[WikiEN-l] naming convention for birds and others

[Ray Saintonge]

JFrost8401 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 04/06/03 04:28:31 GMT Daylight Time, 
> saintonge at telus.net writes:
>
>> JFrost8401 at aol.com wrote:
>>
>> > One other point with regard to the everlasting capitalisation debate
>> > is that it  is usually argued that non-specialist encyclopedias use
>> > lower case, and only specialist handooks like HBW, HANZAB and BWP use
>> > capitals.
>> >
>> > If it is being seriously suggested that Wikien should be the same as a
>> > paper encyclopedia (or on-line version thereof), can I suggest the
>> > following to bring other aspects into line.
>> >
>> > 1) Standardise spelling and names as American English (this solves the
>> > capitalisation problem too, since you lose the European and Australian
>> > contributors who write 90% of the animal/bird articles at a stroke.
>> >
>> > 2) Get rid of articles you wouldn't find in a "proper" encyclopedia,
>> > such as lists of people called Fred, album play lists, articles on
>> > "fisting" , lists of famous Hungarians etc. (I'll help on this.)
>> >
>> > 3) If you do item 1, then you can also revert the many US-centric
>> > articles, which just assume there are no other countries that matter,
>> > back to their original unsullied versions.
>>
>
> I was being ironic. Despite the AOL ISP, I am a Brit, and a major 
> contributor to bird articles. The non-trivial point I was making is 
> that by its nature, the encyclopedia has to be a compromise. If you 
> standardise spelling and vocabulary, you lose all the Old World 
> contributors. If you insist on lower case birds etc, you lose Tannin, 
> Steve Nova and me, the three most prolific contributors. The only 
> reason I haven't written a convention sheet is that it will just start 
> edit war 6. Incidently, you can't blame the AOU. Capitalisation is 
> standard in all specialist books, websites, and English language 
> ornithogical organisations.
>
> Jim

I was suspecting irony.  That's why I was pleased to respond in kind.

First of all, stop trying to cast this as an American vs. other English 
issue when it's nothing of the sort.  The AOU list is American and 
supports capitals; the Globe and Mail Style Book is not American and 
opposes them.  This is exactly the opposite to what you claim..Nor is 
the argument about spelling or vocabulary; it's about capitalization. 
 But for the capital letters , all the words in question are the same.

I've just looked at another source, Species 2000 
http://www.usa.sp2000.org/AnnualChecklist.html When I arbitrarily chose 
herons as a look-up the results were all with lower case, including for 
birds.

The NCBI taxonomy page 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi uses lower case.

There is nothing standard about uppercase.  Even if it is standard among 
ornithologists and bird guides, there is no need to extrapolate that POV 
and make it apply to other fauna.

The big advantage of having capitals in bird guides lies in that it 
makes refocusing one's eyes much easier when going back and forth 
between guid and binoculars.

The argument that if you don't get your way on this the three of you 
will leave is an irrelevant bully tactic that should be completely 
ignored.  It is completely contrary to any spirit of compromise.

Eclecticology