[WikiEN-l] naming convention for birds and others

[JFrost8401 at aol.com]

In a message dated 04/06/03 13:00:55 GMT Daylight Time, fredbaud at ctelco.net 
writes:


> Well, I looked at [[Red-winged Blackbird]]. It follows the usual 
> convention, capitalization in title but not in text, until you "tidied it up" and 
> changed the instances in the text to capitalized. The problem is that red-winged 
> blackbird is not a proper noun. Not sure how many of these  you did and it 
> does seem unfair to ask you go back and try to find all of these that you 
> changed, but the "fait accompli" seems to be of your own making.
> 
> Fred
> >> 
>> 
> Some of the earlier bird articles pre-dated the agreed convention, so were, 
of course, brought into line. One reason that we have only recently started 
adding full species lists for large groups like the hummingbirds is that the 
sources I know capitalise in line with the agreed wikien convention, so it is 
simple to convert the list to a suitable layout. Doing the 337 hummingbirds took 
about 10 minutes.

If the agreed convention is reversed, future species for large families lists 
are likely to be less forthcoming, since there is no source with 
uncapitalised lists, and converting a capitalised list to the appropriate form would not 
be easily automated because (a) some names would remain partially capitalised 
like Wilson's petrel (b) nobody has disputed that the genus name must be 
capitalise, eg Parus ater.

I would not accept this is a problem of our own making-we followed an agreed 
policy. I should also point out that new fauna contributors like Kingturtle 
and Hawthorne have automatically gone for the capitaisation style they are 
familiar with.

At the risk of seeming churlish, I should point out that if the policy is 
reversed, it won't be me going through all the articles (written in good faith to 
an agreed style) to change the capitaisation.

Jim
.
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