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Formatting titles of journal articles and book chapters in references
When formatting references I had always assumed that 'title case' was used for the titles of journals and books and that 'sentence case' was used for the titles of journal articles and book chapters. This is a style that is used by many scientific journals. I've now discovered that this choice is not explicitly specified in the manual of style which reads:
"The titles of articles, chapters, songs, television episodes, research papers and other short works are not italicized; they are enclosed in double quotation marks. Italics are not used for major revered religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these items should also be in title case." (colour added)
So my question is, which of these items should be in title case? Or does WP:CITEVAR apply? Aa77zz (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- MOS:ALLCAPS. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:20, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:CITEVAR applies per the RfC at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Exceptions to Small Caps which stated
MOS does not seem to apply to references using a style using these (such as BlueBook). In any case, changes to citation style should be made at WT:CITE, not here.
. That doesn't address the question however. WP:CITEVAR applies. If your chosen citation style uses title case, then you use title case. If it uses sentence case, then you use that. If it uses italics or underlines, ditto. GregJackP Boomer! 23:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
- I agree that this is a matter for CITEVAR: variations in this choice from article to article are ok but within a single article we should be consistent. My own preference, btw, is the one expressed at the start of this section: sentence case for journal articles and book chapters, title case for journal names and book titles. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- As long as it is consistent within the article, I agree with you and think that it's fine. I personally use Bluebook for articles I create, so journal articles are title case and in italics while book titles are in title case and smallcaps. GregJackP Boomer! 20:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
- WP:CITEVAR applies per the RfC at Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Exceptions to Small Caps which stated
- I very grudgingly concede, temporarily, that CITEVAR probably applies sometimes, but: 1) use a consistent style within the article for the same type of source; 2) never change non-periodicals' titles to use sentence case; and 3) always favor title case for all titles when in doubt, for consistency between different types of sources. On that last point, I would further say never change periodicals' titles to sentence case unless it was used by the first major contributor, in properly formatted, complete citations – don't count copy-pasted, wannabe citations (e.g.
<ref>"The unlightable beingness of bears", Jane Smith, Underwater Basketweaving Jnl, Jan 2016</ref>). Per WP:COMMONSENSE, it would also be reasonable to override CITEVAR for rational reasons, e.g. the first major contributor adding only one such citation, and not raising any objections after other editors added considerably more periodical citations using title case. We also often override ENGVAR for rational reasons, and we must not take "first major contributor" fetishism seriously. (This has been happening; I fairly often see attempts at WP:RM to extend the "first major contributor" concept to all sorts of things, and this problem is growing not shrinking.)I would prefer if WP settled on "use title case for titles", and just left it at that. It would eliminate all such disputes. It's more important for the project to eliminate recurrent disputes that pointlessly waste editorial time and energy for no reader benefit, than to do what some particular camp stylistically prefers in "their" articles because some journals in their field use sentence case. It's yet another example of the WP:Specialist style fallacy in action. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 09:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Well, WP:CITEVAR clearly applies, and that includes using a consistent style within the article. APA uses sentence case for journal articles, and if the first major contributor is using that style it should be allowed. If that means changing a title to match the requirements of the citation style used, that's what we do. Second, we use the citation style implemented by the first major contributor. By definition, if there is only one or two poorly formed citations in the article, there is not an established style and CITEVAR encourages editors to impose a citation style in those cases. Finally, WP:Specialist style fallacy is an essay by you, and of no more weight than WP:Generalist style fallacy if I should decide to write an essay on that subject. It is your opinion and not close to what is currently policy.
- Finally, we don't impose a single citation style on editors, we allow them to use what they are comfortable with. I'm comfortable with Bluebook and prefer to use it on articles I create. If you prefer CS1/2, you can use that. If you prefer Chicago, use that. It is more important that we don't run off content creators by imposing styles that they don't like or feel comfortable with. GregJackP Boomer! 04:12, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
- "Well," CITEVAR does not "clearly" apply or this discussion, and many previous similar ones, would never arise. Hyperbole isn't helpful, and simply restating your assertion after it's been controverted isn't a real argument. CITEVAR was intended for one, clear purpose, to prevent the wholesale alteration of citations from one major style (e.g. Help:Citation Style 1), to another. It was never intended to allow anyone to WP:OWN every nitpick of citations. It's been incrementally WP:CREEPing toward that un-wiki goal for several years now, and this has to stop. It's not an MOS matter, though, so I'll take that up at WT:CITE. Moving on, CITEVAR doesn't say what you seem to think it says; "first major contributor" (FMC, hereafter) is only one of multiple encompassed scenarios, and the FMC can be overridden. This is because the "we don't impose a single citation style on editors, we allow them to use what they are comfortable with" intent you point out is directly thwarted when the FMC picks something that doesn't work well in the context and/or that other contributors aren't comfortable with. WP:CONSENSUS applies to this as it does to everything else on WP. Even the FMC's ENGVAR preferences can be overturned. Citation styles don't "run off" anyone (cf. comment about hyperbole again). No one has ever been blocked for adding citations that weren't formatted a particular way, and people can add citation any way they like; they just don't necessarily get to tell others they can't reformat the citations. There is no principle anywhere on WP that you can't add information and citations to an article however you like, and leave it to someone else to tweak them later (though they may ask you on your talk page to respect CITEVAR and/or to use our citation templates).
PS: I think you misapprehend the nature of WP:ESSAYs and why people mention them. No one is citing them as authoritative (or if they are, they are making a mistake, misunderstanding how WP:POLICY works). There is no assertion of "weight", and accusing me of making one is a straw man. People write essays to lay out frequently-repeated reasoning clearly, so they don't have to keep writing it out again and again every time the same issue comes up. That's all they are, and that's the only reason to link to one. If I or anyone else points to an essay, it means "this has already been addressed, and we don't need to rehash it at length here, unless we're adding something new." (As for that essay in particular, if the specialist style fallacy were not actually fallacious, someone would have long ago written a refutation, given how many people engage in that fallacy and are convinced they are right. Hasn't happened, because the reasoning in the essay is sound.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 00:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- "Well," CITEVAR does not "clearly" apply or this discussion, and many previous similar ones, would never arise. Hyperbole isn't helpful, and simply restating your assertion after it's been controverted isn't a real argument. CITEVAR was intended for one, clear purpose, to prevent the wholesale alteration of citations from one major style (e.g. Help:Citation Style 1), to another. It was never intended to allow anyone to WP:OWN every nitpick of citations. It's been incrementally WP:CREEPing toward that un-wiki goal for several years now, and this has to stop. It's not an MOS matter, though, so I'll take that up at WT:CITE. Moving on, CITEVAR doesn't say what you seem to think it says; "first major contributor" (FMC, hereafter) is only one of multiple encompassed scenarios, and the FMC can be overridden. This is because the "we don't impose a single citation style on editors, we allow them to use what they are comfortable with" intent you point out is directly thwarted when the FMC picks something that doesn't work well in the context and/or that other contributors aren't comfortable with. WP:CONSENSUS applies to this as it does to everything else on WP. Even the FMC's ENGVAR preferences can be overturned. Citation styles don't "run off" anyone (cf. comment about hyperbole again). No one has ever been blocked for adding citations that weren't formatted a particular way, and people can add citation any way they like; they just don't necessarily get to tell others they can't reformat the citations. There is no principle anywhere on WP that you can't add information and citations to an article however you like, and leave it to someone else to tweak them later (though they may ask you on your talk page to respect CITEVAR and/or to use our citation templates).
- Well, I'm sorry, but CITEVAR clearly defers to the FMC, stating:
"As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved."
So if you want to change it, you get consensus to change it. It works the same way as anything else in WP. I'm also familiar with the purpose of essays. When they are good and well-grounded they serve the purpose you state. Unfortunately, the reasoning is not sound, nor, for that matter, does it do a good job of explaining the position, relying instead on"using emotive, even insulting language that generates heated responses and tends to derail discussions"
as above. I get that you don't like CITEVAR and would apparently prefer a uniform system for all articles. But CITEVAR still clearly applies. GregJackP Boomer! 04:37, 3 June 2015 (UTC)- I'm not sure why you somehow seem unable to see the part that says "or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page" (trumps the FMC), and the part that follows, "unless a change in consensus has been achieved", which trumps both the FMC and a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of the main editors of the page as a group, if (e.g.) an RfC decided the cite style they were using wasn't appropriate for the topic area. "It works the same way as anything else in WP"; yes, I just said that. I didn't say there should only be one citation style. Vague claims than an essay isn't reasoned well don't demonstrate that it's not reasoned well. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 09:56, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- No, you're unable to comprehend it. I've stated several times here (and hundreds of times elsewhere) that consensus can overrule the FMC. Why are you having difficulty with this? GregJackP Boomer! 18:54, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- I think we are concluding that we've been talking past each other then. :-) You clearly put more weight on the FMC than I do, but who cares? I even !voted here to go the same way you did, albeit more tentatively, so we should probably save this discussion for some other time, since continuing to argue this side point isn't instructive to the question that was asked. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 21:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
- Works for me. GregJackP Boomer! 16:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- I think we are concluding that we've been talking past each other then. :-) You clearly put more weight on the FMC than I do, but who cares? I even !voted here to go the same way you did, albeit more tentatively, so we should probably save this discussion for some other time, since continuing to argue this side point isn't instructive to the question that was asked. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 21:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
- No, you're unable to comprehend it. I've stated several times here (and hundreds of times elsewhere) that consensus can overrule the FMC. Why are you having difficulty with this? GregJackP Boomer! 18:54, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- I'm not sure why you somehow seem unable to see the part that says "or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page" (trumps the FMC), and the part that follows, "unless a change in consensus has been achieved", which trumps both the FMC and a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of the main editors of the page as a group, if (e.g.) an RfC decided the cite style they were using wasn't appropriate for the topic area. "It works the same way as anything else in WP"; yes, I just said that. I didn't say there should only be one citation style. Vague claims than an essay isn't reasoned well don't demonstrate that it's not reasoned well. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 09:56, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Commas and full stops (periods) inside or outside
The style given is just not being followed by WP editors and anyway is not the custom in the U.S. and Canada, so I was WP:Bold and simply deleted it. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
- For the record, BeenAroundAWhile, I reverted you because, while Misplaced Pages editors generally do not follow WP:Logical quotation, this subject has been repeatedly debated at this talk page and attempts to achieve WP:Consensus to remove that text have repeatedly failed. There should be WP:Consensus for its removal. Flyer22 (talk) 00:01, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Agree with the revert. Community consensus is established by discussion leading to guidelines, not by individual perception(s) of what's commonly done. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:06, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Agree with BeenAroundAWhile that WP:LQ needs to be replaced; disagree that "just be consistent" is enough instruction. The English language has two systems for dealing with this, and we should tell people how to use them correctly. WP:LQ is the single most challenged part of the MoS for good reason. As for consensus, 1) The last RfC we had on this issue was written in a biased manner; 2) while a majority of participants said that we should use only British punctuation, the majority of sources said the opposite. Misplaced Pages's not a democracy. We're supposed to care more about what's verifiable than about what people happen to like. The MoS shouldn't have personal preferences up there as rules. There's no reason not to use ENGVAR for punctuation. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:00, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Mandruss, if you're concerned about compliance and individual perception, we actually did check the last time this came up: . Compliance with WP:LQ is pretty low. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:06, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Darkfrog has campaigned for internal punctuation on the internet more widely, seeing it as a nationalistic issue. But she fails to account for the fact that it crosses the boundaries of national variety. Tony (talk) 05:23, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- 1) Tony I have no idea what you're talking about, "campaigning widely on the internet"? When WP:LQ comes up, I support changing it. 2) Don't make claims about how I do and don't see things. The way I see this matter is that requiring people to do things incorrectly is really mean and makes the encyclopedia look unprofessional. In American English, leaving periods and commas outside closing quotation marks is wrong, just like how spelling "harbor" without the U is wrong in British English.
- 3) No it does not cross boundaries of international variety. We found one American source that required British, one. All of the others required American, a 16:1 ratio: Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:22, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- That was a little unfair of me personally. Retracted. Tony (talk) 05:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
- Nevertheless, Darkfrog24, a sampling of articles says nothing about how many editors even know about the guideline. In my experience, even when an editor edits per MOS:LQ, they rarely bother linking to it in their editsum, so it appears they are just editing per their personal preference. This does nothing to educate other editors, and it's unwise to cite non-compliance to justify the elimination or modification of any guideline. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Darkfrog has campaigned for internal punctuation on the internet more widely, seeing it as a nationalistic issue. But she fails to account for the fact that it crosses the boundaries of national variety. Tony (talk) 05:23, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Compliance is high enough to keep LQ, for its precision. Editors like me regularly fix TQ when we encounter it. It's been this way for years. The sky has not fallen. A large proportion of MOS's guidance is expected to not be followed by casual editors, and implemented in cleanup by MOS gnomes; that's true of everything from date formats to spaces between measurements and unit symbols (and non-breaking ones at that), insertion of non-breaking spaces in various other cases, using the
{{sic}}template, and on and on. "Not everyone does it" isn't a valid rationale against MOS recommending any particular best practice. Reversing it to a preference for typesetter's quotation (commas inside, sometimes referred to erroneously as "American style") would be a huge hit to accuracy and the precise parseability of quoted material, while not actually fixing anything. It would simply result in about as many non-North-American editors using the not-recommended style, as we presently have of North American editors doing so. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:37, 24 May 2015 (UTC)- Mandruss, I wouldn't say it says nothing about how many people know about the guideline Since we can't read their minds, looking at what they do is a good indicator. I guess we could figure out a survey if we need to. SmC, "not everyone does it" might not be enough, but "only about 60% compliance, even in featured articles" is a little stronger than "not everyone."
- SmC we're on the same page that Misplaced Pages shouldn't just flip it around and ban British and require American. That would be just as disrespectful of British editors and British English as the current situation is to American. ENGVAR is a proven policy. We should use that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:22, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- For cases where MOS:LQ is not observed, looking at what they do is an excellent indicator that one of the following is true: (1)(anarchy) They are aware of the guideline, disagree with it, and don't observe guidelines that they disagree with. (2)(apathy) They are aware of the guideline and don't feel it's worth worrying about one way or the other. (3)(ignorance) They are not aware of the guideline. It tells us absolutely nothing about which of the three is more or less common than the others. You're correct, we could conduct a survey, but we haven't yet, so we can't deduce anything at all from the degree of non-compliance. Instead of a survey, we might as well just run another RfC. Guidelines represent community consensus and they should be followed except in the rare case where there is good reason to deviate, as determined by local consensus—whether we agree with them or not. We !vote in RfCs, and we live with the results even when they don't go our way. That is the meaning of consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, we don't know which of those reasons people use, but all three of them indicate that this isn't a great rule. Actually, per WP:NOTDEMOCRACY, no it's not about the votes, or at least it's not supposed to be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- We don't have any rules. Whilst the MoS is a guideline, no one is required to follow the MoS when they create an article. That was mentioned above. RGloucester — ☎ 12:48, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Exactly. No one is REQUIRED to obey MOS when editing. It's not a WP:DE problem unless someone goes around preventing others from complying with it (e.g. by editing articles to remove compliant style). So of the three possible cases for non-compliance, #1 and #2 simply don't matter, while #3 we really can't do anything about. Everyone ignores something in MOS either because they hate it or just can't be bothered (more like 50+ "somethings"). Like all style guides, MOS has more details than any normal human will remember; it's a reference work for polishing stuff after it's written, not a list of stuff to comply with before you write. It is not a content policy. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- That is not true in practice. I wasn't preventing anyone from doing anything and got brought up on ANI solely for using American punctuation, in articles that were already using it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:48, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Were you actually punished? As with lawsuits, anyone can start a complaint at a noticeboard, but it doesn't mean it'll go their way. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 01:39, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- That is not true in practice. I wasn't preventing anyone from doing anything and got brought up on ANI solely for using American punctuation, in articles that were already using it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:48, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Exactly. No one is REQUIRED to obey MOS when editing. It's not a WP:DE problem unless someone goes around preventing others from complying with it (e.g. by editing articles to remove compliant style). So of the three possible cases for non-compliance, #1 and #2 simply don't matter, while #3 we really can't do anything about. Everyone ignores something in MOS either because they hate it or just can't be bothered (more like 50+ "somethings"). Like all style guides, MOS has more details than any normal human will remember; it's a reference work for polishing stuff after it's written, not a list of stuff to comply with before you write. It is not a content policy. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- We don't have any rules. Whilst the MoS is a guideline, no one is required to follow the MoS when they create an article. That was mentioned above. RGloucester — ☎ 12:48, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, we don't know which of those reasons people use, but all three of them indicate that this isn't a great rule. Actually, per WP:NOTDEMOCRACY, no it's not about the votes, or at least it's not supposed to be. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- For cases where MOS:LQ is not observed, looking at what they do is an excellent indicator that one of the following is true: (1)(anarchy) They are aware of the guideline, disagree with it, and don't observe guidelines that they disagree with. (2)(apathy) They are aware of the guideline and don't feel it's worth worrying about one way or the other. (3)(ignorance) They are not aware of the guideline. It tells us absolutely nothing about which of the three is more or less common than the others. You're correct, we could conduct a survey, but we haven't yet, so we can't deduce anything at all from the degree of non-compliance. Instead of a survey, we might as well just run another RfC. Guidelines represent community consensus and they should be followed except in the rare case where there is good reason to deviate, as determined by local consensus—whether we agree with them or not. We !vote in RfCs, and we live with the results even when they don't go our way. That is the meaning of consensus. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:55, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Since the word "RfC" has come up, I'd like to say that if we do get to the point where we have one, we should engage a neutral third party, like a mediator, to work out the wording with us. Last time, there was a huge problem with finding middle ground. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Darkfrog, you're on this warhorse at least once a year. Every time you ramp it up, and every time you don't succeed. It is pure disruption. Tony (talk) 14:09, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- You mean a complete stranger challenges WP:LQ at least once a year and I say "you're right." Then I provide sources that back up the position. If you don't like that, you're on the wrong site. Stop acting like this is about me. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:25, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- It is about you. Your forum shopping, canvassing, and circumvention of consensus has been made apparent many times in many contexts. If you keep this up, I'm sure someone will take you to AE. RGloucester — ☎ 15:04, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- RG, lay off the personal attacks. For the umpteenth time, publicizing an RfC is not WP:CANVASSING. Creating a new proposal when an old one fails is not circumventing consensus. You have your way of interpreting the rules, but that doesn't mean I'm breaking them.
