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Νοητικά means "things of the intellect", just as φυσικά means "things of nature (physics)". Consensus has it that I am male, and Australian. Stationed on the planet's surface awaiting orders for my next assignment, I specialise in the details at WP:MOS – punctuation and style recommendations for our 6,929,543 articles.

If you post here, I will answer here. Tea?

Hi

Nice to see you back, Noetica. I don't generally hang around MOS, but our paths may cross elsewhere. -- Jack of Oz 08:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Jack. Good to see you're still active! I'll be doing a bit of MOS work at least. Then we'll see ...

(We should catch up again some time. I might email you.)

–_⊥Noetica!– 10:29, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Please do. -- Jack of Oz 10:38, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Query about italic face

Noetica: help! Can you give an opinion here? Tony (talk) 11:33, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I've responded at the location in question, Tony.–_⊥Noetica!– 11:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Mexican~American War business

I appreciate your cooperation on the Mexican~American War issue. I know our debate got a little heated. Honestly I am just leaning toward the hyphen camp and my mind could certainly be changed. I don't really care which sides wins, I just want consistency. Hopefully other editors will like our proposed solution. –CWenger (talk) 22:11, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to you, for what promises to be a breakthrough. I hope everyone will join in and keep an open mind. I have already advertised our new suggestion here at WT:MOS. Some background: as a professional editor (by the way: Australian, male) with a research interest in systems of punctuation, my passionate concern at Misplaced Pages is to develop the Manual of Style. It helps ensure rational and consistent practice throughout our millions of articles. Well-founded local interests may clash with that well-founded global interest. Inevitable, on any vast project. The only hope is to work with fair and orderly process, and good will. Starting with us.

–_⊥Noetica!– 22:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Chinese hyphenation conventions

Hi Noetica,

On this discussion, I think you've misread the (very vague) Chinese MOS conventions. Not hyphenating language names means not hyphenating the 'language' or 'speech' morpheme at the end of the name; AFAIK it doesn't address whether the stem itself is hyphenated. Forms like Jing-Jin for Beijing-Tianjin suggest it should be, and iso conventions reflect that (Pu-Xian Chinese, etc). Anyway, I've asked for clarification here. — kwami (talk) 20:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, Kwami. Glad you dropped in for tea. Pu-erh OK?

I was very cautious in my statement of support:

... subject to later review if more specific WP guidelines are developed for such names. This is a very difficult case, located at the confluence of several issues in English punctuation practice and various cross-linguistic accommodations. In the end I am swayed by ...

The Library of Congress guidelines are themselves odd. We know that they do not follow the standard Chinese ruling for apostrophes, so why should we expect them to be deeply accurate concerning hyphens? But the current WP ruling that you and I want clarified does appeal to Library of Congress. I cannot get involved in all this right now, despite my abiding interest in everything concerning Chinese use of punctuation (and use of punctuation for Chinese: not the same thing). One note in passing: you invoke "Niger-Congo" (see your link above); but at least one authority has it as "Niger–Congo", in a linguistic context. I can find that for you if you like; but not right now. Too busy!

Noetica 23:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "Niger–Congo" would be correct if we're going to use disjunctive dashes. But it would require changing so many generally unambiguous articles that it might not be worth it. (Though I would like to see that ref when you get a chance.)

Never had Pu-erh tea. I'll have to try it. Had some wonderful whole-leaf green tea from Saigon, but I ate it all. (Yes, ate. I couldn't bear to throw the leaves away after steeping.) — kwami (talk) 01:59, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

More Mexican~American War

Wasn't this edit (the dashes part of it) a violation of MOS:CONSISTENCY? –CWenger (talk) 04:25, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Good to see you here, CWenger. No, it was not a violation. For one thing, some material on the page (in the categories at the bottom, and elsewhere) had the en dash form and could not be changed, and some had the hyphen form. So consistency could not be achieved in any case. Therefore, when in doubt, edit according to clear MOS guidelines. The prevailing and irremediable inconsistency comes about because of editors' refusal to accept a peace proposal that you tentatively suggested and I took up and presented, in the second RM at Talk:Mexican-American War (and see current discussion there). I'm not kidding: this is all more serious than it looks, because of the wide implications for policies and guidelines, and the potential to generate precedents for disorder if they are ignored. Noetica 04:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I was half joking with you, in light of the fact that it would not be possible to edit the page and adhere to the MOS! Anyway, in all seriousness, I am sad to see the dispute still ongoing, and our proposal not really getting anywhere. As I mentioned on the talk page, it looks like we are unfortunately going to have to go to to arbitration/mediation. –CWenger (talk) 05:03, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

@Noetica, I see that you have now re-inserted the dash. The two requests for move should be a big clue that consensus is against you. Please restore the hyphen yourself or I'll have to report you to the edit warring noticeboard. (P.D.: I have gone ahead and undid your revert. If you or anyone else tries to ignore again the result of the move requests and edits war over stylistic issues, then I'll drag that person to WP:AN3 for blocking. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:30, 13 April 2011 (UTC)) --Enric Naval (talk) 08:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Considering that you're edit warring, that's a bit hypocritical, don't you think? The MOS is clear, so she at least has that on her side. — kwami (talk) 09:18, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, MOS:CONSISTENCY is pretty clear.... in that Noetica is wrong. You can't invoke the MOS to say exactly the opposite of what it says. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

(and, Noetica, for the renaming of the categories I'll go and open a request in WP:CFD. I still hadn't gone around to that. I'm trying to go slowly, step by step.) --Enric Naval (talk) 10:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, welcome to Kwami and Enric!

• First, a note on pronouns and the like: "he" and "his" would be more natural in my case (see a note to CWenger earlier). Not that I care much! I like the web to be unsexed; but some people are uncomfortable with that. Hungarian has the idea: same pronoun for male and female. "Noetica" is a Greek neuter plural. Its meaning? Left as an exercise for anyone interested.
• Enric: I see my invitation to peacemaking whooshed right over your head. You paid not the slightest attention when CWenger hinted at a fair procedure to solve such wrangling. When I developed it and promoted it hard, you did what you could to hijack the initiative with tired old mantras about reliable sources. It turned out there was no point trying reason or compromise with you. Accordingly, I will not. By all means, go step by benighted step, blind to the larger questions that are really at issue. If you ever get bored with that (which it seems you may not), read the article Sphex. One of my favourites.

Noetica 23:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I reported you for continuing an edit war where other editor left it, violating MOS:STABILITY, refusing to accept two consecutive move requests, etc. Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:Noetica_reported_by_User:Enric_Naval_.28Result:_.29. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:41, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

How does a person 'continue an edit war' on behalf of someone else? If you have different editors each time going back and forth, I think that there is probably a different name for that, but who knows. -- Avanu (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Removing hyphens after -ly adverbs

I am inviting your comments at Misplaced Pages talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#Removing hyphens after -ly adverbs (permanent link here).
—Wavelength (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Wavelength. I will turn my attention to that when I have time.

Noetica 23:30, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Unblock (someone else's abuse of the same IP address)

{{unblock-auto}}

Hello, I notice you still had this unblock request up, but you seem to be editing, so I suppose this has become moot now? Let me know if you still encounter any problems. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:42, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks FP. I switched to a different provider in order to edit. Let's see how it goes tomorrow. Thanks! Noetica 11:46, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Touchy much?

I'm not sure why you think I'm patronizing you, but ok. As far as that other person's choice of username, it might have been better not to mention that I dislike having to type it, but my impression was that they deliberately chose a username like that and I have every right to dislike it. It doesn't affect how I treat him otherwise, in fact I have indicated how much I agree with his logic and rationale. If you choose to focus on my short aside rather than the actual rest of the discussion, go for it. I don't see how me disliking a username relates to the rest and in all other ways I've been civil as some of you (overly) passionate editors argue about an essentially minor issue. So just have fun with it, it's not that big of a deal in the big picture. -- Avanu (talk) 10:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Your generally lighthearted approach is to be commended. Your rapidly formed impressions might be engaging to observe when you display them in public, if they were not a distraction and an impertinence. But you don't understand many of the issues – even, until recently, a core one concerning how punctuation works. More advice for you then: if you know little, say little. Support that is capricious and uninformed is not what we need right now. We would see who is "touchy", if the gloves were off and I were at all inclined to be "playful" with you. Noetica 11:24, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I understand the punctuation just fine, and I'm willing to admit I could always learn more. If this were a perfectly clear issue, it wouldn't have gone on for this long. Generally, it appears to me that the hyphen has taken on a role much like the word "their" has in relation to not being absolutely 'proper', but at least generally accepted. People used to say "The person took his book to class." and for a time people tried to say "The person took his/her book to class." in order to be politically correct. Now, many people say "The person took their book to class." The word wasn't intended to be used that way, but it fills a void. That's how language is. It moves and changes over time. Our dear friend the hyphen never wanted to be promoted, but there he sits, ready and willing on the keyboards of so many, and expediency made him a ready option for a dash -- or simply a faux dash -

My attitude toward such things is not as rigid as yours and I'm not willing to be offended by their misuse as easily. I am a fairly nitpicky person, but quoting manuals of style or reliable sources doesn't work as well as an actual well-reasoned argument, and Dicklyon gave us that, and I appreciated it. Saying I don't understand "many of the issues" just makes me wonder how many issues there could really even be here. Is a dash correct or is a hyphen correct, what more is there? I'm just not as nitpicky as some, I suppose. I'm willing to allow it to be slightly wrong, if it ends up furthering the overall goal of Misplaced Pages. I can be quite a bit like yourself if I choose to be, but for an issue like this one regarding the dash, I'm not willing to allow myself to become so emotionally involved that it becomes a big deal. -- Avanu (talk) 11:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and incidentally, if the implication you were making earlier has some relation to some sort of academic or intellectual elitism, kindly leave that out. Some people believe they win an argument by saying "I'm a PhD in X." But in reality, we win arguments by reason and logic. While rote is useful, reason ultimately wins. -- Avanu (talk) 11:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for entering into dialogue, Avanu. I do like a chat! But it might be best to for us to leave it now. Some of what you say here is mere guesswork. My attitude to punctuation is far from rigid, and again you have not looked at the evidence. I never even hint that there is a single "correct" way to punctuate, to use your term. But WP:MOS must make recommendations: based on rational analysis, of course; but also on precedent and practice, of course. I have repeatedly said that I will not do such analysis of punctuation guidelines, nor cite my collection of style guides, until the discussion is focused, open-minded, and conducted at WT:MOS. Do you imagine that I have time to do it wherever people open a discussion? It's hard enough to maintain focus in the appropriate forum, let alone at every other random nook of the Project. I am not "emotionally involved" concerning the wretched dash, and how people might like to blot their favourite articles with inconsistencies. I am emotionally involved in seeing that sound guidelines are maintained for the Project, by collaborative effort. And that they are not ignorantly despised or damaged. It is easy to accuse someone who takes a stand for that; I have recently been accused, on the most spurious and defeasible grounds. I tolerate that, for now.

