Tannin wrote:
Or, we can take a look at how the recognised authorities do thgings. ....
Since we are a general reference and not a specialized publication then ordinary English grammar and how similar publications do things are our guides. And down style is the rule for this. BTW my biology textbooks also use down style for species names.
Why are we (according to the name-change people) supposed to use different rules for dogs, and aircraft on the one hand, and birds and mammals on the other?
Because aircraft are proper nouns, dog breeds are very close to being proper nouns (as explained in my last email) while birds and mammals are common nouns.
Our audience is the general public. As such we need to use general rules of grammar and capitalization NOT specialized rules of grammar and capitalization used in specialized publications. That is why other encyclopedias use down style for almost all common nouns. But since we are a wiki and page titles are also the way we link to pages, we need to be extra careful not to overcapitalize.
I understand that there is a strong tendency for specialists to capitalize their terms but Wikipedia is not a publication for specialists, it is a publication for all of the world.
For example there are specialists for almost everything so the result would be that Almost Everything In Wikipedia Would Be Capitalized:
Anyone know where the Clam Dip is? Hip Hop is a form of Rap Music. Some say that Global Warming and Ozone Depletion will kill us all. What type of Map Projection is that Topographic Map in? The Crystal Structure of lithium is Cubic Face-Centered. John Doe is a Computer Science pioneer in Integrated Circuits. At work I help to design Roundabout Intersections for Transit Villages.
In fact something close to this was the case when I started the project over a year ago. Over time these Incorrectly Capitalized Articles were moved to their proper down style names.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't have exceptions like dog breeds - that is why I added "almost always" to the convention. I'm willing to entertain the interesting proposition that theorems should also be counted as proper nouns. They are very specific things that have been formulated by very specific people (just like dog breeds). But species names are, by definition, common nouns. Here are the definitions again:
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). n : a noun that denotes any or all members of a class
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
Cheers!
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)