Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)

Also "xx Dynasty" ?

See Tang Dynasty etc., and category:Vietnamese dynasties. Where is the guidance please? Thank you. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:29, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

"Nguyen dynasty" beats "Nguyen Dynasty" on this ngram. It's not by that big a margin, though. Kauffner (talk) 14:13, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

There are quite a few books, like this one, that use lower case for both Chinese and Vietnamese dynasties, implying that caps are not "necessary" for either. Therefore, it is WP style to go with lower case, avoiding the unnecessary caps. It's a simple WP:MOS issue, not special to titles. Dicklyon (talk) 06:24, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Dicklyon. Tony (talk) 06:37, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Same here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:06, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Main Page

OK, so how about "Main Page"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.10.204.202 (talk) 02:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Main Page is an artifact of the software that defaults to a main page called "Main Page". It is not an article. Apteva (talk) 04:54, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: bird names

Add bird names as capitalized. This is a procedure used by ornithologists and Wikipedia, but not used in most dictionaries and literature. See[1] Apteva (talk) 04:30, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Note: Most words preceded by a dash are not capitalized, but not all. See, for example Yellow-bellied Sunbird-Asity, which is correctly capitalized. Apteva (talk) 18:33, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

• Support This is long-accepted and agreed practice on Wikipedia, and is used consistently in all the thousands of articles that fall within the Bird project's remit Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:09, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  No articles fall within any WikiProject's remit. —David Levy 18:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I had to look up the word remit.

  re·mit [ri-mit] verb, re·mit·ted, re·mit·ting, noun

  verb (used with object)

  1. to transmit or send (money, a check, etc.) to a person or place, usually in payment.

  2. to refrain from inflicting or enforcing, as a punishment, sentence, etc.

  3. to refrain from exacting, as a payment or service.

  4. to pardon or forgive (a sin, offense, etc.).

  5. to slacken; abate; relax: to remit watchfulness.

  In this case it seems the meaning was "forgive". Apteva (talk) 22:03, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  "The thousands of articles that fall within the bird project's forgive"? That doesn't make sense.
  You've overlooked the noun form. From the page that you quoted: "the area of authority or responsibility of an individual or a group: by taking that action, the committee has exceeded its remit"
  —David Levy 00:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose expanding the codifying of that naming convention beyond the bird project. If a bird name appears as part of a quotation (hypothetically), then it would not be capitalized. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:12, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  What you are saying is that in internal discussion on WP Birds it is ok to name birds correctly but if WP Birds ventures out into article space they can not do that? What you are saying does not make any sense. If a bird name appears in a quotation it is correct to add [sic] after the name if it is not correctly capitalized. But doing so would actually add confusion, as it would tend to indicate that the spelling was wrong, not the capitalization. Apteva (talk) 18:03, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I'm saying that I don't want to see WP:BIRDS odd choice in capitalization (not "correctly", mind you, but "jargonly" -- the language particular to discussions within a field is "jargon", and can well deviate from general usage such as in a general encyclopedia without making general usage incorrect -- and I really, really, really do not want to rehash that here) foisted upon other articles as if it's a general capitalization convention. In quotations, it wouldn't get [sic] because it's not incorrect. And since we're in "naming conventions", I'm talking about articles about quotations, which would never have [sic] in the title anyway. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Other articles? We are talking about article names. All of the bird articles use this convention. All we are doing is recognizing that. This is not a change to what has always been done. It is definitely not an "odd choice". What is an odd choice is to call a Grizzly Bear a Grizzly bear. Just as odd as calling Robert Smith by the name Robert smith. Both Grizzly bear and Robert Smith are proper nouns. Why use one convention for people and another for animals? We do that because that is what the "jargon" people use. Apteva (talk) 18:42, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Grizzly Bear is not a proper noun. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:48, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  When used to distinguish between types of bears it is a proper noun. When used to describe a group of bears of the same type it is a common noun. There is only one bear that is called a Grizzly bear. There are thousands of Grizzly bears. In the first case it is a proper noun in the second case it is a common noun that is capitalized. Go figure. Apteva (talk) 22:19, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  
  Do you apply this logic to everything? The term "sink wrench" refers to a specific type of wrench, distinguished from others. Does that make it a proper noun in that context? And if plumbers' specialist publications used the styling "Sink Wrench" (while everyone else wrote "sink wrench"), which form would be more appropriate at Wikipedia? —David Levy 22:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I figure that you do not understand the term "proper noun". Hercules is a proper noun. Old Ephraim is a proper noun. Each refers to only one bear. "Grizzly bear" is not a proper noun. It is the common noun that identifies the class to which Hercules, Old Ephraim, and unnamed multitudes of other grizzly bears belong. It does not magically become a proper noun based on context, any more than "book" becomes a proper noun when used to distinguish between types of media. It might be jargonly capitalized, but even changes in capitalization would not confer proper-nounhood upon it. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:30, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  The name of the species is "Grizzly bear". It is not grizzly bear. Why is the first letter capitalized? Because it is a proper noun. Why is the second word not capitalized? Because that is convention. The name of the species is "Grey Heron", not grey heron. I have no problem with using the name of a species as the title of an article. People learn about proper nouns in the second grade, according to this book. Get Ready! For Standardized Tests: Reading Grade 2 ISBN 9780071374064 pg. 57 However, English is a very complex language. WP is not a one size fits all item, and all policies tend to have exceptions that are noted. This exception is noted, but not correctly. This is not "a proposal". It is what editors have been following. Apteva (talk) 02:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  The name of the species is "Grizzly bear". It is not grizzly bear. Why is the first letter capitalized? Because it is a proper noun.
  
