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== Disruption versus personalization == | == Disruption versus personalization == | ||
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{{ambox|text=This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a ]. ] (]) 15:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)}} | {{ambox|text=This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a ]. ] (]) 15:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)}} | ||
Apteva has filed an arbitration enforcement action against me and against Neotarf, for our attempts to deal with his disruption on this page: , in case anyone here cares. ] (]) 07:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC) | Apteva has filed an arbitration enforcement action against me and against Neotarf, for our attempts to deal with his disruption on this page: , in case anyone here cares. ] (]) 07:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC) | ||
:The fact that sanctions are requested for violating the ARB sanction are not important. Each individual user has already been notified. ] (]) 15:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC) | :The fact that sanctions are requested for violating the ARB sanction are not important. Each individual user has already been notified. ] (]) 15:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC) | ||
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File:Yellow warning.png | This page (along with all other MOS pages and WP:TITLE) is subject to Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions. See this remedy. Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style and Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style are subject to WP:1RR as a unit, one revert per editor on either the MOS page or its talk page per 24 hour period, until 15 January, 2013. |
For a list of suggested abbreviations for referring to style guides , see this page. |
Internal consistency v consistency across articles
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As the lead already mentions internal consistency, this sentence is arguably repetitive without the juxtaposition. More importantly, we don't require consistency across articles, and it's important to stress that. The lead currently implies that we do, or at least does not make clear that we don't:
Therefore, the addition of "though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" (or similar) is needed. SlimVirgin 02:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC) The first sentence of this section inadvertently misrepresents what happened. The sequence of events (all on 12 August 2012):
Slim, would you please amend that first sentence? Best to keep the account accurate. ♥
I disagree with "In groups of articles on similar topics, similar styling is better than an unprincipled or random selection of styles." this has never been a requirement. The problem is what is a group? For example it could be argued that all articles about any subject within the countries of the EU should use British English/Irish English because the EU does. Or all articles on NATO (except those specifically about Britain and Canada) should use American English because the US is by far the largest contributor to NATO and therefore most articles about NATO are about American topics, and As NATO is deployed in Kosovo and Kosovo is not a member of th EU all articles about Kosova should be in American English. This type of argument has never been accepted. One can see the fun one can have with arguments such as if its in a category its grouped in that category therefore it has to be consistent with all the other articles that appear in that category (An editor at the moment is using that as a justification for using his preferred spellings and ignoring usage in reliable sources). When an article appears in two categories then in which "group" does it belong? This is why the MOS has only ever agreed that consistency should within an article, not across "groups" of articles. I am with SV, EN and Darkfrog24 on this one. If as has been said "SlimVirgin restored some wording that had been long absent from MOS" then as it is a sentence that sums up a lot of Arbcom decisions, when was it deleted who deleted it and what was the justification given on this talk page for the deletion? -- PBS (talk) 10:15, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
BreakThe problem is that the second and third paragraphs contradict each other. The second says we have a house style; the third says we do not. Both have redirects (WP:CLARITY redirects to the second, and WP:Stability and WP:STYLEVAR to the third), so anyone reading those in isolation would be misled.
SlimVirgin 16:30, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Additional discussionI just want to note that I agree that User:Noetica was correct in removing the discussion that User:SlimVirgin started by pulling the archive instead of linking it, but some comments had been added when she restarted the discussion:Curb Chain (talk) 03:05, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Reversion of non-consensual edits concerning inter-article consistencyI have reverted (see diff) two edits by SlimVirgin. The change in question clearly has no consensus. Editing and discussion for this page are subject to ArbCom discretionary sanctions (see the note at the top of this talkpage); so a high standard of conduct and respect for due process applies. Please discuss more, and if necessary initiate a neutral RFC. If any RFC is not set up in neutral terms, according to the provisions of WP:RFC, I will call for its immediate closure and refer the matter to WP:AE. Please note especially: This is not intended as inimical to any good-faith development of the page; but experience has shown how these things can escalate, and how they can wear away people's time and patience. ♥
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RfC: Internal consistency versus consistency across articles
This RfC was about the sentence "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole." In particular, whether the phrase "though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" should be included or not. There were two reasons to remove the phrase: that it is superfluous and that Misplaced Pages should be striving to be consistent across all articles. These are two very different viewpoints that are arguing for the same change in the guidelines, but the net effect of the change would be that it would increase arguing over what was meant in the MOS. Those who wish to retain the phrase (or oppose removal) basically are arguing that consistency across Misplaced Pages articles is not, nor has ever been, required, and even if it is superfluous it should be reiterated in this sentence. The consensus of the discussion was to oppose the removal of the phrase. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 11:52 am, 4 October 2012, Thursday (9 days ago) (UTC−4)The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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The RfC was opened on 1 September. It asked whether the words "though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" should be removed from the lead sentence: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole." The RfC was closed on 4 October by an uninvolved editor, Nathan Johnson, following a request at AN/RFC. He concluded: "The consensus of the discussion was to oppose the removal of the phrase." Noetica reverted his closure twice, asking that it be closed by an admin. I am therefore going to ask an uninvolved admin to endorse or overturn the closure. SlimVirgin 16:21, 8 October 2012 (UTC) |
RfC
This sentence had been in the MoS for some time: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole." The whole sentence was removed 12 months ago, then restored, then it was changed so that it read: "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article."
Should the words "though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" be removed from that sentence? SlimVirgin 01:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
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Replies
Threaded discussionSome questions
Break 1
I am not sure if Noetica is still amazed, (21:00, 25 August 2012). But there is a possibility of arguing that while a consistent style may not be desirable across all articles, a consistent style in groups of articles may be desirable. This argument has been advanced in the past for the articles Orange (colour) and Grey because they are both articles about colour. It has also been advanced for the articles in featured topics. My problem with arguing for consistence in "groups" of articles is what is obvious a group to one person is not necessarily obviously a group to another (and what to do with articles that are obviously in two groups with differing styles). I suspect that while the argument about obvious groups is superficially attractive, due to the problems lack of clarity in defining a group, it will eventual lead inexorably towards harmonisation of style over large parts of Misplaced Pages. -- PBS (talk) 08:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
Break 2
Well since the proposed addition has been absent for a year or so I can't point to any recent problems it has caused. I can however point to responsible and constructive activities that this wording appears to target and wonder why anyone would expend so much effort to try to prevent them:
Break 3
Counting votes
Presentation of evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole"I think this discussion might benefit from a summary of the evidence presented. Please limit discussions to things that can be verified (rather than discussing reasoning alone). I have paraphrased four other editors below and I invite them to replace my words with their own as they see fit. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC) Non-hypothetical evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole"This section is for listing problems, such as fights and edit conflicts, that have actually happened. Practical experience falls under this category. Please show how the wording "not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" caused the problem or would have prevented it. Contributors, please post links to the relevant changes, talk pages and archives whenever possible. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Hypothetical evidence for and against "not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole"This section is for listing problems or advantages that you believe would or could happen but haven't witnessed. PLEASE BE SPECIFIC. Don't say "this wording will be misused" or "this wording will keep Misplaced Pages running smoothly"; say how you think it will be misused or keep things running smoothly and why. Contributors, please include links where relevant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
Summary of RfC: “Internal consistency versus consistency across articles”A request for closure has been made, and the bot has removed the RFC tag, and in the meantime the thread has been archived. I have unarchived it and attempted to summarize the issues as follows. Wording: It is proposed to add the following sentence to the fourth paragraph of the introduction: “An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole.” There is a consensus, or at least no opposition, to adding the first part of the sentence, but the second part of the sentence is contested.
Neotarf (talk) 21:09, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Premature closure reversedWith this edit I reversed a non-admin closure of the RFC. Clearly there is no consensus, so the RFC should be closed by an admin. The editor (User:Nathan Johnson) erred in not realising this, and by less than competent summation of the issues. In particular, he completely failed to distinguish consistency in general (the purpose of all manuals of style, including MOS) and consistency where MOS allows choices. This distinction is crucial among the issues confronting us in the RFC, in a number of ways.
Noetica, you seem to be making this up as you go along. There is absolutely nothing in the policy which prefers an admin closure over a non-admin closure. Any RFC "can be formally closed by any uninvolved editor". I suggest you undo your reversions, and start to play by the same rules as the rest of us. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 18:20, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
Noetica's RFC summation
There have been problems with this RFC from the start, and they have obscured the issues most unproductively, as I will show below. Procedural problems include these:
Noetica 14:26, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2012 (UTC) Time to close this (RfC for re-insertion of "not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole")The RfC had been open for 33 days, and it was closed by an uninvolved editor, so I can't see any reason not to respect the closure. Restoring a sentence to a guideline shouldn't require this level of meta discussion. SlimVirgin 16:02, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
This should be evaluated by someone who is "sufficiently experienced", "impartial", and "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal". (see WP:PROPOSAL) This is a policy page, not a wikilove kitten page, and IMHO needs to be closed by an admin, and not someone who is helping out with the backlog but "doesn't care" (see Noetica's talk page). The boxing and summary should be done by the closing admin, not the person bring the RfC. One of the troubling things about this RfC is that no one really understands what it is supposed to do. That was clear enough from the extensive comments. The first time the wording was introduced, there was no explanation or edit summary, at least not that was brought out in the rather confused discussion above. Likewise when this RfC was introduced, the new language was just inserted without much of a rationale. Maybe that's where any new attempt at a consensus should start. --Neotarf (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
I step away from the keyboard for a moment, and look what happens to this thread! The subthreads have become impossible to follow; I will put my points all together.
--Neotarf (talk) 01:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC) Does anyone agree with the reasons given for reverting Nathan's closure?Noetica's primary reason for reverting was that a "controversial RfC should be closed by an admin". The above discussion shows that he is a minority of one in that opinion. Noetica has argued, at length, that the validity of the votes should be decided according his own criteria. Jason's "failure" to use Noetica's criteria was another reason that Noetica gave for reverting him. It seems to me self-evident that Jason is not obliged to use Noetica's criteria, any more than he's obliged to use mine or any other participant's. Jason's job was to assess the opinions and thought processes of all participants, which he did. Subsequent to his revert, Noetica has mentioned that the bot had delisted the RfC before Jason closed it. Well, the bot did exactly that, it delisted it; it removed it from the list. It didn't declare that all bets were now off, and we must start again. The RfC was open for 33 days. All interested parties must already have seen the listing. The hours between the delisting and the closure made no difference at all. I don't feel that Noetica, a heavily involved editor, should have reverted Nathan, an uninvolved editor. I don't feel that Noetica has found any support for the reasons he gave for the revert: it should have been an admin, Jason didn't use Noetica's criteria, a bot had delisted the RfC. Noetica's cri de guerre throughout all of this has been "due process". Surely due process now is that Nathan's closure stand, and the text be included in the article. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 12:09, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
This closure was premature. The original discussion died down about halfway through, and the initiator of the proposal made a request for early closure. But there was some disagreement about the early closure. This request was postponed, and in the meantime, notices were placed on various pages. This drew in a few more votes and comments, about equally divided, as before. Again the discussion died down. At this point, I wrote a summary of the positions and started a new section for tallies, since the the discussion seemed to be finished and the tallies had not been updated. This triggered a new round of discussion. At the time of the latest attempt at closure, several questions had been asked, and the problem reframed in several ways, but responses were still being awaited. I don't think it's too fair to dump on the editor who attempted the closure, since it was done in good faith, although evidently without being familiar with WP:CONLIMITED, which states "Misplaced Pages has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles" or with WP:PROPOSALs for policies and guidelines, that asks that a closing editor be "familiar with all of the policies and guidelines that relate to the proposal", consider whether "major concerns raised during the community discussion been addressed", and whether "the proposal contradict(s) any existing guidelines or policies". The editor's statement "The closure was neither premature nor incompetent, but you've cleverly exploited my not caring. You may continue arguing about something that no readers actually care about." should pretty much answer any questions about that individual's level of attention to nuances of policy and guideline. It is admirable that they responded to a request to help out with the backlog, especially on these pages that seem to have so many hidden landmines for the unsuspecting newcomer, but they didn't seem to have noticed that the discussion had indeed started up again. --Neotarf (talk) 23:26, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Since we have been asked for our detailed opinions about the undone closure:
Thus in addition to it's being premature, I think the closure was flawed. --Mirokado (talk) 00:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm going to add the text back into the article, per the RfCI'm going to add the text back into the article. From the section above, the only remaining justification for the revert appears to be that the closure was premature. I'd say that is demonstrably not the case. The only discussions we've had in the last few days have been meta discussions about the closure, about the nature of consensus, and so on. At the time Nathan closed the RfC there had been no substantive discussion of the question in the RfC for several days and there has been none since. The RfC ran its course, and consensus was assessed by an uninvolved editor. To anyone considering reverting my change, I would ask that you point out here where the on-going discussion is. For the record, I commented within the RfC as 87.112.91.134. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 11:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
FilibusteringCan I point people to our policy on consensus which states
Postmature closure?I thought this thing was long dead and gone. Slim Virgin failed to convince people that we should add the odd clause that she inserted here on Aug. 11 claiming it was being "restored". As far as I can tell, the whole basis for this mess was this lie. We didn't buy it. Move on. Or if I missed something, what? Dicklyon (talk) 02:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
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Note: I've restored Nathan Johnson's close. There is no reason why an RfC cannot be closed by an editor in good standing and this editor does appear to be in good standing. The request for closure was sitting on AN for quite a while, the RfC itself saw no new opinions coming in for several days, closing it was a reasonable action. --regentspark (comment) 21:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- And I have re-restored it. Noetica complained that it wasn't an admin closure, and now we have an admin endorsing that it was a valid closure. Noetica should stop stonewalling the consensus in this page with non-existing requirements that are in conflict with Misplaced Pages not being a bureaucracy. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:26, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Time to respect the admin's decision
RegentsPark stated "I've restored Nathan's closure." 1. The RfC hatting summary text should reflect Nathan's decision, not Kwami's. 2. That decision should be implemented in the MoS itself—the contested wording should be reinserted.
Yes, I opposed Nathan's closure at the time. That is because the discussion itself was still ongoing at the time. Certain parties asked for an admin to weigh in, and an admin did. Now it's time to let it stand. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:54, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think I understand one source of confusion: by hatting I meant "hiding" text. My two "hatting" changes are the green bars you see with "Extended content" in them. Those are still there, as you can see. I never reverted anything else, did not change the summary at the top (I think what you are calling Rfc hatting text), which closure the thread reflected and so on. Hope that clears your confusion as to what I was doing at any rate. You can directly check the diffs to confirm I never reverted a thing. Churn and change (talk) 04:03, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Oh I see. Yes that does show up before the change that you made. I rescind my "Churn probably just made a mistake." But I stand by my actual change. This section should reflect the text of the editor that RegentsPark approved. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- And the confusions and chaos roll on and on. No, it is not time to accept any patchwork quasi-solution to a monumentally botched process. We really need to do better, to see that RFCs are conducted fairly from start to finish. The suggestion that the present RFC resulted in consensus is surreal. Only the most committed partisan could claim that it had and keep a straight face.
- I knew it. I knew before the RFC started there would be difficulties. I know the players too well.
- Set it aside, leave it behind, learn the lessons. If that is not done, an ArbCom case may be the only proper continuation.
- Noetica 08:11, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Seventeen to thirteen in favor of reinserting the text. Far more evidence offered in favor of reinserting the text than against. No the conclusion that this discussion resulted in consensus is not "surreal."
- Noetica, you insisted that an admin weigh in. An admin said "Nathan's original decision is valid." Now it is time for you to set it aside, leave it behind, and learn the lessons. As you keep pointing out, I didn't think that Nathan's closure came at a good time either, and I'm willing to let it stand. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:48, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Resolving the underlying infobox "ownership" issue
The fact that "first major contributor gets to arbitrarily decided" idea proposed above isn't workable is only half the problem here, and not the root one. The other, which this proposal also tried to address, is that wikiprojects by and large do appear to believe that they have the authority to tell the entire editorship "thou must" or "thou shalt not" put an infobox on any article We the Project consider within our Holy Scope. They need to be rapidly and unmistakably disabused of this notion before this situation gets any worse. So, the underlying issue this proposal tried to address is a real problem and remains unaddressed with this proposal's failure (because it reached too far in the opposite direction).
I propose that we add a statement to the effect that no editor or group of editors can force this issue, and that it's up to a consensus of the editors at the article, on a per-article basis, just like almost all other editorial decisions on Misplaced Pages.
(PS: I rather wish we'd scrap the entire WikiProject system and replace it with something that forbids any kind of "club"-like model - no "members" or "participants", no "projects", just pages of recommendations arrived at by a consensus of editors who care, on how to address particular topics. But that's another issue for another time and place.)
— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 22:55, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
- Can you provide links to places where this has happened? (I'm not doubting you, I'm just interested in reading what the debate looked like in those instances.) Tdslk (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
- See Classical music, and preceding comments in First major contributor, above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
- We already have WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. A link to that should suffice; though the problem is not that we don't have a policy, but that some editors are allowed to ignore it, for the sake of a quiet life. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
- The rule you want already exists, or nearly does: "If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor." The first choice is a consensus of editors at the individual article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
- I was asked to comment again. That is not the consensus. The consensus that is followed in practice in WP is that once it is decided to use infoboxes on a particular type of article then the decision stands until consensus changes, and affects every article in scope. It does not go article by article. In particular, there is general consensus throughout WP to use infoboxes for people in as standardized and generalized a way as possible across all the relevant wikiprojects; that nobody is compelled to make such an infobox when writing an article, but that if they do not, someone will add it. (I understood the original proposal here to be challenging that, and I understand that challenge to be rejected. If the wording of the MOS needs to be changed to make it clear that they are not optional, I make such a proposal.) DGG ( talk ) 15:44, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Thats way off - I hope others dont see things this way as conflict will only issue - Wiki projects don't own articles in anyway and it does go article by article as seen at Using infoboxes in articles. We have tried to fix this ownership problem many times over the years, but still have statements like "should not be used without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page" that is a clear violation of our Editing policy and Be bold. To think our editor will see some odd WP advice page before they edit is just crazy and has lead to many many conflicts.Moxy (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Not to mention in-article comments instructing people not to use infoboxes, which are a blatant defiance of the outcome of the RfC called by members of that project in a vain attempt to enforce their preference. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Thats way off - I hope others dont see things this way as conflict will only issue - Wiki projects don't own articles in anyway and it does go article by article as seen at Using infoboxes in articles. We have tried to fix this ownership problem many times over the years, but still have statements like "should not be used without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page" that is a clear violation of our Editing policy and Be bold. To think our editor will see some odd WP advice page before they edit is just crazy and has lead to many many conflicts.Moxy (talk) 17:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Quote - "Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article". There seems to be a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes, and that the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes, which people here appear to want to be set centrally as part of MOS and be immune from all challenge. Why should MOS (effectively a Wikiproject itself) have supremacy and be allowed to dictate things if no-one else is? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nigel Ish (talk • contribs) 18:32, 22 September 2012
- Quote =Nigel Ish "a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes" and "the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes" - All that would be the opposite of what the policy says that you have just quoted. All content and format disputes should be discussed at the individual article level first - then proceed to outside the article if not resolvable at the article level. No blanket rules by a group of editors should prevail over talking about what is best for each article at each article!Moxy (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- The quote is what the guidance currently says - the following comments are my take on what the regulars here appear to be doing in trying to force a Misplaced Pages wide standard for infoboxes onto all articles, with the appearance of trying to override any objections either at the article and ignore any issues that wikiprojects raise, whether based on valid subject related reasons or not.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Oh sorry that was not clear to me.... but yes you are correct that the majority think infoboxes are beneficial thus an asset to our readers.Moxy (talk) 20:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- The quote is what the guidance currently says - the following comments are my take on what the regulars here appear to be doing in trying to force a Misplaced Pages wide standard for infoboxes onto all articles, with the appearance of trying to override any objections either at the article and ignore any issues that wikiprojects raise, whether based on valid subject related reasons or not.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
- Quote =Nigel Ish "a drive here that all articles must have infoboxes" and "the editors of an article or members of wikiprojects have no say whatsoever about what the content or format of infoboxes" - All that would be the opposite of what the policy says that you have just quoted. All content and format disputes should be discussed at the individual article level first - then proceed to outside the article if not resolvable at the article level. No blanket rules by a group of editors should prevail over talking about what is best for each article at each article!Moxy (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
I just want to comment to say I agree with DGG's analysis above. The current practice is that once there is agreement that a certain type (topic) of article should have an infobox, we do indeed put infoboxes on all articles of that type. This is not the same, for example, as citations, where different articles of the same type could have different citation styles. But I also agree that the MOS is not the place to decide what infobox to use. For many topics it would be better decided by a wikiproject. For types of articles that span many wikiprojects (e.g. biographies), the discussion should be on the village pump. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Three corrections
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Please comment if there are any questions. Apteva (talk) 19:11, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
It appears that the example "the Uganda–Tanzania War; the Roman–Syrian War; the east–west runway; the Lincoln–Douglas debates; a carbon–carbon bond" while not commenting that it is a little long (do we really need so many examples?), is in need of two corrections; in the first example, "the Uganda–Tanzania War", war should not be capitalized (see google book search), and it should be "but not the Roman–Syrian War (as Roman-Syrian War is a proper name)". The article at Uganda–Tanzania War should also be moved, to Uganda–Tanzania war, and if it is a proper name, a better example used, and it be moved to Uganda-Tanzania War. (already moved) Apteva (talk) 23:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
- Comment. I have reverted Apteva's undiscussed move of Uganda–Tanzania War, which was apparently done to prove a point here and not in the interest of the article itself.
This section attracted no comment before Apteva elevated it to an RFC, probably because Apteva is pushing on proper names, en dashes, and hyphens at several forums at the same time – including an RM, now closed as not moved, for the long-settled Mexican–American War. I have explicitly said, on this talkpage and elsewhere, that general issues with WP:MOS guidelines should be raised as general issues, right here. Not at several locations, and not as particular sparring points. It seems to me that this RFC is yet another waste of time. I comment on one detail only: yes, obviously many examples are needed in the guideline. Even more than we have now, perhaps. Some editors are still refusing to accept the principle it is based on as consensual; and Apteva, for example, is playing hard by appeal to inconsequential differences among the present examples. If any element of the long and meticulous community consultation on dashes in 2011 needs review, let it be done in an orderly and informed way. Some recommended background reading for those interested: the article Proper noun, most of which is now accurate. (It needs a move to Proper name.)
