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Illogical punctuation and footnotes

Why is punctuation required to be illogical for references (MOS:REFPUNC), while we use logical punctuation everywhere else (MOS:LQ)? Requiring references to be after a full stop, when it only references the last clause of a sentence, is misleading readers by making them think the entire sentence is referenced. Surely indicating what parts of a sentence can be found in the source is more important than superficial things like punctuation aesthetics? -- Jeandré, 2014-11-07t14:09z

There are publications (Nature for example) that always put the reference before the full stop. Neither style makes precisely clear the exact scope of the text supported by the reference. If only part of a multipart sentence is supported by a reference, then surely the best course of action is to rewrite the sentence? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:21, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Jeandré, that system doesn't actually mislead readers. It's just a bit annoying to people who prefer it the other way. As for aesthetics, people usually tend to prefer whichever system they're more used to. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:37, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:CITEBUNDLE, "Bundling is also useful if the sources each support a different portion of the preceding text ... Bundling has several advantages: It avoids the visual clutter of multiple clickable footnotes inside a sentence or paragraph". This would seem to imply that the inclusion of citations inside sentences is visually displeasing. I tend to agree. Rationalobserver (talk) 17:28, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

There's a trade-off between making content visually pleasing and making it easily verifiable. I know which I think is more important. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:04, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

When done correctly, bundled cites are quite easy to understand. Rationalobserver (talk) 18:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree. When a section of text (sentence or paragraph) contains information from different sources bundled cites at the end don't make the source of the information clear. Even if initially the cites were in some kind of order, other editors may change the order (e.g. so that the reference numbers are in ascending order). I would only use them when the information is so thoroughly integrated that separate citing doesn't work. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:17, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

IMO, if a reader is confused by the following system, it's likely because the reader lacks comprehension skills, not that the system lacks clarity:

The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big. The sun is also quite hot.

Notes

---

Rationalobserver (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, you're right that it works when detailed explanations are given in the footnote – which I now understand is what you meant by "correctly". However (a) few if any real examples I've seen of bundled cites go into this detail (b) if the reader wants to check a fact, The sun is pretty big,^[1] but the moon is not so big.^[2] The sun is also quite hot.^[3] is a lot simpler – just follow one of the reference links with nothing more to read and work out. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:24, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad that both styles are acceptable, and neither one is required or preferred over the other. Rationalobserver (talk) 21:21, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

What about The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big.^[1] where ^[1] only states the moon is not as big as the sun, but doesn't state that the sun is pretty big? With the ref outside the full stop, it looks like both clauses are referenced. If it was inside the full stop it would be clearer that only the clause before the ref is sourced. Should I now add a Failed verification tag, making it The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big.^{[1][not in citation given]}? -- Jeandré, 2014-11-10t10:25z

No. Use {{citation needed}} after the unsourced claim (The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big.^[1] or, if this is unclear, encase it in a {{citation needed span}} tag (The sun is pretty big,^[1] but the moon is not so big.). —sroc 💬 10:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Precisely. As per my point above, because there are publications that always place the ref inside the full stop, regardless of what part of the text it sources, both The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big.^[1] and The sun is pretty big, but the moon is not so big^[1]. imply that [1] supports the whole sentence. If this is not the case and you want to make this clear, then the only remedy is to re-write, e.g. The moon is not pretty big,^[1] although the sun is. Now it's clear that the second part of the sentence isn't sourced. Placement before or after full stops and commas is irrelevant. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:01, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Logical quotation is called that because the punctuation's placement varies in accordance with a set of rules, not because the alternative style is "illogical". —David Levy 23:54, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

It's called that because the rules are based on the semantics (i.e. logic) of the content of the quotation. This doesn't, of course, mean that the alternative style is necessarily "illogical", just that it prioritizes appearance over semantics. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:17, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

+1 to what Peter is saying. Tony (talk) 10:56, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

You're assuming that other systems are based on appearance. Usually, they are not. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:11, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

"As of"

I've started a discussion about the use of "As of" -- both the phrase and the corresponding template -- at Wikipedia talk:As of#Usage guidelines: current state. Interested editors are encouraged to explain their opinions there (and not here, to keep the discussion all in one place). Thanks. — Mudwater ^(Talk) 22:32, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

And Ladies of the Club

I would like feedback on the use of quote marks as part of the title of this novel, which is properly “... And Ladies of the Club” (curly) or "... And Ladies of the Club" (straight), with the ellipsis and quote marks. The article had originally been created with a punctuation-free form of the title, and I moved it to the curly quote form, and I fixed the half-dozen or so links. Now I'm thinking I should move it again to the straight quote form. The argument for the curly quotes is that they are not really serving as punctuation so much but as decoration. (Unlike say an apostrophe in Harper's.) Titles are titles, often meant to be eye-catching, so to speak, not true English. But this argument is quite weak, and indeed the publisher (Putnam) on the book's inner dust jacket flap (but not the outside cover) used a font with straight quotes. Choor monster (talk) 13:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Always use straight quotes, see WP:QUOTEMARKS. The page title should be, and show as: "... And Ladies of the Club" (including italicized quotes). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 14:09, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

(WP:QUOTEMARKS goes to the wrong place, and does not discuss straight-vs-curly) You meant MOS:QUOTEMARKS, which does not say "always", just highly recommends. As written, it is taken for granted that both styles are in fact around. Choor monster (talk) 15:00, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Were we to go by the styling on the cover, it would be “... AND LADIES OF THE CLUB”; we choose to straight-quote it much as we choose the Title Case version. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:05, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'm convinced. I'll be making the changes. Thank you all. Choor monster (talk) 15:09, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Inaccurate section names

Forgive me if I missed it. But should section names be accurate and not only point out one part of the section when it discusses multiple things? AlbinoFerret 02:59, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

On this talk page, yes. It's been suggested (and upheld) that headers should be descriptive and specific to make it easier to find things in archives. Or were you talking about the MoS itself? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:44, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

He means in articles. This issue: Talk:Electronic_cigarette#Ultrafine_Particles.2C_the_name_of_the_section_is_inaccurate. Dicklyon (talk) 04:50, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

How is this engvar message set?

When editing an en-uk language article, I get a banner that says "This article is written in British English, ..." [1]. How is this set? (More general: is there some bluelink HELP:ENGVAR page that describe practices and templates?) -DePiep (talk) 07:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think Category:Varieties of English templates and WP:ENGVAR (MOS:ENGVAR links there as well) have you covered? DonIago (talk) 14:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The top rigt of your edit link says "Page notice" with a link to Template:Editnotices/Page/Phosphorus. See Wikipedia:Editnotice. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:20, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I created HELP:ENGVAR to start a gathering of links. -DePiep (talk) 12:44, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

I (re)created {{Engvar}} for usage in templates. When build in a template, the article editor can set parameter |engvar=en-GB and template text will turn British English in that article. See template documentation. -DePiep (talk) 01:13, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Useless Infobox, or whatever it is

Came here to look for something on football. Clicked through the links on the right hand side. Clicked on "Sports" and all I find is Snooker. WTF?

Then I noticed that there is a Search box. Typed "football" in there. As my first hit, I got "Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Thailand-related articles/Draft".

Gave up at that stage.

This is not friendly. HiLo48 (talk) 06:41, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not the fault of the navbox that there is no MoS page specific to football. It is correctly reflecting the fact that no such information exists. Whether or not there should be, and why snooker should be singled out by the MoS, are separate questions. Perhaps you were looking for WP:FOOTY or WP:NFOOTY? By the way, what happened to your "non-swearing vow"? SpinningSpark 10:43, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Spinningspark, are you sure all this is relevant? -DePiep (talk) 09:56, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Which part of my post do you suppose to be not relevant? And what do you suppose it is not relevant to? I replied to another editor's post and my comments are certainly relevant to the problem he raised. If you mean there is nothing actionable for the MoS page then I agree with you. SpinningSpark 17:00, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

@DePiep: SpinningSpark 17:01, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I do not see the relevance of the 'lying is safer' link you added. -DePiep (talk) 17:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The OP used the phrase WTF in his post. WTF is an acronym for "what the fuck". Fuck is considered an obscenity in most English-speaking regions and is thus counted as swearing. In the link I provided, the OP has made a self-imposed "non-swearing vow", an issue which has seen him the subject of an ANI thread in the past. I was merely gently reminding him of his inadvertent lapse. The comment was an aside, as indicated by the phrase "by the way", thus indicating that it is tangential to the discussion at hand. I don't see why you need to highlight that it is tangential to the discussion at hand when that has already been clearly indicated in my original post. The net result of your intervention has been to create an irrelevant discussion, the very thing you are complaining about. SpinningSpark 18:11, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

You're right, I had not noticed that one ;-) . I was distracted by the nicer "This is not friendly" conclusion. Consider answered & closed. -DePiep (talk) 18:59, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Can Wikipedia headings following level 2 headings have more prominence?

as I think that there is a sudden drop in both the prominence and distinctiveness

in the type formats used for level 3, 4 and 5 headings as following the default heading format style

to the point that the type format used for level 5 headings ...

... is no different from the format of regular text when boldly presented.

I think that the depth of headings may be better utilised if there were not such a marked change in heading prominence and distinctiveness following level 2 headings. One option that might bring unification could be underlining Gregkaye ✍♪ 09:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm happy with the current level format/display.  Stepho  talk  10:11, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree (this is a semicolon-level demo)

What's the use of differentiated sublevels if they have the same result? -10:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

In mobile view there is a diff. -DePiep (talk) 10:29, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like an idea at least worth discussing. Since this is a discussion about the entire skin, I think it could better be discussed centrally (phabricator/mediawiki Vector talk page/design mailing list), but I could be convinced of only doing this locally if there are reasonable arguments. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:36, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Question: Can anyone point to an article in which headings this deep (and difficulty distinguishing them from body text) are an issue? It doesn't seem unlikely, but let's see one in action. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:48, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Darkfrog: Greg, could you provide some linked examples to article contexts where it could work better? Tony (talk) 05:20, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

See Helium (FA), Uranium (FA). Must say, other FA's in my pet WP:ELEMENTS only have level=3 max. A quality sign? -DePiep (talk) 18:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

These don't look that bad, actually. They're set off and clearly headers (not regular bold text). Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:13, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Unexpected bolding in response to redirects

MOS:BOLD, at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Other uses, says "Use boldface in the remainder of the article only in a few special cases: ... at the beginning of a section of an article, which are the targets of redirects to the article or section (e.g. sub-topics of the article's topic, rather than the synonyms as already boldfaced per the above). (See Wikipedia:Redirect § What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects? for examples and further details.)". There's probably a lot of discussion at WP:REDIR, but that's not a MOS page, so I don't know to what extent style is taken into consideration there. I can see no discussion going back to mid-2011 at the talk page of MOS/Text formatting. I haven't seen bolding for this purpose ever at FAC, and it concerns me. (I saw something similar today, and decided to investigate.) It seems to me that either you believe that readers will take note of that bolding and decide it means something, or you don't. If you do, then you're violating the principle of least surprise for the 99.99% (usually) of readers that didn't arrive at that spot via the particular redirect you have in mind. If you don't, then the bolding doesn't accomplish the function you're aiming for, and choosing a suitable subsection heading or topic sentence would be preferable to bolding. Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 15:32, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The trade off is for bold when it is not expected vs no bold when it is expected.

If the occasional word (usually a noun) is unexpectedly bold then the reader thinks for a bit, doesn't see an obvious answer and continues on without any drama. No harm real done.

But if a redirect takes you to a different article name than what you thought you were going to, then you have a very confused reader who doesn't know why he is there.  Stepho  talk  05:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone want to object to this advice, at least in the general case ... that it's not a problem if something we write looks wrong enough that it's likely to catch a reader's attention? ... "the reader thinks for a bit, doesn't see an obvious answer and continues on without any drama. No harm real done."? (I'm quoting because that's a good description of one approach to writing and copyediting, an approach that does carry some weight in some circles.) - Dank (push to talk) 19:55, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Generally I find bold in the main text to be disruptive to the flow of reading, and ungainly to view synoptically. I've learned to put up with it at the very opening, but I can't see the functionality in allowing yet more bolding in the text. Tony (talk) 05:03, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Quotation templates

We're currently considering merging some of the quotation templates, over at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2014_October_21#Template:Quotation. The basic issue seems to be that {{quote}} and {{quotation}} are identical, except that {{quotation}} has a colored background and box, and {{quote}} doesn't.

The Manual of Style mentions these quotation templates. MOS:Blockquote suggests that colored backgrounds are inappropriate, implying that {{quotation}} should never be used in article space (and all uses should be replaced by {{quote}}); MOS:ITAL, however, mentions the use of {{quotation}} as an alternative to italicising long quotes. This seems to be an internal inconsistency; at TfD, we'd like to fix the templates to match the Manual if possible, but we can't do this without consensus as to what the correct quoting behaviour should be (or whether it should be left up to individual articles).

My recommended fix would be to change MOS:ITAL to mention {{quote}} only, removing mentions of {{quotation}} from the MoS, and the template itself from articlespace. Would anyone object to me removing backgrounded quotations from MOS:ITAL to make the Manual consistent? Or are there people who feel that they should be allowed? As this page is a guideline and I haven't been following its talk page in the past, I'd like to make sure I'm not doing something that's been debated to death hundreds of times already before making a change. --ais523 01:10, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I've now made this change. If you disagree, feel free to revert with an explanation, and we can take things forward from there. --ais523 00:43, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Question: news-style information

Is it appropriate to include backround information in the style of print news" For example, I've seen politicians identified with a parenthetical tag [i.e. Diane Feinstein (D-CA)]. I'm just wondering if this is even necessary given that anyone reading the article can just click on the link to find out information about another topic.--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 00:40, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Those abbreviations are completely opaque to people who don’t read U.S. newspapers, so they should not be used. If the information is critical to understanding the sentence, spell it out instead of abbreviating. If not critical, let the hyperlink do it its job. Indefatigable (talk) 15:48, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Comma after "Jr.", "Sr.", etc.

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#Comma after "Jr.", "Sr.", etc.? about whether expressions such as "Jr." and "Sr." should be followed by a comma in cases where they are also precedes by one. —sroc 💬 13:29, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Spaced dash

Can someone explain this recent change? The examples that follow seem to illustrate the former content. I'm not sure what the new content is supposed to mean. --Boson (talk) 22:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Got it reverted, that wasn't an improvement. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Tense of authoral actions

I have a question regarding tense which the MOS does not seem to cover (WP:TENSE was not helpful). When quoting or paraphrasing a published work of any kind, is it proper to say that the author "states" or "says," or is it proper to say that they "stated" or "said" whatever it is they did in fact say? Obviously, if the statement is prefaced by "In the book," then the present tense is appropriate, but the MOS seems silent on the point otherwise. DNA Ligase IV (talk) 02:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

The present tense is correct in those cases.

