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|url-status=
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; not strictly an MoS matter, but likely of interest to MoS regulars (February 2021 – April 2021) - Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#MEDLEAD – RfC about whether to keep as-is, or delete (and possibly rewrite from scratch), the MEDMOS section MOS:MEDLEAD (February 2021).
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- Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lists#RfC: Standardizing shortened reference column titles – On whether and how to abbreviate "References" as a table column heading (October 2020)
Capitalization-specific:
- Talk:Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#Requested_move_30_August_2021
- Talk:Major Arcana#Requested move 20 August 2021 – major and minor arcana caps?
Concluded
Extended content
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Non-breaking spaces with written-out units
As a follow-up to topic-specific discussions at Talk:Hassium and User talk:DePiep#MOS and NBSP, it seems that the current MOS guideline on the usage of non-breaking spaces when separating numbers from written-out units (e.g. 5 kilometers (instead of 5 km); 118 elements) is open to interpretation. It advises to use non-breaking spaces when line breaks are awkward, which they seem to be in this case; however, implementing this would apparently require making heavy changes to lots of articles, as it is not strongly established as are the examples given in the MOS section.
I thus ask, should the same guideline for quantities and abbreviated units be followed for fully spelled-out units? Should non-breaking spaces be used only with abbreviations, or always with units and quantities? I would like to establish a more definite MOS guideline, in which one or the other is widely agreed upon as common practice. ComplexRational (talk) 00:46, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- I really, really wish people would stop jumping straight into a project-wide RfC before working with other editors to frame the questions to be posed. I urge you to withdraw this. And MOSNUM is probably the right place for this. (Main MOS vs subsidiary pages is a longstanding problem.) EEng 01:26, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- Where else would you suggest discussing this, seeing as its outcome is not specific to the articles for which this was discussed, and the question is pretty straightforward from these discussions? If it can be held elsewhere, I will withdraw; however, I don't think that place is MOSNUM because this issue pertains to MOS:NBSP, which is not its own MOS sub-page. I'm open to ideas. ComplexRational (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- I'd suggest discussing it right here (or at Talk:MOSNUM, but since ultimately it's an aesthetic, not technical, issue I guess here is fine.) There are plenty of people here who have thought a lot about formatting issues, and many have outside professional experience, and with their participation I suspect the issue can either be resolved or boiled down to a clearcut question. Open-ended RfCs like you've started, which pull random people from all over into an unstructured discussion, just end up a mess. EEng 03:28, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- Okay, I withdrew it as an RfC. Let's play it out as a regular discussion now; I apologize for being unaware of this potential complication. ComplexRational (talk) 09:53, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- Ping to prevent archiving. EEng 12:49, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
- I don't see the "jumping into an RfC" that EEng is referring to here. I do see a reasonable description by ComplexRational of a MOS detail to be clarified somehow. Do I miss some invisible redacted editing? Please clarify. As it stands now, the OP is correct and relevant to me. -DePiep (talk) 00:01, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Yes, obviously, like the OP said: he had set this up as an RfC but later withdrew it at my urging. EEng 00:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Eh, that 'obvious' part is not visible then?, like in an talk edited afterwards (ouch)? Must I do homework research to see it? -DePiep (talk) 00:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Jesus Christ, the OP wrote, just above here:
Okay, I withdrew it as an RfC
. 01:46, 1 April 2020 (UTC)- I think the point that is puzzling both DePiep and me is there seems to be no trace of the !RfC for us to see what issues had been raised. Starting an RfC and then withdrawing it should surely leave something in a history somewhere. There are no links, nor anything in contributions that I can find. What am I missing? --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- The most recent diff before I withdrew upon EEng's suggestion was [1]. All that changed since then was removal of the RfC template; the content of my original post is the same now as it was then. ComplexRational (talk) 14:43, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I think the point that is puzzling both DePiep and me is there seems to be no trace of the !RfC for us to see what issues had been raised. Starting an RfC and then withdrawing it should surely leave something in a history somewhere. There are no links, nor anything in contributions that I can find. What am I missing? --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Jesus Christ, the OP wrote, just above here:
- Eh, that 'obvious' part is not visible then?, like in an talk edited afterwards (ouch)? Must I do homework research to see it? -DePiep (talk) 00:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Yes, obviously, like the OP said: he had set this up as an RfC but later withdrew it at my urging. EEng 00:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I don't see the "jumping into an RfC" that EEng is referring to here. I do see a reasonable description by ComplexRational of a MOS detail to be clarified somehow. Do I miss some invisible redacted editing? Please clarify. As it stands now, the OP is correct and relevant to me. -DePiep (talk) 00:01, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I'd suggest discussing it right here (or at Talk:MOSNUM, but since ultimately it's an aesthetic, not technical, issue I guess here is fine.) There are plenty of people here who have thought a lot about formatting issues, and many have outside professional experience, and with their participation I suspect the issue can either be resolved or boiled down to a clearcut question. Open-ended RfCs like you've started, which pull random people from all over into an unstructured discussion, just end up a mess. EEng 03:28, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- Where else would you suggest discussing this, seeing as its outcome is not specific to the articles for which this was discussed, and the question is pretty straightforward from these discussions? If it can be held elsewhere, I will withdraw; however, I don't think that place is MOSNUM because this issue pertains to MOS:NBSP, which is not its own MOS sub-page. I'm open to ideas. ComplexRational (talk) 02:02, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
In traditional typography, typesetters would ensure that sentences didn't break onto another line at a point where the result was a new line starting with something that didn't make sense alone, or where the break would produce a semantic dissonance. So they would avoid lines starting with an abbreviation:
- something something ... a distance of 15
km
as well as lines that changed meaning when the next line was read:
- something something ... a cost of $5
million
In electronic document processing, when line length can change with screen resolution or window size, the non-breaking space was used to prevent those sort of breaks from happening. I don't believe there has ever been any rationale for placing a non-breaking space between numbers and normal recognisable English words, because those don't produce problems, other than in cases like the second example. There is really nothing wrong with seeing:
- something something ... a distance of 15
kilometres
and it is especially ludicrous to extend the fetish for non-breaking spaces in quantities to normal counted items. There is nothing wrong with reading:
- something something ... a squad of 24
football players
The examples at MOS:UNITNAMES reflect these simple principles, and I can't see what other interpretation could be made of the present guidance:
- Use a non-breaking space (
{{nbsp}}
or
) between a number and a unit symbol, or use{{nowrap}}
... - ... and a normal space is used between a number and a unit name.
If somebody wants to change those guidelines, then they really should be proposing what changes they want made and the reasons for them. --RexxS (talk) 19:07, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
- Just for the record, I wasn't proposing a change. I was merely asking for clarification, and if any disagreement were to arise, then firmly establish one way or another. What is written here makes sense, now I only propose that it is made crystal clear for other (copy)editors in the MOS:NBSP section (to use only with abbreviations). ComplexRational (talk) 00:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- (ec) @RexxS:, these examples are undisputed, and are clear by WP:NBSP and WP:MOSUNIT. Minor detail: your example of 15<regularspace>kilometres is not in the MOS explicitly, but well observed, also by {{Convert}} — end of detail.
- Note: for simplicity, an "_" (underscore) says NBSP.
- A question arose when reading in MOS:NBSP:
It is desirable to prevent line breaks where breaking across lines might be confusing or awkward.
-- note the criterium "awkward". The examples given are (1) unit symbols - no problem, see before, and (2) exampes of number-in-proper-name (Boeing_747). - Some editors state that the "awkward" situation may also occur in situations with a number inline, i.e. in running text. Examples (in here):
element_114
,the expected magic 114_protons, ...
. - My (opposing) point is that such number-word combinations are not awkward, can reasionably occur in any running sentence, are part of a reading habit, and so are not 'awkward' and do not allow an NBSP. Otherwise, this whole enwiki could require a MOS-change in ~every article, or have inconsistent styles between articles re this line-breaking.
- So, first question: do we recognise this is a Good MOS Question to discuss? -DePiep (talk) 00:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- There's long been a need for the nbsp/nobreak guidance to be improved. I've never done anything about it because I realized some cases would need a discussion. EEng 00:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- @DePiep: It certainly seems that something ought to be done to educate editors about when to use (and not use) non-breaking spaces. I just looked at the Island of stability article you pointed out. Over 200 non-breaking spaces. Seriously? I've just removed four that you could see at a glance occur at places where the line could never break. No doubt somebody will revert me, citing MoS instead of thinking for themselves. I'm not sure repeating the already crystal clear guidance in MoS is the solution though. Either they never read MoS or they don't understand what a line break is. Either way, tinkering with the MoS won't have any effect on them. As for your actual examples, I've long ago given up trying to convince others that there's absolutely nothing wrong with reading
- Flerovium, with the expected magic 114
protons, was first synthesized in 1998
- Flerovium, with the expected magic 114
- Although to get a line break there, you would have to be viewing on a screen with a maximum line length of less than 40 characters. Even my 1978 vintage TRS-80 could manage that. --RexxS (talk) 03:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- If
114 protons
can't be broken, then you may as well say that every number has to be followed by an nbsp, always, and that would be silly. - I do think
Z = 112
shouldn't break, though that would be better coded as{{nobr|Z = 112}}
than the currentZ = 112
- I'm not sure that all the examples at MOS:NBSP belong there, and I wonder if there shouldn't be some other cases listed.
- If
- EEng 04:20, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- User:RexxS: that is my understanding of MOS:NBSP too, including its background (typography). It's just, I stopped editing because of EW, started a talk, and involved editors correctly started a wider talk here. But I see no need to admonish other editors, instead we could use a clearer MOS text and explanation here, for fellow editors. -DePiep (talk) 08:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- I now see that the section title here is a much narrower issue than the wide one ComplexRational and I were discussing/editing. As the Island of stability example show, it was and is about all of MOS:NBSP. This complicates/disturbs this talk flow, I must excuse. (how to proceed?). -DePiep (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- @EEng and DePiep: Apologies, I was too focused on the quantities issues and not enough on the general nbsp guidance, which does seem to be missing. IMHO, we should have a guideline that says something like
- Numbers followed by an ordinary English word (not an abbreviation, or similar) do not require a non-breaking space between them in normal circumstances.
- There are also many circumstances where a non-breaking space is unnecessary because a line break can't happen there. There are three examples in Island of stability: in the caption of the infobox (the width is fixed, regardless of window size); in reference number 5 (too close to the start of a line for a line break to be possible); and in the table caption
"Most stable isotopes of superheavy elements (Z ≥ 104)"
(the table can't become narrow enough to wrap the caption onto another line). I've tried pushing the zoom up to 250% and narrowing the window to its minimum, but I can't find a setting that could cause a line break where one had been placed. Nevertheless, I don't suppose that is anything we can, or should, try to give guidance about in MoS for fear of causing more confusion. --RexxS (talk) 14:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)- In the first image, a line break appeared at 70% zoom on my computer screen, and indeed was awkward. What exactly are you suggesting would risk more confusion? The MoS is supposed to make things as clear as possible, and I wouldn't have started this thread had it been clear from the beginning (echoing EEng –
There's long been a need for the nbsp/nobreak guidance to be improved.
). ComplexRational (talk) 14:40, 1 April 2020 (UTC)- Thanks for explaining how you got the line break in the image caption; I hadn't considered zooming out that far. But do you think anybody actually reads Wikipedia at 70% zoom? I can't even get any of my browsers to zoom at 70% to see the effect. Still, it's possible, so best to leave in the {{nowrap}} in that case. The general point about infobox images with captions shorter than the image width is worth understanding, though.
- What I am suggesting is that there are many cases where we simply don't need a non-breaking space, i.e. whenever it's not possible for the line to break at that point, but that it's difficult to try to give foolproof guidance to cover those cases, so I don't think we can come up with a form of words that would be helpful. Can you?
- Do you agree with my suggested clarification above: Numbers followed by an ordinary English word (not an abbreviation, or similar) do not require a non-breaking space between them in normal circumstances. and if not, why not? --RexxS (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Makes sense, I understand what you're saying about captions. Would it then also be better to use
{{nobr|1=''Z'' = 114}}
(for example) throughout the article, if this would be preferred to a pair of nbsp's? (On an unrelated note, maybe a new template should be created following whatever this discussion establishes, as this is pretty common in chemistry and physics articles.) ComplexRational (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2020 (UTC) - I agree with this wording, it addresses the elephant in the room and is easy enough to follow. I would specifically use it as an antithesis to the MOS points advising nbsp with units (70_km) or parts of the name (Airbus_A380), though I suppose saying "not an abbreviation" already addresses that. The only thing that may raise questions is "normal circumstances" – I'd rather leave that out and add an additional bullet point saying something along the lines of Non-breaking spaces are not required in fixed-with table cells or image captions, especially when the text is not long enough to wrap., or else work out through discussion what the most common exceptions would be (that would otherwise confuse editors unfamiliar or too familiar with MOS). ComplexRational (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Most editors, in my experience, prefer {{nowrap}} over multiple consecutive non-breaking spaces in a phrase. It makes the wikitext more readable for other editors (the same reason we prefer to avoid html entities where possible).
- The "normal circumstances" would be to cover exceptions like
- ... his fee for the service was $50
thousand.
- ... his fee for the service was $50
- where a non-breaking space between the number and the next word would avoid giving the reader the impression the fee was $50 until they read on to the next line. But I'm happy to accommodate other views such as giving examples of specific exceptions instead of stating "normal circumstances".
- While I think about it, there is a good case for what I called the "semantic dissonance" to be noted as a rule in other places as well:
- ... the great-grandnephew of Queen Mary
II
- ... the great-grandnephew of Queen Mary
- To anyone familiar with Tudor/Stuart history of England, it first reads as Mary I of England, then as Mary II of England when the next line is reached and obviously should be avoided. That represents one of the very few phrases where I would have no hesitation in recommending the use of a non-breaking space for cogent, rather than aesthetic reasons.--RexxS (talk) 19:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- Makes sense, I understand what you're saying about captions. Would it then also be better to use
- In the first image, a line break appeared at 70% zoom on my computer screen, and indeed was awkward. What exactly are you suggesting would risk more confusion? The MoS is supposed to make things as clear as possible, and I wouldn't have started this thread had it been clear from the beginning (echoing EEng –
- @EEng and DePiep: Apologies, I was too focused on the quantities issues and not enough on the general nbsp guidance, which does seem to be missing. IMHO, we should have a guideline that says something like
- @DePiep: It certainly seems that something ought to be done to educate editors about when to use (and not use) non-breaking spaces. I just looked at the Island of stability article you pointed out. Over 200 non-breaking spaces. Seriously? I've just removed four that you could see at a glance occur at places where the line could never break. No doubt somebody will revert me, citing MoS instead of thinking for themselves. I'm not sure repeating the already crystal clear guidance in MoS is the solution though. Either they never read MoS or they don't understand what a line break is. Either way, tinkering with the MoS won't have any effect on them. As for your actual examples, I've long ago given up trying to convince others that there's absolutely nothing wrong with reading
- There's long been a need for the nbsp/nobreak guidance to be improved. I've never done anything about it because I realized some cases would need a discussion. EEng 00:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
- This is already covered at MOS:NUM, to the extent any of this needs any rule-mongering. It advises using non-breaking spaces in strings like 5 cm, but it does not advise doing this when using spelled-out words. It doesn't advise against it, either. Like most things, it is left to editorial discretion. Nothing is broken. No, we do not need another template, since
{{nobr}}
and{{nbsp}}
work fine. So does just using
. Yes, it is WP:Common sense to non-breakify certain strings like "$50 thousand", and "Mary II". No, we don't need a rule about it, or we would've already had one by now. No, we do not need anyone going around inserting non-breaking spaces robotically in proximity to every number they see, per WP:MEATBOT ("ain't broke, don't 'fix' it"). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 11:29, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
NBSP for numeric followed by words
Hi all, I recently put up Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1985 World Snooker Championship/archive2 for FAC. SandyGeorgia commented that there should be some additional non-breaking spaces for items such as "15 seeds, 103 entrants, 32 participants". I don't really mind putting these in, but wanted to clarify our MOS, and how it effects these types of phrases. My understanding at WP:NBSP is that we should use these on names, such as World War 2, and measurements, such as 10 Miles. However, should we also use these on regular expressions, such as "20 people"? I don't mind either way, but wanted to clarify before I do wholesale changes. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:19, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
- The guideline gives patchy and somewhat conflicting advice on this entire subject. I'm going to give you what I think will be useful guidance, but we must brace ourselves for people to leap out at us from all corners of the project to denounce what I say as at best the product of unfathomable ignorance, and at worst detrimental to the moral fiber of the nation.
- There are two (maybe more, but two I can think of offhand) things we're trying to prevent:
- (1) You don't want tiny fragments that look odd alone stranded on the start of a line. Thus World War{nbsp}2 and Henry{nbsp}VIII.
- (2) You don't want two things separated by a linebreak if the reader, seeing just the first part, will be momentarily misled and have to back up and rethink when he sees the bit on the next line. Thus $2{nbsp}million, because if the million goes on the next line the reader first thinks "Two dollars", and then when he sees the million he has to back up and think "Oh, wait, Two million dollars". (This is a peculiarity of the fact that money symbols go at front of quantities rather than at the end as with other units. Can anyone think of a similar example not involving money?)
- (3) Notice that the logic of (2) doesn't arise with normal quantities like 15 seeds or 2 million dollars (i.e. no nbsp used in these cases) because as the reader scans "15<linebreak>seeds" there's nothing misleading about 15 alone at the end of the line, and the same for scanning "2<linebreak>million dollars" or "2 million<linebreak>dollars". When you think about it, if you required nbsp in constructions like that, then you're pretty much saying every number anywhere must be followed by an nbsp, and that can't be right. So I would not put {nbsp} in your examples.
- (4) Units of measure are a special case. By the logic of (3), there's no {nbsp} in 10 kilometers. However, I think the guideline does recommend an {nbsp} in the case of 10{nbsp}km, because at the start of a line km looks weird in a way kilometer doesn't. (km is what's called a unit symbol, whereas kilometer is what's called a unit name, and there are several other ways in which unit symbols and unit names are treated differently, so there's nothing odd about treating them differently here.)
- Perhaps the principles laid out above can be the start of a revival of this thread. EEng 03:04, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
- Or perhaps not. In the meantime, here are some other places I think (comment invited, of course) nbsp would be needed or not needed. Probably some or all of these are give by others in the posts above but I want to get them down while they're on my mind.
- Needed:
- In DMY dates e.g. 28{nbsp}May or 28{nbsp}May 1935, because at least some readers will find separation of the day-in-month from the month odd. (Further explanation on request as to why this is different from the case of 10 kilometers.)
- In MDY dates e.g. May{nbsp}28, 1935, because "28, 1935" looks ludicrous at the start of a line.
- He responded, "Better you than{nbsp}I." or The smallest reading was{nbsp}5.
- 9:30{nbsp}a.m. because I think it's somewhat analogous to a unit symbol (see above); and definitely 9:30{nbsp}am, because "am" alone and separated from the "9:30" could cause the reader to trip and fall.
- several{nbsp}.22 shells, because starting a line with a . looks weird
- <certain image caption situations, details to be supplied (centered captions, left-aligned captions)>
- Ellipsis or other fragments at the start of a quotation: He listed them as "1.{nbsp}Good goals, 2. Good planning, 3. Good execution; or The torn fragment read, "...{nbsp}for the love of God!"
July{{nbsp}}28, 1942
????
- I ask people here: how often have you struck a dangling numeral at the end of a line? Me: not that I can recall. Tony (talk) 07:08, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
- By struck do you mean "run into/happened to find" or "struck out/had to get rid of"? EEng 16:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
- Perhaps that was meant to be "stuck", the synonym for "put". — BarrelProof (talk) 23:58, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- By struck do you mean "run into/happened to find" or "struck out/had to get rid of"? EEng 16:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
- I could see having a summary section somewhere (hopefully not in the main page, maybe in MOS:TEXT) about "Appropriate uses of non-breaking spaces" or some heading title like that, in which we could suggest these sorts of cases, without implying that they're required. People already rankle at the currently fairly-strongly-recommended ones in MOS:NUM and a few other places. So, there's opportunity to cry "WP:CREEP!" here if this discussion produces more rules, rather than optional tweaks for polishing up text for maximum usability. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
- I'm surprised to see the above quote from MOS:NUM (WP:UNITNAMES): "a normal space is used between a number and a unit name". Personally, I would find a line break within the example's "29
kilograms" rather ugly. — BarrelProof (talk) 00:05, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- Me, too. The position "you're pretty much saying every number anywhere must be followed by an nbsp" that EEng spoke against earlier actually seems to me to be the best practice. Your example of a break between 29 and kilograms not only looks "ugly", but makes me think that there has been a misprint of some sort causing me to have trouble understanding what is written. --Khajidha (talk) 19:38, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
- Somewhat related, but since the discussion here is almost-exclusively referencing insertion of NBSPs, I wanted to re-raise this previous discussion where I advocated for using Template:nowrap instead of NBSPs. The simple reason being that (at least on my system / in my browser)
{{nowrap}}
has the same effect as the insertion of NBSPs, without affecting spacing of the text the way NBSP does (again, at least on my system). Here's the example I presented:
Bare | Wikilinked | |
---|---|---|
Using {{nowrap}} | World War I | World War I |
Using
|
World War I | World War I |
- Looking at that on my screen, the
version has a much larger — in fact, uncomfortably large — space between "War" and "I", whereas the{{nowrap}}
version is spaced normally. If we can protect phrases against wrapping without making the formatting look weird, I figure that makes the decision on when/whether to do so a bit less fraught. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 02:52, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
Something from somewhere else
- From User:Tony1/Monthly_updates_of_styleguide_and_policy_changes / WP:Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-07-07/Dispatches --EEng 15:34, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
Non-breaking spaces. The narrower scope for using non-breaking (i.e., "hard") spaces was significantly clarified. They should be used:
- in compound expressions in which figures and abbreviations or symbols are separated by a space (17 kg, AD 565, 2:50 pm);
- between month and day in dates that are not autoformatted (August 3, 1979);
- on the left side of spaced en dashes; and
- in other places where displacement might be disruptive to the reader, such as £11 billion, 5° 24′ 21.12″ N, Boeing 747, and the first two items in 7 World Trade Center.
Improve Controlling line breaks section
It seems that it would be good if the example markup of 5° 24′ N included a non-breaking space between the 5degrees and the 24minutes and the N. DGerman (talk) 21:18, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
Possessive forms of biblical names ending with "s"
For probably their entire existence, the Jesus and Moses articles used " Moses' " as the possessive form until I changed them to " Moses's ". The other day I came across an article on Merriam Webster that says specifically that biblical names are an exception to this rule and should be written " Moses' " and " Jesus' ", but an editor won't let me change it back. I noticed the first time I was making the edits that certain quotes used the " Moses' " form (for example Moses#Artapanus), which I left as is, since quotes shouldn't be changed obviously. I also noticed just now that the footnotes on Jesus still use the " Jesus' " form because I missed them the first time around. Should the manual of style be updated or does Merriam Webster not know what they're talking about?
I think they might be right because people always say "in Jesus name, amen", they don't say "in Jesuses name, amen" Akeosnhaoe (talk) 16:08, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
- Wikipedia follows its own manual of style; while it may be influenced by others, it doesn't need to adhere to them. MOS:'S recommends adding 's to singular nouns ending in s, including proper names (which I personally find abhorrent to look at), but suggests rewording a sentence if adding the 's would make the name harder to read. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 16:19, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
- I think Akeosnhaoe is aware of what the MOS says. The question isn't of what the MOS says but whether the MOS should say what it says or if it should be amended. The MOS itself can't be used as an argument against such a question..now, I personally don't understand why only biblical names should have such an exception (I would that this were the standard), but if that truly is the practice, I think it's worthy of consideration. Firejuggler86 (talk) 03:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- Well, since you've asked about should, the apostrophe represents a contraction, hence singular uses a apostrophe-s (contracting "his", "hers" or "its") whereas the plural form does not (contracting "their"). That's why it does not apply to personal pronouns; they are already spelt out in full. I don't know why there was an exception made for Biblical names; but it was a common style to omit the "s" when it was not pronounced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:49, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- That’s not actually correct, Hawkeye7, see Saxon genitive. The idea that it’s a contraction was a popular folk etymology in the early modern period.
- The current rule has consistency on its side - there’s no actual reason not to always write ‘s and there are style guides that prescribe it including for names like Moses and Jesus. It’s not a question of correct usage, just standardization in a particular written document. I personally prefer to write all names ending in -us with just an apostrophe, but that’s only one option. I don’t see any reason to change the current rule.—Ermenrich (talk) 22:55, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- There isn't a rule for how to handle possessives for non-plural names ending in s, right? I generally go by how its pronounced, and I suppose most people do.. Mr Franks' bunny pelts, Jits's walloo.
- Well, since you've asked about should, the apostrophe represents a contraction, hence singular uses a apostrophe-s (contracting "his", "hers" or "its") whereas the plural form does not (contracting "their"). That's why it does not apply to personal pronouns; they are already spelt out in full. I don't know why there was an exception made for Biblical names; but it was a common style to omit the "s" when it was not pronounced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:49, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- I think Akeosnhaoe is aware of what the MOS says. The question isn't of what the MOS says but whether the MOS should say what it says or if it should be amended. The MOS itself can't be used as an argument against such a question..now, I personally don't understand why only biblical names should have such an exception (I would that this were the standard), but if that truly is the practice, I think it's worthy of consideration. Firejuggler86 (talk) 03:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
- The Bibilical names thing is just tradition. Certainly for Jesus -- people always say "In Jesus' name" rather than "In Jesus's name". I guess preachers talk that way. Since that's how people in the real world do, so should we. Even Strunk & White carved out a exception for that (they prescribed the 's form for all other instances). For Moses the possessive is just pronounced that way, I guess: "By Moses' whiskers, I shall be avenged". Maybe because three esses in a row sounds awkward. So that's not an issue. Are there other important Biblical names ending in s? Herostratus (talk) 03:27, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- Well, Lazarus comes to mind. Silas, James, Tobias, Amos, Matthias, Genesis, Phineas, Gluteus Maximus. And the possessive form of Methuselah – is it Meh-thooze-uh-luhz or Meh-thooze-uh-luh-zez (or -zuz)? And what's the possessive of Lourdes? I don't even know how to pronounce Lourdes itself. EEng 04:39, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- Phinehas "distinguished himself as a youth at Shittim". I think that's all we need to know. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:34, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- The only one for which I actually hear anyone not saying the 's is "Jesus' name". And even there I do hear some people say "Jesus's name". I'm not sure why anyone cares about pronunciation when the question is about spelling, though. It's not as if English doesn't already have gobs and gobs of silent letters. Just stick the 's on all of them and continue pronouncing them however you already do. --Khajidha (talk) 13:08, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- Well, Lazarus comes to mind. Silas, James, Tobias, Amos, Matthias, Genesis, Phineas, Gluteus Maximus. And the possessive form of Methuselah – is it Meh-thooze-uh-luhz or Meh-thooze-uh-luh-zez (or -zuz)? And what's the possessive of Lourdes? I don't even know how to pronounce Lourdes itself. EEng 04:39, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- The Bibilical names thing is just tradition. Certainly for Jesus -- people always say "In Jesus' name" rather than "In Jesus's name". I guess preachers talk that way. Since that's how people in the real world do, so should we. Even Strunk & White carved out a exception for that (they prescribed the 's form for all other instances). For Moses the possessive is just pronounced that way, I guess: "By Moses' whiskers, I shall be avenged". Maybe because three esses in a row sounds awkward. So that's not an issue. Are there other important Biblical names ending in s? Herostratus (talk) 03:27, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- It has nothing to do with a Biblical exception. It's just English. The possessive of James is very often written as James' rather than James's, for example. But both are technically correct. I don't think we should be changing one to the other except for consistency within articles. It may even be that there's a WP:ENGVAR issue here, as British English certainly often prefers the apostrophe without the terminal 's' on these names (as per the given example, St Thomas' Hospital). -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:35, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- Keep in mind that Biblical names are actually Aramaic, Greek or Hebrew rather than English, and the English names are often significantly different from the original, e.g., Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה, romanized: Moshe, lit. 'Moses', Hebrew: פִּינְחָס, romanized: Pinchas, lit. 'Phineas', Hebrew: שְׁלֹמֹה, romanized: Shlomoh, lit. 'Solomon'. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:48, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- As Ermenrich and others above have said, the MoS standard that singular names carry an ‘s in the possessive is simple, clear, and widely used elsewhere. I don’t see any reason to be making any exceptions for biblical names. The London hospital exception is actually not an exception - the change in its punctuation is relatively recent and reflects that there were two St Thomases associated with the hospital. It doesn’t indicate anything about British English, where ‘s for the singular possessive is the common standard. MapReader (talk) 18:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
- This is already addressed by MOS:POSS. It does not make exceptions for Biblical names, which would be a gross PoV-pushing exercise. Nor is that an idea found across other style guides, which have widely divergent ideas about this: use 's in every case; use 's except after a trailing s; ... after a trailing s or z; ... after a trailing s or ss or z; ... after a /s/ sound however spelled (including x, sse, and other things in various cases, but not s or z if silent or pronounced /z/); ... in all cases except after a trailing s [or any of the variations just mentioned] in a Biblical name; ... in all cases except after a trailing s [or any of the variations just mentioned] in a name from antiquity at all; ... insert 10 other pseudo-rules here.
We need to stop rehashing this stuff. It is guaranteed that every single editor is going to disagree with something in MoS (as they will in every other style guide in existence), and it is also guaranteed that every single MoS line-item will have at least one editor disagreeing with it. This needs to stop being an excuse for perennial "fix the MoS my way or else!" rehash. It wastes both our time and a considerable amount of editorial goodwill. The central purpose of MoS is to present consistent content for readers, and its secondary purpose is forestalling editorial conflict over style trivia. Engaging here in cyclical editorial strife over style trivia is therefore contraindicated. Just accept that fact that MoS is never going to say 100% of the things you'd like it to say. And "just do whatever you're used to" defeats the main purpose of MoS. Instead, just follow MoS and stop picking style fights. If you write an article for The New York Times, then follow the NYT style guide. If you submit a paper to an American Medical Association journal, then follow AMA style. This is not F'ing rocket science.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:34, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
Is using 'Latter' and 'Former' a bad idea?