Noetica 21:48, 7 October 2012 (UTC)- It was a correct move. Uganda–Tanzania war is not a proper noun and is not capitalized. Nor was it undiscussed. The date and time in the above discussion shows that it was pointed out on September 27 that it should be moved, and that it was not moved until October 5 (and a check of the edit history will show that I noted that it had been moved when I opened the RfC on October 7). Clearly plenty of time and some for anyone to disagree with the proposal. Seeing none, I took it as approval, not an unusual response. Should an RM to move proper noun come to my attention I would object. And I think that would be the consensus. The word phrase "proper noun" did not enter use until about 1890. The dictionary, if it contains "proper name", defines it as proper noun. The two terms are interchangeable. I have called for an RfC because I am not going to get into an edit war over the Revert. In the BRD cycle, after R comes D. There had been no response, so I am asking for a response. I do not believe that a review of a clearly embarrassing discussion needs to be reviewed. Proper names use hyphens and our MOS says so. 10,000 books use a hyphen and maybe a 100 use something else. Case closed. I would like to remind everyone to focus on the issue, not the editor, though. WP is never an authority on anything, proper nouns included. WP articles can never be used as a RS. Apteva (talk) 02:40, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- These topics have already been the focus of much long and pointless argumentation that wasted the time of multiple editors, time that could have been spent elsewhere, like in creating content. I don't understand the point of reopening these discussions so soon after they have finally and painfully been settled by consensus. --Neotarf (talk) 08:03, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- Congratulations to Noetica, the proper noun article has just been cited by no less an authority than Mark Liberman at Language Log. --Neotarf (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- There are still improvements that are needed - fix the misleading and incorrect examples. If someone wants to argue that proper nouns are not capitalized or that sentences do not need periods, not questions of course, then certainly their time is better spent elsewhere, but if someone insists that Roman-Syrian War is spelled with an endash they will have a very hard time supporting that premise. Is War capitalized in "Uganda-Tanzania War"? Possibly, but if it is the punctuation is a hyphen and not an appropriate example of where to use an endash. If war is not capitalized, Uganda–Tanzania war is an example of where an endash is used, and the capitalization needs to be fixed. In both cases the current article needs to be moved - either to Uganda-Tanzania War or to Uganda–Tanzania war. There are always people who misspell things, and use incorrect punctuation, and that is why there is an edit tab and a move option. Apteva (talk) 03:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
Comet Hale-Bopp
This example: "Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)" needs to be removed because used either with or without the word "Comet" this is still a proper noun and therefore uses a hyphen, as supported by the thousands of reliable sources that use this punctuation. According to Google Books there are 31,900 sources, the overwhelming majority of which use a hyphen. It is not even close. Apteva (talk) 22:47, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Many of those reliable sources do use the en dash, which confirms that it is simply a styling choice. The fact that many sources have a style that substitutes hyphens in the traditional role of the en dash, and that the Google books OCR can't tell the difference, does not mean that WP needs to adopt that style. There's nothing special or unique about Hale–Bopp here. Your concept of "proper noun, therefore hyphen" is unsupportable hallucination. Dicklyon (talk) 01:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not nonsense at all. There are some sources that do use en dash, but if there were many, as in many more than use hyphen, then statistically at least one would have appeared in the first ten. Out of the first 100 how many use hyphen? Out of the first 1,000 how many? Google books has 32,900 to look through. I strongly disagree with the supposition that an OCR can not tell the difference as there are a huge number of occurrences in google books of both endashes where they are appropriate and em dashes where they are appropriate. While it is far easier to do a text search, I am completely confident in my assessment that there are no endashes in the first 10 results that I obtained. As was pointed out before, any suggestion of "many" needs to also include "out of how many", as saying there are 432 examples of using Hale-Bopp with an endash sounds impressive until you find out, say, that that was out of 32,000, with 29,000 using a hyphen and 3,000 using a space, just as a made up example. Proper noun hyphen is not fiction. It is in our MOS and I really have yet to see any example of a proper noun that does not use a hyphen. I am not saying they do not exist. I can certainly imagine that if someone named Hale-Bopp and someone named Lennard-Jones discovered a comet it could be called the "Hale-Bopp–Lennard-Jones Comet, to distinguish between one discovered by Hale and someone named Bopp-Lennard-Jones, or by one person named Hale-Bopp-Lennard and one named Jones. Normally exceptions to rules are pretty easy to find. It is academic to find them, but still interesting, and I really have not seen one. One editor perhaps looked for examples of endashes in WP article titles and came up with two that are not proper nouns and two that are using incorrect punctuation on WP. Since when has WP ever been considered a reliable source? Apteva (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Several of them DO in fact appear in the first page of 10 hits on Google Book Search (with previews). You need to actually look at the previews to see how they are styled, as the OCR does not distinguish hyphen from en dash usually (and sometimes it sees en dashes as em dashes—I was going to say like this one, but it turns out that one really did get typeset with an em dash, due to some amateur typographer's blunder). If en dashes do show up sometimes in snippets, in probably from books that they got electronically, as with this one, where you can tell they got it electronically because if you zoom way in the letters aren't blurry or pixelated; they're being rendered from text. The same effect is often seen in Google Scholar, where papers with en dashes often show up as hyphen, but not always; in spite of that, nearly half show up on the first scholar results page with en dash. It's not an usual style like you're making it out to be. Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Am I hearing an echo? 5/20 is a long way from "nearly half". It is 3 to 1 in favor of using a hyphen. Which is correct based on that information? Clearly a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 06:35, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Several of them DO in fact appear in the first page of 10 hits on Google Book Search (with previews). You need to actually look at the previews to see how they are styled, as the OCR does not distinguish hyphen from en dash usually (and sometimes it sees en dashes as em dashes—I was going to say like this one, but it turns out that one really did get typeset with an em dash, due to some amateur typographer's blunder). If en dashes do show up sometimes in snippets, in probably from books that they got electronically, as with this one, where you can tell they got it electronically because if you zoom way in the letters aren't blurry or pixelated; they're being rendered from text. The same effect is often seen in Google Scholar, where papers with en dashes often show up as hyphen, but not always; in spite of that, nearly half show up on the first scholar results page with en dash. It's not an usual style like you're making it out to be. Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not nonsense at all. There are some sources that do use en dash, but if there were many, as in many more than use hyphen, then statistically at least one would have appeared in the first ten. Out of the first 100 how many use hyphen? Out of the first 1,000 how many? Google books has 32,900 to look through. I strongly disagree with the supposition that an OCR can not tell the difference as there are a huge number of occurrences in google books of both endashes where they are appropriate and em dashes where they are appropriate. While it is far easier to do a text search, I am completely confident in my assessment that there are no endashes in the first 10 results that I obtained. As was pointed out before, any suggestion of "many" needs to also include "out of how many", as saying there are 432 examples of using Hale-Bopp with an endash sounds impressive until you find out, say, that that was out of 32,000, with 29,000 using a hyphen and 3,000 using a space, just as a made up example. Proper noun hyphen is not fiction. It is in our MOS and I really have yet to see any example of a proper noun that does not use a hyphen. I am not saying they do not exist. I can certainly imagine that if someone named Hale-Bopp and someone named Lennard-Jones discovered a comet it could be called the "Hale-Bopp–Lennard-Jones Comet, to distinguish between one discovered by Hale and someone named Bopp-Lennard-Jones, or by one person named Hale-Bopp-Lennard and one named Jones. Normally exceptions to rules are pretty easy to find. It is academic to find them, but still interesting, and I really have not seen one. One editor perhaps looked for examples of endashes in WP article titles and came up with two that are not proper nouns and two that are using incorrect punctuation on WP. Since when has WP ever been considered a reliable source? Apteva (talk) 04:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
For now I have changed "Comet" to comet, per p. 48 of the New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, and per our article on the comet, which does not capitalize the word comet - hence an endash is correct as it is not treated as a proper noun. There is an open RM to move the page to Comet Hale-Bopp, treating it as a proper noun. Sources clearly favor proper noun status. Halley's comet, on the other hand, does not favor proper noun status and can also be corrected. Apteva (talk) 16:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please see WP:Policies and guidelines#Not part of the encyclopedia: "The policies, guidelines, and process pages themselves are not part of the encyclopedia proper. Consequently, they do not generally need to conform with the content standards. It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Misplaced Pages's administrative pages, or to phrase Misplaced Pages procedures or principles in a neutral manner, or to cite an outside authority in determining Misplaced Pages's editorial practices. Instead, the content of these pages is controlled by community-wide consensus, and the style should emphasize clarity, directness, and usefulness to other editors."
- The "New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors" does not have any authority over Misplaced Pages. The Misplaced Pages house style for comets is here: WP:Naming conventions (astronomical objects)#Comets.
- --Neotarf (talk) 18:22, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Irrelevant. The name we have chosen is "comet" not "Comet". Using "Comet" gives it proper noun status, and it becomes Comet Hale-Bopp, with a hyphen, not an endash. the section referenced says to use the common name, and if none, give it proper noun status (how generous). The example, Comet Hyakutake, is littered with references that use comet and ones that use Comet. Apteva (talk) 18:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- IMHO, recalling high school grammar classes might be of help here. Is the word "comet" a part of the name, or it just reiterates what the name is about? In other words, can we leave "comet" out without loss of meaning? Does the (c/C)omet Halley-Bopp resemble the "New York Times" newspaper and a McDonald's restaurant, or, rather, The Wall Street Journal and the White House?
- To my feeling, that particular space object is called Halley's Comet, and another one is called Hale-Bopp Comet. Since the names of space objects (planets, stars, comets, galaxies, constellations, etc.) are always capitalised (e.g., Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Aldebaran, Vega, Milky Way, Sun, etc., etc.) , the word "comet" should also be capitalised in all the instances, since it is an inseparable part of that object's name. Rules as to dash/hyphen should apply accordingly. kashmiri 19:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Of course Comet Hale-Bopp (however hyphenated) is a proper noun. All names are proper nouns. Some sources may choose not to capitalize it; that's a style decision (a poor one in my view, but style rather than grammar). But even in those sources, it's still a proper noun — that's a grammatical rather than stylistic category. --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- That may be obvious to any number of people, but it is not obvious to the people who write articles about the comet, or Articles as in scientific articles published elsewhere. In both cases the spelling of the dictionary is used. Why would we write a style guide that no one was using? Style guides should follow what we are doing, not make up rules that no one uses. I suggest that Comet should be changed to comet in Celestial bodies to agree with common use. We use sun and moon when 99.9+% (probably a lot more 9s for sun than moon) of the time we actually mean Sun and Moon, and it is ridiculous to capitalize it, and not done in common practice. Our style guides need to follow common practice, not introduce peculiarities. Apteva (talk) 21:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Your reference to "common use" seems misguided: Sun and Moon are always capitalised when used as names of celestial bodies (i.e., not in sun lotion, sunbathing, moonlight, etc.); so are Earth, Mercury, etc. As to your removal of capitalisation in "Comet", I would thus suggest you refrain from making edits that deliberately violate WP:MoS. Any such changes should be reverted. kashmiri 21:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Speaking only for myself, I am not making any edits that violate the MOS. The MOS says that proper names use hyphens, so I am moving articles that are proper nouns and use an endash, like, for example, Mexican-American War and Spanish-American War. Doing that brings them into compliance with the MOS. I am removing the examples in the MOS that are not in compliance with the MOS. The MOS says that proper nouns use hyphens, and has three examples that are proper nouns yet use an endash. One of them, comet Hale–Bopp, is not capitalized in our article, is not capitalized in a respected dictionary, and yet is capitalized as an example in our MOS. What's up with that? What I do need to do, though, is politely ask editors to read the section of the MOS on hyphens and note that there actually are places they are used - like in proper nouns. We all need to get on the same page here though, and if someone can show me 10,000 books that use an endash in Mexican-American War, and that there are less than use a hyphen, by all means that is what we also should use. But no matter how some editors came to the conclusion that Mexican-American War should have been spelled with an endash so they are going to use one, if in fact that is not a reasonable decision, it needs to be re-opened. In case no one has noticed, out of 4 million articles, there are some that have errors, and that is where I would prefer to spend my time. Fixing errors - like the spelling of Mexican-American War. Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- A Google Books search shows about 50% capitalize "Comet". Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- True. But how many dictionaries capitalize Halley's comet or comet Hale–Bopp? Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Most online dictionaries on the OneLook list capitalize the "C". Some capitalize it inconsistently. None on my list uncapitalize it consistently, although Dictionary.com's Halley's comet definition comes closest. Art LaPella (talk) 04:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But now I found two uncapitalizers elsewhere. Art LaPella (talk) 05:07, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- True. But how many dictionaries capitalize Halley's comet or comet Hale–Bopp? Apteva (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Your reference to "common use" seems misguided: Sun and Moon are always capitalised when used as names of celestial bodies (i.e., not in sun lotion, sunbathing, moonlight, etc.); so are Earth, Mercury, etc. As to your removal of capitalisation in "Comet", I would thus suggest you refrain from making edits that deliberately violate WP:MoS. Any such changes should be reverted. kashmiri 21:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- That may be obvious to any number of people, but it is not obvious to the people who write articles about the comet, or Articles as in scientific articles published elsewhere. In both cases the spelling of the dictionary is used. Why would we write a style guide that no one was using? Style guides should follow what we are doing, not make up rules that no one uses. I suggest that Comet should be changed to comet in Celestial bodies to agree with common use. We use sun and moon when 99.9+% (probably a lot more 9s for sun than moon) of the time we actually mean Sun and Moon, and it is ridiculous to capitalize it, and not done in common practice. Our style guides need to follow common practice, not introduce peculiarities. Apteva (talk) 21:04, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Of course Comet Hale-Bopp (however hyphenated) is a proper noun. All names are proper nouns. Some sources may choose not to capitalize it; that's a style decision (a poor one in my view, but style rather than grammar). But even in those sources, it's still a proper noun — that's a grammatical rather than stylistic category. --Trovatore (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Irrelevant. The name we have chosen is "comet" not "Comet". Using "Comet" gives it proper noun status, and it becomes Comet Hale-Bopp, with a hyphen, not an endash. the section referenced says to use the common name, and if none, give it proper noun status (how generous). The example, Comet Hyakutake, is littered with references that use comet and ones that use Comet. Apteva (talk) 18:53, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
The dictionary link for Comet Hale-Bopp is amusing - links to WP with a hyphen, even though the article uses an endash, as of 2011 - "05:05, 26 January 2011 CWenger (talk | contribs) . . (31 bytes) (+31) . . (moved Comet Hale-Bopp to Comet Hale–Bopp: MOS:ENDASH #1, comet discovered by Hale and Bopp)".
We found 3 dictionaries with English definitions that include the word comet Hale-Bopp: Click on the first link on a line below to go directly to a page where "comet Hale-Bopp" is defined.
General dictionaries General (1 matching dictionary)
- Comet Hale-Bopp: Misplaced Pages, the 💕
Computing dictionaries Computing (1 matching dictionary)
- Comet Hale-Bopp, Hale-Bopp, Comet: Encyclopedia
Slang dictionaries Slang (1 matching dictionary)
- Comet Hale-Bopp: Urban Dictionary
I checked to see if it was just copying the punctuation used in the search entry, and replaced the hyphen with an endash and got:
Sorry, no dictionaries indexed in the selected category contain the exact phrase comet Hale–Bopp. Apteva (talk) 15:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- You might want to check s.t. other than a dict, such as Cometary Science after Hale–Bopp (Böhnhardt, Combi, Kidger, & Schulz, eds, Springer 2003), which uses the en dash in numerous papers and research notes, such as The 1995–2002 Long-Term Monitoring of Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale–Bopp) at Radio Wavelength; Large-Scale Structures in Comet Hale–Bopp; Modelling of Shape Changes of the Nuclei of Comets C/1995 O1 Hale–Bopp and 46P/Wirtanen Caused by Water Ice Sublimation; Observations of Rotating Jets of Carbon Monoxide in Comet Hale–Bopp with the IRAM Interferometer; From Hale–Bopp's Activity to Properties of its Nucleus; The Shadow of Comet Hale–Bopp in Lyman–Alpha, 73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann 3 – One Orbit after Break-Up; Nitrogen Sulfide in Comets Hyakutake (C/1996 B2) and Hale–Bopp (C/1995 O1), etc. These are proceedings of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Colloquium No. 186 "Cometary Science after Hale–Bopp" (Tenerife, Jan. 2002), which followed the First International Conference on Comet Hale–Bopp in Jan. 1998. There are other, similar uses, such as 4015/Wilson–Harrington, 55P/Tempel–Tuttle, the Kuiper–Edgeworth (K–E) belt, the Hertz–Knudsen relationship, and the Stefan–Boltzmann constant. They even use the dash for Hale–Bopp in their references, though I suspect that if we followed up, we'd find that many were published with a hyphen. That is, they punctuate according to their in-house MOS, which is s.t. people here have been arguing we're not allowed to do (esp. in article titles, claiming it violates COMMONNAME). — kwami (talk) 18:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Comment. Hale-Bopp carries a hyphen because the IAU says that it's spelled with a hyphen. Hyphenated surnames have the hyphen replaced with a space, like Singer Brewster, discovered by Singer-Brewster, or cut in half, like Bally-Clayton (
1968dC/1968 Q1), discovered by Bally-Urban and Clayton. Some people had already moved a couple of featured comet articles via RM. Kwami (who is posting right above me by pure chance) then moved dozens of comet articles to dashed articles, then proposed "Hale-Bopp" for the MOS draft as an example of a dash names. He didn't mention that all comet articles were hyphenated only a few weeks ago, or that he had moved dozens of himself a couple of days ago without discussion. Months later I realized the problem and I tried to correct it, but the usual suspects stonewalled the change. Now Kwami has been desyosped for making massive moves against consensus. Maybe it would be time to discuss comet hyphens again..... Or should I wait until Noetica is topic banned for stonewalling and edit warring? --Enric Naval (talk) 18:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- And Enric Naval posts pictures of cats he's killed on his user page. If you can provide a source for the IAU rule, great, but that would simply be their in-house style. We don't copy the in-house styles of our sources any more than they do, as the result would be chaotic. Punctuation varies from source to source, and is even adapted in references and quotations.
- The IAU convention, BTW, is similar to typewriter hyphenation. It's because astronomers send the IAU telegrams of their discoveries, and telegrams can't handle dashes. — kwami (talk) 19:14, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- The IAU has a comet naming guideline, not a style guideline. It's the only body that can name comets, and its naming decisions are internationally accepted. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Valuable link. Although I can't help an impression that the document deals more with naming than with typography. I wouldn't be surprised if its authors did not understand a difference between a hyphen and a dash. Astronomers hardly ever are typesetters... kashmiri 12:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- What it says is that spaces or hyphens are used: "each individual name is to be separated by a hyphen", and it is recommended that no more than two names be included. If someone has a hyphenated name that hyphen is replaced with a space or one of the two names only used. So that eliminates the ambiguity of Hale-Lennard-Jones - it would be either Hale-Lennard Jones or Hale-Lennard or Hale-Jones. Apteva (talk) 14:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Valuable link. Although I can't help an impression that the document deals more with naming than with typography. I wouldn't be surprised if its authors did not understand a difference between a hyphen and a dash. Astronomers hardly ever are typesetters... kashmiri 12:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- And the comet names were always announced in circulars, printed in paper, with diacritics, umlauts, scientific symbols, minus and plus signs, superscripts, and French letters like ç. The telegrams were coded and illegible, and they never contained any comet name. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- I don't know whether this has to be a joke or what. This is a printout of a French-language news release from 1920 regarding the position of an observed new planet. Nothing about comets, naming, etc. See, basic knowledge of French prevents being misled by comments like yours. kashmiri 12:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- The IAU circulars communicate the discovery of all types of astronomical bodies: stars, asteroids, minor planets, comets, etc. as well as observations of interest, corrections, etc. Here you have the printed IAU circulars announcing 1919 g (Skjellerup) and Reid 1921a and Väisälä 1944b. More recent version are available by subscription. As you can see, the official names have always been announced in printed circulars, which don't have any restriction for diacritics, umlauts, dashes, scientific symbols, etc. Decades before the circulars started, they were announced in printed journal Astronomische Nachrichten, which also didn't have any restriction in characters. Telegrams didn't play any role in name announcements, they were just for quick announcements of discoveries. At discovery time comets only had a provisional designation like 1944b (second comet discovered in 1944). --Enric Naval (talk) 16:27, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- I don't know whether this has to be a joke or what. This is a printout of a French-language news release from 1920 regarding the position of an observed new planet. Nothing about comets, naming, etc. See, basic knowledge of French prevents being misled by comments like yours. kashmiri 12:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- The IAU has a comet naming guideline, not a style guideline. It's the only body that can name comets, and its naming decisions are internationally accepted. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Comment. Hale-Bopp carries a hyphen because the IAU says that it's spelled with a hyphen. Hyphenated surnames have the hyphen replaced with a space, like Singer Brewster, discovered by Singer-Brewster, or cut in half, like Bally-Clayton (
I am not sure about the coded and illegible part. The IAU recently, though, asserted using capital letters for planets, etc., but it is not clear if that extends to comets. Hale-Bopp for example could simply be certified as being "the comet Hale-Bopp", which provides no insight into capitalization of comet. The examples given were Solar System and Earth's equator.
It was noted that the naming of all planets so far has long predated the existence of the IAU. I think that rather than naming things they standardize names and certify them, and are an arbitor, but they do not make up the names, or sell names.
The IAU frequently receives requests from individuals who want to buy stars or name stars after other persons. Some commercial enterprises purport to offer such services for a fee. However, such "names" have no formal or official validity whatever.
Based on the survey of google book results below it is clear that the endash conclusion in 2011 took an extreme minority viewpoint and put the MOS in conflict with WP:TITLE. I suggest that it be reversed in light of new information, and that the examples of wars and comets with endash be removed from the MOS and replaced with hyphens. Whether the use of hyphens will remain dominant or, like Kiev could be replaced with a new spelling remains to be seen. WP is not a crystal ball and does not try to reflect what people should be doing or what they might be doing but simply what they are doing. Just as Kiev remains the overwhelming spelling in common usage, Comet Hale-Bopp (with a hyphen) is the dominant spelling for the comet Hale-Bopp (correctly not capitalized when preceded by the), along with airports and wars which have achieved proper name status and if there are any other names with endash or hyphen they, like Comet Hale-Bopp can be tested to see if they use an endash or a hyphen in common usage, but the MOS does not need to pretend that endash rules apply inside names, because that is not the interpretation of the vast majority of book editors. Should that change, clearly WP would eventually reflect that change as well, but certainly can not be expected to precede that change. To do so would be original research. Apteva (talk) 13:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Punctuation and footnotes
I would very much like to add the following to this section:
- - - - -
In contrast to scientific articles, ref tags are not placed immediately following the name of a scientist, but following the content that is referenced.
- Example: Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers stated that the individual needed an environment that provided them with acceptance, empathy, and approval.
- - - - -
The reason is that in more and more articles (anyway, the ones that I see) the ref tags are put immediately behind the name, just as in scientific articles. The problem is that is becomes unclear where the referenced content finishes and the unreferenced content starts.
For instance, "Rogers stated that the individual needed love. Love is the most important need for a human being. Without love, people can get depressed."
In this case, there is no way to know where Rogers statements finish, and the editor's opinion starts. I would like to point this out to some editors and be able to refer to the manual of style. So that's why I wrote this extra example. Lova Falk talk 08:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
- Too specific, and ambiguous. My impression is that by "scientific articles" you mean "articles in scientific journals, as opposed to articles in wikipedia", many of which are scientific articles. Just say references follow the facts they are referencing. If a specific editor is violating that you can {{welcome}} (subst:welcome) them and point that out. Apteva (talk) 18:22, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
- Added a section to Misplaced Pages:Simplified Manual of Style, though to help avoid this happening. Apteva (talk) 18:59, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
- It's a WP:CITEVAR issue. If the editors at the article in question want to use that style, they're permitted to. Your only recourse is to gently talk them out of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with WhatamIdoing. Suppose the Harvard style is being used. Then you would get something like "Rogers (2009) stated that the individual needed love. Love is the most important need for a human being. Without love, people can get depressed" (where "Rogers (2009)" would be linked). This style is perfectly acceptable in Misplaced Pages, but doesn't correspond to the advice that "references follow the facts they are referencing". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- But how would we know where Rogers' statement finishes? If it is Rogers who thinks that people can get depressed or an editor who thinks so???? Lova Falk talk 17:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Which is why that style is rarely used - but as pointed out it is still a valid reference style. I am guessing that someone could find an FA that uses it - throughout. Apteva (talk) 07:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- It may or may not be the case that the Harvard style is "rarely used" in Misplaced Pages; I've never counted. It is, however, almost the norm in some academic disciplines. The trailing raised number style has precisely the reverse problem: it's not clear where the sourced material starts. If I read a paragraph with one raised number reference at the very end, does this apply to the whole paragraph, just the last sentence or what? No referencing style is perfect in this respect. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Which is why that style is rarely used - but as pointed out it is still a valid reference style. I am guessing that someone could find an FA that uses it - throughout. Apteva (talk) 07:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- But how would we know where Rogers' statement finishes? If it is Rogers who thinks that people can get depressed or an editor who thinks so???? Lova Falk talk 17:25, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with WhatamIdoing. Suppose the Harvard style is being used. Then you would get something like "Rogers (2009) stated that the individual needed love. Love is the most important need for a human being. Without love, people can get depressed" (where "Rogers (2009)" would be linked). This style is perfectly acceptable in Misplaced Pages, but doesn't correspond to the advice that "references follow the facts they are referencing". Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Maths styling and readability
I want to make a case for including, as a style guideline, that all math using symbols other then the basic arithmetic symbols, be 'transcripted' into ordinary language. I don't mean that the math be replaced by ordinary language descriptions, but that displayed math have accompanying text that reads as if the math were being spoken. The case is very simple:
1) There is a huge problem of innumeracy in the general public, even among very intelligent people.
