> From: "Eugene Gill" <minty(a)keergill.screaming.net>
>
> As we have noted, some of the people "correcting" these pages have adopted
> blanket reversions on account of a very povie view that fact and fantasy are
> two distinct categories
The view that fact and fantasy are distinct is POV?
I fail to see how an encyclopedia can possibly function without such
an (obviously-correct) distinction.
Evercat
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman(a)blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
In a message dated 04/06/03 14:14:45 GMT Daylight Time, fredbaud(a)ctelco.net
writes:
> One of the counter-intuitive things a new Wikipedian has to adjust to is
> the
> convention on capitalization of titles: Only the first word is capitalized
> unless it is a proper noun. This is not natural as all words in a title are
> conventionally capitalized. We do that so that links from within text do not
> need to be capitalized.
>
> In the case of species names we are now making an exception, creating
> another counter-intuitive requirement: in text all words in the name of a
> species must be capitalized. Again in contradiction to expected usage.
> Having adopted the convention that in titles all words in a species name are
> capitalized we are now forced to have them capitalized in text in order that
> links work.
>
> So we have three choices: put the titles of species in the usual first word
> only capitalized format; capitalize all words of a species name in text; or
> made a redirect for each species to the all caps format.
>
> This is not a major issue with me. I guess I only want to see a definite
> convention established.
>
> Fred
it has been and I'm following the agreed policy until a new agreed one
replaces it.
Jim
Fred
the other point I should have made is that non-standard capitalisation
creates problems in itself. How do I distinguish [[penduline tit]], the group Remiz,
from [[Penduline Tit]] the species Remiz pendulinus. For that matter, how do
I distinguish, in the text , Spotted Crakes, the species, from spotted crakes
(all crakes with spots).
There are good reasons why the normal capitalisation of species have been
adopted. Even some of the invertebrate groups where scientific names are more
common still capitalize the English name if it exists.
Jim
In a message dated 04/06/03 13:00:55 GMT Daylight Time, fredbaud(a)ctelco.net
writes:
> Well, I looked at [[Red-winged Blackbird]]. It follows the usual
> convention, capitalization in title but not in text, until you "tidied it up" and
> changed the instances in the text to capitalized. The problem is that red-winged
> blackbird is not a proper noun. Not sure how many of these you did and it
> does seem unfair to ask you go back and try to find all of these that you
> changed, but the "fait accompli" seems to be of your own making.
>
> Fred
> >>
>>
> Some of the earlier bird articles pre-dated the agreed convention, so were,
of course, brought into line. One reason that we have only recently started
adding full species lists for large groups like the hummingbirds is that the
sources I know capitalise in line with the agreed wikien convention, so it is
simple to convert the list to a suitable layout. Doing the 337 hummingbirds took
about 10 minutes.
If the agreed convention is reversed, future species for large families lists
are likely to be less forthcoming, since there is no source with
uncapitalised lists, and converting a capitalised list to the appropriate form would not
be easily automated because (a) some names would remain partially capitalised
like Wilson's petrel (b) nobody has disputed that the genus name must be
capitalise, eg Parus ater.
I would not accept this is a problem of our own making-we followed an agreed
policy. I should also point out that new fauna contributors like Kingturtle
and Hawthorne have automatically gone for the capitaisation style they are
familiar with.
At the risk of seeming churlish, I should point out that if the policy is
reversed, it won't be me going through all the articles (written in good faith to
an agreed style) to change the capitaisation.
Jim
.
Hi all,
I'm a bit concerned about what I've been reading
lately about proposed filters. Before I respond,
though, I'd like to make sure I understand. Jimmy,
what is it you're thinking of exactly? Michael, what
did you have in mind?
best.
kq
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Michael writes:
>People have suggested rating system, or flagging
>systems. I think they all sound good.
Well, I'm not so sure. I'm a bit ambivalent about
them: on the one hand, I don't mind that Google has a
SafeSearch feature and some people like to use it. On
the other hand, I do think it's relevant that we don't
know exactly what is and is not included in the
SafeSearch.
If I can take a short divergence before getting back
to the point:
Chain supermarkets in the United States typically have
an "ethnic" food aisle, apparently under the
misapprehension that ethnicity is something their
white owners and CEOs don't have. Similarly, a few
years ago one of my colleagues at work asked me why I
was so political. The best parry I could think of was
that complacence is also a political position.