  People learn about proper nouns in the second grade, according to this book. Get Ready! For Standardized Tests: Reading Grade 2 ISBN 9780071374064 pg. 57
  Now you're just being insulting and condescending.
  WP is not a one size fits all item, and all policies tend to have exceptions that are noted.
  Exceptions are appropriate when Wikipedia consensus — not WikiProject consensus — dictates. —David Levy 02:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  My measure of consensus of the community is the 10,000 articles that are named with capital letters. For every one of them the "community" had the opportunity to change them and lost every battle. What I see is that the community chose to use capital letters 10,000 times. Apteva (talk) 05:13, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Either you're unfamiliar with the situation's background (as some of your other messages suggest) or your definition of "consensus" doesn't jibe with policy. —David Levy 05:42, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Yes I am unfamiliar with the "situation's background", but I am familiar with an excellent index of all of the discussions on the topic that has been compiled, and have little interest in reading them, and secondly my definition of consensus is the outcome of a consensus decision making process, and it is my assumption that process occurred 10,000 times, once for each article, with the result always the same. In view of past discussions it is my hope that by some miracle people are ready to come to a consensus on this issue. The consensus of capitalizing names seems to be clear, as it has been applied 10,000 times. Many times there are situations when bodies want to talk about what to do and in the meantime either nothing gets done or others just go and do it, such as wp:bold. The consensus process tends to be slower than a top down approach, but when consensus is reached the body can act much quicker than when the decision is top down. In negotiating with Japanese companies Americans were confused when it seemed that the Japanese were sending over everyone including the janitors and the Americans had to start all over with each and explain the program all over again, but then when a decision was made to act, the Americans were left in the dust and were astonished at how quickly the Japanese were able to react. In an American company when the owner/CEO makes a decision, it is common for those who disagree to drag their feet and slow things down, which does not happen when consensus decision making is used. Apteva (talk) 08:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Yes I am unfamiliar with the "situation's background",
  And you're relying upon inaccurate assumptions.
  but I am familiar with an excellent index of all of the discussions on the topic that has been compiled, and have little interest in reading them,
  What was the point of mentioning the "excellent index" that you don't intend to utilize?
  and secondly my definition of consensus is the outcome of a consensus decision making process, and it is my assumption that process occurred 10,000 times, once for each article, with the result always the same.
  As noted above, your assumption is inaccurate. —David Levy 11:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  If I have a discussion about whether Spotted Owl should be capitalized and three people participate and conclude it should, that is a local consensus. There are less than a handful of thousands of active WP contributors. If there are 3,000 discussions about a particular question, it is highly likely to come to the attention of most if not all of the active contributors. This then becomes a community consensus, because all of the community of active contributors has weighed in, and in many cases codified the decision. You will note in the edit summary for the creation of the convention of capitalizing all animal species names in 2003 that it was done not as an out of the blue suggested style, but that it was an "added agreed naming convention for animals (plants?)". That is the difference between a local consensus and the consensus of the community - solely the level of participation. Please note that out of the hundreds of millions of people in the community who use wikipedia, there is a far greater community of people who do not and may not have even ever used a computer, though that number is declining. Occasionally we have an expert who stumbles upon a WP article and notes something that is completely false and edits it, usually as an ipuser. That was my first edit - fixing a glaring error, that was glaring to an expert, but taken as fact by the WP community who had put it there. Now if you have some other definition of local consensus, I suggest that an edit to that section is needed. I would say that it was not until about 2010 that most people started taking WP seriously - prior to 2005, or even 2008 it was a running joke to quote something from WP, and even now no one asks for a reference in WP in support of something, but always a RS, with the explicit assumption that WP is inherently unreliable. That could change in 50 years. Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I've attempted to explain the situation, but it appears that you still don't understand.
  The Wikipedia editing community hasn't endorsed the style "10,000 times". It hasn't done so once.
  The community has weighed in, and it disagrees with the local consensus established at the bird WikiProject, whose members believe that they possess the authority to overrule the community and control "their" articles' content. Attempts to address this problem have been met with stonewalling, distortion and threats of leaving Wikipedia in protest, leading many to conclude that it's more practical (and far less stressful) to let the WikiProject have its way than to persist in trying to set things right.
  This is not the same as "consensus" for the status quo, the mistaken impression that you seek to propagate. —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  I was not a participant in any of those discussions, but to say "than to persist in trying to set things right" assumes an outcome that is not warranted. The WP:Bird editors have a very valid reason for stating that they have "set things right" by using their version of capitalization. There are mediation processes available, and it seems like your mythical community that excludes WP:Bird is simply not willing to admit that they are wrong. What is done in bird articles has exactly zero interest or affect for me. Not a subject that I ever either use or have any interest in, and I certainly am not going to make up rules for them and try to impose them on them. And if I did, I would codify whatever it was that was current practice. The only time I see bird articles is recent edits or move requests. Apteva (talk) 01:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  I was not a participant in any of those discussions, but to say "than to persist in trying to set things right" assumes an outcome that is not warranted. The WP:Bird editors have a very valid reason for stating that they have "set things right" by using their version of capitalization.
  You're conflating two separate (but related) issues.
  Unquestionably, the bird WikiProject's members sincerely believe that their preferred style should be used at Wikipedia, and they've presented reasonable arguments.
  When I refer to "setting things right", I don't mean "using the right style". I mean "honoring consensus".
  I personally disagree with some of Wikipedia's style conventions. But I don't believe that overruling the community and forcing my non-consensus preferences into articles would constitute "setting things right".
  Likewise, even if I agreed with the bird WikiProject's preferred capitalization style, I wouldn't condone the manner in which it's been implemented.
  There are mediation processes available,
  And attempts to utilize them have occurred. In the most recent instance with which I'm familiar, the main party arguing on the WikiProject's behalf announced her retirement from Wikipedia (after threatening to quit under any scenario in which 100% of the WikiProject's demands weren't met) before any progress could be made.
  and it seems like your mythical community that excludes WP:Bird
  I explicitly stated that "the opinions of a WikiProject's members matter no less than those of any other editors". —David Levy 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  I am not the least surprised that they quit. You can only beat a dead horse so long. However, whatever the guideline says is the defacto consensus, and it said for 8 1/2 years that what WP:Bird was doing was within the guideline. The current guideline is just plain wrong, and misleading. Apteva (talk) 03:41, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  I am not the least surprised that they quit. You can only beat a dead horse so long.
  Oh, she didn't actually quit. She merely announced it, thereby obstructing further discussion (including the mediation that you just cited as a viable course of action). And as I recall, it wasn't the first time that she employed that tactic.
  However, whatever the guideline says is the defacto consensus.
  That isn't how Wikipedia works. When a WikiProject forces something onto a guideline page, that doesn't create consensus.
  Our policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive. They're written because they're true, not true because they're written. And if one isn't true (e.g. if it doesn't accurately reflect consensus), it isn't valid. —David Levy 04:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  This exception is noted, but not correctly.
  It's noted correctly (as a deviation imposed by a WikiProject).
  This is not "a proposal".
  It's not? Then why did you label it as such? You aren't proposing that something be done?
  It is what editors have been following.
  It's what a WikiProject has forced editors to follow, in contravention of policy. —David Levy 02:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  What I meant is this is not a proposal to change policy. It is simply a clerical correction to allow the written policy reflect what I see as a defacto policy. Apteva (talk) 04:57, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I've explained why the proposed change carries far deeper implications.
  The current wording reflects a great deal of discussion. It isn't accidental, doesn't contain a clerical error, and wasn't thrown together on a whim. —David Levy 05:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Point is that it says one thing and editors are doing another. It may have seemed like a good idea when it was written, but it does not seem like a good idea now. Has anything changed? Could it have been written better, in a way that five years later it would be meaningful? What is worse is looking at the page history, which went from saying that capitalization was disputed, to saying that birds are capitalized,[2], to the current wording that it is proposed that bird names are capitalized. It may have been a proposal in 2003,[3] but in 2009 it was a re-cast in concrete policy, and remained that for two years and three months. And after that it became a proposal? No, that just does not make any sense. Apteva (talk) 09:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  It may have seemed like a good idea when it was written,
  (earlier this year, resulting from a massive discussion)
  but it does not seem like a good idea now.
  (in your opinion)
  Has anything changed?
  Not that I know of. You simply aren't familiar with the relevant circumstances and refuse to become informed.
  What is worse is looking at the page history, which went from saying that capitalization was disputed, to saying that birds are capitalized,[4], to the current wording that it is proposed that bird names are capitalized.
  The earlier wording didn't accurately reflect consensus. —David Levy 11:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I am really astonished to see arguments made against going back to what has been policy for over eight years by saying that it is a project that is trying to violate policy. When in fact it is anyone who does not want birds capitalized who is violating policy. Apteva (talk) 09:15, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  The WikiProject is violating WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. To what policy are you referring? —David Levy 11:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  See timeline below. The way you are wording your argument it sounds like there was a policy that no animal species names should be capitalized and WP:Bird used a local consensus to override that. As mentioned it no longer is a local consensus if you do that thousands of times. But actually there is no policy on the capitalization of articles, there is a guideline, and since 2003 that guideline said that bird species names get capitalized - until the confusing wording of January of this year was added, saying that there was a proposal to capitalize bird species names, and you make it sound like they are using local consensus to jump the gun and capitalize before the proposal is ratified. This is like Kyoto. It was never ratified by the United States, but many cities have jumped in and ratified it for their own community. So in light of the history of the convention on capitalization, clearly all those arguing against capitalization are bucking eight and a half years of a guideline and 10,000 articles that were created, not as a violation of guideline, but inline with this guideline. So the burden of prove is not on the side of anyone who wants to capitalize species names, but on the side of anyone who does not want to capitalize them. That would be you. Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  The way you are wording your argument it sounds like there was a policy that no animal species names should be capitalized and WP:Bird used a local consensus to override that.
  You've misunderstood. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is a section of WP:CONSENSUS. That's the policy that's been violated, as I've plainly stated several times.
  As mentioned it no longer is a local consensus if you do that thousands of times.
  You're arguing that if a WikiProject forces its local consensus upon the community a sufficient number of times, it somehow is transformed into a community-wide consensus. That doesn't make sense.
  But actually there is no policy on the capitalization of articles, there is a guideline, and since 2003 that guideline said that bird species names get capitalized
  Those versions of the guideline, like the practice itself, reflected local consensus contrary to that of the Wikipedia editing community at large.
  This is like Kyoto. It was never ratified by the United States, but many cities have jumped in and ratified it for their own community.
  You claim to have read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but you evidently don't understand it.
  So in light of the history of the convention on capitalization, clearly all those arguing against capitalization are bucking eight and a half years of a guideline and 10,000 articles that were created, not as a violation of guideline, but inline with this guideline.
  Said "guideline" never reflected consensus (and therefore was invalid).
  You're arguing that it's appropriate for a WikiProject to create and enforce a Wikipedia guideline, overruling those created by the community at large. And hey, they weren't doing anything wrong...because look, there was a guideline! And the community didn't manage to stop them, so that means that there's consensus. In fact, the consensus decision making process occurred 10,000 times; whenever someone created a bird article with IOC-style capitalization and refused to allow others to change it, it was yet another instance in which the community chose to use capital letters. —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Firstly, WikiProjects are simply groups of normal editors with shared interests, collaborating to improve and maintain articles. They possess absolutely no special authority.
  Secondly, neither capitalization style is inherently "incorrect". One is prevalent in specialist usage and the other is prevalent in general usage (including encyclopedias like this one). —David Levy 18:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose This creates undesirable inconsistency between birds' names and other animals' names, and generally flies in the face of policy and guidelines. See WP:LOCALCONSENSUS ("participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope") and WP:PJ ("WikiProjects have no special rights or privileges compared to other editors and may not impose their preferences on articles"). I see no good reason for this wild deviance from this well-established guideline. If I said American black bear is bad capitalization because it could refer to any bear which is black and American, no one would take me seriously. It doesn't make any more sense applied to birds. --BDD (talk) 15:12, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Sorry but that is what it is. If you read the link you will see that Ornithologists made a conscious decision to break with the tradition used by other species naming conventions, and it is a tradition that WP has no reason to ignore. What the guideline actually says is that capitalization follows the practice used by experts in the field. In the case of Grizzly bear, zoologists follow the convention of capitalizing the first word and not the second or third for the English name. For the Latin name both ornithologists and zoologists follow the normal Genus, species naming convention. In the case of birds ornithologists note that Grizzly Bear is a proper noun and really should have been capitalized and use Grey Heron as the name. Since WP reflects industry practice, it is correct to do exactly what we have always been doing. Robert Smith is a proper noun. Are we supposed to only capitalize Robert and not smith? No, because that is not common practice. If ornithologists change their mind, we will follow suit, but in the meantime we need to do whatever they do. And if zoologists change the way animal species are named, we would likewise change Grizzly bear to Grizzly Bear. An encyclopedia reports on the world, it does not make up its own spelling rules. Apteva (talk) 17:44, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  And what it is that it is is part of the birds project, not part of the general encyclopedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  What you are saying does not make any sense. Are you saying that the article on Yellow-bellied Sunbird-Asity is not a part of article space, but is a part of WP Birds? Apteva (talk) 18:35, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  It would help if you would say "I don't understand" when you don't understand what is written, rather than accusing the writer of not making sense. Introducing the "rule" here would mean that it would apply to all article titles, not just articles in the WP Birds space. All WP Birds articles are part of article space, but not all parts of article space are WP Birds articles, see? -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:42, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  This convention only addresses the capitalization of article names. If you make a wikilink from another article and do not like the capitalization, there is always a redirect from the uncapitalized spelling that will get you there. Redirects are not costly, and can be used freely. I would add "common exceptions include articles on birds, fish, cultivars, and breeds". There is no need here to add rules of naming. The linked MOS can cover those details. All that is needed here is to point out the major exceptions. There may be others. Obviously the criteria of proper noun is inadequate because no one knows what a proper noun is. All the references I can find are oriented at the second grade level.[5][6] Truck is a common noun, but Ford F-150 is a proper noun. Is that because there is only one F-150 truck? No, it is because there is only one kind of truck called by that name. Duck is a common noun but Mallard is a proper noun for the same reason. In context it becomes a common name when used in a sentence if you are talking about the duck, and a proper noun if you are talking about the name of the species. F-150 always stays a proper noun. City is a common noun but Chicago is a proper noun. A sink wrench is a common noun, an Allen wrench is a proper noun if made by the Allen company, and a common noun which includes a proper noun if made by anyone else. The words "This convention often also applies within the article body" are not using the word "convention" in the context of this [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)|convention]], but in the context of this [[Wiktionary:convention|convention]]. If that is not clear, the wording can be clarified. In the case of both birds and fish, ornithologists use caps when they are talking to each other, the general public normally commonalizes the names of the species and does not capitalize them. Ditto for ichthyologists. To me it makes sense to default to the ornithologists and ichthyologists in the article title, and to the general public in the body of all articles other than those one the species itself, and leave it to individual preference to create an article that uses capitalization or not - it is, after all, an ornithological article. The main rational I see for that is heaven forbid if some ichthyologist actually used WP, for example to get a list of fish and why make them change the capitalization of each? Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Some of that is simply false, Apteva. You're either ignorant of the actual state of things in ichthyology or intentionally misstating the facts about capitalization in that field, which is controversial. Either way, you appear to be disingenuously trying to make it seem like bird capitalization is normal and just a common thing that some fields do. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's an explicit convention against the practice for mammals, for example. With fish, the AFS/AFIH capitalize, and no one else does. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

• Obviously the criteria of proper noun is inadequate because no one knows what a proper noun is.
  Wow. I lack the patience to go through this point by point. I can only reiterate The Blade's suggestion that you read our Proper noun article. (Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but plenty of reliable sources are cited.) But I am compelled to respond to a couple of statements.
  Duck is a common noun but Mallard is a proper noun for the same reason.
  You really didn't think this through. By the same logic, "Duck" is a proper noun (because only one family of birds is called by that name). Likewise, "Bird" is a proper noun (because only one class of animals is called by that name) and "Animal" is a proper noun (because only one kingdom of eukaryotes is called by that name).
  A sink wrench is a common noun,
  Why? Only one kind of wrench is called by that name. —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Really? Home Depot sells two of them, one by Brasscraft, one by Ridgid.[7] No one has ever said that the rules of English are simple. It is a very rich and a very complicated language. Apteva (talk) 02:16, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Multiple companies manufacture that kind of wrench. —David Levy 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Evidently not a very good example. What you are saying is that just because it is a kind of wrench it should be a proper noun. As should be pipe wrench, monkey wrench, and lug wrench. Not because it is a unique design, which would make it more likely to be a proper noun. That would be suggesting that mammal be a proper noun because it is a particular type of animal. Not specific enough. Star is not a proper noun, Sun is, and sun is not. The word moon is not, the word Moon is. From what I can see family and above are not proper nouns. Genus for each species is a proper noun, and species is an adjective, which is why our style guide says always capitalize genus, and never species, and italicize both because both are in Latin. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, Individual. Above genus is a common noun. No one disputes that the name of an individual is a proper noun. I say that the name of the species (which includes the genus, such as H. sapiens (or Human), is a proper noun, with only the first word capitalized, such as Grizzly bear, and is used as a common noun, human when referring not to the name of the species but to the members of that species. On this point you and I will both evidently need to wait for others to weigh in as neither has presented any "Reliable Sources". Apteva (talk) 05:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  What you are saying is that just because it is a kind of wrench it should be a proper noun.
  No, I'm not saying that. Good grief.
  That would be suggesting that mammal be a proper noun because it is a particular type of animal. Not specific enough.
  According to whom? You, evidently.
  From what I can see family and above are not proper nouns. Genus for each species is a proper noun,
  ...according to a college handout of indeterminate authorship, which you found via a keyword search.
  But let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that this is accurate. What bearing does that have on English names?
  I say that the name of the species (which includes the genus, such as H. sapiens (or Human), is a proper noun.
  Right. You say it. And someone from a message board agrees.
  On this point you and I will both evidently need to wait for others to weigh in as neither has presented any "Reliable Sources".
  Are you asking me to prove a negative (i.e. to find documents containing the statement that "English species names are not proper nouns")? Please see Russell's teapot. —David Levy 05:55, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Are you aware of the extent to which this matter has been discussed (often heatedly, unfortunately) at Wikipedia? I get the impression that you aren't.
  You're mistaken in your belief that Wikipedia routinely adopts the style conventions preferred by a subject's specialists (when they differ from those prevalent in general usage). We rely on such sources for factual information (e.g. a bird's migratory behavior), but on matters of style, we follow the examples of reliable mainstream (non-specialist) publications.
  As has been discussed in the past, most (not all) bird specialists deviate from the style convention overwhelmingly followed elsewhere (non-specialist books, newspapers, websites, etc.). They do so not because bird species names are proper nouns (a claim evidently made by one ornithologist), but to draw emphasis in field guides and such (in a manner intuitive only to bird experts/enthusiasts, not to an encyclopedia's readers in general).
  The bird WikiProject, like every other WikiProject, possesses absolutely no special authority. The current situation (in which specialist styling is tolerated in bird articles, but not in articles in which birds are merely mentioned) exists in the interest of maintaining the peace. Some of the WikiProject's members are so strongly opposed to the use of mainstream styling that it's easier to simply let them have their way (in contravention of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS) than to deal with the endless argumentation, deliberate distortion, stonewalling tactics, and threats of quitting the project if their demands aren't met. (To be clear, not all of the WikiProject's members behave this way; some have expressed their opinions in a highly reasonable manner.)
  It seems that for the most part, they're satisfied with owning the bird articles. We needn't turn over the rest of the encyclopedia, nor should we endorse the idea that WikiProjects are entitled to control "their" articles. —David Levy 18:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  No but we can certainly ask the advice of a project. And we need to write down what our actual practice is and not say that it is a proposed change when that change has been followed for years. Apteva (talk) 20:10, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  The status quo is something analogous to a ceasefire, not an actual agreement within the Wikipedia community. The current wording (already a major concession) reflects that. Your proposed wording would make the WikiProject's decision "official", thereby endorsing the idea that WikiProjects possess such authority (and encouraging other WikiProjects, which currently respect WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, to act in kind). —David Levy 20:33, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I can think of two cease fires that took place in Asia. Vietnam and Korea. In one case the country went back to doing whatever it wanted without intervention. In the latter the country remained divided with no contact between two halves of one country. What we have done in the case of bird articles is akin to Vietnam, not Korea. I say we "formally recognize the country". WP Projects are not evil savages that need to be kept at bay. They are editors like any other editors. Apteva (talk) 21:54, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  At no point have I suggested that WikiProjects' members are "evil savages that need to be kept at bay". On the contrary, I believe that their efforts benefit the encyclopedia tremendously.
  That they're "editors like any other editors" is my point. The proposed change would convey that they possess special editorial authority. —David Levy 22:07, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  The proposed "change" does not change anything. It specifies how to name bird articles, using the same convention that has been applied to every other bird article. In the same fashion, we use section headings "in the same manner that they are used in every other article". By the way it has come to my attention that capitalization is not unique to bird articles. This change, though, is. Apteva (talk) 22:31, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Our section heading style reflects consensus within the Wikipedia editing community at large. The style in question does not. Your proposed wording formally endorses the idea that a WikiProject is entitled to dictate the content of articles within its scope. That is a substantial change, and it contradicts policy.
  Such "capitalization is not unique to bird articles" precisely because other editors and WikiProjects have followed the example set by the bird WikiProject. This is a problem, not justification for further encouragement. —David Levy 22:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, for the reasons expressed above. —David Levy 18:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
• See The Capitalization of Birds' Names, a 1983 article in ornithological journal The Auk, helpfully linked by Enric Naval in a related discussion. In it, an ornithologist writes about how his field "never change[s] convention but only succeed[s] in violating it." I understand the wisdom of following expert practice rather than general practice (although this isn't necessarily a good idea on Wikipedia due to WP:COMMONNAME). The expert practice makes sense in context—if you're writing an article for an ornithological journal, it makes sense to conveniently distinguish individual species. But for a general encyclopedia, all this is going to do is create a constant stream of editors making individual move requests due to the break with Wikipedia's capitalization conventions. Again, other animal articles don't capitalize species names, and I don't think that has caused any mass confusion. --BDD (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  One article did nothing to change the convention. What I am trying to do is end the constant stream of move requests that we currently have by noting that bird name articles follow the IOC. It does not apply to all article titles. The proposal is to add "except for bird articles which use the English name from the IOC". The proposal is to change "A possible exception is common names of birds, for which WP:WikiProject Birds proposes that the initial letter of each word be capitalized (but not after a hyphen)" to "An exception is English names of birds, for which the initial letter of each word is capitalized (but usually not, after a hyphen), as listed in the IOC World Bird List, such as Red-winged Grey Warbler and Yellow-bellied Sunbird-Asity." Note that if the Latin name of a bird is used as the article title, only the first word would be capitalized, as is done in the IOC. It is not a "possible exception" it is in fact an exception that has been applied to all of the thousands of bird articles that have been created. The IOC has 10,572 bird names, and I would expect that WP would have the goal of creating 10,572 bird articles all of which can be expected to use the Zone-tailed Hawk convention. Apteva (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  And I see that we have picked up all but about 20 of them Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Missing IOC names/Bird names. Apteva (talk) 20:02, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  The community reluctantly tolerates this situation because members of a WikiProject, acting in contravention of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, have effectively obstructed all attempts to do otherwise. The current wording (already a major concession) reflects that. Your proposed wording would make the WikiProject's decision "official", thereby endorsing the idea that WikiProjects possess such authority (and encouraging other WikiProjects to act in kind). —David Levy 20:33, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I see nothing wrong with what WP Birds has done. What I take issue with is ignoring the fact that all bird articles are named per the IOC and not putting that into the naming convention. The fact is that all bird names are proper nouns and the IOC has chosen to capitalize them. The fact is that all animal species are proper nouns and zoologists have chosen to only capitalize the first word. To me what is strange is what zoologists do, not what ornithologists do. However, it is a fact that all bird articles follow the IOC and we need to state that and not ignore it. Projects get an equal say in adopting policies, and yes this change makes what has been done for years official. You want to try to force WP Bird to change the names of 10,000 articles? I see no point in proposing that, and if this proposal fails, that is what needs to happen. A WP Project simply tends to be made up of people who have an interest and knowledge of a subject, and who better to turn to for advice? Apteva (talk) 21:46, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  No one said anything about making the WikiProject move the articles. Give me the permissions and I'd gladly change those names, checking for double redirects and everything. Note that the IOC's own documentation concedes their capitalization rules are "contrary to the general rules of spelling for mammals, birds, insects, fish, and other life forms." Per WP:UNDUE, "Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view." So this is a case where a self-admitted minority's personal preferences overrides multiple Wikipedia policies and guidelines because... they know a lot about birds? --BDD (talk) 22:00, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I'd never thought of the UNDUE approach to this issue. I'll add that to the long list of why capitalizing bird names is a bad idea here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