- Everyone else, RG is talking about his proposal to create a style noticeboard, which I publicized on related talk pages—it may be relevant that I supported the proposal. He is also talking about my proposal to endorse the MoS for Q&A, which I made after the noticeboard proposal did not get approval. These things are not only allowed on Misplaced Pages but encouraged. I don't know where he's getting forum shopping.
- Note that none of this has anything to do with BeenAround's changes to the MoS or with WP:LQ. We should keep it on that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 15:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, we should keep it on topic, and be mindful of the discretionary sanctions warning at the top of the page (which RG is close to transgressing by personalizing commentary and, ironically, making AE threats. I was just reading an AE thread regarding Gerda, and RG was warned very, very clearly about both battlegrounding and frivolous AE complaints, so should probably refrain from "going there". Anyone who would invite the hammer of admins, many of whom are not sympathetic to MOS/AT to get involved in punishing people for how they argue at WT:MOS is making a terrible, terrible mistake.
- So, back to the topic: The fact is that LQ has been stable on WP for years and years and years. A few people don't like it, but there are probably zero line items in MOS that a few people don't like, so that indicates nothing at all. It works for WP, even if it's mostly made consistent incrementally and after-the-fact. The forum-shopping element to this (no matter who raises it) is "LQ is British, and the other way is American, so it's should be an ENGVAR matter." This has been discussed to death and beyond, and every single time it's conclusively proven to be false. Various British publications use typesetters' quotation, and various American ones use logical quotation. People can bring up this bogus ENGVAR argument 10,000 times per day, and it will never change this fact. LQ is used when precision is important, by all sorts of reputable publishers all over the world, more so, not less so, as time goes on. WP consensus is that precision is important in Misplaced Pages, and that LQ is helpful in this regard. As I say about twice a day, MOS is an internal style guide for how to write this encyclopedia, period, end of story. It is not a style guide for the whole world, so there are no WP:GREATWRONGS to right with regard to LQ on WP. This perennial noise about it is among the WP:DEADestHORSEs we have. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- It depends on what you mean by "stable," SmC. This think keeps getting challenged and not always for the same reason. Sometimes challengers cite lack of compliance, as here, but the fact is that it directly contradicts the overwhelming majority of the sources on correct English writing and many of Misplaced Pages's other polices, like WP:COMMONALITY and WP:V, and yes WP:ENGVAR. As of our last RfC on the subject, even with the biased initial wording, it was a lot more than a few people who thought it should be changed.
- As for the "LQ is another name for British style" and "the current rule directly contradicts the rules of American English" those things have been proven true, not false: . And those are just the sources that I had on hand. When did you think it was proven false? I'm not being rhetorical SmC. I want to understand why you think this. (And yes I've heard of your essay; it didn't help with this question much.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- If "lack of compliance" were a valid argument against any WP policies or guidelines, we would have no policies and guidelines left. So, it does not keep getting challenged for different reasons that actually matter, only one, which has also been debunked. Your selective citation to two things that agree with your nationalism on this topic doesn't undo years of prior debate proving that selective citation of this sort is misleading on this question, and that the nationalistic arguments are false. We have the MOS:REGISTER for a reason; see in particular MOS:REGISTER#Punctuation inside or outside. The idea that one style "is American" and the other "is British" has been exploded repeatedly. Your repeated pretense that this is not the case, and attempts to push anew an argument to this nationalistic effect that has already been debunked, is, I would wager, the principle reason that people make WP:NOTGETTINGIT and WP:FORUMSHOPPING allegations in your direction. If you look at RfCs and other discussions on the matter, the "more than a few people" against MOS recommending logical quotation almost uniformly do it on the same, false nationalistic basis. WP is neither a vote nor a democracy; consensus on this is not changing, since the rationale for undoing LQ on Misplaced Pages doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and no amount of drum-beating about it is going to change that. If we were actually going to entertain an ENGVAR argument about quotation marks, it would be use of single quotes in British English, long before we'd get to the LQ question. And we've been over that, too, many times, with the same result: The belief that single quotation mark style "is British" is simply false.
- It is about you. Your forum shopping, canvassing, and circumvention of consensus has been made apparent many times in many contexts. If you keep this up, I'm sure someone will take you to AE. RGloucester — ☎ 15:04, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
| In both cases (inside/outside, double/single) all of the following have been demonstrated: |
|---|
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- This all indicates clearly that continued fist-shaking debate about this is a pointless waste of time. Some minority of editors refuse for personal reasons to comply, and the rest of Misplaced Pages and the world couldn't care less. Feel free to IAR, and we'll just clean it up later. There is no impediment of any kind to your or anyone else's editing by MOS having line-items that a few people don't agree with. Every single point in MOS has people who don't agree with it, and who ignore it (there are plenty of MOS "rules" I don't bother with myself). This is absolutely inescapable because of what MOS is, a compromise between divergent rules that no one agrees about off-WP. We pick one or the other because one serves our readers' interests better, and having a "rule" results in fewer stupid style editwars. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 22:43, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
PS: I've updated MOS:REGISTER#LQ to include the last year or so of relevant discussions, and in the course of doing so, I noticed that it really is one editor predictably "on this warhorse". While sometimes other editors bring it up, they generally get an answer about why WP uses LQ, and move on. The distracting debates are generally always engendered by one editor, month after month, year after year. Someone above suggested that this qualifies as WP:Disruptive editing; it must surely be getting close. I note that WP:FORUMSHOP doesn't say anything about being the one who first started a thread, it just addresses repeatedly "raising essentially the same issue", in general terms. When mostly one editor is the source of "challenges", then "WP:LQ is the single most challenged part of the MoS", a claim made by that editor, is disingenuous. Cf. WP:FAITACCOMPLI, WP:POINT, and the fallacy of proof by assertion. (It's not even true anyway, despite that pattern of activism; MOS:CAPS/WP:NCCAPS lead to far more disputes, especially at WP:RM, because of the near-universal pattern of specialty sources uses capitalization as a form of emphasis or marker of terms of art, in a style not acceptable in general-audience works like WP.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 01:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you for taking the time to answer me, SmC. I'll try to keep my response organized.
- SmC, I notice that you say "lack of 100% compliance is no reason to disregard WP:LQ," but then you immediately turn around and say, "because of a lack of 100% compliance, we must completely disregard the national split on punctuation." Yes The Guardian uses American style and the American Chemical Society uses British, but what this means is that there are exceptions, like a sign in Texas that says "Town Centre." It doesn't mean that "centre" isn't correct British spelling.
- Can I say with confidence that when you say, "The national split has been debunked" you are referring to these exceptions/lack of 100% compliance? I am asking because I want to understand you when you speak. It's not anything else in addition to this that makes you believe the split isn't real?
- There are several problems with your point #3: First, no it has not been proven that British style is "preferred by sources that value precision." Second, it has not been proven that that it would be desirable for Misplaced Pages to weight those sources more heavily. We write in an encyclopedic style for general audiences, so we should use general-audience rules. We do it for bird names; we should do it for punctuation. Third, in all the times we've debated this rule, no one has ever provided even one example of American punctuation causing even one error or misinterpretation on Misplaced Pages. You shouldn't claim that something happens when it doesn't. Fourth, I personally got called up on AN/I solely for using American punctuation, so no users are not free to IAR and contribute how they please, but the whole rules-vs-optional-guidelines thing is a separate issue affecting the whole MoS rather than WP:LQ alone.
- Were you under the impression that I had only three sources that referred to these styles as British and American? Heavens no! Those are only the ones I had handy. There are far more! If anyone wants I can make a long list of them here, but they more or less line up with these: . Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:48, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- If you think I am the only one who has repeatedly and energetically supported efforts to change WP:LQ, then you are reading the archive far too selectively. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:47, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
- Re: "because of a lack of 100% compliance, we must completely disregard the national split on punctuation" – That's not even related to the argument for LQ, which is precision. The observation that plenty of (precision-focused) American publications use LQ, and plenty of (fiction and news style) British publications use TQ is simply a refutation of the claim that one "is American" and the other "is British". A refutation by party A of party B's argument against X is not necessarily party A's argument for X. And please note that it's been shown before that the LQ-like style of some British sources isn't always LQ, but just similar. British press sources have actually criticized WP's article on quotation marks for conflating the two! That's reliable sourcing that LQ isn't "British style". There are multiple, severable refutations – more than one thing debunks your nationalist premise; see the collapsebox above, and previous discussions. I'm not going to be drawn into another time-wasting regurgitation of all those details. Yes, it has been shown that even American sources increasingly use LQ for precision, and even the most conservative American style guide, Chicago, has finally admitted this. This all, too, has already been covered in detail. Not going to re-source it for you here. Of course WP weights precise sources over others when it comes to precision. All over the place we make the point that WP is not written in news style. And so on. We've been over all this before. So of course the nationalist split isn't real, for multiple reasons, and you've been shown this, by multiple editors many, many times. I'm skeptical that you really can't understand; this looks like an attempt to WP:WIN by a long game technique of just wearing and wearing away incessantly until you get what you want (your AN & ANI track record, see below, demonstrates this conclusively). That's the very definition of tendentiousness. I doubt your claim that no one's given examples of TQ causing errors or interpretation problems in article, but I'm not going to read through 18 miles of old debates to prove you wrong. This page doesn't exist for "sport debate", and I don't need to. Whether anyone has give you examples you'll accept is irrelevant. Our own examples in MOS already illustrate how it happens, and external reliable sources writing about quotation marks style also illustrate it clearly. If you really want, I'll be happy to save some examples from actual WP article for you next time I correct some of them, which is fairly often. But they really don't determine anything, and I won't go out of my way to do it, because you obviously won't be swayed no matter what. I don't need to find an actual, live-in-an-article example of something like "The Empire State Building is very tall" for us to have rules against that. The point of MOS rules is to prevent crap from happening. You can't try to invalidate a rule because it's been working and you can't find that particular bad crap happening right now!
"I got called up on AN/I"... Yeah, yeah, you've mentioned this at least three times on this page alone lately. It is irritating to get pilloried at a notice board; I understand. That should not be an entrenchment motivation. I do not believe your spin that it's just because you used TQ in some article. Let's go look. Here it is: Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive544#Darkfrog24: Tendentious contravention of MoS. No action was taken against you. So what's the issue? Anyone can make a complaint at ANI about anyone for any reason, stupid as some of those reasons may be (and WP:BOOMERANG helps curtail that). But the reasons weren't stupid. You were changing things to TQ. MOS was cited. You tried to change MOS to get your preference. That wasn't accepted, so you just went back to changing articles to TQ again because you felt like it, even knowing this wouldn't fly. You then acted surprised that you were at ANI. It concluded with "Resolved: Darkfrog24 said he'll stop." Have you? This relates also to Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive210#User:Darkfrog24 reported by User:Amadscientist (Result: Protected), which evidences the same pattern of not getting what you want because of a rule, trying to unilaterally get rid of the rule, not succeeding at that, and then going back to editwarring to get your way. The four Oathkeeper-related AN / ANI actions against you (some resulting in blocks) involve a similar pattern of recalcitrance, though don't seem to be style-related. This is clearly an editorial behavior issue, not a consensus problem, nor bad-rule problem. And you did not get ANI'd "solely for using American punctuation", but for imposing it on content that already existed with LQ. No one will ANI you if you go add new content and don't follow some MOS nit-pick. You're just not allowed to make content worse from a WP perspective by un-MOS-ing it. I'm running out of patience, just skipping to the end now: No one cares if you have 3 or 30 sources that say that TQ is called "American style". It only takes one fact to disprove that there's actually a national English variety split (like there is for color vs colour), and we have lots of facts disproving it. I think our text already says that it's sometimes called American style, so there is no point to press in that regard. PS: The "Town Centre in Texas" example is silly false equivalence. Things done for cutesy, old-time evocation are not comparable to editorial decisions publications make that govern their precision and reliability. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 02:39, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Re: "because of a lack of 100% compliance, we must completely disregard the national split on punctuation" – That's not even related to the argument for LQ, which is precision. The observation that plenty of (precision-focused) American publications use LQ, and plenty of (fiction and news style) British publications use TQ is simply a refutation of the claim that one "is American" and the other "is British". A refutation by party A of party B's argument against X is not necessarily party A's argument for X. And please note that it's been shown before that the LQ-like style of some British sources isn't always LQ, but just similar. British press sources have actually criticized WP's article on quotation marks for conflating the two! That's reliable sourcing that LQ isn't "British style". There are multiple, severable refutations – more than one thing debunks your nationalist premise; see the collapsebox above, and previous discussions. I'm not going to be drawn into another time-wasting regurgitation of all those details. Yes, it has been shown that even American sources increasingly use LQ for precision, and even the most conservative American style guide, Chicago, has finally admitted this. This all, too, has already been covered in detail. Not going to re-source it for you here. Of course WP weights precise sources over others when it comes to precision. All over the place we make the point that WP is not written in news style. And so on. We've been over all this before. So of course the nationalist split isn't real, for multiple reasons, and you've been shown this, by multiple editors many, many times. I'm skeptical that you really can't understand; this looks like an attempt to WP:WIN by a long game technique of just wearing and wearing away incessantly until you get what you want (your AN & ANI track record, see below, demonstrates this conclusively). That's the very definition of tendentiousness. I doubt your claim that no one's given examples of TQ causing errors or interpretation problems in article, but I'm not going to read through 18 miles of old debates to prove you wrong. This page doesn't exist for "sport debate", and I don't need to. Whether anyone has give you examples you'll accept is irrelevant. Our own examples in MOS already illustrate how it happens, and external reliable sources writing about quotation marks style also illustrate it clearly. If you really want, I'll be happy to save some examples from actual WP article for you next time I correct some of them, which is fairly often. But they really don't determine anything, and I won't go out of my way to do it, because you obviously won't be swayed no matter what. I don't need to find an actual, live-in-an-article example of something like "The Empire State Building is very tall" for us to have rules against that. The point of MOS rules is to prevent crap from happening. You can't try to invalidate a rule because it's been working and you can't find that particular bad crap happening right now!
- This all indicates clearly that continued fist-shaking debate about this is a pointless waste of time. Some minority of editors refuse for personal reasons to comply, and the rest of Misplaced Pages and the world couldn't care less. Feel free to IAR, and we'll just clean it up later. There is no impediment of any kind to your or anyone else's editing by MOS having line-items that a few people don't agree with. Every single point in MOS has people who don't agree with it, and who ignore it (there are plenty of MOS "rules" I don't bother with myself). This is absolutely inescapable because of what MOS is, a compromise between divergent rules that no one agrees about off-WP. We pick one or the other because one serves our readers' interests better, and having a "rule" results in fewer stupid style editwars. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 22:43, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Seeking relevant section
Hi, is there a section anywhere in the MoS pages that deals with the disambiguation of people with the same name in article titles, e.g. the parts in brackets in "Joe Bloggs (actor)" and "Joes bloggs (politician)"? I can't seem to find it, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. 109.157.11.203 (talk) 14:06, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- I think what you're looking for is linked from WP:MOSDAB, but it's actually Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Naming the disambiguation page. —C.Fred (talk) 14:09, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- For naming an actual article about a person, take a look at Misplaced Pages:Article titles#Disambiguation, and also at Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Naming the specific topic articles. — Mudwater 14:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- Guidance specific to articles about people is at WP:NCPDAB. older ≠ wiser 16:04, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for the links. I have noticed that this disambiguation is not always done in a consistent way. Typical example: Sam Smith (actor), Sam Smith (painter), Sam Smith (journalist), Sam Smith (footballer, born 1904), Sam Smith (basketball, born 1944), Samantha Smith (tennis). Note that "basketball" and "tennis" are inconsistent with the others and (in my view) illogical. The relevant advice in the MoS is "The disambiguator is usually a noun indicating what the person is noted for being in his or her own right." Following this advice, and (in my view) logic, the disambiguators should be "basketball player" and "tennis player". I believe this issue has been discussed before, quite a while ago, and I think I may have participated in the discussion. I can't remember the outcome now, though it seems it did not result in any change being mandated. What is the current view about this? 109.157.11.203 (talk) 17:24, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- While consistency is good... it isn't always possible (and in some cases trying to be consistent results in a silly title that simply does not make sense).
