[WikiEN-l] bird names etc.

[JFrost8401 at aol.com]

mav

The only recent mammal book I've bought is "Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises", 
which capitalises, which is the practice I've used in the cetacean articles. 

I know there is no ownership of articles, but you must see that it is to say 
the least irritating when you put hours of work into articles when people 
whose make no contributions to these articles beyond copyedits (yes know that's 
vauable too) make sweeping changes to what appears to be standard practice 
elsewhere. 

I've conscientiously stuck to what appeared to be the agreed policy, only to 
find that it isn't agreed anymore. I've deliberately avoided fauna other than 
birds and mammals because I don't know what the convention is for fish and 
reptiles.

I can't really win on this-I've got too much real work on to spend a lot of 
time on this debate for the umpteenth time, but failure to maintain an active 
participation is only likely to weaken my position.

For mammals and birds, I can't see what's wrong with the current postion. 
Somebody searching for blue whale or Blue Whale will find it. Under the proposed 
lower case regime, a little knowledge will be a dangerous thing. I would 
search for capitalised mammals, eg Gray Whale, and presumably not find them ( I 
don't think it's wikien policy to provide capitalised redirects to all articles.)

Perhaps it's simpler only to do single word mammals, and make sure the name 
is always at the start of a sentence, then nobody gets upset (sorry, being 
facetious).

I just can't spare the time on this debate any longer. I'll stick to bird 
articles, where at least there still appears to be a degree of tolerance, and 
plenty to do on European, African and Asian species about 4,000 I should  guess.  


Jim

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