  Due to the fact that there are other examples of similar capitalization, it seems best to use whatever the IOC uses. The other examples are there for the same reason, and if anyone proposed changing the name you would get arguments on both sides - that it was always called this with this capitalization, that it violates WP:NAME. The purpose of a policy is to decide what to do and run with it. This ship has sailed long ago, and 10,000 articles use IOC. If IOC decides to change capitalization, there are plenty of editors, yourself included, who are willing to make changes to WP. Apteva (talk) 22:43, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  On what do you base the assertion that the IOC's decision should determine ours (i.e. that Wikipedia prefers specialist style conventions to those followed by mainstream reliable sources)? —David Levy 22:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  The purpose of the IOC Bird name list is to standardize the names of birds. The convention used in naming birds just happens to be different than the convention used in naming, say rocks. IOC is simply a convenient way of resolving questions, such as should it be "gray heron", "grey heron", "Gray heron", "Grey heron", "Gray Heron", or "Grey Heron". Apteva (talk) 00:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Reliable non-specialist publications have overwhelmingly declined to emulate the IOC's style convention. Why, in your view, should Wikipedia (a non-specialist publication) abide by it (instead of looking to mainstream reliable sources, as we do on most style matters)? —David Levy 00:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  You may be misinterpreting my view. My view is that policy should reflect common practice, not the other way around. We create policies to codify common practice so that following editors will know how to write articles correctly. We do not create policies out of the blue just to create policies - other than the five pillars, which are the foundation of the encyclopedia and are what allowed it to be created. What has evolved seems like a very simple procedure to follow, and I see no reason for asking anyone to change it - and if I did want anyone to change anything, I would ask zoologists to change the way they name animals, not ornithologists, because I happen to think that the way birds are named makes more sense, than the way animal species are named. Can anyone think of any other proper nouns that only capitalize the first word? Apteva (talk) 02:17, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  At this point, it's becoming difficult to assume good faith on your part. Your comments, which initially seemed sincere, are beginning to resemble trolling. —David Levy 02:23, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  It is unfortunate that you might think that. I am 100% sincere. I see a problem, and I am seeking a solution. Apteva (talk) 03:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I'm doing my best to assume good faith (and if I were convinced that you're trolling, I wouldn't still be posting replies). But honestly, you aren't making it easy. —David Levy 03:55, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  True, and like I said all I am doing is trying to fix a problem. Trolling would not accomplish a solution. Apteva (talk) 04:42, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I see nothing wrong with what WP Birds has done.
  Have you read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS?
  The fact is that all bird names are proper nouns
  
  The fact is that all animal species are proper nouns
  
  —David Levy 22:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Proper nouns are capitalized. In the scientific name, the genus is a proper noun, the species is an adjective. The English name is a proper noun.[8] Guidelines on creating new names:[9] Apteva (talk) 00:02, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  The PDF contains nothing remotely resembling a statement that "the English name is a proper noun". Neither does the webpage, on which the capitalization of bird names is mentioned simply as a style convention. —David Levy 00:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  The reason why a genus is a proper noun is because there is only one. Ditto for the name of a species. There is only one, making the name of it a proper noun. If you click on the link of the webpage at the bottom you get rules of capitalization, with the example at the top of "Grand Heron". Apteva (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  You're formulating and citing your own conclusion. I'm asking you to cite reliable sources stating that English species names are proper nouns.
  And again, that webpage — belonging to a committee of wildlife specialists — documents its style convention of capitalizing bird names. It contains no statement that this practice has anything to do with said names being proper nouns. —David Levy 01:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  [10] Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  A message board thread? Do you understand what's meant by "reliable source"? —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Projects get an equal say in adopting policies
  To be more precise, the opinions of a WikiProject's members matter no less than those of any other editors. But they aren't supposed to matter more. That's the issue.
  and yes this change makes what has been done for years official.
  And I've explained why that's problematic. "What has been done for years" doesn't reflect consensus within the Wikipedia community.
  You want to try to force WP Bird to change the names of 10,000 articles?
  No. I want the WikiProject to accept the fact that it doesn't own those articles and permit the Wikipedia editing community to rename them in accordance with the mainstream English style conventions to which we adhere. Unfortunately, this hasn't occurred. That doesn't mean that we must formally endorse the WikiProject's policy violation. —David Levy 22:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Let me explain where I am coming from. As an RCP and a frequent contributor at WP:RM I need to know how to name articles. I do this by following policies. This policy is a problem because it says one thing and all the articles do another. I can either change all the articles or change the policy. Whichever is easier. I am positing that changing the articles is not possible. Apteva (talk) 23:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  There is no deadline. Adherence to policies and guidelines is a worthwhile goal, and specifically worth the time it would take. --BDD (talk) 23:15, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

• Two examples of capitalization similar to birds. List of apple cultivars and List of horse breeds. Apteva (talk) 22:47, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Such deviations exist precisely because other editors and WikiProjects have followed the example set by the bird WikiProject. This is a problem, not justification for further encouragement. —David Levy 22:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I see no evidence that anyone creating an article about a flower has even seen any of the articles about birds. "however, there is currently no consensus within WP:PLANTS regarding the capitalization of common names in articles". What this says is capitalize them any way you wish. Apteva (talk) 23:05, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  Also, cultivars and breeds have a better argument for being proper nouns than species. Cultivars and breeds can be proprietary, for one. It's largely a separate issue. --BDD (talk) 23:10, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

  I see no evidence that anyone creating an article about a flower has even seen any of the articles about birds.
  That's because you evidently haven't followed past discussions (in which editors of plant articles have attempted to cite the bird articles as a precedent).
  "however, there is currently no consensus within WP:PLANTS regarding the capitalization of common names in articles". What this says is capitalize them any way you wish.
  No. It means "follow the normal English style conventions used throughout the encyclopedia", which would be correct even if there were "consensus within WP:PLANTS". —David Levy 00:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  An empirical study of a few articles on apples suggests otherwise. It would be good to address those exceptions as well, but that is outside of the scope of this proposal. Apteva (talk) 01:08, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  You're citing deviations from policy as evidence that it's correct to deviate from policy. —David Levy 01:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I am citing deviations as evidence that after careful reflection on the best name to use for the article the ones that I find are what were chosen. Red Delicious, if it was the only one capitalized, would make me think it was in error. A whole list and it makes me think it is correct. Apteva (talk) 01:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I am citing deviations as evidence that after careful reflection on the best name to use for the article the ones that I find are what were chosen.
  They were chosen by editors/WikiProjects under the mistaken impression that they're entitled to ignore/overrule Wikipedia's style conventions (and others emulating them). As noted above, this is a problem — one that the proposed change would exacerbate.
  Red Delicious, if it was the only one capitalized, would make me think it was in error. A whole list and it makes me think it is correct.
  In other words, if editors violate policy with sufficient consistency, their actions become correct. —David Levy 01:56, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Bingo. You hit the nail on the head. If people started spelling "spelling" with one l, speling, and then more and more, until everyone spelled it speling, it would be codified in dictionaries as speling. That is just the way the world works. We have an example of this called OE spelling, where the Oxford Dictionary insists on using an archaic spelling, even though most people use a different spelling. Apteva (talk) 02:27, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Again, the deviations in question don't reflect consensus within the Wikipedia community at large. Have you read WP:LOCALCONSENSUS yet? —David Levy 02:31, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Yes I am long familiar with that policy. As was pointed out there has been previous discussion of this topic. And unless policy is corrected to agree with practice it will continue to come up. The argument against letting this project do it seems to be a ship that has long ago sailed. And the argument that projects are somehow like dominoes that will fall one after another if you let this one get its way does not seem very valid. Projects do not request variances unless there is a reason for that variance. If there is a reason, it should be carefully considered, not rejected just because of policies that were written without knowing about that reason. Apteva (talk) 03:27, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  The argument against letting this project do it seems to be a ship that has long ago sailed.
  I don't know whether it's realistic to hope that the situation will change. I do know that tolerating the status quo isn't the same as formally endorsing it. —David Levy 03:47, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Actually turning a blind eye is worse than formally endorsing it. For example, almost no one obeys speed limits or stops at stop signs, which severely penalizes those few who feel they need to obey the law. Apteva (talk) 04:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I haven't the foggiest idea of what point that analogy is intended to convey. —David Levy 05:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  And the argument that projects are somehow like dominoes that will fall one after another if you let this one get its way does not seem very valid.
  Again, members of other WikiProjects have attempted to cite it as a precedent. This isn't speculative. It's a problem that already exists. —David Levy 03:47, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I would interpret this not as a problem, but as a recognition that other projects have valid reasons for wanting exceptions. The solution is to use words like mostly, or many, in policies so that we recognize that they do not apply all of the time. Apteva (talk) 04:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I would interpret this not as a problem,
  You disagree with WP:LOCALCONSENSUS?
  but as a recognition that other projects have valid reasons for wanting exceptions.
  1. On what do you base the conclusion that their reasons are "valid"?
  2. "Wanting exceptions" isn't the same as forcibly making them. As noted below, it's perfectly reasonable for WikiProjects to suggest exceptions. They simply lack the authority to dictate them. That's what some fail to realize/accept (the "problem" to which I've referred). —David Levy 05:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Projects do not request variances unless there is a reason for that variance. If there is a reason, it should be carefully considered, not rejected just because of policies that were written without knowing about that reason.
  No one is saying that input from WikiProjects should be dismissed out of hand. Indeed, they're entitled to suggest exceptions, and the Wikipedia editing community at large should consider these requests carefully.
  In this instance, the community disagrees with the WikiProject's rationale (on the basis that we routinely favor mainstream style conventions, not specialist ones). Unfortunately, the WikiProject didn't "request variances". It decided to overrule consensus and impose its preferences within "its" articles. —David Levy 03:47, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Evidently some editors may disagree but have clearly lost the battle. Like I said the ship has sailed. Apteva (talk) 04:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  And like I said, tolerating the status quo isn't the same as formally endorsing it, thereby officially condoning a policy violation and encouraging others to act in kind. —David Levy 05:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  It is no longer a violation if it is endorsed. The problem is saying one thing and doing another. Almost everything in WP is subject to discussion and change. Articles today look a lot different than they did a few years ago, and I am sure will look different a few years from now. Apteva (talk) 08:13, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  It is no longer a violation if it is endorsed.
  So you acknowledge that you seek formal endorsement of the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS violation. —David Levy 11:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  Actually, the guideline has always called for capitalization. For five years it said that was disputed, and that either was acceptable. Then for two years it correctly said that the main exception was birds were capitalized. It was not until January of this year that the confusing and incorrect language was added that there was a proposal "that the initial letter of each word be capitalized (but not after a hyphen)". That is false, and should be simply removed. No capitalization rules are needed because there is already a link to the complete guidelines, which should be moved to the MOS. Summarizing them is not helpful, and provides incorrect information. Under Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Common names, instead of saying that the rules for names of birds are complicated and the link to WP:Birds, simply add in the sources for common names of birds. That section, by the way, is poorly worded. "Use a consistent style of capitalization in all articles" is misleading, as is "As of March 2012, wikiprojects for some groups of organisms are in the process of converting to sentence case where title case was previously used." If you are taking about the animal, it is correct to use lower case, if you are talking about the species name, it is correct to use the species name, which capitalizes only the first word (Grizzly bear, not Grizzly Bear), other than birds and fish (Spotted Owl, not Spotted owl, Rainbow Trout, not Rainbow trout). There are many examples of articles that use capital letters in one context and lower case in another, within the same article, and the use of capital letters makes it clear which use is meant. Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

