Tannin wrote:
Over and over again, a small number of good, decent Wikipedia contributors are causing difficulties for those of us who are actually doing the hard yards in the fauna articles. All the major contributors to the bird entries, for example, have complained about this on the talk pages, but nothing is ever done. People keep claiming that, for example, the Common Raven should be written as "common raven". One need only reach to the bookshelf and pick up a reference work to discover that this just ain't so. All we ask is that we follow our own naming convention:
You mean a specialized publication that only covers birds. Pick up a dictionary or another encyclopedia and you'll see those species names in the lower case. As I have stated many times before ; specialists /almost always/ overcapitalize the terms they use but Wikipedia is not a specialist publication. Also Ortolan has pointed out that style guides on this issue state that when there is significant doubt in these matters we should use the "downstyle."
I quote: "Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun OR IS OTHERWISE ALMOST ALWAYS CAPITALISED." Species names for the higher orders (and possibly the lower ones too) are indeed "almost always capitalised" and rightly so, as to do anything else is to court ambiguity and lose clarity.
Perhaps I was rash when I changed:
Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words
To your quote of the current convention (Hm - I could revert myself since I didn't make that edit based on any consensus...). Nah - the caveat is a good one but "almost always" to me means way more than a simple majority of usage. I usually think of that term meaning "greater than 90%" of usage. I've already stated that these terms are /very often/ not capitalized outside of specialized publications.
We, the people WHO ACTUALLY WRITE THE ENTRIES have had a gut full of it. Please stop before the real contributors in this area get sick of the whole damn thing and take their effort elswhere.
Nobody wants that but at the same time we cannot add spurious capitalization to articles Or Else Sentences Begin To Look Very Odd When They Are Wikified - not to mention grammatically wrong and inconsistent with longstanding Wikipedia naming conventions.
Hopefully this will clarify the distinction between common and proper nouns:
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of a particular person or thing).
Proper noun (Gram.), a name belonging to an individual, by which it is distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to common noun; as, John, Boston, America. n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
So we are only dealing with common nouns here which means the default style is to /not/ capitalize unless the term is almost always capitalized for some reason.
It is true that the specialist bird authorities are an excellent source of information on this subject - but those bird publications are not a useful source of information on English grammar as it relates to our unique circumstances on Wikipedia or for encyclopedias in general for that matter.
These experts are experts in their respective fields whose subjects in this particular case are birds, not grammar. So for our naming needs the references we should use are dictionaries, style/grammar guides and other encyclopedias. Encyclopedias have different naming conventions and needs than do specialized publications. BTW, just because the top transportation planners in the United States write Transit Village with caps does not mean that that capitalization is correct in our context.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
On 26-04-2003, Daniel Mayer wrote thusly :
Tannin wrote:
Over and over again, a small number of good, decent Wikipedia contributors are causing difficulties for those of us who are actually doing the hard yards in the fauna articles. All the major contributors to the bird entries, for example, have complained about this on the talk pages, but nothing is ever done. People keep claiming that, for example, the Common Raven should be written as "common raven". One need only reach to the bookshelf and pick up a reference work to discover that this just ain't so. All we ask is that we follow our own naming convention:
You mean a specialized publication that only covers birds. Pick up a dictionary or another encyclopedia and you'll see those species names in the lower case. As I have stated many times before ; specialists /almost always/ overcapitalize the terms they use but Wikipedia is not a specialist publication. Also Ortolan has pointed out that style guides on this issue state that when there is significant doubt in these matters we should use the "downstyle."
I quote: "Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun OR IS OTHERWISE ALMOST ALWAYS CAPITALISED." Species names for the higher orders (and possibly the lower ones too) are indeed "almost always capitalised" and rightly so, as to do anything else is to court ambiguity and lose clarity.
Perhaps I was rash when I changed: Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words
To your quote of the current convention (Hm - I could revert myself since I didn't make that edit based on any consensus...). Nah - the caveat is a good one but "almost always" to me means way more than a simple majority of usage. I usually think of that term meaning "greater than 90%" of usage. I've already stated that these terms are /very often/ not capitalized outside of specialized publications.
We, the people WHO ACTUALLY WRITE THE ENTRIES have had a gut full of it. Please stop before the real contributors in this area get sick of the whole damn thing and take their effort elswhere.
Nobody wants that but at the same time we cannot add spurious capitalization to articles Or Else Sentences Begin To Look Very Odd When They Are Wikified - not to mention grammatically wrong and inconsistent with longstanding Wikipedia naming conventions.
Hopefully this will clarify the distinction between common and proper nouns:
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of a particular person or thing).
Proper noun (Gram.), a name belonging to an individual, by which it is distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to common noun; as, John, Boston, America. n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
So we are only dealing with common nouns here which means the default style is to /not/ capitalize unless the term is almost always capitalized for some reason.
It is true that the specialist bird authorities are an excellent source of information on this subject - but those bird publications are not a useful source of information on English grammar as it relates to our unique circumstances on Wikipedia or for encyclopedias in general for that matter.
These experts are experts in their respective fields whose subjects in this particular case are birds, not grammar. So for our naming needs the references we should use are dictionaries, style/grammar guides and other encyclopedias. Encyclopedias have different naming conventions and needs than do specialized publications. BTW, just because the top transportation planners in the United States write Transit Village with caps does not mean that that capitalization is correct in our context.
Another area of possible problematic capitalization are names of diseases and syndromes. I feel especially Americans tend to excessively capitalize every word in these names. Diabetes Mellitus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, etc etc
Can this be clarified and the proper practice added to naming conventions please ? Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) Wikipedia:Wikipedia medicine standards
Regards, kpj.
