[WikiEN-l] A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface

Sun Apr 27 05:18:32 UTC 2003

Tannin wrote:
>In a novel or in a work of general non-fiction, 
>it is perfectly acceptible (and indeed correct) 
>to not capitalise, as the intention of the work is 
>to highlight some thing other than the creature 
>in question. ....

And that is my very point - Wikipedia is a general reference and many of the 
links to the bird/mammal articles will be from articles that "highlight some 
thing other than the creature in question." In those articles it is most 
correct to have "bald eagle" in the running text of the article and not "Bald 
Eagle".

>In summary, there are three possibilities: 
>
>(a) That we always use binomial names if in the 
>slightest doubt about the identity of a species. 
>This would be, strictly speaking, correct, but 
>unreadable for the vast majority.

This would be the least desireable option. I took 2 years of Latin already and 
didn't like it - all it did was screw-up my Spanish. :-)

>(b) That we abandon the attempt to create a scientifically 
>correct body of work, and become a light-weight, non-auhoritive 
>place that is little more than a glorified chat room. (Not that there 
>is anything wrong with chat rooms, it's just not what I think Wikipedia 
>ought to be. Nor you.)

Nobody is trying to make the articles scientifically incorrect. As I've stated 
all my biology textbooks use the down style for the common names of species. 
This does reflect a bias towards normal rules for English grammar and against 
the artificial rules developed by birding societies/organizations (which, as 
you have stated, have been developed to overcome subtle ambiguity issues). I 
guess I should admit my own bias - I am a generalist who is often mistrustful 
of specialists and other people who claim academic authority. In fact I 
purposely did not choose a concentration for my biology major becasue I 
feared that doing so would result in me becoming a specialist - thus I would 
not be able to see the big picture on how things inter-relate. 

>(c) That we adopt the same solution as is used 
>by the vast majority of works that aim to be factual, 
>comprehensive, scientific, and accessible to the 
>general reader too - i.e., we use the correct capitalisation 
>for species names.

Like most encyclopedias, dictionaries and textbooks which employ the down 
style?

>I would be delighted to return to crafting factual, readable, 
>accurate entries about fauna of all kinds. I have greatly 
>enjoyed doing that over the last few months. 

I would also like to see you return to that - I really enjoy reading your work 
and the work of your compatriots. 

>But, fair dinkum, I have had a gutfull of constant hit and 
>run edits that do nothing but spoil the result of all the 
>effort I put in. 

Certainely there is more info in the articles you have written that is not 
codified in the particular capitalization of the title? 

>I don't want to be unreasonable or petulant, but let's face 
>it, we all only work on articles because we enjoy doing it
>and find it rewarding. I am no longer enjoying it, and it's no 
>longer rewarding. As I have documented elsewhere, everyone 
>who is doing bird entries on any significant scale has similar 
>problems. It's not just me. I just happen to be the one who has 
>reached the end of his tether first.

I'm sorry to hear that - the work that you and other people have done in this 
area has been great.

So after reading what you have written and what tc wrote to me in an off-list 
email I have decided to a compromise: Have the bird and mammal articles 
follow the capitalization convention deemed appropriate by the specialists 
and enthusiasts working on them BUT a down style redirect MUST be pointed to 
the up style article title.

I also think what is needed is to make redirects far less ugly than they are 
now. People seem to get real pissy when they follow a term they know and use 
only to get a result that in effect screams "the method you are using to 
access this page is depreciated". A technical fix here should solve a great 
many naming disputes since, as it is, nobody seems to like to have their pet 
spelling/method of capitalization/etc be a redirect becasue the resulting 
page after following that redirect is ugly.

When a user accesses a page through a redirect it could be possible to change 
the displayed H1 page title of the target page to match the title of redirect  
(or at the very least move the redirect message from below the H1 title to 
the very top of the page - as it was in Phase II). 

But then we would either have to orphan misspellings and truly depreciated 
redirects (like / pages) or have a two-tier system of redirects. That system 
could use the #OBSOLETE syntax for depreciated page title redirects and 
#REDIRECT for alternate and valid ways to express the same term.

That way users can link [[bald eagle]] in an article on US National Parks and 
not be greeted by an ugly result that implies that the capitalization of 
"bald eagle" was incorrect from where it was linked (when in fact that 
capitalization was totally correct from where it was linked - but at the same 
time it would not be correct to have a lowercased "bald eagle" linked from 
[[eagle]] per the specialists' convention).

The correct capitalization here depends upon the grammatical context and 
intent from where a term is linked. So if specialists will allow down style 
links to their articles I can live with those articles following the up style 
and other conventions deemed appropriate by those users - so long as the 
resulting titles are still common names and if the ugly redirect problem is 
fixed. 

Alas it is getting late - I need to work on my WikiKarma. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)