When the MoS doesn't say something, default to general English rules. (This way the MoS doesn't get overloaded with redundant solutions to non-problems.) A good place to start looking is the style guides cited by the MoS as sources. If there's a conflict with that (different style guides say different things; Wikieditors disagree about what's best), then raise the issue on this talk page and we'll all work out a rule together. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Both present and past tense are equally acceptable. Rationalobserver (talk) 21:25, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

That's true, WP:TENSE still depends on the overall context of what is being described. It mentions a non-fiction example in passing, and it suggests using the past tense. (The fiction example is explained in more detail). There's not much difference between "stated" and "said". You probably won't go wrong using either or both in the course of an article (they are both preferred per WP:SAY, along with other possibilities: described, wrote, and according to).__ E L A Q U E A T E 21:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that both present and past are acceptable. I find that, for the sake of clarity, it's preferable to use present tense – to separate (past) events being discussed in an article from commentary or interpretation of those events. I'm glad that the issue's been raised here, and it could be useful to add something to the MoS on this, as it's come up once or twice in GA reviews, in my experience. Any such addition, I suggest, should emphasise clarity above all other concerns. I mention that because, if we trumpet consistency as the prime objective throughout an article, it might create other problems – it's not always easy to adhere to the same approach each and every time. JG66 (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Looking for proper MoS for 2013 Ben Ketai film Beneath

What is a proper title for this horror film IMDB Beneath. It has the same year, genre, and country as this film Beneath (2013 film). Valoem ^{talk contrib} 05:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

This is the proper MOS. For title, see WP:TITLE. Dicklyon (talk) 05:57, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Hyphenation of "open source" when used as a compound adjective

MOS:HYPHEN clearly states that a phrase used as a compound adjective should be hyphenated. Nevertheless, there are numerous instances in Wikipedia of the term "open source" used as a compound adjective without being hyphenated; examples include the titles of the Open source hardware and Open Source Architecture articles, as contrasted with Open-source software and Open-source journalism. In fact, the Open source hardware article was moved by consensus from a non-hyphenated to a hyphenated title in 2010, and moved back to the non-hyphenated title without discussion in early 2014 by a single editor whose stated rationale was that the phrase is "idiomatic". It seems to me that the inconsistency of hyphenation of the term calls for a Manual of Style consensus to be established, with article titles and text to be edited accordingly. — Jaydiem (talk) 05:41, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

There are numerous instances in WP of almost every compound used as an adjective without hyphens. Many of these are unclear, giving readers little or no clue about how to parse or interpret the meaning. Nothing special about "open source" in this respect. Where the hyphen helps the reader, go ahead and add it. Where such a phrase is "idiomatic" within the group who knows it, it is still usually helpful to the general reader to have the clue for how to parse it. If others disagree, some discussion may be in order. I went ahead and moved back the one that had a consensus on record. And worked on unsourced one, too. Dicklyon (talk) 05:49, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. In-groups, particularly engineering and scientific specialties, become loose about the typography that helps non-expert comprehension—since those specialties see the compounds every day and often address their texts only to those within their cloister. Here, we write for a wider readership. This is a good example of why we should not always regard specialist usage as ideal for our circumstances; and it's why serious publishers have house styles. Tony (talk) 08:26, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

You are correct, Jaydiem. Was there something you wanted to do about it or are you just here for confirmation? Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:44, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Comma-related RfC

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#RfC: Comma or no comma before Jr. and Sr. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:42, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Editor not seeing the benefit of WP:NOTBROKEN

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Editor not seeing the benefit of WP:NOTBROKEN. A WP:Permalink for the discussion is here. Flyer22 (talk) 22:59, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Need some advice

After looking at WP:MOS in regard to religion, etc., I'm not finding anything specific in the way of what's acceptable and what's not when referring to religious figureheads/deities. Please refer to this edit [2] for a better idea of what I'm coming up against. Specifically, at the article Shema Yisrael, I don't want to anger the IP editor nor discourage them from editing or reading Wikipedia, but because they are essentially pushing a POV in how to write/not write the Judeo-Christian name of "God" (they have been changing it to G_d which is the correct honorific spelling for certain sects of Judaism). It seems to me that because Wikipedia is not a religious-based encyclopedia that spelling it G_d would be POV to a certain degree. Any thoughts, suggestions? -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 02:30, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

His edit summary, Fixed typo, does not suggest that he's serious. It's possible that he hasn't figured out that he is being reverted, so he keeps trying. And hasn't figured out from notifications that he has a talk page. Keep trying... Not much point worrying what MOS says if you can't get a discussion going. Dicklyon (talk) 02:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Backlash against MOS?

My routine style adjustment work seems to have brought out some weird and wonderful new ideas about what WP style ought to be for capitalization. In spite of recent re-affirmations of MOS:CAPS at various multi-move discussions (Talk:Villatina massacre#Requested moves, Talk:Rock Springs massacre#Requested moves, Talk:Potato riots#Requested moves), my latest batch of MOS-compliance moves was all reverted, so I opened another multi-move discussion at Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves. The centralized discussion listing of this discussion has brought out these interesting proposals for why various titles about riots and massacres and murders should be capitalized even though they are not typically capitalized in sources:

• "These are historical events with proper names. There is no justification for decapitalisation in MOSCAPS or elsewhere."
• "That's why God has sent me here, to protect these articles from the ugly candour of minuscule letters."
• "These requests should be done separately, or through something else besides a multi-move request."
• "I personally prefer the names we are accustomed to seeing in print."
• "you might want to begin by updating MOS:CAPS so that it actually addresses historical events ... If the issue is not addressed clearly in MOS:CAPS, then I am inclined to oppose the whole list because of poor documentation of the guideline and questionable tactics for its implementation."
• "if in doubt, capitalize to show respect!"
• "Accepted full names of wars, battles, revolts, revolutions, rebellions, mutinies, skirmishes, risings, campaigns, fronts, raids, actions, operations and so forth are capitalized"
• "These massacres were given an uppercase letter in reliable sources, likely to establish their place in history, along with battles. This mass move would be taken as consensus to make the word lowercase. Go to the manual of style and get consensus rather than picking a set of articles and moving them to different titles."
• "Capitalization makes more sense for Wikipedia"
• "Oppose for massacres. I'm neutral on the rest, but we rarely use that word massacre (in a non-figurative sense) unless it's in a proper noun."
• "Britannica uses capitalisation, and so should we. We're not writing a rag paper."
• "No where in the MOS does it say that capitalisation should not be used by default." (in an edit summary)

Some of the same are also at the earlier RM: Talk:Chicago Race Riot of 1919, and some twists such as:

• "I don't care what Wikipedia style is. I care about what's right. It is right that proper names be capitalised, and this is a proper noun. That's that. Your tiny little consensus at those pages is hardly indicative of larger support. If I'd known of them, I'd have opposed with every fibre of my being. Good sources, such as the Britannica, capitalise this title. That's reason enough to maintain it."
• "We don't object to MOSCAPS, we object to your false interpretation of it."
• "I know what's right, and I'll make sure to do what I need to do as such. If you'd like me to stop cleaning up articles, I'd be happy to do so. Far from Mr Tony's arrogant claims, most of Wikipedia is a mess of dismal and dingy prose or proseline that has no semblance of style. If he'd like to continue living in such a squalid mess, that's up to him. Me, on the other hand, I like to keep my house in order."

So, did I misread or misinterpret MOS:CAPS? Do we need to amend it to indicate that we capitalize things that people want to show respect for, or to capitalize all titles that refer to events even when sources mostly don't, or what? Or go the other way and amend to specifically say that random events, riots, massacres, incidents, etc. are covered by the general principle of avoiding unnecessary capitalization, as repeated there several times? Or give up and let these categories of things remain rather inconsistent, rather than continue to work on cleaning them up? Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

It is telling that you have placed this comment here and not on the talk page of the Article titles policy (AT) page . I think this shows that you do not fully understand the relationship between the MOS and AT policy. It has never been the consensus on the AT talk page that the MOS guidelines applies to article titles. The policy revolves around what is common usage in reliable sources, not the dictates of the Wikipedia style guide. The Article titles policy has its own guidance on such things in guidelines that are called naming conventions. For example WP:AT has its own information on how to capitalise ( AT § Article title format ¶ Use lowercase, except for proper names and its own guideline WP:naming conventions (capitalization)).

In the specific case of Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves you have made a specific mistake basing in on MOS:CAPS you should base such a requested moves on AT § Article title format ¶ Use lowercase, except for proper names. Also I think you should consider what Lukeno94 wrote in that requested move "Far too many things being proposed for change here;", as very few people are going to look through the whole list and agree that all of them or none of them should be moved having done a survey of all the reliable sources for all the articles. Even is some editors do survey of all the reliable sources for all the articles, they are unlikely to reach an unanimous agreement on what is reflected in all of the sources for each page. Therefore it is extremely unlikely that an informed consensus based on the AT policy will be reached for such a list. It would be much better to tackle such a list one item at a time on the talk pages of the individual articles, basing the request not on the MOS guidelines but on the AT policy. -- PBS (talk) 11:08, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

There's no dispute about titles, only about styling. We style text and titles the same way, don't we? And there's certainly no conflict here with WP:RECOGNIZABILITY as supported by WP:COMMONNAME, nor with "Use lowercase, except for proper names." Nobody has shown a good source-based reason to consider these to be proper names. Dicklyon (talk) 16:22, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Here's why we have to look at the sources... If the sources capitalize the word "Riot" when referring to the event, then we know that the word is considered part of the proper name of the event ... its similar to the way the word "Massacre" is part of the proper name in Boston Massacre. If, on the other hand, they do not capitalize the word "riot" when referring to the event, then we know the sources do not consider that word to be part of a proper name, but are merely describing the event as being a riot. Blueboar (talk) 13:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Of course we look at sources, as I said and showed; and I said "Nobody has shown a good source-based reason to consider these to be proper names." That means that when they look they do not find sources consistently capitalizing those words. If there's no consistency, there's no necessity, and WP style is to pick lowercase. Yet they object. Why? Dicklyon (talk) 05:56, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh PBS. No. Nobody is arguing that the titles of these articles should be capitalized differently from how they're titled (except for the first character), are they? Why do you keep bringing this up? Would you please stop? It's fine to talk about things in WP:MOS at WT:MOS. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:32, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

It is fine to talk about things in WP:MOS at WT:MOS... But PBS does have a valid point... I see a degree of WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT behavior by some here on the MOS talk page whenever editors raise the issue of conflicts between the MOS pages and various policies and guidelines. Denying that there is a conflict does not resolve the concern. Blueboar (talk) 21:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Dicklyon's main objection seems to be that people are capitalizing things that are not typically capitalized in sources and that the MoS says not to capitalize them. PBS's response is that they are capitalized because they are capitalized in reliable sources and that the MoS doesn't apply. Unless this is like species names, where there is a clear specialist-vs-generalist split on this issue, the answer is clear: List all the reliable sources that use lowercase, list all the ones that use capitals and take a look. (If it were me, I'd do it on the talk page of the article(s) in question.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Listing them all would be a big project, but I've got pretty good summary stats and links for further inspection at the multi-move discussion at Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves. This doesn't seem to affect the opinions of those who don't like WP style however. Look at for example the Watts riot, the Watts riots. Dicklyon (talk) 22:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

You may be right that doing them individually would lead to more sensible input. But it would have been nice if RGloucester has not mass-reverted the maintenance moves; if he had only reverted ones for which a glance at sources indicated an uncertain result, that would have been easier to deal with. I might even skip a few (like the Lager Beer Riot, which is lowercase only rarely) that would be marginal on the "consistently capitalized in sources" question. Dicklyon (talk) 22:27, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

It would be nice if I didn't have to revert mass moves to decapitalise articles against consensus. There was no "maintenance" involved on your part. Another editor, in October, did the exact same thing as you, and made tons of page moves to lowercase titles, including most the articles you moved. All of these were reverted after a long discussion, as they had no consensus. Likewise, your moves, a month later than those, have no consensus, and no basis in policy. Rightly, they were reverted. Now you can try and gain consensus for your position, which is antithetical to our article title policy. As you see, consensus is largely against it at this time. Therefore, your position is incorrect. RGloucester — ☎ 23:26, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not aware that any of these had been moved before or discussed, or considered potentially controversial. Which ones? Can you supply pointers to relevant discussions? Dicklyon (talk) 01:02, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

By the way, the reason this discussion must be centralised is because the above editor and his decapitalisation cabal have been taking advantage of the fact that many of these pages are not watched by many editors. He has been using that to his advantage, having RM "discussions" with either no participation, or very little, and requiring multiple re-listings. He has done this to claim "re-affirmations" of a position that is not backed by a broader consensus. That's why I insisted on a broadly-advertised centralised discussion, where a large slice of the Wikipedia community could voice an opinion. It is necessary, or he will continue to game the system by making large amounts of small changes to claim "consistency" with guidelines. That type of WP:BULLDOZERING is unacceptable. RGloucester — ☎ 23:29, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

RM discussions are always advertised centrally for this reason. I've never seen the WP:BULLDOZERING shortcut to Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point before, and don't see how it can be relevant here. I have a long history of constructive editing, cleanups, sourcing, etc., doing my best to follow and implement policies and guidelines. I don't look at how many watchers an article has, and I haven't seen multiple relistings, nor any cabal helping me. So I don't know what you're going on about. Dicklyon (talk) 01:02, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

It is quite relevant here. In fact, if you'd like to know its origin, I can inform you. It is rather humorous. One editor, who I'm not likely to agree with on anything, started an AN/I thread with the words WP:BULLDOZERING as a red link in the heading. The way that he went about this thread was so absurd that I thought that I should create the link, to remember the absurdity of the behaviour of certain editors who attempt to make a point that isn't much of a point at all. This absurdity even escalates to the point where usual words like "bulldozing" must be replaced with the bombastic "BULLDOZERING". You are taking your own interpretation of the guidelines as gospel, when they are not. RGloucester — ☎ 01:34, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, then I object to that shortcut link; it is not meaningful. It appears that you made it up just to make some odd point yourself. Please remove it. Make an essay about bulldozering if you need to. Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Listing the sources isn't as much work as it sounds like. Remember, you don't have to list all the relevant sources yourself, Dicklyon. Just start two lists, add the sources you've been using to one of them, and invite others to contribute. If the opposition to your proposal is as vehement as you say, then you'll have all the help you need filling up the other list.