Well, I support that kind of focused and open debate also. And I think you are right that the issue is not being discussed/settled in the proper forum. I'm very supportive of your effort in that area, and if it helps, I can take a less cavalier approach in future. I'm all for fairness and doing things right. Let me apologize for any offense, you seem to be very willing to do what is right and have your heart in line with that. And to address what you add below, I'm not terribly familiar with what you've contributed, I only came into the Mex-Am article because of someone bringing a complaint to the Wikiquette page and it led me to be curious about it. I appreciate the chat also, and wish you well. -- Avanu (talk) 12:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I do not see why you mention PhDs and elitism. I do not rely on what professional status or qualifications I might have, but on hard, sustained argument. If you doubt that, you are not familiar with my record here. Not surprising: I was blissfully away from all involvement on Misplaced Pages for a year: until recently, when I found there were abuses to counter. I really don't want to be here, and put up with any of this. But I will stay for now. Now go! And be good. I'll try to do the same. Noetica 12:12, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

On en dashes

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "Topic ban proposal concerning the lame "Mexican-American War" hyphen/en-dash dispute".Thank you.  Sandstein  20:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Current discussion:

I have been looking into the hyphen / en dash issue more and I have a question for you. I looked up Michelson–Morley experiment (which we both agree should be en dashed) on Google Books. Looking through the first two pages, about half of the results do in fact use an en dash, the rest use a hyphen except one which uses a space. (They all show up as hyphens in the search results, but when you actually go look they are sometimes dashes.) Again, I have said I don't think WP:COMMONNAME applies to punctuation, I think Misplaced Pages should be free to use its own typography just like any other publication. So even if slightly more use a hyphen I don't think we have to follow them, we can use our discretion that an en dash is more professional. But then I look up Mexican~American War on Google Books. I don't see any results that use an en dash. That, along with the fact that the MOS:ENDASH examples all use words acting as nouns (France–Germany border rather than French–German border), leads me to question if this rule is really being interpreted/applied correctly. If you can convince me, I might change my mind back. It would certainly be easier to rename the one article rather than a whole set of other articles and categories (including other wars), but I want to be correct. –CWenger (talk) 19:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

What CWenger says is more or less my impression also. I have found in the meantime that there are some (apparently few) style guides that do include adjectival cases like this among the en-dash cases (e.g. Cambridge guide to English usage), but it seems a decidedly marginal type of usage, and I really can't see a good reason why our MOS should mandate such a thing against the huge majority of writers and publishers out there, and against the practice of the huge majority of Misplaced Pages editors. Especially since the main reason why this usage seems to have taken hold in some domains of article titling appears to be that some very few editors once took a rule they themselves hardly understood, and ran away with it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree. I would also add that some of the logic I have heard in defense of the clarity of the en dash is not very persuasive to me. For example, I have heard Mexican-American War/war could mean (1) a war of the Mexican-American variety, or (2) a war among Mexican Americans. I think both usages are extremely unlikely, but in any case, for (1) war would be lowercase to differentiate, and for (2) it would be a proper noun and could be called anything regardless of precision (e.g. the French and Indian War). I genuinely don't know if a hyphen or en dash is correct but I assume there is some reason, and not sheer coincidence, that so few sources call it the Mexican–American War. –CWenger (talk) 21:06, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both for coming here. Briefly and bluntly (since I extremely busy with editing tasks in the real world), both of you have expressed support or opposition for RMs without slow consideration of the issues. (And CWenger, you changed your vote in one RM on the flimsiest of amateur-linguist testimony from Headbomb. I did not stoop to counter his evidence, since Talk:Mexican-American War was not a suitable forum; I cannot replicate all of this wherever people choose to raise it.) But supporting or opposing as you do is your prerogative. Do as you please. Now, I have a great deal of evidence to adduce on the matter. But I have steadily maintained that the place for it all to be worked out is WT:MOS. I will not, as I have steadily pointed out, weigh in with full argument and evidence until conditions are met for a rational, respectful, and systematic treatment. This reason I give for holding back is itself repeatedly and irresponsibly misrepresented. There is current discussion at WT:MOS. Why not go there?

Next time you come I'll put the kettle on. (Anything but Earl Grey, of course.)

Noetica 01:04, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

My original intention was to have a smaller discussion that would not explode into multiple pages of comments from various editors, but that may be a hopeless endeavor. As an aside, I don't appreciate being told I changed my vote on flimsy evidence, and I doubt many people would... –CWenger (talk) 01:52, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

It's regrettable, CWenger; but like you, I think we must often call it as we see it. At least you might now have a closer understanding of the many things I have not "appreciated" over the last few weeks. ☺ Best wishes, as always. Noetica 13:14, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

By the way, that editor who closed the AN discussion seems very emotionally hyped up about it. On one hand, I'm glad a rather arbitrary discussion got closed, but on the other hand, the person who ended up closing it characterized the discussion and participants as being "so fucked up it's going to wind up at ArbCom". I noted the extreme hostility of some of the non-involved people toward us at the outset, but as time went on, we saw new editors arrive who were actually intent on legitimate and thoughtful discussion, so I'm a little puzzled by such a harsh judgement of the process. To me, this experience shows that this is a subject worth discussing, but also worth resolving. And hopefully, it shows that when people are interested in discussing something, an admin has a responsibility to work *with* other editors, not against them. -- Avanu (talk) 15:30, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and incidentally, between our earlier talk about my somewhat cavalier attitude, and the AN topic ban thing, I am not sure being less than serious in tone is useful anymore. In a way I don't know what tone is right anymore. I actually was ready to throw in the towel here if that discussion at AN had gone how I feared at first. -- Avanu (talk) 05:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a quick post in reply, Avanu, with more to come when I have time. Thanks for your wrapping things up (touch wood) at WP:AN. You might be interested in this this edit I just made at a page that attempts to be humorous. I think it's only fair that it be really funny, don't you? Instead of a mere put-down of everyone, including peacemakers in the whole saga. See what you think (and see the talkpage there also). For next time: I have no Coke here. Do you drink tea also? Noetica 06:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, tea is just fine also. :) I'm glad things didn't get pulled down into an abyss at the AN. I was pretty nervous at first because of the crazy hostile comments being made. And yes, I went ahead and re-wrapped the AN discussion; I didn't want to end up with Sven and you getting pulled into something new. Hadn't expected this level of adrenaline in Misplaced Pages. -- Avanu (talk) 06:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Manguard

Noetica, I greatly sympathise with your being abused by Manguard. It's absurd how he suppresses discussion, both on his talk page and on an open forum. I suggest that you take action on this and file an SPI. Looking at his earliest edits, you will notice an irregular knack with Misplaced Pages jargon, templates, and process, namely the use of "userspace", removal of welcome template, and a warning to an IP. He has claimed that he is a former IP editor, but I am dubious. Please do us all a favour and shut him down once and for all. I am fed up with his general pompousness and what he did to Tony. By virtue of my circumstances, I am unable to file to SPI, so I leave it to you. Vivastun 04:53, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Vivastun, first of all, your signature needs fixing. I have posted something in response to Sven's latest disorderly attempts to impose his idiosyncratic brand of order on proceedings. (See content visible above Avanu's tidying and conciliatory edit.) That's all I will do for now; but if I have any more trouble from Sven I will look again at the options. Thanks for dropping in! Stay for a cup of tea next time, yes? Noetica 06:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Sir, pray keep off my talk page.

You have a conciliatory edit; I have removed the moral claim, and asserted mere facts; what you demand is that I cease to state facts. If your friend is wearing the Emperor's New Clothes, the way to deal with it is to persuade him to get dressed, not demand that everyone else go into denial. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:48, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Noted. I will no longer issue such due notice at your talkpage. My present request, as amended, stands. Noetica 07:11, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I cannot, and do not, refuse you permission to make edits you are required to make, such as ANI notifications. If you do omit them, I will complain accordingly; if you want that, that's your decision. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 07:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Incident

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Dicklyon (talk) 05:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Logarithm

I've responded to your comments about logarithms. I'd appreciate some update, whether you consider these matters fixed or not. Thanks muchly, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 08:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Featured Sounds needs you

Featured sounds was booming with activity in the March/April period, ideally that should be all the time. FS has been a battleground at times, however, it is my hope that that is in the past. I ask you all to reconsider your positions and set aside the differences you may have had with other participants for the good of the project and encyclopedia. Don't let FS become like VP, it is a path that a featured process should traverse. You were sent this message because you are listed at Misplaced Pages:Featured sound candidates/Contributors or have been a past contributor.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of Featured sound candidates at 09:35, 16 May 2011 (UTC).

By the way

Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not upset here or anything. A shorthand handle for me is usually "Ohms" rather then "V" or "V=". The V=I*R thing is the actual algorithm for Ohm's law, which is why I use it as my sig, since that's where the user name came from... oh, and I'm glad that you got the joking reference earlier, and weren't insulted or anything. :)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:49, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for dropping in, Ohms. Tea? I have some excellent choices from Yunnan. Concerning your name, I fully understand that V = I*R is the equation that represents Ohm's law. But I deliberately used "V" and "V =" in answering you because newcomers, and those unaware of such physics, might be mystified otherwise. May I suggest that you take this into consideration? We both know how complex the to and fro of discussion can get, without the added difficulty of tracking who is answering whom.

Finally, I may have got some joking reference to something earlier; but I do not currently get what you reference you are referring to.

Do come again.

Noetica 02:06, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Tea, *blech*. I'll have some coffee though. Thanks! :D
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:FSC backlog

WP:FSC has gotten backed up due to limited feedback. Your feedback would be appreciated.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for calling in, TonyTT. Tea? (Anything but Earl Grey here.)

I'll look in at WP:FSC and see what can be done. A little tied up just with other things, but I'll take a look soon.

Noetica 02:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Bold of you

I don't mind at all. JIMp _talk·cont 05:23, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Jim. I wish we had more participation at MediaWiki talk:Edittools‎. Changes are too often made by technerds (bless 'em) without explanation or discussion; but these things affect the work of all editors. MOS specialists would do the Project a service by hanging out there more often.

Noetica 05:31, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Holy Thorn Reliquary

As usual I am going to revert about 50% of your changes - I don't for example consider that the introduction of long phrases in parentheses has any of the benefits claimed in yor edit summaries. You might note the explanation given at the FAC for the Duke/duc "inconsistency". Johnbod (talk) 00:02, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, welcome! Now John, I don't understand your "as usual". I have not edited anything that you have been concerned with since 2009 at the latest. I understand your sensitivity; but sometimes we get too close to a favourite project and cannot see how it might be improved "from outside". You might consider something like that for the present case. It is clear, for example, that you fail to detect the replications of words and forms that I have rectified. A pity that you gave the matter so little thought. As for the Duke/duc thing, if you look at all the instances freshly you will find stark and unaccountable inconsistency. There is also inconsistency with capitalisation ("crown of thorns") that cannot be justified by context. Still, I'll leave it for now. Noetica 00:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

As I say, see the FAC, where both issues are discussed. You have your own style and, as this page amply demonstrates, other people have theirs. It seems that every time I have something at TFA, there is this very last minute copyedit, which seems to consist of about 25% useful improvements, 40% entirely pointless rewording, 25% subtle Americanization, and 10% clearly detrimental edits, usually arising from not knowing the subject at all. There is enough to worry about on TFA day with vandals, without having to cope with this late night onslaught as well. Johnbod (talk) 00:43, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Every time "you" have something at TFA? ☺? It is not late at night in the world, John: just in your part of it. I have not been responsible for any depredation of the sort you mention here, having had very little to do with TFAs. Subtle Americanization and other such rust are a problem on Misplaced Pages generally; but I certainly don't do that, from the Antipodes. If you can't see the point of my rewordings, you need to take a breath and perpend. Try taking a longer view, with less chance of distorted perspective. Noetica 00:54, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Having been working on the article for a year, I think it is I who have the longer perspective. It is indeed in my part of the world that it is late at night, but you should bear in mind that that is where I live. Johnbod (talk) 01:01, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

No, that is the jeweller's close-at-hand perspective, and the fine results of your work do you credit. But the genius of Misplaced Pages is that others can come in with improvements – improvements that intimacy with detail, over weeks or months, often precludes. Misplaced Pages is edited around the world, by dwellers in the world at large. I don't expect you to appreciate changes I make, any more than I appreciate what I take to be thoughtless reflex reversions. Such is life, and such are the inevitable tensions. Tea next time? Noetica 01:10, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Remember - this is Misplaced Pages (with all that implies) - and it is meant to be fun. Aa77zz (talk) 07:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely, Aa. Fun and excellence, all at the same time. Noetica 07:35, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Colored box on the dash drafting page

I saw that you'd reverted Koavf's change to the message box's color, and I was hoping that I could convince you to change your mind on that. Maybe it was "playful", or whatever, but Koavf said in his edit summary that the yellow is abrasive and I happen to (quite strongly, actually) agree with him. It's not a big deal really, but... would you revert it back? Please? That damn yellow hurts my eyes. :(
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:10, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

O Ohms! You may consider my reversion itself playful. Make it a third colour, more exactly to your liking. I promise not to take you to WP:ANI or WP:AE over it.