2) Part of this problem has nothing to do with the difficulty of understanding relations of quantity and so forth, but a simple inability to *read* math. Often people's eyes glaze over at the appearance of math because they simply cannot associate any sounds or meanings to the symbols.
3) I realize that the meaning and often the pronunciation of various symbols is covered in specific entries about the symbols but... a) This is not universally the case. There are symbols without specific entries, and those that have them require either the symbol itself or its name to be found. b) Math symbols are often displayed as graphic images, thus the symbols cannot be individually selected, linked or searched unless one already knows the name of the symbol. c) People are reluctant to search lists and read about symbols when they just want to grasp the basic concept the math is expressing. Instead, they go away thinking, "this is not for me..."
4) An alternate possible solution would be to include a list of every symbol used on a page with a link to the specific entry for each, perhaps in a sidebar. But this solution is inferior because: a) Symbols often have context dependent readings. For example '—>' may read 'implies' or it may read 'goes to' or 'maps to' etc. Disambiguation has to occur in context. b) Even in the same context different mathematicians will sometimes read expressions differently. There is no one canonically correct reading for many math expressions. c) It requires people to leave the page and come back, perhaps without the information they sought. d) It is a little like telling people, "learn the math before reading this". But in some cases that is exactly why they are here... trying to learn the math!
5) The problems of reading math expressions and understanding them are related but separate problems. In some cases one does need to "learn the math" before understanding, but there are numerous cases where simply being able to read the expression conveys sufficient information to result in a satisfactory understanding of the article, including the unfamiliar math.
6) For the same reason we don't encourage highly technical articles laced with specialist jargon. The function of an encyclopedia is to transfer specialized knowledge to a general audience. We don't allow foreign language quotations to go untranslated. We oughtn't allow math expressions to remain impenetrable.
68.80.134.156 (talk) 16:52, 3 October 2012 (UTC) (sorry, thought I was logged in) Baon (talk) 17:00, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think that means that at Maxwell's equations#Equations (SI units), for example, becomes something like (this is surely wrong; I didn't bother to look anything up because the details don't matter) the dot product of the electric field with the infinitesimal change in the surface, integrated over an infinitesimal change in the volume, is equal to the electric charge of the volume divided by the electrical constant. If that is your idea, I think that is harder to understand than the equation. The article's preceding paragraphs explain the equations to some extent. The Simple English equivalent is harder to understand, not easier (perhaps because my editing over there is frustrated by the "science not babytalk" faction) because it "simplified" mainly by omitting the verbal explanation. So how would you write that? And do you really think editors would even read any further nagging about readability?Art LaPella (talk) 20:33, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes! I think that's much more useful. Let me stress again that I am not advocating this as a replacement for the equation. I can at least look up "the dot product" and I know what an infinitesimal change is and what an electric field is (and could look them up if I didn't). I can't even look up a circle with two kind-of-extended "f"s (or perhaps "s"s) drawn vertically through it and two greek subscripts that I may or may not be able to name. Looking at the equation only, I don't even know that infinitesimals are involved. But perhaps you are trying too hard to deliver the meaning of the equation. That is labor the reader must undertake. I notice your code uses the term 'partial omega' for the subscript, and if I look up "dot product" the wiki page nowhere has the circle with two function signs drawn through it. So this must be "<something>subscript partial omega". What I am asking for is what you would say if you were reading the text aloud to a companion who's comprehension of the meaning of the math was not an issue. How do you read it to yourself? Do you just say to yourself, "oh, Maxwell's equation" and then substitute your understanding of the meaning without ever referring to the symbols themselves? The explanation of the meaning must be something else again, and stand apart. For instance, I might read a differential as, "dxdt" or as "dx over dt" or as "delta x delta t". There is not one "right way" to do it. I might be reduced to "d times x divided by d times t..." and I may have no clue what it means, but at least it can be read. I am looking for analogues of readings like, "the definite integral from a to b of y with respect to x...", or "take the integral from t-nought to t...".
- As for the problems of getting consensus and editor resistance or push back... those are real problems I don't want to minimize. I think it is a matter of lobbying for the usefulness of it. Along with reminders of the purpose of an encyclopedia.. it is not to glory in one's superiority or have conversations with one's peers. I agree with the no babytalk guideline. I am not suggesting talking down to anyone. Merely providing additional verbal information that some (I think many) people would find useful. If done properly, it should not interfere with readability, but enhance it for most people. Those who see it as an unnecessary crutch can skip over it. That is not ideal, but it is, I think, preferable to skipping over the math itself, which many people currently do. In any event, thank you for entertaining the idea. Obviously it will not be an easy sell to math editors, who are the least likely to perceive a need for it, and who have much invested in their own math competency, unless they are also zealous educators. Baon (talk) 23:42, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- P.S. I looked at the SI units page you link to above. It is very good; very clean. The table provided on the symbols and notation is great! But consider a simple example: Is this "the dot product of the divergence operator and" or "the divergence of" or "divergence times..." All the above? None of the above? Uneducated, I read "the funny down pointing triangle that is the divergence operator, not delta followed by a dot that probably means multiplication". I want to know how it is commonly read. Then I can worry about its function in the equation. We have difficulty associating meaning to symbols we can't name, I think. Baon (talk) 00:36, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that Wikipedian editors are more driven by vanity than helpfulness, but there is no easy solution without paying them. If readers don't at least recognize that the surface integral symbol (I found the explanation in the table) is some kind of integral, then are we really doing them a favor by inviting them to look up dot product, divergence etc.? This is a physics article. We have other articles that describe multi-variable calculus. So if we're leading them into a trap they won't understand, then isn't "learn the math before reading this" more helpful? And even if a verbal description does more good than harm in this case, is that true of every case, such as the much simpler quadratic formula for instance? Or should we let editors use their discretion for individual articles? And even if we should have such verbal descriptions for all articles, what will another guideline accomplish that WP:JARGON isn't doing already, besides the familiar dangers of WP:CREEP? Most Wikipedians won't read it, and the ones who do will use it for edit wars as in the thread immediately after this one. Art LaPella (talk) 04:52, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks again for engaging with me on this matter. I am coming around to your point of view. I have spent more time looking over the symbol lookup table, and I see that there is a column in the table for "reads as", which is pretty much what I was asking for. I can see the duplication of effort that would be entailed in making that part of every article. I guess my problem reduces to individual cases where a symbol is used that is not in the table... I started this train of thought after trying to read something on the "Affine transformations" page. I have looked at the source.. The symbol is 'varphi' and I was able to look it up. I found the page on phi discusses this. It is a varient font form of phi, found mostly in older fonts, and is deprecated for mathematics. I am content to address this on the Affine transformations page, and take it as an isolated instance. I may add it to the symbol table with a note, so others will at least have a chance of seeing it there, if I can figure out how to do it. I still think there is a problem with symbol lookup... a kind of catch 22 where you need to know the name of the symbol in order to be able to look it up efficiently. And most users won't go to the page source to read the markup. (I didn't think of it myself, initially.) But I can see my suggestion is not really a good fix to those problems. Baon (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Just a note here — Baon appears to have misinterpreted a remark in the phi article. There is nothing "deprecated" about . It is a perfectly normal mathematical symbol and is used quite regularly. --Trovatore (talk) 22:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks again for engaging with me on this matter. I am coming around to your point of view. I have spent more time looking over the symbol lookup table, and I see that there is a column in the table for "reads as", which is pretty much what I was asking for. I can see the duplication of effort that would be entailed in making that part of every article. I guess my problem reduces to individual cases where a symbol is used that is not in the table... I started this train of thought after trying to read something on the "Affine transformations" page. I have looked at the source.. The symbol is 'varphi' and I was able to look it up. I found the page on phi discusses this. It is a varient font form of phi, found mostly in older fonts, and is deprecated for mathematics. I am content to address this on the Affine transformations page, and take it as an isolated instance. I may add it to the symbol table with a note, so others will at least have a chance of seeing it there, if I can figure out how to do it. I still think there is a problem with symbol lookup... a kind of catch 22 where you need to know the name of the symbol in order to be able to look it up efficiently. And most users won't go to the page source to read the markup. (I didn't think of it myself, initially.) But I can see my suggestion is not really a good fix to those problems. Baon (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Only four articles are listed at Misplaced Pages:Spoken articles#Mathematics (version of 22:15, 4 October 2012).
- —Wavelength (talk) 21:39, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- A discussion about pronouncing mathematical symbols is at Learning math? | Lambda the Ultimate.
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- If you visit the Unicode code chart index at Code Charts, and scroll down to the heading "Symbols and Punctuation", and find the subheading "Mathematical Symbols", you can select thereunder a sub-subheading or a sub-sub-subheading. For example, you can select "Supplemental Mathematical Operators", which is linked to http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2A00.pdf.
- There, below the table with a width of 16 cells, the symbols are listed, preceded by their respective hexadecimal encodings and followed by their respective official Unicode names. For example, the symbol ⨀ is encoded hexadecimally as 2A00 (
⨀
produces ⨀) and has the name "N-ARY CIRCLED DOT OPERATOR". - By reference to the names of symbols in these pages, at least in theory a person can read a mathematical formula without necessarily understanding what they mean. In some respects, the process is similar to reading a passage orally, and spelling orally an unfamiliar word whose pronunciation one does not know or can not articulate.
- —Wavelength (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- See the category "Mathematics" at WatchKnowLearn - Free Educational Videos for K-12 Students (WatchKnowLearn)
- and the category "Math & Statistics" at Math & Statistics | EduTube Educational Videos
- and the category "Mathematics" at Mathematics | Video Courses on Academic Earth (Academic Earth)
- and the category "Math" at Khan Academy (Khan Academy)
- and search results for mathematics at mathematics - YouTube (YouTube)
- and search results for mathematics at YOVISTO - Academic Video Search (Yovisto)
- and the category "Mathematics" at Category: Mathematics - videolectures.net (VideoLectures.net).
- —Wavelength (talk) 01:49, 13 October 2012 (UTC) and 06:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- See http://www.math.cornell.edu/~hubbard/readingmath.pdf (Cornell University)
- and http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/speakmath.pdf (University of California, Berkeley), with an unlinked reference to www.dessci.com, that is to say, http://www.dessci.com
- and http://www.access2science.com/jagqn/More%20Accessible%20Math%20preprint.htm
- and Periods and commas in mathematical writing - MathOverflow (MathOverflow).
- —Wavelength (talk) 23:45, 13 October 2012 (UTC) and 23:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 35#Easy as pi? (July and August and September 2008).
- —Wavelength (talk) 17:03, 16 October 2012 (UTC) and 17:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Arbor-tree break
To remain within the honored traditions of this page, we cannot discuss "Maths styling" without first duking it out in a long, to-the-death debate about the title of the debate itself. Should it Maths styling or Math styling? I'm sorry to introduce a discontinuity, but critical points must be integrated in such differentiations, though it's a slippery slope. EEng (talk) 05:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is not the place to make individual decisions. Maths is probably British English, and Math American English. Apteva (talk) 06:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please tell me you knew I was joking. Please. Please. I beg you. EEng (talk) 14:01, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, "maths" is British, and EEng is satirizing the rest of the page. Art LaPella (talk) 07:00, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The word mathematics complies with WP:VNE (version of 19:20, 12 October 2012).—Wavelength (talk) 00:16, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I repeat, even more forcefully: Please tell me you knew I was joking. Please. Please. I beg you. EEng (talk) 03:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- This talk page is for serious-minded people communicating in seriousness about serious matters. Joking here belittles the importance of those matters. Some or all of us try to avoid misinterpretations and disagreements, but they occur anyway. Joking here about misinterpretations or about disagreements belittles the efforts of editors who try to communicate effectively in spite of them.
- —Wavelength (talk) 01:16, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I repeat, even more forcefully: Please tell me you knew I was joking. Please. Please. I beg you. EEng (talk) 03:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Spaced vs unspaced em dash
A certain well-intentioned user named Hydrargyrum keeps replacing unspaced em dashes in hundreds of Misplaced Pages articles with spaced em dashes (preceded by a non-breaking space). This is contrary to WP:DASH; still, Hydrargyrum maintains that his is the correct way because he has "completed a typing course". I recognise that there is no single way of using em dashes: The Chicago Manual of Style and the Oxford Guide to Style, for example, recommend unspaced em dashes while AP Stylebook and a few others propose that these be spaced. However, WP:Manual of Style has expressly stipulated that em dashes should not be spaced on Misplaced Pages. The above user argues that "the information at WP:DASH was developed by incompetent individuals operating in an information vacuum, who apparently never took a course in typing, nor are they familiar with how line wraps are handled in browsers and other software" (User_talk:Hydrargyrum#Em_dashes). What, if any, action should now be taken – either with regard to restraining Hydrargyrum or allowing other styles in WP:MOS? Thanks. kashmiri 22:48, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- I ask such people to read User:Art LaPella/Because the guideline says so. If that doesn't work, others might try something more coercive. Art LaPella (talk) 23:29, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks, good read, I posted the link, let's see. Little optimism remains: Hydrargyrum has been asked to stop changing dashes his way already several times in the last few months – to no effect. kashmiri 00:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Remember to advise a user (as I've done in this case) if you are going to discuss their behavior somewhere. —— 04:30, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- As often when it comes to style discussions, they seem rather overconfident that they are "right" and that everyone else, or any different punctuation style, is "wrong". The reality of course, as appears to have been pointed out to them, is that there are alternatives, which are simply a matter of choice - and that the most commonly seen and used alternatives in the real world for dashes in running prose are the unspaced emdash and the spaced endash. MOS happily allows either. Common sense and the MOS would both suggest an editor shouldn't be making mass changes between the two of them - let alone changing either to the rarely seen spaced emdash. Nor do I think there's much need to change the MOS to add that third option (and even if we did, changing to that format in individual cases from one of the other two would still be utterly pointless). N-HH talk/edits 09:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is related to the internal consistency RfC in this same page. Some people take upon themselves to change hundreds of articles between two accepted styles in order to ensure consistency, and they refuse to take hints. The MOS needs to make really clear that this is not acceptable. If the MOS doesn't say this clearly then editors can't use the MOS to stop this sort of behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:39, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not really related. This is about an editor who is changing to an unacceptable style (per the MOS). —— 16:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- I also find spaced emdashes preferable for setting off parentheticals. Unspaced emdashes give an unwarranted sense of connection between the two words they join; parentheticals, almost by definition, should more tightly group the words contained within them than to the words outside. Endashes, on the other hand, do not seem appropriate for parentheticals at all. I think if the MoS does not permit spaced emdashes for parentheticals, this should be changed. --Trovatore (talk) 03:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- The editor appears to still be changing dashes in violation of the MoS, even though several editors have asked him to stop. I have given him a warning on his talk page. Let me know if I need to follow up on it. Cheers. Kaldari (talk) 20:58, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- I also find spaced emdashes preferable for setting off parentheticals. Unspaced emdashes give an unwarranted sense of connection between the two words they join; parentheticals, almost by definition, should more tightly group the words contained within them than to the words outside. Endashes, on the other hand, do not seem appropriate for parentheticals at all. I think if the MoS does not permit spaced emdashes for parentheticals, this should be changed. --Trovatore (talk) 03:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Perhaps a modification of the guidelines in the MOS for use of the hyphen, en dash and em dash should be considered. There are technical reasons for doing so. By default, most browsers and text editors break text automatically after a hyphen (ASCII 45, HTML code -); I have never encountered one that doesn't, unless it is forced to display in "no-wrap" mode. This is not true of the en dash and em dash characters, however. Over the years I've encountered some software that breaks lines after these characters, but most don't. Instead, what one most often sees is a break before the en dash or em dash if it is unspaced, putting the dash in the first column of the next line. Although you will no doubt find examples in print publications where this occurs, this is generally considered bad practice in typography and typesetting. It slows down reading and comprehension. How wo
uld it feel if type
-setters interru
ted text at random places within words and used hyphens in rando
-m fashion? It would make reading such text much more time consuming, would it not? By forcing the hyphen or dash to be the last visible character before a line break, it prepares the reader's brain for what is to follow, requiring less mental effort on the reader's part.
Since we don't have any control over what browser software a visitor to Misplaced Pages will use, we cannot predict how that browser will handle all types of dash characters. Moreover, we don't know what type of display equipment a visitor will be using; it could range from sub-VGA to XVGA, so we can't predict where lines will end within the browser window. Moreover, not all users run their browsers maximized, so even on an XVGA display, they may be viewing Web content in a sub-VGA window. That being the case, how would you go about providing the best reading experience for the site visitor?
Since Misplaced Pages isn't a typesetting system, we have limited options in controlling where characters will appear in a given line of text. One way that we can control the position of en dashes and em dashes is to precede them with a non-breaking space ( or  ) and follow them with an normal space (ASCII 32, HTML code  ). This guarantees that a line break will not put those characters in in the first column of the following line. Another way of doing it is with zero-width spaces. There is a zero-width non-breaking Unicode character (⁠) and also a zero-width Unicode space character (​) that would allow en dashes and em dashes to appear unspaced, yet retain the desired control of where the line breaks.
Some have presented the argument that it doesn't matter whether one uses an en dash or an em dash. Indeed, one may find pathological examples in print where the typesetter has used en dashes in place of em dashes, particularly when text is arranged in narrow columns and an em dash might appear disproportionately wide. It's not good policy, however to do so in Web content. The technical reason for this again, we cannot predict what kind of hardware and software a Misplaced Pages visitor will be using. The reader may be using the default screen font, or due to "accessibility" requirements may be using a substitute font, something that one can do with most modern browsers. The hyphen, en dash and em dash can look confusingly similar, depending on the screen font. Hyphens are generally not offset by spaces, and when one uses an unspaced en dash or em dash in such a situation, it can lead to ambiguous interpretation of a line of text: Was the writer pausing and interjecting an incidental thought, or is that some strange compound word? By offsetting an en dash or em dash with spaces, it leaves no doubt in the reader's mind what the writer intended to convey.
If you enjoy abusing your readers, go ahead and insist that the present MOS must be followed without question. If, on the other hand, you care about your readers, consider what I've written here. — Quicksilver 23:26, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for presenting your case on the proper page for it, not throughout Misplaced Pages. I have verified that a line break can occur before an unspaced em dash, and those who write rules here (not me; note that some people here write style manuals as their real life job, not (ahem!) as a lesser part of some other job) haven't discussed that issue, to my knowledge. And yes, an unspaced em dash could look like an unspaced hyphen depending on the font. Art LaPella (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The identified problem is not unique to the em dash. The problem is that browsers use a widow/orphan control scheme (also called text flow control) which responds poorly to the user's preferences for font size, window size and for image placement. Putting a non-breaking space in front of the em dash does not fix the problem. The problem is virtually the same for unspaced em dashes, spaced em dashes, unspaced en dashes, spaced en dashes, and every sort of hyphen. People here must get past the world of print and settle for the imperfect world of browsers where your writing is going to display in ways over which you have no control. Hydragyrum is tilting at windmills; there is nothing anybody can do to make the em dash work consistently online. The problem is not limited to Safari or Chrome or Mozilla or Internet Explorer—it is all-pervasive. Misplaced Pages's established em dash style is fine as it is. Binksternet (talk) 04:29, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you for presenting your case on the proper page for it, not throughout Misplaced Pages. I have verified that a line break can occur before an unspaced em dash, and those who write rules here (not me; note that some people here write style manuals as their real life job, not (ahem!) as a lesser part of some other job) haven't discussed that issue, to my knowledge. And yes, an unspaced em dash could look like an unspaced hyphen depending on the font. Art LaPella (talk) 01:13, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Your statement about putting a non-breaking space in front of the em dash (or en dash) not fixing the problem can easily be shown to be untrue, at least with the Mozilla family of browsers and with Opera. Moreover, if a non-breaking space didn't do what it's supposed to do, it wouldn't even exist in HTML. — Quicksilver 06:18, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- The statement that the em dash can be confused with hyphen or en dash is also demonstrably false. I copied this image (and its caption) from Dash to illustrate. As for spaces, there is no case where spaced em dash is correct; but spaced en dash is an acceptable alternative to unspaced em dash. Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Try your experiment again with fixed pitch text. — Quicksilver 18:27, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree they are confusing in monospace fonts, for example, the editing interface. Hopefully the upcoming Visual Editor will alleviate some of the confusion. Kaldari (talk) 22:11, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Modification to MOS:IDENTITY
A few weeks ago, there was a proposal at WP:VPP to modify the wording of MOS:IDENTITY, specifically Point 2; the archived discussion is here. It gained some traction, but it died down without any kind of resolution, so I want to raise it again. The specific change being sought is;
"Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns, pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's gender at the time of notability as reflected within the prevalence of mainstream reliable sources. Identity changes thereafter should be dealt with chronologically but should always follow the conventions used with prevalence in mainstream sources."
Instead of copying over the rationale, the link to the archive shows Berean Hunter's rationale, and other examples are provided in the thread. If people think this would be better discussed elsewhere, that's fine, but since the waters at VPP have been tested this seems like the most logical place. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:49, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- I made a similar proposal back in May here. I agree with Blade that we need to follow what mainstream sources say rather than get ahead of these sources by making a judgment based on an individual's statements. GabrielF (talk) 18:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Does this mean we'll have to change Template:MOS-TW?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:40, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, it would. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- What would the template's words have to change to?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hadn't thought about it... that'll obviously need some work. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:55, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- What would the template's words have to change to?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, it would. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Does this mean we'll have to change Template:MOS-TW?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:40, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Can you clear up the exact meaning of this proposed rule?? Is it any similar to the following:
Trans women who are notable for being trans women should be referred to as she/her. However, trans women notable primarily for an event before the operation of surgery for a reason that has nothing to do with being transsexual should be referred to as he/him as if they were cisgender men. Georgia guy (talk) 22:29, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
- Almost. The first sentence is right, but the idea is to refer to, say, Laura Jane Grace as "he" when he was identifying as Tom Gabel and "she" after coming out in public as a she. Make sense? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:10, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- You mean, we should assume that trans women actually were men, not women trapped in men's bodies, before the operation?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- To couch it in less loaded, more policy-based language, it's to avoid outright misleading revisionist history such as "she captained her tennis team at Horace Mann" (in the article on Renée Richards); specifics are in the linked VPP conversation. We at Misplaced Pages aren't here to play psychologists and pass judgment on whether or not they were really men or just women all along, we're here to report facts; in the cases of Grace and Richards, among others, they were notable under different names and sexes and our articles should reflect that. And this also works the other way too; the article on Andreas Krieger should be treated the same (and as of writing is actually a good example of what I'm shooting for). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- Notable under different names and sexes?? This phrase actually does imply the statement I was asking above whether we should assume. Georgia guy (talk) 19:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The sex the person was commonly believed to be at the time. I think this is a slam-dunk. We do not — we must not — take a position on whether a person's "real" sex is. The choice to retroactively apply a sex change to previous notable events is nothing short of advocacy of a particular point of view; it must stop. --Trovatore (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Notable under different names and sexes?? This phrase actually does imply the statement I was asking above whether we should assume. Georgia guy (talk) 19:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- To couch it in less loaded, more policy-based language, it's to avoid outright misleading revisionist history such as "she captained her tennis team at Horace Mann" (in the article on Renée Richards); specifics are in the linked VPP conversation. We at Misplaced Pages aren't here to play psychologists and pass judgment on whether or not they were really men or just women all along, we're here to report facts; in the cases of Grace and Richards, among others, they were notable under different names and sexes and our articles should reflect that. And this also works the other way too; the article on Andreas Krieger should be treated the same (and as of writing is actually a good example of what I'm shooting for). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
- You mean, we should assume that trans women actually were men, not women trapped in men's bodies, before the operation?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
This section can be archived, just like any section of a talk page. I remember from 2004-2006 the "Georgia moving poll" which was wasn't archived for a long time. (It was at Talk:Georgia; now it's in an archive.) Can we put this discussion in a similar area so that it won't be archived too quickly?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not sure... anyone familiar with this talkpage have suggestions? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Think I've got it... now on with the discussion. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:31, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
MOSQUOTE vs PERCENT
WP:MOSQUOTE reads "a few purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Misplaced Pages's conventions without comment" and later "Spaces before punctuation such as periods and colons: these should be removed as alien to modern English-language publishing.". In to my opinion this includes and percent numbers. For instance if a quote includes something like "15 %" it should be changed to "15%" per WP:PERCENT. Am I right? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- I would consider this a minor typographic change that does not involve any qualitative change to the underlying quote. -- Ohconfucius 10:19, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- It can also be considered as conversion to house-style. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:46, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- (As the editor who raised the altering of the citation
quote=
with Magioladitis) I'd be happy to see WP:PERCENT linked in WP:MOSQUOTE under the list of minor typographic changes, and preferably for WP:MOSQUOTE to explicitly make a statement on citationquote=
applicability. The general altering of citations literals intitle=
andquote=
by semi-automated/WP:MEATBOT methods can be problematic though, as can be seen by the examples in . —Sladen (talk) 11:35, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- (As the editor who raised the altering of the citation
- "Spacing in quotes can be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" would be suffice? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:05, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- "WP:TIME" might be too broad as it includes date-reformatting. Perhaps the test would be whether a reformatting change would prevent the locating of the original citation; so removing a space in "15 %" to get "15%" probably doesn't impair locating of a source much; but renaming the
title=
of a work from "25 October - The Romanian Armed Forces' Day" to "October 25 - The Romanian Armed Forces' Day" significantly changes the ability to find that work by that name in an alphabetical card index, or Google. The second paragraph of following WP:TIME shortlinks talks about date reformatting, so perhaps that is possibly too broad. Perhaps the simplest would be to encourage quotation reformatting when used in the main body of an article, but even to go as far as to discourage reformatting within the{{reflist}}
as the references aren't there to be read, but are there to allow the reader to locate additional reliable information easily. This would allow cases where a reformatted quotation is used inline, but the "raw material" is left untouched in thequote=
. It could even be suggested that in the case of extensive reformatting of a quotation in the body, that the original can be preserved in the{{cite}}
for clarity. —Sladen (talk) 15:54, 6 October 2012 (UTC) - Ah yes, You are right. I only meant the addition of non breaking space in 12-hour time. And In general I am referring only to addition/removal of whitespace. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
- Since you say "Spacing in quotes" I think it is perfectly fine, and the dates stuff is not relevant. Rich Farmbrough, 22:12, 6 October 2012 (UTC).
