Toby Bartels wrote:
I generally agree with you that Wikipedia should be agnostic about matters of style like whether things are "movies" or "films". (That's why I'm horrified at the growth of the Manual of Style.) But we have to draw the line when it comes to article *names*, so that linking will go smoothly. Naming conventions often must make arbitrary stylistic choices, but that's OK, since it's only for article names, not for every item of text.
I think that's a very important insight. We want to be careful about imposing a lot of standards, and the more standards we have, the less we should expect newcomers to follow them. Nupedia died (or nearly so, it still breathes on occassion!) under the weight of extreme a priorism that made the whole process impossible for newcomers to get invested in.
But the thing about standards for article titles is that they make things easier for newcomers and oldtimers alike.
--Jimbo