Is using 'the latter' of 'the former' (as the subject of a sentence, not a point in time) a bad idea? Or indicative of a sentence that needs re-wording anyway?
For example in:
Rio 2016 Olympians Shōhei Iwamoto and Natsumi Tomonaga confirmed places each in the men's and women's event, respectively, with the former finishing fourth and the latter second among those eligible for Olympic qualification at the 2019 Asia & Oceania Championships in Kunming, China.
I would prefer something like:
Rio 2016 Olympians Shōhei Iwamoto and Natsumi Tomonaga confirmed places each in the men's and women's event, respectively, with Iwamoto finishing fourth and Tomonaga second among those eligible for Olympic qualification at the 2019 Asia & Oceania Championships in Kunming, China.
My objections:
- It's poor for readability, you have to scan back and forth when reading, especially bad for screen readers and audio recordings, and even then the subject is often still unclear.
- It's brittle, if someone adds another example to a list or re-orders the list, then the whole construct has to be re-written.
- It's potentially harder to understand text out of context for e.g. 'did you know'
I'm tempted to edit these out whenever I see them, is there any existing discussion/guidance on this that I should take into account?
JeffUK (talk) 17:15, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- Both sound fine to me, but I exercise caution when I repeat names in a sentence, as it can sound redundant. If I want to do a little repetition, I would personally go for:
—Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 18:18, 25 July 2021 (UTC)Rio 2016 Olympians Shōhei Iwamoto and Natsumi Tomonaga confirmed places in the men's and women's events respectively: Iwamoto finished fourth, and Tomonaga second among those eligible for Olympic qualification at the 2019 Asia & Oceania Championships in Kunming, China.
- Former and latter are way overused. In most cases they're simply one more form of WP:ELEVAR. The OP's rewrite is best. Tenryuu's rewrite is missing a comma after second (or you can omit the comma after fourth). EEng 19:31, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- I tend to agree, but is there a proposal here? Are we just commenting in general, or is a MOS rule forthcoming? If the former, is this the right forum? If the latter, don't we normally avoid being overly-proscriptive in MOS? --A D Monroe III(talk) 20:35, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- I definitely agree "latter/former" is rarely a good prose choice (see Wikipedia:The_problem_with_elegant_variation#Latter_/_former). I also feel it probably doesn't need to be in the MOS. Popcornfud (talk) 21:09, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- I tend to agree, but is there a proposal here? Are we just commenting in general, or is a MOS rule forthcoming? If the former, is this the right forum? If the latter, don't we normally avoid being overly-proscriptive in MOS? --A D Monroe III(talk) 20:35, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- I rarely see them on WP, perhaps too rarely. They are often better than repeating names, especially when only one of them is needed. This may be an ENGVAR style thing. Certainly no MOS change needed. Johnbod (talk) 22:18, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
- No nothing wrong with using 'Latter' and 'Former', avoids repetitive tedious language. Also please do not cite ELEVAR at me, it is a user essay. Spy-cicle💥 Talk? 14:03, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Wow, someone sure got up on the wrong side of the style manual this morning, you have a comma splice too. Linking to a user essay informs (or reminds) our fellow editors of a particular line of reasoning without its having to be tediously pasted in; that's what essays are for. EEng 14:39, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with latter and former when referering to things that are sequential. But when one is referring to a sequence of words in the sentence, then it can be a sign of verbosity and complexity that could be eliminated with a rewrite. The proposed sentence is way too long and confuses the reader by combining "came fourth" and "came second" about separate events. The facts:
- Both Shōhei Iwamoto and Natsumi Tomonaga were Rio 2016 Olympians.
- Both compete in the modern pentathlon and sought qualification at the 2019 Asia & Oceania Championships in Kunming, China
- Iwamoto came fourth in the mens event
- Tomonaga came second in the womens event
- Both successfully qualified to compete at the 2020 Summer olympics.
- There are lots of way to write this to minimise redundancy while keeping separate things separate. In particular, I think it is important to keep the mens/womens events/results separate. For a data-heavy article like this, it is probably best to err on the side of short simple sentences, than attempting beautiful flowing prose. The reader is skimming for facts, not reading to be entertained. -- Colin°Talk 15:10, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- I think it should be avoided wherever possible. I'm not talking about zero tolerance, but to only resort to it when repetition of the names/terms becomes truly clunky and repetitious. This was an example I found unnecessary – imo, the use of former/latter there came across as affected, and so caused more problems than it solved. WP:ELEVAR makes some good points, I think, because there's nothing worse, as a reader, than coming across a page that reads as if it's been authored a little too fussily. JG66 (talk) 15:54, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
- Concur with EEng and Popcornfud. We have essays like ELEVAR to explain the reasons behind various good/bad writing choices, so we don't have to WP:CREEP-bloat MoS with rules that virtually no one actually needs. "ELEVAR is just an essay not a rule" is completely missing the point. See WP:MOSBLOAT: we don't want a rule about anything that doesn't need to be one. If something can be resolved on a case-by-case basis just by applying common sense, then we don't need a rule about it, and need to not have a rule about it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:49, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- To respond to the initial question, yes, the way you have written it is a bad idea. The sentence as you wrote it is not proper encyclopedia style. The goal in encyclopedia writing is to express ideas in the simplest, most direct manner so as to aid in the reader's understanding.
- Your sentence "Rio 2016 Olympians Shōhei Iwamoto and Natsumi Tomonaga confirmed places each in the men's and women's event, respectively, with the former finishing fourth and the latter second among those eligible for Olympic qualification at the 2019 Asia & Oceania Championships in Kunming, China" is very badly written.
- It should be written "Rio 2016 Olympians Shōhei Iwamoto and Natsumi Tomonaga confirmed places in the men's and women's events. Iwamoto finished fourth and Tomonaga finished second among those eligible for Olympic qualification at the 2019 Asia & Oceania Championships in Kunming, China." God bless and happy editing. MarydaleEd (talk) 03:04, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Olympics etc: "400 metres" or "400-metres"
Some recent edits have been putting in "400-metres" for Olympic events, e.g. Ariarne Titmus. While it agrees with WP:HYPHEN, in my opinion it should be trumped by the fact that the Olympics and other sporting events rarely if ever include the hyphen. Thoughts? Adpete (talk) 09:17, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
- We don't strictly follow sources' style guides. It also helps clear ambiguity: are we talking about a freestyle that is 400 metres long, or 400 freestyles that are a metre long? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:44, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
- Surely WP:COMMONNAME applies, though? And while WP:COMMONNAME generally only applies to titles, we are left with the situation that the text doesn't match the title, e.g. Swimming at the 2019 World Aquatics Championships – Women's 400 metre freestyle, which in my opinion is poor style. Adpete (talk) 23:39, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
- I don't think COMMONNAME applies really - not only is it just about article titles, but it's also about choosing the name that we're going to call something by, not about how to punctuate it (so it requires that we call our article 'Triple jump' rather than Hop, skip and jump). From my reading of MOS:HYPHEN, these changes are correct, and titles without the hyphen probably ought to be changed. (Or, if people don't like hyphens, per MOS:HANGING it's OK not to hyphenate if the units are abbreviated, so 400 m freestyle would be.) Girth Summit (blether) 14:10, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- COMMONNAME does not apply. That only applies to article titles (which is why it's in the article titles policy and not the MoS), and it does not apply to style questions anyway. COMMONNAME is the policy that tells us to use a particular article title (in one spelling or another, which might be determined by MOS:ENGVAR or some other MoS criterion), e.g. David Johansen, rather that some totally different name, e.g. Buster Poindexter. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:38, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
- The linked page uses the hyphen correctly, but "400-metres" in some other location is simply incorrect and is likely a result of hypercorrectness. The plural can't be correctly attributive. That is, "400-meters event" is clearly wrong. Case 3 of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Hyphens is the related case of correct use of a hyphen, and it specifically details in its third bullet why "400-meter event" is good and "event of 400-metres" would not be. Don't feel bad about this. Few professional journalists can get hyphens right in the analogous cases when they're reporting someone's age. NoNonsenseHumJock (talk) 22:24, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Terminal punctuation in table cells
Should trailing punctuation be added to table cells? Someone already made that edit for me (which also impacted image descriptions which is only vaguely relevant here,), which is 1035992478 which should demonstrate nicely what I mean. My personal opinion on that is that there should not be any in "special encasings" or however you want to call them, which include tables, image descriptions and similar templates. This discussion should be primarily about tables if possible since I saw a lot of inconsistencies in similar tables.
-- NetSysFire (talk) 21:41, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
- MOS:CAPFRAG says to not put periods at the end of sentence fragments for captions (which that diff did). Not sure if that would apply to table entries but that's where my intuition takes me. Stepho talk 10:57, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
- Sentence fragments should not have terminal punctuation, regardless of where they are found. Primergrey (talk) 12:06, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed. Rather than post a new pointless argument about that here, just look at what several million other articles are doing. They are not putting periods/points at the end of table entries or headers, or list entries, or image captions, or table captions, or etc., except where they end with abbreviations that take a dot, or actually form complete sentences. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:41, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
WP:NavFrame is a long-deprecated collapsing technology. Efforts over the past several years have trimmed down its use or made it such that when it is finally turned off in our Common.css/js, it will be accessible to users in non-article spaces (simply by uncollapsing its content permanently; see also User:IznoBot#Task 3). There are about 70 pages left to work on in non-article space to swap it for its replacement so there is still some to do there.
However, there are some 1400 pages in the mainspace that employ NavFrame. Noting that WP:COLLAPSE says not to collapse content in mainspace generally, would there be support for a mass removal of this specific class and related HTML in semi-automated fashion (not the content held inside it)? Or to finish removal, must the uses be converted to use NavFrame's replacement technology (or one of the various collapsing templates)?
If it is of interest, the remaining use of NavFrame is generally in a series of sports articles to hide long tables that I would argue violate WP:NOTSTATS, but I'm not interested in article deletion right now. ;)
I am willing to leave a nice "here's how to 'revert' this activity constructively" in the edit summary, if that matters, indicating how the interested user can swap to the more correct class. (And more or less did so in the context of IznoBot task 3.)
(This may need a wider audience a la RFC, or possibly a more general question, since that section was written largely when collapsing stuff was not broadly accessible, and while there may be rationale for its continued existence, accessibility is not it today as collapsing these days is a case of progressive enhancement.) Izno (talk) 21:44, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
- Hi @Izno:. This automated edit has left a bit of a mess on 2015–16 Coupe de France Preliminary Rounds. I would hope you can fix this before implementing the edit on any other Coupe de France articles, please. Cheers, Gricehead (talk) 19:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
Re. MOS:RANGES
There's an ongoing discussion at Talk:Body mass index#Boundaries between categories that may benefit from some attention from experienced MOS editors. Essentially, BMI categories like Normal and Overweight are variously described by reliable sources, with some using ”18.5 – 25” and ”25 – 30”, respectively, while others use ”18.5 – 24.99” and ”25 – 29.99”. MOS:RANGES doesn't actually recommend how adjacent ranges of values in a continuum should be displayed. The article had previously used the former style, but it's now been changed to the latter, which arguably leaves gaps. Also, using a decimal precision of 0.1 (or 0.01) when it comes to BMI values is like weighing a fart. The discussion, such as it is, is like watching ping pong. As I see it, there's no real consensus either way at the moment, so the more opinions the merrier. Cheers. nagualdesign 22:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
- This is a self-contradictory argument. If x.99 is so precise it's like weighing a fart then it cannot be said that x.99 (versus something much more precise like x.9999999) leaves gaps in any meaningful sense. This is much preferable to having overlapping and directly contradictory values as in ”18.5 – 25” and ”25 – 30”, which results in the reader having no idea how 25 is classified. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:10, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
Is man-made undesirable gendered wording?
I moved "List of man-made disasters in South_Korea" to "List of human-caused disasters in South_Korea". I note the Gender-neutral language section overleaf.
Now there's friction at the talkpage. Anyone care to give an opinion (here or at that talkpage)? Tony (talk) 09:22, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Nothing wrong with man-made. It is still the most common usage in English, and believe it or not, it IS gender neutral. Masterhatch (talk) 13:44, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- I would generally agree "man-made" still is one of those terms that is recognizes as not pushing a gender, and the switch to "human-made" is awkward. In this specific case, it may be possible to suggest "List of anthropogenic disasters..." if there really is issue with that. --Masem (t) 13:49, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Per [2] man made: "manufactured, created, or constructed by human beings", not sure how that excludes women. "Man-made" is short for mankind, i.e. humans as a whole for just "men". Spy-cicle💥 Talk? 13:59, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- In some cases artificial works as a synonym (as at swimming pool). I don't think that particularly works in that title there. --Izno (talk) 14:52, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- True, but sometimes that carries the wrong implications. I think "man-made" is still ok, per others above. It's much clearer than the alternatives in most cases - how many people understand "anthropogenic"? I think "human-caused disasters" is the best for that page though, though User:Tony1 was completely (and typically, I'm afraid) wrong to move it without discussion. He can't have thought that would be uncontroversial. Johnbod (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- yeah, he's been around long enough to know about the MOS retaining existing styles. Masterhatch (talk) 15:06, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Right, as regard "anthropogenic". Nobody knows what that means. Step outside your shoes here, people. (On the proximate matter, "human caused" is preferable IMO, but only because "man-made" seems a bit off in this particular context). Herostratus (talk) 15:08, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Erm, we have a strong predilection to the gender-neutral. MOS:RET doesn't apply in such cases. Izno (talk) 15:42, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- It's WP:RM that applies, and that makes no concessions to supposed PC. Johnbod (talk) 16:09, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- RM is neither policy nor guideline; WP:BOLD is. (Mind you, I don't care about this particular article - simply commenting that the RM process is not mandatory.) Wikipedia:Article_titles#Considering_changes is policy I suppose, so take that fwiw. Izno (talk) 16:13, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- As an interesting point on "anthropogenic", I was looking at what other articles started with "list of man-made..." and found that the redirect List of man-made disasters points to Anthropogenic hazard. So we sorta already support that. (The other two cases, List of man-made objects on the Moon goes to List of artificial objects on the Moon (which makes sense from above) and List of man-made mass poisoning incidents which is just there). --Masem (t) 16:20, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- It's WP:RM that applies, and that makes no concessions to supposed PC. Johnbod (talk) 16:09, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Anthropogenic hazard is a man-made disaster of a title! Johnbod (talk) 03:47, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- True, but sometimes that carries the wrong implications. I think "man-made" is still ok, per others above. It's much clearer than the alternatives in most cases - how many people understand "anthropogenic"? I think "human-caused disasters" is the best for that page though, though User:Tony1 was completely (and typically, I'm afraid) wrong to move it without discussion. He can't have thought that would be uncontroversial. Johnbod (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Can we use “man-made” if all the items listed were made by human males? Blueboar (talk) 15:58, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- "man-made" has not just been applied to disasters. Once upon a time, it was applied to ice. Man-made ice was different from the one transported from the arctic and stored in ice houses. Now because pretty much all ice consumed by humans is human-made we just call it ice; "artificial ice," is now reserved for the one underfoot in rinks. In the early days of rayon or nylon, it was called man-made fiber; now it is just artificial or synthetic fiber; man-made grass or turf is artificial turf; man-made lakes are artificial lakes; man-made flavors are imitation flavors; man-made leather or fur is faux; man-made flowers are fake or artificial; man-made gems are imitation gems. So man-made has been continued to be replaced by gender-neutral terms for nearly 100 years now. And it doesn't just apply to Homo sapiens. The national bird of India used to be the peacock. But on WP it is now peafowl based on the principle that a national bird can't be born of a mother who is not. The European Parliament says in its pamphlet on gender-neutral language, "the use in many languages of the word 'man' in a wide range of idiomatic expressions which refer to both men and women, such as manpower, layman, man-made, statesmen, committee of wise men, should be discouraged. With increased awareness, such expressions can usually be made gender-neutral." I think the page move was needed because gender-neutral terms are inevitable. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:56, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- "Anthropogenic" sounds good to me. Tony (talk) 00:06, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- "Anthropogenic" is too sesquipedalian to be used in an article title. WP:COMMONNAME y'know. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- "Anthropogenic" sounds good to me. Tony (talk) 00:06, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- "man-made" has not just been applied to disasters. Once upon a time, it was applied to ice. Man-made ice was different from the one transported from the arctic and stored in ice houses. Now because pretty much all ice consumed by humans is human-made we just call it ice; "artificial ice," is now reserved for the one underfoot in rinks. In the early days of rayon or nylon, it was called man-made fiber; now it is just artificial or synthetic fiber; man-made grass or turf is artificial turf; man-made lakes are artificial lakes; man-made flavors are imitation flavors; man-made leather or fur is faux; man-made flowers are fake or artificial; man-made gems are imitation gems. So man-made has been continued to be replaced by gender-neutral terms for nearly 100 years now. And it doesn't just apply to Homo sapiens. The national bird of India used to be the peacock. But on WP it is now peafowl based on the principle that a national bird can't be born of a mother who is not. The European Parliament says in its pamphlet on gender-neutral language, "the use in many languages of the word 'man' in a wide range of idiomatic expressions which refer to both men and women, such as manpower, layman, man-made, statesmen, committee of wise men, should be discouraged. With increased awareness, such expressions can usually be made gender-neutral." I think the page move was needed because gender-neutral terms are inevitable. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:56, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, we should avoid 'man-made' per existing language in MOS:GNL. I can't immediately generate an example of a usage of 'man-made' that wouldn't clearly or precisely be covered by 'human-made', 'human-caused', or a similar construction. If there continue to be 'man-made'-specific style disputes, I would support an explicit mention in GNL. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:30, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- Fiber, grass, and lakes listed in my post above have been purposefully made by humans. Disasters have typically not. So, "anthropogenic" (OED: originating in or caused by human activity) is certainly more accurate independent of the gender bias issue. "Anthropogenic" is applied to climate change (OED example: 2008 S. Vanderheiden Atmospheric Justice i. 38 By the time George W. Bush took office in early 2001, the existence of anthropogenic climate change was acknowledged by broad scientific consensus.), or to deforestation (OED example: 1963 E. Pyddoke Scientist & Archaeol. iii. 67 West has suggested that at Hoxne a phase of deforestation might be anthropogenic.) But in terms of human purposefulness, a disaster is somewhere in between fiber and climate change. That is why this morning, I'm leaning more toward "human provoked disasters," (which has some currency in the literature). They were provoked by human activity or agency. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:22, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- PS So in terms of preference, I'd say: 1. "human provoked disasters" 2. "anthropogenic disasters" 3 "human-caused disasters." All are better than man-made. I don't buy that "anthropogenic" is unfamiliar. It might be a little, but probably not much more than "pandemic" was in 2019 (as opposed to epidemic). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:32, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- All three of these (as well as "man-made disasters") seem to be used in reliable academic sources, so they satisfy WP:COMMONNAME. All three also satisfy MOS:GNL so I'd be fine with any of them. pburka (talk) 16:32, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- PS So in terms of preference, I'd say: 1. "human provoked disasters" 2. "anthropogenic disasters" 3 "human-caused disasters." All are better than man-made. I don't buy that "anthropogenic" is unfamiliar. It might be a little, but probably not much more than "pandemic" was in 2019 (as opposed to epidemic). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:32, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- I probably should have clarified: my position above is focused on interpretation of our MOS, and the possibility that new language needs to be added to it for clarity. If I start to have an informed opinion on the list that's generated this discussion, I'll share it at the talk page. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- Fiber, grass, and lakes listed in my post above have been purposefully made by humans. Disasters have typically not. So, "anthropogenic" (OED: originating in or caused by human activity) is certainly more accurate independent of the gender bias issue. "Anthropogenic" is applied to climate change (OED example: 2008 S. Vanderheiden Atmospheric Justice i. 38 By the time George W. Bush took office in early 2001, the existence of anthropogenic climate change was acknowledged by broad scientific consensus.), or to deforestation (OED example: 1963 E. Pyddoke Scientist & Archaeol. iii. 67 West has suggested that at Hoxne a phase of deforestation might be anthropogenic.) But in terms of human purposefulness, a disaster is somewhere in between fiber and climate change. That is why this morning, I'm leaning more toward "human provoked disasters," (which has some currency in the literature). They were provoked by human activity or agency. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:22, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- There is generally no problem with "man-made" in terms of gender neutrality, unless discussing specific objects made by an individual person. However, as noted above, there are in many cases different terms that are better for other reasons. Thryduulf (talk) 00:50, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
- Under my interpretation of MOS:GNL, I would support using 'human-made' instead of 'man-made,' although I must admit it does sound a bit awkward, likely because it is not used in mainstream lexicon. However, using 'human' avoids either he/she, as set forth by MOS:GNL. Perhaps for each individual circumstance, we can consider alternative wording altogether, such as "artificial," which a user above has suggested. I also agree that 'anthropogenic' is an appropriate term in this case, which removes the need to use 'man-made' or 'human-made' at all, if causing contention. Alternatively, maybe in some cases, labelling something more specifically, like 'industrial disaster' avoids the issue, too. All in all, though, while there are alternatives, I see no reason to stick to the term 'man,' especially when MOS:GNL advises as such. Broadly, I see no harm done in using more gender-inclusive terminology in the English language more generally. Kind regards, PinkElixir (talk) 01:50, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
- Support either man-made (pithy, very common, and an alliteration that humans tend to like) , or human-made (more gender neutral, and still straightforward). Anthropogenic has its semantic merits, but as mentioned above is sesquipedalian and not commonly used in this context ("anthropogenic climate change" yes, "anthropogenic disasters" no).
- I'd support either man-made or anthropogenic. I feel I have to dip in here - I may be a trans guy, but trans I still am, and though the sentiment is admirable, this feels like a strange move to make.
- 'Man', in this instance, seems to refer pretty obviously to humans in general, in the same sense of the phrase "when man first landed on the moon"; though gender neutral language is something I pick up on, I don't think I'd be alone in saying this isn't relevant to gender neutrality, because the usage of the word is not in a gendered context. I feel it's far less gendered than a phrase like "you guys", to the point where I wouldn't classify 'man-made' as gendered at all. People refer to humankind as 'man' on the whole. Though it is in somewhat of an edging-on older, more grandiose sense, it's not an egregious turn of phrase.
- However, I *would* imagine that 'anthropogenic' is a more *specific* turn of phrase than 'man-made'. I don't think it's too sesquipedalian for usage here at all. 'Anthropogenic' is close enough to 'anthropology' and 'anthropological' to be pretty clear at the very least what it probably means; something to do with humans, and human-caused disasters.
- At any rate, 'human-made', though it doesn't have the word 'man' in it, doesn't feel like an improvement towards gender neutrality, it just feels like a sideways change. I'd much rather see people focus on replacing 'he or she' with 'they'...-- Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 16:18, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
-
- Ah, shit. 'Human' does have the word 'man' in it. There's a reason I didn't go to University for English Language Studies... -- Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 16:19, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
- No, it does not have the word man in it. Consult any dictionary that has etymological information. Human entirely coincidentally has the character string m-a-n in it, but the word man and the word human have unrelated origins. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:58, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Ah, shit. 'Human' does have the word 'man' in it. There's a reason I didn't go to University for English Language Studies... -- Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 16:19, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
- While I agree with observations that man has multiple uses in English, it probably cannot be escaped that some people will object to use of man to mean humans, including in man-[something] constructions, whether their objection is well-grounded or not. Ergo, it is better to use substitute terms like artificial, anthropogenic, human-[something], industrial, etc., and which to use will vary by context. There will be times that this may run into WP:COMMONNAME problems, but keep in mind WP:NTITLE and that COMMONNAME is just a restatement of WP:RECOGNIZABLE, which is only one of the five naming WP:CRITERIA. We can generally write around problems like this with some thought and judgment. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:06, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Avoiding "man-[something]" or "man" when human or something else will do, in such a context when there are several alternatives is in keeping with GNL and it avoids the flowery over the specific, except in quotes, (in fact, individual men walked on the moon), or the ambiguous or archaic ('which man?' or 'which men?', or 'do you mean human?'). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- Keep using "man-made". Let's not adopt Justin Trudeau views, claiming we Canadians use "people-kind", rather then "man-kind". GoodDay (talk) 12:17, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- Disagree Man-made is perfectly fine to express something wouldn’t’ve occurred without human intervention. Actually, if you wanted to say something was caused exclusively by male humans, you would need to write men‑made. (PS: Shouldn’t it have read “huwoman-caused”? )‑‑ K (🗪 | ✍) 07:29, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
Template:Anchor documentation boldly changed; some unaddressed objections in preceding discussion, however
Please refer to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_222#Instructions_on_the_placement_of_"Anchor"_templates.
Template:Anchor's documentation was boldly changed with this revision; however, I see some unaddressed objection in the discussion. It seems to me that placing the anchor in the previous section just above the next heading is the best option. While it does have the problem that a section could be moved with the anchor then being in the wrong place, I think this is better than the result of substituting the template in the heading of the section the anchor links to.
Please let me know your thoughts. Regards, DesertPipeline (talk) 10:08, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- Regardless of where it is used, there should not be two pages that decide where it goes. Seeing as it is a template, that place should be Template:Anchor and its talk page. Perhaps it would be valuable to document the previous discussions here on its optimal location. Izno (talk) 14:15, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
- I've started a section for it there now: Template talk:Anchor#Documentation boldly changed; some unaddressed objections in preceding discussion, however. If anyone reading here would like to participate, please feel free. Thanks, DesertPipeline (talk) 15:18, 9 August 2021 (UTC)
Repeating person's position in article
After someone is initially introduced in an article that isn't their biography, how should they be referred to?
e.g. say the article is about 2018 Russia–United States summit and Trump is introduced as "U.S. President Donald Trump", in the rest of the article is he referred to as "President Trump" or just "Trump"? I think there's a MOS about this but I can't remember which one. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:23, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
- It depends on the context. If "Trump" by itself is ambiguous somehow (say it could be the Trump organization, or one of the Trump family if any of them were mentioned also), then it needs "President" or "Donald" in front of it to disambiguate it. If it isn't clear that the reference to Trump is before or after his presidency, then "President Trump" would be used only for anything pertaining to his time in office. Use the least amount of words that still makes the intended meaning clear. ~Anachronist (talk) 11:59, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
- Let me pick a better example so we’re not getting into questions of ambiguity, say repeated usage of “Prime Minister Arden” at Christchurch mosque shootings or “Prime Minister Johnson” at COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:20, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
- MOS:LASTNAME may be what you were looking for. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 12:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed; we already have this in MoS. And Anachronist is correct about context, i.e. about WP:Use common sense. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:42, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
I was pinged to this discussion, but now I can't find that ping. Anyways, FWIW - I don't see why we'd have to keep repeating Prime Minister (for example) in front of the occupants name, unless there's another person being mentioned in that article with the same full name or same last-name. GoodDay (talk) 14:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- GoodDay, Here's that ping [3]. I got one too, no idea why. As stated above, MOS:LASTNAME already handles this and we seem to have a consensus here that reflects that. Odd that this discussion is still continuing TBH. WaggersTALK 14:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ah, ok, we were pinged to the discussion below, not this one! WaggersTALK 15:00, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- I was confused too. The edit added a section heading. Apparently, the ping software doesn't recognize when a ping is for a newly-created section. — BarrelProof (talk) 22:18, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ah, ok, we were pinged to the discussion below, not this one! WaggersTALK 15:00, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
- Speedy close - this is going over the same ground as this discussion a couple of months ago, isn't surfacing any new points, and is turning confrontational. I suggest everyone steps away and takes a deep breath. The Land (talk) 10:59, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
Whilst I am aware that a previous attempt to address the issue ended in no consensus, it seems to me there are two distinct issues with how articles relating to either people from the UK or places in the UK are treated on this website, compared with other countries. These issues are deeply unsatisfactory and ought to be resolved.
1) Historical articles: It is the standard across Wikipedia, when adding birth and death places to inboxes, to accurately record the country at the time that the birth/death took place. E.g. at Vladimir Lenin, we see that the birthplace is correctly marked as being in the Russian Empire, as it was pre-1917, and that the death place is equally correctly marked as being in the Soviet Union, it being post-1922. The only biographical articles this is not the case for are people from what is now called the UK. For example, at Robert Walpole, the pre-1707 Kingdom of England is correctly cited in the birthplace, but the equally accurate and correct post-1707 Kingdom of Great Britain is not included in the death place, and is in fact being removed by editors. Why is there an inconsistency here? Why is it that only for people from what is today the UK, but has previously been either Great Britain or England/Scotland etc., is this historically accurate standard not applied? I would suggest that in order to be consistent with the standard laid down across this website, the changes of country (pre-1707 England, Scotland etc., 1707-1801 Great Britain, 1801-1922 UK of GB and I, 1922-present UK of GB and NI) ought to be noted, exactly as they are in other articles. Could somebody please give a clear, concise and logical reason as to why this should not occur? Nobody appears to have done so.
2) Inconsistency of contemporary figures' infoboxes: The standard used across Wikipedia is very clear. When citing a birth or death place in a biographical article, the format is: City/town (or similar), wider local authority (be that some form of federal state, county or similar), country. Subjects of biographical articles from the UK are the only country of all UN member states that this is currently not the case for. There ought to be a clear and specific reason as to why the UK should be treated differently from the other 192 member states of the United Nations. To put it simply, either the UK is a country or it isn't. Since it clearly is a country, and is recognised as such, can somebody give a clear, consistent and logical reason as to why "UK" ought not to be added to articles? Nobody is asking for "England" or "Scotland" or similar to be removed, simply that the articles be made consistent with ALL other biographical articles on this website. Why is an exception made for the UK alone?
Clearly there are two distinct issues here - I think it really ought to be for somebody to justify why we should not immediately address issue 1) given that all other articles take account of this. On the second, a case ought to be made why the UK is the only country in the world to face erasure from infoboxes as standard by certain editors.
