[WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding global guidelines?

Mon Jun 13 22:58:00 UTC 2005

Timwi wrote:
> I'm quite severely disturbed by the apparent habit of participants in 
> some WikiProjects to completely disregard Wikipedia's Manual of Style 
> and various guidelines, claiming that their pet WikiProject has their 
> own pet style guidelines, as if Wikipedia's global guidelines have no 
> say anyway.

This has always been the case. Specialities need their own naming 
schemes because the problems of naming and disambiguation are 
different. For example, European monarchs, European nobility, popes, 
cardinals and patriarchs all have their own naming schemes that differ 
from the Wikipedia standard; see [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names 
and titles)]]. Military ships have their own naming scheme, because so 
many ships share names; see [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)]].

So I think it's reasonable for Star Trek articles to have their own 
specialized naming conventions. However, if you're concerned that they 
are departing too much from standard conventions, you need to "bring 
them into the fold" by integrating the Star Trek conventions into the 
Manual of Style in the way that other specialized conventions have been 
integrated.

> Case in question: So far it seemed to me that Wikipedia uses brackets
> after article titles *only* when they are required for disambiguating
> between otherwise identical article titles. Hence, there is the title
> [[Cher (département)]] but not [[Haute-Corse (département)]].

> Add to this the fact that outside of Star Trek fandom, readers aren't
> likely to know what TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT mean anyway.

I agree that the abbreviations are not likely to be understood by many 
readers. But  compare this case with an article like [[USS Nassau 
(CVE-16)]]. Who except a naval enthusiast understands what "CVE-16" 
means? But "CVE-16" is universally used by naval historians, the 
experts in the field, to identify this ship.

So if the experts in the field of Star Trek universally use "TOS" to 
refer to the original series, then we should at least consider 
deferring to them. (But if they don't, then you certainly have a case 
for changing the convention.)