(Now, something Brazilian OK for you? Pure arabica, of course.) Noetica 04:17, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Yumm, don't mind if I do. :)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:43, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Of dingoes, "and/or", and Footy

G'day, Mate! Thanks, but I'm not sure I was being all that shrewd. The hint on your Talk page about being an Aussie seems fairly clear to me, at least if one is willing to take a (very?) small leap of faith, given that you don't deny the "consensus."

I'll reply as soon as I can to your most recent post re the dingoes example, but it'll probably be a day or two ... or more. Interim reply:

I completely bungled my set theory terminology in my post. My set theory is very old and rusty, and even at its best, it wasn't very good. When I said:

Assuming for the purpose of illustration that dingoes and wild dogs are identical (that is, neither one is a subset of the other), ...

the parenthetical "that is, ..." phrase was completely wrong. I meant identical to be taken absolutely literally. I also intended that is to be interpreted exactly the way you stated a little later, that is, which is to say the same as. ;-7 Unfortunately, what I said after that is didn't convey what I meant it to at all. (I'd completely forgotten that every set is a subset of itself, although not a proper subset.)

To be clear: Solely for the purpose of this illustration (disregarding that this is in fact sometimes incorrect), I intended dingoes and wild dogs to be sets that are completely overlapping (whatever the correct terminology is for that)—which I intend to mean, neither is a proper subset of the other, they don't just partly overlap, and they're not disjoint. (Is it proper to interpret "disjoint" as "mutually exclusive"? In any event, I think one might describe my intent to be that the two sets are mutually inclusive.) All dingoes are (also) wild dogs, and all wild dogs are (also) dingoes. There are no dingoes that are not wild dogs, and there are no wild dogs that are not dingoes. {wild dogs} ≡ {dingoes} The 2 terms are perfect synonyms. ("There is no God but God, and ...," etc.)

If I might ask a favor, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could tell me the correct term for "completely overlapping" so I can use it in my post.

• Is it just "identical sets"? (I found that in one of my old math books.)

Well! First, just let me put the kettle on.

Now, don't assume that all Australians say "g'day", or have the faintest idea about "footy". I gather you mean the game played with long balls, not a stick and a hard little red ball, right? I know nothing of such matters. On the other hand, I am frequently among kangaroos, so I do fit at least one stereotype. Not dingoes: but I did look after a friend's half-dingo-half-German-shepherd for a year, while he was overseas. Looked like the one at the top of Dingo article. A really clever animal.

I suggest you review the terms at Set_theory#Basic_concepts. "Overlapping" is not among them; but I used it informally to mean "having elements in common". By such a definition, every set would overlap with itself, except that it leaves out the null set (with respect to itself alone, and to itself and any other set), which has no elements yet is a subset of every set (including itself, of course). For that reason, "overlapping" is desperately loose, and best left out of any serious continuation. For a similar but more remediable quirk, see Intersection_(set_theory)#Nullary_intersection.

If you want to say that all wild dogs are dingoes, and all dingoes are wild dogs, you can indeed say "the set of dingoes is identical to the set of wild dogs". It gets complicated when you reflect on whether you mean this as a matter of definition, or as an accidental fact. I mean, it could be that there are many wild dogs, and some of them you want to call dingoes; then all the non-dingoes die out. In that case it is just accidentally true that the sets are identical, yes? Your notation "{wild dogs} ≡ {dingoes}" then looks questionable, hmm? A lot depends on – a lot else. But I'm too tired to get into any of it.

For the rest, what can I say? I am no deep authority on set theory, nor on dingoes. I do claim expertise with punctuation: its theory, its regimentation in practice, and something of its history. If you think things need to be taken forward with this newcomer, the slash "/", I'll watch with interest and I might participate. However, with respect: I think you have extracted from me a generous slice of my attention.

I hope you, in turn, will look at the new draft (see the pale green navbox) in this section of WT:MOS. It was a long time in the making, believe me. See also the latest tranches of discussion below it (latest chapters in an epic); and watch for a final version tomorrow.

Now: milk no sugar, right?

Noetica 05:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

"TMTCFY"? new "Dashes" section & "memorable"

I'm delighted to see the new "Dashes" section progressing (it appears) in the approval/adoption process.

In your reply to one of A. di M.'s posts in the subsequent discussion, you used the abbreviation "TMTCFY". A search of 4 major online dictionaries of abbreviations, plus both a WP and a Google search, yielded no explanation of it, and I couldn't figure it out from the context. Am I missing something? (I'm not particularly fluent in that argot.)

Finally, in the section "Features of the Draft" of your "Preliminary Notes", you said, "... the principles themselves are simple and memorable." Memorable? MWC11 defines memorable as, "worth remembering : NOTABLE <a ~ occasion>." Although these rules might be "worth remembering" in one sense, I don't think they rise to the standard MWC11 intended, which IMO implies something of considerably greater significance. E.g., the day you were born was probably a memorable day to your mother; "To be or not to be, that is the question ..." is one of the most memorable lines in all of English-language literature; but "an en dash is not used for a hyphenated personal name"? Umm, not so much. It's simply of a different ilk altogether. And there are too many of them to be "easy to remember", at least for me (and my memory for grammar rules is pretty good, although quite short of yours, of course).

I'm not sure principles was the right word to use, either. Aren't they just rules? Or rationales for those rules? But I'll let that one slide for now. My prior quibble is sufficient unto the day. And now, one craves a cup of tea. – Jack --Jackftwist (talk) 18:22, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

That's “Too many things can f*** you”, innit? ― A. di M.​_plé​ 23:37, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

That seems to make sense in the context. Many thanks. Odd that it didn't show up in at least my Google search, or perhaps it was just so many pages down in the search results that I ran out of patience and/or ;-) time before I got to that entry. Jack --Jackftwist (talk) 16:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Jack, TMTCFY stands for "to make things clearer for you". I used it in answering A di M, who has a habit of using such abbreviated forms to the distress of his elders (you and me) who have no idea what he might mean by them. ITCN?

Now I turn to the word memorable. As a preliminary I should warn you (as a black-belt might in a casual skirmish): I collect dictionaries as well as style guides. I have OED and two editions of SOED installed on every computer in the house, and access to the current online version of OED, along with every major British and American dictionary, in hardcopy or some other form. Memorable, according to the current SOED, has been in English since the 15th century and has these meanings: "Worthy of remembrance or note, worth remembering, not to be forgotten; able to be remembered, easy to remember." Current OED gives this as its second sense: "2. Easy to remember, able to be remembered; memorizable." Citations include Shakespeare and Ruskin; the most recent citation is from 1991. Most American dictionaries agree, including the big brother of the one you cite above: MWNI3 (Webster's Third New International Dictionary).

As for principles, that is chosen with great care. The contents of MOS are not rules in the fullest sense, because MOS provides guidelines rather than rules of policy for the project. They are rules in a weaker sense, of course: like the rules of a game that one can play or not, or cheat at or not. But principles rules out interpretations that rules principally evokes.

I hope you are content that the issue of positive and negative examples has been addressed. There will never be agreement on the best way to distinguish them; but the matter has been taken seriously.

Finally, I'm sorry for the late reply. I was exhausted after the marathon dashes drama, and just wanted silence for a couple of weeks.

Tea next time, OK? (Could you bring a couple of muffins?)

Noetica 05:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, ITYM is a somewhat standard initialism whose meaning can be found with a simple Google search without even clicking through or scrolling down, unlike TMTCFY. Also, what my age has to do with that eludes me. I have no idea of your age or that of most other people on en.wiki I've talked to, nor do I consider that terribly relevant in most situations. ― A. di M.​_plé​ 17:02, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Well A di M, no: not terribly relevant. But AFAICS those abbreviations are far commoner among people much younger than I am, and than our joint interlocutor here is. I don't know most of them, and they are a nuisance. You have made no secret of your youth, I seem to recall; and it is more relevant as a causal factor than gender associations for "Noetica" – thoroughly distracting and annoying mentions of which were recently made at WT:MOS, with you joining in. Neither of us censures the other for these things, I trust. SLLIAT, OK? Noetica 02:39, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

A period of recuperation from your "marathon dashes drama" was well deserved, indeed. No apology necessary. I've been much occupied elsewhere lately, too, and still am.

1. The way you've indicated correct and incorrect examples in the "Dashes" section will just have to do. The ultimate success or failure of neither the WP enterprise in general nor the MoS in particular hardly rests on this matter. To paraphrase the saying about academic politics, the debates on these points are so bitter because the stakes are so small. (For a truly remarkable and egregious recent example, others might wish to see the Great Crêpes vs. Crepes Fracas, which you rescued almost singlehandedly from utter piffle through your exhaustive research and substantial contributions.)

   (For other readers: This link should be to item 13 on the Crêpe Talk page. Click "" in the medium-blue "discussion" header line to expand the box.)

2. Regarding memorable and principles: Ahem. I see. Yes. Well. Quite.
   1. I assumed from the outset that your library of dictionaries and usage guides, as well as your on-line access to them, would dwarf my meager collection, so I had absolutely no intention or desire to provoke a "dueling dictionaries" match with you. But because your reply cites the 2nd sense of "memorable" from OED, I should note that my 1971 OED edition explicitly labels that sense "rare" . Coming from OED, I took "rare" at face value. As for your reference to Shakespeare and Rushkin, such towering masters of the language can get away with using it, particularly in poetry, in ways the rest of us simply can't in ordinary discourse (e.g., WP Talk pages). If any editors on these pages have, in fact, risen to Shakespeare's or Rushkin's stellar level of literary and linguistic achievement, though, I have yet to make their acquaintance.
   2. In the end the difference between your connotation and mine in both of these cases may be simply a matter of WP:ENVAR. So, "two peoples, separated by a common language" and all that.
   3. But regardless of the merits of your rationales, my query for clarification of your usage in your original comment was in good faith, so what gives me the impression of a rather haughty, chiding tone in your reply seems somewhat ... uh ... indelicate? ... unseemly? ... perhaps a tad uncivil?
3. BTW, I thought you would have gathered from the 2 explicit references to "MWC11" in my comment above that I was already familiar with your very useful compilation of style guide and dictionary abbreviations, so you didn't need to decode "MWNI3" for me in your reply. But it's an entirely different matter with your use of (at best) obscure abbreviations like "TMTCFY"—and now "ITCN", which I don't recognize, either. (Are you just making these up as you go along? WTFO?) Besides, I rather preferred A. di M.'s interpretation of "TMTCFY"; it's clever instead of condescending.
4. Re our separate discussion above of "or dingoes", etc.: I'm still far from satisfied on that matter, but I doubt I'll ever have time to reply to your last post there. Maybe it's best for me just to let that sleeping wild dog (or dingo) lie, instead of risking getting bitch-slapped again. Time to just walk quietly away for now.