Those interested may include: DeFacto, Chipmunkdavis, Calidum, Johnbod, Oknazevad, Sgconlaw, FOARP, Bretonbanquet, Fyunck(click), Timrollpickering, S_Marshall, The_Gnome, BarrelProof, GhostInTheMachine, Spy-cicle, No_Great_Shaker, Imaginatorium, MB, Tony1, JG66, Nagualdesign, Pburka, Alanscottwalker, Keith_D, Ghmyrtle, Angry_candy, Llewee, Mabuska, AussieWikiDan, DeCausa, Francish7, Roger_8_Roger, Snowded, Pelagic, Waggers, GoodDay.
Vaze50 (talk) 14:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- "the UK is the only country in the world to face erasure from infoboxes" is ludicrous hyperbole. There are dozens of examples where we routinely use the easily recognizable constituent nation and omit the supernational descriptor: Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and Aruba spring immediately to mind. pburka (talk) 14:52, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- pburka Not a particularly relevant point. Several wrongs don't make a right now, do they? Vaze50 (talk) 15:34, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- In fact pburka, an immediate search demonstrates that you are wrong. The article Mike Eman, for example, former Prime Minister of Aruba, has listed in the birthplace: Oranjestad, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles. So even the example you tried to use to defend the UK being the only country to be erased from infoboxes goes against you. Vaze50 (talk) 15:42, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- They're only "wrongs" in your opinion, and your example supports my point. Aruba wasn't a country when he was born. The Netherlands Antilles was a constituent country of the Netherlands, so by your logic it ought to read Oranjestad, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, Kingdom of the Netherlands. pburka (talk) 15:54, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- In fact since 1954 the Netherlands has been a co-equal constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Is it your position that everyone born in Amsterdam after 1954 should have their birthplace listed as Amsterdam, Netherlands, Kingdom of the Netherlands? pburka (talk) 16:16, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- That would actually be consistent, yes, and so I would favour that. However that isn't the point under discussion here, is it? Vaze50 (talk) 09:24, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- You claimed that the UK was being treated uniquely unfairly ("...the only country of all UN member states..."). I've demonstrated that the United Kingdom is, in truth, treated identically to the Kingdom of the Netherlands and similarly to the United States and China. I'm sure there are many other examples we could find (e.g. Kingdom of Denmark, United Arab Emirates). Are you proposing a sweeping change (adding sovereign countries in all infoboxes where only constituent countries are currently listed), or are you requesting special treatment for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? pburka (talk) 17:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- That would actually be consistent, yes, and so I would favour that. However that isn't the point under discussion here, is it? Vaze50 (talk) 09:24, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- In fact pburka, an immediate search demonstrates that you are wrong. The article Mike Eman, for example, former Prime Minister of Aruba, has listed in the birthplace: Oranjestad, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles. So even the example you tried to use to defend the UK being the only country to be erased from infoboxes goes against you. Vaze50 (talk) 15:42, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- pburka Not a particularly relevant point. Several wrongs don't make a right now, do they? Vaze50 (talk) 15:34, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Oh jeez, could I ever write a book about how over these years, I've been frustrated by the special treatment given to British (post-1707) bios. There's an ESSAY WP:UKNATIONALS, which dictates the usage of English, Welsh, Irish, Northern Irish, Scottish, over British. It also dictates the usage of birth/death places. GoodDay (talk) 15:04, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- GoodDay Could you kindly point to where it dictates the usage of birth/death places in that WP? Could not see it. Thank you. Vaze50 (talk) 15:38, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- The claimed "consistency" in biographies of people from other parts of the world is nonsense. Standards are particularly variable relating to historical people from Italy, Germany, France, North America, Central Asia, India, China, and the Islamic world generally, often understandably so. Vaze50's vandalistic repeated imposition of his preferred solution, despite objections from many editors, should not be allowed to stand. And, by the way, "England" should not be linked. Johnbod (talk) 15:10, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- That's true, but two (or six, or more) wrongs don't make a right. Clearly there's a lot of subjectivity here but we have to acknowledge there's a difference between a person's national identity preferences and the objective facts regarding citizenship, origins, UN-recognised sovereign states, etc.
- Whether she likes it or not, Nicola Sturgeon is British and was born in the United Kingdom - these are objective facts independent of politics; but equally it is very well referenced that she has a desire to reject that nationality and to be Scottish instead. The quandry that gives us is that sovereign states and citizenship are well defined but "Scottishness" isn't.
- Does one have to be born in Scotland to identify as Scottish? Can someone who has never set foot in the place but with Scottish ancestry be Scottish? Is someone with no Scottish ancestry but who now lives in Scotland, Scottish? If so, how long do you have to live in Scotland for to qualify? Can someone with none of those things, who just "feels" that they are Scottish, be Scottish? The truth here is that it's completely subjective, there are no rules at all other than to find verifiable references about what the person says their identity is (or what others say it is) in each individual case. Without those references, or if we want a more consistent approach, sticking with UN-recognised sovereign states seems a sensible way to go for contemporary figures. WaggersTALK 15:24, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Johnbod So you admit that actually the vast majority of biographies DO contain accurate historical information? Covering Europe, North America, Central Asia, India, China, and the Islamic world...so...that's the entire world then. Seriously, do us a favour, and tell us exactly why you think people from the island of Great Britain should be subjected to a different standard? Elaborate on "understandable so". What exactly is the distinction and difference between Britain (which has changed political constructs numerous times in the last few centuries) and France, which you gave as an example, and which has also changed political constructs many times? Please, do tell us. I await your specific reason eagerly... Vaze50 (talk) 15:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- It looks like you may have misread Johnbod's comment. They listed those countries and regions as places with "particularly variable" standards. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- What, Firefangledfeathers, makes France, an example Johnbod used, "particularly variable", and the UK (which has gone from occupation to multiple separate kingdoms to several separate kingdoms to multiple different types of unified kingdoms, with a brief commonwealth along the way) not "particularly variable"? What standards are you applying here? Are there even any? It feels unbelievably arbitrary. Vaze50 (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- If I'm reading Johnbod correctly , they mean variable in the sense that other regions/countries, not just the UK, have inconsistent information. I think it's fair to say that the standard we're currently applying is "no real standard". It's find to register that as a problem and to work toward solutions. I feel you will be more successful with less of a battleground mentality. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 16:56, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, French historical biographies typically just say France, Chinese ones China, and so on. German ones usually say Germany or the rather dubious Holy Roman Empire, rather than the actual mini-state of the time. For Central Asian ones there is often no real state to link to. Johnbod (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- You admit therefore Johnbod and Firefangledfeathers that there is "no real standard", to use your words. It's difficult to avoid a battleground mentality when it is so painfully obvious that there is only one country a particular type of editor is absolutely determined to airbrush from this website wherever they can. French historical biographies do NOT typically just say France Johnbod - even a moment's research on that would demonstrate to you that they clearly distinguish between the different political states of the time. So again, explain to me why it is that the UK (a country like France) should be removed, when the likes of France are included? I note you haven't actually given a specific and clear reason why yet... Vaze50 (talk) 09:27, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- I don't think that's true. I picked some random pages from Category:19th-century French people and it's about 50% 'France' 50% 'No infobox' and I found one that said "Second French Republic". Firefangledfeathers (talk) 14:32, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- (ec) Exactly! We must have several thousand French historical biographies, so "a moment's research on that" isn't going to get you far. Anyway, I did it. The first 6 bios I looked at had no infobox at all (& one was born in Belgium), but #7 Joseph Boulnois and #9 (next with a box]], Louis Adam, #10 Auguste Franchomme all just said "France" (mostly not linked, correctly). Johnbod (talk) 14:38, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- You admit therefore Johnbod and Firefangledfeathers that there is "no real standard", to use your words. It's difficult to avoid a battleground mentality when it is so painfully obvious that there is only one country a particular type of editor is absolutely determined to airbrush from this website wherever they can. French historical biographies do NOT typically just say France Johnbod - even a moment's research on that would demonstrate to you that they clearly distinguish between the different political states of the time. So again, explain to me why it is that the UK (a country like France) should be removed, when the likes of France are included? I note you haven't actually given a specific and clear reason why yet... Vaze50 (talk) 09:27, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, French historical biographies typically just say France, Chinese ones China, and so on. German ones usually say Germany or the rather dubious Holy Roman Empire, rather than the actual mini-state of the time. For Central Asian ones there is often no real state to link to. Johnbod (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- If I'm reading Johnbod correctly , they mean variable in the sense that other regions/countries, not just the UK, have inconsistent information. I think it's fair to say that the standard we're currently applying is "no real standard". It's find to register that as a problem and to work toward solutions. I feel you will be more successful with less of a battleground mentality. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 16:56, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- What, Firefangledfeathers, makes France, an example Johnbod used, "particularly variable", and the UK (which has gone from occupation to multiple separate kingdoms to several separate kingdoms to multiple different types of unified kingdoms, with a brief commonwealth along the way) not "particularly variable"? What standards are you applying here? Are there even any? It feels unbelievably arbitrary. Vaze50 (talk) 15:45, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- It looks like you may have misread Johnbod's comment. They listed those countries and regions as places with "particularly variable" standards. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Johnbod So you admit that actually the vast majority of biographies DO contain accurate historical information? Covering Europe, North America, Central Asia, India, China, and the Islamic world...so...that's the entire world then. Seriously, do us a favour, and tell us exactly why you think people from the island of Great Britain should be subjected to a different standard? Elaborate on "understandable so". What exactly is the distinction and difference between Britain (which has changed political constructs numerous times in the last few centuries) and France, which you gave as an example, and which has also changed political constructs many times? Please, do tell us. I await your specific reason eagerly... Vaze50 (talk) 15:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- While I had suggested using "UK" in infoboxes in the RFC, my real concern is the lack of consistency between it and most other countries. I would actually prefer we remove country names from American, Canadian and Australian articles. Is it really necessary to say Justin Trudeau was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada? -- Calidum 15:25, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- An interesting question, but surely we need to be consistent. Perhaps it would be right to remove country names, but if we aren't going to remove them from Canada, Australia, USA etc., why would we remove them from Britain because people like Johnbod and Ghmyrtle decide Britain isn't a country? Vaze50 (talk) 15:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- That's why I supported including UK in the prior RFC. Now that the RFC is over, however, I think it is time to consider whether the country name can be removed from other infoboxes like those of American, Australian or Canadian subjects. The vast majority of readers will know Quebec and Ontario are part of Canada or that New York and California are part of the US -- just as they would know England and Scotland are part of the UK. -- Calidum 15:48, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- For what it is worth I agree with you that it would be worth removing them in all of those instances. However, without a consensus to do so, at the very least I think that UK pages should be treated with consistency, and not treated differently for entirely unexplained reasons. You'll note already that Johnbod has failed to provide a single actual reason as to why they should be. Vaze50 (talk) 15:53, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- My guess is, you'd get less resistance in American & Canadian bios if you went with city, sovereign state (i.e. deleting California & Ontario, for examples). But would get greater resistance in attempting to establish city, sovereign state, in the post-1707 British bios. GoodDay (talk) 16:14, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- GoodDay, your guess is not correct. Nobody but nobody says or writes, "Boston, United States" or "Miami, United States". It is always "Boston, Massachusetts" and "Miami, Florida". There are dozens of cities and towns named "Oakland" in the US, and "Oakland, California" is the largest and best known. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 19:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- But, "Boston, Massachusetts, US", would be more acceptable to American editors, then "Cardiff, Wales, UK" would be to British editors. GoodDay (talk) 20:02, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- In most contexts, GoodDay, I would think that "born in Boston, Massachusetts" would be perfectly adequate especially if the personal is identified as "American" in the lead sentence, but if another editor thinks that adding "United States" to the mix is helpful, then I am not going to get bent out of shape at all, as long as they don't delete "Massachusetts". I think about the needs of younger readers new to English language topics in far flung areas of the world, so sometimes we need to explain things that are obvious to more sophisticated English language readers. Should we really expect that a 14 year old student of English in Malaysia or Venezuela will know that Wales is part of the United Kingdom? Why not just add it so they know? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:57, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- One would think, what's so big a deal about adding US or UK in those infoboxes? They don't take up much room in their abbreviated form. Alas, as far as British bio infoboxes are concerned, there's just too many (mostly) British editors who haven't & never will accept it's addition. I partly blame it on the fact that England, Scotland, Wales & (some times) Northern Ireland are called countries, which (IMHO) causes some to confuse it with sovereign states. If only my old proposal of using constituent country at those four articles, would be adopted. But it won't, as it'll just be opposed by the same editors :( GoodDay (talk) 06:29, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- In most contexts, GoodDay, I would think that "born in Boston, Massachusetts" would be perfectly adequate especially if the personal is identified as "American" in the lead sentence, but if another editor thinks that adding "United States" to the mix is helpful, then I am not going to get bent out of shape at all, as long as they don't delete "Massachusetts". I think about the needs of younger readers new to English language topics in far flung areas of the world, so sometimes we need to explain things that are obvious to more sophisticated English language readers. Should we really expect that a 14 year old student of English in Malaysia or Venezuela will know that Wales is part of the United Kingdom? Why not just add it so they know? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:57, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- But, "Boston, Massachusetts, US", would be more acceptable to American editors, then "Cardiff, Wales, UK" would be to British editors. GoodDay (talk) 20:02, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- GoodDay, your guess is not correct. Nobody but nobody says or writes, "Boston, United States" or "Miami, United States". It is always "Boston, Massachusetts" and "Miami, Florida". There are dozens of cities and towns named "Oakland" in the US, and "Oakland, California" is the largest and best known. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 19:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- That's why I supported including UK in the prior RFC. Now that the RFC is over, however, I think it is time to consider whether the country name can be removed from other infoboxes like those of American, Australian or Canadian subjects. The vast majority of readers will know Quebec and Ontario are part of Canada or that New York and California are part of the US -- just as they would know England and Scotland are part of the UK. -- Calidum 15:48, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- An interesting question, but surely we need to be consistent. Perhaps it would be right to remove country names, but if we aren't going to remove them from Canada, Australia, USA etc., why would we remove them from Britain because people like Johnbod and Ghmyrtle decide Britain isn't a country? Vaze50 (talk) 15:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- I was pinged. TLDR and not particularly interested - but this seems to be something about using English etc over British in the United Kingdom article, which is apparently inconsistent with other country articles. If that’s what this is about…don’t care either way but “consistency” is generally an overused and overrated argument on WP. It should be about what the RS do in any particular case. DeCausa (talk) 15:53, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Agree. Consistency is overrated and broad rules (e.g. "only use sovereign nations in infoboxes") often have unintended consequences, such as erasing identities of colonized communities. pburka (talk) 17:38, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- As I mentioned above, there'd likely be less resistance to implement city, sovereign state in the bios of Canadians & Americans. But in the post-1707 British bios? Well, I've been down that frustrating road, before. GoodDay (talk) 17:44, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- San Juan, United States, Pago Pago, United States, and Manila, United States would all, I imagine, be quite controversial. pburka (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- So first of all GoodDay's point is confusingly worded, given that the United States (but not Canada) at least notionally recognizes a form of dual sovereignty, in which the several states are partially sovereign. (The notion of "partially sovereign" does not make sense in British legal theory, but it does in American theory.) So it's not clear at first reading whether the proposal is to write "Los Angeles, United States", or "Los Angeles, (the sovereign state of) California".
- From context I gather that the proposal is to write "Los Angeles, United States", which is frankly very jarring to American ears. I don't know why GoodDay thinks that this would meet "less resistance", but I seriously doubt that that's true. I would change that to "Los Angeles, California" if I came across it. --Trovatore (talk) 18:14, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- San Juan, United States, Pago Pago, United States, and Manila, United States would all, I imagine, be quite controversial. pburka (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- The basic problem is that Vaze50 has an incomplete understanding of how a "country" is defined. They appear to think that the sole definition of "country" is "sovereign state", which is not true. Historically, and now, England, Wales, Scotland and (in many respects) Northern Ireland are defined as separate countries though not separate sovereign states. The reasons are primarily historical. Most countries - the US, Canada, Germany, Italy, etc. - are, by British standards, relatively recent creations. Within the supranational state called Britain (or the UK), the four countries that it contains are the most meaningful areas of community and national identity. Describing a place in Britain as, for example, "London, England, UK", is, in British English (the language in which these articles about British people are written), nothing other than absurd. I recognise that many people in the rest of the world find this inconvenient if not incomprehensible, but it is nonetheless true. Also true is that, within each of the four countries, the town or village, and the county, are important, and part of the problem with Vaze50's edits (alongside the edit-warring, and the ad hominem attacks on editors' motivation) is that, often, they removed all mention of the county level - which it is essential to retain except in the case of those cities which by size or history are recognised at national level - for example, "Oxford, England" is preferable to "Oxford, Oxfordshire, England". That brings me to another point - that pure consistency, and a strictly uniform approach, is unattainable, because everywhere - every country and every sovereign state - has different characteristics, and an encyclopedia should recognise and accept that. Two final points. Firstly, I have never suggested that Britain (the UK) is "not a country"; it's just a different definition of "country" to, say England. And, to DeCausa - the issue here is not about English or British nationality - it's about whether the letters "UK" should be added to birth and death places in infoboxes, which is a different matter. Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:16, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Point of information: This discussion is effectively a reopening of the discussion closed less than two months ago as "no consensus". Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:21, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Gmyrtle, you likely remember this. Years ago, we had to change the article List of countries to List of sovereign states, in order to get an editor (since passed on, RIP) to stop inserting England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland into said article. So indeed, that's how emotionally charged this topic can get. GoodDay (talk) 18:26, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- @Ghmyrtle: ok, that being the case I find it exceedingly difficult to care. In terms of providing information to WP readers what difference is there in an infobox that says (a) “born Edinburgh, Scotland” (b) “born Edinburgh, United Kingdom” (c) “born Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom”, with wiki linking? I think the answer is ‘none’. It should be similar to WP:ENGVAR or WP:ERA: unless there’s some sort of special circumstances whatever style was there first should stay. DeCausa (talk) 19:47, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- The idea that the UK is especially unique and should be treated especially different is for the birds. Plenty of other countries have a level of governance defined as “country” (the German Lande is normally translated as “state” but but can be translated as “country” just as easily). The idea that people identify with the “country” more than they do with the UK as a whole is something that unionists would disagree with quite a bit.
- But in terms of what to do here: let’s not pretend that there’s a consistent rule. Do whatever makes sense in the context you are talking about, don’t go around changing articles to conform to an essay-level guidelines as this is extremely pointy. FOARP (talk) 18:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ignore or overturn WP:UKNATIONALS? Good luck with that, you'll need it. GoodDay (talk) 18:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Probably an obvious point to most, but this discussion is not about WP:UKNATIONALS. It's about infoboxes. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:00, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- There are ties to it. The core discussions. GoodDay (talk) 21:02, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ghmyrtle You are wrong, the UK is not a supranational state called Britain, it is a sovereign state, a founding member state of the United Nations, a COUNTRY. It isn't any more complicated than that. Describing a place in Britain as being in Britain is not "absurd" - explain why? Instead of just stating it, actually try explaining why for a change? Your desire to keep the UK off such infoboxes would appear to be simply because you don't see it as being legitimately included. You haven't given any other actual reason. So tell us why the UK along among countries should be treated differently? State your reasons. Vaze50 (talk) 09:32, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- If your statement that "It isn't any more complicated than that" were true, this discussion would not be happening. I've explained my position - you seem to be unaware that the word "country" has many subtleties of meaning, not simply the one you prefer. And please stop trying to attribute motives to editors with whom you disagree. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ghmyrtle You are wrong, the UK is not a supranational state called Britain, it is a sovereign state, a founding member state of the United Nations, a COUNTRY. It isn't any more complicated than that. Describing a place in Britain as being in Britain is not "absurd" - explain why? Instead of just stating it, actually try explaining why for a change? Your desire to keep the UK off such infoboxes would appear to be simply because you don't see it as being legitimately included. You haven't given any other actual reason. So tell us why the UK along among countries should be treated differently? State your reasons. Vaze50 (talk) 09:32, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- There are ties to it. The core discussions. GoodDay (talk) 21:02, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ignore or overturn WP:UKNATIONALS? Good luck with that, you'll need it. GoodDay (talk) 18:50, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Pinged. We are talking about information boxes, so to begin with, imo, we should not be averse to a bit more information in the 'where' fields. With that as background, imo, because this is an international project, our general guidance should be in the 'where' fields, including: the locale, 'in-county-where', and the internationally recognized nation-state (____, ____, ____). In the old days when international mail-letters were a thing, people had little problem including the nation-state, where they would never do that for domestic mail -- do it for people a world away. --Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:08, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Betcha "Los Angeles, California, US" or "Montreal, Quebec, Canada" would be more acceptable, then "Edinburgh, Scotland, UK". GoodDay (talk) 19:13, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- and even worse, "Edinburgh, Lothian, Scotland, UK of GB and NI". That'll fit neatly into some fancy little space-wasting infoboxlet gadget, an obvious must for the boxfillers. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- There is no inconsistency. Walpole's place of birth was England, which is and I think was, the common name for the highest level country at the time, not Kingdom of England. You say that Lenin was "correctly" noted as being born in the Russian Empire. I suggest this is incorrectly noted because just Russia is all that is needed, because that was and is the common name and because I do not think there ever was an entitity formally called the Russian Empire. I do not see any real issue with this whole problem in WP articles. Just remember two words: Anachronism and common-name. They will deal with 99.9% of articles. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:37, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- How about another headache. The bios of Latvians, Lithuanians & Estonians whose infobox (and intros) deny 'ever' being a part of the Soviet Union. -- GoodDay (talk) 20:46, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- Roger_8_Roger The common name today would be UK. That's what should be included. But that's what certain editors, for blatantly political reasons, are attempting to keep off. It's an issues that needs to be addressed. Vaze50 (talk) 09:36, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- How about another headache. The bios of Latvians, Lithuanians & Estonians whose infobox (and intros) deny 'ever' being a part of the Soviet Union. -- GoodDay (talk) 20:46, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- I assume this is just a repeat of the discussion in Archive 22 started on 10 April 2021 and closed as no consensus on 19 June 2021. Nothing has changed. England is still a country. London, England is still correct. London, England, UK is still excessive and to be avoided — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:52, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- GhostInTheMachine Nothing has changed. UK IS STILL A COUNTRY. Why are people like you obsessed with scrubbing that fact out? This is supposed to be an objective website, not subject to political bias. Why on earth is the inclusion of the country that London is in (guess what? That's the UK. The country it is the capital city of) "excessive"? Give an actual reason for once instead of just arrogantly dismissing it. See if you can. Vaze50 (talk) 09:34, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- Personally, I find "Los Angeles, California, US", "Edinburgh, Scotland, UK", and "London, England, UK", annoying. I think most readers should be assumed to know what country California is in, and sometimes that doesn't especially matter to the subject, or the article is about a subject that would primarily be of interest to readers with some context awareness. If they don't know and are curious, the city name is usually linked so they can click on it and learn more about the place. I think the state level in the United States or the big four parts of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) are sufficiently identified without adding a higher level. I often get the impression that some Wikipedia editor is trying to make a WP:POINT by appending the largest entity – either trying to make some nationalistic or anti-nationalistic political statement or trying to tell readers that Wikipedia should have a policy of consistently including that info for all places without assuming general knowledge about any particular countries. However, I discovered some time ago that not all Wikipedians share my view on the matter. I doubt we can agree on a clear and consistent rule. — BarrelProof (talk) 22:02, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
- My view is that we should always start with "town/city, United Kindom" (or just "town/city, UK") and then insert only what is important and absolutely necessary to the context of the article before "UK". The purpose of a location is for readers from around the world to be able to picture the geographic position of a place on the globe. We cannot assume that all, or even most, readers understand the relationship between the UK (the sovereign country which is a member of the UN and to which the Union Flag and "God Save the Queen" applies) and its constituent countries, or even know (or care) that it has constituent countries or what they all are. What we need to guard against too, is the use of the location field for the pushing of a political or nationalist agenda - all towns and cities in the UK are, from an international point of view, geographically in the UK, whether they are in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or Wales is not of primary importance. We must avoid the confusion or conflation of self-identified nationality and location of birth or settlement too, of course. It is factually correct to say that a person born in, say, Pwllheli, who self-identifies as Welsh, is a Welsh person born in Pwllheli, UK. -- DeFacto (talk). 19:17, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- IMHO, today's "I'm (Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish/Irish, English) not British" etc bit, has become old & archaic. But, like I mentioned earlier, it's the number of editors that are deciding these things. If enough editors take the stand that 'red' is 'blue'? we end up with 'red' being 'blue'. GoodDay (talk) 19:50, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- Oppose for the reasons laid out in the last discussion. Country is perfectly sufficient and using "England/Scotland/etc, UK" is redundant, etc, etc, etc, laid this out all in the previous discussion. Rehashing the discussion after a no consensus results seems like WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It seems reduntant,. we are general purpose English encylopedia we are not expected to teach every reader the obvious that England is in the UK, it is irrelevant that it is not a "sorverign state". Country is perfectly sufficent. to accurately record the country at the time that the birth/death took place We do that already. You seem to suggesting the adding England/Scotland to end does not do this. England, Scotland, and Wales are countries... You seem to suggest only by adding GB that we are able to achieve this which is not true. The inconsistency argument is also flawed. When listing the Netherlands for example Ahold Delhaize We say more often say "Zaandam, Netherlands" rather than "Zaandam, Netherlands, Kingdom of the Netherlands" as the latter is again redundant. But it is getting increasingly tiresome dealing with this editor becuase
- "a) they cannot respect consensus of the lack of it (so WP:NOCON), and b) whenever anyone disagrees with Vaze50 they bad faith assume it is for "blatantly political reasons":
- "People like you who are, for blatantly political reasons, intent on erasing the UK/Britain from this website as much as you can are being allowed to get away with your agenda, not on the basis of consensus being behind you doing so, but on there being a split opinion."[4]
- "That's what should be included. But that's what certain editors, for blatantly political reasons, are attempting to keep off. It's an issues that needs to be addressed."[5]
- "you are - for obvious political motivations - seeking to erase the country from this website which is intended to be accurate, not politically motivated." [6]
- "This is blatantly politically motivated by you" [7]
- Thus it is getting increasing tiresome trying to reason with this Vaze50. Spy-cicle💥 Talk? 20:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
- My own take is to avoid the childish game that most people did as children of listing their address as street, city, state, country, continent, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, the universe. Tedious and childish. Listing city, country is fine. I looked at Encyclopedia Britannica and it says that the UK is a country. Making Edinburgh, UK perfectly acceptable. Britannica also says that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are constituent units of the UK but also calls them countries. Which means Edinburgh, Scotland is also perfectly acceptable. Notice that both forms link to the same place. Either form works and avoids the tedious long form that helps nobody. I think it fair to assume that any unit that is big enough to be an actual country is big enough to be known in its own right. So, either of the 2 short forms is plenty good - just try to be consistent within the same article and don't flip-flop between them - ie, similar rules to WP:ENGVAR, WP:RETAIN, WP:DATERET. Stepho talk 02:42, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
- Consistency is not really that important for International Wikipedia, vs writing a book edited and published in England or the US rather than a mix of countries round the world. We already recognise this by accepting English language variants. Scotland and England are not just "called" countries, as some people above have written, they are countries. I read some nonsense about being Scottish only a "desire" of some nationalists. The UK Census gives the options "Scottish; English; Welsh; Northern Irish; British; Other, please describe". The 2011 census demonstrates clearly that the great majority of people in Scotland identify as Scottish and in England as English and in Wales as Welsh, not as British. This isn't some deviant belief only held by Nationalists, but how the great majority of people identify, and something Wikipedia should respect. The two regions where "British" identity is stronger are in Unionist areas of Northern Ireland, and London (which has a significant immigrant population). I agree with the comments above that writing "England, UK" is an embarrassment of ignorance. If you ask someone in these countries which country they were born in, they will say "Scotland" or "England". Nearly nobody says "Britain" or "the United Kingdom". -- Colin°Talk 08:18, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
- That's one of the core problems, why so many British editors keep opposing the usage of "British" in the bio intros & "UK" in the infoboxes. Been through it all before & know full well, you ain't 'ever' gonna get'em to change their position on this topic being debated. GoodDay (talk) 08:44, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
- Well I think we can all see that the problem here is if you think this is a problem and you consider British editors to be a problem. Vaze50, can you stop making personal attacks about the motivation of editors here. Similarly, GoodDay, try to avoid grouping editors like this as it is a sort of mass personal attack. The arguments here can be made on their merits and references, and don't need to consider the personal beliefs, assumed motivations or nationality of editors. -- Colin°Talk 10:22, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
- That's one of the core problems, why so many British editors keep opposing the usage of "British" in the bio intros & "UK" in the infoboxes. Been through it all before & know full well, you ain't 'ever' gonna get'em to change their position on this topic being debated. GoodDay (talk) 08:44, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
Closed quite quick. I absolutely agree with the points raised. The issue primarily around the inclusion of United Kingdom after E/S/W/NI is the result of nationalist editors seeking to prevent the name being associated with their region. It is also an attempt at trying to portray that E/S/W/NI are actual sovereign countries in the way that the USA, France, China etc. are. They however are not.
