I missed the email discussion, but for the people who are frustrated by the lack of agreement, why do I see nothing about species names under [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]]? I apply a specific set of conventions to navy ship articles for instance, but if I haven't written one of them down, I don't feel like I have much grounds for complaint if someone doesn't follow it when copyediting.

I get the sense that people have now reached a compromise involving redirects, but please, let's get it written down where the less-informed like myself can read it and know what the rules are going to be.

On redirects in general, I keep hearing the suggestion that the use of a redirect is somehow insulting to the reader, and should therefore be discouraged. Has anybody ever talked to an actual user (not another Wikipedian), and gotten that sense of insult? My own reaction is more like "oh, I didn't know that was the full/proper name" or "oh yeah".

My own bit of survey of users showed that a) my wife thinks Wikipedia is lame because it doesn't state that "W" has a 91 IQ (although she likes the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam), and that b) my father lost interest when in four clicks of "random page", he got the same page twice (not in a row), thus conveying the impression that wikipedia was kind of small. Neither had an opinion on redirects.

Stan