Sorry, no time for tea and muffins right now. (You'd probably just find fault with any muffins I brought, anyway.) Must dash. Ta. --Jackftwist (talk) 21:07, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I appear to come across the ‘easy to remember’ meaning of memorable more often than across the ‘worth remembering’ one, but this might be some cognitive bias due to Italian memorabile also having the latter meaning so when I see the latter I get the point of sentence without noticing the particular word used. Anyway, easy to remember is no less clear, though less concise. ― A. di M.​_plé​ 21:29, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

A di M, I think indimenticabile is an option, and it is given for memorable, along with memorabile, in the comprehensive Oxford Paravia. Like unforgettable in English. But both are inadequate: most that is easy to remember is not strictly unforgettable. The same dictionary gives only "memorable" in accounting for memorabile, and that leaves things undecided for both languages. Zanichelli's Ragazzini dictionary (2005 edition) does a little better, giving as parallels in its first definition of memorabile both "memorable" and "unforgettable", distinct from momentous in a second definition. French mémorable leans strongly toward "momentous"; Petit Robert: "Digne d'être conservé dans la mémoire des hommes. → fameux, historique, inoubliable, remarquable."

Jack, yes I made up some abbreviations. I am surprised that you interpret me as clearly treating you with disrespect. That is not intended. I hope you will forgive me if I have seemed a little short with you (though I have answered you at length here, and at great length at WT:MOS). Thanks for your notes on Talk:Crêpe. Please understand that the crêpe adventure, the many-month saga over dashes (have you reviewed the prelude phases?), and present disturbances at WT:MOS like Enric Naval's distortions of history – all of those are a huge drain on my time. There is a big picture here, concerning veracity, due process, and maintenance of established protocols on Misplaced Pages. I cannot do justice to every issue I see as peripheral, but you will have to concede that I try.

Best wishes as ever.

Noetica 02:39, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, bilingual dictionaries are sometimes very frustrating. The Oxford Paravia says “ memorabile; indimenticabile” which is quite right (OK, literally indimenticabile would be “impossible to forget”, but it's often used in a hyperbolic way), but useless in deciding how to translate memorable password or memorable rules. Actually, I'd just say facile da ricordare, or if I really needed it to be one word I might coin ricordabile and put it in scare quotes because I don't think it's a standard word. ― A. di M.​_plé​ 11:09, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Although sometimes bilingual dictionaries can get us out of a semantic circularity. Ricordabile certainly exists in dictionaries, like this big one online. The text of the entry:

non com. Che si può ricordare
‖ Da ricordarsi, degno di essere ricordato: avvenimenti ricordabili
‖ SIN. memorabile

Hmmm. "Degno ..."; but before that, effectively "suscettibile di essere ricordato", which expression occurs in print of course; and ricordabile gets 402 genuine Google hits in books, many in the "suscettibile" sense. Memorabile in the dictionary excerpted just now:

Degno di memoria: un evento m.; un uomo m.
‖ estens. Tale da essere ricordato per la sua eccezionalità: una vittoria, una sconfitta m.

Note observe and remark (along with remarkable, but not observable) for similar bivalence. Finally, recallable sounds noncelike in English but is dated by OED from 1657, with the definition "That can be recalled" (= "Che si può ricordare"), and not marked as rare.

Noetica 23:25, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

park names

I'll have to dig up the discussion. I thought I already posted the links. Smith River Falls – Fort Halkett Provincial Park is another one. Someone went through and dashed a bunch of BC names, there was a big fight over it, we got official BC govt docs to show they were all hyphenated—or almost all. There were a few with dashes, and those remain dashed. — kwami (talk) 11:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_119#Official_refs_for_hyphen.2Fdash_for_BC_placenames and at Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot_Regional_District. Some like Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission use em dashes rather than spaced en dashes. — kwami (talk) 11:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been finding a lot of articles where titles and secondary titles of refs are separated by a spaced hyphen/dash. I would think they'd be colons. Is that s.t. we want to recommend, colon rather than dash? The syntax of the Nilotic languages: Themes and variations rather than The syntax of the Nilotic languages – Themes and variations. — kwami (talk) 06:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Kwami, I'm sorry for the late reply. I have wanted little to do with Misplaced Pages after the long drawn-out task of settling a draft under ArbCom instructions.

Now, I don't say that those Canadian authorities are irrelevant in considering what should be done in Misplaced Pages articles (especially titles). So far I do not find the hard evidence that the spaced en dash is consistent official usage in the the cases you cite, assuming that we can even make sense of "official usage". What is abundantly clear is that there is a "dominant convention" for names of places – and other proper names like McGraw-Hill, on account of which A di M has rightly amended the MOS guideline. As elsewhere (in the quest for a robust, workable approximation to full consensus), I chose the wording with great care: "By default, follow the dominant convention that a hyphen is used ...". "By default" allows some judicious flexibility; but it would be a bad move to articulate things further. The present guideline for en dashes settles almost all disputes over dash-versus-hyphen in advance; or at least it provides a fall-back, long-discussed consensual preference as a point d'appui. We should guard that carefully, against those few who prefer to argue every damn point from first principles at every wretched outpost of the Project, with endless duplication and no centralised register of practice or precedent.

As for colons rather than dashes, already the revised guideline has this at the very start: "Dashes are often used to mark divisions within a sentence: in pairs (parenthetical dashes, instead of parentheses or pairs of commas); or singly (perhaps instead of a colon)." The case you adduce is like that, isn't it? I think a colon is better there, but a sentence-level dash (em dash, or spaced en dash) is a plausible option. I prefer the colon because it is an established standard for titles; or, to put the matter differently, to separate title from subtitle. Hmmm ... yes, I would support an addition to exclude all em dashes in titles (so reducing conflicts), and therefore also spaced en dashes qua alternatives to em dashes in titles. Colon is better. But please: can we hold off on this, and let the present changes be digested first?

Noetica 06:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The sources were official enough to convince those fighting to abolish dashes from BC place names. We had govt. officials explain this was exactly what they intended, and that the punctuation was part of the official names.

I'm concerned about edit wars over legitimately dashed place names using the current MOS as a deciding factor. I think we should remove Austria-Hungary as an example, because we shouldn't prejudice future discussions there. ("It's even an example in the MOS. It must have a hyphen.") It's not the case that Austria-Hungary is hyphenated in conventions that use dashes, and IMO it is irresponsible of us to suggest it is. I know I said this was a good example earlier, but since then I've looked into it more carefully. Austria–Hungary may be dashed as a dual monarchy just as Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is, and for two years the WP article was stable with a dash. I'm aware of four such dual states in WP articles, two currently hyphenated and two dashed. I therefore don't think we should present either option as the default, esp. since hyphens go against normal dashing conventions. (Apart from hyphenating or not even punctuating familiar phrases.)

As for dashes vs. colons, they mean opposite things. A colon introduces an explanation, whereas a dash summarizes. From a style guide I picked up a while ago:

These are the colors of the flag: red, white, and blue.

Red, white, and blue—these are the colors of the flag.

Yeah, I hear you about wanting to drop out. I've been paying only peripheral attention recently. — kwami (talk) 06:47, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

In the park mentioned above, it's just the usual case of something named for two entities (likely two communities it serves, or something like that), so logically gets an en dash. Most sources that I see use a spaced hyphen, because an unspaced hyphen binds too tightly and they don't know how to use en dashes. If the official is en dash, that's great. That leaves the spacing issue. The spaces would be more common in Brit style; but in WP style we don't call for them at present, though we did before. Let's see if we're happy settling out there. In summary, it's not much to do with em dash, colon, official usage, or subtitles. Dicklyon (talk) 15:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

En dash question

Re this: are you saying that some style guides that accept the en-dash for the prefix situation explicitly reject it for the suffix situation? Or are they just silent about the suffix situation if they accept the prefix situation? I find it difficult to believe that any style guide would purposefully treat the two situations differently. Good Ol’factory 06:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, GO. Welcome! I hope you don't mind that I altered the heading to make it more informative.

The matter of en dash versus hyphen is extremely vexed in those cases you raise. Terminology is all over the place, for a start. You spoke of suffixes in your edit at WP:MOS, and because I was constrained in my edit summary I simply followed that. But your example was Boxing Day–only sale. Is only a suffix? It seems to be an adverb, modifying Boxing Day as a modifier of sale. Compare a candidate usage involving a true suffix like -ward: we drove New York–ward.

That aside (and I'll stick with a loose sense of suffix), the guides are extremely uneven in their treatment of any sort of spaced compound that joins with another element, whether "prefix" or "suffix". Some do only mention prefixes for such cases. Ready to hand is Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors (MWM; see "Style guides and other resources" at the top of this page), which at ¶48 of its treatment of compounds (p. 77) provides that:

If a prefix is added to an open compound, the hyphen is often replaced with an en dash in typeset material.

No mention there of suffixes, proper or improper. At ¶58 we find a distinction between open compound with a hyphen before a suffix (a Red Cross-like approach, a New York-wide policy) and with no hyphen, but written solid (middle-of-the-roadism, bobby-soxer).

NHR similarly notes the usage post–World War I period in "US style" (3.3.4); but it makes no such note in the section dealing with suffixes (3.3.5). CGEU makes explicit provision for prefixes (quasi–open government policy; p. 140), but nothing parallel for suffixes.

Those are all major guides. There are others that deal equally with prefixes and suffixes, like CMOS16 which is equally cautious for both and prefers rewriting.

In sum, the dash poll showed a great deal of division on this matter. What led to that whole saga was the need to find the most consensual single provision, to avoid as many scattered and replicated RM disputes throughout the Project as possible. With the greatest difficulty I found a single provision that allowed for en dash with a prefix – one that kept it to a minimum, and strongly favoured rewriting. Since the suffix case was hardly discussed at all, and not presented for voting, and favoured by fewer major guides, it seemed reasonable not to make a provision for it. I suggest you raise the matter at WT:MOS, though. There may be a need to give the suffix cases some grudging acceptance. I will argue strongly against optionality; and indeed, I will argue that the en dash is not necessary to make things clear except in extremely rare cases, even for prefixes. Capital letters hold the open compound together; and when there are no capitals, the open compound can be bridged with a hyphen (country music, but she was country-music-proof, and could only enjoy Mozart).

Tea next time? Noetica 12:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you—that is a very helpful and informative answer. It's true, my precise terminology is somewhat off, since I'm a relative novice in the minutiae of style guiding, but I do try. I have no problem with your reverting my additions; I had assumed they were comparable cases covered by the same rule (or at least the same logic) but see that it does need to be dealt with separately at least in these initial stages. Whether or not it can be covered by the same point in the MOS is another issue. (I don't mind at all about the header change.) Good Ol’factory 01:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Google tutorial

I saw your contributions to Talk:Crêpe, and I request that you write a tutorial on using Google search result numbers. Many of us, including me, could benefit from such a tutorial.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:25, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

O Wavelength! I should, and probably will when I have the time. There are many things on Misplaced Pages that I want to follow up; and I must not ignore approaches from Wikifriends. Forgive me for my preoccupation with other matters.

Noetica 01:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I understand your situation, because many things on Misplaced Pages compete for my attention, also. If you make a copy of it in project namespace, it can be reciprocally linked with Misplaced Pages:Search engine test.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:28, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Pmanderson and Arbcom

Hi. As I'm sure you know, you were named by Pmanderson recently on my talk page as one of a party of editors with whom he has some protracted conflict. Subsequent to discussion of that conversation at AN/I, I have decided to file a case with ArbCom to address issues that I'm not sure AN/I is capable of dealing with. Because you were mentioned in the post that started this particular grass fire, I'm thinking of you as a primary candidate to list as a party to the arbitration.

Are you okay with that? -GTBacchus 06:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Bacchus, proceedings at ArbCom are long and arduous. I have kept away from them as much as I could. While I have not the slightest fear for my own situation, the time and effort involved make entanglement with ArbCom a last resort, and one that is not necessary in the present WP:ANI case over PMAnderson's behaviour.

I hope that the common-denominator preference will be put into effect: an enduring ban for him, from WP:MOS and associated areas.