  I repeat: Apteva's statement that there's a pro-caps convention for fish is false. Only two (closely-related) ichthyology organizations do it, and the rest think it looks unprofessional and harms the field's credibility. See reliable source citation I posted elsewhere here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

  Actually, the guideline has always called for capitalization.
  Said "guideline" never reflected consensus (and therefore was invalid).
  It was not until January of this year that the confusing and incorrect language was added that there was a proposal "that the initial letter of each word be capitalized (but not after a hyphen)". That is false, and should be simply removed.
  No, it isn't false. The WikiProject advocates such a convention, which lacks consensus within the Wikipedia editing community. The fact that the WikiProject decided to go ahead and enforce it anyway doesn't change that.
  You seek to undo a long-overdue correction. —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  What? Just because some people disagreed with it does not mean a lack of consensus, and the policy if you want to call it that, became that either capitalization was acceptable. And it is not a long overdue correction - it is an error - and ignores that it has been a guideline for years. However carefully you think it was worded, it is simply not a factual statement. A correct wording would be that either is acceptable and WP:Birds has a proposal to limit capitalization in bird articles to all caps. That is what should have been done, and that is an accurate statement. You will note that I have identified the January change not as a recognition of bird articles, but an attempt to change bird articles. We go from AB to either AB or ab to AB in bird articles to a statement that all articles are ab and there is a proposal to use AB in bird articles. This is false. The guideline of using AB in bird articles has existed unabated since 2003. The guideline that all articles use ab other than bird articles is patently false, as there are other examples of AB that are just as valid as the bird articles. All published guidelines and policies are defacto valid unless they are deleted or changed within a short period of time. For example, if I write a constitution for Israel and publish it on the official website, it is defacto the constitution unless it gets pulled down as soon as it was discovered. As you will often hear, the US should have ended the sentence after "Congress shall pass no laws." But the US constitution is the defacto constitution. You might like to hear the definition of official, which few people know. It is, because I said so, and am in authority to say so. Basically there is only one person of that status in WP, Jimbo. Other than that, if a policy or guideline is published, and stays up, it is defacto valid, no matter how much anyone may disagree. Bear in mind that most editors simply would like to see "the style sheet" for WP, and are willing to follow whatever it says. If it says "Use ab spelling for bird articles", it seems clear that editors familiar with the subject are going to disagree, and there is no point in putting them into that position. It is like telling people in my field that we can not use standard industry terminology in our articles because someone who knows nothing about the subject wants them written differently. That's a real quick way of losing editors. Apteva (talk) 01:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  What? Just because some people disagreed with it does not mean a lack of consensus,
  Of course not. That isn't what I wrote. No Wikipedia policy or guideline is supported unanimously.
  The "guideline" never reflected consensus, as defined at Wikipedia:Consensus.
  and the policy if you want to call it that,
  No, I haven't called it that. "Guideline" is the correct term.
  became that either capitalization was acceptable.
  And that didn't reflect consensus either.
  And it is not a long overdue correction - it is an error
  No, it's quite intentional (your disagreement notwithstanding).
  - and ignores that it has been a guideline for years.
  We haven't ignored the previous text. We've addressed its inaccuracy.
  You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines derive legitimacy through their very existence (i.e. that a rule becomes official and binding when it's written down). That isn't so. Our policy/guideline pages are descriptive, not prescriptive. They serve as documentation, not bills signed into law.
  If it says "Use ab spelling for bird articles", it seems clear that editors familiar with the subject are going to disagree, and there is no point in putting them into that position. It is like telling people in my field that we can not use standard industry terminology in our articles because someone who knows nothing about the subject wants them written differently.
  If we were to apply that principle to my field, our film/television articles would contain such terms as "aud", "ayem", "boff", "chopsocky", "competish", "crix", "distribbery", "floppola", "hotsy", "kudocast", "laffer", "meller", "mitting", "nabe", "nitery", "oater", "ozoner", "percentery", "perf", "praisery", "preem", "prexy", "sked", "spesh", "sudser" and "terper". —David Levy 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  That is very colorful, and hopefully someone will make an article that explains each term. In many fields most things are technical and proprietary and regarded as company secrets. Apteva (talk) 18:19, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  That is very colorful, and hopefully someone will make an article that explains each term.
  Wikipedia is not a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide.
  In many fields most things are technical and proprietary and regarded as company secrets.
  How is that relevant? —David Levy 21:25, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Break (bird names proposal)

Here is an interesting example. Great Blue Heron and Little Blue Heron are both types of herons. In the sentence "The rookery was filled with adult great blue herons and little blue herons" are the herons all great blue herons? The sentence "The rookery was filled with adult Great Blue Herons and Little Blue Herons" makes it clear. Apteva (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Only to someone familiar with the specialist convention (which a vast majority of Wikipedia's readers aren't). As noted in past discussions, a much better solution is to simply avoid the ambiguous wording entirely: "The rookery was filled with adult herons, belonging to the great blue and little blue species." —David Levy 01:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

There are often multiple solutions to any problem. English is such a rich language that it only takes about four or five words to create a phrase that no one else has ever used. Capitalizing proper nouns is one of those tools. Apteva (talk) 01:35, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Species names aren't proper nouns, nor are they commonly capitalized in the texts with which most Wikipedia readers are familiar (so they won't know what this seemingly peculiar formatting is intended to indicate). —David Levy 01:56, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

There appear to be disagreements on that point.[11] Evidently I am not alone in thinking that names of species are proper nouns. I also think that they can be used as common nouns. What is clear, is that the scientific genus is a proper noun, and the scientific species is an adjective. Put them together and I say you get a proper noun, with only the first word capitalized - except for birds, which capitalizes both words. I think the confusion is that a proper noun can also be used as a common noun. Apteva (talk) 02:58, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Flowers use three names, a genus, which is a proper noun, a species, which is an adjective, and a cultivar, which is a proper noun. Apteva (talk) 03:02, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

There appear to be disagreements on that point.[12]

Now you're citing edits by other Wikipedians as evidence? Wow.

You stated above that "the fact is that all bird names are proper nouns" and "the fact is that all animal species are proper nouns". I'm still waiting for you to cite reliable sources corroborating these claims.

Evidently I am not alone in thinking that names of species are proper nouns.

Indeed. It's been suggested in past discussions. Then, like now, no reliable sources on the subject of English grammar were cited.

Even bird experts rarely make such an assertion. As noted above, the birders were able to find an article by one ornithologist who opined that the English names of bird species should be considered proper nouns.

But according to you, it's a "fact". —David Levy 03:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

It's a fact that the article[13] was written in 1983 and that the IOC Bird names was published in 1996. Evidently the 1983 article had no impact on the naming of birds. Apteva (talk) 03:35, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

No one disputes the IOC's style convention's existence. What bearing does this have on your claim that it reflects the "fact" that bird names are proper nouns? Again, even bird experts don't cite that as the reason behind it. —David Levy 03:47, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely none. If you ask me all names of species are proper names, and the group of animals or plants with that name are a common name. I am saying that I can see the logic of capitalizing cultivar and some breeds, based on common usage. I have no interest in re-inventing the wheel by suggesting that all such names be force fed into a pointless style convention. Should Red Delicious be changed to Red delicious? As I mentioned, flowers have three names, a genus, which is a proper noun, a species, which is an adjective, and a cultivar, which is a proper noun. I would expect to find the names of some flowers to be capitalized and some not, just knowing that. We already say "Common names of species generally do not have each word capitalized". The problem comes in when we say "A possible exception is common names of birds". The word generally already says that there are exceptions, and by saying "a possible exception" it sounds like almost all articles, including bird name articles follow the convention of not being capitalized but there are some exceptions, and there is discussion of changing all bird name articles in the future. That is not what exists. It seems likely that were I to rename any of the bird articles they would quickly be reverted, and were I to create one without capitalization it would quickly be capitalized. Why not just point out that bird name articles are capitalized. Anyone who wishes can argue for a change in that policy, but it sounds like the ornithologists will argue just as strongly against changing it. Apteva (talk) 04:19, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

If you ask me

That's just it. No offense, but I don't ask you (just as I don't expect others to ask me).

You claim that "the fact is that all bird names are proper nouns" and "the fact is that all animal species are proper nouns". As evidence, you've cited your own personal conclusions.

I don't mean to be disrespectful. You certainly are entitled to your opinions. But do you understand why they don't rise to the level of a reliable source?

all names of species are proper names, and the group of animals or plants with that name are a common name.

You appear to have invented this rule yourself.

It seems likely that were I to rename any of the bird articles they would quickly be reverted, and were I to create one without capitalization it would quickly be capitalized.

And this is because a WikiProject imposes its preferences, in contravention of policy.

Why not just point out that bird name articles are capitalized.

I've answered this question several times. It would constitute formal endorsement of the WikiProject's policy violation. —David Levy 05:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I've been watching this from afar, and this reminds me a lot of what a few people tried to do at Gadsby (novel); see here and here for reference. That it's managed to go on this long is only the difference between having two people stonewalling against community consensus versus a whole WikiProject attempting to foist their personal preference onto us over community consensus. Largely per David Levy, I don't see how the people at WP:BIRDS have any ground to stand on. MoS isn't a guideline a project can just override if they feel like it (c.f. a couple discussions I was involved in regarding FLAGBIO in March/April 2011, where the longevity project tried something similar with flag icons), so obviously birds, like everything else, should follow normal capitalization standards. And by the way, genus and species names are most definitely not proper nouns, anyone who thinks otherwise should consult the linked article to learn the actual definition of that term. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:27, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually genus is a proper noun and species (the scientific species) is an adjective. All plants and animals follow the convention of capitalizing the genus and not capitalizing the species. This reference says "the entire name ... is a proper name"[14], but pardon me if I use a reliable source to find out what a proper noun is and not a wikipedia article. Apteva (talk) 06:40, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

An unattributed (i.e. authored by a TA, for all we know) college handout about binomial nomenclature (scientific names, written in Latin) — which, for some reason, you've deemed applicable to English names? That's your "reliable source"? —David Levy 11:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

It is adequate. As is the blog entry. This is not an article. I only need to show that they could be considered proper nouns. It is not disputed that they are treated as common nouns in most contexts, and in non-specific literature. How more specific can you get than having an article about a species? Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

It is adequate. As is the blog entry.

No, those sources aren't remotely adequate. One could find practically any statement somewhere online, particularly when performing a keyword search (as opposed to seeking materials about the general subjects).

And yet, these documents don't even say what you want them to. That's the strangest part.

I only need to show that they could be considered proper nouns.