- As for "(basketball)" vs "(basketball player)"... I don't think the word "player" is needed in most cases. Most of the time, it is enough to distinguish the Sam Smith who is (in some way) associated with the sport of basketball from the other Sam Smiths (who are associated with other things). There is no need for the article title to explain that he is a "player" if he is the only Sam Smith associated with Basketball. That, of course, changes if there are other Sam Smiths who are also associated with basketball (especially if those others are associated with the sport in other ways, such as being a coach or a referee). In that case we might need to include the word "player"... because just saying "Baskeball" isn't enough. Blueboar (talk) 18:29, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- Could you give an example where consistency results in "a silly title that simply does not make sense"? 109.157.11.203 (talk) 20:58, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps the silliest article title debate I can think of revolves around two ice hockey players named "Steve Smith". As one might expect, there are plenty of "Steve Smiths" in the world. Unfortunately for Misplaced Pages, our hockey Steve Smiths shared a lot in common. Seriously, a lot:
- Their names: Both were known as "Steve Smith"
- Their profession: Both professional ice hockey players
- Their role on the ice: They were both defenceman
- Their nationality: Both held Canadian citizenship
- Their year of birth: 1963
- They even shared their month of birth: Both were born in April of 1963
- Literally, the only acceptable difference we could find was that one was born in Canada, and the other born in Scotland. Thus, we have the rather long, but still technically accurate, article titles Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Scotland) and Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Canada). Canuck 10:43, June 1, 2015 (UTC)
- To me, this does not seem to be an example of consistency resulting in "a silly title that simply does not make sense". Actually, it is not even consistent in the sense relevant to my point, since it says "ice hockey" not "ice hockey player". 109.151.63.170 (talk) 11:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- In terms of the "ice hockey player" piece, the rationale behind omitting "player" that I most support is the fact that it is unnecessary. We want the DAB to be as simple as possible while conveying proper context to identify which topics sharing a name we are referring to. In this case, simply noting the sport is sufficient. Likewise, we don't dab Calgary Stampeders (ice hockey) as "Calgary Stampeders (ice hockey team)". The extra word is unnecessary. So in that respect, I would submit that adding unnecessary "player" or "team" to the dab would be an example of consistency resulting in a silly title (though it would still make sense). And if we changed, we could then get into the question of why soccer uses "(footballer)" instead of "(football player)" - or more accurately, "(association football player)". The current dabs are all inconsistent in format, but consistent in function: they add context with the shortest reasonable title available. Resolute 19:01, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- You really think that Steve Smith (ice hockey player, born in Scotland), for example, is a "silly title" because it includes the word "player"?? I don't. By the way, "(footballer)" is consistent. It means "football player". Inconsistent would be "(football)". 109.151.63.170 (talk) 20:38, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Indeed. The fact that WP:HOCKEY insists it has "consensus" to not use "player" is just another example of a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS problem. Titles like that don't make sense, to plenty of other editors, or the issue would not have been coming up for years and years. Virtually all of our biographical articles are disambiguated, where necessary to disambiguate, with descriptors of the person not the field in which they're most notable. It's "Jane Garcia (biologist)", not "Jane Garcia (biology)". Right off hand, the handful of WP:FAITACCOMPLI divergences from this that affect a whole category of articles that I can think of are all in sports. The sport wikiprojects in particular are more prone to local consensus issues than average (in multiple ways; e.g., they're also among the most frequent campaigners against MOS:ICONS; "their" articles are often among the most riddled with WP:PEACOCK problems; etc, etc.), so this doesn't surprise me. NB: I say that as the co-founder of a sport wikiproject that has it's own style and naming guidelines, by the way – written to comply with and topically apply policies and guidelines, not skirt them.
Anyway, in this particular extremely unusual case, the obvious answer is to disambiguate by including their middle names instead of some weird criterion like "born in Scotland", a much more obscure fact than the full name of the subject. WP:COMMONNAME, like all WP:POLICY that isn't dictated to us by WP:OFFICE, can be bent by WP:IAR when WP:COMMONSENSE requires it. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 00:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
- (OP) I think the "Steve Smith" example is a complete red herring, and nothing to do with point I was trying to raise. 109.145.19.68 (talk) 01:53, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
- Indeed. The fact that WP:HOCKEY insists it has "consensus" to not use "player" is just another example of a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS problem. Titles like that don't make sense, to plenty of other editors, or the issue would not have been coming up for years and years. Virtually all of our biographical articles are disambiguated, where necessary to disambiguate, with descriptors of the person not the field in which they're most notable. It's "Jane Garcia (biologist)", not "Jane Garcia (biology)". Right off hand, the handful of WP:FAITACCOMPLI divergences from this that affect a whole category of articles that I can think of are all in sports. The sport wikiprojects in particular are more prone to local consensus issues than average (in multiple ways; e.g., they're also among the most frequent campaigners against MOS:ICONS; "their" articles are often among the most riddled with WP:PEACOCK problems; etc, etc.), so this doesn't surprise me. NB: I say that as the co-founder of a sport wikiproject that has it's own style and naming guidelines, by the way – written to comply with and topically apply policies and guidelines, not skirt them.
- You really think that Steve Smith (ice hockey player, born in Scotland), for example, is a "silly title" because it includes the word "player"?? I don't. By the way, "(footballer)" is consistent. It means "football player". Inconsistent would be "(football)". 109.151.63.170 (talk) 20:38, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- In terms of the "ice hockey player" piece, the rationale behind omitting "player" that I most support is the fact that it is unnecessary. We want the DAB to be as simple as possible while conveying proper context to identify which topics sharing a name we are referring to. In this case, simply noting the sport is sufficient. Likewise, we don't dab Calgary Stampeders (ice hockey) as "Calgary Stampeders (ice hockey team)". The extra word is unnecessary. So in that respect, I would submit that adding unnecessary "player" or "team" to the dab would be an example of consistency resulting in a silly title (though it would still make sense). And if we changed, we could then get into the question of why soccer uses "(footballer)" instead of "(football player)" - or more accurately, "(association football player)". The current dabs are all inconsistent in format, but consistent in function: they add context with the shortest reasonable title available. Resolute 19:01, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- To me, this does not seem to be an example of consistency resulting in "a silly title that simply does not make sense". Actually, it is not even consistent in the sense relevant to my point, since it says "ice hockey" not "ice hockey player". 109.151.63.170 (talk) 11:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps the silliest article title debate I can think of revolves around two ice hockey players named "Steve Smith". As one might expect, there are plenty of "Steve Smiths" in the world. Unfortunately for Misplaced Pages, our hockey Steve Smiths shared a lot in common. Seriously, a lot:
- Could you give an example where consistency results in "a silly title that simply does not make sense"? 109.157.11.203 (talk) 20:58, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
MOS:IDENTITY and personal names
Why does Misplaced Pages break it's otherwise good rules about the most common and recognizable name when referring to people who wish to change their genders? Bruce Jenner is still known more commonly as "Bruce" than "Caitlyn". Everyone who recognizes the name "Caitlyn Jenner" will also recognize the name "Bruce Jenner". Many people who recognize the name "Bruce Jenner" will have no clue who "Caitlyn Jenner" is. I understand that people want to try to be nice to transexuals, but creating a useful encyclopedia is more important. Any website that has an article called Nigger cannot say that is is trying to avoid being offensive to minority groups. Bobby Martnen (talk) 23:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) – Apparently two of us were preparing comments on the same issue at the same time. My comment below suggests a potential specific action, although it seems you might advocate a different outcome. I have merged these two sections for discussion. (A couple of hours ago, I was arguing for Caitlyn Jenner to be reverted to Bruce Jenner, but right now I'm just trying to figure out whether the current MOS:IDENTITY phrasing is intended to apply to that question or not.) —BarrelProof (talk) 23:30, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
There is an issue that has come up in discussion at Talk:Caitlyn Jenner, regarding the application of MOS:IDENTITY in regard to personal names. Currently, MOS:IDENTITY says that there is an exception for gender identity in regard to "pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example 'man/woman', 'waiter/waitress', 'chairman/chairwoman')". The list of examples that is given does not include an example for the personal name of a person – e.g., "Charles" versus "Charlotte" (or, in that instance, "Bruce" versus "Caitlyn"). Should we add a personal name to the list of examples, to help clarify that this issue is intended to fall within the scope of "gendered nouns"? Is this phrase actually intended to cover personal names? —BarrelProof (talk) 23:25, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
- I still think the article on Mr. Jenner should be called "Bruce Jenner" until the other name becomes the most common one. This is an encyclopedia, not a transexual activist site. Most people know him as "Bruce Jenner". Bobby Martnen (talk) 02:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- "Mr. Jenner" Can we please not with this kind of thing? I legitimately don't know why I decided "Oh, I'll read wiki pages on trans issues after someone major came out again", because seriously, this seems to happen every time. Cam94509 (talk) 18:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- If you strike the POV-pushing "Mr." part, the comment is clearly valid, though. WP:COMMONNAME policy exists for a reason, as does the WP:NOT#SOAPBOX policy.
- "Mr. Jenner" Can we please not with this kind of thing? I legitimately don't know why I decided "Oh, I'll read wiki pages on trans issues after someone major came out again", because seriously, this seems to happen every time. Cam94509 (talk) 18:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- If anyone seriously wishes to challenge or change Misplaced Pages's established position on this, I would strongly suggest starting by studying the history of our articles on Chelsea Manning and Wendy Carlos and the extensive discussions about the naming of each on multiple noticeboards. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:26, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. Also check out Chaz Bono. You're allowed to challenge the rule if you want to, but check out the talk pages and see if your concerns have already been addressed to your satisfaction. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed as well, and some of these decisions definitely need to be revisited (Chaz Bono makes sense, since that's the WP:COMMONNAME of that subject. Meanwhile Chelsea Manning is a clear violation of that policy, pushed through by intensive WP:ADVOCACY.) But these titles aren't really a MOS matter, and there's no entirely consistent approach to them, even when excessive activism isn't taking place with regard to a particular case. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 23:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. Also check out Chaz Bono. You're allowed to challenge the rule if you want to, but check out the talk pages and see if your concerns have already been addressed to your satisfaction. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- This matter (well, to what extent does MOS:IDENTITY apply) is being discussed at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#MOS:IDENTITY clarification. A WP:Permalink for the discussion is here. Flyer22 (talk) 07:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- That discussion seems to be about a different topic. It seems to be about whether to apply MOS:IDENTITY to secondary articles that have no particular reason to discuss a person's gender and only cover the period of a person's life during which they were publicly identified by a different gender than their current self-identified gender. The question of whether or not MOS:IDENTITY is intended to provide an exception to WP:COMMONNAME in regard to personal names does not seem to have been discussed there. If that is a settled matter (and WP:Gender identity seems to say that it is, although that's only an essay), then I suggest that we add an example of this in MOS:IDENTITY. —BarrelProof (talk) 14:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- However, retroactive use of a new personal name would clearly seem anachronistic in some instances. In an article about the 1976 Olympic sports competition, it would probably make more sense to say that it was won by "Bruce Jenner" or "Bruce (now known as Caitlyn) Jenner" than to say it was won by "Caitlyn Jenner" or "Caitlyn (then known as Bruce) Jenner". So perhaps we should be cautious about that. In that regard, I suppose the Village Pump discussion is overlapping. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- Why? We say that Michelle Obama was born January 17, 1964 and was raised on the South Side of Chicago even though her name at the time was Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. We say that Switched-On Bach is a musical album by Wendy Carlos (originally released under the name of Walter Carlos) We can and should say the olympic events in question were won by Caitlyn Jenner (competing under the name of Bruce Jenner). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Macon (talk • contribs) 18:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- I think retroactive use of a new personal name can be strange ieloquentlyn some cases, although it may be fine with some others. Michelle Obama wasn't very notable under her prior name AFAIK and it's so well-understood that this wasn't her original name that it's not necessarily worth mentioning, but articles about the early films starring Shirley Temple Black don't mention that name at all, even though I believe she would have been insulted to be referred to as Shirley Temple while serving as the Chief of Protocol of the United States – articles about her later life use her later name, but articles about her early life do not. I think it would be pretty strange to have an article about Robert Kardashian that says he married Kris Jenner, as she wasn't known by that name until after she was no longer his spouse – so the article about him describes her as "Kris Kardashian (née Houghton, later Jenner)". Switched-On Bach was released under both names, and Carlos was undergoing transition even before it was released, so it's not really on-topic here. Articles about the hit songs and albums by Cat Stevens (at least the ones I looked at) don't mention Yusuf Islam at all, and he's been primarily using that name for more than 36 years. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:17, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Why? We say that Michelle Obama was born January 17, 1964 and was raised on the South Side of Chicago even though her name at the time was Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. We say that Switched-On Bach is a musical album by Wendy Carlos (originally released under the name of Walter Carlos) We can and should say the olympic events in question were won by Caitlyn Jenner (competing under the name of Bruce Jenner). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guy Macon (talk • contribs) 18:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- However, retroactive use of a new personal name would clearly seem anachronistic in some instances. In an article about the 1976 Olympic sports competition, it would probably make more sense to say that it was won by "Bruce Jenner" or "Bruce (now known as Caitlyn) Jenner" than to say it was won by "Caitlyn Jenner" or "Caitlyn (then known as Bruce) Jenner". So perhaps we should be cautious about that. In that regard, I suppose the Village Pump discussion is overlapping. —BarrelProof (talk) 15:03, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- That discussion seems to be about a different topic. It seems to be about whether to apply MOS:IDENTITY to secondary articles that have no particular reason to discuss a person's gender and only cover the period of a person's life during which they were publicly identified by a different gender than their current self-identified gender. The question of whether or not MOS:IDENTITY is intended to provide an exception to WP:COMMONNAME in regard to personal names does not seem to have been discussed there. If that is a settled matter (and WP:Gender identity seems to say that it is, although that's only an essay), then I suggest that we add an example of this in MOS:IDENTITY. —BarrelProof (talk) 14:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
- This matter (well, to what extent does MOS:IDENTITY apply) is being discussed at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#MOS:IDENTITY clarification. A WP:Permalink for the discussion is here. Flyer22 (talk) 07:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree with BarrelProof. Common sense should be used in cases like Bruce/Chelsea Jenner. He competed under his birth name in the men's Olympics, so per the principle of least surprise, we should use that name there. That way, there is accord with sources. Presumably, a less politically charged example would be someone competing under a maiden name. I leave it to the sports folks to give a list of examples. Sławomir Biały (talk) 17:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- I think that's quite good, and it's an ideal that we may hope for, but it assumes a world that does not exist. Specifically, no one has been harrassed, attacked, physically harmed, or killed for changing their name from a maiden name to a married name. On the other hand, people who are transgendered, and who have other non-standard gender and sexuality identities, are so treated on a daily basis in the world today. Were it not so, I would be much happier. The refusal to use someone's chosen name for a transgendered person is used all the time as a deliberate act of degradation against that person, and used specifically to deny the legitimacy of their identity. No one refuses to use a heterosexual cisgendered person's married name because they don't recognize the legitimacy of their marriage, so it's a non-issue. Yes, we wan't to live in a world where it isn't an issue, and we can use a name like "Bruce Jenner" and do so in a way that doesn't carry any political or social baggage. We don't live in that world right now. People are using the name "Bruce Jenner" as an overt attack on Caitlyn to deny the legitimacy of her experience. Because of that, Misplaced Pages must be cognizant of the effect of using that name, especially since our intent, while it may be innocent and pure, cannot be assessed merely from the text of an article, and also cannot be assessed outside of the greater context where it IS being used as an attack. I'm not saying we never use such a name, or that we refuse to acknowledge it, but that we understand the greater social context, and use that context to inform our decision to NOT degrade the dignity of transgendered people, even if that would never be our intent. --Jayron32 17:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- But it's not Misplaced Pages's job to right great wrongs. Just to provide the facts. Fact was, Jenner was a man when she competed at the Olympics, and it makes sense to refer to them by the persona they outwardly identified under at that time. - Floydian ¢ 18:03, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
How can you say that, it is garbage, he was a man when he competed in the olympics, that was the correct pronoun at the time, you can't change history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.236.81 (talk) 11:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- It's not writing any wrongs. It is granting proper dignity to a living person. --Jayron32 00:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- Clearly, not everyone agrees, including people quite familiar with this debate's parameters both on- and off-Misplaced Pages, and sympathetic to the interests of TG individuals. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 00:05, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
- It's not writing any wrongs. It is granting proper dignity to a living person. --Jayron32 00:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- That's just it: It's not a fact that Jenner was a man during the Olympics. It is a belief.
- The issue of whether Jenner 1) was a man and is pretending to be a woman now, 2) was a man and became a woman, or 3) was always a woman whom we all mistakenly believed to be a man are all vibrant and dynamic points of view based on everything from hard facts to assumptions to misconceptions, but it is not for Misplaced Pages to determine which one is right. We must let our sources do that and then reflect what they say. That means waiting, probably decades, for scientific and social research projects to be completed. Does Jenner really have a woman's brain? If so, is that enough?