You're very welcome at my talkpage. Stay for tea next time? (Bring Stroopwafels.)

Noetica 23:24, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Ampersand in article title

Hi Noetica, I see you have good insight in WP:MOS. A question on the use of ampersand in article titles. As long as "&" is not hard-coded in the name like AT&T, is it right that the preference is than to change "&" into "and" for article titles? I see sometimes the mix of "&" used in the logo's and the marketing names, but "and" is used in the official name of the organization. In this case my suggestion would be: article name with "and" and creating also a redirect with the name using "&". Is this a correct understanding? -- SchreyP 12:35, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Schreyp: I think you have it pretty well right. Many sources freely substitute "and" for "&" in catalogues, databases, and other listings where that species of "alphabetic" uniformity is desirable. Amazon often does that for book titles. But Misplaced Pages article titles are different. They must follow the sources more closely, and not be distracted by logos and the like. Often the ampersand is a feature of a logo's design; but logos are not names. We need to go to the accurate source itself, rather than believe intermediaries like Amazon (and Google in other ways) that distort the original form. Redirects? The more of those, the better.

I hope that helps.

Noetica 23:42, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the confirmation of my understanding. It is not that clear from MOS:&. -- SchreyP 09:34, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you raised your concern, SchreyP. Perhaps the wording in WP:MOS needs some fine tuning. I'll look into that. Noetica 22:59, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Friction and MoS

Some thoughts on what you said at ANI: "Friction accompanies every manual of style". That's, interesting... In my experience, in a professional environment people have a fixed manual of style (changing slightly through different editions, and I'm sure behind the scenes there are some arguments by the editors of such publications, but surely nothing to match what we see here?) and stick with it, adapting their writing to the different publications they write for that have different style requirements.

It is the constant shifting and changing of Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style that arguably causes problems, as writers on Misplaced Pages are forced to constantly shift and change with it (or have scripts run to achieve consistency). The content of Misplaced Pages should be a work-in-progress, but why should the manual of style similarly be a never-ending work-in-progress? That's no way to write an encyclopedia. I skimmed WT:MOS recently and noticed this: "We are rarely dealing with a controversy between professional style and crappy style; we are dealing with points on which there are several professional styles". Letting arguments over different professional styles cause instability in the end product (what the reader sees) is, ironically, unprofessional.

I remain convinced that if there was a proper community-wide RfC on the Manual of Style (not some small aspect of it, which most people ignored), the results (if the right questions were asked) might surprise some commenting here. I don't think there has ever even been a basic discussion of the principles underlying a manual of style and how those principles work in an open-editing environment - the assumption has always been that an manual of style is needed and that the people active there are shaping it in a way that best suits the needs of the encyclopedia as a whole (which is different from attempting to attain some perfect Manual of Style, or arguing for the individual aspects of style that an individual editor prefers).

I see from the banner at the top of your talk page that you see yourself as specialising in MoS issues, and I've often admired the sheer knowledge you bring to such issues, but I sometimes worry that there is a danger of things becoming too esoteric. Most people writing here just want some simple guidance, with some brief explanation if they are not quite sure what the reason for something is. Those wanting in-depth discussion of manuals of style, or to discuss different manuals of style, might be better served by one of the many internet fora that exist to discuss such things, rather than discussing them on Misplaced Pages. If you've ever seen the Misplaced Pages:Reference Desk, that has at times teetered between being a useful adjunct to Misplaced Pages and a distraction. Is it possible that WP:MOS teeters between being a reference desk for MOS issues and a useful guide to Misplaced Pages editors? And given the open-editing nature of Misplaced Pages, is a stable Manual of Style ever possible? Carcharoth (talk) 23:10, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Carcharoth, please see User:Noetica/Archive5 (sections 1–6, and 13)

and User:Wavelength/Miscellaneous information/Discussions.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:53, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Carcharoth. (And Wavelength: good to see you here, as always.) We agree on a great deal of this, at least. Some responses:

"It is the constant shifting and changing of Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style that arguably causes problems, as writers on Misplaced Pages are forced to constantly shift and change with it (or have scripts run to achieve consistency)."

Absolutely! The churning of content at WP:MOS has been a genuine problem, though not so much in recent times. I'm all for stability, after hard-won consensus through wide consultation and calm discussion of the options. The recently concluded dash-and-hyphen epic, though, confirmed that this had already been achieved rather well. The relevant guideline, WP:DASH, is now much better expressed – but the content is very little altered. Changes in the expression can themselves be a nuisance; but that's a much smaller problem.

"Letting arguments over different professional styles cause instability in the end product (what the reader sees) is, ironically, unprofessional."

Sure! My own approach? I avidly collect manuals of style, dictionaries, and related material in print or on CD-ROMs, and subscribe to online sources; I read, study, and consult these, and bring the results of my analysis to WT:MOS. Not everyone does that, and this is an area where everyone is an expert. It's unhelpful when people hold forth on the most difficult points of style after a quick Google search fortifies their unexamined opinions. But that's Misplaced Pages, and that's opinion on style.

"I remain convinced that if there was a proper community-wide RfC on the Manual of Style (not some small aspect of it, which most people ignored), the results (if the right questions were asked) might surprise some commenting here."

I'm all in favour of that. As I say at present WP:ANI case over PMAnderson's behaviour, WT:MOS really does welcome wide community involvement, despite the rhetoric about cliques and cabals. The dash saga was wonderful in that way at least. But one thing at a time; and let's keep present behavioural issues separate from this larger topic. "Might surprise"? I agree. I predict there would be landslide support for a Manual that actually guides, as the present version does admirably well. Those who support MOS do not shout their support from the rooftops; a few who are politically against it do so incessantly. Sustained and balanced consideration would be great.

"... but I sometimes worry that there is a danger of things becoming too esoteric. Most people writing here just want some simple guidance, with some brief explanation if they are not quite sure what the reason for something is."

Yes, again. The analytical work behind the scenes can be esoteric and exhausting, but the result has to be lucid and simple. I am a strong advocate of "singular" guidelines that settle on one recommendation, after consideration of all options. (See how WP:DASH achieves that in almost every respect that affects titles; a great achievement, and one that will dramatically diminish wrangling at contested RMs.) The complexity behind the scenes should stay behind the scenes. Unfortunately (and not naming him here would be artificial), editors like PMAnderson have abused the brevity of some guidelines at RMs and the like. That's what sparked the whole Mexican~American War saga. That's one reason for some of the complexity in guidelines. MOS editors talk constantly about how to solve this. There is hope, on a couple of fronts.

"Is it possible that WP:MOS teeters between being a reference desk for MOS issues and a useful guide to Misplaced Pages editors? And given the open-editing nature of Misplaced Pages, is a stable Manual of Style ever possible?"

I am familiar with the reference desk, and was once a regular at the Language desk. Funny you should raise this. WT:MOS has served as an advice service for Misplaced Pages style issues; but given the personalities involved this has not been conducted well. See a fine example from earlier this year. (We might get some relief soon.) But I think the community should eventually consider a separate desk, parallel to Language and the others, dedicated to style issues, naming issues, and everything related. The existing talkpages are not well suited. But it would be a bit of a bunfight, don't you think? Best set aside for now.

Is a stable Manual of Style ever possible? Some of us work hard to approximate one. But as you suggest, given the nature of the Project it can only ever be a dynamic equilibrium. Well, better dynamic than dead! And once again, I challenge anyone to show us a more comprehensive, more considered, more realistic, guide to best-practice style for collaborative web use. Anywhere. On many points, MOS holds up brilliantly against major guides in print – a tribute to the Wikipedian way, and some reward for the immense effort that goes into its development.

Noetica 00:43, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I fear we may agree less than you think. At least on the way forward. At the links Wavelength provided, I saw: In what respects and to what extent should there be flexibility, and by what means should it be controlled? and In what respects and to what extent should there be stability, and by what means should it be controlled? I think the key misunderstanding there is desiring to control things. Constrain would be a better word. See also Misplaced Pages:Consensus can change. One of the things people often misunderstand about consensus is that they think there is a need to build in mechanisms to avoid later change (i.e. ensure stability), when in fact things should be left so that they can change in future. I read through this section and the one that followed it, and it looks like that was inconclusive to me (not helped by some overly formal language 'putative extinctions of consensus'? and use of dictionary definitions - if you have to resort to a dictionary to explain something, it means the discussion has become too esoteric).

My view is that consensus has to be current - you can't point to discussions from years ago and claim current consensus from that, no matter if the aim of such a claim is to maintain 'a robust, stable, and enlightened Manual of Style' ('enlightened' is a tad evangelical). Consensus can change regardless of what the current Manual of Style says, and is based on actual practice by current editors, not past discussions that may be from years ago. The Manual of Style tries to prescribe consensus, rather than document it, and that is the inherent tension that comes when trying to document consensus for a document that seeks to prescribe.

I'll also expand here on what I just said elsewhere: "I have deep misgivings about the immense work being put into building up a Manual of Style that may one day come crashing down under its own weight (my view is that a simpler MoS is needed, not a more complicated one that becomes increasingly inaccessible to all except those best-versed in its intricacies)." It is a laudable goal to aim for "more comprehensive, more considered, more realistic, guide to best-practice style for collaborative web use. Anywhere. On many points, MOS holds up brilliantly against major guides in print". But that is an unsustainable goal in an open-editing environment. The current editors of the Manual of Style won't be around forever, and large edifices built up like this eventually disintegrate when no-one is left to maintain them.

If you do want to bring together the best practices of a variety of style guides, I would urge that you initiate a wide-ranging discussion about what the current community of editors (that is editors of articles, not editors of the manual of style) want from a manual of style. Not small isolated discussions on obscure aspects. Ask whether editors want exact guidance, or a range of options (i.e. more flexibility). Ask whether people refer constantly to the manual of style, or only when they are unsure of themselves, or whether they largely ignore it. Ask whether they leave it to others to tidy things up, or whether they try and teach themselves how to follow Misplaced Pages's MoS. Ask how the manual of style can be improved, and whether people want a large and complicated MoS or a stripped down simple one (or even both, if that is possible). Also, the summaries at WP:MOS are frequently not consistent with the subpages, which is annoying.

And also try and see how things work in practice. Is the MoS used as guidance for editors, or is it used as a rulebook while tweaking lots of articles with scripts and bots? Is it used to educate editors, or as a way to enforce a style with minimal discussion? And also consider the reactions of new editors when they first encounter MoS guidance and first try and read WP:MoS. I suspect some dive right in and are enthralled by it, while others quail before it (I would put prominent wording up front pointing new editors to a simplified page). Essentially, I think that limits need to be placed on the Manual of Style, and that it needs to be kept as accessible as possible, and as maintainable as possible without a need for 'esoteric and exhausting analytical work behind the scenes'. In the latter situation, you either have discussion concentrated in the hands of a few (with the sources and time to carry out this analytical work), or ongoing conflicts between those that disagree about the fundamental approach needed here. Carcharoth (talk) 13:57, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Carcharoth, thanks for your continued attention to some important issues, which really do need to be pursued elsewhere with more voices heard. Some responses, again:

"I fear we may agree less than you think. At least on the way forward."

Don't assume my disagreement with the points you have made, or will make. There are competing principles, and many questions here are to be resolved practically by compromise: greys, not black and white. That's Misplaced Pages, right? I can accord weight to points on one side and on the other.

"At the links Wavelength provided, I saw: In what respects and to what extent should there be flexibility, ..."

