[WikiEN-l] Species names

[Toby Bartels]

Tannin wrote in part:

>There seems to be an almost 1:1
>relationship between the degree to which species names are capitalised
>in different taxa, and the extent to which species names are formalised
>and standardised.

Which begs the question:
Do the downstyle references (the scientific ones, not the Chicago MoS)
use standardised common species names in the first place?

Regardless of the answer to that ...
An obvious compromise is to place articles on species at standardised names:
a common name (capitalised per the rules that have been quoted before)
if English speaking authorities have agreed upon a standardised one;
or a Latin binomial (italicised and with initial capital) otherwise.
Uncapitalised titles will then become redirects or disambiguation pages,
depending on whether that unstandardised common name is used for
a single species (redirect) or several (disambiguation).

Complications:
An unstandardised common name may be used for a single family or such taxon.
Also, we rarely have plant articles as specific as a single species,
and requiring such would run into NPOV problems too,
given the debate between splitters and lumpers.
So an unstandardised (hence uncapitalised) common name
may well be appropriate for a grouping higher (or possibly higher)
than species, even if the above compromise is adopted for species.

Well, I'm trying to be neutral, so I won't argue strongly for the compromise,
but I'd like to know if any of the debaters are interested in it.


-- Toby