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

Sat Apr 26 10:33:56 UTC 2003

Let's walk through the feelings of the people who are doing the actual
contributions, shall we?  In the massive task of documenting the
9000-odd species of bird, the active contributors are:

* Jimfbleak. Jim has done an incredible amount of work on birds,
probably more than everyone else put together, and he's only been here
a few months. Take a look at his user contributions page, it's a huge
and ongoing effort. How does Jim feel about this? "The normal
convention is that English names of species begin with capitals, eg--
Magnificent Frigatebird, but groups are lower case". He thinks the wiki
practice of editing out correct species names is a right pain.

* I have done 50-odd myself, and not many itty-bitty stubs amongst
them. I work more slowly than Jim, but it's adding up to a fair slab
just the same. 

* Steve Nova has only been here a very short while (though he was
contributing species accounts as an anon before that) and he's doing
quite a lot: working his way through the crows and ravens and now into
other families. He has had problems with the silly practice of not
using the correct names too. 

* Kingturtle joined not so long ago, and like me has wide interests,
but has already made a good start on American birds. His feelings?
"Through my dozens of bird reference books dating from 1939 to 2000,
all but one use the Ruby-throated Hummingbird convention." Or, on the
ambiguity problem: "in order for this signal to the reader to succeed,
the species article ... needs to be called "Red-throated Diver." And so
on.

* The ONLY  person who is regularly contributing anything of substance
to the bird entries that has NOT spoken out against the name-change
mania is Montrealis, who has started making a modest number of bird
edits lately. I don't know what his view is on this.

So there you have it: with the possible exception of Montrealis (who is
the least active of the active contributors in this field in any case)
EVERY ONE of the people who actually do the work in the bird entries
agrees.

Now, please, will the back seat drivers get out of our hair and let us
get on with the job?

Tony Wilson
(Tannin)