[WikiEN-l] A plea for sanity in capitalisation from the coalface

[Ray Saintonge]

Tony Wilson wrote:

>Ray wrote: "Although I am usually responsive to blaming the Americans
>for everything, it needs to be remarked that the capitalist charge in
>this matter has been led by an Australian" - which made me smile. The
>irony is that I also tend to blame the Americans for everything - and
>in this context, I blame them for *not* capitalising things when they
>ought to!  So perhaps we had best categorise this particular Australian
>as one of Little Johnny Howard's "American Deputy Sherrifs in
>South-east Asia."  .... Err - sorry, Jimbo. I know - no politics on the
>list. :)
>
I can never pass up a good opportunity for a bad pun.  This was a chance 
to look at capitalism with an entirely fresh meaning.   :-)

>Enough humour. When Ray wrote that "the problem ... operates on two
>levels" and that "as long as it is only on a stylistic level ..." he
>missed the point. It is *not* only stylistic, nor indeed even primarily
>stylistic: it is a matter of clear, unabiguous, and accurate
>communication. There are many long-tailed shrikes, but only one
>Long-tailed Shrike. It is not a matter of 'preffered styles", but a
>matter of a precise and correct name or a vague and incorrect name.
>
The problem here is in insisting that there is only one way to do 
things.  My personal preference would be to put all these animal 
articles under the Latin binomial.  That option would be the least vague 
and least ambiguous of all, but I haven't had much of a following in 
this.  As I said in a previous post your position tends to be most 
adamantly held by birders than by any other students of life forms; the 
opposite point of view tends to be favoured by grammarians.  It is once 
again a matter of POV's.  Certainly the issue does not carry the heavy 
emotional baggage of many of the political issues that have flared up, 
but it is a POV issue nevertheless.  How do you choose in a battle 
between lexicologists and ornithologists?

>However, Ray's third point raises a significant issue. Creating
>lower-case redirects to entries that are (quite properly) capitalised
>involves a good deal of attention to detail - something that I can
>speal with authority about, as I have spent 20 or 30 hours attending to
>this stuff in the four days or so, It is tedius and a small number of
>mistakes will undoubtedly have slipped through. A technical solution
>would indeed be very welcome. The obvious starting point would be a
>search function that works. I understand that that matter is high on
>the developers' priority list, and wish them every success in the
>quest. 
>
This was indeed my most important point since it affects such a wide 
range of articles well beyond avian capitalism (or Avian Capitalism). 
 Using Tony's distinction, very few of the terms that he would put with 
lower case letters would lead to articles anyway so why not use 
re-directs?  It's as effective a temporary measure as any.  

Unfortunately, even though I can envision how I would like to see this 
sort of thing work I have to admit to a complete lack of technical 
expertise to apply this in out multilingual environment.

Eclecticology