Yes, those words occur; but you did not provide a link and you did not reveal that those were Wavelength's own words from 2009. I tracked them down here, in a section Wavelength started with the heading "Designing a system for establishing and recording consensus decisions" (a very worthwhile goal, don't you agree?). Some context might be useful. Apart from the broader setting (well worth exploring also), here is the list of propositions and questions that Wavelength submitted for consideration, in full:

Flexibility is important for when there is a need for change.
Stability is important for when there is a need for keeping the status quo.
In what respects and to what extent should there be flexibility, and by what means should it be controlled?
In what respects and to what extent should there be stability, and by what means should it be controlled?
If an editor (new or old) raises an old issue, we can save time by consulting a record of consensus decisions. If he or she mentions a new perspective on an old issue, there can be a new discussion.
Who wants to work for an employer who changes the rules every week?
Who wants to work for a capricious customer who changes his decision every five minutes?
...
Who wants to rely on a reference book (for example, a dictionary, a cookbook, or a train schedule) whose inkprints reassemble themselves during the night to spell out new instructions?

Lest anyone think something sinister was afoot. ☺

"I think the key misunderstanding there is desiring to control things. Constrain would be a better word. See also Misplaced Pages:Consensus can change."

Do you think so? The context was recording consensus, and taking note of changes in direction, in a churning sea of discussion. Would you take the man at the rudder to task for wanting to steer a course? You diagnose a "key misunderstanding"? I don't.

"One of the things people often misunderstand about consensus is that they think there is a need to build in mechanisms to avoid later change (i.e. ensure stability), when in fact things should be left so that they can change in future."

Why think that this insight was lacking, in those long deliberations? Anyway, I remind you of what you wrote above: "It is the constant shifting and changing of Misplaced Pages's Manual of Style that arguably causes problems The content of Misplaced Pages should be a work-in-progress, but why should the manual of style similarly be a never-ending work-in-progress?" So when you have a perfect solution to the complex nest of issues that you recapitulate from WT:MOS, and a reconciliation of the irreconcilable, do please post it there to the benefit of the Project. (Also let us know when you have quantum theory and general relativity harmonised. We'd like that too.)

"... not helped by some overly formal language 'putative extinctions of consensus'? and use of dictionary definitions ..."

You might help out here. I seem to recall some exploration of consensus in dictionaries, sometime; but I can't immediately see appeals to dictionary definitions in that discussion – only on other matters in the same archive. You'd want discussions of language and style to refer to dictionaries, wouldn't you? And let me assure you: use of "putative" presents no difficulty at WT:MOS, any more more than your use of "laudable" (see an excerpt below). I'm sure you don't want to control my use of language, any more than I want to constrain yours.

"My view is that consensus has to be current ..."

Nu? You also point to problems caused by "constant shifting and changing".

"It is a laudable goal to aim for "more comprehensive, more considered, more realistic, guide to best-practice style for collaborative web use. Anywhere. On many points, MOS holds up brilliantly against major guides in print". But that is an unsustainable goal in an open-editing environment. ..."

Ah, but that is no mere "goal", unsustainable or otherwise. It is an actuality. Take the challenge: show me a better one. And miraculously, it has been achieved in an open-editing environment. Takes hard work, by many editors.

"... The current editors of the Manual of Style won't be around forever, and large edifices built up like this eventually disintegrate when no-one is left to maintain them."

And your point?

"If you do want to bring together the best practices of a variety of style guides, I would urge that you initiate a wide-ranging discussion about what the current community of editors (that is editors of articles, not editors of the manual of style) want from a manual of style. Not small isolated discussions on obscure aspects. Ask whether editors want Also, the summaries at WP:MOS are frequently not consistent with the subpages, which is annoying."

Here you raise problems that are of perennial concern at WT:MOS, as recorded in its 125 very large archives. You would urge me, or "us"? I would urge you! WP:MOS belongs to no one in particular, and is the community's resource. I donate my skills there more than anywhere else, and others are dedicated also. I'm sure editors frequenting that page would welcome any genuine help from newcomers, just as they were delighted to have wide input from the community concerning dashes and hyphens recently. Bring it on: in orderly and collegial fashion, respecting the community's need for a stable Manual of Style, of which you remind us above.

"And also try and see how things work in practice."

And try not to lecture me, as if you are somehow streets ahead on all this. I for one am constantly concerned with what works in practice.

"Essentially, I think that limits need to be placed on the Manual of Style, and that it needs to be kept as accessible as possible, and as maintainable as possible without a need for 'esoteric and exhausting analytical work behind the scenes'. In the latter situation, you either have discussion concentrated in the hands of a few (with the sources and time to carry out this analytical work), or ongoing conflicts between those that disagree about the fundamental approach needed here."

Of course there must be "limits" on the Manual of Style. There are already, and they are of many sorts. For a start, it has status as a Misplaced Pages guideline, not Misplaced Pages policy. You quote my word "esoteric", which I in fact quoted from you (see your first post above). You might also quote my continuation: "... but the result has to be lucid and simple." People assume that recommendations toward consistent style must be an easy matter, because everyone writes, yes? But it is not like that. We are all made of subatomic particles, and our lives might ultimately be reducible to their movements and interactions. That sort of intimate connexion does not make for understanding of nuclear physics. We all write: but not every writer is a skilled copyeditor, and not every skilled copyeditor is a skilled distiller of consensual recommendations for style. You want those editing MOS to read the sources and discuss them, or not? Many of the sources are "esoteric" and forbidding. That's not anyone's fault, it's the just the way of things. But dialogue at WT:MOS should not generally be forbidding. It is not! I say to all editors: Come along, with an open mind. You may teach something – and you may certainly also learn something. I do, all the time.

Noetica 22:50, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Leaving a brief note here to apologise for not being around last week (you asked me to strike part of what I said at that discussion, which has now closed, so I'm posting here instead). The above discussion was interesting. Maybe we can continue it another time when it is clearer what the function of the MoS should or shouldn't be. Presently, one of my over-riding concerns is whether the MoS has become a 'belief system' for some. Other concerns centre on plans for 'harmonisation' that involve mass script- and bot-editing of literally all Misplaced Pages articles. My view is that this goal, while it might seem laudable, actually destabilises things as a critical mass of editors previously unaware of any issue get drawn into arguing about it when they see bot or script edits on their watchlist. Anyway, I should leave this discussion until I have more time, but I am about to make the same argument in a few other places, so feel free to respond there or here. Carcharoth (talk) 23:49, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

example of en dash in non-tech book

Hi Noetica,

I thought this was an interesting example:

For reasons that I, as a non–native islander, can never fully understand, the Library Fair is an unspoken homecoming day

—Mike Brown, How I Killed Pluto, accompanying his wife back to her home-town island

Clearly meant to distinguish one who is not a native islander from an islander who is non-native. Maybe even a good example for the MOS. — kwami (talk) 05:27, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

A great find, Kwami. A Google search turns up nothing similar with those components ("non native islander"). I'll look into this further when I have time. A few of us who normally attend to MOS matters have had our attention diverted to WP:ANI, at this section. Noetica 23:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I always thought it's best to use examples from existing texts, when possible, rather than making ones up. Wiktionary, for example: some of the illustrative examples are absolutely horrid. Even with the style guides we've used for sources at MOS, some people have commented that many of the examples are things that no-one is likely to ever use.

As for Anderson ANI, well, have you ever been given castor oil? I've been avoiding it, but suppose I should see what nonsense he's claiming now. — kwami (talk) 05:14, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Television, human values, and Misplaced Pages

It has been reported that television is now teaching children to value fame foremost, whereas benevolence is being devalued. Please see Popular TV shows teach children fame is most important value, UCLA psychologists report / UCLA Newsroom. You can imagine the values that (some) young people bring with them when they edit Misplaced Pages. (People of all ages are impressionable, but children especially so.)
—Wavelength (talk) 17:06, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Wavelength. Interesting reading. The punctuation of "popular with 9- to 11-year-olds" is incidentally worth noting. By a mechanical application of certain principles it might be judged unsound; but I support it.

Noetica 08:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Posthumous

Hi, could we have your advice? This and this. Tony (talk) 07:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Done ☺. Noetica 08:32, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The box at the top of your user talk page

The absolute positioning causes “wrong” layout in page diffs, at least on my browser (the box overlaps the diff text, and there is a large amount of whitespace before the rest of the page). This could be solved by removing the <div style="right: 0em; position: absolute; top: +0em; center: +0em; "> at its beginning and the </div> at its end and removing the margin-top: 18em in the navbox below. ― A. di M.​_plé​ 11:57, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Grazie mille. I don't understand all of those details, but I did what you suggested and I have no problem with the result. One day I'll learn these things systematically. Noetica 01:33, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

No prob... (Just curious, though: why had you put that mark-up there in the first place?) ― A. di M.​_plé​ 17:07, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I think I just copied it from somewhere, and fiddled the details montecarlically rather than with any deep understanding. Heuristically, saving the algorithmic rigour for more weighty matters. Noetica 04:43, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Capitalitis spreading

Hi, I see you chimed in at Officer of the Deck (oh, that Deck). Capitalising job-names seems to be a sleeping giant at WP, and I note that we have a long-established house style at WP:CAPS not to do this, or we'll end up with Garbage Collectors. And in some areas, such as IT, management, and business, the disease has spread to the initial uppercasing of Example and Business in the middle of sentences, can you believe. Thx. Tony (talk) 02:21, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It's a shlepping giant, and it needs straightening up. So many RMs are to do with caps, which are the "new hyphen-en dash problem". We're going to need a systematic solution. Noetica 03:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

dash example

Just came across "the Italians built a World War I–style fort in El Tag in the mid-1930s". With a hyphen, I found I couldn't immediately parse it. — kwami (talk) 05:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I thought you meant in an external source. But I see that you changed it in a WP article. Yes, there will always be problem cases. Also, pi is irrational. Nothing much can be done about it. Hey, look at these cases, from a Googlebooks search on "post World War II style": , , , . Thought you'd like those ones.

Meanwhile, see the RM at Talk:An Post–Sean Kelly‎.

Noetica 03:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it wasn't a problem, just a good example of where I thought an en dash improved legibility.

And yes, the "post-WWII-style" examples are amusing! — kwami (talk) 03:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

But there is a problem. You are inclined one way in all this – a predominantly American way, which others find quite unnatural and which might have them trying to parse the construction with a sentence-level dash. Accommodating one set of expectations thwarts another set. Anyway, the examples I linked to show that sooner or later we inevitably strike constructions for which no one has any complete guidelines. How would you punctuate "a post World War II style house"? On what principles? Here are some rational options, choosing this logical structure from among the options: {a }:

• a post–World War II–style house

• a post World War II–style house

• a post-World-War-II-style house

• a post–World-War-II style house

Still hoping for a rational pi (or certainty that γ is transcendental)? You might object that the first punctuation here (two en dashes) is indeed covered. But no. With the assumed logical structure, the second en dash is applied to an en-dashed construction (sic). Is that covered anywhere? I seem to recall one guide that might want it (at least with the higher-level en dash at the left); but I'm pretty sure it does not give an instance that has internal spaces. I'll check.

By the way, how's your Akkadian?

Noetica 06:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It seems clear enough to me. You'd write "a post-war-style house". With spacing, the hyphens become dashes. I don't know if that's American, but the last I checked it was in the MOS. I don't see anything complicated about it.

No Akkadian.

BTW, you might want to check one- to six-star rank. We have an editor who says it goes against "reality" to hyphenate or spell out the numbers, though a search of GBooks shows that 90% of sources, including military sources, do just that. Since there are hundreds of articles that link to each of those, the formatting there has non-local effects. — kwami (talk) 23:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Come now, we both know that doesn't work. Don't change the example to avoid the difficulty. Anyone can do that! As we tell the reflex-rewording advocates, rewording is not always an option – in transcribing spoken English, for example; or to match parallel structures in a sequence. Heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago (Australian ABC local radio):

"There was a near~fatal~railway~accident ..."

In fact, there was no railway accident. There nearly was one, and it would have been fatal. How do you write it down? The structure (to use my earlier trick) is {a }, ugye? One normal solution:

"There was a near fatal railway accident ..."