- When the jury is out on the facts, we must rely on other things. I think we should err on the side of using Jenner's preferred name and pronouns, if only because it is more polite, though Jayron also brings up some good reasons why this issue is not exactly the same as that faced by, say, Muhammed Ali. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:21, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- The larger issue is not the same, but the fact is, we cannot credibly call Misplaced Pages a serious encyclopedia if we are going to alter history to suit politicized feelings. We absolutely want to refer to Jenner as Caitlyn on her own article and on articles related to her person. But for the historical record in her sporting career, the lists should contain the name she was known by. If the IOC goes and retroactively changes the name, then we should definitely look at following suit, but otherwise, the WP:NPOV solution is to leave the historical record as is. Resolute 18:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. I've been saying this about this issue in particular for years now. And as a factual matter, yes we can say that for both WP and IOC purposes, Jenner was a man during the Olympics! FFS. I doubt even Jenner would argue to the contrary, or she'd be arguing for his medals to be rescinded. There's a huge difference between "felt like woman trapped in a man's body" or even "already self-identifying as a woman", and being externally verifiable to be one in the sense relevant in the context. WP is written in plain English, not the highly theoretical, prescriptive, and debated ontological reinterpretationism of some schools of thought in gender studies. Pushing that lingo, and that view of what English-language words "really mean", is not only a WP:NPOV problem, it's patent original research when applied to cases like this. It's a novel analytic/evaluative/interpretive/synthetic claim based on a personal, subjective, WP-editorial view of primary sources, like Jenner's own statements in particular, and gender studies journal papers more generally. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 23:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- The larger issue is not the same, but the fact is, we cannot credibly call Misplaced Pages a serious encyclopedia if we are going to alter history to suit politicized feelings. We absolutely want to refer to Jenner as Caitlyn on her own article and on articles related to her person. But for the historical record in her sporting career, the lists should contain the name she was known by. If the IOC goes and retroactively changes the name, then we should definitely look at following suit, but otherwise, the WP:NPOV solution is to leave the historical record as is. Resolute 18:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- It's really much simpler than all of this. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia. If we have lists of individuals that competed in sporting events, we should include the names as they are listed in the billings of those events. This makes an article on the 1976 Summer Olympics more useful as a reference resource, because it adheres to other other reference sources concerning that event. I disagree very strongly with the attempt to politicize this. Jenner was a public figure who went by the name of "Bruce" during this event. We don't need to inject our own opinions on whether this is proper, or what the social implications of it are, etc. That is really not appropriate under NPOV. We just report what sources about the event report.
- Also, we don't really need to speculate about whether Jenner was a man at the time of the olympics, or what defines a man, etc. I would point out that we are here talking about someone who did compete in the men's olympics, but I fear that such a comment would rapidly degenerate into a pointless discussion about whether such biological designations of masculinity are appropriate, or are outmoded social constructs that should be abolished. That really isn't the point. Sławomir Biały (talk) 18:45, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Those concerns are addressed by saying Caitlyn (then Bruce) Jenner or Bruce (later Caitlyn) Jenner. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, I'd be fine with either of those options. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:32, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- I would disagree with either. WP:POLA would apply strongly here. Resolute 21:54, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- As a failed proposal, WP:POLA doesn't apply anywhere. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Indeed. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 23:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- Either of DarkFrog's options are equally acceptable. As a matter of standardization, we should probably go with one or the other as standard (since we need some standard), but those elegant solutions are neither factually incorrect nor problematic. --Jayron32 00:16, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed with both Sławomir Biały's "It's really much simpler than all of this" explication, and Darkfrog24's obvious wording suggestions. It occurs to me that "When a style or similar debate becomes intractable, see if a rewrite can make the issue moot" should be a general maxim here, perhaps even in the MOS lead. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 23:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- It is a failed proposal, but still relevant to this situation. That said, I have spoken my piece, and don't wish to follow the path of so many others by arguing a point incessantly. If consensus emerges to rewrite history, then so be it. Resolute 00:19, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- It does sometimes (seen where Bradley Manning redirects to?), but this doesn't mean it can't be readdressed later after tempers cool and WP:ACTIVISTs go make trouble somewhere else. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 23:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- As a failed proposal, WP:POLA doesn't apply anywhere. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- I would disagree with either. WP:POLA would apply strongly here. Resolute 21:54, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, I'd be fine with either of those options. Sławomir Biały (talk) 21:32, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Those concerns are addressed by saying Caitlyn (then Bruce) Jenner or Bruce (later Caitlyn) Jenner. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:27, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
- Darkfrog's suggestion of including both names is the simplest solution, and when someone was notable under another name it's also the best solution. (In cases where someone was not notable, Misplaced Pages has never hesitated to "rewrite history"; the article on Michelle Obama's school mentions her under that name, not the name she had at the time.) Others have argued that saying only "Caitlyn" would be obfuscating history. I point out that saying only "Bruce" is obfuscating history because, as Skyerise pointed out in the WP:VPP thread about this (quod vide), "a name does not win a Gold Medal in the Olympics, a person does" and "that person has the ethical right to be credited for their past accomplishments". As Skyerise puts it, imagine if "every time someone moves, they are no longer allowed to be credited for things done in their old town. You move to Boston and play ball in college, but you graduate and move to New York to pursue a career. All your college football credits have to be deleted from every article they occur in, they cannot be credited to you. You found a company which goes big, you sell it and move to LA. Gotta delete all those references to you from the company and other articles." -sche (talk) 21:53, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- I've stated my opinions on the Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#MOS:IDENTITY clarification discussion, but apparently this also needs to be said here. Specifically, the problem with this guideline that is causing problems is (even when usage by reliable sources indicates otherwise. This goes against a key WP:POLICY; WP:SOURCE by definition and in the very public case of Jenner, but in many others where notoriety is achieved before the change in identity, it actually leads to confusion. It makes wikipedia's reporting of the facts inaccurate, hurting the entire wikipedia project's reputation. We have reasonable compromises available but because this particular phrasing was adopted by advocates for transgender acceptance, they have overridden a key policy and are using this specific clause to make their WP:POINT. We should never have adopted a phrase that allows users to violate the key policy of WP:SOURCE and this clause must be changed. Trackinfo (talk) 22:42, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
- The thing that is never mentioned in all the debates about Jenner is that a woman can be named "Bruce". Blueboar (talk) 23:45, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
- This is not as simple as a name. Jenner came to notoriety as a male athlete, played male roles on TV and in a couple of movies, married three now notable women (they have WP:BLPs too), fathered 6 children all in full public coverage by the media--a tabloid celebrity. For wikipedia to suddenly put female pronouns and use Caitlyn across the board goes against what the public has learned about Jenner for almost 45 years. She is Caitlyn in 2015. Because of her transition in 2015, we seriously have people trying to claim female world records from athletic performances in 1976 in wikipedia's voice because of this policy. I'm arguing these points elsewhere. Sure it goes against what the authority on world records says, but with this line in the policy, wikipedia can go against all that crazy stuff like evidence. Trackinfo (talk) 05:47, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, but doesn't seem to apply here. The name change came along with the public gender switch. Same with C. Bono. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:08, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I have to concur with @Trackinfo:. So, what should it actually say? I would rewrite the whole section significantly, but I doubt that would be accepted, so let's hear some proposals for minor changes that resolve this conflict with WP:Verifiability policy (I needn't dwell on it, but there's also WP:NOT#SOAPBOX, WP:NPOV, and WP:NOR problems inherent in it, too). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:57, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Elsewhere I am trying to defend against the repercussions of this poorly written MOS guideline. As involved as I am, I'm probably not the person to rewrite the guideline. It involves the #1 most read article on wikipedia this week, which has 4 times the hits of #2. There are going to be repercussions. There are a lot of advocates pushing for their POV, conflating this with transgender acceptance. I'm all for acceptance in society, but I'm against the rewriting of history. That was a terrible precedence to allow. If we do attempt a rewrite, how will it survive the onslaught of POV pushing advocates? In this environment, how will we state the case without wild accusations of bigotry? How will sane minds prevail? Trackinfo (talk) 04:30, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- Here's the thing, Trackinfo, is using female pronouns for Jenner rewriting history or merely acknowledging that previous sources made an honest mistake? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- While I am arguing for a broader rule change (to conform with existing policy that was excepted out for this special section), Jenner's representation was not a mistake on the part of the contemporary media. Jenner entered a male only event in the Olympics (and the entire athletic career, including vs me, personally). Jenner entered into three marriages as the male in the relationship. WP:BLP did all three of these women acknowledge they were marrying a woman, and for two of them, that this woman was fathering their children. Is that a mistake on the part of the reporters? In the least, it was misrepresentation on the part of Jenner. Is Jenner a liar? As they would ask in court; Where you telling the truth then? Or are you telling the truth now? Just when are you telling the truth? Trackinfo (talk) 09:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, that gets to the heart of the cognitive dissonance. The heart of the policy matter, to me, is that its setting up TG people as a special class who have rights, as article subjects, that no one else may enjoy. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, even if the gander used to be a goose. Put another way, why is one particular mid-life realization, about gender identity, different from any other major one? I don't mean for the subject, I mean objectively for Misplaced Pages. This question actually has deeper ramifications, with regard to many public figure who went through a totally life altering change, e.g. Nelson Mandela disassociating his views from the arguably-terrorist group he was a member of in his youth, and becoming a pacifist reform leader. Whatever. Lots of examples come to mind, and I don't need to belabor the point. (It's also not an MOS discussion at that level, since broadened that way it doesn't involve gender-related language disputes, but NPOV and OR more generally.) PS: I don't think this can be fixed right now because of the pageviews issue. Jenner is too hot a topic, attracting too much off-WP and new-to-WP opinion that is uninformed about and unexperienced with WP editing culture. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- While I am arguing for a broader rule change (to conform with existing policy that was excepted out for this special section), Jenner's representation was not a mistake on the part of the contemporary media. Jenner entered a male only event in the Olympics (and the entire athletic career, including vs me, personally). Jenner entered into three marriages as the male in the relationship. WP:BLP did all three of these women acknowledge they were marrying a woman, and for two of them, that this woman was fathering their children. Is that a mistake on the part of the reporters? In the least, it was misrepresentation on the part of Jenner. Is Jenner a liar? As they would ask in court; Where you telling the truth then? Or are you telling the truth now? Just when are you telling the truth? Trackinfo (talk) 09:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Here's the thing, Trackinfo, is using female pronouns for Jenner rewriting history or merely acknowledging that previous sources made an honest mistake? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- Elsewhere I am trying to defend against the repercussions of this poorly written MOS guideline. As involved as I am, I'm probably not the person to rewrite the guideline. It involves the #1 most read article on wikipedia this week, which has 4 times the hits of #2. There are going to be repercussions. There are a lot of advocates pushing for their POV, conflating this with transgender acceptance. I'm all for acceptance in society, but I'm against the rewriting of history. That was a terrible precedence to allow. If we do attempt a rewrite, how will it survive the onslaught of POV pushing advocates? In this environment, how will we state the case without wild accusations of bigotry? How will sane minds prevail? Trackinfo (talk) 04:30, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- The thing that is never mentioned in all the debates about Jenner is that a woman can be named "Bruce". Blueboar (talk) 23:45, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
- I've stated my opinions on the Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#MOS:IDENTITY clarification discussion, but apparently this also needs to be said here. Specifically, the problem with this guideline that is causing problems is (even when usage by reliable sources indicates otherwise. This goes against a key WP:POLICY; WP:SOURCE by definition and in the very public case of Jenner, but in many others where notoriety is achieved before the change in identity, it actually leads to confusion. It makes wikipedia's reporting of the facts inaccurate, hurting the entire wikipedia project's reputation. We have reasonable compromises available but because this particular phrasing was adopted by advocates for transgender acceptance, they have overridden a key policy and are using this specific clause to make their WP:POINT. We should never have adopted a phrase that allows users to violate the key policy of WP:SOURCE and this clause must be changed. Trackinfo (talk) 22:42, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
Logical "and/or" strings
"A, or B, C, D, or E" is logically equivalent to "A, B, C, D, or E". "A, and B, and C, and D, and E" is logically equivalent to "A, B, C, D, and E". Is there something in MOS that prefers the latter? FloraWilde (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- Sometimes there are nested series. Please see User:Wavelength/About English/Nested series.
- We visited Acapulco and Guadalajara, and ate guacamole and gazpacho.
- —Wavelength (talk) 17:30, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- EDIT CONFLICT: I do not believe that either the main MoS or MOS:LISTS covers this issue specifically. However, most basic writing lessons do. Keeping in-sentence lists simple is part of good writing in general. It's one of those things that's so obvious that we don't have a rule about it. If there's a problem (like Wikieditors constantly changing the latter type of list to the former) then we could certainly add a line to the MoS about it, but I don't see why else we would need one. I guess this could be covered by WP:TONE, which says we're supposed to write in formal, standard English rather than any kind of field-specific jargon.
- Is there a problem in the article space or a specific issue that needs to be resolved? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:36, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Wavelength: I clicked through for the essay and got a redirect to your talk page archive. Intentional? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:39, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- The sub-subpage itself has no essay at this time, but only a link to an archived discussion about nested series.
- —Wavelength (talk) 17:49, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Wavelength: I clicked through for the essay and got a redirect to your talk page archive. Intentional? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:39, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It was the highly edit-warred alternative medicine article, where there are some editors who use the alternative thinking styles in their logic. (One of the sources is titled "Alternative medicine and common errors in reasoning".) I made the change to the simpler style, with a talkpage quote of Darkfrog24 above, "It's one of those things that's so obvious that we don't have a rule about it", and so far there are no objections. Thanks. FloraWilde (talk) 23:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm not huge on the serial comma after D, but that's about as neverending as the God debate. The MOS (basically) says omit them unless doing so causes ambiguity. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:46, June 8, 2015 (UTC)
And be consistent throughout the article. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:48, June 8, 2015 (UTC)
- Please refer to ordinary English grammar ... sorry to be an arse but ... P.S., InedibleHulk, may I humbly suggest you not link dates? Jimp 17:59, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Generally I agree with the OP (who probably doesn't mean nested series, as Wavelength details), but there are cases where "A or B, C, or D" structure (to simplify the original example) makes more sense, to group closely related alternatives that variants of each other more than separate alternatives to the others in the series. E.g., "The Manx cat is known in the Manx language as kayt Manninagh or cayt Manninagh, kayt cuttagh or cayt cuttagh, or stubbin". There are often alternative ways to do this, e.g. with parentheses (round brackets). In this particular case, a compressed version of the nomenclature paragraph at Manx cat, a better approach is to instead drop the partially redundant cayt examples, shortening the list, and add a note that kayt is sometimes spelling cayt. But the original longer list isn't "wrong", it's just not ideal. And it contrasts sharply with, e.g., "The tribe subsists mainly on fruits and nuts, legume crops, pigs and sheep, rice, barley, and squash and beef", which of course is terrible.
PS: Any "A or B, C, or D" structure should definitely use the serial/Oxford comma, even if you would not use one in an "A or B, C or D" case. Because we have no idea what someone will insert in mid-sentence later (hopefully with a one-detail citation, so they don't falsify any existing citation for the rest of the list), I lean more and more toward recommending to always use the serial comma, though I don't use it in my off-WP writing (or even in talk pages here) unless it's necessary in a particular case to avoid ambiguity or other confusion. It's taken me about two weeks to rather painlessly shift my in-article comma style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:04, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
MOS: articles and talk pages
Wrong venue. Please move to Misplaced Pages talk:Biographies of living persons
Hello, sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere. Is "articles" meant to be interpreted broadly to include talk pages? In other words, does the MOS apply to talk pages? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 17:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
No, "articles" excludes talk pages. The MoS does not apply to talk pages. —Quondum 17:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- What Q said. There are separate rules for talk pages at WP:TALK, but that's conduct, not style. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:41, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yep. I'm curious what case comes to mind. It's pretty routine for people to normalize things like sentence case in talk page headings, per WP:REFACTOR, just because we're used to sentence case headings here. People shouldn't revert-war about such trivia. It's definitely not normal to edit other people's posts to comply with MOS points, if that's what the issue is. See WP:TPOC. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 23:10, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Ok. This was posted on the Caitlyn Jenner page: This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to one of the subjects of this article and need help, please see this page. Is there a hierarchy of Wiki policies? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 22:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
- Oh, I see. I thought you were talking about someone else correcting the spelling in other people's talk page posts or something. Is there something libelous or unsourced on the Jenner page? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:33, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
- The text you've quoted is a notice about Misplaced Pages's "biographies of living people" policy (BLP), which is quite distinct from Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style (MOS). Material which violates BLP will be removed from anywhere (articles, talk pages, userpages, ...). -sche (talk) 03:48, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
- ... but it raises (unintentionally though it be) a point. Whilst we ought to strive to be respectful of the talk-page contributions of others there can be valid changes we might make, e.g. replacing an extinct (or even a modified) template, heading organisation, etc. Jimp 17:52, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, that's covered by WP:REFACTOR. I even fix dead templates, redirects that go to different articles than they used to, and such stuff in talk page archives, and I think in over 9 years I've only been reverted on that twice, and the reverts didn't stick when I explained what I was doing (some people just reflexively reverted changes to archive pages).
