[WikiEN-l] bird names etc.

[Daniel Mayer]

Jim wrote:
>I raised the point previously as to how this will be
>decided, with has more relevance now that Mav seems
>to be retreating from his previous position. If it 
>is a straight numerical thing, the American view is
>bound to prevail, despite the fact that the
>proponents of lower case contribute so little to
>actually writing the wildlife articles. 

It has been proven very clearly that this is not an
"American" thing. Trying to paint things in that light
is disingenuous and smacks of Anti-Americanism (since
your premise seems to be that if Americans are trying
to impose something then it must be bad). 

Oh and using your logic I should have near dictatorial
powers over WikiEN just because I've made /far/ more
edits than anyone else across nearly every subject.
And guess which area I've made a good majority of
those edits? In copyediting and fixing things like
capitalization. So according to your line of reasoning
everyone else should just shut up and let me do what I
want.

But I don't try to use my editing numbers as a wedge
in an argument because that is irrelevant. The only
thing that is relevant is what is the best thing for
us to do; the articles and their capitalization does
not belong to the people who write them. This is a
community matter - esp since it involves how articles
link to each other.

Also, this is a wiki Jim, so if you don't like other
people editing your articles then this isn't the right
place for you.

>Are we also going to insist on standardising names,
>so that the lead article has to be Common Loon,
>rather than as at present, Great Northen Diver (with
> a redirect).. and as for spelling! ( incidently,
> the group article is Loon - I wouldn't want to be
> chauvinist about this).

Why are you beating that straw man? The argument about
what to do with the birds has been won by the
capitalizers since each species has been given a very
specific name by an international body and their
convention is to capitalize those given names. I'm
content with that so long as lower-cased redirects are
provided (since there is a strong standard English
convention to write bald eagle not Bald Eagle). 

The issue we have before us is whether or not to
extend capitalization beyond the birds where there
does not seem to be international standards committees
handing out official names which have a one-to-one
relationship with particular organisms (let alone any
policies on capitalization). 

Do you have /any/ arguments to support capitalization
beyond the birds? 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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