No, you stated this as a "fact", so that's what you need to show (or retract the assertion).

Suppose that I were to state that "the fact is that whales are fish". You probably would dispute this claim and request that I cite a source. If I then linked to this page, (on the basis that "I only need to show that they could be considered fish"), would that suffice?
Of course not. A credible source is needed. —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

That only applies if I wanted to put that into an article. Talk pages have no such requirement of verifiability. Apteva (talk) 01:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

If you mean that you're entitled to make unsubstantiated claims, that's true. But don't expect others to believe them. —David Levy 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

As an example, someone wrote, what about Foo, on a talk page, and I researched it, found a reference and put it into the article. In other cases people write what about Foo, and I have researched it, found it to be false, and not put it in. In both cases there was zero need for a RS on the talk page. Apteva (talk) 01:59, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay. So if you want these claims to have any bearing on what we put in articles, find some reliable sources. —David Levy 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

English is an evolving language. Originally "wolf" was a common noun to describe a class of objects, and "gray wolf" as a class of objects. Then scientists came along and named it "Canis lupus", where "Canis" is a proper noun and always capitalized, and "lupus" an adjective and therefor never capitalized. The words "gray wolf" can be either an adjective and a noun or "Gray wolf", the technical English name for the Canis lupus. If you want a RS, you need go no further than to read [15], which states: "we now have a single, unique name (see below) for each of the biological entities that we call bird species. These names must be regarded as proper nouns (thus receive capitals in all English publications)." It is clear to me that the words "in all English publications" means what it says, all - including books, dictionaries, and oh yes, encyclopedias. It is my opinion that the same applies to all species that are given specific names (which applies to all of them), with the recognition that animals other than birds and fish only capitalize the first word of the name (the adjective "Gray" is capitalized, the noun "wolf" is not. If you ask me it is likely that this will become standard practice "in the future". Apteva (talk) 18:19, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

AFS/ASIH decided to capitalize fish common names, but no one else does, and the practice has no legitimate traction in Wikipedia (if its happening, it needs to stop). Many real-world ichthyologists are on record as opposing the practice, and it remains controversial. See source I cited elsewhere here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

English is an evolving language.

Indeed. And grammarians have documented the phenomenon at length. So when consulting their writings, you should have no difficulty finding mentions of the "fact" that species names are proper nouns.

If you want a RS, you need go no further than to read [16]

Do you remember when I stated that "the birders were able to find an article by one ornithologist who opined that the English names of bird species should be considered proper nouns"? Well, that's the one.

which states: "we now have a single, unique name (see below) for each of the biological entities that we call bird species. These names must be regarded as proper nouns (thus receive capitals in all English publications)." It is clear to me that the words "in all English publications" means what it says, all - including books, dictionaries, and oh yes, encyclopedias.

Indeed, Jon S. Greenlaw (whose credentials are unrelated to English studies) wrote an opinion piece advocating that bird names be "regarded as proper nouns" and "receive capitals in all English publications". This obviously hasn't occurred, nor does Greenlaw claim otherwise. Why are you conflating a man's fantasy with reality?

It is my opinion

Exactly.

If you ask me

I don't. —David Levy 21:25, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• I harshly oppose WikiProject Birds' capitalization procedures. The problem is, as every other opposer revealed, that the these procedures are against the estabalished consensus about capitalization of animal names. A secondary problem is that WikiProjects cannot wield power over articles in their scope, and that's exactly what WikiProject Birds is trying to do. Finally, Wikipedia prefers non-specialist sources, and the bird WikiProject is using naming procedures enforced by specialists, which is analogous with sources written by the specialists. That's all my comments on this matter. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 21:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  It appears that the "the estabalished consensus" on capitalization is the opposite. That either is acceptable. That is what the guideline said for a lot longer than it said that only all caps were used, and the current wording added in January is clearly not a reflection of consensus. Apteva (talk) 22:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Your understanding of Wikipedia "consensus" — particularly that it's established via the creation of policy/guideline pages — is highly inaccurate. —David Levy 23:03, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

  Thank you for your opinion, but opinions do not change facts. Consensus happens to be within my field of expertise. But do not let that get in the way of your opinion. Apteva (talk) 02:24, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

  Do you remember what I said about your messages coming across as trolling? It's happening again. —David Levy 02:29, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

  Over the course of the last couple of days there has been very little interest in this topic. Hopefully adding a link will help. Apteva (talk) 03:04, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

  There has been very little support for the proposal. Since it's obvious that there is no consensus for the proposal, and since David Levy is doing an admirable job of trying to explain to you why, there is little need for additional churn. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:17, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

  Creating policy or guideline pages by themselves are not the result of consensus. There needs to be an agreement with the community for consensus to be made. Then the pages are created. Also, the ornithological community's capitalization is not relevant for a general encyclopedia, which Wikipedia is. Finally, the bird WikiProject has appeared to strictly disallow title changes to titles against their convention. This is analogous with article ownership. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 13:23, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

• Strongest OPPOSE I've ever offered: There is absolutely no consensus on Wikipedia that bird species common names are capitalized while others are not. What there is, is a WP:FILIBUSTER by an activistic group of editors from WP:BIRDS that has mired WT:MOS (among many other forums) in tendentious debate for the last four years (since MOS adopted the lower-case convention firmly), with the definite effect if not express intent of disrupting the consensus-forming process, so that their attempts to stick bird caps into other guideline pages, or promote their wikiproject pro-caps essay as a guideline, is not overridden by MOS. The actual consensus at WT:MOS is that WP:MOS must not make weird exceptions like this, or everyone will want one for everything. The only reason MOS appears temporarily to be supportive of the idea of wikiprojects getting to make up their own rules is that these editors have used the argumentum ad nauseam technique to browbeat all opposition, especially by way of the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT tactic, to the point where they're sick of the debate for a while, and too worn out to continue. The statement in this proposal that bird publication "and Wikipedia" use capitalized common names of species is disingenuous nonsense. WP articles use the caps because some (very few, actually) birds editors editwarred them all to be this way several years ago and chase away anyone who disagrees. This is what is known as a fait accompli, an attempt to render a debate moot by forcing one side to already have their way. From what I can tell, it's the biggest one ever pulled off in WP history. It's also the kind of action that has already been condemned by ArbCom.

Not a naming/title issue

Naming conventions are about article titles. The capitalization of bird names is not title specific, but a general style issue. See the lengthy recent discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_127#Species_capitalization_points. Dicklyon (talk) 06:30, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Also note that books clearly contradict the idea that grizzly bear is a proper name: [17]. Dicklyon (talk) 06:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Any way to do that without including book titles?[18] uses Grizzly Bear 25% of the time. But this is a tangent. The subject is bird names, not animal names. I still maintain that the name of a species is a proper noun, or if you will, a proper name, and that name gets used as a common noun to describe a group of them, or even one member of that species. Like using Marbled Salamander and salamander, or Robin and robin. The subject of capitalization within an article is completely separate from the capitalization of an article. I am only addressing the capitalization of the article name in this proposal. Apteva (talk) 07:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

How, in your view, are they "completely separate"? —David Levy 11:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Surely you are joking? If I write a book about lamp shades, and title the book Lamp Shades, I am using completely different rules of capitalization for the title from the rules of capitalization within the book. This is just third grade spelling. Apteva (talk) 21:29, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I think Apteva is right on this one. Book titles capitalize the first letter of most words in most cases. The practice is more mixed in article titles, but the point that a book title The Grizzly Bears doesn't inform capitalization in prose (and thus Wikipedia article titles) is noted. --BDD (talk) 21:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't addressing that portion of Apteva's message; I was responding to the statement that the capitalization used in Wikipedia's article titles and that used in running prose are "completely separate" subjects. ("The subject of capitalization within an article is completely separate from the capitalization of an article. I am only addressing the capitalization of the article name in this proposal.") —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

But we don't use completely different rules of capitalization (such as your example's title case) for our articles' titles. —David Levy 00:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Technically we use sentence case all the time, but titles necessarily have different rules than articles because they are more like book titles than text appearing in a paragraph of text. We have very detailed and very complex rules for article naming, that anyone who jumps in to help out at WP:RM discovers very quickly. You start at WP:Name and drill down to dozens of special cases. It is not as simple as just saying "For page titles, always use lowercase after the first word, and do not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless the title is a proper noun." Apteva (talk) 01:45, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

No one has asserted that no title-specific considerations exist. That doesn't make the subject of titles "completely separate" from the subject of running prose.

In this case, irrespective of which capitalization style is used, nearly everyone agrees that the same style should appear in both titles and running prose (allowing for the uppercase first letter in titles, of course). —David Levy 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

But only in bird or fish articles. The language explaining that does not need to be so strongly worded. Just because a Rainbow Trout is named "Rainbow Trout" does not mean that it needs to be capitalized outside of that article, or one on another type of fish. Apteva (talk) 04:00, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI, there's no consensus in the world of ichthyology that fish common names be upper-cased, either. AFS/ASIH decided to capitalize fish common names, but no one else does, and the practice has no legitimate traction in Wikipedia (if its happening, it needs to stop). Many real-world ichthyologists are on record as opposing the practice, and it remains controversial. See, for example: Kendall, Robert L. (July 2002). "A Capital Punishment". Fisheries (American Fisheries Society) 27 (7): 33–34. ISSN 0363-2415. Ichythologist Kendall criticizes AFS/ASIH for inappropriate "veneration" of species, undermining industry and academic credibility, pushing an agenda not within their scope, ignoring for no clear gain the grammar rules that matter to many people, trying to undo a very widespread real-world consensus that was difficult and slow to forge, ignoring the clear fact that capitalization of various things as if they were proper nouns is a practice that has been declining for "a long time", and harming the ability of the list-publishing organizations to get international consensus on the vernacular fish names they are advancing. He's right about declining practice for sure - this German capitalization of nouns has been disappearing from English since around the time of the American Revolution and was already extremely uncommon by the turn of the 20th century. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:33, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm expressing disagreement with your statement that the capitalization used in Wikipedia's article titles and that used in running prose are "completely separate" subjects.

It's true that mentions of a particular species needn't necessarily be consistently capitalized from one article to the next. But nearly everyone agrees that a single style should be used within a given article — including the running prose, title and section headings (allowing for an uppercase first letter in the latter two).

In other words, if the article is titled "Rainbow Trout", the running prose shouldn't contain references to "rainbow trout" (excepting, perhaps, a mention of the alternative style in the lead). —David Levy 04:17, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Apteva, you're starting to act like a troll again. We've told you hundreds of times the answers to your questions in this dispute. You also have been obviously suffering from WP:ICANTHEARYOU. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 20:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S, are you a member of WikiProject Birds? Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 20:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Well let me think about that. I rarely if ever see any of the bird articles, ditto for editing them. I do not participate in any way with any part of the project. I am not listed as a project member, nor do I even know if the project has a list of members. Knowledge of birds is very very far from being anything that I have any recognition let alone expertise or interest. I can tell a crow from a Robin if I see it up close, but if I see a hawk I can not tell if it is a crow or a hawk. I will leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions. What I do do, is edit solar related articles, and am a frequent contributor to WP:RM, and am a recent changes patroller. As part of that I often click on Special:Random to see if anything obvious needs to be fixed. I need to have guidelines that I can point to, not guidelines that say one thing and all of the articles do something else. Someone needs to fix this, and I would like to see some proposals (below). This needs to move forward, or at least go back to stating explicitly that any capitalization is acceptable if is used correctly. Saying that capitalization is not used and there is a proposal to use it for bird articles is flat out false. Apteva (talk) 23:05, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Your statement that "this needs to move forward" illustrates the problem at hand.

Editors have expressed disagreement with your assertion that the current wording — a result of recent discussion/consensus — is "flat out false". You apparently believe that the proper response is to dismiss our objections and repeat your arguments over and over until you manage to get through to us.

To quote WP:IDHT:

"Believing that you have a valid point does not confer upon you the right to act as though your point must be accepted by the community when you have been told that it is not accepted."

"The community's rejection of your idea is not proof that they have failed to hear you."

—David Levy 23:22, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Apteva, I'm going to remind you to please stop trolling. (the notices will be on your talk page) Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 23:34, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

For the third time, I am not trolling. I have a sincere interest in finding an appropriate resolution. Apteva (talk) 23:51, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Trolling is an activity, not an intention or measure of sincerity. If your sincere interest is leading you to troll, you need to redirect your sincere interest, and accept that the appropriate resolution may not be the one you approve. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:56, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with JHunterJ. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 00:07, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Noted. I will trust that step 2 will occur, and the guideline will get fixed. If there is no resolution in a month, I will bring it up again at an appropriate interval. Apteva (talk) 00:47, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Did you read WP:HEAR (or even the above quotations thereof)? —David Levy 00:52, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

That question is not relevant to moving this discussion forward, and does not require an answer. I follow all WP policies and guidelines. This one is broken. Apteva (talk) 04:23, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

That question is not relevant to moving this discussion forward, and does not require an answer.

Your definition of "moving this discussion forward" is "agreeing with Apteva". In your view, until that occurs, the discussion is stalled.

Unless, of course, you're simply trolling. And frankly, it's becoming harder and harder to assume otherwise.

I follow all WP policies and guidelines. This one is broken.