- Please do correct the space. And commas reversed with periods in numbers, as the continental Europeans do, and currency symbols after and spaced rather than before and unspaced. Tony (talk) 03:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- I disagree with making changes inside quotations. For what purpose? The advice of changing curly quotes with straight quotes and single quotes is fine, but spaces? Why? And "commas reversed with periods"? There is nothing wrong with that style, no matter how strange it may look. If the quote is really wrong can be used, but it should not be changed. Apteva (talk) 04:56, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- So no, "Spacing in quotes can be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" should not be added for two reasons - it is bad advice and it adds nothing to the MOS. If it said "spacing in quotes can not be altered" that would be one thing, but of course spaces are sometimes altered. Saying that something "can be altered" says nothing. It implies that they can also not be altered, and if someone alters them they might have done it appropriately or might not have. So what good is it? None at all. Apteva (talk) 05:03, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- What about "Spacing in quotes must be altered to comply with WP:PERCENT and WP:TIME" then? The problem is that it is optional? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- No, the question is why would anyone want to refract a quote. It is no longer a quote. Apteva (talk) 22:02, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Manual of Style reads "This practice of conforming typographical styling to a publication's own "house style" is universal." -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- And that statement in the MOS is simply false. It is not universal practice, especially in respect of more substantive changes to formatting and typography. N-HH talk/edits 22:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- I disagree. Usually a quote is written in a book in the first place just following the rules of the given book. Or it appears in some media again following the rules of the given media. I've never seen a a quote in any of the popular internet media to follow different writing style than the rest of the site/portal/media. The same should hold here. Having or not having a space between a number and the percent symbol is only a matter of preference and the quote should be written following the Misplaced Pages Manual of Style. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- And that statement in the MOS is simply false. It is not universal practice, especially in respect of more substantive changes to formatting and typography. N-HH talk/edits 22:23, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Manual of Style reads "This practice of conforming typographical styling to a publication's own "house style" is universal." -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- No, the question is why would anyone want to refract a quote. It is no longer a quote. Apteva (talk) 22:02, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Please do correct the space. And commas reversed with periods in numbers, as the continental Europeans do, and currency symbols after and spaced rather than before and unspaced. Tony (talk) 03:45, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
- "WP:TIME" might be too broad as it includes date-reformatting. Perhaps the test would be whether a reformatting change would prevent the locating of the original citation; so removing a space in "15 %" to get "15%" probably doesn't impair locating of a source much; but renaming the
I agree with Magioladitis. N-HH is ignoring the word "this" in the MOS statement. It isn't any change in formatting and typography that is universal practice, it is the specific changes listed in the MOS that are universal practice. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- I understand what it is trying to say perfectly thanks; nor is it likely that the precise stipulations of one MOS reflect "universal practice". As to the first response, it may well happen "usually" (although I doubt anecdotal evidence can show that conclusively). Equally, WP may decide to have an MOS that inists we do things that way. However, it is simply not a universal practice - that explicit statement is simply not true. N-HH talk/edits 23:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Then delete it. It clearly adds nothing to the MOS. It is an explanation of why it is done and looks a little foolish pretending to be universal. Here is why I do not think we need to be more explicit about refractoring quotes than to remove all caps. A politician gets quoted exactly as they say something no matter what they say, swear words included. If they misspell a word, we use , but we do not correct it. If they use incorrect punctuation we can add a parenthetical, but we do not correct it. There are just too many quotes where the punctuation is an important part of the quote for us to be "universally" changing it, just to make it look pretty. I want to know if a politician knows the difference between a hyphen and an endash or whether to put a space before a % sign (or how to spell potato). I do not want us to make corrections like that inside a quote whether they are a politician or not. I want to see what punctuation Thoreau used or Dickens. Apteva (talk) 06:40, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
"Adaptations of The Thing" vs "The Thing (adaptations)"
Where in MOS is this discussed? I notice that there is Adaptations of The Wizard of Oz, and until a few moments ago, The Phantom of the Opera (adaptations), when it was moved to Adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera. I prefer the "Thing (adaptations)" form, because it puts the modifier last, and the name of the work first, which is of greater importance to the reader, the author, and us, IMHO. Modifier-last conforms with:
- Thing (film)
- Thing (novel)
- Thing (1987 album)
That is, the various instances or forms of a work are always parenthesized. I argue that "(adaptations)" is a superclass of instances of a work on Misplaced Pages, rather than an extant subject to which the works themselves are subservient. Yet somehow a creeping, "standard" has been put forth, and is being acted upon en masse, solely by User:Neelix Contributions. Discuss? --Lexein (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Modifier-last is used when the "correct" title cannot be used. In this case, an article listing adaptations of The Thing could not be correctly titled "The Thing", so Adaptations of The Thing (or List of adaptations of The Thing) would be correct. An article on the 1987 album would be titled "The Thing", except that it's not the primary topic for that title, so a parenthetical qualifier is tacked on to the title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:06, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, Neelix linked Misplaced Pages:Article titles#Article title format. Trimmed too much over time, now lacking enough rationale to answer my concerns, and a rationale stretched quite thin when applied to plurals, IMHO. See discussion (my viewpoint, anyways) back at the bottom of User talk:Neelix. Reopen here if you see fit. --Lexein (talk) 18:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Reopen what here? Your question as to why the qualifier isn't needed here? -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:34, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is not a MOS issue, but a title issue. I recommend discussing either on the talk page of the article or at Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles Apteva (talk) 00:12, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well, that's unexpected. I would have thought WP:Article titles was moved out of MOS for space reasons, not for "not MOS". No? --Lexein (talk) 04:52, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The farther I dig into the history of "don't imply subsidiary articles" or words to that effect, the less I find. It started out as partially a technical issue (old server software would literally create subpages if a slash was in the title). Over time, the explanation and rationale has been trimmed, and its application expanded to include parentheticals, to the point that it's a nearly empty imperative, without rationale. It's depressing. At some point, I had hoped to see discussion, consensus, or precedent mentioned, but nothing so far, using Wikiblame. In case anyone wondered, that's what I've been doing in spare moments, all day.
- And yes, I'm starting to think that policies and guidelines should also have inline citations, linking to their origin discussion & consensus, precedent in other encyclopedias, or to an external manual of style, just to prevent the kind of endless spelunking I'm now forced into, just because a policy doesn't seem to make prima facie sense.--Lexein (talk) 04:52, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, Neelix linked Misplaced Pages:Article titles#Article title format. Trimmed too much over time, now lacking enough rationale to answer my concerns, and a rationale stretched quite thin when applied to plurals, IMHO. See discussion (my viewpoint, anyways) back at the bottom of User talk:Neelix. Reopen here if you see fit. --Lexein (talk) 18:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Register is a similar idea, though far from completion. Art LaPella (talk) 05:21, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I see no reason for documenting changes other than is already available from the history. The basic principle of WP is that it does not matter who or why or when someone adds something as long as it is correct. In article space everything needs a reliable source, and because of the need for verifiability, needs a reference. In WP space everything only needs to make sense, and if not, that is what talk pages are for. Adding references is helpful in some cases, but in most cases they are not needed. That is what articles are for. Apteva (talk) 07:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- No one's forcing you into spelunking. The distinction given above between titles and their qualifiers makes prima facie sense. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:53, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- So when I see a policy that makes no sense, and has no historical rationale whatsoever, I should just shut up? I do not think that is the purpose of policies, in general, nor should it be, here. --Lexein (talk) 18:25, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Agreed. It is a detriment to the project to use parenthetical disambiguators to distinguish articles from their parent articles, both because parenthetical disambiguators have a well-established, disparate purpose and because subtopics by definition represent only a portion of the scope of the term indicated thereby. Neelix (talk) 14:42, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Neelix: sorry, "just because" isn't good enough. How can this be discussed in a way that does not result in you resorting to circular logic?
- Apteva: "The basic principle of WP is that it does not matter who or why or when someone adds something as long as it is correct." In WP space, by what standard of "correctness"? Every article requires multiple support in independent reliable sources, but our policies require no substantiation of any sort? Ridiculous. That's a very good reason for academics to openly mock the work done here.
- I've written this: User:Lexein/Sourcing of policies. --Lexein (talk) 18:25, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Register is a similar idea, though far from completion. Art LaPella (talk) 05:21, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
Question everything. If no one knows why it says something and no one objects, change the policy or guideline. But the authority is not a reference, although in some cases there is an authority, and in those cases it is appropriate to use an external link, the authority is actually the one or more editors who put it there, and their signature is already in the page history. Right now I am working on comet names, and there are guidelines that the IAU uses in specifying comet names, but even that does not really need to be referenced, because we are not the ones who choose comet names, they are the ones who are the final authority, but do we really need to know what spelling rules they used? The purpose of this discussion page is to discuss changes to this page, and it is archived so that it is possible to figure out what the reasoning was, if any discussion took place. That should be sufficient documentation. Apteva (talk) 02:51, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Article titles
This sentence
- "The Manual of Style applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Misplaced Pages:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)"
is, to put it mildly, absurd. Policies always trump guidelines, but policies do not specify everything, that is what guidelines and common sense are for, but to say that a guideline determines punctuation of an article title is not possible, and has created the absurdity of thinking that Mexican-American War should be called "Mexican–American War" (with an endash instead of a hyphen) just because if it was not a proper noun it would be spelled with an endash. Well it is a proper noun and it is spelled with a hyphen. But really, the idea that a guideline can say that a policy does not apply is completely absurd. Which is anyone going to follow, the policy or the guideline? The policy every time. Now if it was the other way around, if a policy felt a need to say, but please ignore such and such a guideline, never mind how absurd that is, that would work, because the policy gets precedence over the guideline. Just my two cents worth. I recommend deleting the entire sentence as absurd. Apteva (talk) 02:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I lost you between "policies do not specify everything, that is what guidelines and common sense are for" and "to say that a guideline determines punctuation of an article title is not possible ... Which is anyone going to follow, the policy or the guideline? The policy every time." Distinction without a difference? Art LaPella (talk) 03:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The only word between those two quotes is "but", an unusual place to get lost. I am having a hard time figuring out what is being asked. The only question at hand is, should the above sentence be removed? Arguments for or against need to be couched not on the clarity or lack thereof of my summary of the issue, but on the merits of the sentence being in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 03:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I meant that what comes before "but" seems to contradict what comes after "but". If you recognize that policies do not specify everything, then why isn't title punctuation an example of something a policy wasn't intended to specify? Art LaPella (talk) 05:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The point is that the MOS does not over ride the policy. If someone finds a policy reason for using punctuation in a certain manner, that is what will be used regardless of what the MOS says, but I have not found any examples of that being the case, hence clearly no reason for the sentence even being in the MOS. I think it is there because someone wants a ridiculous justification for the ridiculous conclusion that Mexican-American War should be spelled with an endash, even though no one does. It is nothing more than trying to make a WP:POINT, and a waste of all of our time. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The bureaucratic answer is, in your own words, "policies do not specify everything". For example, if you read MOS:ITALICS (admittedly a guideline, but the same IAR logic applies) you might think Kyrie should be in quotes as a song, but WP:MUSIC says it's "generic" (at least the words aren't; the only words you can sing to Kyrie are "Kyrie ..." or a translation). OK, so only the music guideline covers that detail.
- The practical answer is that laughing off the Mexican–American War debate, one of the biggest debates we have ever had, is completely inconsistent with complaining about wasting time. Art LaPella (talk) 18:49, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The point is that the MOS does not over ride the policy. If someone finds a policy reason for using punctuation in a certain manner, that is what will be used regardless of what the MOS says, but I have not found any examples of that being the case, hence clearly no reason for the sentence even being in the MOS. I think it is there because someone wants a ridiculous justification for the ridiculous conclusion that Mexican-American War should be spelled with an endash, even though no one does. It is nothing more than trying to make a WP:POINT, and a waste of all of our time. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I meant that what comes before "but" seems to contradict what comes after "but". If you recognize that policies do not specify everything, then why isn't title punctuation an example of something a policy wasn't intended to specify? Art LaPella (talk) 05:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that WP:TITLE is a policy and WP:MOS a guideline shouldn't be given too much weight, as it's a bit of historical anomaly. Not much of what is in WP:TITLE can really be called policy, as it's most full of guidelines. Nevertheless, if there's a conflict between them, point it out and let's talk about it. Dicklyon (talk) 04:16, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I find the words guideline and policy to be carefully chosen and uniformly applied - and not just an accident. A great deal of discussion goes into which items should be a policy and which should be a guideline. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- They are more carefully chosen now than they used to be. Early on there were few debates (as most did not consider it an important distinction) for example WP:V was turned from a guideline into a policy with this edit (I suspect with no debate on the appropriate talk page) back in April 2005. Likewise what is now Article Title received its banner in 2005 with this edit but it had been in the "Category:Misplaced Pages official policy" since 2004 after being "One of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines" before that. Of course since then there have been intermittent debates on whether the central MOS page and AT should be a policies or guidelines and each time the status quo has been kept. To understand the reason for the sentence you have picked out you will have to read the talk page archives, and who was in favour of what. Personally as I have stated before (in April this year) that I am in favour of removing this sentence for similar reasons to those you have given. -- PBS (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- This appears to be part of a campaign being carried out in multiple threads and multiple forums to reopen the n-dash wars that were settled in 2011. For example, see here --Neotarf (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- They are more carefully chosen now than they used to be. Early on there were few debates (as most did not consider it an important distinction) for example WP:V was turned from a guideline into a policy with this edit (I suspect with no debate on the appropriate talk page) back in April 2005. Likewise what is now Article Title received its banner in 2005 with this edit but it had been in the "Category:Misplaced Pages official policy" since 2004 after being "One of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines" before that. Of course since then there have been intermittent debates on whether the central MOS page and AT should be a policies or guidelines and each time the status quo has been kept. To understand the reason for the sentence you have picked out you will have to read the talk page archives, and who was in favour of what. Personally as I have stated before (in April this year) that I am in favour of removing this sentence for similar reasons to those you have given. -- PBS (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I find the words guideline and policy to be carefully chosen and uniformly applied - and not just an accident. A great deal of discussion goes into which items should be a policy and which should be a guideline. Apteva (talk) 06:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- The only word between those two quotes is "but", an unusual place to get lost. I am having a hard time figuring out what is being asked. The only question at hand is, should the above sentence be removed? Arguments for or against need to be couched not on the clarity or lack thereof of my summary of the issue, but on the merits of the sentence being in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 03:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I lost you between "policies do not specify everything, that is what guidelines and common sense are for" and "to say that a guideline determines punctuation of an article title is not possible ... Which is anyone going to follow, the policy or the guideline? The policy every time." Distinction without a difference? Art LaPella (talk) 03:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- I stayed away from the hypen/en dash thing, but given that it's being discussed here, I also find the en dash usage odd-looking. It's often at odds with what I would write and with what I see written elsewhere. I have no examples to hand as I've not collected any. But I do wonder about the origin (the sources) of the rules we adopted. SlimVirgin 23:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is not the rules that are being questioned, but some of the examples used that do not follow those rules. The correct use of a hyphen, endash, and emdash is relatively subtle, but I think what we have is mostly correct - other than in at least three of the examples, and in at a minimum dozens of articles that were moved in 2011 to follow the "Mexican-American War" misspelling by using an endash. According to "New Hart's Rules", style guides only address issues where more than one style is perfectly acceptable in writing, such as using "co-operate" or "cooperate", both of which are implied as valid, but the book also uses the word "bemade" to mean "be made".
- I stayed away from the hypen/en dash thing, but given that it's being discussed here, I also find the en dash usage odd-looking. It's often at odds with what I would write and with what I see written elsewhere. I have no examples to hand as I've not collected any. But I do wonder about the origin (the sources) of the rules we adopted. SlimVirgin 23:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
- "No appeal need be made to stylistic conventions or record kept of them where text is incorrect". That would apply to names, of which it only says that names use hyphens. I think that point has been missed by the advocates of "Mexican-American War" spelled instead with an endash.
- On hyphens is says "If an author has consistently applied a scheme of hyphenation, an editor need not alter it, although a text littered with hyphens can look fussy and dated. Editors can find the dominant form of a particular compound in a suitable current dictionary such as the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors."
- There are examples where either a hyphen or an endash could be used: "Note that in US style an en rule is used to connect a prefix and a compound (the post–World War I period)." Implying that others would use "the post-World War I period" (with a hyphen instead of an endash). Apteva (talk) 00:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Slim, the sources of the rules were discussed at great length in the deliberations of 2011. We even had tables of abbreviations (like CMOS for Chicago Manual of Style) to make it easier to compare and contrast the style guidance of dozens of different guides. Feel free to look into it, so you won't have to just wonder about it. As for "odd-looking", I'm not sure what you mean. To me, it's odd to the see the tight binding of a hyphen where the relationship of parallel items is what is intended. Many people never learned about the typography to signal that, since it wasn't in the realm of the typewriter, or of Microsoft Word, to get that right. Mac users had a better chance, since Steve was inspired by typography and had both en dash and em dash on the keyboard from day one, but many people still didn't learn it, since having it available was not enough. People who make docs with TeX and LaTeX are more likely to have learned about en dash, since you have to get past it (--) to make an em dash (---). Dicklyon (talk) 20:46, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hi, thanks for the explanation. I avoided that whole discussion and I'm afraid I still don't understand it. Could you explain briefly why Mexican-American War is wrong? It seems correct to me, and using an en dash doesn't. It would matter less in the text, but bolded in the title does look odd (odd as in devoid of meaning, unusual, perhaps just unnecessary or perhaps an error). SlimVirgin 20:59, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- There's several aspects to this debate of course, starting with the broader issue of whether WP should employ a hyphen/en-dash distinction at all when it comes to compounds and prefixes. Many, possibly even most if you exclude book publishing, online and print publishers don't bother and simply rely on the hyphen for the whole range of such links (and it's not simply because they are "wrong" or not sufficiently sophisticated). I still don't understand why a general-use website like WP, where the editing system makes it difficult to add en-dashes anyway, decided to make the switch at some point to start bothering about it. It makes editing more complicated and leads to endless disputes on the secondary issue, as here, on how to apply the distinction in specific cases, such as the ones under debate now. We have incredibly complicated and detailed rules, formulated after months of haggling, and we still don't have any clarity – in the Mexican-American/Mexican–American war case, we have people citing real-world examples/practice and title policy and/or their interpretation of the rules here to back up each alternative, with equally valid arguments; when at the end of the day the average reader doesn't give a toss, were they even to notice the difference. N-HH talk/edits 22:43, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
- Slim, it's not that the hyphen is "wrong", but that we have adopted the style of recognizing the type of distinction that the en dash versus hyphen signals. That the distinction is meaningful can be illustrated with this particular example, though. The hyphen is used when a compound noun is used as an adjective. When the the compound noun Mexican American is used as an adjective, as in a Mexican-American neighborhood, or Category:Mexican-American culture, or Mexican-American Studies, the hyphen is used to signal that those are about Mexican Americans. If we had a war against or involving primarily Mexican Americans, we'd probably call it the Mexican-American War. To signal a different interpretation, a relation between parallels, in this case a "versus" or "against" relationship, we use the en dash in Mexican–American War. As N-HH points out, many authors and editors and styles don't bother to try to send such signals to their readers, and many readers don't notice. But for those who notice, and sometimes even for those who don't, the looser coupling of the longer dash helps to get the right message across. That's why so many many guides recommend the en dash for such roles. The fact that styles and guides vary meant that we had to work to hammer out the right compromise for WP. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. The hyphen used in an adjective or noun subordinates the first item to the second. So an X living in country Y would be X-Y while a Y living in country X would be Y-X. The second part of the hyphen is the main part, and the first the qualifier. But this convention means we can't link two nouns in an "equal" fashion, as is required for a construct such as the "Mexican–American war." That is where the en-dash comes in. Apteva is not disagreeing with this; Apteva's claim is that in a proper noun: Mexican-American War, which is what a title is, the convention is to use a hyphen and not an en-dash, against the convention when the phrase is not a proper noun. I would like to see some sources cited for the claim. Churn and change (talk) 05:48, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I can provide a small list of names that are similar to this. My source is 1) do they appear in a dictionary 2) how do they appear in books and 3) how do they appear in other sources. I really do not think that I am at all out of line in thinking that the vast majority of editors have been applying the same convention. Use a hyphen in a proper name. Use endash otherwise using the endash rules. Apteva (talk) 06:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Hi, that wasn't a rhetorical question objecting to your suggestion; it was a real question. I went and checked. Online, the en-dash is, in general, absent in both content and titles. That is not surprising because most keyboards don't have one. The Chicago manual does not provide an explicit exemption for titles (proper nouns) for its en-dash rule. However that doesn't mean it requires en-dashes in proper noun titles. It does require the use of en-dash in constructs such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but that is mentioned as an exception. It requires a hyphen, not an en-dash, for abbreviation compounds such as U.S.-Canadian relations (The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. 2003. 6.85 and 6.86 pp. 262–263). The APA manual mentions it in passing for equal-weight compound adjectives, but that is it. The MLA doesn't mention the en-dash at all, using just the dash (two hyphens, often an em-dash) and the hyphen. I would say we leave the current guideline wherever it is at now, assuming there is a guideline. Churn and change (talk) 21:05, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I can provide a small list of names that are similar to this. My source is 1) do they appear in a dictionary 2) how do they appear in books and 3) how do they appear in other sources. I really do not think that I am at all out of line in thinking that the vast majority of editors have been applying the same convention. Use a hyphen in a proper name. Use endash otherwise using the endash rules. Apteva (talk) 06:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. The hyphen used in an adjective or noun subordinates the first item to the second. So an X living in country Y would be X-Y while a Y living in country X would be Y-X. The second part of the hyphen is the main part, and the first the qualifier. But this convention means we can't link two nouns in an "equal" fashion, as is required for a construct such as the "Mexican–American war." That is where the en-dash comes in. Apteva is not disagreeing with this; Apteva's claim is that in a proper noun: Mexican-American War, which is what a title is, the convention is to use a hyphen and not an en-dash, against the convention when the phrase is not a proper noun. I would like to see some sources cited for the claim. Churn and change (talk) 05:48, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Slim, it's not that the hyphen is "wrong", but that we have adopted the style of recognizing the type of distinction that the en dash versus hyphen signals. That the distinction is meaningful can be illustrated with this particular example, though. The hyphen is used when a compound noun is used as an adjective. When the the compound noun Mexican American is used as an adjective, as in a Mexican-American neighborhood, or Category:Mexican-American culture, or Mexican-American Studies, the hyphen is used to signal that those are about Mexican Americans. If we had a war against or involving primarily Mexican Americans, we'd probably call it the Mexican-American War. To signal a different interpretation, a relation between parallels, in this case a "versus" or "against" relationship, we use the en dash in Mexican–American War. As N-HH points out, many authors and editors and styles don't bother to try to send such signals to their readers, and many readers don't notice. But for those who notice, and sometimes even for those who don't, the looser coupling of the longer dash helps to get the right message across. That's why so many many guides recommend the en dash for such roles. The fact that styles and guides vary meant that we had to work to hammer out the right compromise for WP. Dicklyon (talk) 05:32, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Following on from that, why won't we allow article titles to use a hyphen in titles like Mexican-American war? Most keyboards don't have an en dash, most publishers and style guides don't recommend one for that usage, so why did Misplaced Pages get locked into using one to signal a distinction of no consequence? SlimVirgin 21:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well, I would say it is unclear what style guides recommend. Note that manuscripts (the focus of APA and MLA) and books (the focus of Chicago House) don't have "article titles"; they have book titles, chapter headings and so on. As to your specific questions, I don't know the history of why the WP:MOS guideline says all sections and their headings should follow same punctuation rules; I notice somebody has proposed taking that out. WP:AT#Special characters, the policy, allows it and requires a redirect from keyboard-friendly titles. I would say the rules for Article Titles should be in WP:AT, the policy, since administrators effectively decide it by ruling on contested moves (NACs are disallowed there), and, in general, administrators do not enforce guidelines. I would also say article titles should contain only characters people can type, because otherwise they will mostly come in via redirects. However, I suspect this has been discussed to death before. Churn and change (talk) 22:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Following on from that, why won't we allow article titles to use a hyphen in titles like Mexican-American war? Most keyboards don't have an en dash, most publishers and style guides don't recommend one for that usage, so why did Misplaced Pages get locked into using one to signal a distinction of no consequence? SlimVirgin 21:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- @Apteva: You are mistaken. See WP:POLICY (and its section WP:GUIDES) and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. The only difference between WP:AT as a policy and its earlier WP:NC version as a guideline is that now one should have a stronger reason for citing WP:IAR and ignoring it when necessary, because the editorship at large takes it more seriously now. That doesn't mean that a small group of tendentious editors can form a "local consensus" at WP:AT to magically sweep away a much larger and longer-lasting community-wide consensus at MOS (despite the fact that you personally are trying to pull of exactly this as we speak, pushing for recognizing of birds as some kind of exception to capitalization rules). WP:AT and all its NC subpages derive their style advice from MOS and its subpages, and always have. Otherwise we'd have sheer chaos, with article titles radically differing from usage within the article text. Do not mistake WP policies for wikilaws with wikicops and wikijudges running around enforcing them against "mere" guidelines. WP doesn't work that way. There are some policies, including WP:BLP, WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:OFFICE that do have the force of real-world law behind parts of them, but they are special cases, not general ones. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 12:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Digressions from the topic
Discussion of hyphen examples
Good, Churn. As an avid collector and analyst of style guides, I would be most surprised if a source could be found for Apteva's odd claim. The editor appears to be working from something in WP:ENDASH that is pretty well unrelated:
- By default, follow the dominant convention that a hyphen is used in compounded proper names of single entities, not an en dash.