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
Another area of possible problematic capitalization are names of diseases and syndromes. I feel especially Americans tend to excessively capitalize every word in these names. Diabetes Mellitus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, etc etc
Can this be clarified and the proper practice added to naming conventions please ?
This is an excellent point. In a general work there needs to be a generalized approach to this matter. If we agree to a special rule to please the birds we can expect that the whole argument will break out again at some later time. It could be with diseases, but it could also be in any of a large number of specialized areas.
(BTW. Although I am usually responsive to blaming the Americans for everything, it needs to be remarked that the capitalist charge in this matter has been led by an Australian.) ;-)
I surely think we need a technical review of how we capitalize things. Unless there really are two separate articles for [[common crow]] and [[Common Crow]] the software should bring us to the one that exists. Options for dealing with ambiguities could be developed.
Linked to this is how we handle accented characters so that "e" and "é" don't need to be distinguished unless there is an ambiguity. It also ties in with the issue of enforced capitals in the first letter of an article title. That has proven problematical in Wiktionary.
The problem of capitalized bird names operates on two levels. As long as it is only on a stylistic level many of us would probably not be so concerned about it that we would change every occurrence of a bird name in the middke of an article to our preferred styles. When it starts to affect the titles of articles and how those titles are linked it is a more serious issue because it relates to the functionality of Wikipedia.
Eclecticology
----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2003 11:01 AM Subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface
Tannin wrote:
Over and over again, a small number of good, decent Wikipedia contributors are causing difficulties for those of us who are actually doing the hard yards in the fauna articles. All the major contributors to the bird entries, for example, have complained about this on the talk pages, but nothing is ever done. People keep claiming that, for example, the Common Raven should be written as "common raven". One need only reach to the bookshelf and pick up a reference work to discover that this just ain't so. All we ask is that we follow our own naming convention:
You mean a specialized publication that only covers birds. Pick up a dictionary or another encyclopedia and you'll see those species names in
the
lower case. As I have stated many times before ; specialists /almost
always/
overcapitalize the terms they use but Wikipedia is not a specialist publication. Also Ortolan has pointed out that style guides on this issue state that when there is significant doubt in these matters we should use
the
"downstyle."
But I think that most of the people writing the bird articles are going to be either specialists or get their information from specialist sources. Imposing the Wikipedia article naming on these articles would then make the article name inconsistent with the article contents.
Examples of this can be seen in the articles on mathematics, some of the people writing the articles capitalise a lot of named things like theorems and conjectures. For example [[Twin Prime Conjecture]] redirects to [[Twin prime conjecture]] but there are 13 articles which link to Twin Prime Conjecture and only 5 to Twin prime conjecture. In the [[Poincaré conjecture]] article text Conjecture and conjecture are freely interchanged and also the Geometrization Conjecture, the Hyperbolization Conjecture and the Elliptization Conjecture are all mentioned. Unless an attempt is made to ensure consistency throughout the articles I don't really see the point of being so anal about article titles.
Other inconsistencies include articles entitled [[Fast Fourier Transform]], [Discrete Fourier transform]] and [[Continuous Fourier transform]] which isn't consistent but has presumably happened as FFT is used outside of maths. Also [[Monte Carlo method]] has lots of links in it to things like [[Rejection Monte Carlo Sampling]], why should Sampling be capitalised but not Method?
Convention, Committee and Pact are all regularly capitalised in titles but what makes them any different from Theorem, Conjecture or Hypothesis? If the Riemann hypothesis article should have a small 'h' then shouldn't the Geneva Convention have a small 'c'?
Unless we are going to be equally picky about article contents then I don't think we should be so forceful about article titles, especially if there is a group of people who strongly believe it should be done a particular way.
Andrew (Ams80)
I quote: "Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun OR IS OTHERWISE ALMOST ALWAYS CAPITALISED." Species names for the higher orders (and possibly the lower ones too) are indeed "almost always capitalised" and rightly so, as to do anything else is to court ambiguity and lose clarity.
Perhaps I was rash when I changed:
Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper noun, do not capitalize second and subsequent words
To your quote of the current convention (Hm - I could revert myself since
I
didn't make that edit based on any consensus...). Nah - the caveat is a
good
one but "almost always" to me means way more than a simple majority of
usage.
I usually think of that term meaning "greater than 90%" of usage. I've already stated that these terms are /very often/ not capitalized outside
of
specialized publications.
We, the people WHO ACTUALLY WRITE THE ENTRIES have had a gut full of it. Please stop before the real contributors in this area get sick of the whole damn thing and take their effort elswhere.
Nobody wants that but at the same time we cannot add spurious
capitalization
to articles Or Else Sentences Begin To Look Very Odd When They Are
Wikified -
not to mention grammatically wrong and inconsistent with longstanding Wikipedia naming conventions.
Hopefully this will clarify the distinction between common and proper
nouns:
Common noun (Gram.), the name of any one of a class of objects, as distinguished from a proper noun (the name of a particular person or thing).
Proper noun (Gram.), a name belonging to an individual, by which it is distinguished from others of the same class; -- opposed to common noun; as, John, Boston, America. n : a noun that denotes a particular thing; usually capitalized
So we are only dealing with common nouns here which means the default
style is
to /not/ capitalize unless the term is almost always capitalized for some reason.
It is true that the specialist bird authorities are an excellent source of information on this subject - but those bird publications are not a useful source of information on English grammar as it relates to our unique circumstances on Wikipedia or for encyclopedias in general for that
matter.
These experts are experts in their respective fields whose subjects in
this
particular case are birds, not grammar. So for our naming needs the references we should use are dictionaries, style/grammar guides and other encyclopedias. Encyclopedias have different naming conventions and needs
than
do specialized publications. BTW, just because the top transportation planners in the United States write Transit Village with caps does not
mean
that that capitalization is correct in our context.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l