Previous example: here. The issue was whether to change "New York Theater District" to "New York Theatre District." Two or three editors put the lists together in a day or two, and a subsequent challenge to the page's name was later shut down with "you can challenge it if you want but reliable sources prefer this spelling 2:1." I've also tried this the last two times that WP:LQ was challenged. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:26, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, with 30 articles being considered, it's still a lot of work. Especially for those with hundreds or thousands of sources, where it would make more sense to do something like pick the first N pages of Google Books hits that have previews, or something like that, rather than have a stamina contest. And of course if people argue that 2:1 capital to lower meets the threshold for "consistently capitalized in sources", that will be a mess. Or if they argue that historians get precedence over general writers, that will be a mess. It's not clear to me what these lists are supposed to show, if the clear evidence of majority lower case use in books is not even enough to overcome the opposition. RGloucenter has consistently refused to consider such evidence as meaningful, so how are lists going to help him? Dicklyon (talk) 02:30, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Consider this RM that opened before the 30-article multi-RM: Talk:Pottawatomie Massacre#Requested move. Even if I stipulate that there has been a shift since the 1980s and now a slight majority of books using upper case, and even if we enumerated all those, how would that shifting style in the outside world affect our decision of whether to pay attention to our own style guide? It is abundant evidence that capitalization is not consistent in sources, so we should use lowercase. Why is this even being discussed? Please take a look and let me know. Dicklyon (talk) 04:09, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

• Just to note first that two editors who have come in to comment here have continually taken an anti-MOS line when it comes to the styling of article titles—as though the article text should be subject to different rules to the titles. WP:AT doesn't concern styling, and it's not tenable to encourage the notion that there are two sets of rules. This was resolved many many years ago.

  Second, RGloucester and one or two others have taken it on themselves to raise a flag for capitalisation, but never respond when asked to explain what they mean by "proper name". MOSCAPS says: "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. Most capitalization is for proper names or for acronyms. Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia." (my bold)

  Given this clear wording at the top of the MOS, I rather think the onus is on them to (i) demonstrate consistent capitalisation in sources for each example, and (ii) provide whatever definition of proper name they are using to drive this capitalisation campaign. They have not done so, but instead have used a wall of pretty unconvincing comments, including those quoted by Dick at the top of this thread. Tony (talk) 06:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the phrase "proper name" is obvious to anyone that has a basic level of English comprehension, Tony. One should also note that MOS:MILTERMS has its own definition. By the way, as I told you before, the MoS is only a guideline. It is not a straitjacket that is applied uniformly everywhere. It is subject to talk page consensus. WP:UCN is a policy, and makes clear that we should take questions of encyclopaedic register into account, weighing sources to determine what is more appropriate for this encylopaedia. I have provided encyclopaedic sources in cases where I oppose capitalisation, such as the Britannica, just as UCN says to do. When capitalisation is necessary to maintain the encyclopaedic register, it is necessary, and therefore not "unnecessary". I'm not opposed to lowercase titles, and I've mentioned the articles I agree should be decapitalised at the bulk move, as capitalisation is not supported by encyclopaedic sources or any sources at all in those instances. I find it queer that you refer to a "capitalisation campaign" when these articles were already capitalised and stable for years until you fellows started messing with them. No one has suggesting "capitalising" any new articles, as far as I can see. If I can present another argument, WP:TITLECHANGES suggests that no move should be made for reasons of stability. RGloucester — ☎ 06:42, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

You say: "I think the phrase "proper name" is obvious to anyone that has a basic level of English comprehension, Tony." More hedging. Yet again, could you enlighten us to what your definition is, please? Without your proposed definition, we're at a loss to even start judging your argument. Tony (talk) 07:17, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Would you prefer if I call you "tony" because I cannot find any reliable sources that refer to you as "Tony"? Perhaps I should start a requested move on your user page. RGloucester — ☎ 15:11, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

RG: No the MoS is not "just a guideline." It's called a guideline but what it really is is changeable but required set of rules. In practice, people who add new material aren't penalized for not following the MoS but people who change text from MoS-compliant to non-MoS-compliant can be penalized.

Read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. No individual pages do not get to deviate from the MoS just because their editors think it's a good idea. If you think there's something special about these pages that means they need the extra capitals, then the place to discuss it is at the relevant MoS page so that an exception can be written into the rules.

I get that you think you're being clear, but Tony has asked you a serious question about a relevant point (by which I mean that Tony does not appear to be messing with you; he asks this kind of question a lot). There's no harm in coming out in saying either, "What I mean by proper noun is XYZ" or "I've just been using the regular definition of the term; can you be clearer about what it is that you need to know/why you're confused?" Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:16, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

None of these are "required rules". The MoS is a generally accepted documentation of good practice, not a straitjacket that is applied to all articles uniformly. MoS compliance isn't even mandated for GA status. The "capitals" are not "extra". Mr Lyon unilaterally moved articles away from their titles as supported by policy and the MoS. He did make some moves that were correct, too. Regardless, in most cases, the majuscule letters are mandated by WP:UCN, a policy, and by MOSCAPS. To be clear, talk page consensus explicitly is used to determine how to apply the MoS to specific pages. For example, see MOS:MILTERMS: "Where there is uncertainty as to whether a term is generally accepted, consensus should be reached on the talk page". The articles I'm referring to are not "deviating" from the MoS. The problem is that different people interpret the MoS differently. How it is applied to individual articles is determined through talk page consensus in areas of uncertainty. I'm not going to engage in nitpicking that will be used to weasel out of the common and generally accepted meaning of the phrase "proper name". RGloucester — ☎ 22:57, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

WP style is to avoid unnecessary capitalization, but you have stated "I don't care what Wikipedia style is." Your comments about WP:UCN make no sense, as that bit does not relate to style (and the fact that it's part of a policy page has no particular significance, either). Start making sense. Dicklyon (talk) 23:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Not "WP style", but the Manual of Style-documented style, firstly, and secondly, it says "unnecessary". If it is necessary, it cannot be unnecessary. Strictly speaking, no capitalisation is necessary. One can convey a point without any capitalisation whatsoever. That's not what the MoS is implying we do. How can it "not relate to style"? It is about article titles. If reliable sources are capitalising a title one way, UCN demands that we follow their capitalisation. UCN also tells us to write in the encyclopaedic register, and to view fellow encyclopaedias as more valuable for these purposes than every other news article. It being a policy means that it is higher ranked than guidelines in the roster of Wikipedia conventions. RGloucester — ☎ 00:29, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I think one point that should be addressed, and which makes reliance on sources somewhat problematic, is the issue of what the use of a common noun implies. Writing "the Boston massacre" (uncapitalized) uses the common noun "masssacre" in Wikipedia's voice, implying that "massacre" is a correct description of the event. Writing "the Boston Massacre" uses a proper name, which implies that this is the established name of the event but does not require that the event is (necessarily) correctly described by the common noun "massacre". If some sources represent the view that this event was a massacre, then those sources may justifiably (but non-neutrally) use the common noun "massacre" to describe the event from their point of view, while other sources may use an expression with a different common noun, such as "the unfortunate events in Boston". Perhaps WP:POVNAME should state (even more) clearly that the exemption from WP:NPOV applies only to proper nouns used in names. There may occasionally be a case for using POV common nouns in article titles, but I don't think they should be regarded as the default, on the basis of policy. None of this, of course, means that a proper name cannot also be a correct and neutral description (for instance, the President of the United States is indeed the president of the United States). --Boson (talk) 00:14, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree entirely with what you just said, Boson, and that's one of the reasons I argued against decapitalisation for massacres. We should not be using "massacre" in WP:NDESC titles. That's definitely editorialising, and entirely inappropriate. If we are constructing titles for events, the word "massacre" should not be included. RGloucester — ☎ 00:29, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Massacre is a common noun, defined as "an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people". If sources commonly call something a massacre, then per WP:UCN, so should we. And if sources consistently capitalize it, as with Boston Massacre, we take that to mean that capitalization is necessary. If they don't, we don't. It's not that complicated. If sources have other terms they use, we can choose that instead, as long as we agree that it's at least as good, per the WP:CRITERIA. Per MOS:CAPS, we don't use case to signal our opinions about whether the UCN is a good one or not. Dicklyon (talk) 03:00, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

You didn't hear me. For titles that are commonly used per UCN, it is fine to use "massacre". However, for WP:NDESC titles that we construct ourselves, it is unacceptable. The difference between "massacre" and "Massacre" is that "Massacre" implies a commonly accepted name for an event, whereas "massacre" merely implies editorial description, per Boson. RGloucester — ☎ 03:04, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

True, I'm not hearing you. So how does your "We should not be using "massacre" in WP:NDESC titles." relate to your comments supporting decapitalization at Talk:Carnation_Massacre that "These are all constructed WP:NDESC titles, and hence should not be treated as proper names." Dicklyon (talk) 04:22, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the "Carnation massacre" is not a massacre, and should not be at that title anyway. In fact, I'm not sure it is notable at all. None of the cited sources seem to support calling it a massacre, though. Six people dead does not make a massacre. I'd much prefer "Carnation killings". However, I didn't want to rock the boat too much. If I did, I'd propose it for deletion. It really doesn't seem encyclopaedic at all. WP:NOTNEWS, and all that. RGloucester — ☎ 04:28, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I might even agree with you. But you said it's a WP:NDESC and should be decapitalized, and then that we shouldn't use it in a WP:NDESC. I'll let it go at that. Dicklyon (talk) 04:33, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

I still maintain that "massacre" should not be part of NDESC titles. The only reason I was not pushing for significant change here was to avoid making more of a mess than we already have. If you agree with me on this matter, perhaps we can work out a solution. Would you support either a deletion request, or a renaming to "2007 Carnation killings" or "murders"? RGloucester — ☎ 04:35, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Find at least one source and I'll support moving to killings or murders. This one calls it a massacre. It's marginally notable, but I'd probably not delete an article on such an event. Surely there are news stories at least. Dicklyon (talk) 04:53, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

There's the rub, though, Mr Lyon. We're using a NDESC title, not a common name. That one source you provided did not refer to this incident as the "Carnation massacre". It editorialised with the word "massacre" in a sentence describing the events. The title we're using is constructed, a neutral descriptive title, not one used commonly. That's what a WP:NDESC title. They are necessitated sometimes when there is no one unambiguous neutral common name. Given that we are constructing a WP:NDESC title, we must construct one that neutrally describes the events. The only neutral description is as "killings" or "murders", which describe what took place, rather than editorialise with value-laden terminology that is specifically frowned upon by the MoS. As far as deletion is concerned, see WP:LASTING and WP:PERSISTENCE. There is no evidence that this event had a lasting impact, or that it has had persistent and in-depth coverage in the years following its occurrence. It doesn't seem to meet the event notability criteria. Regardless, if you won't support deletion I shan't push for it. Let's instead focus on giving it a neutral title, as I said above. RGloucester — ☎ 05:00, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

@Darkfrog24 you wrote "PBS's response is that they are capitalized because they are capitalized in reliable sources and that the MoS doesn't apply." No that is not what I wrote what I wrote was "The policy revolves around what is common usage in reliable sources, not the dictates of the Wikipedia style guide. The Article titles policy has its own guidance on such things in guidelines that are called naming conventions. ..." and went on to describe what some of them are. -- PBS (talk) 15:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

@Dicklyon you wrote "and WP style is to pick lowercase." Yes! but that is lower case style decision based on AT policy not the MOS guideline " AT § Article title format ¶ Use lowercase, except for proper names" which is why when making such a move you should base your request on the AT policy not the MOS guidelines as you did in the Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves. -- PBS (talk) 15:15, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

PBS, AT has never ruled on style. Tony (talk) 13:15, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

What is this? Arabic vs. Muslim/Islamic

Can someone explain the origin of this bizarre note "The adjective Arab (never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic) refers to people and things of ethnic Arab origin. The term Arabic refers to the Arabic language or writing system, and related concepts (Not all Arab people write or converse in Arabic)"? Perhaps the note itself is fine, but the parenthetical "(never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic)" is absolutely absurd. I wonder why we have a specific note on this matter at all, given that no other ethnicity is given this special treatment. I also wonder who would confuse "Muslim or Islamic" with "Arab". Are we writing for the lowest common denominator, here? This just seems downright odd. RGloucester — ☎ 17:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

As no one seems to know why this note exists, I'm considering boldly removing it. RGloucester — ☎ 06:00, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

There have been lots of articles about Arab or Islamic scientists such as Alhazen where editors argue over whether to characterize them as Arab, Islamic, Arabic, or something else. I expect it arose out of some of those disputes. Dicklyon (talk) 06:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think you'll agree with me that the idea of confusing "Arab" with "Islamic" or "Muslim" is absurd, no? This strikes me as instruction creep, and downright absurd instruction creep at that. RGloucester — ☎ 06:19, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it's unclear to a lot of people how to refer to someone from that region and era, when they were both Arab and Islamic. Look at the usage stats. I'm not saying it's a great comment, just letting you know why it probably came to be put there. Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't see how it is unclear. They are not mutually exclusive. "Muslim" is not an ethnic identifier, and never has been. Regardless, perhaps that is how it arose, but that's not at all reason for a blurb in the MoS. I can easily name much more complicated ethnic/national identities that are not mentioned, and which are much more problematic. RGloucester — ☎ 06:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the unclarity is related to any issue of mutual exclusivity. Dicklyon (talk) 07:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

What is the issue? Follow reliable sources. Otherwise, if someone is "Arab" and "Muslim", one can call that person "an Arab Muslim". I don't understand what is hard about this. That's what the article you mentioned, Alhazen, does. RGloucester — ☎ 07:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

In protracted arguments that I have seen, the sources are mixed, and in some cases seem to themselves be confused. It's very hard to know how to characterize people from distant history, in terms of the presumed religious, ethnic, and cultural situation of their time and place. Like the thing about whether Maxwell is of Scottish nationality. Simple question, complicated arguments. Maybe you can straighten them out. Dicklyon (talk) 07:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It seems to have been inserted as part of this 2007 edit. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 06:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Clarification over the use of "Arab" vs "Arabic" was included in February 2005 and reworded in July 2005. RGloucester had deleted it entirely but I have restored it sans the unnecessary "Muslim or Islamic" remark as the advice is otherwise useful and has been fairly stable for almost a decade. The above discussion was mainly about the "Muslim or Islamic" remark rather than the "Arab" vs "Arabic" advice as a whole. —sroc 💬 19:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC) [added link to July 2005 version 19:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)]

If we're doing that, it seems odd that "Arabian" is not included. "Arabian" is used to refer to things from the Arabia, i.e. the Arabian Peninsula. RGloucester — ☎ 19:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

If we're doing what? The current wording has barely changed since July 2005. You were querying the "(never to be confused with Muslim or Islamic)" remark which is now gone. If you want to propose another change, do so, but is there any indication that further clarification on proper usage is suddenly needed? —sroc 💬 19:47, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

My opinion is that it should be eliminated all together. Unless we are going to provide a breakdown for all ethnicities, there is no reason why we should give special treatment in the MoS to "Arab" and "Arabic". This is instruction creep. If we're going to include this little note, then we should be comprehensive and include "Arabian", as well. RGloucester — ☎ 19:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

By the way, I think someone should take a look at the "Ethiopian"/"African" example, as that seems to be positing some kind of colonial point of view. RGloucester — ☎ 19:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

If it's instruction creep, it's a very slow creep – it's been there for a decade! "Arab"/"Arabic" is a special case because it has variant forms (and presumably it has been a source of confusion) so an explanation is justified to guide editors on proper usage. Same goes for the note on preferring "Jew" over "Jewish people". It doesn't mean other ethnicities or religions need mentioning for the sake or balance or completeness. Do you have any specific proposals on what to say about "Arabian" – or do you just have a vague sense that something must be said? —sroc 💬 21:24, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Merely because it has been there doesn't mean it should be. "Presumably it has been a source of confusion" is an odd thing to say. There has been plenty of confusion about "British/Scottish/English/Irish/Welsh, &c.", as mentioned by Mr Lyon, but I don't see a note saying "British, never to be confused with English", or any such similar nonsense. The note about "Jew" is an example, not a special note dealing with usage of the word "Jew". Why does this particular case, which doesn't seem that confusing at all, have its own special bullet in MOS:IDENTITY? What does it even have to do with "identity"? Regardless, if we must have a note on the "variant forms" you mention, it does not make sense to exclude one of those variant forms, i.e. "Arabian". RGloucester — ☎ 21:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

• The advice on proper use of "Arab" vs "Arabic" is good and Wikipedia is better for having it.
• The fact that its inclusion hasn't led to a plethora of notes on other ethnicities proves instruction creep isn't a concern.
• You still haven't indicated what you think should be said about "Arabian", only that something should be said. (The reasoning "We say X so we must say Y too" would be a symptom of instruction creep that you were apparently concerned about.)