- Guinea-Bissau; Bissau is the capital, and this distinguishes the country from neighboring Guinea
- McGraw-Hill, a publishing house
That provision started off restricted to place names, like Guinea-Bissau and Alsace-Lorraine. Those cases are clear enough, and each has a hyphen for its own distinct reason; but many place names whose components refer to entities that are more easily separable are treated more variably. "Poland~Lithuania" for example has been a difficult case, resolved on Misplaced Pages with the disambiguation page Poland-Lithuania (and a redirect from Poland–Lithuania). That fits with the provision in MOS.
Later, A di M generalised this provision to cover cases like McGraw-Hill, because like the geographical examples it is utterly fixed in usage with a hyphen. That is what I call a "fossilised proper name". It is never analysed in terms of separate entities "McGraw" and "Hill".
The qualifier "by default" is crucial. It stands prominently at the start of this provision, which has nothing to do with those proper names having the quite different structure "X~Y Z", where "X~Y" is understood in the way Dicklyon and Churn explain above. This is all perfectly standard, and in accord with the style resources that extensive discussion in 2011 determined would be followed on Misplaced Pages. But I am reluctant to enter into debate about any of that while Apteva wages several connected campaigns at several scattered locations. He or she is initiating RM discussions and the like for pointy "political" purposes, in a most disruptive way. When all that has settled down, it will be possible to consider any problems with WP:ENDASH calmly and reasonably here. But let's bear in mind that most of it has been thoroughly talked through last year anyway. ♫♪
Noetica 06:39, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I have not checked all of the examples in endash, but I do know of at least three that are incorrect and need to be removed or repaired. Comet Hale-Bopp is either not capitalized or spelled with a hyphen. Uganda-Tanzania War is either spelled with a hyphen or an endash and war is not capitalized. Roman-Syrian War is definitely spelled with a hyphen. There are also some cases where it should be more clear that either a hyphen or an endash can be used, but consistency within an article for that word combination should be used - post-World War I can either use a hyphen or an endash. The whole focus on the MOS should be in helping editors, not forcing them to change everything. The vast majority of our editors and readers neither know nor care what a hyphen or endash is, and could not care less if the mark on the screen is a few micrometers longer or shorter. New Hart's Rules says that consistency locally is more important than consistency globally "It is, of course, vital to make sure that individual forms are used consistently within a single text or range of texts. If an author has consistently applied a scheme of hyphenation, an editor need not alter it, although a text littered with hyphens can look fussy and dated. Editors can find the dominant form of a particular compound in a suitable current dictionary such as the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors." (emphasis added) Apteva (talk) 06:56, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that you're forcing a choice between capitalization and the dash shows you haven't quite got the concept. The dash shows a union of two distinct entities, as for example in a war. Capitalization is irrelevant. In fact, when combining people's names, there is a strong tendency to go with the dash, even in sources which otherwise don't bother with it much, to distinguish cases of a single person with a hyphenated name. So, one entity: hyphen, two entities: dash, and being a proper name is not a factor. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Trust me, I understand that part. I also understand why 10,000 books use a hyphen for Mexican-American War - because the style guide says to use a hyphen in Mexican-American War. But it is not an "odd claim" that names such as Mexican-American War use a hyphen. It is an "odd claim" that they do not use a hyphen, and the examples in print of an endash are few and very far between, and not anything that can be taken seriously as representing common use. What I am saying is the research is good, but if the conclusion makes no sense it is time to try to figure out what went wrong, and I think it comes down to only one sentence. Names use hyphens. Apply that and you end up with 10,000 books that spell Mexican-American War with a hyphen, 10,000 bird name articles with a hyphen, and who knows how many airports, wars, and towns in Misplaced Pages with a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 07:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- There is no such rule, AFAIK. Many sources simply don't bother with dashes. (Probably the majority of sources use hyphens for date and page ranges as well.) But for those which do, being a name is irrelevant. It would also be a problem with the many mathematical and scientific theorems/theories, where people are more careful to use the dash. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is very true that many sources only use hyphens, but in books it is far more common to see endashes and emdashes used instead of hyphens, but hyphens for every name within that book, even though it liberally uses endashes and emdashes in the same way that our MOS uses them. Their style guide says the same thing ours does - names use hyphens. They just follow that advice. Apteva (talk) 07:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Our style guide doesn't say that, and you need a ref to show that "theirs" does. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is very true that many sources only use hyphens, but in books it is far more common to see endashes and emdashes used instead of hyphens, but hyphens for every name within that book, even though it liberally uses endashes and emdashes in the same way that our MOS uses them. Their style guide says the same thing ours does - names use hyphens. They just follow that advice. Apteva (talk) 07:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- There is no such rule, AFAIK. Many sources simply don't bother with dashes. (Probably the majority of sources use hyphens for date and page ranges as well.) But for those which do, being a name is irrelevant. It would also be a problem with the many mathematical and scientific theorems/theories, where people are more careful to use the dash. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Trust me, I understand that part. I also understand why 10,000 books use a hyphen for Mexican-American War - because the style guide says to use a hyphen in Mexican-American War. But it is not an "odd claim" that names such as Mexican-American War use a hyphen. It is an "odd claim" that they do not use a hyphen, and the examples in print of an endash are few and very far between, and not anything that can be taken seriously as representing common use. What I am saying is the research is good, but if the conclusion makes no sense it is time to try to figure out what went wrong, and I think it comes down to only one sentence. Names use hyphens. Apply that and you end up with 10,000 books that spell Mexican-American War with a hyphen, 10,000 bird name articles with a hyphen, and who knows how many airports, wars, and towns in Misplaced Pages with a hyphen. Apteva (talk) 07:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that you're forcing a choice between capitalization and the dash shows you haven't quite got the concept. The dash shows a union of two distinct entities, as for example in a war. Capitalization is irrelevant. In fact, when combining people's names, there is a strong tendency to go with the dash, even in sources which otherwise don't bother with it much, to distinguish cases of a single person with a hyphenated name. So, one entity: hyphen, two entities: dash, and being a proper name is not a factor. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:MOS:
Hyphenation also occurs in bird names such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in proper names such as Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre.
New Hart's Rules:
Use a hyphen in newly coined or rare combinations with -like, and with names, but more established forms, particularly if short, are set solid: tortoise-like, Paris-like, ladylike, catlike, deathless, husbandless
(emphasis added)- Apteva (talk) 08:29, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Apteva, I'm not at all an enthusiast for the current MOS guidance on hyphens versus dashes. (I waste far too much of my time "correcting" entries at List of botanists by author abbreviation; new editors to this page almost never notice the two uses of en-dash as opposed to hyphen in each entry.) But you aren't properly addressing the MOS; the issue isn't names per se but distinctness of entities.
- Kwami has expressed the underlying principle very succinctly: "one entity: hyphen, two entities: dash, and being a proper name is not a factor". Your examples above show nothing about names. "Black-backed" as an compound adjective has a hyphen regardless of whether it is part of the name of a species of bird. "Trois-Rivières" is a combination of a number and a noun; it's analogous to "one-woman" in "he's a one-woman man", which would only ever be hyphenated. The fact that it's a name is irrelevant.
- The real problem is different: when does a compound which began life by referring to two entities become a reference to a single entity? "McGraw-Hill" obviously once referred to "McGraw" and "Hill", but as these now don't have independent resonance it is argued that the compound refers to a single entity and so should be hyphenated. "French–British rivalry" refers to rivalry between the French and the British, i.e. to two distinct entities, and so should have an en-dash according to the MOS. "Mexican–American wars" referring to more than one such war between Mexicans and Americans again obviously refers to two distinct entities and should have an en-dash. But, from what I see as your perspective (perhaps wrongly), it could be argued that if the noun phrase "Mexican~American war" refers to one single war (whether or not "war" is capitalized) then a single entity is meant and a hyphen should be used. (To be clear I don't see this as a valid argument but it does test the principle.)
- As another problematic example for the principle, consider double-barrelled names. If such a name is of "long standing" then it is hyphenated as it refers to a single person. But if two people with surnames "Smith" and "Jones" get married and decide to call themselves "Smith~Jones", should this novel combination, which still clearly refers to two entities, have a hyphen or an en-dash? Convention rather than the principle rules here, I guess. (But then why rule out convention(s) in other cases?)
- In summary, the principle "one entity: hyphen; two entities: dash" is a semantic test and is not easy to apply in practice. If it is to continue to form the basis of MOS guidance it needs some further clarification, if this is possible. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:35, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, the 'name' thing misses the point entirely. Apteva, your MOS and Hart's examples have nothing to do with dashes.
- As Peter said, there is a point where a dash becomes a hyphen. Austria~Hungary is a case in point: you could even see that as a political statement, with a dash indicating a union of two constituent states, and a hyphen indicating a single state named after two ancestral states. And indeed the perception of the degree of unification may have changed over time. You get essentially the same thing with people's names: a dash in a theorem named after two people, because it's a union of their work, but a hyphen for a child named after two parents, because even though a child is a product of that union, no-one presents them as half mom, half dad. The publishing house would originally have been McGraw–Hill, but we're now long past the point where both McGraw and Hill are dead, and no-one remembers who they were, so now it's simply a company with a double-barreled name, like the child. The Mexican-American War, with a hyphen, would be a war of Mexican Americans, just as the Russian-American Company was a company for Russian America. There will be cases which are indeterminate, just as there are when a city or country changes its name and we debate which name is better for the title, but such cases are relatively rare. — kwami (talk) 12:30, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Right. There will always be indeterminate cases, as with many other deployments of the limited resources of punctuation against the far more rich and subtle semantic nuances in the language itself. Just like the limited resources of an alphabet, pitted against the subtly varying sounds of any natural language. Problem cases do not count as refutations of anything, in these domains; solutions are expected to be optimal, not perfect. Kwami has given a good account of the McGraw-Hill-type cases. Now, another way to think about double-barrelled surnames: just as a parent-teacher has a hyphen, because the same person is both parent and teacher, so in a way Mary Smith-Jones is both a Smith and a Jones! She might equally have been called a Smith after one parent, or a Jones after the other. She is called both, like the parent-teacher. It all makes a good sort of sense; that is why the guidelines in MOS are in good accord with best practice, as captured in many other major style resources.
Noetica 12:54, 12 October 2012 (UTC)- The problem with Peter's and Kwami's theory is that McGraw-Hill has always been written with a hyphen, see google books from 1880 to 1917, a period where both founders were still alive.
- Right. There will always be indeterminate cases, as with many other deployments of the limited resources of punctuation against the far more rich and subtle semantic nuances in the language itself. Just like the limited resources of an alphabet, pitted against the subtly varying sounds of any natural language. Problem cases do not count as refutations of anything, in these domains; solutions are expected to be optimal, not perfect. Kwami has given a good account of the McGraw-Hill-type cases. Now, another way to think about double-barrelled surnames: just as a parent-teacher has a hyphen, because the same person is both parent and teacher, so in a way Mary Smith-Jones is both a Smith and a Jones! She might equally have been called a Smith after one parent, or a Jones after the other. She is called both, like the parent-teacher. It all makes a good sort of sense; that is why the guidelines in MOS are in good accord with best practice, as captured in many other major style resources.
- For "American-Mexican War", as Peter pointed out, some people take Mexican-American as a compound adjective for "War", with the same role as "Spanish" in "Spanish Civil War". --Enric Naval (talk) 13:41, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- From the summary above, or below, it is possible that some editors, in the extreme minority, prefer to use an endash in Mexican American War, and no editors prefer to use an endash in Julia Louis-Dreyfus and in Wilkes-Barre. There is a small, but statistically significant difference between 97% and 100% - but certainly not enough to say that all editors follow the preference of what 2.8% follow. Some books both randomly capitalize words in American Mexican War and randomly even in the same paragraph use endash and hyphen. That is not a style that WP should emulate. Apteva (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- But no. That account of McGraw-Hill doesn't have to be taken literally. It gives a schematic way of thinking about the name for such an entity. People need to understand: the theoretical foundations of punctuation are underdeveloped. The linguistic literature on it is extremely sparse, for example. Nunberg did famous pioneering work a couple of decades ago, and it's been rather stagnant since then. Again, don't expect perfection: and don't be so dogmatic! It is not computer programming: these are "naturally" developing sets of conventions, sometimes in competition, all aiming at effective communication of what needs highlighting in written language beyond what mere letters can achieve. Misplaced Pages has chosen a high-quality, best-practice set from the competing alternatives. Any change would affect 4,000,000 articles, and is not to be entertained lightly. Or approached with the certainty that is born of ignorance. Noetica 14:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- When opposing the hyphens in airport names, the account of McGraw-Hill was a posited as an example of how compounded proper names started having a dash and eventually changed into having a hyphen. If McGraw-Hill was never written with a dash, then the whole point of the account becomes moot, independently of whether it's literal or not. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:49, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think Noetica raises a valid point that comes up in many of these MOS-related debates that have been going on for years. There are some cases where there is no consistency across the English language. In some cases, it's an WP:ENGVAR issue, and as such our convention is to keep British subjects in British English, Australian subjects in Australian English, etc. Other times, however, the inconsistency isn't dialect-dependent. It's just that there is no universal, accepted standard across all sources (I'm also thinking of the currently running dispute of The Beatles vs. the Beatles which is occupying such a large proportion of the Misplaced Pages servers now). In cases like this, where there is clearly no agreement between reliable sources, or widespread agreement on usage, the more important issue is consistency across the project. We need to establish a set of common-sense and easy to follow rules which is supported by enough well-respected style guides to be supportable, but we're never going to be able to reach a universal agreement with all reliable sources because they don't agree with each other. So since it doesn't matter which convention we pick, but we do need to pick one and make it the site-wide standard. And then just be done with it, and not keep revisiting it every six months because someone comes along and decides that just because they're personal favorite style guide disagrees with our usage, it's got to be overhauled yet again. Perfect agreement is impossible, so we should stop looking for it. Set a rule, stick to it, and be done with it. --Jayron32 14:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But a lot of the discussion here is not so much about what rules to have or whether to change them in any substantive sense (although that broader debate does exist, all the way to whether to have the hyphen/en-dash distinction at all; my preference FWIW), but how to apply the rules we do have to specific cases and groups of cases, such as airport names, Mexican-American War etc. The point is that even with these complex rules, we very definitely do not have best practice, clarity or a rule that we can stick with - because people have different views of what the rule means, as the above thread and countless past arguments demonstrate. N-HH talk/edits 14:29, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- For "American-Mexican War", as Peter pointed out, some people take Mexican-American as a compound adjective for "War", with the same role as "Spanish" in "Spanish Civil War". --Enric Naval (talk) 13:41, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- N-HH, I'm unsure of some of your meanings. Andreas, I agree with much of what you say, particularly the point that style typically varies in sources, no matter how much the most authoritative style guides on both sides of the Atlantic might huff and puff about various issues. Often, experts and those used to seeing a stylistic usage every day (e.g. ignore hyphen as unnecessary) forget that their text needs to be easily read by semi- and non-experts too—people who don't see these items every day. WP writes for a broader range of readers than just experts. Every reputable publisher, including en.WP, has its house rules, and I must say that there's sometimes tension in those publishers between stylistic disharmony within the expert fields to which they contribute publications, and from one chapter/article to another within their portfolio. It's not an easy task, sometimes. So WP faces calls to be inconsistent in its use of the dash to link parallel items (mandated by many authorities), because the sources are inconsistent, either between (or within) themselves, or against the major styleguides. My feeling is that we've reached a good compromise in many cases, and that Mexican–American is the right call here, given the large body of examples we have of analogous items with a dash. Tony (talk) 14:50, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that the correct punctuation of Mexican–American wars to refer to multiple wars between the US and Mexico is correct with an endash, and that French–British rivalry is correct with an endash. I also agree that probably 99% of the people with an Apple computer with all three hyphens or dashes on the keyboard have never had a clue what the other two were for. I can certainly remember experimenting with them to see what they looked like and trying to pick the one that looked right. The MOS is not a top down organization where you put into the MOS that every third letter has to be red and all of a sudden 4 million articles are affected. It is bottom up. People write articles and a MOS is written so that new articles look sort of like the ones that already exist. In cases where something new comes along, like an endash that as late as 2007 was banned from FA titles, and was only used in 1% of the cases where it should have been used, I found it annoying to have a copy editor who clearly knew nothing about the subject come along and change a hyphen to an endash - even though the change was correct, such as Bose–Einstein statistics. The advice from New Hart's Rules would be that if an article or group of articles are consistently spelling Bose-Einstein statistics with a hyphen, leave it, as local consistency is more important than global consistency. I have no objection, though, as we are running out of articles to add and running out of content to add (or are we?) to go back and spend time bringing the 1% that use an endash up to 80%, but what I object to is spilling over into articles like Mexican-American War that use a hyphen, and what I object to is even discussing whether it should have an endash. Of course it uses a hyphen. There are though, actual situations where two words and two punctuations are equally valid and that also applies to hyphens and endashes, and I would recommend treating those as British English and American English (it is Brit speak to use a hyphen in post-World War I and Am speak to use an endash). The status right now is that of the spillage into names like "Spanish-American War", relatively few have been tainted with an endash, so the collateral is relatively small, but needs to be corrected. As to where we are on the 1% to 80% spectrum of text that really should use an endash, I have no guess - it could be 2%, it could be 79%. I doubt it is 99%. We had an editor embark recently on changing emdash to nbsp space emdash space, for example. But no, changes to the MOS do not make changes to 4,000,000 articles. It is the other way around - changes to 4,000,000 articles bring changes to the MOS, so that the 4,000,001st article looks like the rest. And yes, avoiding titles with an endash is preferable. Is it really going to kill anyone to use California (1840-1847) in the title and California (1840–1847) in the text? It certainly avoids a lot of redirects, and do three pixels really make that much difference? Apteva (talk) 18:28, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
Break 1 (Article titles)
I looked for MoS compliance on dashes by clicking "Random article", and searching for dashes or hyphens that should be dashes according to MoS. This almost always means ranges (pp. 56–58 or date ranges) or list punctuation, the most common places for dashes or hyphens that should be dashes. Out of 20 such articles, 11 used dashes, 6 used hyphens, and 3 used both. As for whether we should use dashes, I tend to sympathize with Hyphen Luddites but the last time we had an RfC, nobody like that showed up at all, so it's hard to claim a silent consensus. And if you want to avoid redirects for better performance, you need to argue with these people and these people first. Art LaPella (talk) 19:57, 12 October 2012 (UTC) However, when I first encountered the dash rules, compliance was non-existent. Art LaPella (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- So compliance is roughly 55%, counting the mixed ones as non-compliance. Apteva (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- But counting like that tells only part of the story. 3 of the 20 did not apply a consistent style, so they are beyond the pale entirely. Of the 17 that did apply a consistent style, 11 complied with the MOS guideline. That's roughly 65%; roughly two out of every three, in that small sample.
Noetica 23:04, 12 October 2012 (UTC)- Noetica, I don't think you can simply discount the inconsistent cases. Counting editors is more relevant in my view than counting articles, and the 3 articles with inconsistent styles may have had them because different editors consistently applied their usual practice without noticing the inconsistency within the article and/or without being aware of what the MOS says. As I've noted above, my experience at the List of botanists by author abbreviation pages is that a significant proportion of new editors to these pages don't use en-dashes correctly (I've never tried to estimate the exact proportion). Fortunately in this case the guidance is easy to explain to them: always use spaced en-dashes, not spaced hyphens; always use en-dash in the year range. The problem with hyphens versus en-dashes within compound words is that it's not easy to explain what the MOS says. I believe I understand it but I'm not confident that I can explain it simply, and the discussions here reinforce my view (no names, but some of those contributing here clearly hadn't understood what the MOS was trying to convey).
