>Side note: It's so bad, since I started doing Wikipedia fairly regularly,
>I find myself frequently looking for an "Edit this page" link while I'm on
>other, non-wiki sites and I see an error. ;)
I believe that's a known clinical symptom of Wikipediholism. Yes,
[[Wikipedia:Are You a Wikipediholic Test]] number 42. Of course, I never do
anything silly like that.
-- ~~~~
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Tannin wrote:
>Over and over again, a small number of good,
>decent Wikipedia contributors are causing difficulties
>for those of us who are actually doing the hard yards
>in the fauna articles. All the major contributors to the
>bird entries, for example, have complained about this
>on the talk pages, but nothing is ever done. People keep
>claiming that, for example, the Common Raven should be
>written as "common raven". One need only reach to the
>bookshelf and pick up a reference work to discover
>that this just ain't so. All we ask is that we follow our
>own naming convention:
You mean a specialized publication that only covers birds. Pick up a
dictionary or another encyclopedia and you'll see those species names in the
lower case. As I have stated many times before ; specialists /almost always/
overcapitalize the terms they use but Wikipedia is not a specialist
publication. Also Ortolan has pointed out that style guides on this issue
state that when there is significant doubt in these matters we should use the
"downstyle."
>I quote: "Unless the term you wish to create a page for
>is a proper noun OR IS OTHERWISE ALMOST ALWAYS
>CAPITALISED." Species names for the higher orders (and
>possibly the lower ones too) are indeed "almost always
>capitalised" and rightly so, as to do anything else is to court
>ambiguity and lose clarity.
Perhaps I was rash when I changed:
Unless the term you wish to create a page
for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second
and subsequent words
To your quote of the current convention (Hm - I could revert myself since I
didn't make that edit based on any consensus...). Nah - the caveat is a good
one but "almost always" to me means way more than a simple majority of usage.
I usually think of that term meaning "greater than 90%" of usage. I've
already stated that these terms are /very often/ not capitalized outside of
specialized publications.
>We, the people WHO ACTUALLY WRITE THE ENTRIES
>have had a gut full of it. Please stop before the real contributors
>in this area get sick of the whole damn thing and take their
>effort elswhere.
Nobody wants that but at the same time we cannot add spurious capitalization
to articles Or Else Sentences Begin To Look Very Odd When They Are Wikified -
not to mention grammatically wrong and inconsistent with longstanding
Wikipedia naming conventions.
Hopefully this will clarify the distinction between common and proper nouns:
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of
objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of
a particular person or thing).
Proper noun (Gram.), a
name belonging to an individual, by which it is
distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to
common noun; as, John, Boston, America.
n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
So we are only dealing with common nouns here which means the default style is
to /not/ capitalize unless the term is almost always capitalized for some
reason.
It is true that the specialist bird authorities are an excellent source of
information on this subject - but those bird publications are not a useful
source of information on English grammar as it relates to our unique
circumstances on Wikipedia or for encyclopedias in general for that matter.
These experts are experts in their respective fields whose subjects in this
particular case are birds, not grammar. So for our naming needs the
references we should use are dictionaries, style/grammar guides and other
encyclopedias. Encyclopedias have different naming conventions and needs than
do specialized publications. BTW, just because the top transportation
planners in the United States write Transit Village with caps does not mean
that that capitalization is correct in our context.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I havn't seen any of 'Zogs' edits but picked up some concerns about this
person from the mailing list- just in case anyone is unaware, 'Zog' is a
term used by white supremacists and other nazis and is an abreviation of
'Zionist Occupational Governmnent', and is i believe a reference to that
famous nazi publication/forgery 'The protocols of Zion' (ie, that the world
is run by a Jewish conspiracy). as such this username is far more offensive
than the likes of 'fuckyou' or 'i've got a big cock' or whatever. I
seriously doubt any such user has any intentions of doing anything other
than spreading race hate.
Cheers graham (Quercus robur)
Hi,
Zog still hasn't been banned, and is now uploading pictures of
primates and linking to them from civil rights activists. Can a ban
be done as a matter of urgency please?
Evercat
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman(a)blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
John R. Owens wrote:
> I just wanted to check, if somewhat belatedly, that this wouldn't be
> considered an abuse of sysop abilities, if I protect one of my own
> subpages. Taken strictly, it would break the rules, but I don't think it
> would break the spirit of them at all.
Hm. Why would you want to do that? I guess it wouldn't be abuse, but odd.
> Also, while I'm at it, I wasn't sure about an edit I did earlier on
> [[Johnny Rebel]] while it was protected. It was just a simple typo
> correction, "Moustrap" -> "Mousetrap". Is that kind of controversy-free
> thing OK while it's protected, or should it be completely avoided to
> prevent even the appearance of possible abuse? I just can't stand seeing
> misspellings left alone, though. :(
Some people jump all over any appearance of abuse (as a few users did after
they saw a few Admins edit the page while it was protected). So yes it is not
a great idea to edit a page at all when it has been protected to stop an edit
war.
> Side note: It's so bad, since I started doing Wikipedia fairly regularly,
> I find myself frequently looking for an "Edit this page" link while I'm on
> other, non-wiki sites and I see an error. ;)
What? There is an Internet outside of Wikipedia? :-)
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I just wanted to check, if somewhat belatedly, that this wouldn't be
considered an abuse of sysop abilities, if I protect one of my own
subpages. Taken strictly, it would break the rules, but I don't think it
would break the spirit of them at all.
Also, while I'm at it, I wasn't sure about an edit I did earlier on
[[Johnny Rebel]] while it was protected. It was just a simple typo
correction, "Moustrap" -> "Mousetrap". Is that kind of controversy-free
thing OK while it's protected, or should it be completely avoided to
prevent even the appearance of possible abuse? I just can't stand seeing
misspellings left alone, though. :(
Side note: It's so bad, since I started doing Wikipedia fairly regularly,
I find myself frequently looking for an "Edit this page" link while I'm on
other, non-wiki sites and I see an error. ;)
--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Only one human captain has ever survived battle with the Minbari fleet.
He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be
somewhere else. --Delenn
And people ask us why we never seem to respond to feature requests... ;)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Category: Page editing
Group: None
Status: Open
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Assigned to: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker)
Summary: scientific names
Initial Comment:
to do separate the scientific names from the common
languages normally use italics
But I can not do make headword by
italics.
Of this little cause, Wikipedia do never beeen a
serious encyclopedia
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm really beginning to wonder if [[User: John
Stewart]] isn't another troll.
Zoe
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He isn't even trying to hide now. He's calling
himself Ril.
Zoe
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