In regards to historical names. I agree as well that the contemporary entity should be used, but then again the issue comes down in many aspects to nationalist editors taking offence over history and reality. Irish editors of nationalist persuaion frequently censor Lordship of Ireland, Kingdom of Ireland and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from infobox locations and replacing it simply with Ireland. This creates an anomaly in that other places are not treated like this and lumped under a geographical entity. Mabuska (talk) 14:48, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
One wonders, why don't they just call it the "Disunited Kingdom". GoodDay (talk) 20:06, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Difficult to pronounce
Currently we have If a name ending in s or z would be difficult to pronounce with 's added (Jesus's teachings), consider rewording (the teachings of Jesus). Maybe it's me, but "Jesus's" is not particularly difficult to pronounce. The possessive seems to become more difficult to pronounce on multi-syllable words with stresses on the final syllable, say manganese's properties, which might make a better example. (Or Sisyphus's struggles, perhaps.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:05, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
- Lazarus's lethal legalisms. Methuselah's memorable mercury montages. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Sad Sue certified Sisyphus's struggles similarly silly. EEng 00:11, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Doing the OP the favour of taking the point seriously, personally I agree and would delete that provision entirely. Whether something is difficult to pronounce is subjective, and in any event, since when was ease of pronunciation the criterion for deciding how written text should be punctuated? Rewording is always an option that editors have, and shouldn’t need providing for by specific reference within the MoS. Failing deletion, an alternative example would at least move us away from the recently aired misapprehension that there is some sort of exception (to the general rule of adding ‘s) for biblical references. MapReader (talk) 05:19, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- None of those seem hard to pronounce to me. Just put the 's on and leave it to the reader to pronounce or not. I mean, it's not like English doesn't already have boatloads of words with silent letters.--Khajidha (talk) 10:31, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Why is “difficult to pronounce” even a consideration for something that’s written? Are we expecting people to gather round to have articles read out to them? (Or is the concern those that need to move their lips to read to themselves??) DeCausa (talk) 15:49, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know what the original rationale was, but we do have a commitment to WP:ACCESSIBILITY. Some of our users do, indeed, have articles read out to them. pburka (talk) 16:57, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- 'Difficult to pronounce' is a subjective value judgement that should not be present in the MoS. Different people speak English in different ways, and what might be difficult for some is easy for others. RGloucester — ☎ 16:59, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, we often gather round the piano in the front parlour and sing the Today's Featured Article to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:48, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know what the original rationale was, but we do have a commitment to WP:ACCESSIBILITY. Some of our users do, indeed, have articles read out to them. pburka (talk) 16:57, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Why is “difficult to pronounce” even a consideration for something that’s written? Are we expecting people to gather round to have articles read out to them? (Or is the concern those that need to move their lips to read to themselves??) DeCausa (talk) 15:49, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- It looks as if we have a speedy consensus to remove the above mentioned phrase? Making the MoS shorter is generally wise. MapReader (talk) 17:54, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed, to avoid instruction creep. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:44, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Concur, as OP. --Nat Gertler (talk) 23:21, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- Give it a couple of days. No hurry on this. And re "it's subjective", many style issues are subjective. In fact, MOS mostly deals with stuff that varies from publication to publication i.e. it's a subjective choice among multiple formally correct alternatives, but one which the project decides it wants standardized. EEng 01:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed, to avoid instruction creep. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:44, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
- True, although I still maintain that having a rule about written punctuation that rests upon how something might be pronounced if spoken is, as you would say, dumb… MapReader (talk) 05:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- I'd only say so if it was, indeed, dumb. Writing is fundamentally a visual embodiment of speech, so considering how something is spoken isn't dumb. In English we're used to orthography being all over the map, but in other alphabetic languages it would seem bizarre not to consider pronunciation. EEng 18:47, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- For what it's worth the Chicago Manual of Style mentions pronunciation a reference point for whether or not to include an "s" in a possessive, and advises against punctuation such as "Etta James' singing", because this "disregards pronunciation in the majority of cases". --Lord Belbury (talk) 07:17, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- A lot of style choices are subjective, but that's not really the issue here. The point is that this phrase does not make sense because its assertion about what is 'hard to pronounce' is unverifiable (because what each person can pronounce is different, depending on dialect, ability, &c.), and will likely ring false to many people consulting it for guidance. While this is not the place for a linguistic discussion, I strongly contest Mr EEng's point that 'writing is fundamentally a visual embodiment of speech'. This is entirely incorrect, and rooted in a phoneticist viewpoint that should not be embedded into the MoS. There are many examples the world over of cultures that use seperate written and spoken forms that completely deviate from each other. Please refrain from making such strange and offensive assertions here! RGloucester — ☎ 19:52, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- Well I'm afraid you've made it a linguistic discussion, one in which you don't know what you're talking about. That writing (in natural languages, anyway) represents that which can be spoken is a bedrock axiom, even if such representation is often rough and confusing, or (as in Chinese) there are multiple, widely divergent recognized ways to speak out a given piece of writing. These things can make discussing how something is pronounced complex, sometimes even futile, but they don't mean the general goal isn't worth pursuing where possible. EEng 20:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- I believe I do know what I am talking about, thank you. Perhaps you are not familiar, but there are languages that are capable of being read, written, and understood without any knowledge of an appropriate verbal way to express that language. Written language is capable of conveying ideas, without sound. Given that I read and write in one such language, I find your continued attempt to impose phoneticism appalling. But, I will not sully this talk page any longer. RGloucester — ☎ 20:40, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- And I'm quite sure you don't, you're welcome. You've taken on with characteristic rapidity your familiar role of overwrought scold ("offensive", "appalling", "impose phoneticism", "sully") staking out some eccentric position. Go ahead: show us a natural-language writing system that isn't meant to be read out orally. That one might conceivably learn a language's writing with no idea of how it's spoken is obvious – here's an artificial example that's actually intended to be learned that way – but to move from the conceivable to the practical: did you learn Japanese that way? Like I said, go on and tell us; we really want to hear it (or read it). EEng 21:34, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- No answer. Huh.On reflection it's occurred to me that maybe you're confusing the proposition that all writing represents speech (which is what I'm saying) for the proposition that all writing represents speech phonetically, or alphabetically, or something like that (which is obviously not true, and not what I'm saying because... well, because... y'know... I'm not a moron). EEng 00:08, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
- I believe I do know what I am talking about, thank you. Perhaps you are not familiar, but there are languages that are capable of being read, written, and understood without any knowledge of an appropriate verbal way to express that language. Written language is capable of conveying ideas, without sound. Given that I read and write in one such language, I find your continued attempt to impose phoneticism appalling. But, I will not sully this talk page any longer. RGloucester — ☎ 20:40, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- Well I'm afraid you've made it a linguistic discussion, one in which you don't know what you're talking about. That writing (in natural languages, anyway) represents that which can be spoken is a bedrock axiom, even if such representation is often rough and confusing, or (as in Chinese) there are multiple, widely divergent recognized ways to speak out a given piece of writing. These things can make discussing how something is pronounced complex, sometimes even futile, but they don't mean the general goal isn't worth pursuing where possible. EEng 20:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- A lot of style choices are subjective, but that's not really the issue here. The point is that this phrase does not make sense because its assertion about what is 'hard to pronounce' is unverifiable (because what each person can pronounce is different, depending on dialect, ability, &c.), and will likely ring false to many people consulting it for guidance. While this is not the place for a linguistic discussion, I strongly contest Mr EEng's point that 'writing is fundamentally a visual embodiment of speech'. This is entirely incorrect, and rooted in a phoneticist viewpoint that should not be embedded into the MoS. There are many examples the world over of cultures that use seperate written and spoken forms that completely deviate from each other. Please refrain from making such strange and offensive assertions here! RGloucester — ☎ 19:52, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- Of course we should consider pronounceability. For example, tongue twisters or rhymes in formal prose are generally inappropriate because they distract the reader. And, as I mentioned above, some of our readers are, in fact, listeners and we should consider their needs. But I'm not sure we need this specific rule. The guidance to "[use] plain English" and "avoid ... unnecessarily complex wording" in the introduction is probably sufficient. pburka (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- True, although I still maintain that having a rule about written punctuation that rests upon how something might be pronounced if spoken is, as you would say, dumb… MapReader (talk) 05:35, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
- Difficulty of pronunciation isn't mentioned, but the exceptions to adding an 's' to a singular possessive ending in 's' (or sibilant, especially if followed by same, e.g. could "for goodness(') sake" ever be "for goodness's sake"?) are given in both Strunk & White (under rule number 1, actually) and Fowler. I think some rule making allowances for such exceptions should be kept. Dhtwiki (talk) 05:41, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
- Again, if you don't want to pronounce it, don't But that is not a reason not to write it. Or do you say "kuh-nig-hit" for "knight"? --Khajidha (talk) 13:37, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
- Just because English has very difficult spelling doesn't mean we should make it worse. EEng 14:42, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
- It's more like kuh-neekt if you're trying for a Middle English pronunciation of, say, Chaucer. Acknowledging standard spelling variants here should be helpful when such variants are encountered in sources. Dhtwiki (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
- Again, if you don't want to pronounce it, don't But that is not a reason not to write it. Or do you say "kuh-nig-hit" for "knight"? --Khajidha (talk) 13:37, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
Does this impact Spoken Wikipedia at all? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:59, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
Even if we accept that "reword phrases that are difficult to pronounce" is a reasonable command or suggestion for the MoS (on which I'm not committed; I suspect we could do without it), I think there's a real question of whether it is a concern that is that 's-centric that the suggestion should be in this section, or whether this is a more general concern that deserve's a section on its own. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:03, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
- Agree Remove the “difficult to pronounce” guideline from this MoS. Frankly, though, when I begun speaking English (as a second language) it was difficult to pronounce for me, so I would suggest to move this phrase to simple: WP: MoS. ‑‑ K (🗪 | ✍) 07:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
- I have gone ahead and removed the sentence, as that appeared to be the consensus (despite the heat of people arguing over things that were not that question.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 00:19, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- And @EEng: has decided to single-handedly overrule this consensus, despite (as near as I can tell) not having put forth any statement that this particular sentence should be kept (at least that I can find in his large amount of text here). On August 20, his objection was that we should "Give it a couple of days" -- we gave it another week, and not only were there not new folks saying "no" to the deletion, there was at least one additional call supporting the deletion. Consensus looks clear. Does anyone besides EEng feel that consensus has not been reached? (And the edit summary that he used of course misstated the situation; it's not just a mere case of "A couple of people saying they don't get the point" -- it looks like we have actual calls to delete from @MapReader:, @Jochem van Hees and Jochem van Hees:, @Kai Burghardt:, @RGloucester:, and myself.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 03:16, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- It's standard advice that native speakers should rely on pronunciation to guide this kind of spelling, example (see it's mention of Chicago MoS). Perhaps their example (Euripides's plays) might be used, but asserting that pronunciation has no application in written English is a mistake. Johnuniq (talk) 03:55, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- That another style guide does so might be evidence to support an argument, but I’m not seeing an argument. Things would be much simpler and clearer without such provisions, which I struggle to see the sense of, particularly as neither Jesus’s nor Euripides’s with the ‘s voiced appears particularly difficult to pronounce to me. It’s a shame there was a revert based on scant opposition, but as it’s the MoS how about a proper survey of views? MapReader (talk) 05:41, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- @Johnuniq: The question of whether the possessive of Jesus includes the added s, which is what the article you point to discusses, is not the matter of the deletion being discussed in this thread (though you may wish to look to the Bruno Mars thread.) Even though the discussion started with questioning the choice of example, the topic quickly moved on to whether we should even have the suggestion that we should consider avoiding having a possessive at all for cases where it is hard to pronounce. (Myself, while I am somewhat open on the question of whether we should recommend rephrasing things to avoid hard-to-pronounce sentences, I see zero logic on having that concern applied specifically and solely to singular possessives, rather than making it its own general MOS entry.) Do you have a position on the deletion being discussed? (Forgive me if you think it clear that you were making no comment on that matter but another editor just used your entry into the discussion to make claims about the deletion discussion.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:46, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- Can we do the bold edit now then? Very few objections have been raised and they have all been countered. As far as I can tell EEng is the only one who wanted to continue the discussion but has not provided any arguments himself. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 10:20, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- It wasn't a bold edit when it was done after a week of discussion, either. Given how you responded to that by undoing the edit, misdescribing the discussion, and obnoxiously calling me "pilgrim", it's reasonably to wonder if you're going to appropriately respond this time. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Don't take it so personal, pilgrim. I've participated in, and often guided, a whole lot of discussions here, and have a pretty darn good idea of how the community will react to certain kinds of things. In this case, I judged that there would be significant controversy over the change, even if for some reason it hadn't manifested yet; but in this case my crystal ball failed my badly. So sue me. EEng 00:47, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- So you entered this thread to do a little joking around -- and little joking I have no problem with. But you stayed on insulting other editors, overriding consensus, sliding the goalpost, misdescribing the discussion repeatedly and now, having seen that I would prefer not to be called "pilgrim", chose to attack me with that again. Is that all to be blamed on your malfunctioning crystal ball? You may want to consider whether you are interacting here in ways that encourage participation, or whether you are letting Wikipedia:Civility fall by the wayside. --Nat Gertler (talk) 02:11, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- No, no, no, no, no, no and, um ... no. I entered the thread, and reverted the edit, for exactly the reason I stated above. If it upsets you to see Gloucester make a fool of himself, talk to him about it. The stuff about goalposts and "misdescribing" is just shit you made up. EEng 04:43, 31 August 2021 (UTC) You're a persistent cuss, pilgrim!
- Count this as a gentle reminder to all involved that conversations about user conduct are best held at user talk pages. Will new entrants to this discussion, looking to make up their minds about this point of style, benefit from reading this exchange? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- So you entered this thread to do a little joking around -- and little joking I have no problem with. But you stayed on insulting other editors, overriding consensus, sliding the goalpost, misdescribing the discussion repeatedly and now, having seen that I would prefer not to be called "pilgrim", chose to attack me with that again. Is that all to be blamed on your malfunctioning crystal ball? You may want to consider whether you are interacting here in ways that encourage participation, or whether you are letting Wikipedia:Civility fall by the wayside. --Nat Gertler (talk) 02:11, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- Don't take it so personal, pilgrim. I've participated in, and often guided, a whole lot of discussions here, and have a pretty darn good idea of how the community will react to certain kinds of things. In this case, I judged that there would be significant controversy over the change, even if for some reason it hadn't manifested yet; but in this case my crystal ball failed my badly. So sue me. EEng 00:47, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- It wasn't a bold edit when it was done after a week of discussion, either. Given how you responded to that by undoing the edit, misdescribing the discussion, and obnoxiously calling me "pilgrim", it's reasonably to wonder if you're going to appropriately respond this time. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Why not use "Jesus' teachings"? GoodDay (talk) 02:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- There are style guides that recommend that. But to do it we'd have to have a guideline calling out certain words, or classes of words (like Jesus) as special cases, and then you'd be right back in the soup we were in at the start of this thread. EEng 04:13, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- @GoodDay - Because, depending on your belief system, the options for how many Jesuses there were are none or one; there aren’t any religions advocating a plural number. MapReader (talk) 04:57, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- I'm an atheist. GoodDay (talk) 04:59, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- I think the plural possessive of Jesus would be Gee-zus-uhz-ehz? EEng 05:23, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- You see, EEng has his own idiosyncractic belief system. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:58, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- I think the plural possessive of Jesus would be Gee-zus-uhz-ehz? EEng 05:23, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'm an atheist. GoodDay (talk) 04:59, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- I have reverted the change removing the pronouncability, as indeed EEng had already done. It is self-evident to me that constructions like "Jesus's disciples" and "Leeds's defence" are awkward due to their pronouncability, and it is entirely sensible to recommend that writers find a different way to phrase such things. Even if there are exceptions in other languages, English written text is a representation of spoken text, and to be "brilliant and refreshing", our prose needs to reflect that by flowing off the page in both written and spoken form. The point about screen readers and accessibility is also clearly an important one. The advice about avoiding awkward possessives has been around forever and is an integral part of the MOS, so it at least needs a formal RFC to change it, rather than a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of a few shows of hands in this thread. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 08:47, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- The policy that you linked does not support your own argument. It only says that "editors often propose substantive changes on the talk page first to permit discussion before implementing the change." I'd barely call this a substantive change (just one redundant sentence removed), and it certainly has been discussed on the talk page. I can't find anything about RfCs being mandatory for anything. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 09:23, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Amakuru: You have no standing to single-handedly stonewall a change supported by most participants here by imposing an artificial bureaucratic process that is not required by any Wikipedia policy, guideline, or practice, in what is essentially a WP:SUPERVOTE. See WP:NOTBURO. As for what is 'self-evident' to you, that is irrelevant. I have no trouble pronouncing 'Leeds's defence' or 'Jesus's disciples', and I never have done. If anything, 'Jesus' disciples' may well be more difficult to pronounce, as it deviates from the norm! These phrases may be hard to pronounce for you specifically, but that does not mean they are hard to pronounce for anyone else, and this is exactly why this piece of guidance makes no sense whatsoever, as was said numerous times above. RGloucester — ☎ 13:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- It was far from single-handed. EEng had already reverted the change once. And several commenters above agree that the mentioned constructs are difficult to pronounce, and that the guideline is therefore part of what we should be advising readers. It is really not up to a handful of editors to overrride longstanding guidelines on good writing - which match other style guides by the way - without a formal request for comment. And this is nothing to do with me and whether I can pronounce things, this is a pre-existing guideline which obviously makes sense because it's been in use for years. — Amakuru (talk) 13:26, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- The fact that numerous editors above have raised this issue at all is proof that this guideline does not 'obviously make sense'. Perhaps the problem is the specific examples given in our guidance. 'Jesus's' seems quite normal to me, but 'Waters's', as found in The Guardian style guide, is undoubtedly awkward. The Guardian specifies 's as the norm, even for words ending in s, but gives latitude to the writer to use ' where it 'helps', leaving it up to the writer's discretion. This is much more sensible than our present guidance, but still creates the problem of inconsistency based on the specific pronunciation capabilities of a given editor, which vary by region, dialect, and personal ability. In a global encyclopaedia how can we possibly justify guidance that discriminates based on the perceived correctness or awkwardness of a person's pronunciation? In any case, I am not in agreement that our present guidance is in alignment with style guides generally. The Chicago 16th edition that I have access to states: 'In a departure from earlier practice, Chicago no longer recommends the traditional exception for proper classical names of two or more syllables that end in an eez sound. Such names form the possessive in the usual way (though when these forms are spoken the additional s is generally not pronounced)'. This seems a much more sensible approach in a global encyclopaedia. RGloucester — ☎ 14:57, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- It was far from single-handed. EEng had already reverted the change once. And several commenters above agree that the mentioned constructs are difficult to pronounce, and that the guideline is therefore part of what we should be advising readers. It is really not up to a handful of editors to overrride longstanding guidelines on good writing - which match other style guides by the way - without a formal request for comment. And this is nothing to do with me and whether I can pronounce things, this is a pre-existing guideline which obviously makes sense because it's been in use for years. — Amakuru (talk) 13:26, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- @Amakuru: You have no standing to single-handedly stonewall a change supported by most participants here by imposing an artificial bureaucratic process that is not required by any Wikipedia policy, guideline, or practice, in what is essentially a WP:SUPERVOTE. See WP:NOTBURO. As for what is 'self-evident' to you, that is irrelevant. I have no trouble pronouncing 'Leeds's defence' or 'Jesus's disciples', and I never have done. If anything, 'Jesus' disciples' may well be more difficult to pronounce, as it deviates from the norm! These phrases may be hard to pronounce for you specifically, but that does not mean they are hard to pronounce for anyone else, and this is exactly why this piece of guidance makes no sense whatsoever, as was said numerous times above. RGloucester — ☎ 13:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- I am utterly flabbergasted that anyone would find either of those at all difficult to pronounce. --Khajidha (talk) 15:28, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Where's SMcCandlish when we need him? EEng 11:44, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Need a break from this place sometimes. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:35, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- For the record, I've tracked it, and what is there now (more or less, I've not done a note-by-note check) is not something that has been in there forever; prior to this edit in January 2018, there was no comment about Jesus's being hard to pronounce; that Jesus' didn't get a closing s was due to tradition, not pronunciation. And the advice was focused "particularly" on inanimate objects, which does not describe "Jesus" in the name's most common use. The new wording was raised by this RFC at the Village Pump, but was made by proposer @Dicklyon: before the RFC had a formal closure. (As for the screen reader concern: Do screen readers have trouble pronouncing Jesus's? The one on my old Mac OS doesn't. It seems to me it would be easy for a device that isn't reliant on tongue movement.... not that I find it difficult myself, as someone who does rely on tongue movement. But perhaps Dicklyon, who has written about machine hearing, has some input on machine speech.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:30, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Dicklyon effected the change because the consensus was quite clear in the RFC, and nobody then objected. (Plus it was later closed as successful anyway). But the fact that the clause was established through RFC means it's all the more imperative that an RFC be held to remove it. — Amakuru (talk) 13:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- A focused discussion is difficult with people insisting that constructions no more difficult to pronounce than “molasses” or “promises” are apparently unpronounceable. Except that the fact we have such differing individual views on pronounceability does bring home what a pointless criterion it is for determining punctuation within the MoS! MapReader (talk) 16:15, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- You're off by one s. The parallel to Jesus's is not muhl-ass-uss but muhl-ass-uss-izz (as in "mollasses's viscosity"). On the other hand, the possessive of promises is promises' i.e. prom-iss-izz. EEng 16:52, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- I’ve often wondered what the possessive of the Court of St James's is. Court of St James’s’s guards or Court of St James’s’ guards? DeCausa (talk) 17:51, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- The relevant point is that if some people, like me, think that these constructions are easily pronounceable, and others appear to think they are impossible to pronounce, then pronounceability can never be a sensible determinant of anything. MapReader (talk) 18:55, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- You're off by one s. The parallel to Jesus's is not muhl-ass-uss but muhl-ass-uss-izz (as in "mollasses's viscosity"). On the other hand, the possessive of promises is promises' i.e. prom-iss-izz. EEng 16:52, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Well if this sentence came to be through an RfC then I kinda do understand why you'd want another one to remove it, even though I predict that nothing of value would come from such a discussion, and even though I still dislike the bureaucracy. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 21:19, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- A focused discussion is difficult with people insisting that constructions no more difficult to pronounce than “molasses” or “promises” are apparently unpronounceable. Except that the fact we have such differing individual views on pronounceability does bring home what a pointless criterion it is for determining punctuation within the MoS! MapReader (talk) 16:15, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- The January 2018 change that I made was a great simplification (basically, always use 's for a singular possessive) in accord with most modern style guides and the clear consensus at the RFC. I didn't particularly like the bit about hard to pronounce (because it never is), but that was for people who think it is, to have an alternative to just using the apostrophe without the s. That is, if you don't like the possessive with 's, rewrite. And what is molasses's viscosity, if I may ask? One thing I learned in that RFC discussion, if I recall correctly, is that there are people who pronounce a final apostrophe as if it's 's, and then they want to add another 's pronunciation for the s. I.e. Jesus's they would read as Jesus uz uz. That is, some people don't know how to read written English, and want to see it written differently as a result. I had not imagined that such existed. And this was not 2020, so they don't have that excuse! Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- Dicklyon effected the change because the consensus was quite clear in the RFC, and nobody then objected. (Plus it was later closed as successful anyway). But the fact that the clause was established through RFC means it's all the more imperative that an RFC be held to remove it. — Amakuru (talk) 13:39, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks to everyone participating in the discussion in a constructive manner so far.
- Let’s take a step back and wonder what an MoS is about. Is it supposed to be a comprehensive guide to all style issues that might occur? No. The introduction currently says “New content added to this page should directly address a persistently recurring style issue.” I hardly doubt there are/were conflicts on grounds of pronunciation. Worse: The current situation fuels/provokes conflicts as Bruno Mars recently showed. Frankly, I myself would not revert an edit changing the wording to one form or another. I deem it unnecessary, not an improvement regarding encyclopedic content, but otherwise it’s tomayto, tomahto. “The waitress’s attire” and “the attire of a waitress” both convey the same meaning just as well. Space is not a concern here, ¬paper.
- The “no new content unless really necessary” policy already existed at Special: Diff/819210420. It read “Any new content added to the body of this page should directly address a style issue that has occurred in a significant number of instances.” Why is this rule in place? I suppose because the MoS is already quite a mammoth. For a project that’s based on volunteers too many rules are rather stifling, you know what I mean? Let’s KISS, shall we? Remove this clause from the text. I can infer from previous comments that Map Reader, Jochem van Hees and Nat Gertler second this point.
- I suggest to take a look at grammar references. For instance Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage § 432. There is no documented preference for either style simply based on subjective difficulties in pronunciation, hence one’s ideolect.
- Lastly, and I can’t stress this enough, but written English ≠ spoken English. RGloucester already wrote that. It is OK and there will always be differences between how people speak and how they write a language. This attempt in uniting them is doomed to fail.
‑‑ K (🗪 | ✍) 22:59, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
- Dicklyon is right above, that we were very close to a consensus of going for the straight ‘s in all cases (which reflects best practice in many guides) except for a minority hangup over pronounceability, which left us with a rather unhelpful sentence in the MoS. The ability to reword a sentence is always open to editors - it doesn’t need ‘permission’ from the MoS - and resting the facility to do so on the impossible-to-judge question of pronounceability is where the compromise within the last discussion went wrong. Editors should be able to write about the teachings of Jesus even if they can pronounce it the other way around. MapReader (talk) 05:16, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- Hopefully not late the party on this but I'm not in favour of removing the passage in question; yes you can get hung up on what is or isn't difficult to pronounce but that's not really the meat of it to me; having it spelt out concisely that it's okay to restructure a sentence to avoid a direct possessive is worth noting. Maybe someone would care to change the wording of it, but an explicit instruction that it's worth considering "the teachings of Jesus" over "Jesus's teachings" is a good point to retain here. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 21:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- Allowing people to restructure things is not something "worth noting". It is a fundamental part of what a wiki is. People really don't need the MOS's permission to make sentences easier to read in their opinion. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- And yet, is there harm in spelling it out? I don't see the gain in not stating it, whereas I do see the gain in stating it. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 22:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- WP:CREEP. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:34, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- The removed passage is 170 characters in total including wikimarkup, is this really instruction creep or simply a brief gloss? I'm not in favour throwing out baby to save a thimbleful of bathwater. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 22:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- Instruction creep is pretty much never a big block of text that is entirely meaningless. This is exactly what creep means: small changes, over time, each amounting to the problem. There is no baby here, only bathwater. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 23:17, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- That's not what this was. Not "small changes, over time, each amounting to the problem", but rather a big change that was a great simplification relative to all the weird considerations that were there before. That was how we accommodated the RFC inputs. That said, I have no objection to further simplification if that's what people prefer here. Dicklyon (talk) 04:49, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- Instruction creep is pretty much never a big block of text that is entirely meaningless. This is exactly what creep means: small changes, over time, each amounting to the problem. There is no baby here, only bathwater. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 23:17, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- The removed passage is 170 characters in total including wikimarkup, is this really instruction creep or simply a brief gloss? I'm not in favour throwing out baby to save a thimbleful of bathwater. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 22:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- WP:CREEP. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:34, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- And yet, is there harm in spelling it out? I don't see the gain in not stating it, whereas I do see the gain in stating it. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 22:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- Allowing people to restructure things is not something "worth noting". It is a fundamental part of what a wiki is. People really don't need the MOS's permission to make sentences easier to read in their opinion. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 22:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'll generally concur with removal. The important part of the sentence under discussion is the instruction to write around conflict, and that's the first "rule" of MoS, in its lead. So, it's not really necessary to repeat it here, much less to use a flimsy rationale to do so, like alleged pronuncation difficulty. PS: No, the plural of "St. James's" isn't "St. James's's"; I don't think any reputable work would ever use such a construction. "St. James's" is already a contraction of something longer ("St. James's Gate", etc.), so use the longer name, or write "of St. James's", or otherwise write around the problem. This is not difficult, and we have better things to do than entertain argument-for-sport (cf. WP:NOT#FORUM) that attempts to make it seem difficult. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:35, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
MOS:RETAIN at Bridget Burgess (racing driver)
Hi all
Not sure the most appropriate place to post this, but an IP editor has been edit warring with me over a change to the English variety at the above article. The subject is Australian-born, but has lived in the US since the age of seven, which makes me think she does not qualify for "strong national ties" for either US or Australian English. She appears to identify as "Australian made, American raised" according to her Instagram.[8] As such, without a strong reason to prefer one or the other, I think we should stick to US English as the first variant used in the article, per MOS:RETAIN. I'm at two reverts now though, so seeking more opinions here. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 09:21, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
- You’ve also reverted GiantSnowman too, rather than it just being you v an IP. There is an open thread on the talk page too. - 2A01:4C8:46D:2DFF:5CB:46F7:4F12:4CCC (talk) 09:27, 21 August 2021 (UTC) Resigning to activate proper ping 2A01:4C8:1075:2F3F:1854:D8FA:8876:3F5B (talk) 22:21, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
There's a discussion at Talk:Bridget Burgess (racing driver)#Language and date format.—Bagumba (talk) 13:48, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
- ?No there isn't! I think she has "strong national ties" to both US & OZ, therefore it's first come first served, per MOS:RETAIN. Johnbod (talk) 14:44, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Because (I think) of a recent move, the discussion is actually at Talk:Bridget Burgess#Language and date format. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 14:53, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
MOS:Possessives at Talk:Bruno Mars
There is an ongoing discussion regarding the possessive form of Bruno Mars. Should the possessive form of Mars contain only an apostrophe (Mars') or an apostrophe and another 's' (Mars's), per MOS or should this be an exception just like Jesus is and reword whenever it is possible? Any input is welcomed.
Kind regards, MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 22:47, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
- Mars's. We have MOS:POSS for a reason, and it's pretty clear. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:36, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
Contradictory wording of "Punctuation inside or outside" subsection
Currently we have the following wording at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Punctuation inside or outside:
Include terminal punctuation within the quotation marks only if it was present in the original material, and otherwise place it after the closing quotation mark. For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence.
The second sentence above contradicts the following:
When quoting a full sentence, the end of which coincides with the end of the sentence containing it, place terminal punctuation inside the closing quotation mark.
See the corresponding examples. This is clearly different from the treatment of question marks.
I recommend simply deleting "For the most part, this means treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks: keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence."