—sroc 💬 02:52, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Why is Wikipedia "better" for it? What exactly does it accomplish? Nothing. It doesn't make any sense. It is an oddly specific note. No one has demonstrated what purpose it actually serves in the MoS. In this, it reminds me of the British milk rule at MOS:UNIT. Regardless, if you want to write it properly, it must be as follows: "The adjective 'Arabian' refers to people and things from the Arabia, i.e. the Arabian Peninsula. Not all Arabs are Arabian, and they are never 'Arabic'. 'Arabic' refers solely to the Arabic language, writing system, and related concepts. The adjective 'Arab' can refer to people or things from across the Arab world. Not all Arabs speak or write Arabic, and most Arabs are not from Arabia.

The present guidance is actually wrong, in that it says that "Arab" as an adjective refers to things of "ethnic Arab origin". "Arab" refers to a wider linguistic and cultural identity that is not based on ethnic origin, and includes many arabised peoples. RGloucester — ☎ 03:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

RG, English-speaking people in general often confuse "Arab" with "Muslim"/"Islamic." It's a common mistake made by nonprofessional writers. English-speaking people in general and nonprofessional writers are Wikipedia's editors and the MoS's audience, so a pre-emptive correction is offered (not even pre-emptive if people were making this mistake in the article space years ago). In contrast, people don't generally say "Irish" when they really mean "Catholic" or "Baptist" when they really mean "Texan," so there's no need to offer any instruction on the matter (per WP:NOTBROKEN). This is comparable to telling people how to use apostrophes in possessives of words that end in S. People often mess it up; the MoS provides clarification.

Please clarify your position. Do you think that Arabs and Muslims are the same (in which case I can show you some evidence that might put your mind at ease) or do you just think the MoS shouldn't mention it? Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:21, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't think "Arabs" and "Muslims" are the same, and no one else does either. No one confuses "Arab" with "Muslim". Please cite some sources that show that people are so idiotic as to confuse ethnic/national identity with religion. No one says "Irish" when they mean "Catholic", nor does anyone say "Arab" when they mean "Muslim". That's the most outrageous neo-colonial outlook I've ever heard. It seems that your definition of "people in general" is the lowest common denominator of idiots in western countries who are so parochial as to not understand a basic distinction. RGloucester — ☎ 03:27, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Your request for sources showing that confusing "Arab" and "Muslim" is a common mistake is more than reasonable. I found these in a brief Google search: See first line [3]; according to this, the New York Times made this mistake at least once [4]; and this one [5]; also, remember the time at one of McCain's 2008 presidential campaign speeches when the old lady called Obama an "A-rab"?

But if you run a similar search for "Irish" vs "Catholic," you won't see this kind of mistake. That's why the MoS should provide guidance for Arab/Muslim but not for, say, Irish/Catholic. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:15, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Nationality of people from the United Kingdom

On Wikipedia talk:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom it says- "It is suggested that you notify editors active at "Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)" of discussions on this essay taking place here by leaving a message at that guideline's talk page." So I am. 71.228.66.131 (talk) 05:05, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) is over there (and so is its talk page). Pburka (talk) 22:43, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Colons in quotemarks section

I'm editing on a smartphone, and I saw a confusing ambiguity due to screen width, in MOS:QUOTEMARKS under Quotation characters. The change explanation I put in is too long and gets truncated, so I'm copying it here:

Inserted colons before "Recommended at Wikipedia" and "Not recommended at Wikipedia". Reason: in mobile beta on narrow screen, each of these takes up exactly one line, which is not indented as on desktop site, and at a glance "Recommended..." looks like a subhead over the form that is not recommended.

--Thnidu (talk) 00:45, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. - Dank (push to talk) 01:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Present data in tables, not in narrative

The example paragraphs below happen to be from the page for Alameda, California, but the same style seems to be followed everywhere in Wikipedia. Presentation of simple data in narrative (paragraph) format is awfully hard to read. I suggest that all such data, on every relevant Wiki page, would be better presented in simple, clear, easy to read tables, and that the style manual be revised accordingly. Thank you for your consideration.

"The 2010 United States Census[24] reported that Alameda had a population of 73,812. The population density was 3,214.9 people per square mile (1,241.3/km²). The racial makeup of Alameda was 37,460 (50.8%) White, 4,759 (6.4%) African American, 426 (0.6%) Native American, 23,058 (31.2%) Asian, 381 (0.5%) Pacific Islander, 2,463 (3.3%) from other races, and 5,265 (7.1%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8,092 persons (11.0%)."

"There were 30,123 households, out of which 9,144 (30.4%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 13,440 (44.6%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 3,623 (12.0%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,228 (4.1%) had a male householder with no wife present. There were 1,681 (5.6%) unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 459 (1.5%) same-sex married couples or same-sex partnerships. 9,347 households (31.0%) were made up of individuals and 2,874 (9.5%) had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.40. There were 18,291 families (60.7% of all households); the average family size was 3.06." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.90.232.246 (talk) 17:09, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. People come here to read an encyclopedia, and paragraph form is standard for this type of information in encyclopedias. If someone were to make a really great table that used space efficiently, there wouldn't be much reason not to include both in the article. That's more or less why we have infoboxes in so many. Go ahead and start adding them if you want, but I wouldn't support a rule preferring them to text. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:49, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes prose is better than a table; sometimes a table is better than prose. For example, to list out the population of the three major countries on the North American continent, I'd do that in prose. To do all 200-some countries in the world, I'd want a table. It really depends on the data to presented, how much, and the like. But there's very few hard and fast rules here. --MASEM (t) 01:08, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

See WP:WHENTABLE. --  Gadget850 ^talk 01:36, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with 76.90.232.246. This kind of information is very laborious to read and assimilate in this prose form. A formatted layout would be better. 109.153.227.154 (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Language question

Concerning this edit at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 1, 2015: does anyone want to offer an opinion whether "a number of" and "several" have the same connotation? (I ask because there's a little evidence in AmEng dictionaries that they don't ... and if they don't, then the linked edit was probably the right call ... but it's not a call I want to make.) - Dank (push to talk) 23:06, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

In that context, "number" means "positive natural number".

—Wavelength (talk) 00:02, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

:) - Dank (push to talk) 00:12, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Wavelength, taken in context "a number of" and "several" mean the same thing (or close enough that it makes no difference). The change was very petty. However, since it really does not make any difference to the meaning, it would be even more petty to challenge the edit or try to change it back. Blueboar (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I would agree with John that "several" conveys the point more fluidly than "a number of", which sounds more artificial and vague, even though it means the same thing normally. Dicklyon (talk) 02:21, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I've been changing out "a number of" for "some" or "several" for a number of years now. It is one of a number of examples of stodgy prose which deserve to be shot on sight. I think a certain kind of writer may think that a number of sounds better than several or some. It is often found with its relatives additionally (instead of and), therefore (so) moreover, notably, and however. On Wikipedia we are not being paid by the word or the syllable, and short simple phrases which convey the same meaning as stodgy pompous ones should always be favoured. Whether one calls this "petty" or "copyediting towards clarity" is I suppose a judgement call. I am pretty secure in my belief that "some" is better than "a number of". The regular requests I receive to do copyedits during FAC seem to bear out my belief. --John (talk) 12:49, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

The words additionally and and are not interchangeable. The former is an adverb for modifying clauses, but the latter is a coordinating conjunction for joining clauses. Likewise, however is an adverb, and but is a coordinating conjunction. The words though and although are subordinating conjunctions. Where though or although introduces a subordinate clause, the sentence requires a main clause, either before or after the subordinate clause.

—Wavelength (talk) 01:16, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't make a habit of changing text for your minor preferences. Others have other preferences, and as far as I know there's nothing in the WP:MOS to encourage such changes. Dicklyon (talk) 02:21, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Slight preference for "several", but agree with Blueboar—unnecessary to change or revert. Tony (talk) 08:01, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

"Does anyone want to offer an opinion ...?" I can't resist, so I regret visiting this page!
"Several" connotes more than a few --and denotes more than a few in American English as I learned it-- where "a number of" covers both few and several. The full article identifies more than a few respects in which this rendition was first among Rose Bowls, so the writer who digested the full article for Today's feature (several days ago) might well have used "several"; should have used it, in my opinion; and the revision by User:John is "copyediting towards clarity" per John.

Otherwise,

• Zero is a number, as John said in edit summary. So is one. But "a number of plurals" and "some plurals" both connote more than one and it's reasonable to pay attention to connotations as well as stricter meanings.
• I prefer "some" to "a number of", where "several" is not accurate, and in the course of other editing I routinely replace "a number of" with some where the context does not support either "several" or "[a] few".
• The digest-writer selected one among several firsts identified in the full article for identification in Today's feature. I agree with that judgment but would go further; reword something like these:

It was the first Rose Bowl broadcast by radio, and first in other respects.

It was the first Rose Bowl broadcast by radio.

Probably the short version, but I would accept the long one here (or "some other", or "several other", etc).

These remarks pertain to the lead section and body of an article, same as to a digest and a full article.

--P64 (talk) 18:46, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks P64. The digest-writer would be me, for articles appearing starting this month ... but that's more of an accident than a plan, I'm happy to accept any help writing them, as long as the community of writers has some kind of cohesion. People don't generally pay attention to these TFA paragraphs after their TFA day, so I'd rather not spend time fixing those, for now, I've got fires to put out. - Dank (push to talk) 22:55, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Pockets of Over-capitalization

Every now and then I run into a cluster of articles titled with caps, and riddled with over-capitalization internally. I used to just fix them, and usually got no comments when doing so. But it seems that more often I'm finding a few zealots who want their stuff capitalized as "proper names", even though sources are very mixed, or in some cases even overwhelmingly lowercase. There's no question that WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS call for lowercase in these situations, yet the "fist shaking" (as SMcCandlish puts it) of the zealots, and the general apathy of most editors about matters of style, sometimes make it hard to get the obvious outcome if these are taken to Requested Move discussion. And even when the consensus seems clear, it appears that admins fear to close them (see the backlog at WP:RM, which includes the Pottawatomie Massacre discussion that's over 3 weeks old, for what looks like an easy case).

The latest cluster I noticed is around the term "Championship Game". Sources are clear, but WP titles are way over-capitalized.

Example: User:AAlertBot makes alerts to wikiprojects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics, where Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68) is included under Announcements, which is possibly why User:Calidum, a member of that wikiproject, shows up to oppose the capitalization fix, giving no reason except "forgive me for not wanting to rehash every argument presented by those opposing the move".

Would it be a sensible idea to advertise here at WT:MOS all RM discussions that invoke MOS style issues? Many wikiprojects seem to list related RMs automatically, bringing out their specialists thereby. Would it be bad form for people who care about style guidance to have such a scheme, too? Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

That's canvassing, pure and simple. This "we know better than you" attitude reminds me of "Esperanza". Who exactly are "people who care about style guidance"? That sounds like the recipe for a cabal. You can try asking at Wikipedia talk:Canvassing, but I don't think the reception will be positive. RGloucester — ☎ 05:20, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

RGloucester is no doubt chief zeolot, who presents not-very-convincing yet loud challenges to evidence of clear majority downcasing from ngrams; I think a number of editors are becoming sick of this negative input. Just recently, he reverted my downcasing of several titles in the area of Australian federal politics: "[Surname of prime minister] Ministry" (an area, incidentally, in which the main texts are riddled with vanity capping that look suspiciously like contributions from ministerial staffers). This is despite the fact that the articles on Australian state ministries tend to be downcased—a matter RGloucester seemed to pass over. RGloucester, please calm down and stop the zealotry, which at times can be a little aggressive. Tony (talk) 05:38, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Cease with the personal attacks. I'm no "zealot" (I've agreed with the vast majority of the changes, but disagreed with the procedure), and said that I would support a decapitalisation of those articles if done in bulk at an RM to avoid inconsistency in the category. You've not opened the RM. RGloucester — ☎ 06:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, RGloucester has backed off on that, but finds other ways to throw wrenches into discussions, as at Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68), where his Oppose vote says he favors the decapitalization that I proposed. Dicklyon (talk) 06:06, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I've not thrown a single spanner in my life. It's a crap constructed title, fails WP:UCN, WP:CONCISE, and a variety of other junk. I'm not going to support a junk title. I hope people see the light and support my proposal, which is better for the encylopaedia. I hope you understand that the bot sending notices to Wikiprojects that have tagged an article is acceptable, but you canvassing support from "people who care about style guidance" is not. That's a form of advocacy, and I don't see why you can't understand that. As far as the particulars of !votes with no substance, the closer is supposed to strike those, as I'm sure you know. By the way, you pinged Calidum, so I don't know why you're bringing up this canard in this instance. RGloucester — ☎ 06:10, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Good point on the ping! So, abstractly, does advertising at projects seems like a fair thing if we can't advertise here? Dicklyon (talk) 06:19, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Tony1, I'm not really referring to RGloucester, as much as to the fact that each area or wikiproject is likely to have one or a few zealots of this sort. He was the zealot for riots and massacres, but not due to a wikiproject as far as I know. And Randy Kryn is the zealot for the civil rights movements articles; he didn't come via a project either; but some of those supporting him likely did. RG says this kind of project advertising is OK, but if we do advertising here, that would be canvassing. Does that make sense? Dicklyon (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It does, because this is not a project. It does not tag articles. You are outright saying that you want to come here and ask people that "care about style guidance" to influence move discussions that they would not otherwise be apart of, for the express purpose of supporting your position. As I said, you should ask at Wikipedia talk:Canvassing. If you want to "bring titles into accord with guidelines", you are still subject to the same processes as everyone else. File a requested move. RGloucester — ☎ 06:28, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Right, we at MOS do not tag articles, since our guidance, and our concerns, span all articles. So we can't get AAlertBot to make automatic announcements for us. So, is there some other way to keep informed about relevant workflow items? And yes I expect that they would likely support my position if they care about style issues and the guidance of MOS, but they might not support me if my position is wrong. More generally, many others propose RMs with style issues; sometimes they will be supported by those who believe in the guidance of MOS, and sometimes they will not be. Dicklyon (talk) 06:49, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Who is "us"? There are no members of the MoS. It is not a project. Please use the existing channels. RGloucester — ☎ 07:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. No members. This talk page is a central place for people who care about MOS style issues. Dicklyon (talk) 07:07, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