- ... but it raises (unintentionally though it be) a point. Whilst we ought to strive to be respectful of the talk-page contributions of others there can be valid changes we might make, e.g. replacing an extinct (or even a modified) template, heading organisation, etc. Jimp 17:52, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, this isn't a MOS matter. If the question is "can WP:BLP policy be used to remove questionable claims or slander from talk pages", the answer is yes, though this usually not done unless it's egregious. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 03:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Proper names/nouns
FYI – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere
Please see Talk:Proper noun#Merge?, which has been running for some time without closure, and which if closed right now would probably close without consensus. It needs a consensus one way or the other, as this proposed merge and rename has been raised (pro and con) many times, in multiple forums. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 21:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
- Is this discussion already closed or does the closure apply only to the survey portion? Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:19, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
- No idea, but I seem to have stepped in at the wrong time. Good thing I changed my vote to "no vote" before it collapsed (or whatever happened). InedibleHulk (talk) 14:41, June 8, 2015 (UTC)
- Someone rewrote the Proper name (philosophy) article such that it became essentially impossible to merge it. I closed (by retraction) the merge discussion, but the discussion about restructuring Proper noun (to which Proper name redirects), as a WP:SUMMARYSTYLE or WP:CONCEPTDAB article and moving it to Proper name is still open (but it is not a WP:RM discussion; that would be premature). The WP:FAITACCOMPLI mooting of the merge discussion has largely muddled the entire thing, though. I think what I and anyone else who wants to work on it should do is simply start improving the article. It will naturally fall into SUMMARY/DABCONCEPT format simply by the nature of the material. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 03:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- No idea, but I seem to have stepped in at the wrong time. Good thing I changed my vote to "no vote" before it collapsed (or whatever happened). InedibleHulk (talk) 14:41, June 8, 2015 (UTC)
Sub-national varieties of English?
Are "sub-national" varieties of English, such as Scottish English or Southern American English acceptable as national varieties of English for use in articles?--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 06:14, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Scottish English is (see Template:Scottish English), but note that Scotland is sort-of a nation (albeit not independent). I don't think Southern AE is. -sche (talk) 06:22, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps Yorkshire dialect would be a better UK example. AlexTiefling (talk) 06:56, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Or perhaps this?
This page is written in Cockney Rhyming Slang and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. - :) --Guy Macon (talk) 07:34, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- I'd go with no. Most of what we're calling sub-national varieties in the U.S. are either incorrect standard English or easily mistaken for such. We want to be intelligible to any reader of English and appear professional while doing it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- As a Scot, there is no "Scottish English". Standard formal written English in Scotland is no different from standard formal written English in southern Britain. The standard variety should be the determination, not various sub-dialects or spoken slangs. RGloucester — ☎ 15:17, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- There is no such thing as "standard" English. All that aside, how is written Southern American English different from other sub-dialects of American English? I don't think SAE even exists as a written dialect, does it? Would it not be exactly the same as American English? Dustin (talk) 15:56, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- There is a standard formal written British English, which is taught in schools. You are correct in saying that there is no standard written Southern American English. Formal written American English is the same, wherever one is in America. Likewise for British English, and other national varieties. RGloucester — ☎ 16:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps I simply misunderstood? When you say standard, you are referring not to standard for the language as a whole, but standard for the United States and standard for the United Kingdom? On a side-note, that template above is categorizing this talk page in Category:Misplaced Pages articles that use Cockney Rhyming Slang. Dustin (talk) 16:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- That's correct. RGloucester — ☎ 16:17, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Perhaps I simply misunderstood? When you say standard, you are referring not to standard for the language as a whole, but standard for the United States and standard for the United Kingdom? On a side-note, that template above is categorizing this talk page in Category:Misplaced Pages articles that use Cockney Rhyming Slang. Dustin (talk) 16:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- There is a standard formal written British English, which is taught in schools. You are correct in saying that there is no standard written Southern American English. Formal written American English is the same, wherever one is in America. Likewise for British English, and other national varieties. RGloucester — ☎ 16:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- I'd go with no. Most of what we're calling sub-national varieties in the U.S. are either incorrect standard English or easily mistaken for such. We want to be intelligible to any reader of English and appear professional while doing it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- I just went to look up how to suppress the categorization, then I noticed that someone had already fixed it for me. it turns out that all you have to do is to add "nocat=true". --Guy Macon (talk) 00:18, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- So the formal sign pictured in the Scottish English article using 'outwith' instead of 'outside' is... what, exactly? Even in its most formal register, Scottish English has some notable differences from (Southern) English English. AlexTiefling (talk) 17:20, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- "Outwith" is a colloquialism, and does not belong in formal written English. British formal standard written English is unified. RGloucester — ☎ 17:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- In a lot of cases, sub-national variants would use a lot of slang, which we seek to avoid. Also, god help us if we wrote articles in Newfoundland English. OR, more accurately, if we had spoken word versions of articles in it. /s Resolute 16:17, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- This is an encylopaedia. We write in formal written English, whether British, American, or Australia, &c. RGloucester — ☎ 16:18, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- As long as it's comprehensible to a general audience, why no? Am I getting the feeling that we're fixing an unbroken cart? Jimp 17:43, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- The reason I'm bringing this up is because some of the logic behind WP:USPLACE uses the idea that representing cities etc. as "city, state" is somehow intrinsic to American English. I'm trying to see if this same logic can be applied to dialects of American English, such as the fact that a speaker of New England English would refer to Hartford, Connecticut as just "Hartford".--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Spoken English is irrelevant. This is about formal written English. In formal written English, which does not imply a context (as Misplaced Pages does not), it would be unlikely that the city would be referred to as merely "Hartford" without giving further qualification, as other cities of the same name also exist. When we speak about English varieties, we do not mean whether a speaker says "Hartford" over "Hartford, Connecticut," in casual conversation because of proximity, but the differences in spelling and lexicon. RGloucester — ☎ 18:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Formal written English in New England for other people in New England (for example a Connecticut state law) would refer to the city as just "Hartford". The reason I use this example is because Hartford automatically redirects to "Hartford, Connecticut" because consensus has determined that city is the most common use of the word.--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 21:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Again, we don't assume a context. Just because an article is written in American English or British English does not mean that we write the article only for Americans or Britons. It is merely a matter of orthography and lexicon. RGloucester — ☎ 21:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- I largely agree with RG here, but I'd like to express it in a different way: The reason an article like that would say just "Hartford" is because it is written for New Englanders. Misplaced Pages's audience is much wider, so we must be more specific. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:27, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yep. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 03:25, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I largely agree with RG here, but I'd like to express it in a different way: The reason an article like that would say just "Hartford" is because it is written for New Englanders. Misplaced Pages's audience is much wider, so we must be more specific. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:27, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Again, we don't assume a context. Just because an article is written in American English or British English does not mean that we write the article only for Americans or Britons. It is merely a matter of orthography and lexicon. RGloucester — ☎ 21:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Formal written English in New England for other people in New England (for example a Connecticut state law) would refer to the city as just "Hartford". The reason I use this example is because Hartford automatically redirects to "Hartford, Connecticut" because consensus has determined that city is the most common use of the word.--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 21:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- Spoken English is irrelevant. This is about formal written English. In formal written English, which does not imply a context (as Misplaced Pages does not), it would be unlikely that the city would be referred to as merely "Hartford" without giving further qualification, as other cities of the same name also exist. When we speak about English varieties, we do not mean whether a speaker says "Hartford" over "Hartford, Connecticut," in casual conversation because of proximity, but the differences in spelling and lexicon. RGloucester — ☎ 18:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Dah language weh yuh proud a,
Weh yuh honour an respec –
Po Mas Charlie, yuh no know se
Dat it spring from dialec!
Kaldari (talk) 19:26, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
- 1) See comments in next thread. These huge talk page banners are divisive and self-defeating. We should be using the unobtrusive alternative templates, like
{{Use Canadian English}}, etc., not these fight-picking, in-yo'-face banners. 2) No, we don't need any for subnational varieties of English, and we already have too many for national varieties that are essentially patois/creoles and shouldn't be used in an international encyclopedia anyway. Agreed with RGloucester, there's no such thing as written Scottish English, at least not in a formal register; it's the same as the rest of written British English. This is probably true for WP purposes for the rest of Commonwealth English, aside from Canadian, which is an intergrade between British and American. We could probably reduce all of the "Use x English" templates to American, Canadian, Commonwealth, and Commonwealth (Oxford), redirecting all the rest, mostly to Commonwealth. Most of the time, we don't need to use any of these (see thread below) unless there have been editwars; where an article isn't seeing any issues other than date format "correction", the{{use dmy dates}}/{{use mdy dates}}templates are sufficient. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 03:34, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- FWIW, I agree that Misplaced Pages shouldn't be using sub-national dialects like Southern AE and Scottish. (The only distinctive feature of Scottish I've seen used in articles is "outwith", which is the sort of unnecessary, confusing dialectism which WP:COMMONALITY already advises us to avoid regardless of whether Scottish English "standards" are being used or not.) -sche (talk) 16:49, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I believe there has been an unwritten acceptance of the notion that standard native English varieties are the norm in WP articles, unless there's a compelling reason to depart from the choice of one of them. Let's put aside any sniff of racism and say simply that our readership is international, and we need to maintain internationally understood forms. Tony (talk) 04:35, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Proposal to deprecate Template:English variant notice
I propose that {{English variant notice}} (see example usage just above – it creates huge banners on article talk page) be formally deprecated. Then replace with the unobtrusive versions (e.g. {{Use British English}}; these go at the top of the article and do not display anything). Then take {{English variant notice}} to WP:Templates for discussion and delete it. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Support – This proposal would make things simpler and less combative. RGloucester — ☎ 17:25, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Support I could hardly agree more. They serve as an eyesore which does little other than arouse negative thoughts in editors which may result in arguments and combative behavior. I'm not going to say I can't flex in any way, but as it currently is, I think the benefits would outweigh the possible wetbacks with this proposal. Dustin (talk) 18:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Mixed opinion I think it helpful to have some sort of displayed notice at the top of an article that alerts readers to the fact that an article is using a particular National Variation ... but I also agree that such a notice should be unobtrusive and discrete. I am thinking of something more like a hat-note. The current banner is rather large and ugly. Blueboar (talk) 18:35, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Support Already listed on the article page with the above said template. I'm not really convinced that talk page notification is required or useful to conversation. I actually think the Use British English and Date Format templates should be placed at the bottom of the page, as most people well-trained enough to read through the template code will know the score, and to novice users who might benefit from it it's just more template waffle – a better approach would be for these templates to populate somewhere as an editnotice. I think {{EngvarB}} is worth deprecating as well, as superseded by those templates. SFB 19:28, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Varieties of English templates
When I'm mindless I do spelling correction. While doing that one has to figure out the endemic English to set/reset expectations. It occurred to me that, having figured that out, I could 'stamp' the article with the found variation. The only discussion regarding appropriateness I've found so far (I must suppose there've been others) was When to use talk page language templates from 2009, and which seemed to slide towards 'meh...'.
What is the operative (determined before now) stance on whether 'stamping' unstamped articles is
- okay
- worth it (i.e. avoids trouble later)
I'm not much invested in either yea or nay. Shenme (talk) 05:21, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
- There's already a whole family of un-obtrusive templates for this; they sit silently in the wikicode at the top of the page, and categorize the article into, e.g. Category:Use British English. Adding them programmatically seems like a lot of effort for little gain, and is likely to start disputes instead of prevent them. I wouldn't add one unless there's been editwarring over ENGVAR-relevant spelling/style, and a first-major-contributor (or talk page consensus) ENGVAR is undeniable, and there are no rational reasons to change the ENGVAR (e.g. there is one when BrEng is used to write about an intrinsically American topic, or whatever). I.e., if you're absolutely certain what the proper ENGVAR is, and there have been problems, then tag the page, e.g. with Template:Use British English or whatever template from that family is most useful. The talk page banner templates for this sort of thing are divisive, WP:OWNy, and should probably be WP:TFD'd. People who come to an article's talk page to discuss how to improve an article don't need a message box in their face about a dispute they probably WP:DGAF about, especially since it tends to beg the question, and inspire people to think about whether they agree with the ENGVAR chosen, leading to more debate instead of less. The idea in the thread above to add even more of these things for subnational dialects is worse than impractical. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 03:19, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I strongly agree with SM, here. I think we need to establish specific demarcations for these templates, and also to proscribe "sub-national varieties of English" templates. I'd say that they should only ever be used if there has been a particular and long-running dispute over the variety used at a given page. The likes of {{Use American English}} or {{Use British English}} are much more useful for merely "marking" the variety used in a given article. The talk page templates, on the other hand, are largely redundant and cause various problems. RGloucester — ☎ 01:29, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, the less intrusive the better. Tony (talk) 04:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I strongly agree with SM, here. I think we need to establish specific demarcations for these templates, and also to proscribe "sub-national varieties of English" templates. I'd say that they should only ever be used if there has been a particular and long-running dispute over the variety used at a given page. The likes of {{Use American English}} or {{Use British English}} are much more useful for merely "marking" the variety used in a given article. The talk page templates, on the other hand, are largely redundant and cause various problems. RGloucester — ☎ 01:29, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
- Ah, from SMcCandlish's remark I looked at a likely example, Tea, and indeed there is a {{Use British English|date=January 2014}} at the top of page. I think that is what I was seeing done by some editors, and somehow thought it was the talk page thing. Thank you for the pointer. A follow-on question, and related to RGloucester's comment, should that template be used on India-related articles, where the article is obviously using the carried over English? Shenme (talk) 05:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Cool, but we do actually have big talk page banners, that look just like the joke Cockney one above. I mean to TfD those, not the unobtrusive ones. Re: India – there's a separate Indian English one. I'm skeptical about it, since I don't think there's a real difference between Indian and British/Commonwealth English, in an Encyclopedic register. We're not supposed to write in colloquial dialect. So, I'm not sure I would want to pick and fight over whether the tea article should have the British English template. The article text itself probably wouldn't change, but tempers would. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 07:00, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- See template deprecation proposal, one thread above this. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:33, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Closing gameable loopholes
I tweaked the lead a bit to close two gaping loopholes that people try to WP:GAME all the time: 1) The MOS applies to encyclopedic content not just in articles, but also in public-facing templates, category pages, and portals. 1b) It doesn't apply to talk pages, project pages, and user pages, so people can stop squabbling over that idea. This should prevent a large number of minor disputes. They don't last long, but they're frequent enough to be a drain on productivity. 2) The main MOS page has precedence, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy, over not just its own subpages but any conflicting style advice given in other guidelines and in wikiproject advice pages. Not policies, of course, but we actually sculpt policies like WP:AT carefully so that the directly defer to MOS on style matters already. This latter loophole has been used, unsuccessfully but incredibly disruptively, to WP:POVFORK various guideline and project advice pages from MOS, and that really needs to stop.
These wording tweaks don't actually change anything at all, they simply state the scope and policy situation more clearly, to forestall more disruptive nonsense of both kinds.
Also cleaned up some wording and flow problems, by clarifying some lead clauses, removing redundant phrasing, and keeping related sentences together. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- You're missing the point. The MoS has no authority to extend its own authority. That's just very obviously unacceptable procedure. Any such extension needs to be discussed explicitly in a broader setting, where the MoS regulars are not so firmly in control. --Trovatore (talk) 05:08, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Already addressed that below, in #Precedence. MOS's "authority" isn't being changed or proposed to be changed in any way. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:14, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- You're missing the point. The MoS has no authority to extend its own authority. That's just very obviously unacceptable procedure. Any such extension needs to be discussed explicitly in a broader setting, where the MoS regulars are not so firmly in control. --Trovatore (talk) 05:08, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- By the way, Flyer22, you should have taken your own advice and discussed first. SMcCandlish made a bold edit which I reverted; it should be discussed before being re-implemented. --Trovatore (talk) 05:05, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I was going to state that considering that the top of the page states "Please ensure that any edits to this page reflect consensus.", I don't see why I needed to start a discussion instead of reverting you on this. But after seeing where you stated "SMcCandlish made a bold edit which I reverted," and looking in the edit history to look over things, I understand that you were reverting SMcCandlish's text. I initially thought that you were reverting a little bit of what SMcCandlish added and removing long-standing material. I reverted myself. Flyer22 (talk) 05:11, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you. --Trovatore (talk) 05:13, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I was going to state that considering that the top of the page states "Please ensure that any edits to this page reflect consensus.", I don't see why I needed to start a discussion instead of reverting you on this. But after seeing where you stated "SMcCandlish made a bold edit which I reverted," and looking in the edit history to look over things, I understand that you were reverting SMcCandlish's text. I initially thought that you were reverting a little bit of what SMcCandlish added and removing long-standing material. I reverted myself. Flyer22 (talk) 05:11, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Trovatore, considering that SMcCandlish rearranged material with this edit, some of the older material is lost with your revert/my revert. Flyer22 (talk) 05:16, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- That may well be so. He made several edits in a row; I assumed that they were in a linear progression. I didn't look for the possibility that he had removed stuff intending to put it back in in a later edit. --Trovatore (talk) 05:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I looked it over; the only "loss" is removal of the two words "within Misplaced Pages", which serve no purpose in that sentence. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 06:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- That may well be so. He made several edits in a row; I assumed that they were in a linear progression. I didn't look for the possibility that he had removed stuff intending to put it back in in a later edit. --Trovatore (talk) 05:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Trovatore, considering that SMcCandlish rearranged material with this edit, some of the older material is lost with your revert/my revert. Flyer22 (talk) 05:16, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Encyclopedia content in templates, etc.