The point is: given that heterosexuality is still a
sexuality, what will we flag as potentially unsafe?
Will it lean more towards fisting and felching, or
will it include all sex? Will we fall into that
common censorware trap of marking [[breast]] "sexual
content", with the implication that breasts are more
often for--or more importantly for--sexual
gratification than they are for nutrition? Does
[[George Michaels]] get flagged because of the
bathroom incident? Is [[oral sex]] too risque? If
so, aren't we compelled to flag [[Bill Clinton]]?
These sound like idle or rhetorical questions, but
they're not.
I think that any rating system would indicate a
political position, whether to the left, right, or
center, and be a clear and unequivocally POV
annotation of what we intended to be a neutral
article.
I think also that much bickering, tampering, and bad
vibes would result from trying to "rate" articles as
safe or not safe for children; and that anyone with
questions about whether wikipedia is "safe" for their
children ought to assume it is not; and that we should
continue as we are without giving it much more
thought. The world is an odd place, full of actions
that are sometimes beautiful and reassuring, and
sometimes ugly, sordid, and wearying; and if we're
going to report on as much as we can, as neutrally as
we can, we're going to have to cover things that
people will find offensive. First, it's impossible
not to since there's such a broad range of potentially
offensive topics; and second; it's just the completist
thing to do.
Personally, I don't mind being offended
occasionally--the affront to my sensibilities reminds
me of what my sensibilities are, and also makes me
consider whether they are what they should be.
Given that we're encouraged not to talk about
political issues on the list because of the raw
emotion and hostility the discussion causes--would
wikipedia survive an attempt to annotate its articles
with ratings? Think of all the political hot topics:
gun rights, abortion, homosexuality, drug use,
Christopher Columbus' name... ;-)
I would have to hear a lot more about the proposed
systems, but as I understand them right now,* I have
grave reservations. The fairest thing I can think of
would be a list of all possible axes on which a person
could be offended, and ratings for each compiled from
user votes and coupled with a toggle for each of them
in user prefs (Sex:Off, Religion:On, etc.) And,
honestly, categorizing all the articles and rating
them is bound to be contentious and inflammatory,
aside from being enough work to keep all of us busy
for another five years. Is it the best use of our
time? Is it even a *good* use of our time?
kq
*It is, as always, possible that I've misunderstood
something vital. :-/
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Ec
But there is an agreed compromise-check with Maverick 149 if you don't
believe me. It's you that is trying, intially unilaterally and without consulation,
to change the status quo.
Jim
In a message dated 04/06/03 04:28:31 GMT Daylight Time, saintonge(a)telus.net
writes:
> JFrost8401(a)aol.com wrote:
>
> > One other point with regard to the everlasting capitalisation debate
> > is that it is usually argued that non-specialist encyclopedias use
> > lower case, and only specialist handooks like HBW, HANZAB and BWP use
> > capitals.
> >
> > If it is being seriously suggested that Wikien should be the same as a
> > paper encyclopedia (or on-line version thereof), can I suggest the
> > following to bring other aspects into line.
> >
> > 1) Standardise spelling and names as American English (this solves the
> > capitalisation problem too, since you lose the European and Australian
> > contributors who write 90% of the animal/bird articles at a stroke.
> >
> > 2) Get rid of articles you wouldn't find in a "proper" encyclopedia,
> > such as lists of people called Fred, album play lists, articles on
> > "fisting" , lists of famous Hungarians etc. (I'll help on this.)
> >
> > 3) If you do item 1, then you can also revert the many US-centric
> > articles, which just assume there are no other countries that matter,
> > back to their original unsullied versions.
>
>
I was being ironic. Despite the AOL ISP, I am a Brit, and a major contributor
to bird articles. The non-trivial point I was making is that by its nature,
the encyclopedia has to be a compromise. If you standardise spelling and
vocabulary, you lose all the Old World contributors. If you insist on lower case
birds etc, you lose Tannin, Steve Nova and me, the three most prolific
contributors. The only reason I haven't written a convention sheet is that it will just
start edit war 6. Incidently, you can't blame the AOU. Capitalisation is
standard in all specialist books, websites, and English language ornithogical
organisations.
Jim