Tannin wrote:
Over and over again, a small number of good, decent
Wikipedia
contributors are causing difficulties for those of us who are actually
doing the hard yards in the fauna articles. All the major contributors
to the bird entries, for example, have complained about this on the
talk pages, but nothing is ever done. People keep claiming that, for
example, the Common Raven should be written as "common raven". One need
only reach to the bookshelf and pick up a reference work to discover
that this just ain't so. All we ask is that we follow our own naming
convention:
I quote: "Unless the term you wish to create a page for is a proper
noun OR IS OTHERWISE ALMOST ALWAYS CAPITALISED." Species names for the
higher orders (and possibly the lower ones too) are indeed "almost
always capitalised" and rightly so, as to do anything else is to court
ambiguity and lose clarity.
I'm in agreement here. One of my own areas of interest, dog breeds, has a
similar issue. So far the capitalised versions have (mostly) held here, but
it would be nice to clarify the issue and be sure of a consensus.
In the case of dog breeds, all my books on the subject (five) capitalise, as
do the various kennel clubs. I've been careful to check in each case - it's
"Airedale Terrier" but "Maltese terrier" for example. I would like to
move
"Chesapeake Bay retriever" back to "Chesapeake Bay Retriever" to
follow this
principle.
Regards,
sannse