- I can only repeat my view that if this part of the MOS cannot be made clearer, then it does not meet your description of it above as "high quality": the quality of a manual of style does not consist only in the content of rules it recommends but also in whether reasonable writers are able to apply those rules. With regard to en-dashes within words I remain doubtful that this is the case. "Too long; didn't read" applies here: if a principle requires a long explanation it's not suitable for a collaborative enterprise like Misplaced Pages. Peter coxhead (talk) 01:20, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- But counting like that tells only part of the story. 3 of the 20 did not apply a consistent style, so they are beyond the pale entirely. Of the 17 that did apply a consistent style, 11 complied with the MOS guideline. That's roughly 65%; roughly two out of every three, in that small sample.
Should the sentence including article titles in the scope of MOS be deleted?
Back to the main question, are there any objections to deleting the sentence "The Manual of Style applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Misplaced Pages:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)"? If not, it will be deleted. Apteva (talk) 05:54, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I object. It make no sense for title style to deviate from the style used in article text. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- That is not the issue, but in fact there are reasons for title style to deviate from the text, for example for technical reasons an underscore can not appear in the title but can appear in the text. Chinese characters can not appear in the title but can appear in the text. It is also probably better to use a hyphen in the title even though endash would be used in the text. The basic folly though is guidelines never tell policies what to do. Policies tell guidelines what to do, and both policies and guidelines must be consistent with each other, so the sentence is both unnecessary and absurd. Apteva (talk) 03:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Absolutely. I object most strongly. When you settle down to discuss one question at a time in an orderly way, and only at the appropriate location (which is indeed here, for the present question), I will give my reasons.
♫♪
Noetica 06:32, 13 October 2012 (UTC) - Strong objection for the same obvious reasons as Dicklyon and Noetica. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 12:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- The way to fix that, though is not to try to make a guideline tell a policy what to do (which is highly questionable), but to fix the examples here so that they are in compliance with policy. While our guideline here can be toned down to avoid must should and not do quite as much, it basically has sound advice - but needs to be consistent with policy, not the other way around. Apteva (talk) 15:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Hyphen examples
Name | Hyphen | endash | Percent |
---|---|---|---|
Julia Louis-Dreyfus | 51 | 0 | 100% |
Spanish-American War | |||
Mexican-American War | 172 | 5 | 97.2% |
Philippine-American War | |||
Wilkes-Barre | 50 | 0 | 100% |
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport | |||
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport | |||
Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport | |||
Comet Hale-Bopp | 52 | 5 | 91% |
comet Hale–Bopp | 19 | 7 | 73% |
Comet Hale Bopp | 1 | 0 | 100% |
Bose–Einstein statistics | 5 | 5 | 50% |
male–female height | 4 | 2 | 67% |
1914–18 | 1 | 9 | 10% |
1941-45 |
Birds do not need checking, as they are specifically mentioned.
The purpose of the MOS is to help improve the encyclopedia. The purpose of this section is to answer the question, is an endash ever used in a proper noun/proper name? A couple of dozen examples one way or the other should be sufficient. The criteria is, do a majority of books using that term use one punctuation or the other? The purpose of the MOS is not to determine what any particular punctuation should be. The purpose of the MOS is to reflect commonalities so that new articles can be added that are consistent. For example, at one time a guideline said that all species names used all capitalized words - Grizzly bear would be Grizzly Bear, Brook Trout, House Wren, etc., etc., and three examples of birds were provided. The veracity of always capitalizing all species common names was questioned, and the guideline was tagged as disputed. Quite some time later there are still some species that are being moved from capitalization. Bird names, though, actually are capitalized, as maybe some other types of species, particularly fish and in botany. But those questions are not answered here, or at WP:TITLE, but at each species, and whatever seems to be a commonality can then be summarized in the appropriate guideline or policy. Why are punctuation questions answered at articles and not in policy or guideline discussions? Because there are always exceptions and the discussion of is it an exception belongs at the article affected. Apteva (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- This is utterly pointless. As I've said every time this silly debate comes up, Google searching is not useful here, because the results are skewed. Hyphens are **overwhelmingly** more common in online prose, because hyphens are right there on the keyboard, and dashes are not. These search stats are completely meaningless. It's like going to a rave to do statistical research on how many people wear suits after 10pm. You'll be unlikely to find one at all, but the sample isn't statistically useful. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:10, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I am only looking at books, not the web. Books are typeset. Google ignores punctuation in the search, but the results can be checked. If anyone else has any better place to search that can be done as well and the results compared. Also, some terms that are known to be correctly spelled with an endash will show if the google search confirms that punctuation. Apteva (talk) 04:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Use of with ellipses and dashes
“ |
|
” |
I don't get this. How is
- France, Germany,
- ... and Belgium
worse than
- France,
- Germany, ... and Belgium
(or the analogous case with dashes)? —Tamfang (talk) 19:52, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe that example should be chucked in favor of a better example. I see NBSP used a lot between units and their values. Apteva (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's listed too, and I agree it's worthwhile. —Tamfang (talk) 20:15, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe that example should be chucked in favor of a better example. I see NBSP used a lot between units and their values. Apteva (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- is used in many situations enumerated at WP:NBSP. The question is whether we should also use it in front of every ellipsis. If we should, I have often complained that the WP:ELLIPSIS phrase "only as needed" is misleading because it goes on to say the nbsp is necessary with each normal use of an ellipsis. Art LaPella (talk) 20:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Art, I recall that this was discussed before. I said then, and say again now, that the point is accurately expressed with the present wording. A may indeed be advisable with every ellipsis; but where does it go? Sometimes before, sometimes after – only as needed to prevent improper line breaks. No, we should not use it in front of every ellipsis. In this case, we need one only after the ellipsis:
These were his exact words: "... we are still worried".
- That's to avoid this happening:
These were his exact words: "...
we are still worried".- But in this case we need a hard space only before the ellipsis:
"Are we going to France ...?" he asked.
- And that's to avoid this happening:
"Are we going to France
...?" he asked.- In a third case, the hard space after the ellipsis is overkill, because there is no harm in a break that may occur there:
"France, Germany, ... and Belgium"
- This is fine:
"France, Germany, ...
and Belgium"- The ellipsis guideline may need minor fixes to explain things better. I've said that for a long time! But the guidance itself is pretty standard, and robustly adapted for online use. Compare the shockingly poor treatment of ellipses in CMOS, which has improved only a little in CMOS16.
- Similar points can be made about a spaced en dash (in any of its uses). When one is used in punctuating a sentence, for example, it marks some sort of a break in sense from what precedes it – like the effect of a colon, perhaps. It's preferable not to have that dash turning up at the start of the next line, almost as we would not want a colon wrapping to the next line. Sometimes it makes little difference; but sometimes it looks awful and might obscure the meaning. In online work, we do not know how different text will be rendered on different browsers with different individual settings (window size, text size, and so on). So the guidelines must be more foolproof that those for more static printed text, traditionally in the hands of professional typesetters.
- ♫♪
- Noetica 22:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I noted that it was discussed before. No, I didn't say "in front of every ellipsis"; I said "each normal use of an ellipsis". "normal" refers to the "France, Germany, ... and Belgium" situation, which I encounter as a proofreader much more often than the other cases. If you disagree about which use of the ellipsis is most common, I will prepare statistics. I'm not talking about rewriting the whole guideline. Can we simply remove the misleading word "only"? Art LaPella (talk) 22:58, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- We don't disagree on anything important then, Art – except that "only" is crucial, as I have once again explained. How is it misleading? I agree that you have trouble with it, and please don't get me wrong: that is important input! But I don't see the original poster having trouble with that word "only". Do you?
- Why not draft an alternative text here, carefully laid out as it would appear in MOS itself, so we can work on this together?
- Noetica 23:10, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I noted that it was discussed before. No, I didn't say "in front of every ellipsis"; I said "each normal use of an ellipsis". "normal" refers to the "France, Germany, ... and Belgium" situation, which I encounter as a proofreader much more often than the other cases. If you disagree about which use of the ellipsis is most common, I will prepare statistics. I'm not talking about rewriting the whole guideline. Can we simply remove the misleading word "only"? Art LaPella (talk) 22:58, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- The original poster asked why we have an nbsp with an ellipsis at all. Why is a break after Germany worse than a break after France? I don't have an answer to that question. While explaining it, I mentioned my long-standing objection to "only". He didn't ask about that word, and I can't explain why nobody else objects to that word. One alternative text would be to simply omit the word "only", so I don't see what there is to lay out.
- How is "only" misleading? From the standpoint of most editors other than MoS insiders, it is strange to use an nbsp at all. So their first reaction to using an nbsp only as needed, would be: why do we need it at all? It certainly wouldn't be: why don't we use it twice, both before and after the ellipsis? And yet the guideline goes on to recommend an nbsp with every ellipsis (apparently not just the main France Germany & Belgium case). It also explains that we don't use two nbsps, just in case anyone thinks we should. For most editors, an unexpected nbsp with every ellipsis is more of a "Wow!" than a "What, only one?" I believe my previous analogy was "Use a space suit in space only as needed, for example if you want to breathe." Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for clarifying, Art. Three points in answer:
- To the original poster: It's just a norm of good typesetting that the indication of an omission should come before any linebreak, so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader. Such norms are respected by some publishers and not others. Penguin, I think, is happy for all sorts of punctuation to shift to the start of the next line. But the long-standing practice here has been to respect such norms, especially with judicious use of .
- Art, if you think that removing the word "only" would help, I will not object. But I think we should then give one or two examples of undesirable breaks that the use of will avoid. Perhaps those that I offer above, yes?
- In reviewing an archived RM for Halley's Comet I came across a live example that is relevant here, where I had failed to use and the line did indeed break badly on my screen, at the end of a quote like this:
"."
- (Just to demonstrate that the less "normal" cases do occur.)
- Noetica 06:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for clarifying, Art. Three points in answer:
- How would a line break after "Germany" make the omission and its context less apparent to the reader? What's next, "to do" (i.e., avoiding a –ha ha– split infinitive)? —Tamfang (talk) 08:31, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Something like the way having a period, a question mark, or a closing parenthesis or quotation mark at the start of a line would. The ellipsis is different in its precise logic from each of those, and a sentence-punctuating dash is different again. But there are relevant similarities here. Also, note that I did not speak of the omission and its context being more or less apparent; I spoke of immediacy: "... so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader." Often it's like that: the reader can be delayed, irritated, or distracted if the information doesn't come quickly and naturally, or just where it is expected.
I don't make the norms, and I didn't design human perceptual psychology☺; but I have made efforts to understood both, and both are relevant to good punctuation and good disposition of text on a page or a screen.
Noetica 08:52, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Something like the way having a period, a question mark, or a closing parenthesis or quotation mark at the start of a line would. The ellipsis is different in its precise logic from each of those, and a sentence-punctuating dash is different again. But there are relevant similarities here. Also, note that I did not speak of the omission and its context being more or less apparent; I spoke of immediacy: "... so that the fact and the context of the omission are immediately apparent to the reader." Often it's like that: the reader can be delayed, irritated, or distracted if the information doesn't come quickly and naturally, or just where it is expected.
- My answer didn't get saved last night. "examples of undesirable breaks" I usually don't object to adding more explanation, but since you asked, it would add a lot of text without explaining anything I missed. I can easily imagine that omitting an nbsp can result in a line break at that location. But if you think readers need more explanation, it should go at WP:NBSP because it is explaining how nbsp works. Or you could explain some things about nbsp that really are mystifying: it assumes we all recognize bad line breaks when we see them, but in practice I add nbsp only in places that closely resemble the examples, rather than try to guess what the consensus may be on this page, or worse, the consensus on the page I'm editing. Is this related to "only", or is it a separate idea? I don't see how removing "only" would make examples more helpful, because "only" makes sense only to editors who were somehow expecting multiple nbsps, and we already have a red-colored example discouraging multiple nbsps. Art LaPella (talk) 20:21, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Talk pages
It was mentioned above that a lot of discussion on this talk page is about how to apply the MOS. That is like going to an article and discussing the subject of the article instead of the content of an article. For example, it is not appropriate to go to the talk page of Abortion to discuss whether abortion should be legal, but it is appropriate to go there to discuss whether the article should say that in some places they are legal, and the article should say that is legalized murder, or that is not legalized murder (both are oxymorons by the way, and neither are appropriate). Ideally the place for all discussions on the application of the MOS would be on the article talk page that is being discussed or at the help desk, and not here for the same reason. And if it turns out that the MOS is FUBAR, bring it up here. Apteva (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- If you want to discuss whether abortion should be legal, you go to a blog, not Misplaced Pages. Assuming you don't want MoS applications to be driven off Misplaced Pages completely, I don't think that analogy works at all. So where should we discuss whether a specific article conforms to MoS? If everybody agrees what MoS is saying on some specific issue, then I suppose the article talk page is appropriate. If not, then I suppose we come here to discuss what it really means – especially if the same issue applies to multiple articles. I hope we don't need another rule on the subject; we have way too many rules as it is. Art LaPella (talk) 22:26, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
- Discussion takes place on the talk page of the page to be changed. If the meaning of the MOS is unclear, that is not a discussion of how to apply it but a discussion on how to change the MOS. When an issue applies to multiple articles there is normally a wikiproject where the correct interpretation can be discussed. But questions about whether to use an endash or a hyphen within an article do not belong here, they belong at that article or at the help desk. Questions on whether endash should be used in titles belong at the talk page for Misplaced Pages:Article titles, which says nothing about endash, or at the article talk page. Questions about whether Mexican-American War is spelled with an endash or a hyphen belong at Talk:Mexican-American War, not here. Questions about whether the MOS is correct do belong here. Talk page guidelines are at Misplaced Pages:Talk page guidelines. If too many people are asking style questions here the banner at the top of that pages talk page can be added here - {{metatalk}} Apteva (talk) 04:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- No. Tony (talk) 05:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- If discussion takes place on the talk page of the page to be changed, then removing dashes from titles changes the MoS, which rightly or wrongly claims to regulate title punctuation. According to the Arbitration Committee, questions about dashes including the Mexican–American War were settled here. The talk page guidelines say to avoid off-topic posts; is that your point? If so, it's circular reasoning to assume it doesn't belong at the MoS to prove it doesn't belong at the MoS. The actual Mexican–American War debate took place on several pages, with no attempt to exclude anyone who was interested. That sounds better than having some nobility class decide who gets to discuss something. Editors often agree to centralize a discussion, but only when everyone has been notified if they are likely to be interested. Art LaPella (talk) 07:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Discussion takes place on the talk page of the page to be changed. If the meaning of the MOS is unclear, that is not a discussion of how to apply it but a discussion on how to change the MOS. When an issue applies to multiple articles there is normally a wikiproject where the correct interpretation can be discussed. But questions about whether to use an endash or a hyphen within an article do not belong here, they belong at that article or at the help desk. Questions on whether endash should be used in titles belong at the talk page for Misplaced Pages:Article titles, which says nothing about endash, or at the article talk page. Questions about whether Mexican-American War is spelled with an endash or a hyphen belong at Talk:Mexican-American War, not here. Questions about whether the MOS is correct do belong here. Talk page guidelines are at Misplaced Pages:Talk page guidelines. If too many people are asking style questions here the banner at the top of that pages talk page can be added here - {{metatalk}} Apteva (talk) 04:53, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
See User talk:Apteva. I will certainly take a look at the Arbcom decision and bring it up again. Everyone makes mistakes. Even me when I thought I did. Apteva (talk) 08:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Questions about how to use the MoS are relatively rare and almost always resolved quickly. They don't get in the way. If it isn't broken, why fix it? 1. Where would these users go if not here? 2. It's kind of nice for all the people who work on the MoS to see proof that people care about using it correctly. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:05, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Is this really a meta-meta-discussion? And my response a meta-meta-meta-comment? Whimsically yours, :) —— 08:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Where would they go? To the help desk, like for any other how to question. Here is what I propose:
change
Any issues relating to style guidance can be discussed on the MoS talk page.
to
Any issues relating to style guidance can be discussed at the Misplaced Pages:Help desk.
(talk pages are for discussing changes, not the subject, and help desk editors especially need to be able to correctly answer MOS questions) Apteva (talk) 15:04, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Wouldn't help desk editors go looking for someone with MoS experience, and ask us? Art LaPella (talk) 18:44, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- What for? Everyone uses the MOS and every experienced editor should be able to answer most questions. Did every physics teacher call up Einstein every time a student asked a question? Apteva (talk) 02:15, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Most questions (posted 02:15, 16 October) or Any issues (posted 15:04, 15 October)? They certainly can't authoritatively answer questions when even we can't agree on them. Judging by how little MoS regulars know about their own document, help desk editors surely know even less. Art LaPella (talk) 04:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- The MOS currently says "Any issues relating to style guidance can be discussed on the MoS talk page." All I changed was where they should ask them. I did not change any to most. Not all questions have answers, but is still okay to ask them. The point that if "we" can not agree on the answer indicates that we are not the best ones to ask. Apteva (talk) 03:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- "most" comes from this quote and "any" comes from this quote. Most MoS outsiders don't debate style, but when they do, they're usually more impervious to any kind of evidence or consensus, not less, and obviously they are less aware of MoS text. Art LaPella (talk) 04:12, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- The MOS currently says "Any issues relating to style guidance can be discussed on the MoS talk page." All I changed was where they should ask them. I did not change any to most. Not all questions have answers, but is still okay to ask them. The point that if "we" can not agree on the answer indicates that we are not the best ones to ask. Apteva (talk) 03:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- Most questions (posted 02:15, 16 October) or Any issues (posted 15:04, 15 October)? They certainly can't authoritatively answer questions when even we can't agree on them. Judging by how little MoS regulars know about their own document, help desk editors surely know even less. Art LaPella (talk) 04:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- What for? Everyone uses the MOS and every experienced editor should be able to answer most questions. Did every physics teacher call up Einstein every time a student asked a question? Apteva (talk) 02:15, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Wouldn't help desk editors go looking for someone with MoS experience, and ask us? Art LaPella (talk) 18:44, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
American/British English changing
Are the changes this editor is making permissible? Since 2008, has made no other contributions to Misplaced Pages other than to change American English to British English and is starting to look like a WP:SPA with his editing. While some of it is appropriate, not all the articles he is changing have strong national ties to England. I came across it at the Steven Lewington article, which is essentially a professional wrestler of English descent who wrestles in America and who was most notable in America. In addition to that, I was the original author and I used American English. My concern is that he has made thousands of these changes and that is his entire editing history. A cursory glance is some of the topics, for example, may be like the Steven Lewington article, like his changing the date usage on album articles of a British artist when American English was used before. Regards, — Moe ε 08:23, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- In general, it is not okay to go into articles and change one optional style to another. However, if this editor is going onto the article talk pages, saying "I think this article should be in British English because its topic is related to Britain in ways X, Y, and Z," and receiving no objection within a reasonable period of time, then this would be a grayer area.
- Contact the user and direct him or her to WP:RETAIN, specifically the line, "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, it is maintained in the absence of consensus to the contrary. With few exceptions (e.g. when a topic has strong national ties or a term/spelling carries less ambiguity), there is no valid reason for such a change." Maybe this person just doesn't know about this rule. We have so many. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Upon further examination of the articles, if they're about British citizens, then there is a real case for using British English. In this case, I can see why the user is making these changes. I'd say that Teusdaily only needs to raise these changes on the article talk pages if someone objects to them—which you have. Drop Tues a talk page line and say that you've started a talk page discussion about his or her changes. State your reasons why you think the articles should be in U.S. English, allow others to contribute, and a consensus one way or the other will probably form.
- Is this user also changing national varieties on subject-neutral articles? Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:46, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think your message to him was sufficient, along with all other warnings he has received. Like I said, a lot of the changes are good since British English would be better for citizens, but in the case of an article like Steven Lewington, he changed it based on them being from Britain. Lewington made his notability and resides in the United States, making American English more proper here. That was my concern, since this is something that is either American-preferred or simply neutral differing back to the original style (American, in this case). This was also a concern because he has made so many of these edits. If you feel a majority of his past edits are alright, then it's fine, but I will be looking at future changes he makes to ensure he isn't doing this to neutral/American-English preferred articles again. Regards, — Moe ε 03:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I consider the person being from Britain to be a legitimate reason to prefer British English, even if the person was famous for actions performed elsewhere, though you could certainly make the case otherwise. I wouldn't write an article about J.R.R. Tolkien in South African English, but there are few cases as extreme as his. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Certainly "international format" in the edit summaries is misleading; ISO 8601 is the international format.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, Curtis, his edit summaries are also misleading as it implies that British is international language.
- Darkfrog: I guess it would vary on our definition of what a strong national ties are. Interestingly, J. R. R. Tolkien used British English, so it would make since that his article and works use British English, not American or South African English. Personally, I wouldn't consider your ancestors or your place of birth to be a strong national tie. If you leave the country and there is seemingly nothing that ties you back to their country of origin other than "X was born in _____", then how are they tied to that country? Certainly topics like Elizabeth II, Great Fire of London and articles on the election of the British Prime Minister establish a strong national tie to use British English. Articles when they are mixed where notability/residence differs from birthplace and it's disputed, is where WP:RETAIN should seemingly come into play. Regards, — Moe ε 06:27, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I consider the person being from Britain to be a legitimate reason to prefer British English, even if the person was famous for actions performed elsewhere, though you could certainly make the case otherwise. I wouldn't write an article about J.R.R. Tolkien in South African English, but there are few cases as extreme as his. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I think your message to him was sufficient, along with all other warnings he has received. Like I said, a lot of the changes are good since British English would be better for citizens, but in the case of an article like Steven Lewington, he changed it based on them being from Britain. Lewington made his notability and resides in the United States, making American English more proper here. That was my concern, since this is something that is either American-preferred or simply neutral differing back to the original style (American, in this case). This was also a concern because he has made so many of these edits. If you feel a majority of his past edits are alright, then it's fine, but I will be looking at future changes he makes to ensure he isn't doing this to neutral/American-English preferred articles again. Regards, — Moe ε 03:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I have audited the contributions of Tuesdaily (of 500 articles) going back to May 2012 on a 1:4 sample basis. In my opinion, aside from two articles where it may be argued that WP:TIES may not have been correctly interpreted, the articles were correctly put into DMY date formats. Of those two, A Bridge Too Far was an Anglo-British film but for one date was already predominantly in dmy format; "Alone Again Or" may have been converted mistakenly on the basis of the song version by The Damned, but the prior version was also predominantly in dmy format. To me, I cannot see how the editor could be classified as a WP:SPA – (s)he is a ] for they edit a wide variety of articles across Wikispace for compliance with WP:MOSNUM. It is also clear that the editor has been doing the work manually and rather fastidiously. Specifically regarding 'Steven Lewington', I would contend that many British have made their careers on the other side of the pond, and that it is not totally reasonable to assume that WP:TIES would no longer apply to someone on that basis. It would be more reasonable to go along with how the subject identifies himself, which in this case (according to the article) seems to be unambiguously as a Brit. Therefore I see nothing wrong with the actions of said editor. -- Ohconfucius 07:15, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Disruption is not tolerated
This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a user request for comment. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:08, 14 October 2012 (UTC) |
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was: "Apteva needs to stop the disruption now" Apteva (talk) 03:28, 14 October 2012 (UTC) (I am restoring this section that was blanked by Apteva. Users are reminded that this page is under ArbCom sanction, as indicated by the notice at the top of the page. --Neotarf (talk) 08:35, 13 October 2012 (UTC)) In recent weeks, User:Apteva has been the most active contributor to this talk page, pushing his idiosyncratic theory about hyphens, dashes, and proper names. He has started at least three RMs based on this theory. As far as I can see, he has not been able to convince anyone to buy into his theory, and his RMs have been roundly opposed, as have his proposals here. I have not had time to read everything that he has written here recently, but on scanning it appears to be just same old same old. I think the vigorous pushing has become too disruptive, and needs to stop now. Does anyone agree, or have a good idea how to encourage a good resolution to this dead horse? Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I have restored this section again, after Apteva collapsed/hid it as "off topic". The question before MOS editors is whether anyone supports what he is trying to do here, or if not whether they have good ideas how to help bring the disruption to an end. Of course, if he stops, no further comment or escalation is needed. Dicklyon (talk) 22:18, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
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ANI discussion
An ANI discussion related to this page, in particular about the recent RFC, has been initiated by IP user 146.90.43.8 at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Is it reasonable to have my integrity questioned and my edits reverted because I am an ip?. --Neotarf (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks very much for letting us know, Neotarf. I missed this earlier, because Apteva hid it!