This is the change in question.| The proposed change | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Rationale : Anti-WP:GAME fix. The MOS applies to encyclopedic content not just in articles, but also in public-facing templates, category pages, and portals. It doesn't apply to talk pages, project pages, and user pages, so people can stop squabbling over that idea. This should prevent a large number of minor disputes. They don't last long, but they're frequent enough to be a drain on productivity. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Trovatore: Why did you remove the clarification about MOS applying to encyclopedia content when it's outside of articles? That has nothing to do with your theory about the precedence issue (see subthread below). Do you really believe that someone can take content in an article and put it into a template in a bid to avoid MOS compliance? That MOS matters, from gender neutrality, to date formats, to how to properly render and attribute quotations, magically don't apply if you put the exact same content on a portal page or the intro text on an article category page? NB: I'm not objecting to a WP:BRD revert, I'm asking you to actually provide a rationale, part of the "D" process in BRD. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:25, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I didn't specifically insert or remove anything. I reverted to one of your revisions, without other changes. I looked through the list of revisions and looked for the first diff I thought was unacceptable, and reverted to the version (still your version) immediately before that. --Trovatore (talk) 19:32, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I didn't question what you did, Trovatore; we can all read page history. I'm asking you what rationale you can provide for reverting this change, in throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water style, when you reverted the other specific change, below, that you're discussing with what you feel is a policy-based rationale. (I also never said anything about you inserting anything. Not sure what you're talking about.) What I'm getting at is WP:DONTREVERT, '
Don't revert a large edit because ... you don't have time to rewrite the whole thing.
' — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 01:30, 17 June 2015 (UTC)- DONTREVERT is an essay I don't agree with. It's cleaner to revert the whole thing and then discuss.
- Frankly, I think even BRD has too much B for the MOS. It's fine for article space, or at least it's usually fine. But a lot of your edits to the MOS come across as attempts to dictate policy to clarify, of course I mean "policy" in the everyday language sense, not the WP-specific sense, and if no one happens to see it or has the energy to fight it, then you get away with it. I'm not saying that's how you see it, but it's how it can be perceived, and it could substantively come out that way whether it's your intent or not. I think you should do the D part first. --Trovatore (talk) 04:30, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Trovatore: "cleaner to revert the whole thing and then discuss" - The point is there is no "whole thing"; they're two different things, and you clobbered one to get at the other. And still have not provided a rationale for objecting to the part you collateral-damaged. Yes, "then discuss". I did, with -sche, but you don't seem to have any input on the issue (despite being asked for a rationale several times now) and neither does anyone else. BRD is therefore satisfied. This is not an RfC. We don't need to wait a month to get on with it. Re: "DONTREVERT is an essay I don't agree with" - Well, BRD is an essay I don't agree with (much). So? We all know by now how progress occurs here. People make changes, some of them stick immediately, some don't and get massaged into something that assuages concerns, and sticks later. Some is reasoned against and never sticks. What doesn't happen is people squat on a page and filibuster any movement at all, just because. What doesn't work is repetitive knee-jerk reverts that seem to indicate a "not getting it" problem. What isn't permissible is reverting everything some other editor does just because they're the one doing it. All of these things happen at MOS frequently, and they're all bollocks.
I do understand that some people are perceiving a policy change here, but I've already demonstrated repeatedly that it's not. It seems to me that no matter how many times it's explained to various people in the ... MOS skeptics? ... camp that a description of the policy status quo isn't a change in policy, they just don't understand the reasoning, or refuse to accept it (more likely), yet can't provide a refutation (or provide a weak one that is in turn easily refuted), so they go right back to their original assertion. At some point we just have to move on, whether everyone wants to ride the float or not. I'm all for working out concerns and problems, but they have to actually be articulable and articulated, cogently, or there's no way to address them. Even BRD makes it really clear that when a discussion is going nowhere, it's time to be bold again and see if new eyes and minds have arrived and some progress will be made.
PS: Essays are collections of reasoning, not rules. "I don't agree with " means "I don't agree with the reasoning in it". So, what reasoning exactly at DONTREVERT do you disagree with? Have you tried to improve the page? (It does badly need copyediting.) I'm hard pressed to find any reasoning in it that doesn't actually fit how consensus works on Misplaced Pages. If it were worded better would you agree with it? Surely you don't refuse to accept any opinions about reverts and consensus other than your own? PPS: I understood what you meant by policy, and I too am tired of people jumping on that word and flipping out. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- These essays "collections of reasoning"? No. They're statements of a position, for which reasons are (ideally) given. I can agree that the given reason supports the position, without agreeing that the position itself is the correct one.
- For example, DONTREVERT says that editors have a natural preference for the status quo, and that that may be influencing the revert. That is true. It fails to note that this preference is perfectly reasonable, in and of itself. If an edit is not an active improvement, it should be reverted. That promotes stability. There should be a small bias in favor of the status quo ante, that in cases of dispute, the new edit should have the burden of overcoming. The fact that Misplaced Pages "likes to encourage editing" is true, but that is not the same as saying that it encourages editing for its own sake. --Trovatore (talk) 15:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I agree with that principle, but didn't infer the essay intended a different conclusion from yours. Then again it does need some text-massaging. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 17:03, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Trovatore: "cleaner to revert the whole thing and then discuss" - The point is there is no "whole thing"; they're two different things, and you clobbered one to get at the other. And still have not provided a rationale for objecting to the part you collateral-damaged. Yes, "then discuss". I did, with -sche, but you don't seem to have any input on the issue (despite being asked for a rationale several times now) and neither does anyone else. BRD is therefore satisfied. This is not an RfC. We don't need to wait a month to get on with it. Re: "DONTREVERT is an essay I don't agree with" - Well, BRD is an essay I don't agree with (much). So? We all know by now how progress occurs here. People make changes, some of them stick immediately, some don't and get massaged into something that assuages concerns, and sticks later. Some is reasoned against and never sticks. What doesn't happen is people squat on a page and filibuster any movement at all, just because. What doesn't work is repetitive knee-jerk reverts that seem to indicate a "not getting it" problem. What isn't permissible is reverting everything some other editor does just because they're the one doing it. All of these things happen at MOS frequently, and they're all bollocks.
- I didn't question what you did, Trovatore; we can all read page history. I'm asking you what rationale you can provide for reverting this change, in throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bath-water style, when you reverted the other specific change, below, that you're discussing with what you feel is a policy-based rationale. (I also never said anything about you inserting anything. Not sure what you're talking about.) What I'm getting at is WP:DONTREVERT, '
- I would either change "strongly influences" to "may influence" or simply drop ", though it strongly influences them, as many of its style rationales apply generally." Other that that, this is a good anti-GAME fix. -sche (talk) 16:42, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- @-sche: Done! — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 02:44, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- PS: Someone reverted it in a spate of deletions. I let the revert stand for further discussion. I'll put it back after the storm blows over, and maybe in the interim someone will want to improve the wording in some way. (Or maybe someone will have a cogent rationale for not including it after all, in which case I won't put it back in of course, but look into another approach to the underlying WP:GAME problem.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Precedence
This is the change in question.| The proposed change (underlined here for clarity) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Rationale : Anti-WP:GAME fix. The main MOS page has precedence, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy, over not just its own subpages but any conflicting style advice given in other guidelines and in wikiproject advice pages. Not policies, of course, but we actually sculpt policies like WP:AT carefully so that they directly defer to MOS on style matters already. This latter loophole has been used, unsuccessfully but incredibly disruptively, to WP:POVFORK various guideline and project advice pages from MOS, and that really needs to stop. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I have to object in the strongest terms to any attempt by the MoS to claim "precedence", purely on the initiative of editors who work on the MoS. It makes no sense at all for the MoS's presumed "authority" to be based on the MoS itself. --Trovatore (talk) 05:05, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I concur with Trovatore. If the MoS is to gain precedence which it does not presently have, there needs to be a broad consensus of editors who want it. I do not believe that WP:CONLEVEL, which states
"The community is more likely to accept edits to policy if they are made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others,"
supports such a claim to precedence, on the contrary, it calls out for more input. At the very least, a widely published RfC. GregJackP Boomer! 07:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)- I already addressed this below, before you interpolated this comment. Repeat: This precedence already exists. It's at work every single day all across Misplaced Pages. Nothing has changed. The wording in my edit does not change anything about any policy, it's just factual introductory lede material. Please read the discussion and add comments that are responsive to it, don't just insert them into the top of the thread like this. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 09:03, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- WTF do you think you are, the talkpage police? I can insert a comment where I see fit, and offer support for another editor's position. Second, what makes you think that I did not read your incorrect interpretation below? Please do not assume that your opinion is automatically correct, or that others cannot insert properly indented comments into a threaded conversation. It's done every day on Misplaced Pages, see WP:THREAD. I'm surprised that you don't understand this. GregJackP Boomer! 16:47, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- How does making a request turn me into "police"? Don't police generally give orders that must be obeyed, on pain of arrest? I didn't say you couldn't insert your comment here, it's simply not useful if you're just adding something non-responsive to the discussion, just a "me too". Please see WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and WP:JUSTAVOTE. Your !vote on the matter below is already the same "me too". It seemed clear that you did not read the material below because you have not rebutted anything in it, just stated agreement with something I already refuted. If X says "chickens are as smart as dogs", and Y provides a strong argument for why that's not true, it's a reasonable assumption that if Z says "yeah, chickens are as smart as dogs" that either they missed the refutation (the kind assumption), or they can't understand or answer the refutation and are trying proof by assertion, which is an unkind assumption. I decline to apologize for going with the nicer assumption, even if you confirm the other one was correct. No one's opinion is automatically correct, but WP consensus process gives more weight to policy-, source- and common-sense-based rationales than to "me too" comments, and more weight to unrefuted rationales than to refuted ones. "I don't agree!" is not a refutation. Of course I understand WP:THREAD; I'm using it now. What I'm not doing is inserting a redundant statement of agreement or disagreement without a reason. See the difference? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 12:24, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- WTF do you think you are, the talkpage police? I can insert a comment where I see fit, and offer support for another editor's position. Second, what makes you think that I did not read your incorrect interpretation below? Please do not assume that your opinion is automatically correct, or that others cannot insert properly indented comments into a threaded conversation. It's done every day on Misplaced Pages, see WP:THREAD. I'm surprised that you don't understand this. GregJackP Boomer! 16:47, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I already addressed this below, before you interpolated this comment. Repeat: This precedence already exists. It's at work every single day all across Misplaced Pages. Nothing has changed. The wording in my edit does not change anything about any policy, it's just factual introductory lede material. Please read the discussion and add comments that are responsive to it, don't just insert them into the top of the thread like this. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 09:03, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I concur with Trovatore. If the MoS is to gain precedence which it does not presently have, there needs to be a broad consensus of editors who want it. I do not believe that WP:CONLEVEL, which states
- Re: '
It makes no sense at all for the MoS's presumed "authority" to be based on the MoS itself.
' It's not, of course; it's based on the clear, directly quoted wording of WP:CONLEVEL policy, and various ArbCom decisions (e.g. WP:ARBATC and WP:RFAR/DDL) that we probably don't need to quote in the guideline. (I had long thought that the policy pointer was sufficient to get the point across, without including legalistic ArbCom stuff.) MOS isn't "claiming" anything. This precedence already exists. WP:BIRDCON confirms this in no uncertain terms. Camps of editors cannot go off and make up their own rules in defiance of site-wide policies or guidelines. MOS is WP's style manual, and if someone doesn't agree with something it advises, the process for resolving that is to seek consensus to change it, not to run off an write your own topical anti-MOS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:14, 13 June 2015 (UTC)- This notion that the MoS represents "community consensus" is your spin, and that of some other regulars. But it isn't true. It represents the consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide. That is not the "broad consensus" you would like to claim. --Trovatore (talk) 05:21, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Trovatore: I guess we do need to quote directly from ArbCom then, at least on the talk page:
- WP:RFAR/DDL#Manual of Style: "
11.4) The Manual of Style is a set of guidelines governing appropriate editing on Misplaced Pages. The Manual is prescriptive in areas that enjoy broad consensus; where there is no such consensus, the available options are described, but no prescriptive guidance is provided. Editors are expected to follow the Manual of Style, although it is not policy and editors may deviate from it with good reason.
" - WP:RFAR/DDL#Changing a guideline such as Manual of Style: "
13.1) A guideline such as Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates can be changed by the Misplaced Pages community; see the policy on how policies are decided, which provides for consensus decision-making by those users who are familiar with the matter.
"
- WP:RFAR/DDL#Manual of Style: "
- @Trovatore: I guess we do need to quote directly from ArbCom then, at least on the talk page:
- This notion that the MoS represents "community consensus" is your spin, and that of some other regulars. But it isn't true. It represents the consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide. That is not the "broad consensus" you would like to claim. --Trovatore (talk) 05:21, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- So, yes, MOS is a broad consensus. I suspect you are coming from the angle that because you (like surely all of us) have some points in MOS that you disagree with that it "doesn't represent consensus". If so, you're misunderstanding WP:CONSENSUS, what MOS is and why, and what we have consensus on. Consensus does not require unanimity. MOS is not just some descriptive work listing all known options for how off-WP writers handle each style question. What we have broad, long-term, site-wide consensus on is that MOS is our in-house style guide, and we're agreeing to follow it so we have a consistent encyclopedia, and fewer lame style editwars distracting us from creating content. (Some particular situations may inspire us to WP:IAR, to work around a rule that doesn't quite work in that case; this is a situation ArbCom clearly allowed for, and which IAR policy allowed for long before ArbCom said anything about it. MOS is a guideline not a policy, so there is no "power" to "grab".) We also have broad consensus on the points on which MOS is prescriptive, or they wouldn't be prescriptive. Where we don't, options are provided. We even have explicit consensus that for some specific things we shouldn't be prescriptive.
There's no mystery here, and no "spin". It's simply logically impossible under what ArbCom has ruled, and under WP:CONLEVEL policy, for it not to be true that MOS has precedence, on style matters, over other pages (below the level of official policies), or MOS would not be Misplaced Pages's style manual. Is ArbCom lying? Of course not. MOS is WP's style manual. It says so (as a matter of scope definition, not "authority"); ArbCom says so; WP:POLICY processes, that led to its formation over years by innumerable Wikipedians, tell us this is so; and CONLEVEL policy tells us we can't go make up our own style guideline to contradict MOS; meanwhile ArbCom reaffirms that rules in guidelines and policies are changed by community consensus discussions, not by defiance. If you want to propose that MOS somehow isn't a real WP guideline, feel free to propose that it be marked
{{Historical}}. PS: the "users who are familiar with the matter
" ArbCom observation speaks directly to your "consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide" comment. You surely know by now that all consensus on WP is established by editors with enough interest in the matter to weigh in on it. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 05:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)- The point is that the editors who weigh in are those specifically interested in a centralized manual of style. Editors who don't care about that, because they don't see the need for such decisions to be made uniformly across WP, would be expected to be underrepresented here. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- And by the way, WP:CONLEVEL does not in fact mention the MoS. You talk about it over and over again as though it did, but it doesn't. --Trovatore (talk) 19:29, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- I do not feel that CONLEVEL has to mention the MoS specifically to be relevant here. It boils down to "local consensus does not trump wide consensus" and that matches the situation with the MoS and its subpages closely. There may also be circumstances in which the MoS is the local consensus. Either way, it's relevant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- But the point precisely at issue is whether the MoS is a "wide consensus". By the way, the subpages are not the issue here. SMcCandlish's edits cast a much wider net. --Trovatore (talk) 20:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- I do not feel that CONLEVEL has to mention the MoS specifically to be relevant here. It boils down to "local consensus does not trump wide consensus" and that matches the situation with the MoS and its subpages closely. There may also be circumstances in which the MoS is the local consensus. Either way, it's relevant. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- I'm surprised that someone who has been around as long as you does not understand that ArbCom decisions do not set binding precedent, see WP:AP#Policy and precedent. Second, your second ArbCom quote supports Trovatore's position, not yours, that more input is needed, by the "Misplaced Pages community" instead of a few editors at this talkpage. GregJackP Boomer! 17:08, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- GregJP is right that this would need broad consensus: Let's go get it!
- In general, I favor centralization. Don't forget what it's like to be a new editor, clicking through six and seven and ten pages of guideline after policy after essay and still not finding the rule that covers what you need. While I do believe that the MoS should serve in the capacity recommended here—as the place to go when you want to know Misplaced Pages's style rules—we should first check all the sub-pages in question to see make sure that the MoS contains the best, most correct and most practical rules. This is more than a change in text; this is a project.
- So what I'm saying is, if this were a recognition of something that was already happening (like the proposal to make this the official page for style questions; people already do that here ), then it'd be hands-down yes, change the text because it's just a clarification. Yes, we should change this text as recommended, but we should make sure it's true first, and that might involve making some changes. We need to bring more people on board. The regulars from the sub-pages would be the natural choice. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:35, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Not just the subpages. You need to get people from the WikiProjects, and people who just work on a specialized topic and don't bother much with projects or MoS or other "meta" stuff. Challenging to do, but that's what you'd need for a true broad consensus. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- Technically, the best place for this would be VP:Proposals or VP:Policy, but the last two attempts to deal with MoS matters there have shown that many of their participants have an unmerited disdain for the concept of having a MoS at all. So what we'd need to do is get people who care about MoS matters on board, all of the people who care about MoS matters on board, without giving the hecklers an opportunity to whine about how no one should bother. I see posting notices on relevant Wikiproject talk pages as an appropriate part of that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- Uh? Who says it's unmerited?
- The "hecklers" who think "no one should bother" need to be part of the discussion. If you don't include them, you don't have a valid consensus. --Trovatore (talk) 20:15, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- Darkfrog... have you considered the possibility that this "disdain" you detect at VP:Proposals and VP:Policy reflects an actual community wide consensus (which raises interesting WP:CONLEVEL questions regarding the MOS). Blueboar (talk) 21:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- Who says it? I did. And yes, the idea, "Oh punctuation is stupid and we shouldn't bother to have an MoS!" is not valid. The fact that Wikieditors who are not regulars here come to WT:MoS to ask for help writing articles with neat and correct English proves that there's demand for one and that doesn't even count the people who use the MoS without posting on this talk page about it. If people choose to ignore that proof, then yes, they're wrong.