No, it is a page for discussing changes to the guideline. RGloucester — ☎ 07:09, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, this page is for discussing changes to MOS. Where do we take discussions of application of MOS then? Dicklyon (talk) 07:12, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

To the pages in question. File an RM like everyone else in the world does when they want to change a longstanding article title. RGloucester — ☎ 07:17, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

(I've added a comment below, thanks) Randy Kryn 12:32 30 December, 2014 (UTC)

A 'zealot' for the civil rights articles, am I? Thank god for that, someone has to step in at some point. I came to be a zealot because Dicklyon changed all the titles of the CRM pages to lower-case, and I reverted. He then gave me the Dick-lyon treatment on my talk page. I found, through looking at his recent contributions, that he was trying to decapitalize such long-standing event names as the Pullman Strike, the Homestead Strike and Watts Riot - all of which have become proper names used by labor historians, historical societies, and universities. I opposed those changes, as I've done the attempt (on a week when many people are on holiday or otherwise occupied) on the CRM pages, which have been consistent and correctly titled since their inception. Methinks the term 'zealot' may be being used here as a mirror effect. In my limited viewpoint of this issue, and this is a personal viewpoint from coming in in the middle (or is it the endgame? See how personal viewpoints work...) of what I'm becoming aware is a long-term effort, what I see is an editor looking to de-emphasize, on Wikipedia, the major labor and social movements of the 20th Century. I may have come upon this late, and do not know what has occurred before these attempts, but I do know that the capitalization of the proper names of the civil rights movement pages is very common, very sensible, has clear concise arguments why they should remain as they are, and if trying to protect Wikipedia's legacy in this field is being a zealot then I'll borrow a childhood favorite's sword and cut a large 'Z' on my clothes (or is it applied as a scarlet letter on this go-around?). Bottom line, this site has the best civil rights movement pages on the web, imnho, and they can only continue to improve as more data is added and refined. Randy Kryn 12:26 30 December, 2014 (UTC)

Championship Game titles

And how might we go about bringing the Championship Game titles into accord with guidelines? Dicklyon (talk) 06:22, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Maybe by....leaving them alone? Championship Game seems like something which would be a proper name, when applied to games with teams I like. When it's teams I don't like, even if other people do, then change them to lower-case! That'll teach 'em. Am I playing the game right? Randy Kryn 13:05 30 December, 2014 (UTC)

Exactly how do you define "proper name", Randy? This is a critical question that the capping brigade just ... will ... not ... answer. Could you break the impasse, then, here? Tony (talk) 13:07, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

My comment in this section was more or less going on expressions like 'The Big Game', etc. (will 'Super Bowl' ever be 'Super bowl' - in effect, just another dish?). But with something like the African-American Civil Rights Movement pages, the proper name comes when a series of events are looked at by historians and others as a unit, an era in which major shifts in societal agreements were looked at and acted upon by a small group of people (the core of the movement was really about 20 people or less - pulling that number out of my hat but it seems about right, with the top-tier of the movement actually ending up to be two people), which created a national dialogue, and that dialogue (brought about by concise and well-planned use of Gandhian-principals and nonviolent technology) then changed agreements which had been in place for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This was done, or at least finally accomplished, from 1960 to 1966, by people who had the know-how to do it. It is as important an era, an event, in world history as the American Revolution, or French Revolution. When things reach that level, I and many others see them, experience them, as proper names. Maybe what constitutes a proper name is when a large percentage of a population, or a large percentage of academics and historians, see the topic as such. For those of us who, for example, see the 'Pullman Strike' as a single-event (although made up of hundreds of other events), the capitalization seems not only appropriate but essential. It all comes down to, as everything does, viewpoint, and sometimes accepting that other viewpoints are valid, especially on pages here which have had the same names since their inception, is as easy as just letting them alone. If my experience with disagreements like this check-out, Dicklyon and I may become buds at some point, and take turns buying each other real or virtual beers (or buds). Right now there is a point of view difference, I've been called a zealot because of that (huh?), and am having my Zorro cape and mask darned (actually I used to have a Zorro cape and mask as a kid, wish I'd kept them). Thanks for being polite. Randy Kryn 13:40 30 December, 2014 (UTC)

I'm glad you admit the parallels between the different things that people hold dear and want to honor by capitalizing. But that is not WP's style. I don't think you have to worry about "Super Bowl", as it is consistently treated as a proper name in sources, like the "French Revolution" is. Dicklyon (talk) 22:30, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

That's quite a selective reading of my comment. That's what you saw in it, what you took from it? Okay. As for the Super Bowl, that was a satiric comment, of course nobody would attempt to change an obvious name (I heard that someone actually tried to change Monroe Doctrine to Monroe doctrine once). Randy Kryn 19:42 31 December, 2014 (UTC)

Not so much a selective reading as a selective thanking. Cheers! Dicklyon (talk) 00:42, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that an RM discussion will probably attract mostly football fans, and they'll want to capitalize what's important to them, as Randy does with what's important to him. To me, these things are all important; I have nothing against football championship games, or civil rights movements, or riots and massacres, but I tend to agree that WP looks more professional as we work to implement the style guidelines. There don't seem to be enough people who agree with me anymore though, so maybe I'll give it up; at least until I retire and have nothing better to do... Dicklyon (talk) 23:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Deciding what to capitalize

@Tony1: as I suspect you well know, Tony, there is no clear definition which applies to all proper names in English. "Prototypical proper names" like Jane, John Doe, Washington or New York, are easy to recognize using grammatical tests, and it seems that we all agree to capitalize them. "Non-prototypical proper names" like White House, Prime Minister, French Revolution or General Strike (in each case referring to one unique entity) are not easy to recognize by grammatical tests. Their capitalization is a convention which has changed over time and is still changing, and which differs somewhat between variants of English. Thus as an elderly Briton, I would capitalize Prime Minister in both "The Prime Minister spoke to the press today" (meaning the current British Prime Minister) and in "Many Commonwealth countries have a Prime Minister", whereas other people would decapitalize either the second or both. All we can hope for in Wikipedia is some measure of consistency (so why Prime minister but Secretary of State?). Peter coxhead (talk) 23:28, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I think that's why MOS:CAPS suggests the test "consistently capitalized in sources"; where that's not the case, the caps are "unnecessary". Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: the problem with "consistently capitalized in sources" is that in many problematic cases there isn't consistency, so people pick their sources (e.g. if you want the English names of species in lower case, you disregard all "specialized" sources; for other capitalization cases you choose your ENGVAR carefully). This quickly becomes circular: "X isn't a reliable source because it does/doesn't capitalize." Clear rules for categories of noun phrase, like job titles, are easier for everyone to follow and ensure greater consistency. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I've seen that problem only a little. In the case of species common names, the specialist sources are a minority anyway, so excluding them doesn't change the picture. Changing ENGVAR seldom makes much difference, and seldom comes up, but if it did and it was shown that caps are consistent in the variety that the article is written in, that would seem like an OK argument at least. I certainly agree on the need for more clear rules; we have that written down already for some things, like job titles, and that helps a bit. Perhaps the Chief Mechanical Engineer was the odd corner case where the more consistent caps in British English conflicted with our stated rules, but even if that's what you're getting at, that's a one-in-a-thousand problem. I'm talking about the everyday overcapitalization of things like riots, strikes, movements, games, and so many other things, including many where caps are not even very common, and people still insist they're "necessary" in some made-up sense. Dicklyon (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Peter, I want to know how Randy defines proper names, since he's made his case depend on it. Still waiting to hear from him on this. "Secretary of state" should definitely be downcased if not attached to a specific secretary of state. The fact that you're elderly (I am almost that) is no explanation or justification for rigidity. Tony (talk) 05:12, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Tony, re rigidity, I agree, but equally I'm as entitled to my preferences as anyone else is to theirs, and the truth is that a lot of the argument about capitalization and other style issues is ultimately just a matter of preference. If you want to apply the "consistently capitalized in sources" test, by the way, according to Google ngrams, "a Prime Minister" is marginally more common in British English than "a Prime Minister" and "a Secretary of State" more common in US English than "a secretary of state", so both should be capitalized on this test. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Peter: "more common" and "marginally more common" don't equal "consistently" capped. Tony (talk) 14:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

The problem is cases where the proper name of a game, or anything for that matter, is identical, except for the capitalization, to a simple descriptive phrase. For example, the "NFC Championship Game" is just what it says on the tin, the championship game of the National Football Conference, one of two in the NFL. Just because that is the case, and newspapers and other writers may use the non-proper-noun descriptor version ("NFC championship game") in use does not make it any less of a proper noun. Just that they're getting it wrong. And proper nouns are capitalized in English. It's not about importance, promotion or any other such assumption of bad faith it's factually correct. Hate to tell you this, but newspapers and magazines, the principle source of sports writing and sports writers aren't exactly the most careful when it comes to grammatical rules because of the deadlines they work under (and yes it bleeds into their books too). We aren't under such a deadline, so no reason we can't actually treat proper nouns as proper nouns, even if the non-proper version is a perfectly accurate descriptor as well. oknazevad (talk) 17:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Oknazevad: but this is where Tony's earlier challenge comes in – provide a clear definition of a "proper noun/noun phrase/name" independent of whether it is capitalized or not. This is exceedingly difficult to do, so it's not a helpful rule to say that "proper nouns are capitalized in English". Peter coxhead (talk) 22:09, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

For a comical example of the bullshit that people will emit to avoid complying with MOS:CAPS, see Talk:Rose Bowl Game#Requested move 31 December 2014. I didn't expect much better, based on last time, but I didn't expect to attract two new parroters of the theory that didn't pan out last time. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

This comment is exceedingly asinine. Personal attacks, assumption if bad faith, canvassing and authoritarianistic tendencies all rolled into one. Instead of actually, just maybe accepting that you're wrong about the facts or the interpretation of guidelines you immediately call the opinion of anyone who disagrees with you "bullshit". You're not some specially enlightened being we must all defer to. You're just another editor who is incorrect. Again. Happens. But most people can accept that when numerous other editors point I out to them. Instead you arrogantly insult everyone else. Utterly unacceptable. oknazevad (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Here bullshit is a term of art meaning 'nonsense', especially in a rebuking response to communication or actions viewed as deceiving, misleading, disingenuous, or false. The claims that "Rose Bowl game" might frequently mean something other than the Rose Bowl Game is demonstrably false, and was invoked here in a misleading and disingenuous way, in my opinion. If nobody has been able to find a single example of what they are claiming to be skewing the book usage statistics, why are they repeating that silly claim except to deceive? (It might not be clear, but this comment was posted here after just the first two responses there; the ones that invoked this known-false strawman; it was not intended to say that everyone there is emitting bullshit, just the first two. Though JonRidinger's point added later is also bullshit.) Dicklyon (talk) 17:41, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I read the section, and if the full title 'Rose Bowl Game' is used then it's correct (there are many games played in Rose Bowl Stadium, but only one Rose Bowl Game), but I have no idea why the page isn't named 'Rose Bowl', the common name of this game. Like dogs barking up the wrong tree, that should be the discussion on that page, not the other. But yeah, Dicklyon, you are a little harsh in your comment here about that perfectly reasonable talk in progress. Still, it seems they're talking about the wrong thing. Randy Kryn 19:37 31 December, 2014 (UTC)

Randy, you're just regurgitating their bullshit. Have you found a single instance of where "Rose Bowl game" refers to a game played in the Rose Bowl other than the bowl game? The proper way to disambiguate the stadium from the game is also under discussion; I'd prefer natural disambiguation, but I'm losing that one, too. So it goes. Dicklyon (talk) 00:42, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

To throw oil on troubled water (and light it), these are time-varying proper nouns, and probably shouldn't be used at all in an encyclopedia, except with the year, which would make them proper adjectives, which should not be capitalized. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:31, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about. But it's New Year's Eve, so light it up! Dicklyon (talk) 00:42, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Other humorously stupid (stupidly humorous?) comments against decapitalization come from people who don't bother reading what the question is about, or what the evidence says, like [6]: "[caps] are necessary to show that they are proper names and not names of a generic phenomenon ("Let's have a pullman strike this week.") or a descriptive (Who struck which "pullman"?)" Sheesh. Dicklyon (talk) 03:53, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

And another fairly idiotic nonsequitur: "Something has to be the most common word following "Rose Bowl". That doesn't mean that word should part of the proper name.". Why don't people think? Dicklyon (talk) 05:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I never knew this, but it does seem the real name of the game (although I'd say "Rose Bowl" would be its common name) is 'Rose Bowl Game' with the capital 'G'. It was all over the television presentation of the game yesterday, and was used in other forms. As the old football saying goes, "I learn something new every day (or is it 'knew' every day, as in "I knew the name of the game is Rose Bowl and now I know it is 'Rose Bowl Game'"). Who gnu? So I guess the voters on the page were right, although if you go for a common name change I'd vote on that one (I wonder when people are going to try to add the corporate sponsors to the 'Common names' of bowl games). Randy Kryn 10:40 2 January, 2015 (UTC)

Not clear what you mean by "real name". The "official name" is given in the article, but it's too long to use. The common names are "Rose Bowl" and "Rose Bowl game", according to usage stats. Dicklyon (talk) 16:34, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Back to the question

The question is really about how to make progress. I felt it was useful to work toward consistency with guidelines, but nowadays that is made difficult by editors who are unwilling or unable to look at the evidence from sources, unwilling to treat guidelines as important, and zealous about protecting the capitalization of things important to them. We got past this on birds, and on lots of small pockets of over-capitalization that I hesitate to mention, but now we're hung up on a few oddities like Watts Riots and Pullman Strike and Rose Bowl Game, as well as the African-American Civil Rights Movement articles. The only thing special that I can see about these is their fan base that is perfectly willing the ignore the preponderance of lowercase usage in books, or make up flaky theories for why that might be, and/or perfectly happy to proposed new reasons to capitalize that are contrary to WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS.

