Charles Matthews wrote:
"Delirium" wrote
... I'd propose we remove titles from both article names and the beginning of the first sentence of the article, unless they are absolutely integral. This includes both official titles (President, Prime Minister, etc.) and honorific titles (Blessed, Sir, etc.).
I'd agree with the general sentiment. Had a ''Sir'' imposed on an article I wrote, and felt this made too much of a non-hereditry title. Isaac Newton doesn't need the "Sir", for example.
If you don't want titles in the articles that you write that's just fine. Others may prefer to include them in the articles that they write; that's fine too.. Going around and removing these titles just because they don't please you is a disrespectful act.
Ec
Wiki's policy on titles was worked out in detail in a debate raised on wiki-L, on talk pages and the results pulled into a detailed naming convention. On this basis /thousands/ of articles have been pulled together in a uniform structure, having been a hilarious mess (I first found wikipedia, having received an email from a colleague of mine - we both had edited texts for two of the biggest US encylopædias - under the heading 'look at this for a laugh'. The email went around to quite a few academics, writers, journalists, quoting some of the farcical rubbish that passed for titles on wikipedia, and did wikipedia considerable damage at the time because it suggested - wrongly - that wikipedia was sub-high school standard, or as one academic in Harvard is supposed to have said, 'National Enquirer-opedia'. While I cringed at the amateurish handling of the naming issue, I was impressed by the rest and stayed and regard wikipedia as a superb sourcebook).
After a thorough debate, and detailed discussion, not to mention extensive research, the naming conventions were implemented, having been agreed here and elsewhere initially by a small number, including Zoe, Deb, John Kenney, myself and others, then by /everyone/, worldwide, from Swedish users to Australian users, Americans, Europeans and from Asia, who worked on articles about people with titles. As a result, what had been a hilarious mess based on farcically simplistic presumptions (eg, all British royals have the surname Windsor, actually there are 19 names used by members of the British Royal Family, and according to his own staff, the Prince of Wales's surname is not Windsor but Mountbatten-Windor, the name he married under in 1981, similarly Queen Victoria's marital surname was 'Wettin' ) is now professionally organised and academic-standard; a senior editor on a rival print encyclopædia said that /they/ should try to be as good, as factual and as correct in the area of titles as wikipedia, having slammed wikipedia a year earlier as 'amateurish and opinionated' in the area.
As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like Deb to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes to push, would be a gross abuse of wiki and grossly insulting to the many people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles, but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopædic and grossly disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy in a professional, encyclopædic NPOV manner.
JT
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James Duffy wrote:
As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like Deb to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes to push, would be a gross abuse of wiki and grossly insulting to the many people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles, but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopædic and grossly disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy in a professional, encyclopædic NPOV manner.
I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both a logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent Latin phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.
The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not endorsing others, which is inconsistent and POV. When we use Sir, Blessed, and so on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His Excellency, and The Honorable, this is a POV judgment, and unacceptable in a professional encyclopedia.
If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some conventions adopted indicating which we should use, and which we should not. Why should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off "Blessed Mother Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]] does not start off "The Honorable Clarence Thomas"? Is there a principle behind this decision?
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
James Duffy wrote:
As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, by a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like Deb to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes to push, would be a gross abuse of wiki and grossly insulting to the many people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles, but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopic and grossly disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy in a professional, encyclopic NPOV manner.
I disagree strongly, and your attempt to leverage credentials is both a logical fallacy (look up "appeal to authority", or the equivalent Latin phrase if you prefer) and grossly un-wiki.
The issue is that Wikipedia is endorsing certain titles, and not endorsing others, which is inconsistent and POV. When we use Sir, Blessed, and so on, and refuse to use His All-Holiness, His Excellency, and The Honorable, this is a POV judgment, and unacceptable in a professional encyclopedia.
If you do wish to use some honorifics, I would like to see some conventions adopted indicating which we should use, and which we should not. Why should the article on [[Mother Theresa]] start off "Blessed Mother Theresa", while the article on [[Clarence Thomas]] does not start off "The Honorable Clarence Thomas"? Is there a principle behind this decision?
You're talking about two different issues. James is talking about article titles. Delirium is talking about personal titles at the beginning of the text IN an article. It makes it easier to know what we disagree about when when we agree to disagree about the same thing. :-)
POV is unencyclopic when it pokes out one's only good eye. ;-) Sorry James, but I can't resist the temptation of a good typo.! Ec