[WikiEN-l] Re: Tannin, it seems, has changed lots of articles

[Toby Bartels]

JTDirl wrote in part:

>Oliver wrote:

>>If the majority of experts on fauna call an animal the "Aardvark", and the
>>majority of non-experts call it the "aardvark", then the majority of our
>>potential *readership* call it the "aardvark". So that's what our usual
>>naming convention says that *we* should call it, too. We shouldn't make
>>special cases just for one particular group of people without a better
>>reason than just because that's how they do it themselves.

>The thing is, we are an *encyclopædia*.
>As such we should strive as much as possible for
>accuracy and that includes accuracy in capitalisation. [...]
>So we have a redirect page based on
>the wrong but commonly understood title, but the actual page is on the
>correctly titled page. So someone coming to the page is able to go away
>knowing the 'correct' facts, including the correct title, knowing more when
>they leave than when they came to it.

It's hardly been established that the downstyle is *wrong*,
and we can always explain in the body of the article
that many authorities prefer to capitalise (and explain who).

But I didn't come here to argue for downstyle,
and I don't claim that these points outweigh JTDirl's.
What I really want to do is point out the similarity of the argument
to the earlier one over the naming of foreign cities and people.
To paraphrase:

Oliver: People expect "Munich", so we should give them that.

JTDirl: But "München" is correct, and an encyclopædia should be correct.
        We can always redirect from the common but mistaken spelling.

Me (in the first paragraph above): It's not clear that "Munich" is wrong,
   and the article can always explain that it's "München" in Germany.

Not that this similarity should convince anybody in either case,
but I hope that Wikipedians with opinions on both issues
take the time to reconcile them in their own minds.


-- Toby