[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

Thu Oct 23 21:06:58 UTC 2003

>
>Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>>"Delirium" wrote
>>
>>>... I'd propose we remove titles from both article names and
>>>the beginning of the first sentence of the article, unless they are
>>>absolutely integral.  This includes both official titles (President,
>>>Prime Minister, etc.) and honorific titles (Blessed, Sir, etc.).
>>>
>>
>>I'd agree with the general sentiment.  Had a ''Sir'' imposed on an article 
>>I
>>wrote, and felt this made too much of a non-hereditry title.  Isaac Newton
>>doesn't need the "Sir", for example.
>>
>If you don't want titles in the articles that you write that's just fine.  
>Others may prefer to include them in the articles that they write; that's 
>fine too..  Going around and removing these titles just because they don't 
>please you is a disrespectful act.
>
>Ec

Wiki's policy on titles was worked out in detail in a debate raised on 
wiki-L, on talk pages and the results pulled into a detailed naming 
convention. On this basis /thousands/ of articles have been pulled together 
in a uniform structure, having been a hilarious mess (I first found 
wikipedia, having received an email from a colleague of mine - we both had 
edited texts for two of the biggest US encylopædias -  under the heading 
'look at this for a laugh'. The email went around to quite a few academics, 
writers, journalists, quoting some of the farcical rubbish that passed for 
titles on wikipedia, and did wikipedia considerable damage at the time 
because it suggested - wrongly - that wikipedia was sub-high school 
standard, or as one academic in Harvard is supposed to have said, 'National 
Enquirer-opedia'. While I cringed at the amateurish handling of the naming 
issue, I was impressed by the rest and stayed and regard wikipedia as a 
superb sourcebook).

After a thorough debate, and detailed discussion, not to mention extensive 
research, the naming conventions were implemented, having been agreed here 
and elsewhere initially by a small number, including Zoe, Deb, John Kenney, 
myself and others, then by /everyone/, worldwide, from Swedish users to 
Australian users, Americans, Europeans and from Asia, who worked on articles 
about people with titles. As a result, what had been a hilarious mess based 
on farcically simplistic presumptions (eg, all British royals have the 
surname Windsor, actually there are 19 names used by members of the British 
Royal Family, and according to his own staff, the Prince of Wales's surname 
is not Windsor but Mountbatten-Windor, the name he married under in 1981, 
similarly Queen Victoria's marital surname was 'Wettin' ) is now 
professionally organised and academic-standard; a senior editor on a rival 
print encyclopædia said that /they/ should try to be as good, as factual and 
as correct in the area of titles as wikipedia, having slammed wikipedia a 
year earlier as 'amateurish and opinionated' in the area.

As we have an agreed naming convention, applied to thousands of articles, by 
a range of people from professional editors like Zoe and bookworms like Deb 
to experts on constitutional history like John Kenney, any unilateral 
attempt to abandon what has been agreed because Mark has a POV he wishes to 
push, would be a gross abuse of  wiki and grossly insulting to the many 
people who solved what had been a glaring problem. Mark may not like titles, 
but the fact that they exist. Covering them accurately and factually is 
NPOV. Trying to push an agenda that says 'I don't like them, therefore I 
will remove them', is pushing a POV, is unencylopædic and grossly 
disrespectiful to the large numbers of people who debated the issue, made 
observations and have spent a year implementing the agreed wikipedia policy 
in a professional, encyclopædic NPOV manner.

JT

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