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

Sat Apr 26 15:54:43 UTC 2003

Though I do not edit birds, I *absolutely* agree with
Tannin and co on the capitalisation topic.

I wonder who made the initial rules on the
capitalisation to respect.

I also understood that *a rule could be changed*,
should the participants agree on the change. So, the
answer : do not capitalise because it is not coherent
with the rules decided on wikipedia lead me to say
"If the rules are not good, let's change the rules".

I agree english tends to add capitalized letters quite
often to stress out the importance of a word. But, in
this case, the capitalisation is what is done by those
caring with birds issues. That is the rule most widely
respected in the world in this topic. Why should
wikipedia impose new rules over the way things are
named, just because of an old rule nobody can justify
really.

Also, stating this capitalisation is only for
professionals, so not to be respected necessary,
because wikipedia is not professional, is a idea that
I find a little bit easy. Either wikipedia is
professional enough and goes to the end of it to
respect proper naming, or wikipedia is not
professional enough, then birds entries are not
welcome on it.

Of course, this is absolutely similar to the "Theory"
and "theory" debate. Two very proper and clearly
identified articles should not be *merged* under one
unproperly capitalized name "theory", just for some
old and unjustifiable convention. When a concept is
identified - outside of wikipedia - with a big-t or a
small-t, wikipedia should reflect the difference.

This is also a similarly debate of naming plural or
singular. When a concept is known with singular, by
all means, let's prefer to singular. When a concept is
plural, let's respect the plurality.
I am pretty sure the convention on plurality was set
up, *only* for facility of linking (ie, farm naturally
lead to farms, but farms do not lead to farm).
However, the facility of linking should not be an
excuse for articles to be forced singular, when they
are used in plural in life.

And finally, I think referring (budda can not delete
this one) to other encyclopedias to set our
conventions is not necessarily a good move. Other
encyclopedias can make mistakes (confer Saddam
Hussein), that is no excuse to stick with these
mistakes.

Wikipedia should not copy other encyclopedia,
Wikipedia should be *better* than other encyclopedias.

--- Tony Wilson <list at redhill.net.au> wrote:
> 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
&gt; agrees.
> 
> Now, please, will the back seat drivers get out of
> our hair and let us
> get on with the job?
> 
> Tony Wilson
> (Tannin)
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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