Winston (talk) 04:35, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- Could you give an example that could expose the contradiction? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 04:40, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- Here is an example from the subsection itself. In Did Darla say, "Here I am"? the quotation mark applies to both the quoted material and to the whole sentence, and is placed outside. In Marlin said: "I need to find Nemo." the period applies to both the quoted material and to the whole sentence, and is placed inside. Winston (talk) 04:51, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- I don't think Darla said "Here I am?", meaning the question mark doesn't apply to the quoted material. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 04:54, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- Ah wait I'm incorrect. The question mark in Did Darla say, "Here I am"? applies to the whole sentence only. Still, the manual says "outside if they apply to the whole sentence", but the period applies to the whole sentence and is placed inside. Winston (talk) 04:55, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- My first thought is that the first quoted paragraph lays out the general rule ("For the most part") and the second lays out a specific rule that serves as an exception. I have more thinking to do on whether the removal you're proposing would hurt or help. Hopefully others will chime in soon. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 05:14, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- I suspect that was the intention of its author, but the OP is right that it does fail, because what is presented as a general rule is both qualified in a way that makes it meaningless (“for the most part”…) and isn’t really the general rule at all. It is the examples below in that section of the MoS that make clear what we are supposed to be doing. Taking first the part that Winston highlights, it is misleading because it gives two scenarios that are not mutually exclusive: it is possibly for a full stop (period) to apply BOTH to the whole sentence and be present in the original material. The phrasing suggests that in such circumstances the full stop goes outside, but the MoS examples make clear that in many cases it’s the opposite that we should be doing. However the first part of the section that Winston quotes above, but doesn’t propose for deletion, is also badly worded, since it suggests that we should be including the full stop within the quotation if it was present in the original material - yet, here again, the examples make clear that this isn’t what we should be doing, since any end of sentence fragment that is quoted will clearly have the full stop at the end yet this then goes OUTSIDE the quotation marks. “Otherwise” is used totally inappropriately in that sentence! What it (the first sentence) is trying to say is “never include punctuation within quotation marks unless it was present in the quoted material” - which IS a general rule! - The second part is trying to say “the general approach is to include punctuation within quotation marks if it applies solely to the quotation and outside if it forms part of the overall sentence” but I would add for clarity at the end, covering off terminal full stops which is the most common scenario: “, terminal periods (full stops) should be included within quotation marks if an entire sentence from the quoted material is being quoted in full, but otherwise put outside”. These would be my own proposals, but it would be just as good to use the wording we already have elsewhere in WP that sets out the general rule: “include within quotation marks only those punctuation marks that appeared in the original quoted material and in which the punctuation mark fits with the sense of the quotation, but otherwise to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks”. The AND inside that is doing the heavy lifting, but it is at least correct and clear. MapReader (talk) 05:57, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- My first thought is that the first quoted paragraph lays out the general rule ("For the most part") and the second lays out a specific rule that serves as an exception. I have more thinking to do on whether the removal you're proposing would hurt or help. Hopefully others will chime in soon. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 05:14, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- Here is an example from the subsection itself. In Did Darla say, "Here I am"? the quotation mark applies to both the quoted material and to the whole sentence, and is placed outside. In Marlin said: "I need to find Nemo." the period applies to both the quoted material and to the whole sentence, and is placed inside. Winston (talk) 04:51, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- I've thought about this some more (typed this up before seeing MapReader's comment, they make good points too). I believe the issue is mainly with the wording of the explanation, which could do with some logical refinement. Here's my thoughts.
- A question mark goes inside if and only if the question mark applies to the quotation:
- Did Darla ask, "Where am I?" (question mark applies to both the whole sentence and the quotation)
- Did Darla say, "I like dogs"? (question mark applies to whole sentence only)
- Darla asked, "Where am I?" (question mark applies to the quotation only)
- Thus when it comes to question marks, "keep them inside the quotation marks if they apply only to the quoted material and outside if they apply to the whole sentence" should instead be "keep them inside the quotation marks if and only if they apply to the quoted material".
- I think the explanation could also be reorganized. We should first explain fully the rules for question marks, then introduce the heuristic of mostly treating periods and commas in the same way as question marks, followed by further explanation for commas, periods, etc. In this case, there may be enough exceptions to the heuristic that it may not even be helpful to some people.
- An example of such an exception is that if a period is placed inside, then it applies to the quoted material, but if a period applies to the quoted material, it is not necessarily placed inside. (So we have here a one-directional material conditional rather than the biconditional "if and only if").
- Basically, we need to be extremely clear and explicit with logical terms such as "if", "only if", "otherwise", and with the exceptions (if we can even call them that at this point). We should also try to organize the explanation in the most effective way (although what's effective is subjective). I suggest diving into the precise details with examples first, perhaps organized by type of punctuation, and then summarizing at the end. Currently we have an inaccurate summary followed by (correct) examples. Winston (talk) 06:14, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- I strongly urge that examples be found that might conceivably arise in actual article editing. The current guideline spends most of its time on encyclopedically impossible cases. No article is (or should, anyway) ever say something like
"I need", said Marlin, "to find Nemo."
EEng 14:21, 26 August 2021 (UTC)- We could say “The film”, commented Hollywood Reporter, “is very good”. But I’d think we can credit editors with some ability to extrapolate from the examples we already have. Winston risks complicating things by trying to revise the examples as well, which are currently not broken being pretty clear. We’d do better simply to come up with something better to replace the opening paragraph. MapReader (talk) 17:16, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
- No, it's inconceivable that an article would read
“The film”, commented Hollywood Reporter, “is very good”
; that's for novels, historical fiction, and Sunday-supplement pieces. ("'Ask not what your country can do for you", the young president challenged his listeners, "ask what you can do for your country.'" – I'd love to be a fly on the wall while you guys hammer out how to punctuate that one.) If you can't find an actual article-editing situation to which the principle exemplified by an example arises, then the example not just can be junked, but needs to be junked. See WP:MOSBLOAT. EEng 00:25, 27 August 2021 (UTC)- The purpose of an example is to help the reader understand the general principle, and whether or not the words used are true to real life isn’t a critical criterion. In your example the final period clearly goes outside the quotation marks, because the wording within your second set of quotation marks is a sentence fragment and not an entire sentence. MapReader (talk) 05:46, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- I'll say it for the third time: if you can't supply an example that would actually arise in an article, then "the general principle" doesn't need to be understood, and shouldn't be bloating MOS. EEng 06:03, 27 August 2021 (UTC) P.S. There's a lot more going on with the Kennedy passage.
- You have taken the discussion off on a tangent; the original point was about the introductory wording, which most posts above agree is currently inadequate. If you don’t like the examples, that’s a separate issue, and the onus should be on you to offer up some better ones. MapReader (talk) 05:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- Off on a tangent might be preferable to going around in circles. And no, it's the person wanting to retain, in MOS, a particular provision who carries the onus, if challenged, of giving at least one example of a realistic editing situation to which that provision would apply. If there are no such situations, which as I've said I suspect is the case above, then it's obviously impossible for me to offer one as an example as you illogically demand. This the fourth time I've explained this self-evident truth -- here's hoping it sinks in this time. EEng 05:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- You have taken the discussion off on a tangent; the original point was about the introductory wording, which most posts above agree is currently inadequate. If you don’t like the examples, that’s a separate issue, and the onus should be on you to offer up some better ones. MapReader (talk) 05:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'll say it for the third time: if you can't supply an example that would actually arise in an article, then "the general principle" doesn't need to be understood, and shouldn't be bloating MOS. EEng 06:03, 27 August 2021 (UTC) P.S. There's a lot more going on with the Kennedy passage.
- The purpose of an example is to help the reader understand the general principle, and whether or not the words used are true to real life isn’t a critical criterion. In your example the final period clearly goes outside the quotation marks, because the wording within your second set of quotation marks is a sentence fragment and not an entire sentence. MapReader (talk) 05:46, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
- No, it's inconceivable that an article would read
- We could say “The film”, commented Hollywood Reporter, “is very good”. But I’d think we can credit editors with some ability to extrapolate from the examples we already have. Winston risks complicating things by trying to revise the examples as well, which are currently not broken being pretty clear. We’d do better simply to come up with something better to replace the opening paragraph. MapReader (talk) 17:16, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
Requesting inputs
Greetings
Requesting (brainstorming) inputs regarding Manual of Style proposal @ Chronological listing of coastal townships
Thanks and warm regards
Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 07:14, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
Query about extra spaces
I'm a little hesitant to venture into MOS territory with your 200+ archived talk pages but here goes. I'm coming across some old pages that have titles like "Wikipedia talk / Manual of Style" with two extra spaces, one on either side of the slash/diagonal. I checked the article and these spaces aren't repeated in the article when the subject is mentioned. I fixed the first incident I came across because I thought it was a mistake but now I'm running into other examples and so I thought I'd check here and ask if this is standard practice (or was) and I should not correct the unnecessary spaces in the article titles when I come across them. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 05:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Just in case you wanted to see an example, one would be Aoraki / Mount Cook. Liz Read! Talk! 05:39, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Just a guess here: maybe its a New Zealand thing? I go to the New Zealand MoS and there's an example. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (New Zealand)#Dual and alternative place names under dual names. Not sure if it's policy or what, though. Masterhatch (talk) 09:47, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- A forward slash in an article title indicates a subpage; there are no spaces around the slash because the slash is there to separate the subpage name from the main page name. However, subpages are not a thing in the mainspace, where article titles are supposed to have natural English titles. So it is perfectly fine to put spaces around a slash there, following English punctuation rules. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 10:30, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Okay, then, that's what I needed to know. I won't go around around and "correct" elements that aren't obvious mistakes. I thought I received a good education but I clearly didn't learn all the English punctuation rules so I'm glad there is a talk page here to ask. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 23:21, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- Part of the issue is that they vary over time, by region, by topic, and by claimed "authority". It's probably not possible to know them all, and many of them will conflict when any of those variables are changed. However, it's very dubious that the NZ naming conventions page (alleged to be a guideline though I doubt it was subject to a WP:PROPOSAL process) should be recommending page titles like "Aoraki / Mount Cook". Our article titles policy says to use one name, and the prefer the most common in English-language sources (which may change over time, resulting in an article rename). WP guidelines cannot contradict WP policies (see WP:P&G). Odds are that for this specific case the common name is "Mount Cook" and will eventually become "Aoraki" as preference for the original native name increases. This is not limited to NZ; similar geographic-feature renamings are happening in the US and Canada, and possibly in other places (and Canada has already long had the issue of places with differing names in English and French, too; we use the English one in most cases, and do not have dual-named articles with slashes in them). All that said, article titling isn't entirely an MoS issue, but should probably be raised at WT:AT, and moves/renames discussed via WP:RM. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:37, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Okay, then, that's what I needed to know. I won't go around around and "correct" elements that aren't obvious mistakes. I thought I received a good education but I clearly didn't learn all the English punctuation rules so I'm glad there is a talk page here to ask. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 23:21, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
Adjacent places
On some articles about places I see text diagrams describing which places are nearby. Examples:
- Sale,_Greater_Manchester#Geography (collapsed 'navbox' thing which uses Template:Adjacent communities)
- Brisbane (infobox, "Location" text field)
- Hunter Region (at the bottom of the infobox, the table with heading "Localities around Hunter Region")
Is this stuff honestly helpful for a reader? Maybe in ~2005, but these days (given Google Maps exists and so does Wikipedia:Mapframe maps in infoboxes) I feel like it's a really hard-to-parse format with zero benefit to readers. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
- I only know "Localities around …" from {{Infobox Australian place}} where there are widely used. I'm not aware of any discussions to remove them from the template. Given the increasing number of Wikipedia readers on mobile devices, presenting this information in an infobox is preferable to a navigation box which is not visible on mobile devices. Mapframes don't seem to work for most locations using {{Infobox Australian place}}. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- These things really are outdated claptrap. It's been suggested before to delete or deprecate
{{Adjacent communities}}
and some similar templates, but they were rather narrowly kept. I think a new push to remove them would succeed if they were no longer embedded in other templates. The fact that infoboxes can support a roughly similar feature, and the fact that various articles are doing completely different things in an attempt to provide information like this, is a strong indication that the navbox templates for this should go away, and that table-based simulations of them should go away, leaving only the infobox implementation, if even that meets with consensus to retain it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
RfC: LGBT
How should the use of the acronym that refers to the LGBT community be standardized (not including names of organizations)? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 04:10, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
I've seen the usage lean mostly towards LGBT, but LGBTQ+ pops up in some article language, and LGBTQ appears in both article titles and text. Even the article LGBT isn't consistent in prose.
Options:
- A: Standardize the usage of the word/initialism
- A1: LGBT
- A2: LGBTQ
- A3: LGBTQ+
- A4: Queer
- B: Do not standardize, leave under MOS:VAR theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (they/them) 04:10, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
Survey
- B. I think an individual article should be internally consistent but sources used article to article may give a preference to one variation over another. Personally would prefer us to have one set standard but ultimately I think we're beholden to how our sources use it. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 10:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- We may not even be able to be consistent within the same article in some cases, since, for example, the scope of various events, laws, etc. have changed over time. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:37, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- LGBT The reason why we need standardization is because various sources in many languages have many names for this concept, and for clarity we as Wikipedia editors can take an editorial position to use one term uniformly even if cited sources use another term.
- At meta:Wikimedia LGBT+ we had this discussion many times and the consensus came to "LGBT+". "LGBT" is the most common name and also historically accepted by the organized stakeholder communities. In acknowledgement that other demographics want separate recognition we added the plus.
- Problems with "Q" for queer include that 1) this was a slur term until recently 2) its definition varies broadly 3) it is a Western culture concept and increasing Western representation seems counterproductive to shifting the conversation globally. There is almost no non-Western development of the LGBT discourse but to the extent that it happens, I have not seen evidence that queer is anyone's preferred term for talking about how LGBT culture developed outside the Western world. As long as the term is LGBT or LGBT+ we retain more non-Western inclusivity. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:56, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- There are options not listed. The most inclusive variant (found in many sources) is: LBGTQIA+. This should at least be an option. Blueboar (talk) 12:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- B. Seems a bit too tricky to standardize, and I don't think there is likely to be a widely accepted standard anywhere anytime soon. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 16:17, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- B: The existence of these synonyms isn't a problem and doesn't require fixing; we can just follow the sources. As between LGBT and LGBTQ, the former is still the most popular, but the latter is rapidly gaining on it, so the use of both on Wikipedia is inevitable for some time to come. Queer is often used with slightly different shades of meaning from the initialisms, and where sources use it, our summaries of them should reflect that.--Trystan (talk) 18:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- Comment: I’ll admit, I have changed LGBT[etc] to LGBT at least twice that I can remember, and I have backed this up with the following: LGBT was the term used in the source(s); LGBT is the common name used at LGBT; and the word LGBT is not an exclusive one (usually noted in regard to the LGBT community). If either of the first two reasons were not there, I probably would not have made the change. In saying that, my non-vote goes to B, but I’ve always liked Q as the letter-equivalent of a plus, as in, “we are LGBT in a literal sense, but if you’re otherwise a bit ‘queer’ you’re also welcome.” But that’s just, like, my opinion. — HTGS (talk) 20:41, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- B. Which to use varies by context. Using something like "LGBTQIA+" or even "LGBTQ" will be an anachronism is some contexts, even as recently as events from the 1990s to 2000s. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:53, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Disagree (option B): The first thing I ever saw in this discourse was LBT. Later they added another letter LGBT. Some time later I stumbled upon LGBTQ, and now I think we’re at LGBTQIA+? Seriously, an encyclopedia is meant to document established knowledge. Evidently, there is no one generally accepted term. It is politics and I suppose there’ll always be a squabble as regards how to name things. We (as an encyclopedia) should stay away from any politicking (that doesn’t affect our own operations), thus do not standardize. ‑‑ K (🗪 | ✍) 08:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- As recently as the early 2000s, "GLT" and "LGT" were common; I had friends that printed up "This is offensive to bisexuals" stickers to slap on GLT/LGT and "Gay and Lesbian" signage at events like Folsom Street Fair (and to this day there's still a lot of sotto voce discrimination against the B among L and G people). GLB and GLBT have also been common; putting the L first came about later and is mostly a 2010s thing. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:37, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- B (no cross-wiki standardization), though within an article a term should be standardized. I expect this would depend on the topic and other factors - eg if talking about gay rights in the pre-2000s, I would not expect "LGBTQ+" to be used. --Masem (t) 13:07, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- A2 - is the most common usage, that I've seen. GoodDay (talk) 14:16, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- A1 – from search results, it looks to me that "LGBT" is more popular than "LGBTQ", "LGBT+", etc – considering both general searches, and also those focusing on reliable sources (e.g Google News, Google Scholar, JSTOR). I think we ought to try to be consistent across articles, and we ought to prefer the term which is most popular (especially with reliable sources) over those with less popularity. Mr248 (talk) 00:20, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- I have no particular opinion on this, but the problem with search results (especially from Scholar and Books) is that you're looking at the average of past usage. With nGrams, you can see that LGBTQ is now roughly equally as common as LGBT. Is this significant? Hard to say.... --Macrakis (talk) 01:35, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- B - Do not standardize, leave under MOS:VAR. Isaidnoway (talk) 13:32, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- B, although we should try to stick to acronym/terminology choices people or certain groups prefer. --Bangalamania (talk) 15:22, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- B, depending on context (based on context in sources). Even from discussion above I can see people of the comunity(ies) in question have no standardized view on (sub)comunities and places, and even less through time, so it seems differences in acronyms reflect differences in meaning. If, and when, it is so, standardization would unnecessary distort meaning. --Marjan Tomki SI (talk) 14:51, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- B MOS:VAR. Masterhatch (talk) 14:55, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
RfC on alphabetization of extended-latin characters (eg "ä" etc)
Should the MoS give guidance on how to alphabetize foreign-language terms that include letters not in the basic Latin alphabet, such as "Ë" and "Å" and so forth?
1) No.
2) Yes, and:
- 2A) Yes, and we should use each language's system (for instance, some languages treat "Ö" as a distinct letter that comes after "Z"). This is described at the article Alphabetical order.
- 2B Yes, and we should use the French system always (that is, "Ô" and "Ö" etc are treated exactly like "O" and so on).
- 2C) Yes, and we should use Unicode order, as described at Wikipedia:Alphabetical order.
3) Other [describe]. Herostratus (talk) 18:57, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
Survey
- 1 - IMHO, we should do away with diacritics on English Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 19:03, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- You are well aware by now that there is overwhelming consensus against your position. Continued tendentiousness and activism against diacritics on Wikipedia is good grounds for a topic-ban from the subject. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:49, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- I have not & continue to not remove them from articles, where they're considered to belong. I also add them to articles where they're considered to belong. I haven't for years gotten into edit-wars over the topic. Now please, let's not have this conversation. GoodDay (talk) 01:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Then stop WP:FORUM-abusing WP as an anti-diacritics activism platform. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:30, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- I have not & continue to not remove them from articles, where they're considered to belong. I also add them to articles where they're considered to belong. I haven't for years gotten into edit-wars over the topic. Now please, let's not have this conversation. GoodDay (talk) 01:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- You are well aware by now that there is overwhelming consensus against your position. Continued tendentiousness and activism against diacritics on Wikipedia is good grounds for a topic-ban from the subject. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:49, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B makes the most intuitive sense to me but if someone more familiar with the Unicode order makes a case for it, it may sway me. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 19:08, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1 It is not the function of our MoS to avoid every conceivable disagreement that ever may arise with preemptive measures that themselves amount to nothing more than instruction creep. Regarding new instructions in the MoS, it says: "New content added to [the MoS] should directly address a persistently recurring style issue." I am not aware that this is such a recurring style issue and the RfC does not indicate that it is. For now, it seems, to me, like a solution in search of a problem--John Cline (talk) 22:34, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B, since there is already a clear consensus for it for 15+ years; it is how we alphabetize with sorting in WP:Categories. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:49, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1, with 2B as a fallback. Although 2B is commonly used here, it is not the only choice, and in some contexts other systems make sense; in particular, we frequently sort some surnames with lowercase parts (such as Dutch ones beginning with "van") by the first capitalized part. When we sort categories by the titles of articles within them, we omit articles from the start of the title, etc. For that matter, even for unaccented Anglo-American names we generally sort by surname first, even though 2B if interpreted literally would cause us to sort by given name first. I think the conventions we have adopted by consensus are working, and that trying to encode them by MoS text is likely to break things, so I prefer 1 over 2B. All that said, 2A and 2C are nonstarters. 2A is not a sorting system, it's a recipe for conflict, because what do you do when you are sorting items from multiple languages with incompatible conventions? And 2C's idea of sorting Unicodes numerically is never the right thing to do, in work aimed at human consumption. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:01, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- By the way, since this is not explicit in this proposal: I am going to assume that this ONLY covers the collation ordering of accented Roman letters, but would not guide how to choose which words to collate (e.g. the cases of lowercase particles and articles mentioned above, as well as e.g. the apostrophe in O'brien) or how to order other letters. This assumption would allay most of the concerns with 2B in my comment above. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, right, that's my understanding. Herostratus (talk) 12:46, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B or not 2B (1). We pretty much do 2B in DEFAUTSORT as far as I've seen, without explicit guidance. Has this come up as an issue some place? Dicklyon (talk) 05:15, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, here: Wikipedia:Help desk#Alphabetisation of Länsiviitta, an editor was seeking guidance on how to alphabetize List of shopping malls in Finland, would the "ä" in Länsiviitta be treated as an "a" or as coming after z (as would be done in Finnish). FWIW List of Finnish municipalities for instance uses Finnish alphabet order. Herostratus (talk) 05:59, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1 with 2B as fall back. I totally agree with David Eppstein (I also agree with GoodDay in that diacritics should only be used in English where they're actually used in English, eg Métis. But that's not up for debate today, 'nuff said). Masterhatch (talk) 14:02, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B, with 1 as the fallback. 2C is right out, and 2A isn't best IMO.
- I don't see why can't provide a guideline so that editors aren't lost at sea and scratching their heads if confronted with this question. Agreed that we don't want to micromanage, and it doesn't matter if ifs different in different articles, but really we're only talking about a sentence two or that comes down to "Well, since you have to use some rubric, use French system we suppose".
- It could just be stuck in some MoS page, but I can't figure out a good one, so I'm thinking that (if some variant of option 2 gains consensus), maybe a short new page in Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (formatting) titled "Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Alphabetizing". That'd also provide room for pointing out how "O'Brian" etc are handled, and maybe discuss special cases (I mean if you did have a list in Greek -- can't think why, but if you did -- how would you alphabetize that? Etc.) Herostratus (talk) 21:08, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B Yes, this is the English Wikipedia but English includes many words
stolenborrowed from other tongues where they do things different. Élite, for example. Not to mention surviving names from Old Ænglish. English as she is written doesn't fit neatly into any system of spelling, grammar, pronunciation or alphabetisication. If we have a solution that works and editors are comfortable with, then why change? Having a different order for specific uses - List of Finnish beers perhaps - where a different order might be expected by those deep in the subject, should be catered for. --Pete (talk) 22:08, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Doesn't that last sentence indicate a kind of 2A approach? I don't know about beer, but List of Finnish municipalities does exist and it does use the Finnish method. Should it? Maybe. Herostratus (talk) 00:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Our aim should be to present information in a useful fashion. For a specialised topic it makes more sense to my mind to allow for a local consensus if that's how those who know the subject best desire. Otherwise have the best possible default for most topics. We can't get away from words or names in regular English that have accents or obsolete letters so we need to have a rule for them, and when we extend this into lists of words in other languages there must be some boundary between what works for English and what works for potentially hundreds of other languages. I think it is more useful to have one default rule and use that until we hit the point where it begins to break down and be counterproductive and that point is going to be different for each situation and best determined by those at the coalface. --Pete (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Doesn't that last sentence indicate a kind of 2A approach? I don't know about beer, but List of Finnish municipalities does exist and it does use the Finnish method. Should it? Maybe. Herostratus (talk) 00:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1 unless there is evidence that the question needs to be resolved centrally. As a side note, I think 2B probably is the practice I would adopt, but I'm curious what someone would do if two items differed only by the "diacritic" (for lack of a better word; I think umlauts aren't actually diacritcs). It's just a curiosity; I certainly don't propose that it be decided in the MOS. --Trovatore (talk) 16:49, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- 3. I feel we could adopt the same approach as MOS:RETAIN, and leave a hatnote or a sentence at the top stating that this list follows "x" order, where letters with diacritics are treated as if they didn't have any or distinctly for English readers who aren't aware of the different kinds of alphabetisation. I'm still not convinced this needs to be codified in the MOS, though. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 17:05, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1, because it depends. While I do think that the French system is probably most often the right choice, other systems can make sense, and whether they do is better decided on a per-article basis when it comes up. – Rummskartoffel 17:17, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B -- principle of least surprise for the English-speaking reader, who is our primary user. Even in an article on Finnish municipalities, most of our readers will not realize that there are letters that come after Z. (By the way, the French order doesn't actually ignore diacritics -- IBM French collation order, it just treats them as less significant than the base letters --but there are very very few cases where this matters.) --Macrakis (talk) 20:14, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1 unless there is some reason to give guidance. If we give advice it should be 2B in most cases, because this is simpler for editors and aligns with what native English-speaking readers are likely to expect. I have no objection in principle to using the foreign language's convention where it is appropriate. But if we are using a foreign language alphabetical order we should use the foreign language alphabetical order in full. Which means that if we're using Lithuanian alphabetical order, Y comes between Į and J. If we're using Czech or Slovak alphabetical order, CH comes between H and I. And this can get hard. Is this instance of -nny- in Hungarian an underlying N-NY or NY-NY? Is this -rh- in Welsh an underlying R-H or RH? Better to avoid the whole issue in general. Kahastok talk 20:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- Comment: sorting by each language's system (2A), while superficially appealing and workable for language-specific lists, would cause issues in lists that contain items from different languages. For example, for a list of prominent members (people, cities, whatever) of an international organization to sort a Finnish person whose name starts with ä after z, but sort a German whose name starts with the same letter alongside a, is likely to confuse readers, frustrate searchers and not be maintained by other, uninitiated editors. (I see one other user has already pointed this out.) -sche (talk) 22:06, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B. Collating order is a endless rabbit hole of complexity, but this is the English language encyclopedia, so we should do what is most natural and useful for English. I would expect that other language projects would make decisions which make sense for that language. The key point is not, "What makes the most sense in the original source language?", but "What makes the most sense to the English-reading user?" As example of just how perverse this can get, how would you sort Ke$ha? Or NIИ? This isn't a made-up example; at a music web site I used to work for, we really did grapple with this. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:33, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2A, or failing that 1.
- First, I reject arguments based on how the software operates - 2B might be what defaultsort does, and 2C would be relatively simple to implement, but readers do not care and hence we should not base policy off of it.
- "What makes most sense to an English reader" is a reasonable argument, but it is very subjective near the edge cases. I will post more in the extended discussion. TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 09:35, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- Bad RfC.
- There's no mention of old prior discussions (e.g. this, there's no mention of what attention was paid to WP:RFCBEFORE, and the "choices" are defined very poorly:
- saying there's a "French system" that treats Ô "exactly" like O ignores the cote < côte < coté < côté controversy and just arm-waves at other letters by saying "and so on"; saying "Unicode order" means nothing until you say what kind of Unicode order (the cited page's example seems to be Unicode code point order); and the word "alphabetization" means all the points about non-alphabetic characters aren't covered. This "guidance" will only cause confusion.
- Speaking of that, I'm a confused guy myself but this is how I think Wikipedia does things now.
- IN ARTICLES: Judging by the definition that I think applies, page lookup is via a binary collation (which is like Unicode code point because the storage is UTF-8) after some simple transformations. However, if on my desktop's "Search Wikipedia" box I enter Fuhrer, I get Führer due to a redirect, I assume it is due to the category Redirects from titles without diacritics -- but that doesn't explain why, when I enter Lansiviitta, I get Länsiviitta.
- IN CATEGORY LISTS: the switch to UCA default took place in 2016 according to talk page. Some fiddling is possible with DEFAULTSORT. But I think it only works with categories inside article pages.
- IN LISTS: As noted earlier, it is possible to specify that a list is sortable and users can change the order to Finnish by clicking, if JavaScript is enabled and if their locale is Finnish.
- IN WT:MOS ALREADY: This Collation in alphabetical order subsection for Arabic seems to be the only place in the current MoS where something specific appears.
- IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: The idea of what to do has been studied and national-language committees have argued and a standard was made decades ago: Unicode Collation Algorithm DUCET, aka UCA default. I would have said "3. UCA" but it's too late because too many !votes have already been made, my only hope is that the closer will reject and say: start over. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:22, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- All three of the options presented have simple one-line explanations. "Collate as in the native language", "collate as in English and ignore diacritics" and "collate in Unicode code point order". Are we able to give a similarly brief explanation as to what UCA or DUCET actually means in practice?
- If not, I'd say it's unworkable from a practical perspective, because that we cannot reasonably assume that our editors are programmers or technical experts. Kahastok talk 20:40, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- Phrases you're putting inside quotes aren't the three options presented. And we can discuss UCA more if there's a new RfC. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:57, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B Some guidance seems suseful. In a list with names form various language groups 2A cannot work. Unicode 3C gives a rather random and unintuitive order. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Woodstone (talk • contribs) 09:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- 2B - per the argument given by the unknown poster just before my comment. --Khajidha (talk) 11:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC) PS: I assume that in cases where two terms differ only in presence or absence of a diacritic, that the "bare" form would come first. Not sure what to do about the hypothetical case of two words differing only by which diacritics they have, though. But that is probably too hypothetical to worry about. --Khajidha (talk) 11:19, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- It was Woodstone, FYI. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 14:39, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- 1 as existing guidance is sufficient. Per MOS:LISTORG: {{fontcolor|darkgreen|When using a more complex form of organization, (by origin, by use, by type, etc.), the criteria for categorization must be clear and consistent. Just as a reader or editor could easily assume that the headings A, B, C would be followed by D (rather than 1903), more complex systems should be just as explicit." Local consensus can be trusted to pick a sensible sorting system, and if it is more complex than alphabetical, current guidance suggests making that explicitly clear. Diacritics are complicated enough to justify an explicit note. If others feel this is unclear, I'd not oppose a small note at LISTORG including complex diacritical sorting as an example. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
Extended discussion
We're basically talking about things like lists within articles. I believe that the Wiki software handles alphabetizing list of article names (as for instance on Category pages) etc., and I think that the software uses the French system ("O" and "Ô" considered identical, etc).
Note that Wikipedia:Alphabetical order is not marked as any kind of rule. I guess it's sort of like an essay. Sticking with the Unicode system described there (option 2C) give a clear rigid rule where you don't have to figure anything out, but it would mean French (and maybe other languagues, don't know) would use a system foreign to it (alphabetical order would be be "role - rule - rôle" which you would not see in normal French writing).
Thinking that "no" could be a valid answer on grounds that it's maybe WP:MOSBLOAT, we've gone this far without it, it's rare and even then usually makes little difference, so just let the editor doing the writing deciding is OK, we don't need to micromanage everything.