- My intention is, if the RFC is not set aside as a hopelessly confused jumble from the very start, to request an ArbCom case to sort the whole thing out. I have joined that ANI discussion to alert admins to that intention.
- Unfortunately I may not be able to respond fast to developments. I am away from my usual resources, and busy with urgent matters in real life.
- ♥
- Noetica 02:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I noticed your earlier mention of some situation, a family emergency I presume, I hope things are well for you on that front; but of course these things happen to us all and when they do, there is no alternative but to drop everything else. I will probably soon be away from internet access for an extended time as well. Too bad that those who wish to revisit the dash-hyphen matter again so soon chose this exact time frame to start a new push; it is also a very busy time in academia. I would wish to participate in such an Arbcom discussion, otherwise I fear another three wiki-years will be spent trying to explain the concept of in-house style guides to those who take their authority from whatever advice they remember from their football coach or third grade teacher. There is much expertise among the editors here, as far as understanding the technical necessities of the ever-expanding array of devices people use to access the Misplaced Pages, at the same time, the people side of Misplaced Pages, "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", has not kept up. You would think it would be enough to simply write an article and let the gnomes take care of the arcane details and the polishing, but unfortunately the gnomes seem to be spending more and more time here instead, trying to explain to those who demand repeated explanations but appear not to understand them. --Neotarf (talk) 09:39, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Edit warring
Both in the article and on this talk page, needs to stop right now. I've done half the job for you by protecting the page for a few days. Please reference the Arbitration Committee notice at the top of this page for information on what happens if this recurs after the protection expires or there are continued inappropriate edits or edit warring on this talk page. Please do not bother to post any long replies here justifying your actions, any of you. Just don't edit war, ever, anywhere. It's a pretty much a hard and fast rule and liberally handing out blocks to everyone involved is another option that could already have justifiably been taken. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:48, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Easy there. I put some text into the MoS and it got reverted once. Nobody's edit warring just yet. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- "An WP:EW war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions, rather than trying to resolve the disagreement by discussion." Beeblebrox, that is not what has been happening here. There has been copious discussion. An RfC ran for over a month and was legitimately closed. The closure was reverted within a few minutes by Noetica. An ANI thread ran for two days, at the end of which RegentsPark made a change to the talk page, with the consensus of ANI. That change was reverted within minutes, by Noetica. What you have done is freeze the process in favour of Noetica's position. A result he is determined to have, by hook or by crook. Please reconsider your decision. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 10:44, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- You confuse issues, whoever you are. And you distort the facts and the history, as you do at the ANI discussion – which you re-opened after it had been closed! Such impropriety ☺. Confine your assertions on that topic to one forum, please. The relevant one for this matter: ANI. Soon it will be ArbCom, I fear.
I will not refute your assertions here.
Noetica 11:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Facts, not assertions. There is only one person edit-warring here, and that is you.
- 146.90.43.8 (talk) 12:14, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- You confuse issues, whoever you are. And you distort the facts and the history, as you do at the ANI discussion – which you re-opened after it had been closed! Such impropriety ☺. Confine your assertions on that topic to one forum, please. The relevant one for this matter: ANI. Soon it will be ArbCom, I fear.
The 3RR rule applies to reverts that are made without discussion. The reverts were about the summary text. I've started a discussion about what the summary text should say under "Time to respect the admin's decision." The admin has changed the summary text. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:36, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Just so we are clear, I have no position as to which version is right or wrong. The combination of the edits to the page itself and this page did constitute an edit war and the protection was applied solely to stop it, it is not an endorsement of any version of the page. Also, for the record, having consensus on your side does not shield you from responsibility for taking part in an edit war. The only exemption to WP:ER is the reversion of blatant vandalism, which is clearly not the case here. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:36, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Consistency
(I split the above section because B specifically asked that we not start a long discussion there. Feel free to revert if you're unhappy 146.90.43.8 (talk) 14:52, 14 October 2012 (UTC))
I have restored the order of the comments to indicate which comment was responding to which, and also the chronological order, per WP:REFACTOR. The above comment about lengthy posts refers specifically to justifications for edit warring, not long comments in general; however I have left in an arbitrary break. --Neotarf (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well, it seems to me that if an RfC on changing MoS, by adding a weird caveat/disclaimer, failed to come to resolution, then MoS reverts back to its original wording. That's not editwarring, it's just standard operating procedure. The roundabout proposal to add wording to the effect that inter-article consistency goes out with the bathwater clearly failed. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 12:34, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Except that the RfC was deceptively worded, to make it look like the disputed wording was already in the text. In fact, the proposal was to add the wording, not remove it, but somehow all the protests against the deceptive wording kept getting hidden--by resetting the archiving bot, by collapsing discussions -- so new people coming into the discussion could not see the facts. Nathan's close did not say anything about consensus, it is very possible that it is as obvious to him as to everyone else that there is no consensus, but his closing summary just repeated the deceptive language of the RFC, that is, it appears he believed that the proposal was to remove the wording and not to add it. --Neotarf (talk) 13:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) The text was added to the guideline in November 2008 in a rewrite, and it was removed in August 2011 as "repetition and redundancy". I don't think that there was any discussion for the inclusion, and certainly there was no discussion for the removal, as pointed out by Quiddity.
- Rather than argue if this is a restoring or a new addition, we should argue if the sentence is useful (obviously, I think that it is). --Enric Naval (talk) 13:32, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Actually, Nathan did mention consensus. He said, "the consensus was to oppose removal." Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- We had an RfC. The consensus was that the article should contain the words "though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" . Noetica and two or three others have reverted any attempt to add those words to the article. Those words should be in the article. If Noetica or anyone else is still unhappy, then he should start another RfC. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 14:17, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- BTDT. We already failed to come to a consensus that it is, and the idea has more opposition than support. If a proposed change to a page fails to gain consensus, it goes back to the way it was. This is just an drawn-out case of WP:BRD. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 14:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- (EC) I don't really understand what you're saying. There was an RfC to determine consensus. The consensus among all who took part in the RfC was that phrase should be included. Now, a small minority of those who took part in the RfC are preventing the phrase from being added.. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 14:45, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well, the offending "as a whole" passage appears to be absent from the extant text anyway, so I'm mollified. It should not be added back in. ((em|The entire point of MoS}} is consistency between articles. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 14:35, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- (EC) I don't really understand what you're saying. There was an RfC to determine consensus. The consensus among all who took part in the RfC was that phrase should be included. Now, a small minority of those who took part in the RfC are preventing the phrase from being added.. 146.90.43.8 (talk) 14:45, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- BTDT. We already failed to come to a consensus that it is, and the idea has more opposition than support. If a proposed change to a page fails to gain consensus, it goes back to the way it was. This is just an drawn-out case of WP:BRD. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 14:29, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Except that the RfC was deceptively worded, to make it look like the disputed wording was already in the text. In fact, the proposal was to add the wording, not remove it, but somehow all the protests against the deceptive wording kept getting hidden--by resetting the archiving bot, by collapsing discussions -- so new people coming into the discussion could not see the facts. Nathan's close did not say anything about consensus, it is very possible that it is as obvious to him as to everyone else that there is no consensus, but his closing summary just repeated the deceptive language of the RFC, that is, it appears he believed that the proposal was to remove the wording and not to add it. --Neotarf (talk) 13:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- There has been some argument over whether the RfC resulted in consensus or not. The last time I counted, it was about seventeen to thirteen people in favor of reinserting the contested wording, and in my opinion there was more evidence cited in favor of doing so as well.
- There is a difference of opinion regarding whether the discussion resulted in consensus or not. Uninvolved non-admin editor Nathan Johnson found that it did. Admin Kwami found that it did not. Admin RegentsPark confirmed that Nathan Johnson's decision was procedurally valid. 14:37, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Half of the entire point of MoS is consistency between articles. If all we wanted was consistency within each article, it would all just be a matter of local consensus at each article's talk page; let's not be silly. Let's also not beat around the bush: The passage in question was added by people (do I see any birdwatchers in the bushes, perhaps?) who want to advance a topical "standard" through a wikiproject, or just their own personal editing habits, that conflicts with MoS, plain and simple. The way to change consensus about a point of grammar, spelling, punctuation or orthography on Misplaced Pages is to put forth a clear case to change that consensus, at the talk page of the guideline in question. It isn't to sneak in a clause that effectively says "ignore this guideline except inside the same article"; that is what is colloquially known as "a load of crap". If someone wants to propose such a thing, let them do it in another RfC: "Should MoS be limited to only applying within the same article, and it's rules/advice considered null and void for inter-article consistency?" I predict about a 97% outcry against that, especially if it's advertised though WP:VPP and WP:CD. A finding this way or that with regard to the results of an RfC can't ignore basic WP:COMMONSENSE. A vote headcount is now how RfCs or other consensus-determination processes work. You feel the arguments for the passage were stronger, but I sure don't. Most of them appear to be logically invalid to me, because they fail to understand what MoS's obvious purpose is (among other errors). Again, just put the real, underlying question – limit MoS to intra-article authority or not? – to the test. Trying to get at this question by nipping at its heel is disingenuous nonsense. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 14:51, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- No, SMC, the purpose of the MoS is not inter-article consistency. It is 1. the promotion of correct and intelligible English on the English Misplaced Pages and 2. intra-article consistency where more than one correct option exists.
- I didn't say arguments. I said evidence. More people cited actual problems that that had observed that they believed were attributable to the absence of the contested wording than cited problems attributable to its presence. That's what I mean by evidence; observed events rather than hypothetical events or logical arguments. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:58, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- I can read. I disagree with most of them and with your summary of them as supposed observations rather than opinional positions (i.e. arguments) about their observations. And "No, Darkfrog", the purpose of MoS is not "correct" English. MoS makes no pretense whatsoever that it has identified and is promoting "correct" English, since there is no such thing. MoS, for internal Misplaced Pages use, promotes, yes, intelligible English for the benefit of the widest readership, and this by definition means between not just within each article in a vacuum. Basic logic dictates that promotion of intelligible English – as prescribed by MoS – on the English Misplaced Pages necessarily means across articles, not just in one article here and one article there, willy-nilly. It would be "reader-hateful" to have one article "consistently" using one set of terminology, capitalization, hyphenation, spelling, units, abbreviation, punctuation, etc., etc., while permitting, even encouraging other articles to "consistently" within their insular selves use completely different sets of these things. The no. 1 role of MoS is to set a baseline of standard writing practice here. The no. 2 role is to see that it is used consistently *between* articles, or there was no point in doing no. 1 to begin with. The KISS principle and principle of least astonishment are legitimate and important MoS goals. MoS promote intra-article consistency where more than one correct option exists, but only in the relatively uncommon case that MoS has not already selected one of these options as the preferred Wikipedian way. Furthermore, Nathan Johnson should recuse himself from any further admin closures on this and related issues. His closure rationale includes his own pro/con statement that not adding the clause back in would "increase arguing over what was meant in the MoS", which makes him a belated party to the debate, not a neutral party, and his statement that opponents of the phrase were advocating that consistency across articles be required is a straw man – no one in this debate has done so, and doing so wouldn't make sense, since MoS doesn't really require anything. In actuality, opponents of this phrase being added take the much more reasonable position that inter-article consistency is desirable and is a valid goal when achieving it is reasonably possible. I therefore dispute the validity of Johnson's closure, as both by an involved party and fundamentally misrepresenting/misunderstanding half of the debate. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 15:21, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- What is and isn't correct English can change over time (and sometimes with place), but the idea that there's no such thing as correct English is not true. If I spell "cat" "khup," then that is wrong. If I capitalize a t mid-sentence, that is wrong. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:40, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Again, see Linguistic description, esp. vs. prescriptive grammar. If it became commonplace to spell cat as khup instead, then then would be how to spell cat henceforth. "Wrong" is a value judgement and doesn't make sense with relation to language. Khup right now is simply unintelligible, which accurately describes it linguistically without pretending there is some kind of Platonic Truth involved. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, the language could change to make "khup" the accepted spelling. But right now, it isn't. That's what I mean by "wrong." At any given time and place, there are correct spellings and usages and incorrect spellings and usages.
- I've read about linguistic descriptionism vs. prescriptivism. I simply don't agree with you about them. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:26, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Half of the entire point of MoS is consistency between articles. If all we wanted was consistency within each article, it would all just be a matter of local consensus at each article's talk page; let's not be silly. Let's also not beat around the bush: The passage in question was added by people (do I see any birdwatchers in the bushes, perhaps?) who want to advance a topical "standard" through a wikiproject, or just their own personal editing habits, that conflicts with MoS, plain and simple. The way to change consensus about a point of grammar, spelling, punctuation or orthography on Misplaced Pages is to put forth a clear case to change that consensus, at the talk page of the guideline in question. It isn't to sneak in a clause that effectively says "ignore this guideline except inside the same article"; that is what is colloquially known as "a load of crap". If someone wants to propose such a thing, let them do it in another RfC: "Should MoS be limited to only applying within the same article, and it's rules/advice considered null and void for inter-article consistency?" I predict about a 97% outcry against that, especially if it's advertised though WP:VPP and WP:CD. A finding this way or that with regard to the results of an RfC can't ignore basic WP:COMMONSENSE. A vote headcount is now how RfCs or other consensus-determination processes work. You feel the arguments for the passage were stronger, but I sure don't. Most of them appear to be logically invalid to me, because they fail to understand what MoS's obvious purpose is (among other errors). Again, just put the real, underlying question – limit MoS to intra-article authority or not? – to the test. Trying to get at this question by nipping at its heel is disingenuous nonsense. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 14:51, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- There's no point in arguing about when the words were added and when they were removed. This seems to be just another way to filibuster (as in, "you didn't describe the entire sequence of events going back four years 100 percent accurately, therefore you were trying to mislead us, therefore you are a liar, therefore the RfC isn't valid, therefore we're not really edit warring"). The point is: should the words "though not necessarily throughout Misplaced Pages as a whole" be in the sentence in question, and the RfC consensus was yes.
In addition, SMcCandlish, it isn't correct that the entire point of the MoS is consistency between articles. Editors have opposed that idea for as long as I recall. We aim for local consensus and internal consistency, and we have an MoS to offer guidance as to how to local consensus is usually shaped. But a lot of style issues devolve to the first major contributor, the idea of regional differences, changing consensus on talk pages, and who is actually doing the writing. The only thing we require is internal consistency so that articles aren't a mishmash. SlimVirgin 23:46, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Well said. Binksternet (talk) 00:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Wow, that is so opposite to my understanding. First of all, there was clearly NOT a consensus to re-add this old line in the RFC. And it to re-add it without the other part, that said "Therefore, even where the Manual of Style permits alternative usages, be consistent within an article," makes it seem as if it's giving permission to ignore the MOS and develop wholly independent local styles, which is the way of chaos. Dicklyon (talk) 00:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- 1. Dicklyon, speaking for myself, I have no objection to "Therefore ...within an article" and would support its reinsertion. I think it's a bit redundant, but hey.
- 2. When I last checked, seventeen people favored reinsertion and thirteen opposed. Yes, this isn't a vote. But, as Nathan Johnson pointed out, the people who opposed fell into two very different groups: A good chunk of the people who opposed reinsertion said, "Because it's obvious that inter-article consistency is not the purpose of the MoS and unnecessary to repeat it." If we consider that most of the rest of the people who objected believe that the MoS either does or should require inter-article consistency, then this assumption can be proven false. If we either assume that these people would switch their votes or that they wouldn't vote at all, then that put it closer to twentysomething to eight or nine. (And yes, if we wanted to be sure what they'd do, we'd have to ask them.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:29, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Wow, that is so opposite to my understanding. First of all, there was clearly NOT a consensus to re-add this old line in the RFC. And it to re-add it without the other part, that said "Therefore, even where the Manual of Style permits alternative usages, be consistent within an article," makes it seem as if it's giving permission to ignore the MOS and develop wholly independent local styles, which is the way of chaos. Dicklyon (talk) 00:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- SV, I've already moderated my statement. I didn't literally mean "entire", and was using it hyperbolically, but at least you and one other didn't pick up on that, so I used
<ins>...</ins>
to fix it. Consistency between articles, however, is still a top-level goal of the MoS, otherwise we wouldn't really need one. WikiProjects would just set topical standards, to the extent anyone cared, and that would be that; we'd have a really messy encyclopedia, but that would be our norm. The consensus in this latest RfC wasn't "yes", add it. An admin who badly mischaracterized half the respondents and himself offered a strong opinion on the matter said the consensus was "yes". These are very different things. Even without those issues, others have disputed the "consensus" finding anyway. It's pretty much moot. A finding of alleged consensus that immediately results in a huge many-party, multi-day argument about whether there was consensus or not obviously misread the level of consensus, as the argument demonstrates that there is in fact no consensus. When have I ever suggested that first-major-contributor isn't the rule of thumb when MoS fails to offer a pre-set WP-wide preference? I've never said such a thing. MOS does, however, offer pre-set preferences on many, many, many things, and does so equally for inter- as well as intra-article consistency reasons. Both GAN and especially FAC treat MoS as a set of inter-article consistency rules, no doubt about that at all. I think you're mistaking my argument and running with it off into the distance. Observing that MOS is firmly intended and used for inter-article consistency does not mean that one opposes or is oblivious to principles like consensus on the article talk page among active editors of an article, or the principle of first major contributor, or that in various ways WP has decided not to have some kinds of inter-article consistency (WP:ENGVAR, etc.) – namely places/aspects that MOS itself has failed or declined to set a site-wide rule. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS making up local rules when MOS does provide a site-wide rule is, at least, problematic and contraindicated unless the need is so strong it legitimately triggers WP:IAR. If MOS were not intended and continually used for inter-article consistency, an edit summary of something like "style fix per MOS" would signal an edit that should be immediately reverted, by anyone/everyone, as borderline vandalism or PoV pushing, since such an edit's basis would be fallacious. It isn't and it doesn't, however, as we all know. QED: MoS is provably an inter- as well as intra-article consistency guideline. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)- Speaking of consistency, to me the highest priority is fixing the inconsistencies between the various MOS pages, and removing the notice of using this page instead of another if there is a disagreement. In particular, there are two "disputed" tags at Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Abbreviations and it would be helpful to remove both as quickly as possible. Apteva (talk) 02:20, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- It is actually just one dispute, that the list of acronyms is arbitrary. My recommendation is instead of pretending that those are the only acronyms, present the list as examples. Apteva (talk) 03:18, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- SV, I've already moderated my statement. I didn't literally mean "entire", and was using it hyperbolically, but at least you and one other didn't pick up on that, so I used
Species capitalization "asking the other parent" (2 cases)
FYI – Just a pointer to relevant discussions elsewhere. No comment here is neededThe perennial "capitalize a few but not most common names of species" issue that has been extensively debated here has been re-re-re-raised in two other forums simultaneously, over at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Proposal: Bird names and Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion#Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (birds), principally by User:Apteva, though a few other familiar faces on this issue, like User:KimvdLinde and User:Natureguy1980 make their reappearances. The issue is particularly relevant to WT:MOS because, especially at the NC discussion, a case is being made (again; see above on hyphenation) that WP:AT and it's NC subpages trump MOS because AT is policy, and should make up their own completely independent style rules. Yes, really. This is obviously a misunderstanding of how policy works, but little has been said there to correct this misapprehension. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 13:37, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
The meaning of consensus
The process of consensus building is crucial to the success of Misplaced Pages. Consensus does not always bring the result any particular editor or group of editors desires, nor is it necessary that a 'consensus' that has been found is necessarily correct. But, as long as it is determined by an independent editor, we should go with it. If we don't, then the process becomes useless. My suggestion is that, if you don't like this consensus, you take this to some other venue - arbcom if you will. But, don't subvert the process. I also direct everyones attention to the following text from WP:CONSENSUS: The continuous, aggressive pursuit of an editorial goal is considered disruptive, and should be avoided. Editors should listen, respond, and cooperate to build a better article. Editors who refuse to allow any consensus except the one they insist on, and who filibuster indefinitely to attain that goal, risk damaging the consensus process. Any further reverts to the RfC will be disruptive and subject to blocks. And, I won't hesitate to protect the page as well. There is a lot to do on Misplaced Pages that is more important than arguing disruptively over a sentence in MOS. --regentspark (comment) 15:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Correct. My suggestion is, count to ten, and then some, and when it is appropriate, bring up the topic again. First as discussion, and if not enough editors are participating, or if no consensus can be reached, as an RfC, or go to moderation, etc. Everyone has a reason for their viewpoint, and ignorance is just as valid a reason as any other. When the reason for the viewpoint is discovered it is easier to figure out which side to take - which is why at WP:RM (one of my frequent haunts) votes are not as helpful as reasons for the vote. It occurs to me that some of the editors here would like a WP:RS for Requested Style. But note that no RM discussions take place at RM - WP:RM is only a listing of the RM discussions. Apteva (talk) 16:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's an interesting point, that "ignorance is just as valid a reason as any other". It does explain a lot about your recent behavior, where by rejecting responses from others you keep yourself ignorant to try to keep your veiwpoint valid. Wouldn't it be better to consider such viewpoints based on ignorance as not "just as valid", but rather as transient states to be gotten through? Dicklyon (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Even I am wrong sometimes, I freely admit that, like when I think that I am wrong. Apteva (talk) 18:10, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- So, you're an infallible egotist? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- That was intended to be humorous. I could just as easily say and I kno that I never ever make misteaks. Apteva (talk) 05:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- The difficulty with satire is being more ridiculous than those who are sincere. — kwami (talk) 19:36, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- That was intended to be humorous. I could just as easily say and I kno that I never ever make misteaks. Apteva (talk) 05:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- So, you're an infallible egotist? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Even I am wrong sometimes, I freely admit that, like when I think that I am wrong. Apteva (talk) 18:10, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- That's an interesting point, that "ignorance is just as valid a reason as any other". It does explain a lot about your recent behavior, where by rejecting responses from others you keep yourself ignorant to try to keep your veiwpoint valid. Wouldn't it be better to consider such viewpoints based on ignorance as not "just as valid", but rather as transient states to be gotten through? Dicklyon (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
Grammar
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Plesase revert the WP:POINTedly insertion of "some" into "and in some proper names such as Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre". What it implies is that Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre are two of the extremely few proper names that use a hyphen, when no one has been able too find even one proper name that does use anything but a hyphen. If you think about what the sentence actually says, it is easier to understand without the examples - "Hyphenation is also used in some proper names." As in not all proper names have a hyphen - for example, Washington and Sun are not commonly spelled with a hyphen, but Mexican-American War and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are spelled with a hyphen. The intent of the edit was to point out that Mexican-American War is spelled with something other than a hyphen, even though 97.2% of books do use a hyphen, which clearly refutes that idea. Walmart was correctly spelled with a star or a stylized asterisk in the middle of the word, but using some just because of that exception is pointless. All guidelines and policies have exceptions. This is not a place that adding some is warranted, and only confuses the meaning of the sentence. Apteva (talk) 18:10, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- If the page had not been protected, I would have reverted that edit myself, because it's off-topic and too obvious to bother with: It's a simple statement that hyphens are used, equivalent to saying that apostrophes are used in proper names like O'Hara. But you illustrate exactly why it was added: people have been abusing that passage to argue for something else entirely. I don't know whether this is a willful misreading or not, but it very obviously has nothing to do with the hyphen–dash question, any more than it means that O'Hara needs to be spelled "O-Hara". As long as we are able to acknowledge that, I would support removing the added word. If we're not able to acknowledge that, then this extraneous wording would unfortunately appear to be necessary to prevent such misuse. Significant portions of the MOS have already been reworded to head off gaming the guideline in cases like this. — kwami (talk) 18:39, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- That is my point exactly. But adding significant portions of the MOS to head off gaming the guideline is itself a miss-interpretation of what a guideline is. If someone does not want to follow it no amount of specificity is going to help. Apteva (talk) 19:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- But it does head off people quoting the MOS to support points it does not address. — kwami (talk) 02:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- That is my point exactly. But adding significant portions of the MOS to head off gaming the guideline is itself a miss-interpretation of what a guideline is. If someone does not want to follow it no amount of specificity is going to help. Apteva (talk) 19:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