So I'm open to advice about how to proceed. Mostly likely I'll just give it a pause, as I have a book to finish... Dicklyon (talk) 18:27, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Sir, there have been many logical reasons put forward on all of those pages by quite a few different people which detail why they see and use them as proper names, and they present data which shows a large percentage of source material data lists them as proper names. Now you're are adding Rose Bowl Game to your list, and ignoring actual information about it. As I wrote above, which maybe you didn't see, if you watched the game yesterday the capitalization was all over the broadcast. It's the legal name of the event. How can you just ignore and discount that? I'm all for voting on its common name being "Rose Bowl", but the proposal you put forward is to decapitalize "Rose Bowl Game" to "Rose Bowl game" which seems, given the data, inaccurate. As for calling people who point things out to you a "Fan base", kind of a condescending way to describe fellow editors who care about these pages, no? Editors who have presented as much, if not more, evidence as you that those names are rightfully proper names, rightfully capitalized, and have been since their articles were first created on Wikipedia. In the case of the African-American Civil Rights Movement pages, lower-case redirects did not even exist until recently, showing that people coming to or editing Wikipedia have never thought about it enough to do even that. Sometimes a rose is just a Rose, and sometimes capitalization is appropriate, sometimes it isn't (one fan base I'm a glad member of consists of basers who appreciate Anne Hathaway's amazing performance in Les Miserable). Randy Kryn 19:28 2 January, 2015 (UTC)

Randy, why should I pay attention to your opinion, if you back it up with blatant lies? Dicklyon (talk) 21:04, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Few people have accused me of lying, because I try not to, and do so to a fault. I said that the titles provided in the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' capitalize it. Every one does. The titles of the sources use capitalization. What kind of stretch did you put on this to call it a lie - and lying means deceiving on purpose, a game I do not play. Randy Kryn 4:08 3 January, 2015 (UTC)

If your statements are not lies, they are just confusion. I accept that your sources capitalize "Pullman Strike" in their titles, and maybe that was all you were saying. That is hardly the point, though, when it comes to looking at whether they treat it as a proper name. If in the text they use "Pullman strike", without capitalizing "strike", then that's evidence that they do not treat Pullman strike as a proper name; you cite these as evidence for the opposite of what they show. That kind of confusion is BLATANTLY FALSE even if not an intentional lie. What would you prefer that I call it? Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I said titles, I meant titles. It was an observation I made upon having a quick look at the reference section. Please, if people disagree with you on Wikipedia, assume good faith. In this case that assumption would have been correct. Randy Kryn 4:24 3 January, 2015 (UTC)

You actually said "It looks like almost all if not all the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' in their titles capitalize the phrase." It would have been more correct to say "It looks like almost all if not all the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' in their titles do not capitalize the phrase when they use it in a sentence." or "It looks like almost all if not all the references which include the words 'Pullman Strike' in their titles treat it as NOT a proper name." You are throwing out BS as if it is evidence, when it really supports the opposite of your point. Dicklyon (talk) 04:29, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

• Dick... you are probably not going to like my advice on how to proceed, but I will give it anyway: If you are finding that consensus is to not follow the MOS in certain articles... just accept it. Think of them as WP:Ignore all rules situations if you are having difficulty letting go. Consensus rules... even when you think consensus may be "wrong". Blueboar (talk) 02:00, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, good point. When most editors of an article want to ignore all rules, and make up bullshit reasons to do so, I should just move on. I will. Not ready to give up on Pullman strike yet, but certainly not going to sweat the football fans at Rose Bowl Game. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, when "most" editors of an article want to breach our style guidelines, it's up to them to present special justification. This is sometimes quite possible—has been done in the past and will be in the future. But there's no open slather on the matter, not on such a densely populated site as en.WP, where our centralised style guidance minimises arguments on talkpages. Tony (talk) 08:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Given that our policies and guidelines are supposed to reflect the consensus of the community... if "most" editors want to "breach" our style guidelines, then I would say that the breach has consensus and not the style guideline. Perhaps we need to be more willing to change our style guidelines to better reflect what the community desires. Then the "breach" will no longer be a "breach".

Alternatively, more style editors can accept that MOS is excellent guidance (great advice, but advice that has lots of exceptions... advice that we can encourage, but not force, others to follow)... MOS should be viewed as guidance and not some sort of Law or "Rule" that needs to be enforced. Blueboar (talk) 02:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

In the Infoboxes case, ArbCom ruled that editors seeking to do maintenance on articles had to defer to the preferences of the content creators. So it is up to the editors wanting to enforce the MOS to justify their stance, and seek a new consensus. If the content creators stick to their guns, then the editors seeking changes must back down. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:21, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

That would be consistent with WP:FIVEPILLARS which mentions "Seek consensus" and "Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone ..."—Bagumba (talk) 01:05, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization of "sun"

This has come up before, but It doesn't appear that a true, official consensus was formed.

i believe "sun" should never be capitalized unless it is the first word in a sentence, or other extenuating circumstances. Although the sun presently refers to a specific star to us, that was not known at the time the word came into being. And, if, let's say, what if you speak English but live on a planet in another solar system? Wouldn't the star your planet orbits be "the sun"? In English-language sci-fi literature and film, usually stars with planets orbiting them are referred to as "suns," as in the Star Wars universe, Tatooine has "two suns." In the Superman universe, Krypton had a red sun and Earth had a yellow sun that give him his powers. It simply doesn't make sense that all of a sudden the capitalization of a word would change. And NO, I don't want to call it 'Sol'. -- Dougie WII (talk) 08:49, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think experts in the field would riot at the idea of downcasing the Sun, that is, "Sol", to give it its titular name. But your example of "the two suns" is perfectly correct—I suppose it's "the two stars" in a local solar-system context (just not our solar system). Tony (talk) 13:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

• Experts haven't been downgrading the sun, it's been the populous that has been upgrading it. Historically it has always been a common noun. -- Dougie WII (talk) 09:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

@Dougie WII: For future reference, the word you want there is "populace", not its homophone. --Thnidu (talk) 04:13, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

If the context is limited to the :olar System, as in "the sun rose", sun can usually be interpreted as a common noun, but proper nouns should always be capitalized, as in

• "Fomalhaut b is a recently discovered exoplanet about 25 light-years from the Sun."

--Boson (talk) 13:44, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The guideline here seems confusing:

When used generally, the words sun, earth, and moon do not take capitals (The sun was peeking over the mountain top; The tribal people of the Americas thought of the whole earth as their home), except when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the Roman sun god) or when the term names a specific astronomical body (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).

The instruction to capitalise "when the term names a specific astronomical body" suggest capitalising Sun and Earth when referring to those in our Solar System and Moon when referring to the Earth's moon, contradicting the first two examples (i.e., should it be The Sun was peeking over the mountain top and The tribal people of the Americas thought of the whole Earth as their home?). The guidance at MOSCAPS is much clearer:

The words sun, earth, moon and solar system are capitalized (as proper names) when used in an astronomical context to refer to a specific celestial body (our Sun, Earth, Moon and Solar System): The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System; The Moon orbits the Earth. They are not capitalized when used outside an astronomical context (The sky was clear and the sun felt warm), or when used in a general sense (Io is a moon of Jupiter). However, they are capitalized in personifications, as in Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the Roman sun god.

Can MOS be revised to more clearly reflect MOSCAPS on this? —sroc 💬 14:17, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It really can not be improved because it can be confusing in instructional use everywhere. According to some instructions: Correct; "I live on earth.", "I live on Earth that is warmed by the Sun" (used with other capitalized celestial bodies). "The Earth we live on is warmed by the Sun." (same). Earth (or Sun) as a proper noun is capitalized. Common nouns are generally not especially when following an article such as the earth, a sun, or a planet. A "specific" astronomical body would be a proper noun. Using earth or sun in reference to a surface or stratum would not be capitalized like "the surface of the earth", "the surface of the sun", "...hotter than the surface of the sun", However, "The Sun is very hot" would be capitalized. Following the above it would seem that Krypton had a red sun and Earth had a yellow sun (specific astronomical context and two used in the same sentence,) would be wrong except that when sun is used as a synonym for star, Krypton is not in our Solar System, and both are following "a". Confused yet?` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Otr500 (talk • contribs)

@Otr500: "It really can not be improved..." Well, it can and it must. The current guidance at MOS is confusing as "generally, the words sun, earth, and moon do not take capitals" is at odds with "when the term names a specific astronomical body" which implies that "Sun", "Earth" and "Moon" should be capitalised when referring to the Sun, the Earth (is there any other, apart from "dirt"?) and the Moon – and it's contradicted by MOSCAPS. The guidance at MOSCAPS is clear and we'd be better off just copy-pasting it here. At the very least, it should be amended along the lines:

When used generally, the words sun, earth, and moon do not take capitals (The sun was peeking over the mountain top; The tribal people of the Americas thought of the whole earth as their home), except when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the Roman sun god) or when used as the names of specific bodies in an astronomical context (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).

The words "When used generally" are also misplaced, since the exceptions fall outside the "general" uses. —sroc 💬 18:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

@Sroc:: Concerning "It really can not be improved...": My bad, I actually meant the overall capitalization concept has issues depending on what style is consulted. We can certainly make whatever improvements we need so that it will make more sense when presented here. I hit an edit conflict (twice today) and see I missed re-signing my comments. Anyway, we do need to reconcile to conflicting areas as best we can. You didn't mention issues with what I stated and I don't argue with needed improvements you mentioned. Either someone else needs to chime in or just boldly fix it and we can deal with anyone that gets ruffled feathers. Otr500 (talk) 23:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I've already boldly fixed it. —sroc 💬 02:46, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't see consensus sufficient to reverse the longstanding practice here. "The Sun", when referring to Sol, is a proper name, astronomical context or not. --Trovatore (talk) 04:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

@Trovatore:What do you mean "reverse the longstanding practice"? The change that you reverted merely brought the summary at MOS in line with the specific guideline at MOSCAPS, as discussed above. —sroc 💬 04:38, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

By the way, this has been the guidance at MOSCAPS since it was created in 2006. —sroc 💬 04:46, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The reference to "an astronomical context" was removed in this edit in 2009 by Greg L which, in my view, causes confusion in cases where the names of celestial bodies are used generally. The reference to "astronomical context" should be restored to clarify this distinction and maintain consistency with MOSCAPS. —sroc 💬 05:11, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. MOSCAPS should be changed to capitalize all the proper-noun instances; that is, all the cases where "Sun" or "Moon" is being used as the name of a unique body, rather than a description of it. --Trovatore (talk) 05:32, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Then you need to raise this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. Note that the advice at MOSCAPS has stated to use lowercase for general use since 2006 when it was ported from MOS. The advice here at MOS still maintains this, it is just poorly written. If you want to change the guidelines, you need to establish consensus. Otherwise, my correction here should be reinstated for the sake of clarity and consistency with MOSCAPS. —sroc 💬 06:49, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

This has been the rule here for years, and lots of the MOS regulars always insist that in cases of conflict, the main MOS takes precedence. I think you're the one who needs to establish consensus for a change. --Trovatore (talk) 07:08, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I think you are mistaken as to what MOS currently says, namely:

When used generally, the words sun, earth, and moon do not take capitals (The sun was peeking over the mountain top; The tribal people of the Americas thought of the whole earth as their home), except when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the Roman sun god) or when the term names a specific astronomical body (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).

Thus, MOS already says that the use of "sun", "earth" and "moon" are lowercase in everyday context (e.g., "The sun was setting") but not in an astronomical context (e.g., "They re-entered Earth's orbit"). I only seek to clarify the wording as this seems to be a source of confusion. What you are seeking to do is to change the rule to say that "the Sun", "the Earth" and "the Moon" should always be capitalised (e.g., "The Sun was setting") which would be a substantive change to both MOS and MOSCAPS, and therefore would require consensus. —sroc 💬 13:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

It says "names an astronomical body", not "in an astronomical context". I think this is important. If it's the named body in question, then it should be capitalized, whether we're talking about astronomy or not.

I might give you "the sun was setting", because the Sun does not really set. You could maybe stretch a point to claim that it's the sun, in the sense of sunlight, that's disappearing.

But here's a non-astronomical context where I would really want to insist on "Sun": Communications were disrupted by interference from charged particles coming from the Sun.. --Trovatore (talk) 20:55, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that "Sun" should be capitalised in your example (Communications were disrupted by interference from charged particles coming from the Sun) because it is in an astronomical context.

Your argument is refuted by the second example: The tribal people of the Americas thought of the whole earth as their home. This clearly refers to the astronomical body called Earth, but it is not in an astronomical context, so it is not capitalised. This anomaly crept in from Greg L's edit which mistakenly confused "an astronomical context when referring to specific celestial bodies" with "properly-capitalized astronomical bodies" (which is ambiguous anyway). It's time this error of confusion was corrected. —sroc 💬 01:46, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

The "communications" example is not in an astronomical context. The context is communications. It's very possible that it would appear in an article that is not remotely "astronomy"; say, one about television stations. For the "tribal people" example, yes, I suppose that would be a change. --Trovatore (talk) 01:51, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

How would you re-phrase MOS to avoid the anomaly between "When used generally" and "when the term names a specific astronomical body"? For example:

The words sun, earth, and moon do not take capitals in general use (The sun was peeking over the mountain top; The tribal people of the Americas thought of the whole earth as their home). They are capitalised when the entity is personified (Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the Roman sun god) or when the term names a specific body in a scientific or astronomical context (The Moon orbits the Earth; but Io is a moon of Jupiter).

—sroc 💬 04:14, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Cant we just say "our sun"? -- Dougie WII (talk) 09:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It looks to me like book usage is mostly lower case even in cases that would be interpreted as referring specifically to the Earth's sun, as in "The sun", "our sun", "rising sun", "setting sun", etc. There must be some more specific context in which capitalization is considered to be appropriate, or required. Perhaps "astronomical context" is good guidance for caps? Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

You may very well be right that that is the more popular usage in books. But this is a case, like logical punctuation, where we have had the better rule, the more "logical" one, in place, and I would be very reluctant to backslide on that.

The common noun/proper noun distinction, in English, is the distinction between something being described and being named. Granted, there are fuzzy cases, where you have a description that only one object satisfies, and it's not entirely clear whether it's being used as a description, or as a name.

But I would argue that it's quite clear in the cases at hand. The Sun is a particular hot ball of gas. Other hot balls of gas are poetically "suns", but the more common common-noun use of "sun" is in the sense of "sunlight". It's perfectly clear which of these to treat as a name.

Similarly with Earth, a particular ball of rock, versus earth, which is dirt. There's earth on Mars, that good red Martian earth.