"Yes, but (or 'No, but...') with these particular exceptions:..." would be a reasonable response also I think.
Keep in mind that this is the English Wikipedia and we're not bound to follow the rules of any other language. We can if we think it best. As always, the key question is how to best serve the reader, and as always we have to make an educated guess. If the reader comes across a long list where "Arhus" is the first entry, and way down below "Årnheim" is the last, would this be the optimal alphabetization for a typical reader? Might be. Skeptical, personally. Also note that most of our readers have not been to college, as many of you editors have. Most readers will read "wäßrig" as "wabrig" and so forth for instance, I think, and similarly most readers will read "ö" and "ó" and "õ" etc as just "o". I think. Herostratus (talk) 18:57, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
We wouldn't have these headaches or potential headaches, if we would use only the english language. This isn't suppose to be the mult-language Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 19:01, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- We still have English-language entries for characters not commonly used in modern English, though; an entry for Æthelred the Unready or Újpest FC or Óglaigh na hÉireann is still going to be written in English. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 19:05, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- Unfortunately so. GoodDay (talk) 19:17, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- I don't see how this is "unfortunate"? It's a testament to the breadth of our coverage and and increasingly global scope that we handle these subjects and more. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 19:21, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- Best we not get into a debate about this & respect each others' position. GoodDay (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- Respectfully, if you hadn't proposed "English only" we wouldn't be debating it. I agree that the language of en.wp is English, but English has a rich history of loan words, and transcriptions of foreign names, and use of Latin-based letters with variations as needed for French, German, Icelandic, etc. names. Ruling those out would be harsh and pointless. In terms of ordering, Im pretty sure English readers have no knowledge of Unicode order; the "French" system of ignoring diacritics and using the nearest ordinary Latin letter equivalent is pretty familiar though. I'm not sure what that means for things like thorn (letter), but I'm pretty sure Unicode is not the answer. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Shouldn't Wikipedia:Alphabetical order (the Unicode page) just be deleted? It's not marked as a guideline. It says it applies to article titles... many lists of things in articles use the article titles when there is one (sometimes redirects are used). Are people following Unicode order for these? Not that I've heard of (it would only rarely be an issue). The page also indicates the listings of article on category pages uses Unicode, which would only be true if the Wiki software does. Does it? If not, that page is probably just confusing the issue and should go, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 06:09, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- See WP:CATSORT. Supposedly, according to that page, the software sorts categories roughly like 2B, with accented letters grouped together with their unaccented versions. In practice, the keys used in DEFAULTSORT generally strip the accents from the letters to enforce this. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:45, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- So then Wikipedia:Alphabetical order is just confusing and should be marked historical or something right? Herostratus (talk) 12:27, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- The description in WP:CATSORT aka WP:SORTKEY is poor and misleading; however, the footnote is clear: categories should be UCA default. Some kinds of lists, though, depend on client-side JavaScript according to Help:Sorting. It says about strings: "order: uses locale specific (so in this case English) ordering if your browser supports it." which makes me wonder: maybe such tables would automatically have a different order if my locale was Finnish? In which case, it's not a MoS matter. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:19, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
- See WP:CATSORT. Supposedly, according to that page, the software sorts categories roughly like 2B, with accented letters grouped together with their unaccented versions. In practice, the keys used in DEFAULTSORT generally strip the accents from the letters to enforce this. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:45, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Shouldn't Wikipedia:Alphabetical order (the Unicode page) just be deleted? It's not marked as a guideline. It says it applies to article titles... many lists of things in articles use the article titles when there is one (sometimes redirects are used). Are people following Unicode order for these? Not that I've heard of (it would only rarely be an issue). The page also indicates the listings of article on category pages uses Unicode, which would only be true if the Wiki software does. Does it? If not, that page is probably just confusing the issue and should go, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 06:09, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Respectfully, if you hadn't proposed "English only" we wouldn't be debating it. I agree that the language of en.wp is English, but English has a rich history of loan words, and transcriptions of foreign names, and use of Latin-based letters with variations as needed for French, German, Icelandic, etc. names. Ruling those out would be harsh and pointless. In terms of ordering, Im pretty sure English readers have no knowledge of Unicode order; the "French" system of ignoring diacritics and using the nearest ordinary Latin letter equivalent is pretty familiar though. I'm not sure what that means for things like thorn (letter), but I'm pretty sure Unicode is not the answer. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- Best we not get into a debate about this & respect each others' position. GoodDay (talk) 19:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- I don't see how this is "unfortunate"? It's a testament to the breadth of our coverage and and increasingly global scope that we handle these subjects and more. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 19:21, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
- Unfortunately so. GoodDay (talk) 19:17, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
As someone mentioned earlier, 2B appears to be the current standard operating procedure (which I dislike). IF this is so? Why was this RFC opened? GoodDay (talk) 16:03, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
- There was a discussion here: Wikipedia:Help desk#Alphabetisation of Länsiviitta, an editor was seeking guidance on how to alphabetize List of shopping malls in Finland, wondering if the "ä" in Länsiviitta should be treated as an "a" or as coming after z (as would be done in Finnish). 2A is found sometimes, List of Finnish municipalities for instance uses Finnish alphabet order. It doesn't bother me if different editors use different rubrics, but the question is if we should write something down. My opinion on these things is that we should, even if just to say "when alphabetizing lists with extended-Latin letters, do as you think best, but follow the scheme used in the article if there already is one".
Some test cases
If Finnish and French were the only languages, I would have no issue with option 2B: "ä" does look a lot like "a" for English readers so it makes sense to alphabetize both close together even for Finland-related articles. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and the continuum between English (=ASCII letters) and Japanese leaves place to a lot of edge cases.
I urge supporters of option 2B to think about what they would do for the following cases (where 2A and 2C make the decision trivial):
- French "e" vs. "é"
- Finnish "a" vs. "ä" or Danish "ø" vs. "o"
- Greek: "φ/Φ" vs. "Ρ/ρ"
- Hangul: "ㄱ" vs. "ㄴ"
- Anything out of the Japanese writing system
I do not think anyone disputes that in case (1) the letters should be alphabetized closely ("é" is considered a modification of "e" in French and sorted just after it in dictionaries) and that in case (5) we should follow the local conventions (since they have nothing to do with what the average English reader knows, it is not even an alphabet). My question is where you draw the line in the other cases.
In case (2), the letters do look a lot like English, but they are alphabetized differently in the source language. In case (3), the letters look a bit like English; many readers that cannot speak Greek will nevertheless have some familiarity with the alphabet. "φ" will be romanized either as "f" or "ph" and "ρ" will be romanized as "r" or "rh", for instance Φaρoσ → Faros and Ροδοs → Rhodos, but the letter "φ" comes later than "ρ" in Greek even if f/p comes before "r" in English. Case (4) is basically case (3) but less familiar (I would guess that almost every native English speaker who knows the Korean alphabet has some knowledge of the language, and conversely I am not sure a majority of native English speakers knows that Korean uses an alphabet). "ㄱ" comes before "ㄴ" in Hangul but the romanizations are g/k and n.
TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 10:11, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not convinced that cases 3 through 5 are in any way affected by going with 2B; alphabetising the Latin alphabet is its own beast compared to the order of non-Latin scripts; Hangul or kana or Greek letters, etc, will have their own order, and in fact since they are generally unique to a language (perhaps Cyrillic script has different orders in different languages? I don't know), there should be no cases where, for example, Hangul is ordered differently across pages, surely? 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 10:47, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- Agreed. This has nothign to do with characters in writing systems other than Latin-based. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:29, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- When would this even happen? We mention non-Roman script spellings, but don't really use them. Under what circumstances would we be mixing scripts like this? We would be alphabetizing the romanizations, not the native script forms.--Khajidha (talk) 13:57, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Capitalisation after semicolon
I was always taught that it was necessary to capitalise after a semicolon linking two complete sentences, as in Zinc is a common metal; It has several industrial uses. (OK that's not the best way of phrasing that, but I think it works as an example.)
I was about to "correct" an occurrence of non-capitalisation, but checked the MOS first in case there was a national difference. But MOS:COLON is no help. I checked the talk archives and found much discussion but no consensus. So just as well I checked IMO.
I think the MOS should say one way or the other. I don't care which. Or if it does already, say it more clearly. Other thoughts? Andrewa (talk) 17:30, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- I've always learned the opposite; semi-colons should be followed by lower case. That seems to match the examples given in MOS:COLON. If there are differing acceptable styles out there, then I agree we should state a rule explicitly, and not rely on inference from the examples. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 17:35, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
- According to MOS:SEMICOLON, the semicolon is
an alternative to a full stop (period), enabling related material to be kept in the same sentence; it marks a more decisive division in a sentence than a comma
. So it is kind of a middle ground between a comma and a colon. It isn't so much a matter of style as it is one of grammar. Given that the semicolon doesn't end a sentence and begin a new one, it isn't followed by capitalization. —El Millo (talk) 17:41, 6 September 2021 (UTC)- But in the example I gave, it does end a sentence and begin a new one, just like a full stop would. So by your own logic, the following sentence should have initial capitalization... exactly as my primary and high school teachers taught. But I don't mind which way we go. Just so long as we go one way or the other. Andrewa (talk) 00:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- It doesn't. Independent clauses don't get capitalised after the semicolon unless they start with a proper noun. They're considered to be two clauses in the same sentence that are linked by a semicolon. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:19, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- The word after a semicolon is not capitalized unless it's a proper noun. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 00:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- By definition it doesn't end a new sentence and begin a new one. If you want that, you use a full stop, not a semicolon. —El Millo (talk) 01:19, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- But, grammatically, what precedes a semi-colon may be a complete sentence. Similarly with what follows one. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:51, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- Friends, you are confusing "a complete sentence" with two independent clauses. In the sentence used as an example, they are two independent clauses and are better written without a semicolon. In that case, write "Zinc is a common metal and has several industrial uses." I do not believe anyone was ever taught to capitalize the word following a semicolon unless it is a proper noun. I do not believe it is a cultural difference. I believe it is a situation where people are far enough removed from having studied English grammar that they confuse what they were taught. It is not clarified and should not be clarified in the MOS because it is such a basic rule that no one, well, almost no one, could be confused by it. God bless and happy editing. MarydaleEd (talk) 02:46, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- But, grammatically, what precedes a semi-colon may be a complete sentence. Similarly with what follows one. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:51, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- But in the example I gave, it does end a sentence and begin a new one, just like a full stop would. So by your own logic, the following sentence should have initial capitalization... exactly as my primary and high school teachers taught. But I don't mind which way we go. Just so long as we go one way or the other. Andrewa (talk) 00:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- According to MOS:SEMICOLON, the semicolon is
- This appears to be a simple case of the OP either having been taught incorrectly, or incorrectly recollected what s/he was taught. You don’t capitalise after a semi-colon (unless the next word is a proper name or acronym). MapReader (talk) 07:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- I've noticed that a great number of US publications capitalize after a colon and semicolon. (IMO that's fucked up, but hey.) Popcornfud (talk) 09:38, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- I don't recall being taught it, but I have always lower-cased following semicolon. Perhaps more significantly, I have never seen that capitalized in educated writing, and that's exactly the kind of pedantic detail I would notice and remember. I am American, and I would be interested to see a significant sample of this
great number of US publications
. I would be more interested to see what some of the major recognized style guides say about this, but I don't know how to find that. Wikipedia often conforms to a consensus among those guides if any exists, no matter what individual editors think about it personally. 68.97.42.64 (talk) 12:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)- Unfortunately, it seems there's no easy way to google sites for colons.
that's exactly the kind of pedantic detail I would notice and remember
- me too, and that's why it always sticks out to me when I notice it. I may randomly trawl some major US sites later to see if I can spot any examples. (For the record, I think it's gross and we shouldn't do it.) Popcornfud (talk) 12:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)- From the age of 5, I was always taught to follow a semi-colon with a lower case letter, unless the word was a proper noun. I don't see why this rule should have changed, at least in the UK. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:54, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- If you were taught about semicolons from the age of 5 that explains a lot, Martin. EEng 16:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- Yeah, we finished off complex algebra the year before. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- If you were taught about semicolons from the age of 5 that explains a lot, Martin. EEng 16:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- This American was taught the same. I think I was taught to capitalize after a colon, but (even if I was) that seems to have fallen out of favor (and I agree with it going away). --Khajidha (talk) 13:31, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- From the age of 5, I was always taught to follow a semi-colon with a lower case letter, unless the word was a proper noun. I don't see why this rule should have changed, at least in the UK. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:54, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- I think that
great number of US publications
might be like the large (and growing) number of publications (and speakers) using constucts like "there's lots of reasons", or "there's loads of semicolons". Possible rationale: now that any goofball on the planet with Internet access (that's pretty much all of us) can share their wisdom with the world, we need to figure out what people whose native language is Something Else are trying to say, so we're now used to having rules of grammar being ignored (because they weren't learned/taught). Ergo, the rules of grammar are superfluous; let's just ignore them. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 15:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)- JohnFromPinckney, randomly came across an example - a 1998 movie review by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Times.
They occupy "Spice World" as if they were watching it: They're so detached they can't even successfully lip-synch their own songs.
Popcornfud (talk) 00:31, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- JohnFromPinckney, randomly came across an example - a 1998 movie review by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Times.
- Unfortunately, it seems there's no easy way to google sites for colons.
- I don't recall being taught it, but I have always lower-cased following semicolon. Perhaps more significantly, I have never seen that capitalized in educated writing, and that's exactly the kind of pedantic detail I would notice and remember. I am American, and I would be interested to see a significant sample of this
- I've noticed that a great number of US publications capitalize after a colon and semicolon. (IMO that's fucked up, but hey.) Popcornfud (talk) 09:38, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- Oh for God's sake, here are the rules: After a semicolon, never capitalize. If what follows a colon couldn't stand on its own as a sentence, never capitalize; if it can, then there's a stylistic choice to be made which partly depends on whether more than one sentence is being introduced (as in this very post). Of course, the following are always capitalized, the word never in the foregoing notwithstanding: proper names, initialisms normally capitalized, etc.If you doubt me, see User:EEng#correct. EEng 16:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
- "I was always taught that it was necessary to capitalise after a semicolon linking two complete sentences" – then you were taught wrong, or more likely did not remember what you were taught correctly. There are no major style guides that recommend such a style, at all, and it is certainly not used on Wikipedia. Next, "there's lots of reasons" is a grammar error (plurality disagreement). It's common and idiomatic in colloquial spoken (and not just American) English, but it's glaringly wrong in formal written English, so don't use it in our articles. And we don't use contractions in article text anyway. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:27, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- Surely you mean "There is no style guide" ;P . And when did you start spelling capitalize with an s? For the record, I do think there are some very, VERY limited circumstances where a contraction might be used in article text, for example "because he had had no opportunity" --> "because he'd had no opportunity" -- assuming there's no way to reword. EEng 14:49, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- In case it's unclear to you, SMC, or anybody else, I was absolutely not proposing or condoning the use of "there's lots of reasons" and similar, rather bemoaning its usage. And it may be
common and idiomatic in colloquial spoken ... English
, but I find it glaringly wrong when I read it or hear it. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 15:08, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
- This is not in question. Never capitalize the word following a semicolon unless it is a proper noun. If you want to offer a general and vague statement that many publications require it, show me those publications and their rules. If you were taught it, produce a grammar textbook where that was taught. It doesn't exist. I fell in love with the English language in 1969 when I was a child and I have made it my life's work. I have studied it ad nauseam. I freely admit I obsess about it. So often, people think English grammar is subjective and that it is proper to write whatever sounds right or looks right to an individual. There are rules in grammar. Hoping that discussion is behind us, I would like to address the idea of semicolons in general. Semicolons have a place in writing, but please remember that periods and commas are the workhorses of English punctuation. They should be your punctuation of first choice. Any time you are tempted to use a semicolon to separate two independent clauses, please consider separating them into two sentences. The goal of grammar is to provide understanding for the reader and to do that, we must keep our sentences simple. Semicolons, colons, parenthesis, and dashes should be used judiciously. Lean on periods and commas and allow them to do their jobs. That is how we make our sentences simple and easy to read. God bless and happy editing! MarydaleEd (talk) 02:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- MarydaleEd, why are you lecturing me about semicolons and the
goal of grammar
? Why are you telling me what to do in bold letters? Why do you think I mightwant to offer a general and vague statement that many publications require
capitalization after a semicolon? I have never done such a thing myself (except where it's appropriate, as with proper nouns) and I have never suggested doing such a thing, here or anywhere else on the planet. I do not want it to happen. Please don't bark at me for wanting to. I don't. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 05:39, 17 September 2021 (UTC)- Mr. Pinckney, until I received a notification on my account that you had messaged me here, I have never seen your name before in my life, but I am pleased to meet you. Allow me a moment to try to understand what this is about. Thank you. It should take only a moment. God bless and happy editing. MarydaleEd (talk) 06:03, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Ok. Research is completed. There are a couple of ways I could approach this, Mr. Pinckney, but of course, I will choose the path less reflecting of my usual cheerful disposition because I am basically, at this point, typing in my sleep. So, do forgive any typos that might slip through. Upon my reading of your contributions, you appear to be a very intelligent man, so I will treat you like one. There is not a doubt in my mind that when you read my comments, you knew exactly what I was saying and to whom, and that in all I have written on this page tonight, with the exception of the last two posts I've just made, nothing I have written even can be remotely misconstrued to having anything to do with you. But, you already knew that. That leaves me with two reasons for why you wrote that message to me. Either you take issue with the way I formatted my text and, by doing it as I did, would make it appear as if I was answering you, even though you know full well that isn't the case. However, throwing a fit would be an excellent way to make your point, so you threw one to make the point about the formatting. Or, you are trolling and wanted to pick a fight, and feigned making it look like you thought I was talking to you in my messages. Those are really the only two possible options. Of course, there is the third one that I wasn't going to mention because it assumes you were ignorant enough to truly believe I made my post in response to something you said or did, even though there isn't a word in my message that in any way could possibly be in response to you. But, I know the last one shouldn't have even been brought up because, as I said, I've read your stuff and can tell you are an intelligent person. Therefore, ignorance doesn't apply. So, which of the two is it? Do ou want to spank my hand over a formatting slip? I am happy to accept responsibility for not formatting properly. You seem to have too much on the ball to be a troller, so that take out two of the three. So, tell me what formatting mishap angered you. By the way, I thought hthis was fun! God bless and happy editing. MarydaleEd (talk) 06:26, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- MarydaleEd, perhaps you should get more sleep before you edit. You've typed what appears to be one big blast of words in which you try really hard not to insult me by saying I'm too stupid to figure out you weren't talking to me, so I must be so evil that I want to pick a fight. It comes over as insulting to me, either way.
- I do not want to fight, I despise trolling. In fact, the only clue I have when you do not mention other users' names is your indentation. I guess that's what you mean by "formatting" in your reply above. But maybe if I'd had more sleep, myself, I might have seen you'd merely indented improperly and were talking to somebody else. But as it is, I don't think anyone here knows to whom you were replying.
- And by the way, our paths have crossed; you thanked me for this edit at Dick Van Dyke back in June (I have no idea how to link an actual "Thank"). — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 06:57, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Good to know we've worked together before. Sorry for my bad memory. You are right on at least one thing...I need to get some sleep. I couldn't read all that you wrote, but I'll come back. Can we pick this back up tomorrow? Until then, please start at the very top of this section with the original question about capitalizing after semicolons, read that content, then maybe graze over some of the things said, OVERSTEPPING any comment made by you (because that is what I did. I read nothing you wrote which is why your name didn't ring a bell) and THEN read what I wrote. Please do ignore that I wrote directly under your last comment at teh time. I put my comments down there because it was last and that is where I was supposed to put it. You know very well that my comments had nothing to do with you or yours. I've got to go to sleep now =. I keep nodding off. I promise I will come back tomorrow with all my brain cells and answer you intelligently and specifically. Thamks. God bless and happy editng. MarydaleEd (talk) 07:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- How about if you two don't pick this up in the morning? EEng 15:04, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- I would like to offer a sincere apology to Wikipedia editors, and specifically to JohnFromPinckney. JohnFromPinckney, please know that in my original post to this subject, any references I made to other comments truly had nothing to do with you. I posted where I did only because I was tagging onto the end, as is usual practice. I am sorry it appeared like I was lecturing you. I never saw any post from you. If you go to my user page, you will see that my last user box reveals that I suffer from insomnia. What seems funny after one has had sleep meds is not necessarily funny to those who have not. I was attempting to bring you in on the humor, not insult you with it. A lesson has been learned. Do not post in a public place when chemistry tells you it is time for bed. It is embarrassing and unprofessional. I appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia and hope we can work together again. I am truly a fan. God bless and happy editing! MarydaleEd (talk) 23:24, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- How about if you two don't pick this up in the morning? EEng 15:04, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Good to know we've worked together before. Sorry for my bad memory. You are right on at least one thing...I need to get some sleep. I couldn't read all that you wrote, but I'll come back. Can we pick this back up tomorrow? Until then, please start at the very top of this section with the original question about capitalizing after semicolons, read that content, then maybe graze over some of the things said, OVERSTEPPING any comment made by you (because that is what I did. I read nothing you wrote which is why your name didn't ring a bell) and THEN read what I wrote. Please do ignore that I wrote directly under your last comment at teh time. I put my comments down there because it was last and that is where I was supposed to put it. You know very well that my comments had nothing to do with you or yours. I've got to go to sleep now =. I keep nodding off. I promise I will come back tomorrow with all my brain cells and answer you intelligently and specifically. Thamks. God bless and happy editng. MarydaleEd (talk) 07:11, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Ok. Research is completed. There are a couple of ways I could approach this, Mr. Pinckney, but of course, I will choose the path less reflecting of my usual cheerful disposition because I am basically, at this point, typing in my sleep. So, do forgive any typos that might slip through. Upon my reading of your contributions, you appear to be a very intelligent man, so I will treat you like one. There is not a doubt in my mind that when you read my comments, you knew exactly what I was saying and to whom, and that in all I have written on this page tonight, with the exception of the last two posts I've just made, nothing I have written even can be remotely misconstrued to having anything to do with you. But, you already knew that. That leaves me with two reasons for why you wrote that message to me. Either you take issue with the way I formatted my text and, by doing it as I did, would make it appear as if I was answering you, even though you know full well that isn't the case. However, throwing a fit would be an excellent way to make your point, so you threw one to make the point about the formatting. Or, you are trolling and wanted to pick a fight, and feigned making it look like you thought I was talking to you in my messages. Those are really the only two possible options. Of course, there is the third one that I wasn't going to mention because it assumes you were ignorant enough to truly believe I made my post in response to something you said or did, even though there isn't a word in my message that in any way could possibly be in response to you. But, I know the last one shouldn't have even been brought up because, as I said, I've read your stuff and can tell you are an intelligent person. Therefore, ignorance doesn't apply. So, which of the two is it? Do ou want to spank my hand over a formatting slip? I am happy to accept responsibility for not formatting properly. You seem to have too much on the ball to be a troller, so that take out two of the three. So, tell me what formatting mishap angered you. By the way, I thought hthis was fun! God bless and happy editing. MarydaleEd (talk) 06:26, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Mr. Pinckney, until I received a notification on my account that you had messaged me here, I have never seen your name before in my life, but I am pleased to meet you. Allow me a moment to try to understand what this is about. Thank you. It should take only a moment. God bless and happy editing. MarydaleEd (talk) 06:03, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- MarydaleEd, why are you lecturing me about semicolons and the
- This is not in question. Never capitalize the word following a semicolon unless it is a proper noun. If you want to offer a general and vague statement that many publications require it, show me those publications and their rules. If you were taught it, produce a grammar textbook where that was taught. It doesn't exist. I fell in love with the English language in 1969 when I was a child and I have made it my life's work. I have studied it ad nauseam. I freely admit I obsess about it. So often, people think English grammar is subjective and that it is proper to write whatever sounds right or looks right to an individual. There are rules in grammar. Hoping that discussion is behind us, I would like to address the idea of semicolons in general. Semicolons have a place in writing, but please remember that periods and commas are the workhorses of English punctuation. They should be your punctuation of first choice. Any time you are tempted to use a semicolon to separate two independent clauses, please consider separating them into two sentences. The goal of grammar is to provide understanding for the reader and to do that, we must keep our sentences simple. Semicolons, colons, parenthesis, and dashes should be used judiciously. Lean on periods and commas and allow them to do their jobs. That is how we make our sentences simple and easy to read. God bless and happy editing! MarydaleEd (talk) 02:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Citations: removing internal links for book publisher articles
Are the names of book publishers in citation templates no longer being linked to their Wikipedia pages? Was there an RfC about it? Why do I ask? Because of this edit performed with an AutoWikiBrowser. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 13:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- It's certainly not a change I'm familiar with, nor one I've seen enacted across other articles either. Perhaps it was an error or an overzealous use of the AutoWikiBrowser tool out of context? Worth pinging @Colonies Chris: for feedback on it. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 14:08, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- Quoting from Template:Cite book/doc#Publisher:
- "publisher: Name of publisher; may be wikilinked if relevant."
- There's no benefit to the reader in wikilinking the publisher of a cited book, unless there are special circumstances to make the publisher particularly relevant. In this case, the links are to large generalist publishers, which have no special significance. Colonies Chris (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with that – it's not necessary to link publishers, and from what I see, the majority of editors don't link them. It can make for a sea of blue links in the citations also: authors, article or chapter title perhaps, book or website, then publisher (supposedly), on top of a book's ISBN. (And why not location too, if the approach is to link every linkable field?) JG66 (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- "
There's no benefit to the reader in wikilinking the publisher of a cited book, unless there are special circumstances to make the publisher particularly relevant.
" Your personal opinion, of course. But your POV is not a policy and/or guideline. And as you pointed out with Template:Cite book/doc > Publisher: "Name of publisher; may be wikilinked if relevant. The publisher is the company, organization or other legal entity that publishes the work being cited." Obviously, you don't think it's relevant ... but I do — and probably the other editors who added book citations to the biography and wiki-linked book publishers. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 14:48, 9 September 2021 (UTC)- It feels like the sort of link I wouldn't press someone to include, but also wouldn't actively remove either—this feels like a MOS:VAR issue at heart. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 14:53, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- The whole point of the clause "may be wiklinked if relevant" is that merely being the publisher isn't sufficient relevance in itself. The key question is whether such a link would be of value to a reader. And these - to large generalist publishers - are not. Colonies Chris (talk) 15:18, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- It feels like the sort of link I wouldn't press someone to include, but also wouldn't actively remove either—this feels like a MOS:VAR issue at heart. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 14:53, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- Quoting from Template:Cite book/doc#Publisher:
I have an answer for pburka but won't give it until this thread is moved to WP:Citing sources, where it belongs. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- The claim that "there is no benefit" to such links is not consensus, merely individual opinion. As such, these edits violate WP:CITEVAR and should not be performed en masse, nor at all without local consensus at the affected article. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:17, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- It's appropriate to discuss this here. MOS:LINKING applies. pburka (talk) 20:43, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
- Links to publishers seem neutral at worst. One more clickable thing in a part of articles already full of much more obscure and intimidating-looking clickable things (like the bizarre strings we call DOI's) won't make an article harder to read. And they can help the reader sort out issues like publishers' names changing, corporate acquisitions, etc. It can also be helpful sometimes when looking up a publisher to know which Wikipedia articles rely upon them. Is it necessary to include these links? No, I wouldn't insist upon it. Would I remove them when I find them? No. The editor who inserted them took the time to bother and implicitly finds them worthwhile. Don't like? Don't click. And yes, WP:CITEVAR applies. XOR'easter (talk) 22:03, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
The phrasing that's used in the MOS - Name of publisher; may be wikilinked if relevant
- is an implicit statement that the default should be to not link. It's up to anyone who wants a publisher linked in a citation to justify how it's particularly relevant in any specific case. One can always make a case for any potential link that it might be useful to someone in some circumstances, but that's not enough in itself. The whole issue about overlinking arises because linking is often done on a 'because I can' basis rather than through careful thought about whether it would actually be useful. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:35, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- "
The phrasing that's used in the MOS -
" – Again, your interpretation; ergo, your POV. I see it differently. For me, the "may" in the guideline leaves the "yes or no" open to the interpretation of individuals. Is it relevant for me? Yes. Is it relevant for you? No. Your take and mine boil down to: "You say either and I say eyether, You say neither and I say nyther; Either, eyether, neither, nyther" .... Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 11:18, 10 September 2021 (UTC)Name of publisher; may be wikilinked if relevant
- is an implicit statement that the default should be to not link.- No, this is not just a POV matter. The phrasing in the MOS gives you freedom to link if relevant, but thereby places the onus on the linker to make a case for that link being specially relevant, beyond its obvious relevance as the publisher. If you want to argue the case that any specific publisher link in that article deserves to be retained because it has special relevance, go ahead, we can all discuss it. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:39, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- But as "relevant" is not a clear-cut term, it is a POV matter as one editor's view of relevance will not always be the same as another's; linking "if relevant" does not mean "only in exceptional circumstances". As such it still seems that this is a MOS:VAR/WP:CITEVAR issue, which would mean not to add them to articles which have deliberately omitted them, but also don't remove them for the sake of removal. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 19:43, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- "
If you want to argue the case that any specific publisher link in that article deserves to be retained because it has special relevance, go ahead, we can all discuss it.
