<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3>mav<BR>
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The only recent mammal book I've bought is "Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises", which capitalises, which is the practice I've used in the cetacean articles. <BR>
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I know there is no ownership of articles, but you must see that it is to say the least irritating when you put hours of work into articles when people whose make no contributions to these articles beyond copyedits (yes know that's vauable too) make sweeping changes to what appears to be standard practice elsewhere. <BR>
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I've conscientiously stuck to what appeared to be the agreed policy, only to find that it isn't agreed anymore. I've deliberately avoided fauna other than birds and mammals because I don't know what the convention is for fish and reptiles.<BR>
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I can't really win on this-I've got too much real work on to spend a lot of time on this debate for the umpteenth time, but failure to maintain an active participation is only likely to weaken my position.<BR>
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For mammals and birds, I can't see what's wrong with the current postion. Somebody searching for blue whale or Blue Whale will find it. Under the proposed lower case regime, a little knowledge will be a dangerous thing. I would search for capitalised mammals, eg Gray Whale, and presumably not find them ( I don't think it's wikien policy to provide capitalised redirects to all articles.)<BR>
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Perhaps it's simpler only to do single word mammals, and make sure the name is always at the start of a sentence, then nobody gets upset (sorry, being facetious).<BR>
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I just can't spare the time on this debate any longer. I'll stick to bird articles, where at least there still appears to be a degree of tolerance, and plenty to do on European, African and Asian species about 4,000 I should guess. <BR>
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Jim<BR>
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