You've made your opinion clear. Others disagree, and you just vowed to "bring it up again" unless and until that changes. Your behavior is such a textbook example of WP:HEAR that it seems deliberate. —David Levy 05:03, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Fact is that birding organisations (both scientists and birdwatchers, have spent huge amounts of time determining proper names for birds, hence the capitlaisation. This is like the planets and countries, and different from all other organisms. Hence we follow pracitce not invent our own. We don't noncapitalise planets when talking about them in general pages either. Period. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:07, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Apples and oranges. No one is disputing what the correct names are. Rather, some WP:BIRDS people are trying to force the rest of Wikipedia to adopt an orthographical style from academic publications from one particular field, and we simply don't do that. That is the actual issue. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:33, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposals

Organisms 1

See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms, and the naming conventions for fauna, flora and birds

Common names of species generally do not have each word capitalized, except were proper nouns appear (maple tree, zebra, but Przewalski's horse). The main exception is common names of birds, which do have the initial letter of each word capitalized (but usually not after a hyphen). Where more than one capitalization is possible, redirects should be created from the alternative form(s). For details, see the topic-specific pages listed above. There is a proposal to use capitalization found in most dictionaries, with re-directs from any other possible capitalization, such as bird names, which generally treat species names as proper nouns.[19] For common names not in a dictionary, use the scientific name, in italics.

Worse than the current text. Current text correctly recognizes that the WP:BIRDS capitalization is not necessarily correct. Proposed text pretends that birds really do have Title Casing. Also, not that species names are not treated as proper nouns. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:29, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Bird species common names really do have title casing, but they also have dictionary common names which do not use title casing. A Bald Eagle is a Bald Eagle,[20] but appears in the dictionary as bald eagle. The use of "bald eagle" is currently more common than "Bald Eagle", but there are a couple of times in history when that was reversed.[21] Although that could be references to "the Bald Eagle Party", a political party. Apteva (talk) 01:00, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

A bald eagle is a bald eagle, period. In birding and ornithology jargon (only), it is a Bald Eagle. The Ngram will also not distinguish between words actually in a title, e.g., "My Little Book of Bald Eagles". -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:22, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

That is true, and most of the links are to book titles. I do think it is unfair to ornithologists to tell them what the names of birds are when they have taken the trouble to standardize them. Apteva (talk) 01:51, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. In ornithological encyclopedias, let's use the ornithological style, and in general-audience encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia), let's use the general style. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:53, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. See WP:SSF for why, as well as everything else that almost everyone but Apteva's been saying here. There is no consensus whatsoever that there should be a magical "exception" for birds or anything else. Consensus has been against this idea since at least 2008, arguably 2004. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisms 2

See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms, and the naming conventions for fauna, flora and birds

Common names of species generally do not have each word capitalized, except were proper nouns appear (maple tree, zebra, but Przewalski's horse). The main exception is common names of birds, which do have the initial letter of each word capitalized (but usually not after a hyphen). Where more than one capitalization is possible, redirects should be created from the alternative form(s). For details, see the topic-specific pages listed above. There is a proposal that bird names use common names from English dictionaries, not actual species names.[22] For common names not in a dictionary, use the scientific name, in italics, with a redirect from the common name.

Better? Apteva (talk) 00:15, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Current text correctly recognizes that the WP:BIRDS capitalization is not necessarily correct. Proposed text pretends that birds really do have Title Casing. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:36, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Any way of wording it to say that? As I read it, it says that bird capitalization is not used but WP:Birds proposes capitalizing them. See note above about the difference between actual bird common names and dictionary common names. Apteva (talk) 01:10, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

What's wrong with the current wording? -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

"A possible exception is common names of birds, for which WP:WikiProject Birds proposes" to me says that if their proposal is accepted an exception will be made for birds. The actual situation is that WP:Birds has always used that convention, and it was codified in the convention for years, and as I read it, but will have to read a couple of megabytes of previous discussion, something I have been trying to avoid, some editors take issue with it and propose ending the practice, but have not been able to get the guideline to say that. The edit summary where the current wording was added is particularly strange "The WP:BIRDS thing is actually still controversial (cf. WT:Manual of Style/Archive 126#cap, etc.))". If it is controversial it means that some people do not like it, not that it is a new proposal. To me the word proposal is synonymous with "new", not "what we have always done". Apteva (talk) 01:48, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

The actual situation is the one that has no consensus outside of the birds project, and should have been fixed per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, except that,as has been repeatedly pointed out, we opted for the current ceasefire instead. If you are not happy with the ceasefire, we can again pursue bringing the birds articles in line with the general style, but the ceasefire does not become consensus by the passage of time, and I don't want to see it enshrined as such. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:31, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. See WP:SSF for why, as well as everything else that almost everyone but Apteva's been saying here. There is no consensus whatsoever that there should be a magical "exception" for birds or anything else. Consensus has been against this idea since at least 2008, arguably 2004. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisms 3

See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms, and the naming conventions for fauna, flora and birds

Common names are generally preferred over the scientific name, in italics. Scientific names always capitalize the genus name. When other names, spellings, or capitalization are possible, such as Red Delicious and red delicious, provide redirects. For details, see the topic-specific pages listed above.

I think we were going into way too much detail here. Apteva (talk) 02:21, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

This is a good improvement. I have reservations over putting the redirect for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (birds) (which simply goes to WP:BIRDS) on parity with actual naming conventions. Perhaps "See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms, the naming conventions for flora & fauna, and (for articles within the Birds project) Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds#Bird names and article titles." -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:26, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

How about "and for birds:" (followed by the link to WP Birds). I thought the idea was to get away from the concept of article ownership by projects. Apteva (talk) 09:45, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

No, not for birds. Birds are fauna. If we want to get rid of article ownership by projects (and I certainly do), we wouldn't link to WP Birds at all and would simply use the fauna naming conventions and would go back and correct all of the bird articles to the general style. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:34, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. See WP:SSF for why, as well as everything else that almost everyone but Apteva's been saying here. There is no consensus whatsoever that there should be a magical "exception" for birds or anything else, and there is no such naming convention for birds. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisms 4

'See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms, the naming conventions for flora & fauna; and for birds: Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds#Bird names and article titles.

Common names are generally preferred over the scientific name, in italics. Scientific names always capitalize the genus name. When other names, spellings, or capitalization are possible, such as Red Delicious and red delicious, provide redirects. For details, see the topic-specific pages listed above.

--Apteva (talk) 09:58, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

But birds aren't so capitalized. Only articles within the birds project are so capitalized. Granted, there's a large overlap between those sets, but it is possible to have a topic that is not in the birds project but does happen to have a bird name embedded in its title. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:35, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Add "Capitalization of bird names is controversial, and not normally done outside of ornithology ("western chat-tanager" instead of "Western Chat-Tanager")." The example used is pretty arbitrary, I would think. There is a list here that can be referred to in choosing one. Apteva (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Is there anyone who can suggest a better wording than this? It says nothing about capitalizing bird names, and if you wish not capitalizing bird names when they appear in the title of a non-ornithology article can certainly be added to Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds#Bird names and article titles. I would like to propose adopting this and removing the disputed tag. Apteva (talk) 21:43, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. See WP:SSF for why, as well as everything else that almost everyone but Apteva's been saying here. There is no consensus whatsoever that there should be a magical "exception" for birds or anything else, and there is no such naming convention for birds. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Proposal drafted by Hillcrest98 (I give permission to edit this, if I approve of that edit)

All capitalization of animal names should be done on a case-by-case basis. (I find no way to clarify this clearly, please help me do that) Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 23:42, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Sadly, this is likely the only possible resolution. The word "All" is redundant. "is" might be better than "should be done". Apteva (talk) 00:19, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to give up the guidelines that we currently have, and I see a detriment in basically throwing in the towel to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:37, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Please tell me this is a modest proposal. This would completely disregard one of the five pillars of WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. --BDD (talk) 01:47, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I would like to point out that Consistency says "Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles.", which I will emphasize as "Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles." It does not say "Consistency: All articles follow the same pattern." Apteva (talk) 02:02, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Sure. But while you're apparently content to have consistency among birds and consistency among other animals, I think consistency among all fauna (or, more likely, all species) has much more to recommend itself. --BDD (talk) 14:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

• I striked it as I retract that proposal (too poor). Sorry for that one. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 02:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Can you tell us what you were trying to get at, and maybe we can work on a rephrasing? That policy sounded like "whatever," which I doubt was your intention. --BDD (talk) 14:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Nah, I'll let the others do the proposing. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 20:54, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:AT and it's naming conventions sub-pages do not make up their own capitalization rules, but derive them from WP:MOS and its sub-pages such as MOS:CAPS. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Convention timeline

Capitalization of animals in article titles

Date	Policy
2002	No guidance[23]
4 June 2003	All words of all species capitalized[24]
20 July 2004	Guideline is disputed, both capitalized and non-capitalized (except for proper names) are acceptable[25]
29 September 2009	The main exception is common names of birds[26]
6 January 2012	A possible exception is birds (current wording)[27]

So we went from too much capitalization to total anarchy to not enough capitalization to a thinly veiled proposal of no capitalization. This is way too much wikilawyering. Names are names. Use them. Apteva (talk) 10:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, fish are the same as birds. The names are all caps, and in ichthyology they are all caps, in common literature they are lower case. Apteva (talk) 10:10, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Correction. This was never a "policy". It has always been a "guideline". Apteva (talk) 10:15, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

• Apteva is blatantly misstating the support for fish capitalization in the real world, in an attempt to make it look like birders have support "out there". It's not true. There is no consensus in the world of ichthyology that fish common names be upper-cased, either. AFS/ASIH decided to capitalize fish common names, but no one else does, and the practice has no legitimate traction in Wikipedia (if its happening, it needs to stop). Many real-world ichthyologists are on record as opposing the practice, and it remains controversial. It's actually a violation of WP:RS and WP:UNDUE to capitalize fish names here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Does this discussion need to drag on?

We really need the discussion to actually move forward (not meaning "Agree with Apteva"). Apteva is asking the same questions over and over again and we already answered most of them. This is troll-like behaviour and is disruptive. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 12:32, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

An RfC could be appropriate. This discussion hasn't attracted the sort of participation to form anything like consensus. --BDD (talk) 19:50, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Who would start that? (just questioning) Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 02:55, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done it anyway. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 19:46, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment

I found out the debate about WikiProject Birds' capitalization on WT:CAPS is not in a situation to reach a consensus. The debate has too little input and one of the supporters has appeared to have heavily disrupted that discussion.

The question is: are WikiProject Birds' capitalization rules okay or do they violate certain policies and guidelines? Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 11:59, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

• The capitalization scheme favored by WikiProject Birds is in direct conflict with many basic Wikipedia policies and guidelines about article titles. I understand their desire to follow the capitalization conventions of the IOC, but this specialists' approach is inappropriate for a general encyclopedia. I appreciate the contributions of that WikiProject and its members, but I hope they will see the value of consistent adherence to our greater policies and guidelines. --BDD (talk) 20:32, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Please note: This is a separate question than the dispute over the wording above of the convention. My dispute, at least, is only over the accuracy of the convention, not its wisdom, which is the subject of this RfC. Apteva (talk) 21:07, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. Most capitalization is for proper names or for acronyms and initialisms. Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia.