" – I don't need to cherry-pick publishers and then debate which one gets the linking thumbs up. All that I am required to do when I edit Wikipedia is to follow its policies and guidelines. "If relevant" is open to the interpretation of individual editors. The use of "If" can be a conjunction or a noun -- either assumption or supposition. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 13:43, 11 September 2021 (UTC)- Agree with Pyxis Solitary here. The phrase
...if relevant
makes this a matter of editorial judgement. Both addition of links and removal of preexisiting links should be done with such judgement, and not semi-automatically based on the assumption of a default state (here: unlinked) which doesn't exist. –Austronesier (talk) 17:15, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
- Agree with Pyxis Solitary here. The phrase
- Yes, if relevant is a matter of editorial judgment. But clearly different editors make different judgments. That's why we need to have a discussion in each case where opinions differ, but we don't need one where no-one objects to a change. Of course the default state is unlinked - that applies to all potential links in general - links shoukld only be made for good reason - and specifically here, otherwise there would be no need for a clause suggesting when it may be linked. And the question of whether unlinking is done manually or semi-automated is a complete red herring. Any changes made by an editor using AWB or similar are always a matter of personal judgment and responsibility. These tools are productivity aids, not bots. Colonies Chris (talk) 10:47, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
- "AWB or similar are always a matter of personal judgment and responsibility" Yeah too many people have been on the recieving end of AWB automated editing for that to be accurate. AWB is routinely used to make mass-edits to large amounts of articles where the principle for the edit task is considered (eg, publishers should by default not be linked), but no individual article-context judgement (is this link someone previously added relevant to this article) is exercised when the edit is actually made. I would wager with AWB that the complete opposite of the intent of your statement is more often the case. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
- This discussion has now descended into baseless accusations and a failure to WP:AGF. I'm out. Colonies Chris (talk) 07:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
- If you take the descripion above of how AWB is routinely used as an 'accusation' specifically against you, that rather explains the problem other editors above seem to have in getting you to understand. When edits are made at 5 second intervals to groups of articles by AWB, the idea that the editor pushing the button is looking at the context of the change they are making each and every time is laughable. When this editing is about something clearcut such as changing a typesetters apostraphe to a typewriter's, the lack of individual consideration is not going to affect the outcome, as one is wrong and one is right. Where the editing involves something that has a nebulous judgement-value like 'relevance' for inclusion, claiming that the contextual relevance has been assessed in that 5 second interval before moving on to the next article is just not credible. Its not a matter of AGF any more than when someone says they did adequate WP:BEFORE checks when nominating a large amount of articles for deletion in a very short period of time. The principle is declared first, then the run of editing to bring articles in line with the principle is enacted. This is not a controversial description of routine usage of AWB. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:18, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
- This discussion has now descended into baseless accusations and a failure to WP:AGF. I'm out. Colonies Chris (talk) 07:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
- "AWB or similar are always a matter of personal judgment and responsibility" Yeah too many people have been on the recieving end of AWB automated editing for that to be accurate. AWB is routinely used to make mass-edits to large amounts of articles where the principle for the edit task is considered (eg, publishers should by default not be linked), but no individual article-context judgement (is this link someone previously added relevant to this article) is exercised when the edit is actually made. I would wager with AWB that the complete opposite of the intent of your statement is more often the case. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
- No, this is not just a POV matter. The phrasing in the MOS gives you freedom to link if relevant, but thereby places the onus on the linker to make a case for that link being specially relevant, beyond its obvious relevance as the publisher. If you want to argue the case that any specific publisher link in that article deserves to be retained because it has special relevance, go ahead, we can all discuss it. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:39, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
MOS:TENSE for non-fiction television
The MOS doesn't give a clear statement on what tense to use for an old gameshow or documentary series. Would it be closer to "products or works that have been discontinued" (which should be written in the present tense) or "periodicals that are no longer being produced" (which should be past tense)? Checking for examples of usage across Wikipedia articles on prominent shows, I'm finding both tenses used. --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:33, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- I believe that even for non-fiction work, it still is a programme, but its broadcast information would be past tense ("X is a 19xx documentary series that aired on Channel Q", that sort of thing). 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 10:37, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- TV shows were discussed when we made the change for periodicals (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 220 § WP:WAS and defunct magazines) at WP:WAS, but I don't know that the RFC discussed at that time ever went ahead. I think the underlying question is the same as for print materials. Are we describing a work that still exists and is consumed in a semi-regular way (i.e., not just archival access), or describing an enterprise that has ceased? News shows would clearly be analogous to periodicals, so
"The Huntley–Brinkley Report was an American evening news program"
. Documentary series tend to be much less ephemeral than news, so"Civilisation is a 1969 television documentary series"
. Game shows are also commonly aired in reruns, including years after the fact, so I would tend to use "is" for them as well (if the episodes haven't been lost).--Trystan (talk) 13:34, 10 September 2021 (UTC)- I would tend to agree that non-fiction shows intended to be treated as periodicals, their content reflecting on current information of the last day/week since the last airing, should be treated in past tense if they are no longer in production. This would include news programs (including programs like "Meet the Press" and "60 Minutes") and daytime and late night talk shows (eg "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "The Tonight Show"). Non-reality game shows (thinking of daily-produced shows like "Price is Right" and "Jeopardy") are a bit of a different beast as while it is true they can be found in reruns, they tend to also be treated as changing with the times and were generally produced without consideration of reruns, and to that end, I'd consider those past tense where appropriate. --Masem (t) 13:57, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
- TV shows were discussed when we made the change for periodicals (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 220 § WP:WAS and defunct magazines) at WP:WAS, but I don't know that the RFC discussed at that time ever went ahead. I think the underlying question is the same as for print materials. Are we describing a work that still exists and is consumed in a semi-regular way (i.e., not just archival access), or describing an enterprise that has ceased? News shows would clearly be analogous to periodicals, so
PSA: Layout RfC
Hello everyone! There is an ongoing RfC (currently with little participation) regarding MOS:ORDER, found here. I hope interested parties can partake in the discussion. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 12:05, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Double quotation marks and italics
A template-protected edit request on the talk page of {{EB1911 poster}} which renders as:
asks that double quotation marks be added enclosing the title to satisfy MOS:MINORWORKS which specifically mentions reference works like an encyclopedia. The request also asks for an italics parameter for use when the minor work is about a book, play, ect. as outlined at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Titles. I've worked out the technical aspects of the request but have misgivings about implementing a change that would place an italicized title between double quotation marks. I'd like some guidance from the regular watchers of this page before answering the request. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 19:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
- Were you to use
{{cite EB1911}}
to cite an article about a book or about some creature where the encyclopedia article's title is the name of the book or the creature's binomen then you would write:{{cite EB1911 |title=''Book Title''}}
- Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Book Title".
{{cite EB1911 |title=''Genus species''}}
- Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Genus species".
- This latter form occurs regularly with
{{cite iucn}}
where|title=Genus species
{{cite iucn |author1=Hadfield, M. |author2=Hadway, L. |date=1996 |title=''Achatinella leucorrhaphe'' |volume=1996 |page=e.T209A13051378 |doi=10.2305/IUCN.UK.1996.RLTS.T209A13051378.en |access-date=13 September 2021}}
- Hadfield, M.; Hadway, L. (1996). "Achatinella leucorrhaphe". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 1996: e.T209A13051378. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.1996.RLTS.T209A13051378.en. Retrieved 13 September 2021.
- Italic markup within double quotes is a rather common occurrence; this search finds about 35,500 articles before it times out.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you Trappist the monk for that thoroughly definitive answer. I appreciate you and wish you the best.--John Cline (talk) 01:43, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
Timelines for artists/bands?
Over the past half-decade or so, member timelines for bands/artists have been more common. I remember initially seeing them around 2009, but they've been appearing more frequently lately. Examples can be seen on Mushroomhead's timeline, Onyx's timeline, Korn's timeline, Jawbox's timeline, GWAR's timeline, N.W.A.'s timeline, etc etc etc.
I'm very supportive of including these into articles. It gives an accessible glimpse at the history. But, has there been any agreements on the manual of style? Specifically, the colors? The reason I ask is because most timelines use different colors, and lately, I see editors changing the colors based on some sort of preference. Currently, the most common I'm seeing is (for bands): red for vocals, green for guitar, blue for bass, and orange for drums. Any other instruments are colored with purple, lime, brown, gray, etc.
My question is, when was there an agreement to use red, green, blue, and orange as the colors of the four main instruments? Specifically, orange is an odd choice, and it's not a huge contrast to the other three colors. In my opinion, it should be replaced with yellow.
Red, blue, green, and yellow are usually seen as the most common four-way combination. It's the combination used in basic painting/arts, its use is widespread publically for signs and logos, it's the model for the Natural Color System (and its many related subjects), all types of color blindness falls under Red-Green and Blue-Yellow spectrums, etc. So why is orange being used instead of yellow?
I know that this seems like a trivial thing, but my personal reasoning is because I'm partially color blind. The light orange used in the timelines looks extremely similar, if not the same, as the green. I know that I can't be the only one that struggles with this; however, if there was a valid discussion and a consensus reached, then I'd be fine with it. My personal problems are my own afterall. But I searched the archives and didn't find anything. Xanarki (talk) 01:35, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
- After searching through WT:WikiProject Music, WT:Timeline standards and WT:WikiProject Musicians I finally found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians/Archive 8#Create Member Section/Timeline Standards. I haven't read it all, but I see it does mention drums=orange, so maybe that's what you're looking for. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 02:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
The word "template" after {{TemplateName}}
"[The] best practice is to have the word 'template' just after {{TemplateName}}; not all readers know {{...}} refers to a template (and even less newcomers".
Am I the only one who thinks Antoine Legrand is making unnecessary edits? (See diffs A, B, C, and more in the History page.) Do we really have to state a million times that {{...}}
indicates a template. To me, this is like writing, "Mandela was born in the year 1918" instead of simply stating that "Mandela was born in 1918".—Fezzy1347Let's chat 21:43, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
- I agree, I found the changes overly prolix. I think the vast majority of readers will recognize the curly brace syntax as denoting a template, and the few who don't recognize it can click the links and be taken to the template page. Looks like the changes have already been reverted. Colin M (talk) 23:26, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
- There's nothing inherently wrong with writing "Mandela was born in the year 1918." except that "Mandela was born in 1918." is as understandable, and more concise. I do think, however, that it is odd to write "Mandy was born in 1918 year.", and perhaps, more comparable.--John Cline (talk) 00:21, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- With the ever increasing use of visual editor, I wouldn't assume that {{...}} means "template" to most readers. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:53, 18 September 2021 (UTC) - Keep in mind that the share of mobile devices is higher than that of desktop computers. There is no Page Previews, no mouseover on mobile devices and people are less likely to click on links when using a mobile device! — Antoine Legrand (talk) 20:31, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- As Firefangledfeathers advised me, I come to expose my arguments. As soon as I started my modifications, I had a brief exchange with him on my user talk page, and he found my initiative interesting.
- I started to put the word template systematically after the curly braces because I had noticed that it was generally the case on other pages on Wikipedia. I thought that it would benefit newcomers who don't always know the meaning of curly braces. In retrospect, given the length of the MoS page (which is very long), it would take 70x template (tlx=70 times, in wiki markup) and I can understand that it would be too repetitive.
- The problem with the MoS page is that it is extremely long and has many shortcuts. A visitor can arrive in the middle or at the end of the page.
- My new proposal for the use of the word template is: make sure that at least the first two occurrences of {{tlx|TemplateName}} have the word template next to them, and this for each section of the MoS. Beginners who don't know the meaning of curly braces yet will be well informed. — Antoine Legrand (talk) 14:50, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
- I would agree that the article is painfully long – but it does cover a lot of topics. Perhaps there should be another discussion about splitting it into manageable parts?
Regarding "template" – I suspect that most people who read the MOS page are already or intend to soon be an editor rather than being "just" a reader. As such, they probably will explore the links and so there is less need to explain all of the details in the article itself. Perhaps add "template" to only the first example ... — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:39, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
- I would agree that the article is painfully long – but it does cover a lot of topics. Perhaps there should be another discussion about splitting it into manageable parts?
- Telling people that a template is a template isn't going to help them unless they click on it anyway in order to find out what the parameters are and so on, in which case they'll find they'll find out it's a template if they didn't already know that. And come to think of it, some newbie who doesn't know that braces indicate a template -- so we tell them it's a "template" -- what good does learning a name do them? We don't go around marking every HTML tag as an "HTML tag", we just tell people how to use them.This is a solution-which-isn't-a-solution in search of a nonexistent problem which it wouldn't solve even if the problem existed. There are lots of things in MOS which might puzzle the newcomer at first, but they rapidly pick them up, or there are Help: pages on the basics of editing they can consult; MOS cannot be self-explanatory, nor should it try. It's somewhat of a tutorial, but only where necessary -- mostly it's a reference work, and should stay that way. EEng 17:00, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
- Talking about "templates" doesn't help newcomers. Wikipedia's use of the term is very far from the non-IT meaning and from most IT uses. Read our article Template or ask a search engine to "define: template" and it'll take some time before you find a definition that suits the uses in the MOS. So instead we can show the reader some useful templates without calling them that, and the newcomer quickly understands that there are some very useful magic things that are easily recognised by their curly brackets. Long after seeing them while editing, long after using them, the not-so-new editor might dig deeper and discover our weird generic term for them, but that can wait. As it is, of the 51 times the body of WP:MOS uses "template", at least 19 are in the form "the {{whatever}} template" or "the template {{whatever}}" and for the newcomer and the experienced editor alike, that's already too many. NebY (talk) 18:31, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
Wrong use of capitals
My downcasing yesterday of Manned Maneuvering Unit was reverted because it is "capitalised as a proper noun". It is not a proper noun/name. cf "The award-winning manned maneuvering unit was designed for a specific type of mission: satellite rescue missions." – from a history of NASA. Tony (talk) 23:21, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
- While manned maneuvering unit can certainly refer to the technology in general, in this particular usage, it's clearly referring to the proper noun: the Manned Maneuvering Unit previously used by NASA. It's especially clear the example is referring to the proper noun because the full sentence says: "Direct quotations and proper nouns that use gendered words should not be changed, like Manned Maneuvering Unit." Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:06, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Indeed, and if it's not proper noun then the MOS instructs us to write crewed maneuvering unit. pburka (talk) 03:23, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Heck, it's a common noun even though there may be only one of them 'cause there are others, or there may be others. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:39, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Then we need a different example. pburka (talk) 14:16, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- The Manned Orbiting Laboratory seems to not have the same problem and stays within the same specific field too. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 09:59, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Then we need a different example. pburka (talk) 14:16, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Heck, it's a common noun even though there may be only one of them 'cause there are others, or there may be others. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:39, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Indeed, and if it's not proper noun then the MOS instructs us to write crewed maneuvering unit. pburka (talk) 03:23, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
Should MOS:US mention national varieties of English?
In my experience, U.S.
is discouraged in favour of US
in a number of contemporary varieties of English, such as Australian English and British English. The current section on this implies that either could be used in any article, but I think articles in English varieties that prefer US
to U.S.
should use the former only; however, I don't see that principle reflected in this section of the manual. Should the issue be mentioned here? Mr248 (talk) 00:34, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Problem is, US can be easily confused with We. Where's U.S. is recognised as United States. -- GoodDay (talk) 00:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- In practice that’s not a problem at all, though, is it? The word ‘us’ fully capitalised would only be done for emphasis, and that happens extremely rarely, mostly in verbatim speech, which for a non-fiction document like an encyclopaedia means basically never. And the difference is usually obvious from context in any case - ‘US’ is commonly preceded by ‘The’ or followed by words such as ‘military aircraft’ or ‘Secretary of state’ or ‘forces’ that make it clear what is meant. Hence CNN uses ‘US’ throughout its news website. MapReader (talk) 07:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Mr248, if you can find some evidence of those varieties of English preferring US, I think it would be wise to include a small mention. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 02:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Acronymns without punctuation are pretty standard for English beyond North America, and even within the US such styling is becoming more common - for example CNN uses the unpunctuated form. In time I would expect WP to follow suit and adopt ‘US’ as standard; the MoS already requires it in articles using any other unpunctuated geographical term (such as EU, UK, USSR) - which is actually a lot of articles already. Whether or not WP is ready now to make the move to a consistent approach is another question; personally I don’t see the mix of styles as being particularly helpful. MapReader (talk) 07:20, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Confused with "we"? Give us a break. Chicago Manual of Style changed its tune on the U dot S dot in 2014 (16th edition). Tony (talk) 07:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- I agree (and would we feel the need to shepherd readers who might take IT to mean shouty-cap "it"?) I've worked as an editor for publishing companies based in the UK, Australia and the United States, and without fail the approach is to use "US", apart from in the US. I appreciate that's only anecdotal, though. JG66 (talk) 09:43, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Confused with "we"? Give us a break. Chicago Manual of Style changed its tune on the U dot S dot in 2014 (16th edition). Tony (talk) 07:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- How about a new second sentence:
Firefangledfeathers (talk) 14:45, 16 September 2021 (UTC)US is preferred in some varieties of English, such as Australian English and British English.
Guidelines relating to people with disabilities
I don't know if I've followed the process properly, but I've made a proposal here for MOS guidelines on how to refer to people with disabilities. It was previously a style advice page for Wikipedia:WikiProject Disability but I feel that Wikipedia needs a policy on this based on community consensus.
Any input or help people could give would be appreciated! –Bangalamania (talk) 15:27, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'm in favour of this being an official MOS page (although I don't know what the actual procedure is for achieving this). Most of it is essentially the kind of common-sense approach that should be uncontroversial but may not always be obvious to many editors so having a policy page to point to, rather than an unofficial essay, would be a good step. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 15:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not happy with the changes made today. For example, it now claims that so-called people-first language
is the most common form used by scholars
, citing someone's editorial opinion. If that's the new level of the page, no way. EEng 18:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)- This has been moved back to Wikipedia:WikiProject Disability/Style advice, as an essay, reverting its move to become part of the MOS, as a guideline. A major change like that probably needs a full village-pump-advertised RFC, not just a bold move on the initiative of a single editor. And even setting up such an RFC would be premature without discussions to test whether such a move is warranted and ready. My own opinion is that the page in question is far too discursive and opinionated to be part of the MOS; guidance in the MOS needs to be clear, direct, and non-controversial. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- David Eppstein, I put it back. Any attempt to propose adding it (or some version of it) to the MOS would firstly need consensus of the WikiProject to even begin an RFC. BOLD moves have a place in Wikipedia, but this was not one of them. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:38, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Shouldn't Project:Disability be renamed something like Project: PersonWithDifferentAbility? EEng 22:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Absolutely not; a person with enhanced vision, extreme intelligence, perfect pitch or unusual strength is a person with different ability. However, I would prefer, e.g., person with disability, to disabled person, since many such people are able to function despite their disabilities. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:40, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Take it from me, those things can make your life absolute hell. Back to the point at hand, how is a disabled person different from a person with disability? Does that mean an unemployed person should be called a person with unemployment? Are those different? EEng 14:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- This feels needlessly trite. We don't discuss a person's unemployment in biographies generally and when we do it certainly isn't seen to be anywhere near as life-defining as language can make disabilities. We also don't as a society use euphemistic language which equates unemployment with being lesser-than, which is done with disability-related language. What gain is there in taking a path that might hurt people when there's no loss in taking the path that won't. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 14:59, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Grapple X and EEng if the guide page does not adequately address this issue please feel free to start a discussion about it on the talk page. Perhaps the guide could copy some relevant content from the People-first language article? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:08, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Of course biographies discuss a person's unemployment. But sorry, I'm confused. Can you give an example of the euphemistic language to which you object? EEng 15:25, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- You mean to say you've never seen terms like "handicapped" or "disabled" used euphemistically to denote a hindrance? Whereas we would never refer to unemployment in that same sense. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 16:26, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Now I'm really confused. In the old days blunt terms like crippled were used. Then disabled came in as euphemism. But euphemisms gradually take on the stigma they were designed to avoid, and so new euphemisms were needed like handicapped. Then for a while it was differently abled. Now, apparently, there's a new regime being pushed. But look, you said
We also don't as a society use euphemistic language which equates unemployment with being lesser-than, which is done with disability-related language
. You seem to be saying that there's euphemistic language that equates (something) with "being lesser-than"; but euphemisms are designed to avoid offense. So I can't tell what you're saying is/are these euphemisms, and in what way that equate lesser-than–ness. EEng 21:39, 17 September 2021 (UTC)- I mean we very literally use words like "handicap" to denote being at a disadvantage or being at less than full capacity. Golfers can play with a handicap, a security system can be disabled, etc. No such use,s and so no such connotations, exist for words like "unemployed". So it is absolutely a false equivalence. I don't know how I can be any clearer in explaining this. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 21:48, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Grapple X, if you were saying that terms like "handicapped" and "disabled" were being used derogatorily, that would be easy to understand. Likewise if you were saying we don't use derogatory language that equates unemployed with being less-than. I wonder if your use of "euphemistic" is being understood in ways you don't intend. I know that for me, a euphemism is something like calling the Greek Furies "the kindly ones". NebY (talk) 22:48, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- No actually, that's irony. Euphemism is the replacement of an unpleasant or blunt expression with something more palatable. For example, your favorite aunt isn't dead, she's "passed on" or "gone to her reward". EEng 02:10, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- I can see why you'd say that. For a modern who doesn't believe in the Furies, it might be irony. Classically, it was euphemism and is still described as that.[9] Respectfully or fearfully giving a pleasant name to something very unpleasant is euphemism. NebY (talk) 12:09, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- OK, now I'm going to pull the OED on you:
- 1. Rhetoric. That figure of speech which consists in the substitution of a word or expression of comparatively favourable implication or less unpleasant associations, instead of the harsher or more offensive one that would more precisely designate what is intended. 2. An instance of this figure; a less distasteful word or phrase used as a substitute for something harsher or more offensive.
- Notice: comparatively favourable .. less unpleasant ... less distasteful. What's odd about your link is the use of an opposite term, not just a softer one. But classicists are all perverse. EEng 19:59, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- It is sad to see a little parochial failing of the OED put to perverse use. The eu in euphemism is simply "well/good", not "comparatively", and Fowler correctly refers back to "use of an auspicious word for an inauspicious one". English euphemisms do tend to be merely softer, true, though I vaguely remember seeing more dramatically euphemistic uses of wagtail, fudge, golden, chocolate, daisy-chain, pacification and liberation, and in Victorian times a man should not take an interest in a woman's interesting condition. NebY (talk) 22:05, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- Oh for shame, NebY! What Fowler (2015) actually says is
Euphemism, a mild or vague or periphrastic expression substituted for one judged to be too harsh or direct, e.g. to pass away for to die
. Mild or vague or periphrastic is consistent with OED in excluding the use of euphemism to mean a word or phrase of opposite meaning, and supports what I said 100%. (In case you're wondering whether that quote is canonical, Fowler (1927) hasEuphemism ... a mild or vague or periphrastic expression as a substitute for blunt precision or disagreeable truth
.)F2015 does indeed then "refer back" (as you coyly put it) to "use of an auspicious word for an inauspicious one", but you've hidden the context, which isThe word euphemism, which is derived from the Greek word εύφημισμός 'use of an auspicious word for an inauspicious one' and εὔφημος "fair of speech" was first recorded in [etc etc]
(underlining mine). In other words, the English word is derived from a Greek word with a different (if related) meaning, just as I highlighted earlier. You cannot actually have expected to pull the wool over my eyes by quoting out of context, can you? ;P EEng 01:54, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Oh for shame, NebY! What Fowler (2015) actually says is
- It is sad to see a little parochial failing of the OED put to perverse use. The eu in euphemism is simply "well/good", not "comparatively", and Fowler correctly refers back to "use of an auspicious word for an inauspicious one". English euphemisms do tend to be merely softer, true, though I vaguely remember seeing more dramatically euphemistic uses of wagtail, fudge, golden, chocolate, daisy-chain, pacification and liberation, and in Victorian times a man should not take an interest in a woman's interesting condition. NebY (talk) 22:05, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- OK, now I'm going to pull the OED on you:
- I can see why you'd say that. For a modern who doesn't believe in the Furies, it might be irony. Classically, it was euphemism and is still described as that.[9] Respectfully or fearfully giving a pleasant name to something very unpleasant is euphemism. NebY (talk) 12:09, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- No actually, that's irony. Euphemism is the replacement of an unpleasant or blunt expression with something more palatable. For example, your favorite aunt isn't dead, she's "passed on" or "gone to her reward". EEng 02:10, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- Frankly, you seem to labor under an explanatory handicap, because I'm a reasonably intelligent person and I still can't tell what in the world you're trying to say. Blind people, paralyzed people, people with significant heart disease are at a disadvantage -- at less than full capacity and less able (in some areas of endeavor -- in others these things may make no difference at all). You said that something (apparently undesirable)
is done with disability-related language
but for the life of me I can't tell what it is. Can you given an actual example, please? EEng 23:39, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Grapple X, if you were saying that terms like "handicapped" and "disabled" were being used derogatorily, that would be easy to understand. Likewise if you were saying we don't use derogatory language that equates unemployed with being less-than. I wonder if your use of "euphemistic" is being understood in ways you don't intend. I know that for me, a euphemism is something like calling the Greek Furies "the kindly ones". NebY (talk) 22:48, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- I mean we very literally use words like "handicap" to denote being at a disadvantage or being at less than full capacity. Golfers can play with a handicap, a security system can be disabled, etc. No such use,s and so no such connotations, exist for words like "unemployed". So it is absolutely a false equivalence. I don't know how I can be any clearer in explaining this. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 21:48, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Now I'm really confused. In the old days blunt terms like crippled were used. Then disabled came in as euphemism. But euphemisms gradually take on the stigma they were designed to avoid, and so new euphemisms were needed like handicapped. Then for a while it was differently abled. Now, apparently, there's a new regime being pushed. But look, you said
- You mean to say you've never seen terms like "handicapped" or "disabled" used euphemistically to denote a hindrance? Whereas we would never refer to unemployment in that same sense. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 16:26, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Can a disability massively impact a person's quality of life? Absolutely,and it is appropriately to attempt to mitigate that with, e.g., accessibility requirements.Is he thereby less of a person? Absolutely not. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 01:46, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- This feels needlessly trite. We don't discuss a person's unemployment in biographies generally and when we do it certainly isn't seen to be anywhere near as life-defining as language can make disabilities. We also don't as a society use euphemistic language which equates unemployment with being lesser-than, which is done with disability-related language. What gain is there in taking a path that might hurt people when there's no loss in taking the path that won't. 𝄠ʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ X 14:59, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Take it from me, those things can make your life absolute hell. Back to the point at hand, how is a disabled person different from a person with disability? Does that mean an unemployed person should be called a person with unemployment? Are those different? EEng 14:55, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Absolutely not; a person with enhanced vision, extreme intelligence, perfect pitch or unusual strength is a person with different ability. However, I would prefer, e.g., person with disability, to disabled person, since many such people are able to function despite their disabilities. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:40, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Shouldn't Project:Disability be renamed something like Project: PersonWithDifferentAbility? EEng 22:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- David Eppstein, I put it back. Any attempt to propose adding it (or some version of it) to the MOS would firstly need consensus of the WikiProject to even begin an RFC. BOLD moves have a place in Wikipedia, but this was not one of them. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:38, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- This has been moved back to Wikipedia:WikiProject Disability/Style advice, as an essay, reverting its move to become part of the MOS, as a guideline. A major change like that probably needs a full village-pump-advertised RFC, not just a bold move on the initiative of a single editor. And even setting up such an RFC would be premature without discussions to test whether such a move is warranted and ready. My own opinion is that the page in question is far too discursive and opinionated to be part of the MOS; guidance in the MOS needs to be clear, direct, and non-controversial. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not happy with the changes made today. For example, it now claims that so-called people-first language
- One big problem is that there is a lot of disagreement within the various disability groups themselves as to which terms are considered offensive and which are preferred. Some take the attitude that they can remove stigma by “owning” a pejorative and using it themselves. They actually prefer terms that others with the same condition consider offensive. Blueboar (talk) 22:16, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Regardless of when and how we establish guidelines, it would be useful for anyone who understands the possibilities to report the state of things. Some government projects require reporting of accessibility features. Previously I requested a report on the WMF messageboard at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)/Archive_2#Request_for_accessibility_specifications. User:RoySmith around the same time made an image alt text proposal. Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_172#Adding_an_accessibility_requirement?. Whatever requirements we have I would like them centrally listed, along with proposed features that we declined to implement or other features on the wishlist. This is a situation where reporting our status and centralizing conversation would help a lot. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:21, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- By reporting of accessibility features, do you mean that there should exist a page describing the current standard of best practices for making Wikipedia articles accessible? Quick, someone, get in your time machine and create MOS:ACCESS! But I'm not sure how that relates to the current discussion, which is more about how to refer to people who might for some reason require the use of those accessibility features (which is, to be honest, most of us as we get older and our eyes get worse). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:26, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- @David Eppstein: I want the Wikimedia Foundation to pay professional evaluators US$30,000 (or whatever is the typical market rate) to get Wikipedia graded against whatever professional or government standards exist. The Wikimedia platform is a multi-billion dollar investment and periodically we need a status report and external perspectives to assess what we have. It is challenging to talk about how to provide access to features without a report describing what we already have and what expert consensus has claimed to be important.
- Here are some possible checklists -
- This is a situation where the Wikipedia community can make a call to the Wikimedia Foundation to spend money to take action. As the Wikimedia Foundation plans the consumption of budgets near US$200 million a year, issues like accessibility do not have to remain projects which the community crowdsources without a schedule for completion. If the community requested new staff hired to accomplish accessibility features, the Wikimedia Foundation would respond with public conversation.
- One possible request is for the WMF to advance the Wikimedia community's own checklist; another possible request could be that the community point to established accessibility standards and tell the WMF that we prioritize investment to meet those standards. In many ways we do not have minimal accessibility, and the Wikimedia community can keep the WMF accountable to meet those standards. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:55, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- If anyone wants an example of what such reports look like. See here for how a large tech company reports on their own software products. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:06, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- As with most other such cases, WP should not be progressive in this area, but instead should follow when multiple mainstream style guide have such advice. While it does appear a major medical-related organization is providing such advice its not clear if this is yet followed by newspaper style guidelines, and so before we can consider that as part of the MOS, that has to be shown to be true. --Masem (t) 23:35, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
- Masem, there are guidelines at National Center on Disability and Journalism. This topic seems perennial at MOS and it suffers from trolling (e.g. the "Project:PersonWithDifferentAbility" comment and subsequent arguing). The disruption diverges from what should be a "What do respectful professional publishers and writers practice?" question into a heated argument about editors personal opinions, intellectual willy waving about language, and implications by some that only their opinions are valid because they are prepared to declare their disabilities on wiki. I suspect this issue will not find a solution at MOS because editors who are at home discussing how to capitalise and punctuate are not naturally the ones best placed to think about how we write about (and think about) others, either as individuals or as people-groups. The culture here is too much flame-throwing original research, too much arguing to crushing one's opponent vs discussion towards consensus, and not enough "following best practice elsewhere".