Of course this works; but it relies on firm shared understandings of hyphens, en dashes, and their absences. This solution may easily be read as a catachrestic variant of:

"There was a near-fatal railway accident ..."

The speaker actually seemed aware of the difficulty, and paused emphatically between near and fatal. But such a pause cannot be represented with the resources of standard punctuation.

You do not answer the specifics of my objection to "a post–World War II–style house". "With spaces" doesn't cover it. What would be the rule that delivers that solution for that construction, as distinct from closely related other constructions?

No Akkadian here either; but I've taken to browsing through things like this fabulous little dictionary, which I self-indulgently picked up from Amazon. Great to track the roots internally, and to compare them with the little that I know of Arabic and Hebrew roots. A few more decades would be useful – to pursue in depth, not peruse in doubt. O, and I recommend Complete Babylonian: A Teach Yourself Guide. That series has evolved beautifully. When I was little, the Teach Yourself series lacked even Hungarian; but look at it now.

I'll investigate the star-rank matter.

Noetica 23:30, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Um, I didn't change the example. I simplified the structure to illustrate the construction contained in the example. The solution is simple, unless I'm missing something: just as you change the hyphen to a dash when going from "pre-war era" to "pre–World War II era", so you would change the hyphens to dashes going from "a post-war-style house", following basic hyphenation rules, to "a post–World War II–style house". I fail to see any relevant difference.

If "a near~fatal~railway~accident" isn't an accident, then it is ungrammatical in my variety of English, and you can't make something ungrammatical grammatical just by hyphenating it. "A near-fatal railway accident" is the only reading that makes any sense to me. If it was only nearly an accident, then we would need to say that it was nearly an accident: "There nearly was / was nearly a fatal railway accident". If it's a quote and we can't change the wording, we add , just as we would for any infelicitous quotation. — kwami (talk) 01:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You did change the example. "A post~war~style house" removes a relevant element from "a post~World~War~II~style house". There are MOS rules (at WP:HYPHEN) to cover the first, yielding your "a post-war-style house". There are no MOS rules to cover the second in a way that will yield "a post–World War II–style house". The nearest current rule calls for an en dash "instead of a hyphen, when applying a prefix to a compound that includes a space". That would give us the first en dash, but not the second. I know you think the rule should be different, and I know how you would want it, for the easier cases like "a World War II–style house". Please articulate the exact rule you would have for the present more complex case, and also for "a quasi~post~World~War~II~style house", and others that might turn up. We can't cover everything that people actually say. We have to admit that punctuation is a limited toolkit.

Now, you write:

If "a near~fatal~railway~accident" isn't an accident, then it is ungrammatical in my variety of English, and you can't make something ungrammatical grammatical just by hyphenating it.

What? You must then think that "a near accident" is ungrammatical. But a Googlebooks search yields 405 genuine hits. "Near collision" (408 Googlebooks hits) is in the current OED under "near". There are also "near victories", "near failures", "near wins", "near losses", ... none of which are victories, failures, wins, or losses simpliciter. The privative use of near is well-founded, though it is not to be confused with the usage in "near miss". A near miss is indeed a miss tout court. (OED confuses the two senses. I must email them about that.) I would actually transcribe what I heard on the radio with "a near fatal railway accident", even though some writers have a hyphen in "a near-accident" (see my Googlebooks search, above). I would be uncomfortable with "a near~fatal~railway~accident story", but I would render it like this:

a "near fatal railway accident" story

And you?

Noetica 23:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

If a "near fatal railway accident" means a "nearly fatal railway accident", then I am inclined to render it as a "near fatal railway accident” (as in a "near fatal railway accident” story), with the gloss ly in square brackets. A fatal railway accident which happens near a specific place of reference can be a "near fatal railway accident".

—Wavelength (talk) 00:27, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Fine, Wavelength. I would favour simply "near-fatal railway accident", if that is what is clearly meant. By the way, I am a little surprised at your use of which in your last sentence. I thought you were among those of us who distinguish which and that in relative constructions. No matter! Noetica 01:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

For the first (disregarding the idiocy of treating prefixes differently than suffixes), "style" isn't a suffix, it's an element of a compound. We explain the "prefix" thing as being because the do not have an independent existence (just like suffixes), which is not the case for "style". I see that we no longer cover that in the MOS, but that of course is an inadequacy of the current MOS. Since the MOS doesn't cover it, we'd need to use basic common sense in extending the MOS to cover a parallel situation.

Now you're changing the wording. "A near accident" is not a valid parallel. In the "near X" construction, the X is AFAIK always a word. Inserting an attributive between "near" and X doesn't work. A "near railway accident", for example, could only be understood (in my idiolect, at least) as a slightly dysfluent "nearby railway accident". And since "near-fatal" is itself a lexicalized expression, that reading overrides any sense that it could be dysfluent for something else. At least, I cant' think of anything you can put between the "near" and X, though there may be a small set of items.

It actually would be an excellent example/question to post on Language Log. — kwami (talk) 00:45, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

First, of course I discriminate as you do between suffixes and elements like "~like" (see caveats earlier on this talkpage); but I do think the situation is more fluid. SOED has entries for "-cephalic", "-culture", and indeed "-like" as suffixes; and one can suffix an element that is not a suffix sensu stricto, ugye? We need to think about grammaticalisation here. That thought, think next about "idiocy". At MOS we needed to carve something like consensus out of doxastic chaos. We can perhaps do better than we have done; but that is not certain or straightforward.

Second, I invite you to consider a Googlebooks search on "a near * collision". Among the hits:

• "a near mid-air collision"
• "to determine whether a near midair collision did actually occur" (!)
• "a narrow escape from a near fatal collision" (strange and ambiguous)
• "We had a near miss collision with a freighter" (strange indeed)
• "an asteroid-dubbed '2002MN'-/had a near miss collision with Earth" (sic, for the punctuation which I checked in the scanned snippet; "/" marks a linebreak)
• "a near head-on collision" (surely ambiguous out of context)
• "a near grazing collision" (surely ambiguous; apparently more likely to be non-privative)
• "a near central collision"
• "a near disastrous collision of vehicles"
• "a near auto collision"
• "far in excess of programmed speed, into a near disastrous collision with one of the derelict ships before being brought back under control"
• "a near triple collision of a binary with two single stars"
• "for the collinear three body problem that after a near-triple collision, two particles form a binary while the third is expelled"
• "This meant a near frontal collision with the Berlinale award ceremony"
• "A near side-collision event occurs as a car from the other side of intersection suddenly puts on the brakes within the distance of 0.5 meter from the car that violates the red light signal."
• "A popular theory of the formation of the planets, for instance, was the tidal hypothesis, which stated that the Earth and its sister planets were wrenched from the Sun by a near fatal collision with another star"

Third, I will have nothing to do with Language Log, as long as they have a Pinochet-like way of silently disappearing commenters; and as long as they have a crypto-prescriptivist way of glibly classifying some constructions as clearly grammatical, and others as clearly ungrammatical, on alarmingly flimsy or entirely absent evidence. What is "grammatical", and what is not, in the selections I present above? Not an easy question. And punctuation has to deal with them all – at least in transcription.

Noetica 01:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree entirely about things being ambiguously affixes in reality, or at least on a cline of lexicalization. But not according to the MOS, where the reason we give for prefixes behaving differently is that they have no independent existence. I never did like that explanation, though for all I know it actually is the reasoning behind the conventions.

You have some good examples of "near Y X". But note that many of them are so ambiguous as to not only be a model of what to avoid in prose, but to be objectionable even in quotations unless we absolutely could not avoid them. They mostly seem dysfluent. "A near disastrous collision of vehicles" tells me that there was a collision that was near-disastrous. I wouldn't read it any other way unless the context forced it, and then I'd wonder how the writer got away without having an editor. For "a near fatal collision with another star", I can speculate that this was a conflation of "near fatal" with "near collision"; all sorts of odd constructions pop up in stream-of-consciousness writing, which is one of the reasons formal written English differs from spoken English. What's grammatical in spoken English, where you have recourse to intonation for all manner of functions, is different than what's grammatical in written English.

"Near-miss collision" is actually pretty common, but it's not an exception to the pattern: it's the "near X" construction used attributively, and all sorts of things can replace "collision".

I don't think we can or should have conventions on how to properly punctuate bad English. Although I disagree with rewording a passage just to avoid punctuation that someone doesn't like, we do need to reword passages that are ambiguous or incoherent. — kwami (talk) 03:23, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:EN

Thanks. I had not realised those tail end Google books results were false. I will correct the numbers. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Or maybe they were correct.

There's a problem with http://books.google.co.uk/advanced_book_search:

"of the passover sacrifice" 1,810 ends "page 43 of 421 results"

"passover sacrifice" 10,300 ends "page 42 of 412 results"

Some kind of rounding down is happening on the last page of Google books results. The result for above should not be identical.

Can you explain this? In ictu oculi (talk) 10:28, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know exactly how you've configured your searches. I'll answer at Talk:Korban_Pesach, where the problem is currently relevant. Noetica 22:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

All Google results are estimates. But the returns are not the same as the estimates, except with small numbers of hits. It's not that those other thousands of hits are invalid, but only that we can't verify them. Rather like a return with no available preview. — kwami (talk) 00:58, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The large numbers one sees on the first page, preceded by "about", are indeed mere estimates. They have no "validity" other than as estimates, based on Google's hidden techniques that are not based on hits that it just fails to report. Do you think that the numbers are approximately right in most cases? There are logical grounds for thinking otherwise. See here. Noetica 04:21, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if they're in the ballpark or not. But then I don't know that the numbers they cut down to when you go to the last page are in the ballpark either. The fact that the number of returns is not proportional to the number of hits makes me suspicious that neither is reliable. — kwami (talk) 05:57, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The number of returns is not in the ballpark. (IIRC, Google first picks 1000 pages which might match the query through a quick-and-dirty probabilistic algorithm, and then checks one of these at a time to see which ones actually match the query.) In any event, since Google queries often (but not always) match synonyms and alternate spellings, the numbers are nearly completely useless for corpus linguistics, even if they were correct.
― A. di M.​_plé​ 11:01, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Cradle Mountain~Lake St Clair National Park

You may be interested in the hyphenation of the article featured in today’s picture of the day. That article is Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park (permanent link here).
—Wavelength (talk) 04:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
(I am changing the hyphen to a tilde in the heading of this section.) The name is hyphenated in a few places in the article besides the title. The official website is relevant also.
—Wavelength (talk) 04:40, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's a worry. But WP:DASH (under my stewardly hand in the last phases of the Great Dashfest of 2011) came to support adoption "by default" of a hyphen in such cases. That's bound to be controversial, and there is no simple and rational alternative that will avoid unending, bitterly contested RMs. A default is defeasible, of course. But on what grounds, here? Compare absence of apostrophes in geographical names: inconsistent with other usage, and sometimes misleading. But best followed faithfully. Noetica 09:50, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Genderless pronouns (and nouns!)

It seems to me that some people will eventually need to be identified (by themselves and others) with genderless pronouns and even genderless nouns!

• Sex and Gender Diverse Passport Applicants
  

—Wavelength (talk) 02:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I would line up for such a revolution. Hungarian gets it right with pronouns: if the plural ők means "they" regardless of gender, why should there be any concern about ő, which is the equally genderless singular? The Mandarin Chinese word tā means "he", "she", or "it", and it used to be represented by only one character – until about a century ago, when Chinese academics were shamed by Eurocentric understandings of what is "proper", in a civilised and developed language, into providing at least a written distinction: 他 (tā, "he"), 她 (tā, "she"), 它 (tā, "it").

