Toby wrote:

It might be useful to give a huge list of mammal books with capitalisation, similar to the huge list of bird books (the mammal books cited have been few).

I too would like to see such a list and am unconvinced that capitalization of mammal common names is at all correct except outside of very specialized publications (much more so than with birds).

For my part, seeing that mav hasn't continued any objections on that page is sufficient for me to accept that a consensus was reached even for mammals, among those that work on these articles.

Since when has the lack of objection from me been a sign that everything is OK? :) I'm just one Wikipedian - the opinions of others also matter. Oh, and the real reason I haven't responded is two-fold; 1) the initial part of the debate took a lot out of me (10 hours of writing emails in one day will do that to a person) and 2) I've been on holiday in Yellowstone and many points in-between Yellowstone and Northern California (I took over 300 digital photos!).

To Tannin and Jim; I would also like to note that just because /I/ agreed to a compromise (on birds at least) doesn't mean that the issue is settled. Others have to agree as well and IMO you two have given a very weak argument for capitalization of mammal common names and I think that all the moving Tannin did for the mammal articles was not wise at this point.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav - still trying to catch up on all the mailing list posts)