• A certain guideline, specifically MOS:CAPS conflicts with itself in the opening sentences. The above quoted text is conflicting, the final sentence contradicts the first two. Wikipedia does not use capitalisation because sources use capitals or consistently use capitalisation. Capitals are used for proper names because that is the convention in the written English language for proper names. A source that always uses capitalisation on a sets of names does not says at all what is a proper name - and obviously so. I have sympathy with WP Birds because MOS:CAPS has been a mess ever since I can remember. There is an over reliance among editors to use sources(and amend guidelines accordingly) and throw logic out the window. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 23:01, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Specialist sources are irrelevant for a general encyclopedia. Wikipedia generally uses non-specialist sources. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 11:33, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

That's a serious mis-statement. Specialist sources are essential, for facts about the topics they specialize in (e.g. what the actual common name of a bird species is). Specialist sources are less relevant than generalist ones when it comes to matters of style, spelling and grammar (e.g. capitalization); here, specialist sources are simply added to the pile of sources we look at, like newspapers, dictionaries, etc. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 12:57, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

And there are frequently cases of conflicting reliable sources. If I were to make a suggestion it would be to use the actual name of the bird in the Infobox, in captions, and in article titles of that species name, and use lower case in cases where the meaning does not become ambiguous otherwise. That should be a simple enough rule to follow. Apteva (talk) 21:23, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's kind of headache-inducing. The rule that MOS already has (don't capitalize common names of species) is the simple one. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 12:59, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

If this is adopted, I would add to WP:Birds that there is no haste to go back and edit articles that used a different convention, and that it is better to spend time adding to knowledge than simply correcting controversial capitalizations, and that in no case should someone who is not a member of project birds correct the capitalization within an ornithology article, other than fixing obvious errors such as eaStErn roBiN. Just as in unifying reference styles, it is appropriate when edits are made to fix the whole article, such as using a uniform reference style, for the sake of consistency, and it is the expectation that each ornithology article will eventually follow this convention, of using Snowy Owl for the title and infobox, and snowy owl within the text of the article, other than the first sentence: "The Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) is a large owl of the typical owl family Strigidae. The snowy owl is commonly found in the northern circumpolar region, and is the official bird of Quebec." Apteva (talk) 21:47, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Some good sentiments here. I'm not saying all bird names need to be changed overnight, nor would I delegate that task to the WikiProject. And personally, I have no problems with IOC capitalization in the bolded mention in the lede, as above. It's a compromise, if a weak one. --BDD (talk) 15:09, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I suggest closing this RFC as moved to WP:Birds and propose that compromise there. (use actual name in the bold name, infobox, and captions, and lower case in articles other than where the meaning would be unclear) The reason for that is it does not affect this convention, only the convention on bird names, which is not here. Apteva (talk) 03:22, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I am concerned about it offending people who know a lot about birds to have someone who knows nothing about birds coming in and editing thousands of articles just to change capitalization, and even worse having a bot do that. Apteva (talk) 03:26, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I support the proposal of "Snowy Owl" at first mention, then "snowy owl" after that, as it seems to be an okay compromise. It does fit for a situation like this. However, that deals with the names of the animals, not the article titles. Even though the problem in running text would be solved, disputes will still continue about the titles of the bird articles. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 14:11, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Other than the incorrect use of "actual" there (the "actual name" is not the same as the "Title Cased Name" or the "jargon name" -- the actual name of the snowy owl is snowy owl just as much as it is Snowy Owl), there's also the problem of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS: the birds project area is not the correct forum for discussion of guidelines or policies that are intended for Wikipedia generally. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:19, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

When someone uses "snowy owl" they are using an actual name that is used to refer to an actual bird that actually has a species name, and that species name is actually "Snowy Owl" and whatever the scientific name is. As the result of this RfC will not result in any edits to this convention but will affect edits to another page, it seems appropriate to locate the RfC on the talk page of the page that will be affected, with a mention of the RfC here, as well as elsewhere, such as VPP. The place to put non capitalization of bird names in other article names outside of ornithology is not in the section on animals but in the section on "Page names that only differ by capitalization". Add an example there such as: an article which is a list of stories about Easter Bunnies, kangaroos, and snowy owls would have a redirect from "Stories about easter bunnies, Kangaroos and Snowy Owls", if it seems likely to be needed to avoid redlinks. But really, how often is that going to come up, and does it really need to be in the convention? The purpose of a convention is not to make editors follow it, but to let editors know what is normally done, so that we can have a more uniform style. Most editors are always looking for the right way to add material, whatever that is. If there is only one article in the entire encyclopedia that uses a bird name that is not capitalized is it really necessary to put that into a convention? And if there are no articles at all? But by all means add it as an example if it adds clarity. Apteva (talk) 17:55, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, the reason for having the RfC on the talk page of the affected article or guideline, etc. is because years later someone is going to come along and say I wonder why this is worded like this, and will check the talk page, and if the discussion is elsewhere it is very hard to find. Apteva (talk) 17:58, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

• I don't know if they violate any guidelines or policies. Wikipedia:LOCALCONSENSUS is a policy that might be relevant, although I suppose it could be argued that we don't have consensus here about capping bird names one way or another, so the "local consensus" at BIRDS isn't overriding anything. In any case, it is probably not a good idea for wikiprojects to override the MOS on matters of style. Bird species names—like other species names—are capitalized in lots of ways in sentence case: "Bald Eagle", "bald eagle", even "Bald eagle". All by very knowledgeable people. All three of these, and I don't know possibly others, are legitimate styles. They are all correct. I would argue, however, that within a particular work, such as a book, or a project like Wikipedia, the same style ought to be adopted across the work in order to confer a certain level of professionalism that comes with a consistent style. It's not the end of the world if we don't do this, but it does have its advantages. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:50, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

• I support putting the project's rules into the MOS (and making them the standard for bird articles). The current standard is fine overall, but there are always special cases. Since we seem to have identified one, let's fix our guidelines accordingly. --Nouniquenames 13:55, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is the wrong venue for trying to change the MoS; WT:MOS has already declined to come to a consensus to add such a messy proposition as part of the Manual of Style; and MoS already has an explicit standard to not capitalize species common names, as does WP:NCFauna. This is just yet another attempt by a vocal minority at WP:BIRDS to game the system by "asking the other parent". Site-wide consensus has been against this entire idea since at least 2008, if not 2004. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:04, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Give it a rest

This topic has been discussed AD NAUSEAM for years. If you actually take the time to read the hundreds of pages of prior discussion, you'll find that there is no way to move forward. Here's the bottom line: bird people know how to deal with birds. Give it a rest already, and devote your efforts to something that isn't divisive. You'll accomplish more. If this change is forced upon the birds project, Wikipedia will no longer be considered (by most bird people: a large majority of people who access the bird articles) a legitimate source on birds, and both contributors and users will flee en masse. Any source that does not capitalize bird names is immediately viewed as amateur. This is not intended as a threat, but rather, a statement of fact. Natureguy1980 (talk) 21:47, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

• Nonsense. Specialist choices are irrelevant for what Wikipedia is (a general encyclopedia). Also, you really mocked Wikipedia there, which is not nice. Worse, you tried to sensationalize the consequences of names. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 21:58, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
• Wikipedia isn't a crystal ball, so you'll never know what will happen. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 22:02, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Where on heavens did you get this idea? Wikipedia relies in reliable sources, and many times the specialist sources are the most reliable ones. When editing an article about a historical event, I would never choose a generalist newspaper article over a specialist book that examined the event in detail. Please stop repeating this idea. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:05, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing your excellently thought-out and well-expressed opinions on what constitutes mocking. I'll be sure to consider them and reevaluate what "mock" means; you've opened my eyes. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:05, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the sarcasm. :[3] (my emoticon for laughing) Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 22:27, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

You misinterpret my remarks. I obviously have a very different concept of what constitutes mocking and fully intend to research the matter. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:40, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

See WP:DISCUSSED (and for that matter, WP:THREATS right below). If the bird community rejects Wikipedia because of how we capitalize names rather than the content of our coverage... well, suffice to say, it will be their loss. --BDD (talk) 22:15, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

You just accused me of making a legal threat (when no threat of any kind was made), and I demand a full apology. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:34, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I do apologize; I used the wrong shortcut, and it was a bad mistake to make. That should have read WP:THREATEN (which indeed links to the section below WP:DISCUSSED). --BDD (talk) 23:13, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I appreciate the civility. Please allow me to also apologize if you think I made a threat in any way, but I do not believe I did, and that was not my intent. That's why went out of my way to say "This is not intended as a threat..." It's simply what I see as the logical outcome, and I anticipated someone would say I was making a threat. Natureguy1980 (talk) 23:15, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Yea, too bad for them. And I publicised the RFC and got little input. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 22:30, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

It's because people like you come along and refight this war every 2 months. Most people are too smart to waste their time and take your bait. Discussing something every couple years is one thing: relitigating it every 2 months is exhausting. I, and many other bird contributors, am at my wit's end dealing with your attempts to overturn our established policy. More than one excellent editor has given up on Wikipedia because of this. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:34, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

No no no. I just recently joined this discussion (it's the others that are refighting, not me!). Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 19:23, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

• There seems to be someone starting a discussion about bird name capitalisation every two weeks. Surely, we do not have to do this again. As far as I can see, the discussion on the topic has been exhausted and there is no need to discus it again. Snowman (talk) 22:57, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

agreed. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:08, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

The discussion wants to move up to the general issue of whether sources determines capitalization or whether style guidelines determine capitalisation then whatever is decided wants to be unambiguously stated on MOS:CAPS then specifics can be dealt with. Current discussion will go around and around and be fruitless while the general issue remains unresolved. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 23:25, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Huh? Natureguy1980 (talk) 02:50, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

(inserted reply) The answer to that generalized question is simple... Normally we should follow the MOS. However, in cases where the sources indicate that an exception should be made, we should follow the sources. 18:43, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm also fed up with the constant drip-drip of criticism by people who seem to have nothing better to do than impose uniformity on everything in sight. While Signpost runs an article on how we are driving new editors away, the folk here seem to want to extend that to driving established editors away. Some have already given up commenting on this persistent dispute, where people just ignore all the previous discussions and start again until we are too worn down, and they finally get their way. I know, let's make it compulsory to standardise spelling as British English too, that achieves the aim of discouraging good editors better than this pointless intervention! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:02, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Don't you think the entire rest of the encyclopedia is tired of the WTF-WTF of your ungrammatical-to-everyone-but-ornithologists editing and the CLANG-CLANG of your project's eight years straight of sabre-rattling? The idea that editors will actually quit Wikipedia over a capitalization issue, especially academic editors, is utterly absurd (a few may leave in a huff but will return after their mood and priorities sort themselves out). Remember, these are the very same academics who must adjust and follow very, very nit-picky style rules that vary in wide and weird ways from journal to journal every single time they submit a paper. You know as well as I do that Nature, Science and all other (with, so far, one discovered exception) non-ornithology journals refuse to accept capitalization of bird species common names even in ornithology articles. This is not at all about what academic ornithologists acting as expert Wikipedia editors are and are not willing to tolerate, and it never has been. It's about winning against "conformists", because some dozen or so people in your project have become more concerned about their pride and about inappropriately enforcing an academic convention on a general encyclopedia than adapting academic material in an encyclopedic way for the world's most generalist audience. These priorities are sorely bassackwards. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

• I'm sympathetic. Really, I am. I don't want to see productive editors leave over this, but I also don't want to see policies and guidelines hijacked over it. I hate WP:USPLACE, but it's not going to make me leave the encyclopedia. I know I'm biased, but I can only see this ending one way. As long as bird names are capitalized the way they are, dozens of editors like me will innocently think there's a mistake, make an RM, and often get energized about the issue. It must be frustrating for the project to see the issue raised so often, but please understand that it's not a bunch of grunting, unwashed masses not knowing what's right—it's that bird name capitalization is a major exception to a basic Wikipedia convention, so many people are going to perceive it as an error.

Maybe I shouldn't say that. There is another way to solve the issue. Build consensus for the WikiProject's current practice and get it enshrined as a policy or a guideline. That wouldn't please everyone, but it would invalidate the main argument of those opposed to the status quo. That's more the point I want to make: the issue should be solved by a broader discussion, formation of consensus, and the "losing" side accepting this and moving on. I could do that if consensus didn't go my way. Could you? --BDD (talk) 16:47, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

This already happened in 2008. MoS has said not to capitalize species common names since then. Certain parties have refused to move on. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I would move on, but I suspect it would be completely away from Wikipedia. Please forgive this admittedly awkward analogy, but isn't opening up this convention to a vote by the entire editorship (who will undoubtedly quash the status quo) rather akin to letting to letting a majority vote on the rights of a minority they know little if anything about (e.g., gay marriage, banning headscarves, etc.)? Natureguy1980 (talk) 20:11, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Another aside: 1) No, because this isn't about birds, it's about encyclopedic style. 2) Even if it were, so what? Gay marriage is being approved in more and more places the more the issue is put before the people instead of left in the hand of ivory-tower politicians. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I still think that WikiProject Birds is still violating policies (just look at the above discussion!) with its capitalization. For example, that means that brown bear should be moved to Brown Bear,for exactly the same reasons as the capitalization rules at WikiProject Birds dictate! Hmph. Also, it's unacceptable that policy be changed because of one plain WikiProject. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 20:29, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Except that most species other than birds and fish only capitalize the first word - the species name is "Brown bear", which is what we use anyway just because we use sentence capitalization. Apteva (talk) 21:10, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

AFS/ASIH decided to capitalize fish common names, but no one else does, and the practice has no legitimate traction in Wikipedia (if its happening, it needs to stop). Many real-world ichthyologists are on record as opposing the practice, and it remains controversial. Apteva is misstating the case for fish caps, with the effect if not the intent of making bird caps look more reasonable. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 18:53, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

This is not an isolated wikiproject against the rest of wkiprojects. This is a wikiproject that has decided to resist to pressures from MOS regulars. All breed names for horses, dogs and cats were capitalized in wikipedia, until a small number of vocal MOS editors decided to edit-war those provisions out of the MOS and out of the relevant naming guidelines. Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(flora) still says that there is no consensus regarding the capitalization of plant names.