- Blueboar, as to what the disdain means, I think it means that punctuation and writing mechanics bore most people, and maybe they didn't like having to learn about them in school. Nothing more. To them, it's as if we're talking about the best way to sweep the floors. They don't understand why some people just like the floor clean—but they'd get annoyed real fast if the bits of dirt started sticking to their feet.
- As for whether people who think we shouldn't bother should be deliberately included, imagine that we were talking about anything else. A TV show like Game of Thrones or an insect like the Japanese beetle. Anyone who showed up solely to say, "That's just a dumb TV show. It's not worth our time!" or "Bugs are GROSS! It's not worth our time!" should be disregarded. We include Game of Thrones and the Japanese beetle on Misplaced Pages because their treatment in secondary sources proves that they're important enough to include, and the hits that those pages receive from readers show that this was the right decision. Similarly, almost all similar endeavors of good quality, whether they're encyclopedias or newspapers, have their own MoS. There's precedent to use one, none to not use one.
- I get that some people have had bad experiences, whether it was with an English teacher or online or even right here at Misplaced Pages, but that only means that we need to be strict about what goes into the MoS and how it is enforced, not that we shouldn't provide the Wikieditors with everything they need to do their best—even if some people think that intra-article consistency and proper capitalization are dumb. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Darkfrog24: Re: '
we should first check all the sub-pages in question to see make sure that the MoS contains the best, most correct and most practical rules. This is more than a change in text; this is a project.
' All already been done. MOS is centralized because we already went through that process, after VP discussion, several years ago, and it was done as a project (WP:WikiProject Manual of Style). So, great idea, but "been there, done that". Hecklers who whine "no one should bother" with style/title rule are of no concern as a "threat", though I want very much to resolve the issues they're having with MOS and AT, without undermining their purpose. There are not enough naysayers to dump the site-wide consensus that MOS at AT are both centralized, that they are a guideline and a policy, respectively, and that they are our singular WP style manual and WP article titles policy, not alternatives among an array of optional approaches. It would be productive, not disruptive, in a roundabout way, if they would just get on with it and try to kill MOS and the parts of AT they don't like, so that proposal can crash spectacularly, and we can get back to the business as usual of writing the encyclopedia. This endless firehose of noise from a handful of MOS and AT opponents really just has to be turned off.PS: I'm not sure why you say "we need to be strict about what goes into the MoS and how it is enforced", when you keep ending up at AN / ANI for evading MOS, and then complain about enforcement. Cf. my earlier citation of the old saying "Everyone is for free speech, as long as it's theirs." MOS shouldn't have "strict rules" that "are enforced". It should have clear, consistent rules that best serve the encyclopedia's needs, and which are followed because we agree that having a set of rules is more important that personally all getting every single rule exactly as we'd prefer it. It's a maturity and collegial behavior issue. Imagine what football would be like if ever player stopped playing to try to change a rule in the middle of the game, or just ignored it without good reason any time they'd like. Welcome to Misplaced Pages as of 16 June 2015. I certainly agree that "we should... provide the Wikieditors with everything they need to do their best—even if some people think that intra-article consistency and proper capitalization are dumb." I just wish you agreed with this principle when it was about style nit-picks you think are dumb or which aren't the "right version". Maybe your statements in this section are motion in this direction? If so, I welcome that. I also agree with the gist of your analogy to people showing up at articles on TV shows or insect species (aside from the fact that core content policies don't apply to Misplaced Pages-namespace pages). Yes, if we have a consensus to have a page, for a particular purpose and with a particular scope, "this page is pointless", and "there's no real consensus to have this", and similar sentiments don't carry any weight in discussions with regard to improving the contents or refining the scope of the page. I'm not really sure why people take the view that WP:IDONTLIKEIT-type reasons are valid as long as you apply them to a guideline page you hate. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Darkfrog24: Re: '
- Darkfrog... have you considered the possibility that this "disdain" you detect at VP:Proposals and VP:Policy reflects an actual community wide consensus (which raises interesting WP:CONLEVEL questions regarding the MOS). Blueboar (talk) 21:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- Technically, the best place for this would be VP:Proposals or VP:Policy, but the last two attempts to deal with MoS matters there have shown that many of their participants have an unmerited disdain for the concept of having a MoS at all. So what we'd need to do is get people who care about MoS matters on board, all of the people who care about MoS matters on board, without giving the hecklers an opportunity to whine about how no one should bother. I see posting notices on relevant Wikiproject talk pages as an appropriate part of that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- Not just the subpages. You need to get people from the WikiProjects, and people who just work on a specialized topic and don't bother much with projects or MoS or other "meta" stuff. Challenging to do, but that's what you'd need for a true broad consensus. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
- So, yes, MOS is a broad consensus. I suspect you are coming from the angle that because you (like surely all of us) have some points in MOS that you disagree with that it "doesn't represent consensus". If so, you're misunderstanding WP:CONSENSUS, what MOS is and why, and what we have consensus on. Consensus does not require unanimity. MOS is not just some descriptive work listing all known options for how off-WP writers handle each style question. What we have broad, long-term, site-wide consensus on is that MOS is our in-house style guide, and we're agreeing to follow it so we have a consistent encyclopedia, and fewer lame style editwars distracting us from creating content. (Some particular situations may inspire us to WP:IAR, to work around a rule that doesn't quite work in that case; this is a situation ArbCom clearly allowed for, and which IAR policy allowed for long before ArbCom said anything about it. MOS is a guideline not a policy, so there is no "power" to "grab".) We also have broad consensus on the points on which MOS is prescriptive, or they wouldn't be prescriptive. Where we don't, options are provided. We even have explicit consensus that for some specific things we shouldn't be prescriptive.
- Excuse me? "Keep ending up at AN/I for evading the MoS"? That happened once, seven years ago (and it's why I quit general gnoming) and the admin involved had to be convinced that the issue was important.
- I'm going to assume that you're talking about my opposition to WP:LQ. WP:IDONTELIKEIT≠WP:THISCONTRADICTSRELIABLESOURCES. I also don't like it.
- What I mean by being strict about what goes into the MoS, I mean that it shouldn't contain rules that are based solely on whims or personal preferences that we then impose upon others, of which WP:LQ is the most obvious case. To use your words, "clear, consistent and serving the encyclopedia's needs" is good but "supported by (or at least does not contradict) reliable sources" is better. Requiring sentence case for every header—sure, it's nice, but is that a big enough deal to take up space here? Requiring double quotation marks instead of single—we've seen that single can interfere with search functions in some browsers, so it's clearly here for a non-arbitrary reason. The whole point of Misplaced Pages is that it's not just one person telling another person what to do; it's about verifiability, notability and relevance.
- As for how the MoS should be enforced, short answer: politely.
- SmC, you seem to have overlooked something: I do think that the MoS should trump other guideline pages. We might have different reasoning behind how and why, but we're on the same page on what. In fact you and I agree on most things.
- As for the hecklers not being a threat, they were a pretty big deal in the proposals to create a style help noticeboard and an even bigger one in the proposal to endorse the help that we provide here at WT:MoS. They should be disregarded but they aren't. By "disregarded" I mean that the admin closing the discussion should ignore votes from people who gave "The MoS/commas/these people are stupid" as their only reason for opposition. There were also valid complaints made against both proposals. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- MOS consults reliable sources on style and grammar; it does not cite and obey them robotically (it's impossible for it to do so, since they conflict on virtually everything). MOS is not an article subject to WP:V / WP:RS, any more than any other policy or guideline is. It's crafted through often tedious and frustrating, but necessary, consensus processes the primary work of which is not at all digging around in source after source to compile some kind of statistical average of "most popular" recommendation. It's almost entirely an exercise is applying common sense to observed problems and what their most practical solution is. So, I see what you mean by "strict" now; you mean drawn from source that someone (namely you) wants to interpret as authoritative. If you want to apply a content policy analysis, then that's undue weight. In the real analysis, it's just irrelevant. The frequency with which grammar and style sources agree on something has nothing to do with whether the advice in question serves our needs best. And of course there's no way to gauge what that frequency is. Does anyone have every style book? Have they checked every single one of them for every single MOS point? Of course not; it's impossible. Your entire LQ argument is based on a statistical analysis that is faulty and meaningless. It's also impossible for MOS to not contradict RS. This are very nearly zero style or grammar issues on which all style and grammar guides agree, ergo every rule will contradict at least one of them. Everyone seems to have internalized this except (counting on my hands) 6 editors over the last ~3 years. As I said in related discussion above, at some point we just have to move on and leave some people behind.
I don't get your point about sentence case, niceness, and space. Double quotes could have been here for an arbitrary reason, too, and that would be fine. Lots of rules (not just in MOS) are arbitrary, and have to be if we want one rule instead of inconsistency. We don't impose one unless the inconsistency is problematic, but when we do then it's one rule, arbitrary or not. (And as you know, I don't mean "rule" in some kind of formal policy sense). I believe you that you believe in MOS; see your talk page. I look forward to finding common ground somewhere. Hecklers: I'm not worried about them. They didn't derail the "MOS help desk" stuff; even I !voted against those proposals, after initially being interested in them. The opposes changed my mind. It's fine for us to say people can ask questions here, but we wouldn't be telling people all over that they need to come here. It's more that we can't keep people from asking such questions here and we do a serviceable job answering. It's fine for this to be an informal role.
I share your concern that admins are not discounting WP:JUSTAVOTE noise in RfCs. Its becoming an increasing problem all over, though I think it affects MOS and AT matters more strongly, because a significant number of admins are themselves in the MOS/AT critics camp. Just a fact we have to work with. Finally, on ANI: I cited two style-related cases, but whatever. The point wasn't "you've been to ANI, so you must be bad". I have too. It was the topic of the the ANI cases. Seven years later, you're still riding the same warhorse. WP:TE was written specifically with that kind of never-give-up stuff in mind. Some issues you just have to let go of. If I could get my way in MOS there would e at least 50 things I would change, and plenty of things I'd change in various policies, but it's good that I don't get my way. This isn't SMcCandlishPedia. And over time you actually get used to and change your mind about things. My own usage has changed in quite a few ways based on my editing here. But not all. I will never, ever, ever use spaces instead of commas in long numbers, and off-WP I would ever write "J.R.R. Tolkien" as "J. R. R. Tolkien". I think it's pointless, distracting, and a pain in the butt, but it's MOS's rule, it doesn't really hurt anything, some people to expect it, and it's more important that we have an arbitrary rule on this with one answer, than have a "do whatever you want" mess. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 15:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- MOS consults reliable sources on style and grammar; it does not cite and obey them robotically (it's impossible for it to do so, since they conflict on virtually everything). MOS is not an article subject to WP:V / WP:RS, any more than any other policy or guideline is. It's crafted through often tedious and frustrating, but necessary, consensus processes the primary work of which is not at all digging around in source after source to compile some kind of statistical average of "most popular" recommendation. It's almost entirely an exercise is applying common sense to observed problems and what their most practical solution is. So, I see what you mean by "strict" now; you mean drawn from source that someone (namely you) wants to interpret as authoritative. If you want to apply a content policy analysis, then that's undue weight. In the real analysis, it's just irrelevant. The frequency with which grammar and style sources agree on something has nothing to do with whether the advice in question serves our needs best. And of course there's no way to gauge what that frequency is. Does anyone have every style book? Have they checked every single one of them for every single MOS point? Of course not; it's impossible. Your entire LQ argument is based on a statistical analysis that is faulty and meaningless. It's also impossible for MOS to not contradict RS. This are very nearly zero style or grammar issues on which all style and grammar guides agree, ergo every rule will contradict at least one of them. Everyone seems to have internalized this except (counting on my hands) 6 editors over the last ~3 years. As I said in related discussion above, at some point we just have to move on and leave some people behind.
- Yes, I consider style guides and observable evidence more authoritative than people's unsubstantiated personal opinions or what "feels better" to them. Facts, not truthiness. That's pretty much what Misplaced Pages is about.
- We actually did check a lot of style guides the last time this came up. Just go to the archive and search for "vote with sources" or click the link I gave you under the LQ challenge discussion. You say "oh the style guides all contradict each other," but the fact that almost all of them agree on American punctuation in American English is all the more reason to change WP:LQ. Why would we have a rule that contradicts an overwhelming majority?
- So the fact that all but one American style guide (ACS) says "use American punctuation" isn't enough for you personally. You also said that rules should serve Misplaced Pages's needs. Requiring British punctuation in all articles does not serve any of our needs. American is easier to learn, use and copy edit. It is not as has been asserted, more prone to errors than British. And, unlike the case with single-vs-double quotation marks, Misplaced Pages has no technical issue that British style addresses better than American. Also, Misplaced Pages's multinational spirit is better served by treating all varieties of English equally than by favoring one over the others. Or if consistency is so important, we should just chuck ENGVAR and write the whole encyclopedia in British English. I am not being sarcastic. I could get behind that. I'd rather write British English articles correctly than American English articles incorrectly, by a lot, actually, BrE is pretty neat.
- You mean seven years later, this rule has been challenged over half a dozen different times by more than half a dozen different people for different reasons and I continued to support changing it. That's not tendentious editing. That's me putting up with something that I don't like until I can get it changed within the system. You shouldn't be complaining about that.
- I still don't think that two cases in eight years establishes a pattern, but I'm a bit curious now: What was the other one? Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:10, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Get on with it: @Trovatore, GregJackP, and Blueboar: I repeat:'The ArbCom observation speaks directly to your "consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide" comment.' Are you just not reading? We have a centralized manual of style. This is a fact. Policy says so, and refers to MOS specifically, all the time constantly. ArbCom says so. The Guideline tag on it that's been there forever and ever says so. The consensus to consolidate MOS better, which was advertised all over the place, including WP:VP, says so. Most importantly, the fact that the entire community except for a tiny handful of MOS naysayers treat it as our unified style guide says so. That's consensus. If you want to change that consensus, feel free to go to WP:VPPRO and propose a decentralization of Misplaced Pages's style guidance. But stop pretending that we don't already have a centralized style guide. And your reasoning doesn't fly: Editors who don't care about or care for a centralized style guide are not underrepresented here; they're overrepresented, causing constant text-walls of invective because they don't or won't recognize that style guidance is centralized here. And they disruptively blanket revert anything that doesn't help them decentralize without consensus. Sound familiar? Of course WP:CONLEVEL doesn't specifically mention MOS by name; it addresses all site-wide policies and guidelines as a class. Do you really expect it to list every such page? If you do, then you can probably just transclude the existing lists of policies and guidelines, which I'm sure someone will revert you on immediately since that would be pointless. If you somehow don't believe that MOS is "really" a WP guideline, then go to WP:VPPRO and propose that it be marked "historical". Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
No one made a claim ArbCom was setting a precedent. You're confusing ArbCom making a decision, about what is (a finding of fact) and what will happen (remedies) vs. it setting precedent (which it does not do) that binds it from changing its mind in later cases, or prevents WP consensus from changing in ways that moot its prior decisions. ArbCom is modeled on civil law not common law. The idea that "ArbCom doesn't set precedent" means that nothing ArbCom says really matters, is nonsense, or WP:AE would not exist.
