Let's walk through the feelings of the people who are doing the actual contributions, shall we? In the massive task of documenting the 9000-odd species of bird, the active contributors are:
* Jimfbleak. Jim has done an incredible amount of work on birds, probably more than everyone else put together, and he's only been here a few months. Take a look at his user contributions page, it's a huge and ongoing effort. How does Jim feel about this? "The normal convention is that English names of species begin with capitals, eg-- Magnificent Frigatebird, but groups are lower case". He thinks the wiki practice of editing out correct species names is a right pain.
* I have done 50-odd myself, and not many itty-bitty stubs amongst them. I work more slowly than Jim, but it's adding up to a fair slab just the same.
* Steve Nova has only been here a very short while (though he was contributing species accounts as an anon before that) and he's doing quite a lot: working his way through the crows and ravens and now into other families. He has had problems with the silly practice of not using the correct names too.
* Kingturtle joined not so long ago, and like me has wide interests, but has already made a good start on American birds. His feelings? "Through my dozens of bird reference books dating from 1939 to 2000, all but one use the Ruby-throated Hummingbird convention." Or, on the ambiguity problem: "in order for this signal to the reader to succeed, the species article ... needs to be called "Red-throated Diver." And so on.
* The ONLY person who is regularly contributing anything of substance to the bird entries that has NOT spoken out against the name-change mania is Montrealis, who has started making a modest number of bird edits lately. I don't know what his view is on this.
So there you have it: with the possible exception of Montrealis (who is the least active of the active contributors in this field in any case) EVERY ONE of the people who actually do the work in the bird entries agrees.
Now, please, will the back seat drivers get out of our hair and let us get on with the job?
Tony Wilson (Tannin)