Noetica 10:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

unsing a capitalization in the link and a different one on the target article

Noetica, regarding the lowercasing of several links, why did you lowercase also the links whose target articles are uppercased? --Enric Naval (talk) 08:46, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I thought you would be a supporter of consistency within an article, Enric, even if you plainly oppose the most basic sorts of consistency across articles. Why should some titles of the form "X's law" have "law" capped and some not? Every publisher (understanding that term broadly to include Misplaced Pages) sets rational standards for uniformity in such matters, and does not seek to emulate the mosaic of approaches used in the work of other publishers. You obviously favour capitals where possible; this is counter to the first principle laid out at WP:MOSCAPS, which is the relevant style resource for this question:

Misplaced Pages avoids unnecessary capitalization.

And you choose to ignore the most relevant of the specific principles on that page, too:

In science and mathematics, only proper names that are part of a name for an idea should be capitalized (Hermitian matrix, Lorentz transformation). A small number of exceptions exist (abelian group).

I would quibble with the linguistic detail in that, but the message is unambiguous. Clearly "law" qualifies here. Sturgeon's law may be a joke, but its name at least follows the pattern of a genuine law "in science", and it is "part of a name for an idea" that is not itself a proper name.

It would be helpful if you would abandon your partisan campaign, or at least wage it at one location rather than wasting many editors time at piecemeal RMs that are destined to reduce the utility and general quality of Misplaced Pages by weakening consistency of style. Nothing is gained by bending to the whims of "reliable sources", which in matters of punctuation, capitalisation, and similar styling are anything but reliable – at least as grist for a well-harmonised encyclopedia. Such a squandering of resources – and such painfully inadequate evidence, in most cases.

Noetica 09:42, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I found a style guide that says that "popular and fictious" laws shoud capitalize "Law". That would explain why most sources capitalize this sort of "laws" while actual physics laws are almost never capitalized. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:43, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

First, you misspell fictitious, as you do at two current RMs.

Once again you are unwilling to engage in genuine sustained dialogue, even though you came here to start this conversation. Why do I bother to respond? Yes, of course you found one style guide that lends incidental support to certain RMs you attempt. But do you mention that same guide when its provisions are against your case (as that guide does for established scientific laws)? No. That would be consistent.

Look at truly exemplary contemporary works of reference, like Elsevier's dictionary of psychological theories (2006). I have just linked to "Murphy's law" in that work. Yes, it has its own entry; and as with all the other laws in that book, the word is lower-cased. That is proper uniformity, and that is a reliable source of the right sort for Misplaced Pages to emulate.

Come here if you want to discuss things with a view to rational and consistent development of the Project. If you are immune to evidence and argument, and are determined to ignore Misplaced Pages style guidelines, please don't waste my time.

Noetica 23:42, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Improving my edit summaries

Since about one or two weeks ago, the top of a history page now has a link to a new (a sixth) external tool, namely, User edits. My 34 edits to Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style are listed at this page, and my edit summaries are shown. Can any of those edit summaries be improved?
—Wavelength (talk) 01:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
My 34 edits are listed at this page also.
—Wavelength (talk) 03:37, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

That is a wonderful new tool, and I foresee many uses for it. Since you have opened a useful discussion at WT:MOS on editors' edit summaries, I have responded to you there about your own (which are fine, in my opinion). Noetica 01:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Open confessions of a closed mind

Sometimes we encounter people who seem to give evidence of being closed-minded about one thing or another. Rarely we meet someone who speaks openly about being closed intellectually to evidence that would contradict a position already chosen. You might be interested to read the words of Richard Lewontin, as found at the following page.

• RICHARD LEWONTIN: Billions and Billions of Demons

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

Other statements by him can be found at Richard Lewontin - Wikiquote.
—Wavelength (talk) 05:21, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I am certainly interested in such questions, Wavelength. I have done a good deal of exploration concerning constraints on belief and on human rationality – in real life, not on Misplaced Pages. I am short of time for such a discussion right now, but I may want to pursue it later with you. Noetica 01:51, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

dash example II

one from an external text:

a thing of Rube Goldberg–like complexity

(Rosen, The Most Powerful Idea in the World, p 20)

— kwami (talk) 06:00, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure. Who can deny it? There are cases that the limited resources of punctuation can accommodate only awkwardly. But remember: hard cases make bad law. Most authorities are uncomfortable with that use of the en dash. It is as likely to cause problems for many readers: those accustomed to "a thing of Rube Goldberg-like complexity", with the capitals being sufficient to bind the components in constructions like "Rube Goldberg". And when capitals are not present, another hyphen can be used: "His elder-statesman-like demeanour". Noetica 03:03, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that works too. I wasn't trying to push a particular point so much as I thought it might be relevant example for your collection. At least, it seems that you're collecting examples. — kwami (talk) 03:40, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Then I thank you. I guess I was distracted by my knowledge that you do in fact favour such a use of the en dash. Please don't go to that trouble in future; I have enough examples, or can find enough. On the other hand, I would welcome truly unusual sorts. Noetica 04:20, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

You saying I don't get what you're saying

What you seem to be saying in multiple article's RMs that it's not OK to have shorter titles under most circumstances. Both WP:TITLE and WP:COMMONNAME, as well as other guideline and just plain common sense, clearly stay that, in the interest of navigability, titles should be as short as possible. You also bring up other topics with similar names, ones that either get few hits or don't even have articles at all. You claim that that isn't involved with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, but it is, you just aren't calling it that. And using non-articles to argue for a primary topic is irrelevant, especially since some of the things you bring up may fail GNG. Please stop your RM/TITLE comments that ignore policy and guidelines. With the number of pies your fingers are in, it's borderline disruptive. Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 18:21, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion, PBB. Sorry I could not attend to this more promptly. I encourage such approaches to sort out misunderstandings. No, I do not stand against shorter titles in all circumstances; but I think that a developing automatic insistence on the shortest title is unhelpful. It accords with neither the letter nor the intent of the provisions you mention. Habits have arisen of reading them legalistically and narrowly; I take a stand against such interpretations. It is abundantly clear: the needs of readers are not served, when we insist for example that a district of New Orleans be identified by the title "French Quarter", rather than the immediately informative "French Quarter (New Orleans)". Of course I accept the closing admin's judgement in the RM that I initiated; I left a message thanking the admin, not contesting anything. Why should I be ruffled by the decision? I genuinely believe that the longer title is better, and would parallel innumerable similarly helpful titles. But I have no attachment in that particular case – nor any regional or other bias. (We may suspect that others do have such a bias; but let's assume good faith.) The "French Quarter" example will be invaluable when we review the policies and guidelines affecting RMs, and their patently uneven application.

You will understand, then, that as an editor openly committed to the stability and consensual development of policies and guidelines, I do not accept your judgement: "With the number of pies your fingers are in, it's borderline disruptive." But I do not mind your claiming that, here at my talkpage.

My best wishes to you. Noetica 22:53, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

"Carpe diem. Seize the day."

The obscuring of Italian Misplaced Pages emphasized to me the somewhat vulnerable nature of access to Misplaced Pages, and, by extension, to the Internet, because of legislative, technical, economic, or environmental factors. Remembering that continued access is not absolutely guaranteed, I ask myself how I can best spend my time if this is my last day or week or month. I need to prioritize the ways in which I contribute and also the ways in which I benefit. The expression Carpe diem ("Seize the day") is timely. Steve Jobs made some comments about the use of time. (Steve Jobs - Wikiquote)
—Wavelength (talk) 20:19, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure many of us were inspired by the words of Steve Jobs, repeated now that the man speaks no more. The transience of Misplaced Pages is less apparent, but the case of the Italian branch is another memento mori. Problems there affect my own work. I had not realised how dependent I was on immediate access to its riches – or at least to portals opening on less familiar stretches of knowledge, through the links it afforded. Let's hope the whole can be put on a safer footing, even as we retain the broader insights that events might prompt. Noetica 23:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Ecco un collegamento ipertestuale.

• SegnaWeb: risorse Internet selezionate dai bibliotecari italiani - Home

—Wavelength (talk) 00:31, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Mirrors and forks has an interlanguage link to http://it.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Cloni, which appears to list 112 websites in its table of contents.

—Wavelength (talk) 06:00, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

please discuss

Please engage in discussion in Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#comet_and_galaxy_examples instead of reverting again the examples without discussion or proof of consensus. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, last time you came here I made this observation: "Once again you are unwilling to engage in genuine sustained dialogue, even though you came here to start this conversation. Why do I bother to respond?" I'm afraid I have run out of patience with you; I cannot act on the assumption that this time will be any different. You seem to refer to this edit of mine, from 18 days ago. I wish you would give such links, so I know what your intention is from the start. My edit summary was this: "Undid a revision that runs against this page's main principle: 'Misplaced Pages avoids unnecessary capitalization'; there is no consensus for this application of capitals to comets, etc., beyond the FIRST word; stop warring, and discuss this rationally." I invite you to learn from that example. Give more thought to communication, as a consideration to everyone concerned.

It is obvious that you have strong views about capitalisation. That's fine. Great to have convictions, and the energy to act on them. But when you seek to entrench those views firmly in Misplaced Pages practice and guidelines without thought for general practice, so that we are hostage to every diverse standard from a myriad of "authorities", most with less expertise than some of us have here, you go too far. Misplaced Pages needs rational, uniform, easy-to-follow guidelines. Misplaced Pages is not a collection of NASA technical texts, and not a subdivision of IAU. Neither Oxford (with its battery of style publications) nor Chicago's CMOS16 follows any of those relatively small-time players slavishly. Both favour general, robust, usable guidelines. So should we, after disinterested consultation in the community.

Noetica 09:09, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

A certain civil code

Noetica - I appreciated your thorough and intentional responses in this debate. I've put in my recapitulation, as it seems like most of us have said what we're likely to say without having repeated ourselves more than five times. I think we've both tried our best. I look forward to our paths crossing again. Dohn joe (talk) 05:07, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

O, this little RM, you mean? Yes indeed. Good healthy fun. I respect your valuable contributions to that discussion. The whole will serve to illustrate several procedural and substantive points for future RMs. This one was civil indeed, compared to many recently. Tony, myself, and a good few other editors are growing concerned about unruly process in these moves. They need to be more securely founded, but also more efficient; we can't always start again from first principles like Sisyphus, as the count of articles mounts toward 4,000,000. Best wishes to you. I hope we will work together again. Noetica 07:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Men's rights

I believe you may have misunderstood Gabriel's post in your reponse - he has not advocated doing anything contrary to policy in any way. You also appear to misunderstand the nature of the situation - Men's rights is not parallel to Women's rights; the two have completely different origins, history, and prominence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KillerChihuahua (talk • contribs) 22:24, 18 October 2011

Killer, please do not leave unsigned comments on my talkpage, shifting to someone else the burden of documenting posts. Thank you for sharing with me your beliefs. I do not know why you specifically chose to do that, but you are welcome to express opinions here.

Unfortunately, the opinions that you express this time cast doubt on the propriety of your self-appointment in "keeping order" at that talkpage. You "appear" (if I may borrow your mode of accusation) not to distinguish the role of helpful admin overseeing a difficult discussion from the role of commentator on the content. My own small contribution at that talkpage has been respectful and measured. I am not sure that I would make the same assessment of certain other contributions, including yours.

I have no confidence in you as moderator or overseer of that talkpage. I regard the article as a travesty of Wikipedian ideals, because of arrant political involvement from competing interests. I have simple factual material to contribute (as I have done); but I doubt that it can have a fair showing, so I expect that I will keep away. Another reason for doing so is that I feel intimidated and under threat of arbitrary sanctions, given the community probation you have imposed and the censorious moves you have recently made against an editor. It's just too dangerous, even for innocent bystanders. I see little hope for improvement of the article or the situation surrounding it.

Noetica 22:04, 20 October 2011 (UTC)