- Mexican–American War would use a dash, not a hyphen. It wasn't a war of Mexican-Americans vs. someone else, but between Mexico and the United States of America. Juxtaposition of two independent entities. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 02:33, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Sure. But his argument is that since the MOS says hyphens are used in proper names, dashes cannot be used in proper names. Which is the opposite of what it says, of course, but he's been repeating that argument over and over. I think the "pointy" addition of 'some' into the MOS was intended to make it more obvious that that argument is specious. — kwami (talk) 02:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Ah, right. More WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. He's been doing that at the birds capitalization links I posted immediately above, too. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:06, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- But as pointed out adding "some" does not say what it was intended to say. And it can not say that all proper names use a hyphen because Sun does not use a hyphen, and it can not say that no proper names use a hyphen because Wilkes-Barre does. As far as I can see 2.8% of books use an endash for Mexican American War. A second study using only page images may raise that percentage. Adding some does not in any way affect what our article is going to use. The article has been bouncing around half a dozen times from a hyphen to an endash. Adding some will not change whether it uses an endash or a hyphen. Does some mean that where an endash or a hyphen could be used a hyphen is used some of the time? Or does it mean that for all proper names, some of them are hyphenated? If an endash is ever correctly used in a proper name it does not matter in the least how many times that happens, so some, most, all, none, few, many are meaningless. Use the correct punctuation. All the time. It is also a fact that I am not aware of any examples of an endash being correct in a proper name, but certainly it should be trivial to find an exception. And if there is one? What good does adding "some" do? We already say that the guideline has exceptions. Do we have to say that in every sentence? Apteva (talk) 05:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, if you would bother educating yourself about what grammar guides say, or about the en dash discussions, you'd know that in some styles the role of the en dashed is filled by the hyphen – like in styles based on typewriters, and some others. There's probably no en dash role that actually appears as en dash in a majority of sources – not even in page ranges or date ranges. It's not that the hyphen is "wrong", but that in styles that recognize the distinction between hyphen and en dash, the en dash should be used when it signals the intended relationship better than the hyphen does. Proper names have nothing to do with it, except that some proper names, such as person names that have been derived from two parent names, or city names that have been compounded from two names, where the two distinct person or entities are not being distingushed, the hyphen in used. When the two are distinguished, as in Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, the en dash is used. Have you tried consulting grammar guides about this? None of them have anything resembling your theory. The "some" that I added was to blunt your erroneous interpretation of a sentence that nobody had misinterpreted before; I'm not sure why people are calling it pointy. Only very few proper names include a hyphen, so the "some" makes perfect sense. Dicklyon (talk) 05:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that the wording is awkward. If no-one were using that sentence to claim that the MOS says that we need to use hyphens instead of dashes in proper names, then I would remove it. There are, however, several other places in the MOS which are awkwardly written because of repeated misinterpretation of more straightforward or elegant wording. — kwami (talk) 06:11, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I have looked at some style guides. No where near as many as were consulted in developing the MOS, but Seattle-Tacoma Intl is not a particularly good example, because the vast majority of sources spell it with a hyphen. Adding some does not change what I think the sentence says. I think the some was added to try to change the meaning of the sentence, but it has no affect on the sentence other than to mislead. Some implies how many, 1 out of 4, 3 out of 4? One out of a hundred? Nine out of ten? Lets say that there are 100 proper nouns and 2 use a hyphen and 3 use an endash. Does saying some help to know which is which? Lets say there are none that use an endash. Does saying some use a hyphen help to add an endash? What I am saying is that adding the word some was intended to mean that some names use an endash, but it does not say that. It says, and I quote, "Hyphenation also occurs in bird names such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in some proper names such as Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre." How by any stretch of the imagination does that help add an endash to any words? That is why I am saying that it was added just to make a point. Apteva (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I'll be the first to agree that it doesn't change the meaning, and wasn't intended to. But it was intended to keep you from claiming that the meaning is that proper name cannot have en dashes, which it never said. As long as we agree, I don't really care if we remove "some". Dicklyon (talk) 07:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Excellent. I am certain that some kind admin will be happy to do that - for exactly that reason - "as long as we agree"! Edit protected can never be used to perform an edit that has not gained consensus. Apteva (talk) 07:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- So we agree now? Above where you said "Even I am wrong sometimes, I freely admit that, like when I think that I am wrong." you weren't just kidding as you implied? You're admitting now that you were wrong in your interpretation of the MOS as saying the proper names can't have en dashes? Dicklyon (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I was saying that in my personal experience I have yet to find a title that has come through WP:RM that seemed to indicate, based on common usage, that it should use an endash in a proper noun That had nothing to do with the MOS, but only to do with personal experience. But that is a tiny microcosm. I searched through as much of the dictionary that time and google would allow and hoped to find one to no avail - so far. I have not given up, and hope to find some in the comets perhaps. Normally exceptions to anything are trivial to find. But moving on, while reading New Hart's Rules, it says that it is Brit speak to use post-World War I with a hyphen and Am speak to use an endash. Based on what I am finding in the google book search for hyphens and commas in for example male-female I am wondering if perhaps we should have a grey area where either a hyphen or an endash is acceptable? 1914-18 pretty universally used an endash, Bose-Einstein we can ignore because those are scientists and what do they know about punctuation? I am being a little bit facetious but only a little. Male-female surprised me. Apteva (talk) 07:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- So we agree now? Above where you said "Even I am wrong sometimes, I freely admit that, like when I think that I am wrong." you weren't just kidding as you implied? You're admitting now that you were wrong in your interpretation of the MOS as saying the proper names can't have en dashes? Dicklyon (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I have looked at some style guides. No where near as many as were consulted in developing the MOS, but Seattle-Tacoma Intl is not a particularly good example, because the vast majority of sources spell it with a hyphen. Adding some does not change what I think the sentence says. I think the some was added to try to change the meaning of the sentence, but it has no affect on the sentence other than to mislead. Some implies how many, 1 out of 4, 3 out of 4? One out of a hundred? Nine out of ten? Lets say that there are 100 proper nouns and 2 use a hyphen and 3 use an endash. Does saying some help to know which is which? Lets say there are none that use an endash. Does saying some use a hyphen help to add an endash? What I am saying is that adding the word some was intended to mean that some names use an endash, but it does not say that. It says, and I quote, "Hyphenation also occurs in bird names such as Great Black-backed Gull, and in some proper names such as Trois-Rivières and Wilkes-Barre." How by any stretch of the imagination does that help add an endash to any words? That is why I am saying that it was added just to make a point. Apteva (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that the wording is awkward. If no-one were using that sentence to claim that the MOS says that we need to use hyphens instead of dashes in proper names, then I would remove it. There are, however, several other places in the MOS which are awkwardly written because of repeated misinterpretation of more straightforward or elegant wording. — kwami (talk) 06:11, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, if you would bother educating yourself about what grammar guides say, or about the en dash discussions, you'd know that in some styles the role of the en dashed is filled by the hyphen – like in styles based on typewriters, and some others. There's probably no en dash role that actually appears as en dash in a majority of sources – not even in page ranges or date ranges. It's not that the hyphen is "wrong", but that in styles that recognize the distinction between hyphen and en dash, the en dash should be used when it signals the intended relationship better than the hyphen does. Proper names have nothing to do with it, except that some proper names, such as person names that have been derived from two parent names, or city names that have been compounded from two names, where the two distinct person or entities are not being distingushed, the hyphen in used. When the two are distinguished, as in Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, the en dash is used. Have you tried consulting grammar guides about this? None of them have anything resembling your theory. The "some" that I added was to blunt your erroneous interpretation of a sentence that nobody had misinterpreted before; I'm not sure why people are calling it pointy. Only very few proper names include a hyphen, so the "some" makes perfect sense. Dicklyon (talk) 05:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- But as pointed out adding "some" does not say what it was intended to say. And it can not say that all proper names use a hyphen because Sun does not use a hyphen, and it can not say that no proper names use a hyphen because Wilkes-Barre does. As far as I can see 2.8% of books use an endash for Mexican American War. A second study using only page images may raise that percentage. Adding some does not in any way affect what our article is going to use. The article has been bouncing around half a dozen times from a hyphen to an endash. Adding some will not change whether it uses an endash or a hyphen. Does some mean that where an endash or a hyphen could be used a hyphen is used some of the time? Or does it mean that for all proper names, some of them are hyphenated? If an endash is ever correctly used in a proper name it does not matter in the least how many times that happens, so some, most, all, none, few, many are meaningless. Use the correct punctuation. All the time. It is also a fact that I am not aware of any examples of an endash being correct in a proper name, but certainly it should be trivial to find an exception. And if there is one? What good does adding "some" do? We already say that the guideline has exceptions. Do we have to say that in every sentence? Apteva (talk) 05:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Ah, right. More WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. He's been doing that at the birds capitalization links I posted immediately above, too. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ Contrib. 03:06, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Sure. But his argument is that since the MOS says hyphens are used in proper names, dashes cannot be used in proper names. Which is the opposite of what it says, of course, but he's been repeating that argument over and over. I think the "pointy" addition of 'some' into the MOS was intended to make it more obvious that that argument is specious. — kwami (talk) 02:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Abuse of hidden template
Lately I've seen several examples of articles including large amounts of non-encyclopedic cruft by including it inside hidden sections (using either the {{Hidden}} or {{Hidden begin}}/{{Hidden end}} templates). For example, the Gangnam Style article recently included 3 hidden sections: A list of celebrity tweets related to the song, a list of quotations from various media, and a regular section of article prose about the spread of the song outside Korea. This brings up 2 questions:
- Should regular sections of article prose ever be hidden by default?
- Can editors ignore WP:NOT by hiding lists of trivia rather than deleting them or integrating them into the article prose?
I'm guessing the answer to both questions is "no", but would be good to hear other people's thoughts. Kaldari (talk) 19:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not something that needs to be addressed on this particular page. Maybe on text formatting in Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Text formatting#Other text formatting concerns or trivia? Or for now, in a list of questions. Apteva (talk) 14:28, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
New Arbitration Enforcement Remedy
This page and its talk page are currently subject to active arbitration enforcement remedies:
If you are a new editor, or an editor unfamiliar with the situation, please follow the above guidelines. If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. When in doubt, don't revert! |
--Guerillero | My Talk 00:12, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Discrepancies
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Any objections to deleting the sentence:
"In cases of discrepancy, this page has precedence over its subpages (see Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Contents) and over Misplaced Pages:Simplified Manual of Style."
The reason for this is we look like a fool if we want articles to maintain a consistent style and we do not even maintain consistency in the MOS. If there are inconsistencies I recommend fixing them like yesterday, but certainly not pretending that one page is more correct than another. Are there any inconsistencies that anyone knows of? There are 71 pages in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 05:08, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Not done That change could be controversial; please get consensus first. --Rschen7754 05:20, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- It would be best to actually find and fix discrepancies on a case-by-case basis, rather than make a blanket statement like this. --Jayron32 05:21, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- So you are recommending deleting the sentence? Apteva (talk) 06:34, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Support
- Yes, as nominator. Apteva (talk) 17:38, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Oppose
- The sentence puts the editors of subpages on notice that they should not incorporate guidance that conflicts with the MOS, and gives editors license to remove any such conflicting guidance from the subpages. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:53, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose. In the past, contradictions have languished for years. I felt unqualified to resolve them myself, and nagging others to fix them had no effect. Now I can respond as at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Circa. Art LaPella (talk) 18:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose. I added the sentence about page precedence at 04:45, 21 July 2012. It does not make us look like fools, but it simply acknowledges that there may be inconsistencies, and it provides guidance to editors who find them. Resolving them might involve long, convoluted discussions, but in the meantime editors can apply what has precedence.
- —Wavelength (talk) 18:23, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- The problem though, is that editors are going to use common sense, not what the sentence says - anyone can change either page to say anything at all, and there is no greater likelihood that this page is the better of the two to use. Fixing discrepancies is what is needed, not advice on which to use. If it said "if you find a discrepancy correct it", that would be appropriate, and would not pretend to know which was correct. Possible wording could be, "There are many pages to the MOS, and conflicting or confusing information should be corrected or discussed on the relevant talk page." But that should be in a side note, not within the text. In looking through most of our policies, guidelines and essays, many are brilliantly written, at the level of professionalism of our best Featured Articles. This MOS would not even qualify as a GA in its present form, and frankly sets a poor example of what to do. Apteva (talk) 19:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Common sense is subjective. Saying that editors will ignore a meta-guideline (and therefore discarding the meta-guideline) is like saying that people will ignore advice to avoid exceeding the speed limit, avoid abusing drugs, or avoid participating in extramarital sexual intercourse (and therefore wasting appropriate opportunities to give such advice). Even if a guideline on a page with precedence needs to be revised later, there is value in having order instead of a free-for-all.
- Please see Terms of Use: 17. Other Terms, paragraph 6 of 7: "These Terms of Use were written in English (U.S.). While we hope that translations of these Terms of Use are accurate, in the event of any differences in meaning between the original English version and a translation, the original English version takes precedence." For many examples of similar wording, you can search on the Internet for english version takes precedence and english version prevail.
- —Wavelength (talk) 22:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC) and 22:43, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not a good example. Any document that is translated is liable to be horribly translated, and in the case of discrepancies it is obvious to refer to the original. Had the original been in Russian it would have said that in case of discrepancies the Russian version takes precedence. In the case of the MOS, I have no idea if or where any discrepancies occur or how they got there, but it is clearly equally possible that WP:MOS is the one with the error, for example if it said, just as an example, to spell Mexican-American War or Comet Hale-Bopp with an endash, and if a subpage said to spell it with a hyphen, clearly the subpage is correct and should be followed, not WP:MOS. Apteva (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- My example is a good one, and many people have confidence in translations of documents. For evidence, please see the articles "Bible translations", "Presseurop", "Watching America", and "Misplaced Pages", and Category:Multilingual websites. The article "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" has an external link to an index to many translations of the declaration. I am not convinced that all editors would agree with you about the war and the comet.
- —Wavelength (talk) 02:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- As to the comet and the war. If the MOS specialists here decided to use a hyphen, no one at any time would question that decision. Recommend an endash, and it both will and has been questioned. Until it is changed. Apteva (talk) 03:22, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- Not a good example. Any document that is translated is liable to be horribly translated, and in the case of discrepancies it is obvious to refer to the original. Had the original been in Russian it would have said that in case of discrepancies the Russian version takes precedence. In the case of the MOS, I have no idea if or where any discrepancies occur or how they got there, but it is clearly equally possible that WP:MOS is the one with the error, for example if it said, just as an example, to spell Mexican-American War or Comet Hale-Bopp with an endash, and if a subpage said to spell it with a hyphen, clearly the subpage is correct and should be followed, not WP:MOS. Apteva (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose deletion. There are going to be some discrepancies no matter what, and this tells editors what to do about them. If anyone wants to organize a discrepancy-resolving task force, I'd be interested, though. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
- Already done. Have at it. Apteva (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Have these been fixed? (from archive) Apteva (talk) 01:33, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:HEAD
- WP:HEAD says "Change a heading only after careful consideration, and if doing so use an anchor template ..." But Help:Section#Section linking and redirects doesn't require the anchor; it lists anchors as one of several alternatives. MOS:SECTIONS is similarly permissive, using the word "Consider ..." rather than a simple imperative.
- Anchors are not required. They are only used when there are known articles that link to that section heading. The choice is to either change the link or add an anchor. Either can be done. Apteva (talk) 01:47, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- WP:TPOC (version of 09:23, 9 October 2012), point 13, ends by saying: "In order to ensure links to the previous section heading (including automatically generated links in watchlists and histories) continue to work, one should use one of the following templates to anchor the old title: {{formerly}}, {{anchord}}, {{anchor}}." The same benefits apply to article pages.
- —Wavelength (talk) 02:15, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- WP:HEAD currently matches MOS:SECTIONS. Did you simply copy an old list I made, or did you look anything up to see how current it is? Art LaPella (talk) 04:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- As you go down the list, "fixed" means fixed previously; I didn't fix anything tonight. About half the list has been fixed over the last few years. Art LaPella (talk) 05:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
MOS:CURRENCY
- MOS:CURRENCY says "In non-country-specific articles such as Wealth, use US dollars (US$123), the dominant reserve currency of the world. Some editors also like to provide euro and/or pound sterling equivalents ..." (emphasis added). But ] says "or", not "also": "In non-country-specific articles, express amounts of money in United States dollars, euros, or pounds sterling." (emphasis in original)
- Not fixed yet. The latter is from the main MoS page, so I suppose the former should be changed to the latter, unless someone otherwise resolves the contradiction. Art LaPella (talk) 04:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:COPYEDIT
- WP:COPYEDIT#Common edits says "The wording, spelling, and punctuation of literal quotations should not be changed. ... See WP:MOSQUOTE for details." MOSQUOTE starts out the same way: "Preserve the original text, spelling, and punctuation." But then it says "Trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected ...", and there's no hint that some spelling errors are more trivial than others. Presumably it means that quotes over 200 years old shouldn't be spell checked, but that isn't the most common cause of misspelling. Thus most spelling should be corrected, depending on which guideline we read. Most of MOSQUOTE is about "Allowable typographical changes" that similarly undermine the rule against changing punctuation.
- Changed since then, but not fixed. "obvious errors in the original can be marked with " is inconsistent with "Trivial spelling or typographical errors should be silently corrected (for example, correct supercede to supersede, harasssment to harassment)—unless the slip is textually important." Art LaPella (talk) 04:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:Manual of Style (France & French-related)
- WP:Manual of Style (France & French-related)#Railways says "use the basis Ligne de XXXXXXXX - XXXXXXXX (ex. Ligne de Grenoble - Montmélian)". It should say "despite WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH" if you really want French railways to be an exception to our usual taboo against spaced hyphens. The following section about railway stations says "it should be joined by hyphens. ex: 'Gare de XXXXXX-YY-ZZZZZZZZ'", which isn't a spaced hyphen, but anyway.
- The ampersand in the title "WP:Manual of Style (France & French-related)" conflicts with WP:&. I realize it says "Retain ampersands in titles of works", but since we named it ourselves, we can rename it.
- 1 has been fixed except for "Gare de XXXXXX-YY-ZZZZZZZZ", and I no longer think that is an error since we decided to hyphenate Austria-Hungary for instance. 2 has not been fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 04:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:Manual of Style (Islam-related articles)
- WP:Manual of Style (Islam-related articles) says "The first sentence of each article should have the article title in bold ..." To be more consistent with the exception in MOS:BEGIN, it should be more like WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Article introduction which says "In general, ..."
- Not fixed Art LaPella (talk) 04:51, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:ELLIPSIS
- WP:ELLIPSIS says: "Use non-breaking spaces (
) only as needed to prevent improper line breaks, for example: ... To keep the ellipsis from wrapping to the next line ("France, Germany,
... and Belgium but not the USSR")." But the very purpose of is to prevent wrapping to the next line. So "Use ... nbsp only as needed to prevent improper line breaks, for example ... to keep it from wrapping to the next line", can be simplified to "Use nbsp only as needed to prevent improper line breaks, for example every damn time."
- Noetica apparently agrees to removing the word "only", and hasn't answered concerning the other changes he proposed. So if there is no further comment on this issue, I will remove the word "only" when page protection comes off, which would resolve this old issue. Art LaPella (talk) 04:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:NBSP
- WP:NBSP says "Use a non-breaking space ... in expressions in which figures and abbreviations (or symbols) are separated by a space (e.g. ... AD 565". But WP:ERA says "BCE and CE or BC and AD are ... separated from the year number by a space or non-breaking space (5 BC, not 5BC)." (emphasis added)
- Fixed long ago. Art LaPella (talk) 04:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:DECADE
- WP:DECADE says "The two-digit form , to which a preceding apostrophe should be added ..." But ] says "(the '80s or the 80s)".
- That was also fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:CENTURY
- The end of ] says "Centuries and millennia are written ... without Roman numerals". But the section it's supposed to be summarizing at WP:CENTURY doesn't mention Roman numerals.
- Fixed (neither place mentions Roman numerals any more) Art LaPella (talk) 05:03, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:MOS
- ] says "Because large rounded numbers are generally assumed to be approximations, about or similar qualifications are not normally needed." But ] says "approx. US$1.4M ... approx. €1.0M".
- MOS:#Large numbers is now at MOS:NUM#Large numbers, but it isn't fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:BULLETLIST
- WP:BULLETLIST says "As a matter of style, list items should start with a capital letter. They should not have a punctuation mark such as a period, a comma or a semi-colon at the end, except if a list item is one or more full sentences, in which case there is a period at the end." But ] says "When the elements are sentence fragments ... are formatted consistently in either sentence case or lower case. Each element should end with a semicolon, with a period instead for the last element. Alternatively (especially when the elements are short), no final punctuation is used at all." (emphasis added)
- Not fixed Art LaPella (talk) 05:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:Manual of Style (music)
- WP:Manual of Style (music)#Usage says "The word hip hop is ... not hyphenated." The compound adjective article says "Conventionally, and with the support of modern writing guides, compound modifiers that appear before a noun phrase generally include a hyphen between each word, subject to some exceptions", and none of the exceptions applies to a phrase like "hip-hop music".
- I don't know if it changed, but now I wouldn't call it inconsistent. The compound adjective article says Further information: English compounds § Hyphenated compound modifiers which says "If, however, there is no risk of ambiguities, it may be written without a hyphen: Sunday morning walk." Art LaPella (talk) 05:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:PAIC
- WP:PAIC says "Place inline citations after any punctuation such as a comma or period" ... But WP:REFPUNC says "If an article has evolved using predominantly one style of ref tag placement, the whole article should conform to that style unless there is a consensus to change it."
WP:ANDOR
- WP:ANDOR says "Avoid the construct and/or on Misplaced Pages", which is often easier said than done. Searching the Manual for "and/or" proves that the real guideline is "Do as I say, not as I do." The same could be said for other guidelines such as spaced hyphens in the subpages, although I have changed many of them to en dashes according to WP:HYPHEN and WP:ENDASH.
- At least "and/or" has not been fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:25, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
WP:Manual of Style (British Isles-related articles)
- WP:Manual of Style (British Isles-related articles) says "The following guidelines apply to all British Isles-related topics ...", but then it doesn't list any guidelines! The Manual of Style banner has been removed, but not the Manual of Style category, so you can still arrive at that dead end from Template:Style.
WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)
- WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Choice of type style says "The most well-known functions—trigonometric functions, logarithms, etc.—have no parentheses. For example: ". But WP:Manual of Style (mathematics)#Functions says "f(x) = sin(x) cos(x)".
- Parentheses are more common for trig functions, but there is no need to specify how formulas should be written. Not using parentheses for ln though does make sense - ln 2 but does not need to be in the MOS. Apteva (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- Anyway, this contradiction has not been fixed. Art LaPella (talk) 05:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Disruption versus personalization
This page is for discussing the MOS, not specific users. If there are ongoing behavioral issues that need to be addressed the appropriate path is to open a user request for comment. Apteva (talk) 15:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC) |
Apteva has filed an arbitration enforcement action against me and against Neotarf, for our attempts to deal with his disruption on this page: here, in case anyone here cares. Dicklyon (talk) 07:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
- The fact that sanctions are requested for violating the ARB sanction are not important. Each individual user has already been notified. Apteva (talk) 15:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)