We should keep this distinction. --Trovatore (talk) 07:04, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I see a confusion creeping in in the last couple of posts. Try substitution of other objects and compare. "The cow jumped over the moon" refers to a specific cow and a specific moon by virtue of the article "the", yet the linguistic use is of a common noun, not a proper name: we do not capitalize "cow" when preceded by "the". Proper names sometimes include a pronoun, as in "the Beatles", even though it is not necessarily capitalized. Imagine that we had two moons, as Mars does. The sentence "The cow jumped over the moon" would still make sense, but would imply that which moon was being referred to was obvious from the context (e.g. by virtue of being visible or previously selected, while the other wasn't). Similarly, we could have had a binary primary: two suns, and would still have used "the sun" when context dictated which sun was being referred to. The determination of whether the intended interpretation is of a common noun or a proper name is quite subtle, but I would suggest that if preceded by an article, unless there is clear reason to regard it as a label used to specifically distinguish it from other objects of the same class (resp. suns, earths and moons), "sun", "earth" and "moon" should always be treated as common noun. —Quondum 20:34, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

"The cow" is a description, not a name. We are referring to a specific cow, yes, but she is not named "Cow". At least she probably is not. All that we are saying is that we have a specific individual in mind, who satisfies the predicate "is a cow".

On the other hand, "the Moon" is a name, not a description, like "Luna" in Latin or "Selene" in Greek. Yes, if we had two moons, then you could indeed say "the cow jumped over the moon", and you might not be sure without further context which moon was being referred to. But in that case they would probably have individual names, distinct from "Moon".

If you are saying that you think that that English phrase is using "moon" as a description rather than a name, then I'm afraid I just think you're wrong. I admit I'm not sure how to prove it. --Trovatore (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I think it is easy to disprove though. Names conventionally start with a capital letter. If "moon" was a name, you would always see it with capital letter and style guides would not advise against using one. It's not a moon called Moon, it's just the moon. Except in specific contexts (where an exception to the rule might apply), it doesn't need a name, so it doesn't have one. Formerip (talk) 21:46, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement with FormerIP here. Sometimes triviality confounds our initial impulses. Trovatore seem to be insisting that a set with one element suddenly implies that the description of the set necessarily becomes an identifier for the solitary element. In this instance, we are dealing with a particular set of moons. —Quondum 21:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

No, I'm not insisting that, not at all. Something can be a description even if there is only one object that answers to the description. However, "Sun", "Earth", and "Moon" are all names. --Trovatore (talk) 22:05, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Suggesting that they should never be in lower case? Ever? That to refer to the moons of Jupiter is incorrect English, and that we should be saying "the satellites of Jupiter", and that we should say that extrasolar planets orbit their own stars, never their own suns? —Quondum 22:12, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't resist: "Moon orbits Earth, which in turns orbits Sun." —Quondum 22:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Huh? No, not at all. The common-noun meaning of "moon" is "natural satellite". But when we talk about the Moon, we mean the natural satellite of the Earth, which is a named entity. If we were having this discussion on Mars, "the Moon" would still mean Earth's natural satellite, not one of the Martian ones. --Trovatore (talk) 22:22, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I doubt it. Following your logic, though, why do we not use capitals for "the sky", "the world", "the government" and so on? Formerip (talk) 22:45, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

You doubt that we would still call Earth's natural satellite "the Moon", if we were on Mars? Really? What do you think we would call it, then? --Trovatore (talk) 23:29, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

A name such as "the Moon" would be unsuitable, since it would be too easily confused with "the moon". We'd have to name it suitably, perhaps as SF writers have done: "Luna". No "the". —Quondum 23:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't agree. "The Moon" is its name. We would still call it that, no matter how far we were from Earth. --Trovatore (talk) 23:40, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

You're simply repeating yourself. Firstly, you are implicitly sticking to your axiom that it is a name, and FormerIP has asserted the contrary. Any further argument requires checking with outside sources. I have also challenged your assertion that "we" would keep calling it "the Moon", even if your premise were valid, with a specific reason. You have failed to advance a counterargument other than that you disagree. —Quondum 23:57, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Look at mid-20th century sci-fi for example — they always use it that way, when they use it. It's true that some authors prefer "Luna", but the ones that say "the Moon" always mean the one near Earth. --Trovatore (talk) 00:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like another case of fan caps. Sources use lowercase overwhelmingly; probably even sci-fi sources, though that's harder to check. Dicklyon (talk) 00:48, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree that it is probably how most books use it. I'm saying they're using it wrong. They're not taking into account the fact that it's a name. --Trovatore (talk) 01:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Trovatore here that the Sun, the Earth and the Moon should be capitalised when used as the names respectively for the sun of our Solar System, the planet we inhabit and the moon that orbits us. It is not unlike style guides that would use lowercase for government departments but uppercase for the named Obama Government for instance. However, Wikipedia has adopted the style rule that sun, earth and moon are not capitalised in general use even when referring to those named bodies, in examples such as "The sun rose", and it has apparently been this way since the guidance was introduced in 2004. If Trovatore wants to change that usage, a new consensus needs to be established.

I don't agree with Trovatore's approach that says "I'm right, and all those sources are using it wrong". Per MOS:CAPS, we prefer to avoid unnecessary capitalization, and if sources don't capitalize these names, then it is not necessary for us to treat them as proper names. People who think of these as proper names of celestial bodies seem also to be forgetting that when we refer to the sun being out, or the moon being bright, we're not talking about the celestial or astronomical entity so much as we are their light, their affect, their appearance, or something quite independent of a Copernican understanding of celestial bodies. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Dick, did you read what I said? I agree that "the moon is bright" can reasonably be construed as meaning the moonlight, not the named entity (which is actually not very bright; supposedly has about the albedo of old asphalt or something like that). But when it is being used as the name of an entity, I think it should be capitalized. --Trovatore (talk) 05:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I picked a bad example; probably "The moon is up" would have been better. It's the entity, but not in terms of celestrial bodies or astronomy so much as in everyday terms. Books never use caps for this. Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Well it's been this way since 2004. If you want to lobby for change, start an RfC and test the waters. Either way, it's no reason to block my revision to make the current wording clearer in the meantime. —sroc 💬 05:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

US demonym

At a biography article, an IP editor changed the subject's demonym from American to United States of America declaring "I replaced his nationality "American" because America is two continents, not a country".[7] I disagree. What is Wikipedia's stance on what to call an American in the infobox, and where is the policy stated?– Gilliam (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

People and things from the United States of America are called "American". "American" refers to a country in English-language usage, where there is no such debate or ambiguity. Foreign languages have no relevance on what we do here. Americans are called American. That's simple. RGloucester — ☎ 20:23, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The IP editor is flat-out wrong. In American English, "America" means "the United States." In other varieties, it has two meanings. It can mean either "the United States" or "the Americas"/"North and South America" in some contexts. However, there is no English-language demonym other than "American" to refer to citizens of the U.S.

One note: In Spanish, this is not the case. "Americano" means what AmE speakers would call "New World"/"from the Americas" and "estadounidense" means "American." This can also be a very touchy political issue in Spanish-speaking countries because many people see the use of the name "America" as symbolic of American hegemony and imperialism (historical note: while the hegemony part has a basis in fact, the name was picked out long before the Monroe Doctrine). Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:30, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Not to be picky, but is "Nationality = United States", actually wrong? I agree that the demonym is "American", but it isn't clear to me that it the template actually requires the demonym. To give a different example, if he had been French, it isn't obvious to me whether "Nationality = France" or "Nationality = French" (or either) is the appropriate usage. {{Infobox person}} doesn't seem to give any guidance. If the demonym is definitely preferred in cases like this, then that should probably be documented somewhere and there are literally thousands of examples of "Nationality = United States" that would need to be fixed. Dragons flight (talk) 21:58, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Lists of people by nationality and [8]. Nationality usually uses a demonym. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:09, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

That's fine. The problem I have is with an IP editor (maybe the same one the OP is talking about) that is not just changing infoboxes but replacing all instances of "American" with "U.S." or "United States." See for example this edit to Alice Paul. Ltwin (talk) 22:09, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

See "List of adjectival and demonymic forms of place names".

—Wavelength (talk) 22:07, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

What others say, yes.

Some years ago I learned to link American and British and Irish as here, to their people articles -- same as German where the sense it not German language. In the last couple years I learned that those links are systematically deleted by some editors, so I do not routinely provide them.

--P64 (talk) 18:58, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Well those are things that should not normally be linked to anyway, as too well known (except possibly Irish), unlike say Bhutanese people (which I now have to set up as a redirect, sigh!). Wiki CRUK John (talk) 21:06, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

This isn't the same person who used to link [[Names for United States citizens|American]], is it? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Article Titles: Paintings

Should the title of an article about a painting be in the original language, or should it be translated into English? For example, if you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Matisse, it seems to be a random mixture. I cannot discern any rationale. 109.156.50.255 (talk) 04:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Definitely seems to be inconsistent. Which seems to mean, to me at least, that there is no standard rule, other than to call each painting by what it is most commonly called in English language sources. Some paintings are well known by an English title, which may be a full or partial translation of a title in another language, and maybe not always the obvious one. For example, The Scream is the very common English title of Munch's painting, but it's actually a partial translation of its original German title, as the painting was completed and first exhibited in Berlin; this sometimes throws off those who know Munch was Norwegian by birth, and think it's a grammatically incorrect translation of the common Norwegian name Skirk. Other paintings may not have such common English titles. For those, any single English translation would be inappropriate as a title because it wouldn't be truly common. Indeed, the most common title in sources is likely the original language title, so long as it is easily rendered in Latin script. In short, there's no hard and fast rule beyond COMMONNAME, which is a Wikipedia-wide rationale. oknazevad (talk) 07:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

You know we have Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts? No? Well, we do. It says:

• Foreign language titles are generally only to be used if they are used by most art historians or critics writing in English – e.g. Las Meninas or Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. In that case they should be used in the form used by most art historians writing in English, regardless of whether this is actually correct by the standards of the other language. It is not necessary to give the original language version of titles of standard religious scenes or portraits, but for other titles this may be desirable, for example:

The Third of May 1808 (in Spanish El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid; Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish master Francisco Goya.

It probably becomes more tricky with art since 1900, where lots of English writers use the English titles, and lots don't. The Matisse assortment might be fully following the MOS, or completely random. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:13, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The above example might not be a good one. The guidance talks only about article titles but, while we generally use the COMMONNAME for an article title, the full English name (if one exists) is used in the opening para, even if this is not the name most commonly used in sources. So it may be that we should go with The Third of May 1808 in Madrid: the shootings on Prince Pio hill. Sorry to be awkward. Formerip (talk) 23:22, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

I find it offputting when the primary definition (primary bold name or term) in the opening sentence is not exactly the same as the article title. Generally speaking, I think the two should be identical, and then alternative or longer names should be mentioned subsequently after "also known as", "in full", etc. 109.153.227.154 (talk) 02:00, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

That's just not how we normally handle it, though. Formerip (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change at Manual of Style/Capital letters

There is a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Proposed change regarding capitalization of shortened forms of full or formal names including geographical names, geopolitical names, institutions, and titles of people. As it would also impact this page, I'd like to bring it to the attention of those watching this page. SchreiberBike talk 00:06, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Caucasian War

this violates MOS:COLLAPSE, no? Frietjes (talk) 01:29, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Punctuation before quotations

Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Colons (MOS:COLON) says:

A colon may also be used to introduce direct speech enclosed within quotation marks (see § Quotation marks, above).

Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Commas (MOS:COMMA) says:

• Before a quotation embedded within a sentence, the use of a comma is optional. Eve said "He ate the apple." or Eve said, "He ate the apple." Many editors prefer a colon in this position if the quotation forms one or more complete sentences: Eve said: "He ate the apple."

Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Quotation marks (MOS:QUOTEMARKS) has ample coverage of proper use of quotation marks (" ") and placement of punctuation inside/outside quotation marks, but does not actually discuss punctuation that should appear before a quotation. It seems this is the appropriate place for it, so I propose:

1. The above bullet at MOS:COMMA be simplified to read:

   A comma may also be included before a quotation embedded within a sentence (see § Quotation marks above).

3. Move the detailed guidance as follows to a new sub-section at MOS:QUOTEMARKS:

   Punctuation before quotations The use of a comma before a quotation embedded within a sentence is optional: Eve said "He ate the apple." Eve said, "He ate the apple." Many editors prefer a colon in this position if the quotation forms one or more complete sentences: Eve said: "He ate the apple."

Thus, there would be a central place to refer on this point. For example, I just added a colon before a couple of quotations (where a dash had previously used) but I had to refer to both MOS:COLON and MOS:COMMA to explain the rationale; this would allow referring to the more logical MOS:QUOTEMARKS. Thoughts? —sroc 💬 16:16, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Having no punctuation before a quotation is also acceptable, so that should also be covered by any guidance we give. Formerip (talk) 17:55, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

That's explicitly stated in the proposed guidance above. —sroc 💬 17:56, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't see it. Formerip (talk) 18:02, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, yes I do. Could be made a little more explicit, though. Formerip (talk) 18:18, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

How so? It already says "is optional" and provides an example without. —sroc 💬 22:10, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

 Done![9] —sroc 💬 07:18, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

″Quotation marks″

Both for single and double quotation marks I have always used the standard quotation marks supplied by Wikipedia: ′single′, ″double″. These are to be found directly below the edit box, next to the ′Insert′ tab. I did this under the assumpton that standardized quotation marks are better for searches and that they avoid edit wars, as opposed to if everyone just uses their own. I now had these quotation marks changed in one article (diff.) with the editing remark, ″vertical quotation marks (") are preferred over diagonal quotation marks (″). See MOS:QUOTE.″ Following the link to this manual I now find that the slanted quotation marks supplied by Wikipedia are not even mentioned here. What is the sense of that? If there are quotation marks provided by Wikipedia to everyone who does edits, then it does not seem very helpful to me if a Style Manual hidden within the bowels of WP decides on a different standard. I would propose to either use the slanted marks as a standard, or if the vertical ones are to be used, then the punctuation marks below the edit box should be changed first. The status quo is the worst solution of all. --Roberta jr. (talk) 13:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• The vertical single and double quotation marks are even easier to find. So much easier, in fact, that most people use them automatically, unaware of how to find the slanted quotation marks, let alone the various curly quotation marks. Choor monster (talk) 14:20, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

The marks under the edit box next to the degree sign (°) are actually prime (′) and double prime (″), not quotation marks. These shortcuts are provided to make them easier to enter because they are not on standard keyboards. Straight quotation marks (") found on your keyboard should be used for general purposes. —sroc 💬 15:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I have edited the guideline to point out this potential source of confusion. I think many editors have never subdivided a degree into minutes and seconds in their lives, so the placement of ′ and ″ next to ° will not be a sufficient clue to what these symbols really are. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:58, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I have made some further edits to tidy this up and keep it concise. Note that the prime and double-prime characters are also shown to IP users who do not have preferences to show/hide gadgets, so I simplified the wording. —sroc 💬 22:43, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Just one thing to remember... no matter what the MOS says, most editors don't know (or care) about the distinctions between various types of quote marks... we are simply going to use the quote marks on our keyboards for everything. Not saying it's right... only that this is what we will do. It's up to those who do know (and care) about minutia like this to follow along and substitute in the "correct" marks. (please do so with courtesy). Blueboar (talk) 17:20, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I am aware of minutes and seconds, but not that I had to distinguish them typographically from single and double quotation marks when editing WP. On my first edits I just noticed that quotation marks typed directly into the edit box were represented differently from those that I copied from documents (when doing longer edits), and as I have now learned from the manual I was not the first to notice this. When I found the ones below the edit box I assumed they were placed there to avoid such problems. I know better now, but I will not promise to undo the choices other peoples made in the articles they wrote. Thanks for the explanations! --Roberta jr. (talk) 21:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

FYI: per MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition Preferences → Gadgets → CharInsert will be enabled by default. --  Gadget850 ^talk 23:19, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Top 10 suggested improvements

I would like to know if anyone can reveal the top 10 suggested changes to the manual of style. Any thoughts?? Georgia guy (talk) 02:32, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Mandate the use of title style for article titles. RGloucester — ☎ 05:06, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

The MOS does not mandate. And that change would require a whole ton of extra redirects, so probably not going to happen. Dicklyon (talk) 01:35, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

If you say so. "Prescribe the use of" will do. It will not require any more redirects than we already have. It will simply mandate title style. RGloucester — ☎ 02:47, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll let someone else try to explain it to you. Your grasp of Wikipedia title issues continues to be beyond my ability to address. Dicklyon (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Probably something about changing "British" to "English", or vice versa. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

That's fightin' talk. Everyone knows it's changing "English" to "British", or vice versa. Or maybe it's avoiding the supervacuus usage of Latin. Or avoiding the use of "usage" when the usage of "use" will do. Formerip (talk) 01:30, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what supervacuus means, but I'd be in favor of discouraging Latin abbrev (e.g., i.e.), just because so many readers and editors have no idea what they mean or how to use them. Dicklyon (talk) 01:37, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Changing or removing WP:LQ comes up about once a year, so that probably puts it in the top ten. The usual suggestion is to convert it to an ENGVAR-based rule but allowing both British and American punctuation independently of the article's spelling has also been suggested.

