Tony Wilson wrote:
Ray wrote: "Although I am usually responsive to
blaming the Americans
for everything, it needs to be remarked that the capitalist charge in
this matter has been led by an Australian" - which made me smile. The
irony is that I also tend to blame the Americans for everything - and
in this context, I blame them for *not* capitalising things when they
ought to! So perhaps we had best categorise this particular Australian
as one of Little Johnny Howard's "American Deputy Sherrifs in
South-east Asia." .... Err - sorry, Jimbo. I know - no politics on the
list. :)
I can never pass up a good opportunity for a bad pun. This was a chance
to look at capitalism with an entirely fresh meaning. :-)
Enough humour. When Ray wrote that "the problem
... operates on two
levels" and that "as long as it is only on a stylistic level ..." he
missed the point. It is *not* only stylistic, nor indeed even primarily
stylistic: it is a matter of clear, unabiguous, and accurate
communication. There are many long-tailed shrikes, but only one
Long-tailed Shrike. It is not a matter of 'preffered styles", but a
matter of a precise and correct name or a vague and incorrect name.
The problem here is in insisting that there is only one way to do
things. My personal preference would be to put all these animal
articles under the Latin binomial. That option would be the least vague
and least ambiguous of all, but I haven't had much of a following in
this. As I said in a previous post your position tends to be most
adamantly held by birders than by any other students of life forms; the
opposite point of view tends to be favoured by grammarians. It is once
again a matter of POV's. Certainly the issue does not carry the heavy
emotional baggage of many of the political issues that have flared up,
but it is a POV issue nevertheless. How do you choose in a battle
between lexicologists and ornithologists?
However, Ray's third point raises a significant
issue. Creating
lower-case redirects to entries that are (quite properly) capitalised
involves a good deal of attention to detail - something that I can
speal with authority about, as I have spent 20 or 30 hours attending to
this stuff in the four days or so, It is tedius and a small number of
mistakes will undoubtedly have slipped through. A technical solution
would indeed be very welcome. The obvious starting point would be a
search function that works. I understand that that matter is high on
the developers' priority list, and wish them every success in the
quest.
This was indeed my most important point since it affects such a wide
range of articles well beyond avian capitalism (or Avian Capitalism).
Using Tony's distinction, very few of the terms that he would put with
lower case letters would lead to articles anyway so why not use
re-directs? It's as effective a temporary measure as any.
Unfortunately, even though I can envision how I would like to see this
sort of thing work I have to admit to a complete lack of technical
expertise to apply this in out multilingual environment.
Eclecticology