- The disability style guideline is not mature enough and is largely the product of two editors. For it to progress beyond essay status would need a fresh approach, be much shorter, and be very well referenced. -- Colin°Talk 11:29, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- "The culture here is too much flame-throwing original research, too much arguing to crushing one's opponent vs discussion towards consensus" - so discussions about referring to "people with disabilities" are just the same as any other part of MOS - the "dont give an inch" and "win at all costs attitude" is all too common here.Nigel Ish (talk) 11:41, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Colin, I'm quite sure WikiProject Disability (me BOLDly speaking for the project) would really appreciate some input from editors well acquainted with the ways and norms of MOS writing, to improve the project's style guide. As you quite rightly point out, it is somewhat immature and thus far has had too few contributors. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:13, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Like, a recent point of reference is the discussion about the avoidance of "manned" in favor of gender-neutral language where it was pointed out that multiple style guidelines (both press as well as NASA and DOD) all show a recommendation to move away from "manned" to other terms, validating WP to follow suite. In a counter example, a recent discussion about moving away from "commit suicide" language, a practice recommended by professional mental health organizations, was rejected here because its not yet a standard in media MOS. While I am sure that the NCDJ guideline is authoritative, we should also be looking to see if that's followed suit by press as well. That's what I'm saying about avoid being progressive - if its clear we're following the general actions of mainstream sources, then that's good, but we shouldn't move just because one body has issued a statement about preferred language that no other sources has picked up on. --Masem (t) 13:14, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Masem I think you mischaracterise the "commit suicide" argument to be merely that mental health organisations recommend it. At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 216#"Committed suicide" or "died by suicide"? someone dumped a large list of recommendations or style guides with around half being media and news and half being medical. They were told "Style guides are not actual usage" and some did OR by using Google to look at usage since 1800. Admittedly that discussion has hampered by an unpopular alternative choice right from the start. You say "manned" won recently because "multiple style guides" but that suicide discussion included multiple styles guides and nobody cared. I wonder what some here, who become a shade of purple at the sight of a dash of incorrect length, would think if someone algorithmically claimed that usage of anything other than a plain - was so insignificant as to be negligible. Perhaps we should not let stuffy grammar writers "progress" language beyond its actual usage? It seems really people will claim one rule when it suits their opinion and another rule when that suits.
- I think these sorts of difficult issues demonstrate a weakness in Wikipedia, where the crowd is typically ignorant but either has an opinion or can be quickly given one by a statement by someone they respect. They are a timesink for the community, which must I guess drive regulars to despair, but who keep repeating the same mistakes. Maybe for some topics we should simply offer a list of external style guides and professionally-written advice, and leave editors to educate themselves from wiser heads than whoever turns up to an RFC one evening. -- Colin°Talk 18:07, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Well the other way to consider both the "manned" and "commit suicide" aspects is to also consider how style guides actually get reflected in media. "Manned" is very easy to shown that many sources have avoided using that term, in agreement with several style guides, while with "commit suicide" while there are a handful of those, numerous mainstream sources still frequently use that term suggesting that the recommendation hasn't caught on in widespread guidelines. That same sort of approach would need to be evaluated with any language detailing with handling how people with disabilities should be described. --Masem (t) 18:55, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Masem, if you are referring to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 215#RfC on gendered nouns in spaceflight then that debate did not win because anyone demonstrated that "many sources have avoided using that term", or because of many style guides (only one mattered (NASA) and many more were cited wrt suicide). It won overwhelmingly because it was an obvious extension and consequence of the existing policy on gender neutral language, and because multiple editors respected NASA's style guide wrt talking about space programmes. There are certain causes for which it is a no brainer that Wikipedia should be at the leading-edge of current practice, because they are established in the liberal democracies most of us edit from (feminism, LGBTQ, etc). Nobody is going to win an RFC with "No, let's carry on using sexist language because it is well know that sexism is endemic and we should reflect society rather than lead." or "This is the international English Wikipedia, and most of the world is homophobic. So let's wait till it catches up before we reform our writing style". But mental health issues and disability issues.... nah. There isn't even a mental health wikiproject. So I don't think change happens for the reasons you claim. Wikipedia guidelines around these matters can change because enough Wikipedians want to change and because resisting that change is socially unacceptable even with a anonymous username. Or they can not change because Wikipedians aren't that interested and have better things to do than argue with opinionated shouty editors who resist the change for whatever personal and political reasons float their boat. Let's not pretend it is more calculated and rational than that. -- Colin°Talk 09:42, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- Well the other way to consider both the "manned" and "commit suicide" aspects is to also consider how style guides actually get reflected in media. "Manned" is very easy to shown that many sources have avoided using that term, in agreement with several style guides, while with "commit suicide" while there are a handful of those, numerous mainstream sources still frequently use that term suggesting that the recommendation hasn't caught on in widespread guidelines. That same sort of approach would need to be evaluated with any language detailing with handling how people with disabilities should be described. --Masem (t) 18:55, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
trolling
– Now now, Colin, by now you should know to look deeper at things I say. That wasn't trolling. As for the willy-waving (you Brits are so cute with your baby-talk!), let people have a little fun to relieve the humdrum. EEng 16:05, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- For the question at hand just have the entirety of the MOS guideline on 'how to refer to people with disabilities' point at NCDJ's style guide. Firstly its better than anything ENWP could ever conceivably come up with given the various issues Colin has listed above and secondly it will be more likely to be current than any MOS version, since actually getting change on something in the MOS here is a pain. The question/thread title actually answers itself if you read the NCDJ. People with disabilities are referred to (where relevant) as 'person with <disability, usually medical name>'. E.g 'person with albinism' rather than Albino. For the other purposes, statistics etc, the guidance should be familiar to everyone on ENWP, use what the source uses. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:34, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Only in death, The NCDJ is unfortunately not the be-all and end-all undisputed authority that you seem to believe. They have also recently retracted their unequivocal support for person-first language. The WikiProject's style advice actually discusses various competing points of view that exist in the field. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:38, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Yes that was rather my point. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:42, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Only in death, The NCDJ is unfortunately not the be-all and end-all undisputed authority that you seem to believe. They have also recently retracted their unequivocal support for person-first language. The WikiProject's style advice actually discusses various competing points of view that exist in the field. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:38, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Last go-around on this: WT:Manual_of_Style/Archive_222#Person-first_language. EEng 16:10, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- Which was notable for original research by the quite obviously ignorant yet opinionated, and by insults thrown towards anyone even suggesting that we might, you know, attempt to be respectful in our language. The whole thing could do with editors being explicitly banned from original research, from stating any personal opinions and from being negative about other's opinions. -- Colin°Talk 17:29, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
- I think it's a good essay. It would be interesting to have a bit of a deeper look at a wider range of style guides regarding person-first language and see if it's really true that "By "following the sources" Wikipedia mostly favors people-first language with some specific exceptions." as that seems to be the main point of contention. I do agree that for the MOS itself we'd need something much shorter and snappier. The Land (talk) 10:51, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
Consensus on rankings
Please forgive me if this has been discussed and decided, but even if it has, I would like my fellow editors to revisit this style question. I believe that Wikipedia needs a standard for expressing rankings instead of offering options. It adds to Wikipedia's reliability when people see a consistent style throughout all articles. In contrast, I believe it adds to our lack of credibility when people see different styles. When we do that, it appears we do not know what we are doing. Of course, a style should be consistent within an article, but that is not enough. We need to have a standard that is recognizable and consistent. As it stands, we have articles where rankings are referred to as "number one record," "number 1 record," "#1 record," and "No. 1 record." The Manual of Style allows four options, but we can do better and we should do better. The Associated Press and Chicago Manual of Style agree that proper style as "No. 1 record," and that is the style I propose. I believe when editors, especially new ones, come to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, they are looking for answers, and when instead of answers they find different options, it can be confusing. We cannot always provide definitive answers to every situation, but when we can, we should. I usually am in favor of giving people options, but there are times when structure, specific guidelines and policy is more important. In Wikipedia, we often have articles where rankings are expressed because of the nature of the expression. Please consider joining me in putting forward a specific Wikipedia style for expressing rankings, and that it be "No. 1" as in "...the song reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts." God bless and happy editing! MarydaleEd (talk) 02:08, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Should academic degrees be capitalized?
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters § Capitalization of degrees. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:15, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
Place names merger complete
Please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Personal names and place names merger complete.
This merger affected one section of the main MoS page. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:20, 19 September 2021 (UTC)
"Natives"? No, Bwana! Tabu!
I'm not suggesting a rule (we have plenty already, and there's no need to micromanage everything), but do people really have to write like "[Random European explorer] was attacked by natives"? They're inhabitants. Local fighters. "Xians" where X is the name of the place or group. Or whatever. We don't say "When Lindbergh's ship entered New York harbor, many native vessels came out to greet it." "The British troops at Concord were attacked by natives." And like that. Herostratus (talk) 15:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- I beg to differ. Very common to use 'native' for people who are from somewhere. I am a native of Saskatchewan. And from here, this sentence, "The six-foot-four, 208-pound Montreal native has also..." So, yes "white people" are called natives when describing where there from. Native is not an offensive word and definately don't need a rule here, imho. Masterhatch (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- Mnmh. I just changed
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the area, claimed the islands for Spain, and was then killed by natives at the Battle of Mactan.
- to
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the area, claimed the islands for Spain, and was then killed by Lapulapu's fighters at the Battle of Mactan.
- I consider the former to be bwana-speak. I don't like it. Herostratus (talk) 19:16, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- So how do you feel about Eleanor_Elkins_Widener#Second_marriage_and_South_American_adventures? EEng 19:20, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- I agree with your approach. I don't think a rule is necessary, unless we're seeing a lot of pushback against these common-sense fixes. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- What do we feel about Alaska Natives or Native Americans or Native Hawaiians. I’m aware that North Americans quite often say “a native of x” (Masterhatch refers to it above) which is not a formulation we tend to use in British English. But if you’re not North American it can be confusing about when it’s used acceptably and when it’s ‘bwana-speak’. DeCausa (talk) 21:14, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- I agree that this word is used offensively in the example given at the top. The advice at MOS:IDENTITY is to "use specific terminology", and your examples seem to me to be redeemed in proportion to the specificity they offer. William Avery (talk) 21:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- Cripes! The MoS natives are revolting! We British have to be firm! Martinevans123 (talk) 21:38, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- The Native Americans article is a disambiguation page and has been for a long time; see this and this. The Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians articles both use the term indigenous early on to clarify the usage of the term native in the article title. The lead sentence of the Indigenous peoples article reads: "Indigenous peoples, also referred to as first people, aboriginal people, native people, or autochthonous people, are culturally distinct ethnic groups who are native to a place which has been colonised and settled by another ethnic group." I think we're wasting time here and maybe feeding a troll. Consider that comment rhetorical and call me insensitive -- I don't fancy being drawn into a discussion abut this. Call some others oversensitive. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:39, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- A native troll, one hopes. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:50, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- What do we feel about Alaska Natives or Native Americans or Native Hawaiians. I’m aware that North Americans quite often say “a native of x” (Masterhatch refers to it above) which is not a formulation we tend to use in British English. But if you’re not North American it can be confusing about when it’s used acceptably and when it’s ‘bwana-speak’. DeCausa (talk) 21:14, 23 September 2021 (UTC)
- Good grief, Wtmitchell. that's not how we talk here. Nobody's drawing you into any discussion, go do something else if you'd rather. Herostratus (talk) 02:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know how to easily locate or quantify such uses of "native" but maybe "the natives" is a richer seam ("the natives charged the Europeans", "Fearing a massacre by the Natives"). It seems over 7,000 of our articles include "the natives" in the text. There's a great mixture but at first glance, most uses are of non-Europeans that Europeans are encountering, killing or being killed by, trading with, governing and so on. NebY (talk) 01:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- Well yeah, I'm only talking about certain circumstances. I know that "native of Manchester" and "Native Americans" and many other used of the term "native" is OK. I'm talking about some specific uses where it's not excellent. As you say, there are some circumstances, particular when describing European invaders interfacing with people who were pretty much minding their own business somewhere, where there is the danger that using the "native" conjures up the image of an unorganized mass of ignorant savages. Probably because it's the same construction as used in the time of Queen Victoria I guess. So I mean compare
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the area, claimed the islands for Spain, and was then killed by natives at the Battle of Mactan.
- to
In June 1940, the German First Army thrust into northern France, where it was counterattacked by natives.
- I mean both of the above are correct, but you're not going to see the second one are you. Now why is that.
- I get that people have been writing like this forever and its a habit, and fine, but it's occurred to me that not a good one maybe. It's not huge deal, and I'm not advocating a rule. Every gosh-darn thing doesn't have to be a rule. I'm just pointing out that here's a thing. I just noticed this myself just recently, and I'm sharing my thought and making a suggestion. You all are free to ignore it. Herostratus (talk) 02:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- We should look to the RS on this. This is what the Cambridge English Dictionary says for native as a noun
a person born in a particular place ‘He was a native of Indianapolis and a graduate of Indiana University’.
dated: A native is also a person who was born and lived in a country before Europeans began to visit and live there
Note: This use is considered offensive.
- DeCausa (talk) 07:09, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- Well, even without this confirmation from a dictionary, the package of associations that comes with "European explorer X was welcomed/killed/etc. by (the) natives" is quite different from the usage of "native" in other contexts. It is the kind of language you'd exepct from this guy, but not from a 21th century encyclopedia. –Austronesier (talk) 08:12, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- We should look to the RS on this. This is what the Cambridge English Dictionary says for native as a noun
- I get that people have been writing like this forever and its a habit, and fine, but it's occurred to me that not a good one maybe. It's not huge deal, and I'm not advocating a rule. Every gosh-darn thing doesn't have to be a rule. I'm just pointing out that here's a thing. I just noticed this myself just recently, and I'm sharing my thought and making a suggestion. You all are free to ignore it. Herostratus (talk) 02:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
Chopping would
With the summary "verb form", Doremo has removed an amount of "would" from my article Teikō Shiotani. Each is of the word "used to indicate futurity in the past, futurity relative to the time referred to by the preterite" (CaGEL, p.198). It now seems to me that I did somewhat overuse what I'll call "futurity would", so I agree with some of the changes; but as an example of a use I still consider (mildly) beneficial:
- In 1922, Shiotani married Sadako Inoue (井上貞子, 1905–1988). They would have / had three sons, Sōnosuke (宗之助, b. June 1923), Reiji (玲二, November 1926 – March 1927) and Makoto (誠, August 1940 – September 1945); and two daughters, Yūko (優子, b. February 1930) and Yōko (陽子, b. July 1934).
The intention here was a subtle indication to the reader that the narrative is not here jumping ahead to the 30s, 40s or wherever; rather, that we're merely making a little excursion from the early 20s.
Clearly the "core meaning" of the sentence with "had" (Doremo) is the same as that of the sentence with "would have" (me) (i.e. there's no imaginable series of events such that one version of the sentence is true and the other false); and clearly the nuance here is subtle and its desirability hardly worth a discussion thread. But the clearing of instances of futurity would puzzles me. Is my idiolect unusual (perhaps outdated)? Is futurity would a part of your Standard English too, but somehow ill-suited to encyclopedic prose? (Is it what Tony1 might call mere fluff?) -- Hoary (talk) 22:11, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- Don't know about anyone else, but the simple "had" there reads to me as if all those children existed at the time of the marriage and not that they were the later results of the marriage. The version with "would have" seems much better to me.--Khajidha (talk) 23:34, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- Khajidha – Don't you need "had had" (past in past) to convey that? Tony (talk) 23:49, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
- Consider
In 1973 he relocated to Waynesville, North Carolina, where he
Surely you're not suggesting that the died form implies he was dead when he moved. EEng 00:01, 25 September 2021 (UTC)would diedied of cancer.- [edit conflict] "X married Y. They had Z children." is the idiomatic form. Written in this order it always means that the children were born after the marriage, because the two sentences are in the same tense ("They had Z children" is simple past, not past perfect.) "They would have" is pretentious and generally unnecessary. "They had had" wouldhah! indicate by its change of tense that the children were pre-marriage. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:05, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- "Already had" or "had by then" would be preferable if the children existed at the time of the marriage, but the simple "had" still reads that way to me. As for the "relocated to Waynesville, NC, where he died" reads to me that he died pretty much immediately after the move. --Khajidha (talk) 00:31, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- [edit conflict] "X married Y. They had Z children." is the idiomatic form. Written in this order it always means that the children were born after the marriage, because the two sentences are in the same tense ("They had Z children" is simple past, not past perfect.) "They would have" is pretentious and generally unnecessary. "They had had" wouldhah! indicate by its change of tense that the children were pre-marriage. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:05, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- To be blunt, the examples in your diff are in the main wretched. (I'm not saying one or two might not be appropriate, but I doubt it.) In any writing (encyclopedic or otherwise), would has a very (very) occasional role in signaling a temporary glimpse of the future where the reader might otherwise be puzzled or misled. Even one instance of inappropriate use is tiresome. See WP:INTOTHEWOULDS. EEng 00:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC) P.S. CaGEL isn't meant to be a style guide (and from what I've heard isn't very good at being what it is meant to be either).
- Relatedly, I see the phrase "would later" in the diff, and searching Wikipedia finds some 55k instances of that phrase. Isn't this always a pleonasm? If one is using "would" to indicate a temporary futurity, how is it possible for it to be anything but later? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:33, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- I mean, it was fine before, it was fine after. On that basis it's roiling the text, so on that basis you are (of course) entitled to roll it back per WP:BRD and ask the editor to make his case on the article talk page. Or, since it's not worse, you could just roll your eyes and forget it. Your call.
- If anybody wants to get consensus to make a rule about this, I suppose she can try. I'd be against it because both are fine and so why. Herostratus (talk) 01:51, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- It's salutary to hear that examples within what I wrote "are in the main wretched", and I take the point about pleonastic "later". Of course CaGEL isn't a style guide (and doesn't pretend to be one), but I am surprised to read that persons unspecified are saying that this hefty book "isn't very good at being what it is meant to be". I cited it not in the hope of demonstrating that my version was optimal, stylish or whatever; merely to demonstrate (perhaps primarily to myself) that futurity would was an established pattern. I'm confident that it's acceptable (perhaps even desirable) in appropriate contexts. I asked here not about its grammaticality (or "correctness") but about its use in Wikipedia. The immediate trigger was my noticing the diff I pointed to; but if I remember correctly, I'd previously seen other instances of (to me, surprisingly) impatient would-chopping. Above, I see "pretentious" and "[e]ven one instance of inappropriate use is tiresome": the animus directed at what I'd considered an innocuous (and sometimes useful) use of would astonishes me. But the animus is there, so I'll try to reduce my use of futurity would. -- Hoary (talk) 02:59, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- Part of the animus stems from the fact that the construction is a favorite of hacks who think it makes their writing sound fancy. EEng 06:17, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- It had to happen eventually. EEng, you have outed me as, yes, just another hack who fondly hopes that his writing will sound fancy. Guilty as charged. Further evidence: (i) I persistently write that a building is somewhere, rather than writing, as a good Wikipedian should, that it is located somewhere. Thanks to this obscurantism, the poor reader is left wondering if it's strewn there, demolished there, buried there, vaporized there, or what. (ii) Rather than use the versatile, rugged word feature, I resort to what, IIRC, H W Fowler decries as "elegant variation", littering my prose with such gewgaws as have, include, and (for preposition featuring) with. -- Hoary (talk) 07:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- I didn't mean to include you in that. You've simply come under bad influences. BTW, see WP:LOCATIONLOCATIONLOCATION, WP:ELEVAR, WP:ASTONISHME, and WP:DIFFUSINGCONFLICT. EEng 16:04, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- It had to happen eventually. EEng, you have outed me as, yes, just another hack who fondly hopes that his writing will sound fancy. Guilty as charged. Further evidence: (i) I persistently write that a building is somewhere, rather than writing, as a good Wikipedian should, that it is located somewhere. Thanks to this obscurantism, the poor reader is left wondering if it's strewn there, demolished there, buried there, vaporized there, or what. (ii) Rather than use the versatile, rugged word feature, I resort to what, IIRC, H W Fowler decries as "elegant variation", littering my prose with such gewgaws as have, include, and (for preposition featuring) with. -- Hoary (talk) 07:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- Part of the animus stems from the fact that the construction is a favorite of hacks who think it makes their writing sound fancy. EEng 06:17, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- Relatedly, I see the phrase "would later" in the diff, and searching Wikipedia finds some 55k instances of that phrase. Isn't this always a pleonasm? If one is using "would" to indicate a temporary futurity, how is it possible for it to be anything but later? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:33, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
So far I've only received thanks from various editors for removing excessive would. Would can be used to mark reported speech, hypothetical situations, habitual activity, and volition—and adding unnecessary usage for futurity in the past often risks confusing this with those functions of the verb. If a futurity-in-the-past would seems necessary, it can certainly be used, although there are also workarounds (e.g., "he would become" → "he later became"). I see no merit in using would with a time adverbial (e.g., "He would die in 1831") or for a mundane sequence of past events (e.g., "He married Jane Smith in 1831 and they would have three children"). And the would strings ("He would marry Jane Smith in 1831 and they would have three children, two of whom would become lawyers. He would be elected to the Assembly in 1860, where he would serve for eight years before he would die in 1868.") are egregious. Some of the text really is that bad. Doremo (talk) 03:14, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- My view is that "future would" might be permitted where the meaning is clear; but that it shouldn't be sprinkled through a text. That is, it's repetition-sensitive, so needs to be rationed. Tony (talk) 03:30, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- Doremo, I can hardly believe that my article is so dreadful in just that one way. I nervously await the next unsheathing of your editorial machete. -- Hoary (talk) 07:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- I think much of the resistance to the "futurity 'would'" comes from seeing it used in our coverage of sports. You can't just write that a sportsperson did something. They might have "went on to", or "would go on to", but never simply "did". See this diff for a truly eyelid-twitching example. If your read garbage like that once too often, every use of the word "would" starts to looks dubious. Reyk YO! 16:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
So I mean neither of the examples is bad. They're both good. It's just a question of context -- how much our writing should be like the writing you find in business memos and technical documentation, and how much it should be like the writing that you find in magazine articles and books. So let's see, for say a biography of the Earl of Sandwich, compare
It was in Paris that he met the Countess. She would teach him all he would ever know about cold cuts.
to
He met the Countess in Paris. She taught him all he ever knew about cold cuts.
I mean, I wouldn't change the first to the second, no. I might change the second to the first. Which is "better" is a matter of opinion, but I like the first. The second is limp and boring, in comparison. In my opinion.
Yes I know about Bill Strunk, and he makes great points, but "Why use lot word when few word do" is not a iron law, nor is the a rule that we must bore the reader.
Yes I get that our articles are not like magazine articles, and "not boring the reader" isn't exactly part of our remit. On the other hand, if the reader is so bored that she passes out, hits her head on the table, and perishes, that's on us. There's nothing wrong with, I don't know, good prose, as long as the info is communicated clearly. I mean we do (I hope!) take care not use the same adjective in consecutive sentences and so an, and after all an encyclopedia is part of the general body of public literature, it's not, I don't know, a memo to a Group Captain (or whatever they have) at ExxonMobile about how to smartsize the training department. Herostratus (talk) 01:08, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
Capital letters
I made an edit [10] that was reverted [11] with the edit summary "I'm not certain that this, being the converse, is true". It isn't a matter of a converse being true but whether this would be a reasonable addition to this guideline.
I'm interested in what other editors think about adding the sentence, "If something is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for a given article, then it should be capitalized in the article." Bob K31416 (talk) 19:36, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- I have some guesses, but it would be helpful to hear from you why you support this addition to the guideline. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 19:50, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- Because it uses reliable sources to make the determination. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- I can't support a proposed change on that reason alone. We could remove the almost the entirety of the MoS and replace it with "do what most of the RS do", but that sounds frustrating and chaotic. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 21:12, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- I think the MOS was built on what is the accepted style based on style manuals and reliable sources, yet anyone who uses that as a reason for an addition to MOS is not told that we could remove almost the entirety of the MoS and replace it with "do what most of the style manuals and RS do". Bob K31416 (talk) 22:33, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- There's a difference between reviewing sources and guides to write a guideline and writing the guideline to just say "review sources". Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:17, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
- I think the MOS was built on what is the accepted style based on style manuals and reliable sources, yet anyone who uses that as a reason for an addition to MOS is not told that we could remove almost the entirety of the MoS and replace it with "do what most of the style manuals and RS do". Bob K31416 (talk) 22:33, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- I can't support a proposed change on that reason alone. We could remove the almost the entirety of the MoS and replace it with "do what most of the RS do", but that sounds frustrating and chaotic. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 21:12, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- Because it uses reliable sources to make the determination. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- I reckon the folks pushing WP:JOBTITLES, may object to the addition. GoodDay (talk) 19:53, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- They shouldn't have any problem with it if that section doesn't contradict the condition that something is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for a given article. Bob K31416 (talk) 21:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- That could lead to basing capitalisation on the age of the sources, and in general source-based style could be as perilous as source-based units ("we'll show all these footballers' heights in metres because that's what the source does"). Counting sources looks like one good way to reach consensus but need it be the only one? Are we seeing disputes on Wikipedia that have to be determined by such a rule and no other considerations, or existing articles that need fixing according to this rule? NebY (talk) 20:00, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- Re "we'll show all these footballers' heights in metres because that's what the source does" — It would have to be what is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for a given article. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- Do you have any responses to NebY's other point, on dispute/article examples? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 21:12, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- For me it arose while working in the section Talk:Killing_of_Ma'Khia_Bryant#Black_or_African-American when I found in my work there that capitalized "Black" was always used in reliable sources when describing Ma'Khia Bryant. I then changed to capitalized "Black" in the article. (BTW, I was the one who originally introduced uncapitalized "black" into the article a few months before.) I thought I could easily change it to capitalized because that followed the sources, but instead it ran into opposition. The other editors participating in the "black" vs "Black" discussion were Buffs, The Blade of the Northern Lights, and Volteer1. Bob K31416 (talk) 22:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- You seem to be attempting to unilaterally change the rules in order to get your way despite the fact you've been shown a VERY recent RfC where is no consensus to do so. It should stay as is. This could be argued to be forum shopping. Buffs (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- The "black" vs "Black" issue is a very minor issue for me compared to making a good addition to this guideline. In fact, if this addition is accepted, I won't change "black" to "Black" but leave that for anyone else to do. Bob K31416 (talk) 23:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- You seem to be attempting to unilaterally change the rules in order to get your way despite the fact you've been shown a VERY recent RfC where is no consensus to do so. It should stay as is. This could be argued to be forum shopping. Buffs (talk) 23:14, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- For me it arose while working in the section Talk:Killing_of_Ma'Khia_Bryant#Black_or_African-American when I found in my work there that capitalized "Black" was always used in reliable sources when describing Ma'Khia Bryant. I then changed to capitalized "Black" in the article. (BTW, I was the one who originally introduced uncapitalized "black" into the article a few months before.) I thought I could easily change it to capitalized because that followed the sources, but instead it ran into opposition. The other editors participating in the "black" vs "Black" discussion were Buffs, The Blade of the Northern Lights, and Volteer1. Bob K31416 (talk) 22:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- Do you have any responses to NebY's other point, on dispute/article examples? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 21:12, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
- Re "we'll show all these footballers' heights in metres because that's what the source does" — It would have to be what is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for a given article. Bob K31416 (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
As a reminder, here's the proposed addition again, "If something is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for a given article, then it should be capitalized in the article." Bob K31416 (talk) 01:10, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- This would just open up old (and very fraught) discussions, e.g. on the capitalization of the English names of species (particularly since styles in sources differ by country). Consistency across the English Wikipedia means having our own style manual and following it. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:33, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- Could you give an example of a specific Wikipedia article where the proposed addition would be a problem? Bob K31416 (talk) 17:02, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- spotted owl (vs. Spotted Owl) and nearly every other species of bird. Many field guides capitalize these, whereas scientific texts have generally standardized on lowercase (if I recall correctly). In the past we had a weird mixed style where all species were lowercase, except birds. pburka (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- The proposed addition wouldn't apply because spotted owl is not consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for the given article. So there's no problem. Bob K31416 (talk) 21:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- How would one go about demonstrating that? We don't have an authoritative list of independent, reliable sources. And "substantial majority" is vague: is 60% substantial? what about 3 of 5? Some species are so obscure that there may only be two or three sources: should we follow the style of those sources, or be consistent across the encyclopedia? Does Nature count as one source, or is each published paper a separate source? This proposed rule would encourage WP:WIKILAWYERING and inconsistency. pburka (talk) 22:16, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- Exactly. Which is why in repeated discussions we decided on the existing policy. This proposal is a non-starter. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:39, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
- It would be up to the editor using the proposed addition to gain consensus that something is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for a given article. This is the normal process when an editor's use of something in the MOS is challenged. If one was working on an article where something was consistently capitalized in the references for the article, and their change to capitalization was challenged, then they would need consensus that it was consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of references for the article. This is a more objective condition to discuss than whether to capitalize or not without any guidance from the MOS.
- For whatever reason, it doesn't look like this proposal will gain consensus, so I'll end my participation in the discussion here. Bob K31416 (talk) 15:12, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
- How would one go about demonstrating that? We don't have an authoritative list of independent, reliable sources. And "substantial majority" is vague: is 60% substantial? what about 3 of 5? Some species are so obscure that there may only be two or three sources: should we follow the style of those sources, or be consistent across the encyclopedia? Does Nature count as one source, or is each published paper a separate source? This proposed rule would encourage WP:WIKILAWYERING and inconsistency. pburka (talk) 22:16, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- The proposed addition wouldn't apply because spotted owl is not consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources for the given article. So there's no problem. Bob K31416 (talk) 21:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- spotted owl (vs. Spotted Owl) and nearly every other species of bird. Many field guides capitalize these, whereas scientific texts have generally standardized on lowercase (if I recall correctly). In the past we had a weird mixed style where all species were lowercase, except birds. pburka (talk) 17:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
- Could you give an example of a specific Wikipedia article where the proposed addition would be a problem? Bob K31416 (talk) 17:02, 28 September 2021 (UTC)