Issues with dashes also come up pretty often. Tony1 or Noetica could tell you more about that.

Maybe banning certain words, like inserting a rule to always use "among" instead of "amongst" or "while" instead of "whilst."

As Dicklyon brings up, the issue of whether the MoS mandates things/contains rules or merely suggests things/is a guideline is also discussed pretty often here, but that's not exactly a suggested improvement. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:49, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I haven't really seen dash issues coming up since the big powwow in 2011. That area seems pretty stable and settled. And yes, the MOS is a guideline; nobody is required to follow it. But since it's a guideline, it's accepted practice, that therefore it's not a good idea to fight those who work to bring style into closer agreement with the recommendations. Dicklyon (talk) 04:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

But editors who don't follow the "guideline" can be brought up on ANI whether they've done anything else against the rules or not. That means it's a guideline in name only and a set of rules in practice. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:57, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand the contention that MOS is "a guideline in name only". All guidelines are subject to Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines#Enforcement. However, there are no hard-and-fast rules either.—Bagumba (talk) 00:52, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I can explain it easily: "Guideline" in general English, means an optional set of suggestions for best practices. A user may deviate from a guideline without fear of punishment so long as he or she exercises good judgment. That's not the case with the MoS. "I decided to capitalize the word 'the' mid-sentence to distinguish between 'the doom' and 'The Doom of Men'" or "I don't think using British punctuation makes sense in this article for reasons X, Y, and Z" don't fly here. Add that this is Wikipedia and almost anyone can come up with almost any excuse to disregard almost any rule, and treating the MoS as rules rather than a guideline is probably the better course, but we've got to acknowledge that that's what we're doing.

Generally, the guideline-vs-rules argument comes up when someone says, "Well we don't HAVE to do the work of making sure that the MoS conforms with actual English/contains fact-based information/goes the full mile/etc. because it's only a guideline. Let's just put our own whims and preferences in!" To which my response is, yes we do have to because people don't treat it like it's only a guideline. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:43, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Exceptions are allowed. See WP:IAR. Of course, there must be consensus for the exception. A few editors continuously reinserting edits against consensus should be reported to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring.—Bagumba (talk) 22:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

IAR says that exceptions are allowed, but that's not how things actually work. I'll give you an example: I did some editing that wasn't consistent with the MoS a few years ago. I had a good rationale that was based on both Wikipedia's core values and on reliable sources. There were no edit wars associated with these edits. I got brought up on AN/I. By your reasoning, that wouldn't happen, but it did.

Anyway, the upshot of the is-it-a-guideline-or-rules, the reason we argue about it, regards how careful we must be before putting something into the MoS. If it's just a guideline, then we don't need to be too careful. If it's rules, then we do. So if you find yourself in one of those discussions, be prepared to consider, "I don't think the MoS is a set of rules, but in this case we should be careful anyway" or "I don't think the MoS is just a guideline but that doesn't mean we can't insert this." Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:37, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Being brought up at ANI is not necessarily a sign that you did anything wrong. I don't know the details of your particular situation, but some people can be trigger happy. Perhaps you are trying to say that MOS might be more of a lightning rod than some of the other guidelines. In the end, it should come down to consensus, a policy that should always trump a guideline.—Bagumba (talk) 22:50, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

You do realize that's just one case. "Should" and "can be" don't mean as much as "does" and "were." Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this, but have we gotten to the point where you do understand the contention now? You can see where "the MoS is a guideline in name only and rules in fact" argument is coming from? I can keep going if you'd like to hear more. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I assume you were responding to me (not clear from the indents)? I somewhat see where you are coming from. Is there a specific improvement in the wording of MOS that you are seeking?—Bagumba (talk) 02:07, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes I was. The only change I'd make to the wording (regarding this issue) is to stop referring to it as a guideline, but it is even more important to stop making edits to it on the assumption that its content will be treated as if it were optional. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:07, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• I notice there's no agreement above, except that everyone want more regulation, not less. But then this is the MOS talk page. I suspect other groups would be thinking of things to cut. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 04:12, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I do not favor more regulation; but sometimes simpler suggestions are good, like on the discussion about commas before and after "Jr.". No more complexilty until we get better at practicing what we already recommend. Dicklyon (talk) 04:21, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

The change to WP:LQ could be considered either less regulation or a zero-sum change depending on how one looks at it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:57, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• One improvement that I would suggest is to include a section on "Implementing MOS guidance". I see this as being more along the lines of behavioral guidance than substantive guidance over style... but I think it would be very helpful.

There are many editors here who have (in good faith) tried to implement the various MOS provisions, only to be met with strong opposition at the article level. Some have handled that opposition badly. In the most contentious cases, the resulting disputes have even ended up with the style editor being hauled before ANI for being disruptive. Many of the regulars to this page have learned valuable lessons from such disputes... and their experience is something that other editors could benefit from.

One of the first bits of advice I would offer in such a section is: Encourage compliance, don't insist on it - MOS compliance should approached in terms of encouraging "best practice", and not approached in terms of enforcing "rules". Blueboar (talk) 17:02, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, it sounds as if you want the MoS to be an actual guideline instead of a set of rules. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:57, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Blueboar: Is there anything MOS specific beyond what is at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Enforcement?—Bagumba (talk) 00:52, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I have a question: @Georgia guy:, why are you asking? By top ten are you referring to how often, how important, desired by how many people? What's the purpose of this thread? Do you have any plans? If they're suggested changes (rather than actual) then by definition they're either pending or not implemented. Do you want us to also list past suggestions that were adopted? Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:57, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

How often the improvements are suggested. Georgia guy (talk) 23:54, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

LQ and dash stuff, then. The capitalization of common names of species has also come up repeatedly, but that's less an MoS issue than a "should we listen to the MoS or to Wikiproject-specific rules" issue. But "among/amongst" and referring to ships as "she" have both come up more than once. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:34, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

• Another suggestion ... the MOS does a good job of laying out what our style preferences are... but it does not always do a good job of explaining why we prefer them. If it included more explanation of why we prefer X over Y, we might have fewer arguments about what we prefer. Blueboar (talk) 13:50, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Mustang

Should the word "Mustang"/"mustang" be capitalized in running text when referring to the horses? See this RfC here. Red Slash 17:35, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization

In MOS:CAPS, instead of "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization", it might be more accurate to say "Wikipedia lets editors capitalize anything they think is important, especially if there's an article about it", as that would be more in line with how recent Requested Move discussions are going. Dicklyon (talk) 22:29, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't know which discussion specifically you're referring to. I suppose I could look in your history and figure it out, but I'm not that interested.

However, in the past, you and some of the other "anti-capitalists" here have characterized arguments that way, when that is not the argument being made. --Trovatore (talk) 22:35, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm talking about things like Rose Bowl Game and American Civil Rights Movement, among others (and non-RM discussions, too, like at Mustang). Sources are unambiguously in favor of lowercase, but editors want to capitalize them anyway. I'm not sure what you mean by "that is not the argument being made"; I have not characterized the various arguments that they use to try to justify capitalization. And I am not "anti-capitalist"; but pro-MOS, yes. Dicklyon (talk) 22:49, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

"What they think is important" has not in the past been the argument being made, but you and McCandlish have tried to characterize it that way. --Trovatore (talk) 22:51, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not saying they are making that argument; but the arguments they make are less sensible than that; mostly unsupported claims of "it's a proper name", so I was being generous. I'm just saying that our current MOS:CAPS does not reflect that way things are going, as anyone who looks at it will see. Dicklyon (talk) 22:56, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The proper-name argument is usually the key one. You need to address it rather than dismissing it. I do think that the "unnecessary" bit should be edited to clarify that it means "don't overdo caps when there's no good reason for them", not "always pick the least-capitalized style that any decent source uses". --Trovatore (talk) 23:00, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

MoS is not gospel, and needn't be applied. Application, when there is a dispute, is based on the consensus of editors at a particular article. That's simply the way it goes. RGloucester — ☎ 23:12, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The proper name argument is very well refuted in the discussions, by looking at stats on usage in better sources (books, typically). As MOS says, "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia." In most cases, it's easy to show that caps are in a minority, yet they insist. Other, like RGloucester, suggest simply ignoring the MOS and capitalizing anyway. Dicklyon (talk) 23:16, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

(ec) I'm not getting in the middle of your current disputes. Heck, I might even be on your side, in the ones you've mentioned. But I suggest you address the arguments that are actually proffered, rather than an ulterior motive of which you have no real evidence. --Trovatore (talk) 23:20, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I agree with Dicklyon that Wikipedia should almost always use lowercase when the sources do. However, changing the MoS in the manner suggested is probably not our best bet. How about changing its wording to match the main MoS more closely? I'd suggest: "Avoid unnecessary capitalization. Use capitals for terms that are consistently treated as proper nouns by reliable sources. Example Rose Bowl game but American Civil Rights Movement" and a few alternatives. Then call an RfC and invite people from those debates so we can work it out (or at least notify people that they're not supposed to be using title case so widely). Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:19, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The MoS does not claim to be a gospel. Taking it as such, as you tend to do, is contrary to its purpose. As it says, "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason. Edit warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor". You ignore this. The changes from capitalised titles to lowercase titles and vice-versa for no real reason other than to enforce "MoS compliance" is plain disruptive. There is nothing unacceptable about either "Cuban Missile Crisis" or "Cuban missile crisis". If there are sources that use both styles, and the appropriate information is conveyed, it makes no difference to the reader, other than from an aesthetic perspective. From an aesthetic perspective, titles look better and more distinguishable when capitalised, which is why they usually are. Sentence case for titles looks sloppy, like something a primary schooler would write up. That's why I think we should just adopt title case for article titles, as any good publication would do. It is aesthetically better, and more standardised. It eliminates all absurd capitalisation debates. RGloucester — ☎ 23:23, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

That's not at all the issue here; we're not talking about titles. Changing titles to title case doesn't help, as the RFC at Talk:Mustang should illustrate, not to mention all the places where Randy Kryn won't let me fix "civil rights movement" in article text. Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it would eliminate the issue, because if we recommend title case for article titles, we could also recommend user lowercase style for prose, eliminating the debate. RGloucester — ☎ 23:41, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Why would you say something so idiotic? Surely you must understand that we would not want to use lowercase in text for proper names? Or maybe you don't? Dicklyon (talk) 02:21, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Why? As Wikipedia's way of defining what a "proper name" is so far from how people usually think of the concept, it isn't getting us very far to hold onto it anyway. Recommend universal lowercase in the text, why not? If we can recommend such an absurd definition of "proper name", we might as well kibosh the whole distinction. RGloucester — ☎ 02:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for clarifying that you're playing the idiot on purpose. At first I thought you were serious, in spite of the idiocy of it, as you have said things about that idiotic before. Excuse me for not always recognizing the difference; Poe's law, you know. Dicklyon (talk) 02:54, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Despite those recent RMs, the sentence in MOS:CAPS is still valid. Wikipedia does still avoid unnecessary capitalization. What the RMs indicate (at least to me) is that there may be issues not discussed at the MOS (because they are not really style related) that can make capitalization necessary. Blueboar (talk) 23:25, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Explain? Example? Whatever the reasons are, I'd like to understand how caps can be "necessary" yet most sources use lowercase. What, for example, makes it necessary to capitalize Cuban Missile Crisis, which is lowercase Cuban missile crisis in most books? Dicklyon (talk) 23:34, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

+1 Tony (talk) 02:24, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: "What ... make it necessary" seems to have been the subject of the recently closed discussion at Talk:Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Requested_move_8_January_2015, which you were also involved in. Your most constructive options might be to take this to Wikipedia:Move review or to WP:DROPTHESTICK.—Bagumba (talk) 03:16, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not beating anyone with a stick. Just pointing out that the MOS seems to have carried no weight there, where fans of political events prefer to capitalize what's important to them, in spite of most sources not doing so. Dicklyon (talk) 03:46, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

What you describe as "fans of political events" are editors who see a particular event, like the Cuban Missile Crisis (where you added a comment after it was closed, btw), as a unit. Thus, to them, they are obviously proper names which fall under Wikipedia common sense provisions and guidelines, and are backed up by many sources. The majority of the books you listed there were new printings of old - some very old - textbooks, which don't get totally edited on reissue. So, some names which you see as violating policy are names seen by millions of people and many many sources as proper names. Some others aren't, such as many of the 'riots' you lower-cased (except for the Watts Riot, which has 'earned' upper-casing because of its prominence - again, common sense applies). I know you must realize and, as the old-kids say, 'grok' this point on some level, so why can't you just change the ones which are noncontroversial and not change the names which are seen, as I said, by millions of people as proper and common names? Randy Kryn 12:17 24 January, 2015 (UTC)