[WikiEN-l] A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface

[Ray Saintonge]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Tannin wrote:
>
>>Bluntly, we, the people who actually WRITE the fauna 
>>entries, are sick and tired of being buggerised about, for 
>>no good reason, by people who do NOT contribute to them. 
>>Over the last month or so there has been a massive 
>>improvement to the bird sections in particular. There is a 
>>huge amount more still to do, but the concentrated efforts of 
>>three or four regular contributors is really starting to show 
>>results. Please, if you don't want to help with this project, 
>>at least stop interfering with it.
>>
>The taxobox tables that you are using I also helped develop (and in fact I'm 
>more proud of these tables than the element tables). Readers are contributors 
>in Wikipedia and I read a lot and contribute a bit here and a bit there. The 
>goal is to make Wikipedia a cohesive whole and greater than the sum of its 
>parts. 
>
>In the big picture view it is more important for us to avoid the use of 
>specialized grammar rules and concentrate on general rules - rules known, 
>used and expected by our general English-speaking audience and are used by 
>other general reference works (encyclopedias, dictionaries, and most 
>textbooks).
>
>Thus common nouns (those that tell the "kind" of something) are not 
>capitalized but proper nouns (those that name a singular, specific person, 
>place or thing) are capitalized. Anything other than that complicates 
>matters.
>
I mostly support Mav on this issue, but I don't go along with the 
exception that he would make for dog breeds.

After looking at several publications in my own library I find the 
situation inconclusive.  Mammalogists tend to prefer lower case, but 
ornithologists tend to prefer capitals.  Notably, some years back the 
National Museum of Canada published two companion books: "The Birds of 
Canada" and "The Mammals of Canada".  That distinction is maintained 
between those two books.  Entomologists tend to favour the consistent 
use of the Latin binomials, and make very little use of common names.

The fact that a certain cohort has currently been concentrating its 
attentions on the bird articles does not imply that it has any rights to 
insist on its own peculiar format.  We do have Wikipedia rules which, at 
least in this case, tend to be consistent with the usage of grammarians. 
 The burden of proof falls on the shoulders of those who seek to 
institute an exception to those rules.  I don't think that they have 
carried that burden, and their approach is "for the birds". ;-)

I have not been recently involved in the flora and fauna articles, but 
when I happen to wander there again I havew every intention of using 
lower case for the names of all animals, including birds.

Eclecticology