Belief that MOS is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS stems from simply not reading that policy carefully. It distinguishes site-wide polices and guidelines from individuals or groups of editors, like wikiprojects, making up rules against them or ignoring them out of preference. MOS is a site-wide guideline, so it's in first category. Basic logic. If you really believe MOS is not a Misplaced Pages-wide consensus, you know where WP:VPPRO is. If you three really believe that misc. comments of "disdain" at VP about MOS/AT represent some new wave of consensus change against centralized style and naming rules, then just go prove it. If you think MOS isn't "really" a guideline, or AT isn't "actually" a policy, go prove it. And be willing to accept the result when your demotion proposal doesn't go the way you'd like. That means an indefinite cessation of all this disruptive ant-MOS and anti-AT activism. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)</>
- Yawn. TL-DR all of it. BTW, Arbcom is not modeled after the civil law system either, with its call for Jurisprudence constante, which Arbcom doesn't come close to either. Although wikilawyering is an art, it is not because it is needed, it is because people try to force their views on "rules" down other people's throats. GregJackP Boomer! 08:08, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- "TL;DR" is shorthand for "I made several assertions, and someone refuted them, so I'm going to take my ball and go home." I guess this means you won't be making a VPPRO move to demote MOS then? Why shouldn't we take that as concession that, of course, it does have site-wide acceptance as a guideline? PS: I don't recall anyone saying that every single aspect of civil law was mirrored in ArbCom. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- "TL;DR" is shorthand for "not everyone has time to read the walls of text you post in response to each comment". I've found myself agreeing with you more often than disagreeing with you, but even I find your verbosity off-putting. -sche (talk) 16:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @-sche: I guess I could try the typical circular-debater tactic that prevails here: Pick one point out of 5 in someone's post, construct a weak straw-man out of it in an unresponsive one-liner, ignore the rest, and then later just repeat my original assertion in proof-by-assertion style, pretending no one will notice it was already refuted; this gets the other party to re-post their rebuttal, and then I can repeat the cycle, until they get frustrated and leave; then try to convince everyone consensus went my way, which I hope will work if a crony will post some me-toos. I may be verbose, but I cover each of the argument points. I do this enough times, people stop trotting out the same weak arguments; they either present better ones, changing my mind and leading to progress, or accept mine, leading to progress. The circular nonsense does not lead to progress. I would take "TL;DR" here more seriously if the people who throw that at me weren't usually the same ones re-re-re-raising the same tired debates month after month, forum after forum, generating, in total, far more verbiage than anyone else, and wasting far more people's time. I am sorry that it's annoying to some bystanders, but won't it be way more annoying to be having the same debate next week, next month, and next year? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 16:49, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- "TL;DR" is shorthand for "not everyone has time to read the walls of text you post in response to each comment". I've found myself agreeing with you more often than disagreeing with you, but even I find your verbosity off-putting. -sche (talk) 16:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- "TL;DR" is shorthand for "I made several assertions, and someone refuted them, so I'm going to take my ball and go home." I guess this means you won't be making a VPPRO move to demote MOS then? Why shouldn't we take that as concession that, of course, it does have site-wide acceptance as a guideline? PS: I don't recall anyone saying that every single aspect of civil law was mirrored in ArbCom. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yawn. TL-DR all of it. BTW, Arbcom is not modeled after the civil law system either, with its call for Jurisprudence constante, which Arbcom doesn't come close to either. Although wikilawyering is an art, it is not because it is needed, it is because people try to force their views on "rules" down other people's throats. GregJackP Boomer! 08:08, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I'm reserving my right to disagree about the extension of MOS to cover the TFA column until I read everything through again. There are at least a few formatting things that have always been different at TFA. I'll give you a full report as soon as I'm done. Then there's the problem that people sometimes have strange notions about what MOS requires, notions that I don't want to be held to. I'll try to list everything I can think of along those lines, too. - Dank (push to talk) 23:30, 14 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Dank: It's extremely unlikely that if WP:TFA needs a variance (or list thereof) from general rules, because of the very tight space or whatever, that the variance(s) would not be accepted into MOS (directly or as a subpage) if we even think it wasn't covered by WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:IAR. We already know that MOS does apply to TFA content, since it's already written to comply except where IARing for a real reason. :-) That is, it's a description of actual practice, not a "new rule". There are no extant disputes between TFA and MOS, so I wouldn't go looking for one. Heh. I can't see that layout issues would apply, since MOS:LAYOUT covers article structure, and TFA (and portals, etc.) are not articles. I don't think anyone thinks TFA is some "localconsensus"; it's a core WP PR effort. But TFA also doesn't go around abusing underlining, or giving dates in "23rd of Jan. '05" format, or otherwise ignoring MOS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I've finished reviewing the last six months at TFA and comparing that to MOS; the only MOS dispute was over whether to italicize James Bond, and the end result was a change in a MOS subpage. So ... there's nothing to do, so far, and hopefully, there never will be. Unwatching for now; my watchlist is already beyond hope. - Dank (push to talk) 11:44, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Btw, FWIW: I didn't get pinged by the {{ping|Dank}} above. More confirmation that pinging can't be relied on. - Dank (push to talk) 11:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, that's twice in one day (that I know of) that the ping failed. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 15:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @Dank: It's extremely unlikely that if WP:TFA needs a variance (or list thereof) from general rules, because of the very tight space or whatever, that the variance(s) would not be accepted into MOS (directly or as a subpage) if we even think it wasn't covered by WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:IAR. We already know that MOS does apply to TFA content, since it's already written to comply except where IARing for a real reason. :-) That is, it's a description of actual practice, not a "new rule". There are no extant disputes between TFA and MOS, so I wouldn't go looking for one. Heh. I can't see that layout issues would apply, since MOS:LAYOUT covers article structure, and TFA (and portals, etc.) are not articles. I don't think anyone thinks TFA is some "localconsensus"; it's a core WP PR effort. But TFA also doesn't go around abusing underlining, or giving dates in "23rd of Jan. '05" format, or otherwise ignoring MOS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I oppose the proposed change, and would like to note that the MoS cannot extend its reach unilaterally. RGloucester — ☎ 16:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
- We've already covered this in detail at the top of this thread. There is no extension of reach, much less a unilateral one. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose any change that tries to make the MoS more rigid or extensive. It's a guideline, and a small number of editors here are making it strongly disliked by acting as if it's policy. If you would just loosen up a little, you could make it respected and even loved, because people do want the advice when they come looking for it, but they don't want it to be forced on them. Sarah 02:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- @SlimVirgin: Huh? Nothing here would make it more "rigid"; it doesn't involve any changes in content or editability. Nor more "extensive"; MOS's size and scope would remain unchanged. It would simply more accurately describe the scope. It simply is not possible under WP:CONLEVEL policy that some competing guideline's or would-be guideline's editors can overrule MOS, the (not a) site-wide guideline on style, with some "local consensus" to defy it where ever they feel like it. It's like arguing that because some people don't like the results at AfD that they can go start a new "Article for keeping" that has its own deletion rules that can override AfD decisions. Centralization is not the Devil. If a variance is needed, put the new rule in MOS. Not be being a ranter, but by discussion, with reason and evidence. Or just be bold, put it in, and see if it sticks. There is no forcing of anything on anyone. Who is acting as if it's policy? I'm the one repeatedly reminding people these are not hard-and-fast rules, that IAR applies (in more ways than many people think it does), and that MOS is almost entirely build out of refining general rules to account for more specific needs. Other MOS regulars do so as well. The only people treating it like policy are people who don't like something in it, and then create a straw man that it's being applied as if policy, so they can attack it as not really policy. It's shadow boxing. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 04:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- I've regularly seen you try to force in your style preferences to articles with which you otherwise have no involvement, citing the MoS. Hence your footnote that local consensus can't override this, when of course it can and often does. The MoS is a guideline. It's not a question of IAR. It's a question of it not consisting of rules. Sarah 04:33, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- 1) I demand proof of that accusation. 2) WP:CONLEVEL policy says local consensus can't override a site-wide guideline. Has nothing to do with my personal style preferences. The very fact that a small number of people, who doggedly pursue the idea, believe that conlevel magically does not apply to MOS as a site-wide guideline is why that footnote needs to be there, so people start to understand it better, finally. We already had a consensus discussion about this. Please do not remove that long-standing material again just because you feel like it. But we're not talking about the existing footnote. We're talking about the new clarification to that consensus, that people can't go write their own anti-MOS style guides and expect them to be followed. 3) Please give us some examples of local consensus overriding MOS. 4) Please cite the policy where it says that only someone who has already edited a page is allowed to edit it (for style or any other guideline-, policy- or content-related reason). Oh, wait, that principle couldn't possibly exist, since then it would be impossible for any pages to even exist, wouldn't it? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Oppose any change, per my above comments, SlimV, and RGloucester. GregJackP Boomer! 08:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- What rationale(s) in particular did you have in mind? WP:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Per majority indicates why this kind of drive-by !vote is meaningless. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 08:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Comment - I think there is a distinction in community consensus between having an MOS and enforcing the MOS... and this distinction is something that goes directly to the CONLEVEL argument about "precedence". Having an MOS is useful, and the community strongly supports having one. Community consensus even supports what the MOS says (or at least most of it). However... when it comes to enforcing the MOS in actual practice, it is clear that there is a lot less community support. Time and time again (frequently enough to be significant), the wider community sides with Wikiprojects when there is a specific issue between Wikiproject guidance and MOS guidance. We trust the subject specialists at Wikiprojects to know what they are talking about when they say "that's not how it is done in our subject area". That said... it is important to realize that the wider community does not see this as "overruling" MOS guidance... instead the community sees it as "making an exception" to the otherwise good MOS guidance. And that's really the key... while community consensus approves of the MOS, it also favors making frequent and relatively liberal exceptions to it. Blueboar (talk) 19:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
"Atomic" reverting
The first three comments are refactored out of edit summaries, which aren't for extended discussions.Undid revision 667309593 by SMcCandlish (talk) *You* add back in the longstanding material. Not others' responsibility to figure out which is which. -- Trovatore 07:28, 17 June 2015
- Complying with request, but you know as well as I do that when people are deleting material it is THEIR responsibility to delete the right parts. Longer passage has been there for years, shorter one from consensus discussion in June 2015. -- SMcCandlish 07:51, 17 June 2015
- dummy edit: I completely disagree. That rule would allow editors to push stuff in by simply overwhelming the capacity of others to filter it. Reverts are cleanest when done atomically. -- Trovatore 07:54, 17 June 2015
- Not applicable. I did not introduce enough material for that concern to arise. You're basing a "rule" of your own behavior on assumption of bad faith. I guess I can start a sandbox list of editors who prefer to have all of their work on a page mass-reverted, just to fix even a typo, and put you at the top of it, for future reference. Or is destructive, WP:POINTy reverting only okay when you do it to others? You did say you "completely disagree" with the idea of taking any responsibility to delete only the part in a series of edits that you actually object to. Just want to be clear on that. Or maybe you'd like to rephrase and (more to the point) rethink this anti-collaborative approach? Try "atomic" in the other sense, and edit like everyone else: Revert the smallest "particle" of change you can that addresses what your actual concern is, and leave as much of the new material as possible. That's how and why WP has millions of pages not ten. If you feel you have trouble articulating what your concerns are, try the talk page, without reverting, until you can put your finger on what you think the issue is, and see if other people agree. Just a recommendation of course, but it seems to work for the majority of editors, so why not you? PS: I'm having trouble finding the "cleanliness of reverts" policy or guideline. Can you identify it for me? Can you explain what that even means to you? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 10:52, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- dummy edit: I completely disagree. That rule would allow editors to push stuff in by simply overwhelming the capacity of others to filter it. Reverts are cleanest when done atomically. -- Trovatore 07:54, 17 June 2015
Improving examples in "Quotations": "Point of View" section
I made the following tweaks (to my own examples, and in response to a clarification request on my talk page), but someone reverted it in a spate of reverts of everything I'd added any time recently, and with a WP:IDONTLIKEIT-style non-rationale. I'm curious whether there is any actual principled objection to this cleanup and small addition; or more constructively, whether anyone has any ideas for even better wording. (If you want to vent at me personally for something then please use my talk page. Reverts are not a means for expressing inter-editor personality issues.) PS: I made minor copyedits to the "New" version, below, to use more flexible wording in "Styles may be mixed, but should not be when juxtaposed" (vs. "Styles can be mixed, but not when juxtabposd"), and to replace "Siskel and Ebert" with "The reviewer" to shorten the examples and now show how old I am. ;-)
| Old | New |
|---|---|
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Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms often wrongly implies to many readers something doubtful regarding the material being quoted (where weasel words such as "supposedly" or "so called" might be implied).
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Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can often seem to imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words, like "supposedly" or "so called", might be inferred.
Styles may be mixed, but should not be when juxtaposed:
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- Detailed rationale
- The second sentence was awkward in several ways, like: confusing imply and infer; unnecessary use of "many"; didn't mention sarcasm, the #1 problem in such cases; linked wrongly to WP:WEASEL instead of to weasel words (the former applies to material in WP's own voice, the latter to usage in general). The rewrite fixes all of these problems.
- Someone pointed out that the "criticized the film as predictable" wording was ambiguous (could imply it was predictable what the reviewers would say).
- In the course of thinking about a replacement word, it occurred to me that the rest of the "predictable" examples weren't very clear (especially as to why "scare quotes" might imply doubt.
- So picked replacements, first by picking a word that is often used sarcastically (to imply doubt), but also often used by reviewers earnestly, and which is not overly emotive, thus can be used in a paraphrase: "interesting" seemed the most obvious choice.
- The requester of the clarification thanked me for this change. I consider the issue resolved since no one else has raised any issues with it.
- The revert has reintroduced this ambiguity.
- It also occurred to me that a frequent set of "sloppy partial quotation" problems could be addressed in the same section, with little more than some examples, no lengthy explanation or "rules" needed:
- So, give an example source text someone may want to excerpt from, a short simple case. The example's construction is important: It includes a non-emotive, attributable description that doesn't require quotation marks and isn't thematically related to what follows; some fluff verbiage we want to elide; an emotive opinion that does need to be quoted; another non-emotive, attributable description right next to the emotive opinion and which does thematically relate to it; and finally more verbiage we want to elide.
- Illustrate the bad way, and make it obviously why it's bad without having to spell it out. I'm hard pressed to think of a better case than dimly lit, "snail-paced", and lengthy.
- Show a common and technically correct way to do it, but which is awkward, especially in short segments like this.
- Show another common, correct way to do it.
- Without getting into a lecture, include an example of when it is okay to mix styles, by not butting them up against each other, and kill two birds with one stone by hinting at the kind of consideration one might want to engage in to select such a choice (which can sometimes be preferable). It takes far more verbiage to explain it that to just give the example: Siskel and Ebert found the film dimly lit, and also criticized it as "snail-paced and lengthy".
Is there a way to make it even better? I'm hard pressed to think of a content-related outright objection to it, but I'm not the world's best example-maker, and someone may have better cases to use. PS: We should not shorten "The reviewer" to "The review"; inanimate things do no have opinions and do not take actions. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 11:46, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- These new examples have TL/DR and clarity problems. This level of detail required to explain these fine points might be more appropriate for the article space. Also, what source are you using for this? "Styles should not be mixed when juxtaposed" makes sense to me but do we need a rule/guidance/what-have-you about it?
- Question, and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer were yes, do you see people making mistakes in the article space that these new examples would fix? You mention a "requester." Did someone ask for these changes? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Interested in the clarity problems. Where do you see them? It's always a challenge to write stuff this compressed and devoid of explanatory verbiage and still have it be really clear. TL/DR? Are you thinking the rationale material is part of the content? It's not, only the stuff in the "New" column of the table. The entire point of the examples being constructed so carefully is they do not need any explanatory text, as said in the rationale (4th top-level bullet). What was requested and where: 2nd top-level bullet in rationale. Are the mistakes actually made?: Yes, 4th top-level bullet in rationale. I get the impression you skipped the rationale. Sources: I own two entire bookshelves of style guides and dictionaries, almost all that are in print in English (don't have Macquarie yet, due to .au postage cost), and many that are aren't any longer. MOS doesn't cite sources except for a tiny handful of things. For this particular point, it's common sense, and more more about style clarity, not absolute accuracy, so I'm not inclined to spend time crafting citations for something they'll all agree on, where they even address it. Many don't because it seems too obvious. For an "anyone can edit" work like us, it's turning out not to be. I never introduce a "rule" into MOS that isn't based on recurrent problems, and I usually sit on it for 3-6 months to see if the recurrences were transitory, sometimes for years. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 15:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- You've done two things here, SmC: 1) You reworded existing guidance/rules and 2) you added new guidance/rules. The deal with #1 is how we word these examples as clearly as possible, which shouldn't be a big deal, but the deal with #2 is whether or not the additions should be kept. Where these jobs overlap is that some of the new additions, the value judgments given to the different examples, also need to be clarified.
- TL/DR means " too long didn't read ." (NOTE: I did read the whole thing so I could discuss it here.)
- For #1, there are a couple of problems with clarity but the one I can articulate right now is that the green examples say "permissible," "good," "better" and "still better," the red ones "inconsistent" and "unnecessary" and both the "awkward but not wrong" and original text are colored black. That 1) might imply that the "awkward" one is best because it's the same as the original and 2) might confuse people. In our heads, one person might think "Of course 'better' is better than 'good'" and another might think "It's obvious that 'good' is better than 'better.'" (Consider "an old woman" vs "an older woman.") I like to keep the MoS in the imperative; "Do this." "Don't do that."
- For #2, what I see as the addition here is the different values given to different examples ("this is better than that") and the new content ("don't juxtapose"). They look like they're coming from you personally, but I could be wrong. Do you have an outside style guide that says "never juxtapose quoted and non-quoted material" and "doing X is better than doing Y" or is this just a conclusion that you've drawn using your own accumulated experience? And if something is "not wrong," then we shouldn't tell people not to do it in the MoS, even if it looks a little neater the other way. Because the MoS is interpreted as gospel by so many editors, many will think this means never do this and report anyone who does as a rule-breaker! So I'd want to see style guides before I'd support putting this new stuff in. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
- Interested in the clarity problems. Where do you see them? It's always a challenge to write stuff this compressed and devoid of explanatory verbiage and still have it be really clear. TL/DR? Are you thinking the rationale material is part of the content? It's not, only the stuff in the "New" column of the table. The entire point of the examples being constructed so carefully is they do not need any explanatory text, as said in the rationale (4th top-level bullet). What was requested and where: 2nd top-level bullet in rationale. Are the mistakes actually made?: Yes, 4th top-level bullet in rationale. I get the impression you skipped the rationale. Sources: I own two entire bookshelves of style guides and dictionaries, almost all that are in print in English (don't have Macquarie yet, due to .au postage cost), and many that are aren't any longer. MOS doesn't cite sources except for a tiny handful of things. For this particular point, it's common sense, and more more about style clarity, not absolute accuracy, so I'm not inclined to spend time crafting citations for something they'll all agree on, where they even address it. Many don't because it seems too obvious. For an "anyone can edit" work like us, it's turning out not to be. I never introduce a "rule" into MOS that isn't based on recurrent problems, and I usually sit on it for 3-6 months to see if the recurrences were transitory, sometimes for years. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅ᴥⱷ≼ 15:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Permit WP:Red links in WP:Navboxes?
Opinions are needed on the following matter: Misplaced Pages talk:Red link#Guideline revision urgently needed; subsection is at Misplaced Pages talk:Red link#Revision proposal. A WP:Permalink for the matter is here. Flyer22 (talk) 20:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)