Species capitalization (was Re: [WikiEN-l] A clarificaton for Toby)

Sat Jun 7 18:30:14 UTC 2003

Toby wrote:
>It might be useful to give a huge list of mammal 
>books with capitalisation, similar to the huge list 
>of bird books (the mammal books cited have 
>been few).

I too would like to see such a list and am unconvinced that capitalization of 
mammal common names is at all correct except outside of very specialized 
publications (much more so than with birds).

>For my part, seeing that mav hasn't continued 
>any objections on that page is sufficient for me 
>to accept that a consensus was reached even 
>for mammals, among those that work on these 
>articles.

Since when has the lack of objection from me been a sign that everything is 
OK? :) I'm just one Wikipedian - the opinions of others also matter. Oh, and 
the real reason I haven't responded is two-fold; 1) the initial part of the 
debate took a lot out of me (10 hours of writing emails in one day will do 
that to a person) and 2) I've been on holiday in Yellowstone and many points 
in-between Yellowstone and Northern California (I took over 300 digital 
photos!). 

To Tannin and Jim;
I would also like to note that just because /I/ agreed to a compromise (on 
birds at least) doesn't mean that the issue is settled. Others have to agree 
as well and IMO you two have given a very weak argument for capitalization of 
mammal common names and I think that all the moving Tannin did for the mammal 
articles was not wise at this point.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav - still trying to catch up on all the mailing list 
posts)