Oh, and the fauna naming guidelines gives "Black bear" as a correct example of a common (vernacular) name. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:23, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

"Brown bear" wouldn't be title-cased like that in the middle of a sentence, though. You're misreading NCFauna. And NCFlora does not say that at all; it says that the wikiproject on flora never came to a consensus about it; MOS did, sitewide, instead, and did so largely because projects couldn't come to consensus! As to your first point, it's just "revolution vs. rebellion" semantics. Every policy page on the system is generated and maintained by "regulars" at that page - there is no "wiki-draft" that presses editors into service to edit particular policy pages. Any time WP:BIRDS are fond of something, like their own essay on capitalization that no one else on the system agrees with, they try to label it a naming convention or style guideline – a piece of WP policy in the broad sense – while any time they don't like something, such as MOS (one of the most-watchlisted pages on the entire system) saying "don't capitalize", they say it's just a conspiracy of "regulars". Surely you recognize this as a total-bollocks double standard? PS: No one would care about "an isolated wikiproject against the rest of the wikiprojects", since wikiprojects do not set policy. What we actually have here is a handful of vocal "regulars" (since you like to use that word pejoratively) at WP:BIRDS, who do not in fact represent the rest of that project in their willingness to politicize and militarize over this issue, against site-wide consensus at WP:MOS and WP:NCFauna. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, the guidelines necessarily win out over the quirks of the wikiproject. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

WP birds did not make up the capitalisation rules for birds. It is widely used and the rules are set out by the IOC; see Capitalization. The Wiki uses capitalisation for cities and towns, ie "London", "Stoke", "Moscow" and so on. What are the lower case enthusiasts going to do about the capitalisation of place names? Snowman (talk) 22:48, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but many editors don't care about specialists sources to determine capitalisation and thus the never ending circle of discussion. It's not about WP:BIRD, they simply defaulted to following sources as the guidelines recommends. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 23:16, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, WP Birds have used the capitalisation for bird names used by many authorities including the IOC, IUCN, and BirdLife International. The edit on this page wikilinked above is one editors point of view and not "many editors". Snowman (talk) 08:04, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

"Chosen by authorities" does not mean "in common usage" right away. Besides, they're still irrelevant unless common usage can be dictated by other means. (I mean non-specialist sources) Also, you admitted to use specialist sources, which, right away, do not determine common usage. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 11:44, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

"The Times of India" uses capitals for bird names showing that bird names with capitals are in common use by non-specialist sources; see this article. I just did a quick internet search of "The Times of India" and found that every time I came across an article about a bird species, they used capital letters. Snowman (talk) 16:46, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Anymore non-specialist sources? Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 13:58, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I flatly reject the premise of this argument. Let's take an extremely common bird like Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. How many "non-specialist" sources is it even mentioned in? Not many. I guarantee you that if you counted the number of times is not capitalized and compared it to the number of times it is, the latter would far outweigh the former. In other words, the "commonest usage" is literally to be capitalized. Now let's take a rare bird almost no one even knows about, like Sierra Madre Sparrow. I'd be flabbergasted to even find it listed in a "non-specialist" source. Why should we follow the convention of sources who both know nothing about and have never heard of or covered the topic at hand? Wikipedia is not a "nonspecialist" resource. If it were, we'd not have articles for every one of the 10,000+ bird species in existence. Any source that lists such an obscure bird as Peg-billed Finch, which no average person is ever going to be interested in learning about--or even going to come across, has long ago conceded its designation as a "nonspecialist" source. Natureguy1980 (talk) 20:44, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

• Blue-gray gnatcatcher: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/sep/22/wildlife-clinic-call-the-clinic-before-you-evict/?citizen=1
• Sierra Madre sparrow: Linn Parish (November 24, 2004). "Bringing bird lovers to birds". Journal of Business (Spokane). Vol. 19, no. 24. p. A1. ISSN 1075-6124. it took [Michael Carmody] 12 years to find the Sierra Madre sparrow.

(I found nothing for Peg-billed Finch.) That aside, though, I think that birds that are that obscure in general sources could be Title Cased wherever their names appear. But Wikipedia is a non-specialist reference, a reference for non-specialist readers, no matter the sourcing. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:05, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

And you're misunderstanding the nature of the argument, Hillcrest98. It's not whether the blue-gray gnatcatcher is, itself, mentioned by name, in many generalist sources; rather, its whether species common names, including those of birds, are capitalized or not categorically. You're engaging in the fallacy of composition, confusing the member of the class with the class itself. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

• I just don't believe it. The journal Nature doesn't seem to capitalize bird names, or at least not with any consistency. "Any source that does not capitalize bird names is immediately viewed as amateur." Really? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:53, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

  No one but orn. journals (and virtually no other journals, even in ornithology articles!) and bird field guides capitalizes. The bird field guides, by the way, capitalized long before ornithology did, because virtually all field guides on all flora and fauna capitalize as a form of emphasis of make reading in the field easier and faster. This is the Big Lie of the pro-caps camp: They claim a united capitalizing front in both orn. science and birdwatching books, but the first assertion is false (it's only in ornithology-specific journals), and the second is pure coincidence! — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 16:38, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

• The topic has been "discussed ad nauseam for years", as you put it, because a double-handful of bird-topic editors, who do not in fact represent the views of everyone participating in WP:BIRDS, simply will not ever acknowledge that Wikipedia consensus is overwhelmingly against them, meanwhile most other Wikipedians are a) too polite to get in a big fight over the matter and have been worn down anyway, and b) too concerned that some of these holdouts' continued and vocal threats to quit Wikipedia or go on editorial strike might actually be acted upon if bird articles, like virtually all other articles, stopped capitalizing the common names of species (because WP does what most sources do, not what a few ivory tower sources do). There really is nothing more to it than that. The really sad thing is that the majority of participants in WP:BIRDS, who really are here to write articles and really couldn't care less about bird capitalization on Wikipedia (because they understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not an ornithology journal or bird field guide), feel put-upon and demoralized, even demonized (critics tend to say "WP:BIRDS says...", not "these few activistic editors from WP:BIRDS say..."), as a result of the militaristic determination ("capitalization warriors" is their term, remember) of those vocal, threat-making, poll-derailing holdouts. They should be ashamed of themselves for trying to turn a productive wikiproject in a wikipolitical machine and thwarting all progress on a consistent treatment of biology articles for the benefit of our general, 99.999999% non-ornithological readership and editorship for eight years running. I've only been even peripherally involved in this debate since 2008, but have amassed evidence of this program of organized, divisive "orthological fundamentalism" going back years before that. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Blue-gray gnatcatcher

Natureguy1980 asked "Let's take an extremely common bird like Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. How many "non-specialist" sources is it even mentioned in? Not many. I guarantee you that if you counted the number of times is not capitalized and compared it to the number of times it is, the latter would far outweigh the former. "

It's true the mentions in specialist sources, and therefore capitalized, dominate. But mentions in non-specialist sources are not rare, and make a pretty good case that the birders have not succeeded in getting their odd convention adopted outside their specialty. You find it lower case in books on forest ecology, on desert animals, on gardening, on wildlife, on insects, on Belize, on Missouri, on Wisconsin, on Florida species, on the Pacific Crest Trail, and in New Scientist mag, and some old bird magazines, and even some bird books.

It woud not be out of line with general sources for Wikipedia to apply their stated style consistently here. Dicklyon (talk) 22:00, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Be careful with blanket assertions. You can find many non-specialist books that follow IOC's convention, in topics like Sonorad desert, a natural park, Eastern Forest, Tropical Cloud Forest, Californian river-side vegetation, nature guide to Ontario, ecology of communities. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Some of these sources use fairly idiosyncratic styles that it wouldn't behoove us to use. The Sonoran Desert guide, "Eastern Forest," and the Ontario nature guide use title case for all species, the examples in the California riparian study are found in a (specialist) article within the collection, and the ecology of [bird] communities definitely sounds like a specialist source to me. I can only see less than a page of "Tropical Cloud Forest." The natural park guide seems to support IOC conventions. --BDD (talk) 18:12, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Why didn't you count them? Don't they mean that non-specialist sources don't have a single predominant style for these names? That some sources capitalize all species names while other lowercase all of them? --Enric Naval (talk) 21:03, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. Of the seven sources you cited, by my count, two support your position, two are specialist sources (you characterized all of them as non-specialist), and three use a capitalization scheme that doesn't suggest a conscious effort to follow IOC spelling. As a presentation of non-specialist books that use IOC capitalization, it's a bit shaky. --BDD (talk) 21:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'm seeing a problem here. What is a "specialist" source? The current criteria seems to be "if its topic is birds, then it's useless for common usage". This means that all field guides get automatically discarded, but many are targeted to non-specialist audiences, like people who like to watch birds in the woods. Or to young people, like the The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. Non-specialists interested in birds will buy this type of resources and they will always see capitalized names. For them, the common usage is to always capitalize the name. Imagine their surprise when they come to wikipedia and the articles don't follow the common usage in all sources that are about birds. We are rejecting like hundreds of books that are bought by non-specialists, only because they are "about" birds, and thus "specialist sources". I don't see how a book intended for a generalist audience, which happens to be interested in birds, can be classified as "specialist". A clearer definition of "specialist" would be necessary before discarding so many sources whose main target are not "specialists" like ornithologists and such. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I too find the distinction between specialist and non-specialist material to be pretty arbitrary and essentially unhelpful. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

It's from WP:SSF, which identifies (and goes on too long about) an obvious, identifiable problem. But the terms employed it in are talking about general trends. There is no criterion to stamp this particular source in this particular field by this particular author in this particular context as "specialist" or not. It's the "'I'm part Irish!' 'Yeah? Which part?'" logical confusion. At this level here, the distinction is ridiculously arbitrary. At the aggregate level, it's clear and crucial (i.e. the sources WP:BIRDS considers "reliable" are all about and almost all only about birds, not language, while WP considers them all equal candidate for reliability. WP should certainly dispense with any such distinction in reality, and go with what the majority of reliable sources do, just like we always do for every topic. Which means newspapers, magazines, TV, websites, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. collectively bury the quirky capitalization practices of orn. journals and bird guides under a 3 orders of magnitude landslide. Basic, inescapable logic. The WP:BIRDS people know this, really. These people could not have earned advanced degrees (in the cases where they have one); they handful who just won't let this go are simply stubbornly fond of the caps, and rationalizing. This has been clearly apparent since around 2004, when the logical debate actually ended in favor of using normal English, but they refuse to hear it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 16:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:SSF is just an essay that you wrote yourself.... --Enric Naval (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

And the the moon is not made of green cheese. What's your point? Everything on Wikipedia was written by someone. Saying "it's just an essay" does not address the logic within it. Many things we rely upon around here are essays, and some essays (like the GNG) eventually become not only guidelines but policy. "It's just an essay" is a bit like saying "it's just a book" or "it's just a TV broadcast". The medium is not the message. Now, did you have something substantive and responsive to say, or are you just going to play WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT again? I challenge you to respond rationally and fully to the arguments I've presented. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:13, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

See how far this has progressed? We just talk past each other, like happened the 200 times before this topic has been discussed. Nothing accomplished. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:17, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Unproductive nonsense, as I figured out.
What wasn't accomplished? Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 19:09, 2 October 2012 (UTC) I already stated, above: "Nothing accomplished." Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:08, 2 October 2012 (UTC) I take it you disagree? If so, what do you think has been accomplished by having this discussion for the 85th time? Natureguy1980 (talk) 03:02, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

That's because the structure of the "debate" goes:

1. Someone questions the bird caps
2. Birders offer a defense (often a snotty one, as if picking a fight)
3. Random person is irritated, and starts looking into whether capping makes any sense and finds it doesn't in the context of a general, global encyclopedia where virtually no one knows, understands or cares about this acadaemia quirk, a handful of practitioners of which just won't let go of when the context changes, as if they'd ask for another slice of Gallus gallus at the dinner table
4. Random person demolishes argument of birders piece by piece with a rebuttal
5. Others agree with random
6. Birders (maybe after recruiting a bugwatcher) restate their argument in different terms and, with lots of handwaving, do not actually address anything of substance in the rebuttal
7. All others point out this fallacy
8. Birders argue against its fallaciousness
9. Others, now representing a broad cross-section of WP and much larger numbers than birders, re-demonstrate the fallacies
10. Birders get angry and in strident tone make lots of accusations and engage in wailing and threats
11. Birders re-restate their fallacious argument, which has already been torn apart several times; they just pretend this hasn't happened and hope that new arrivals to the debate will join their side, because weeks or months of bickering have now passed
12. It doesn't happen, and others again demonstrate that the birders argument is broken at every possible point
13. This re-starts the fallacy cycle
14. Others have better things to do and start wandering away, but if they declare victory and start changing guidelines to actually reflect what most of Wikipedia thinks is sensible, birders canvass and organize, because they are now entrenched and militarized, totally obsessed with this caps nonsense instead of editing articles; they have become soldiers, not writers, and they derail the policy processes forcefully
15. Lots of histrionics ensue, with fake "quittings" of Wikipedia, fake mediation attempts, fake attempts to go along with various proposals
16. Everyone's exhausted, and the debate implodes, which is precisely what the birders intended
17. Others slowly do make some incremental progress and just work around the birders "island"
18. Birders undo some of it, maybe even all of it, or sometimes they just lie low
19. Time passes
20. Someone questions the bird caps, and it all starts over again, but no one notices that consensus against bird caps actually already happened at step #5. Wikipedians are just too polite, usually, to get into another bitchfight with academics whose input they value until, usually, birders actually throw the first stone.

I've been reading this stuff since somewhere around 2008 as it happened, and have read back to the beginning, tracing almost every debate of this sort, and this is how it always plays out, or more often a truncated version of it. Birders just play the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT game ad infinitum.

In closing, I'll tell you a little 100% true but privacy-redacted story about a place I worked for a long time, an online services outfit doing insanely great stuff, and growing rapidly in popularity and influence. I was only in the second wave of employees. One of the long-term, most formative, most active, most intelligent and most important people, and even most popular within and without, was also the most hot-headedly stubborn. He got it into his head that he'd been wronged, for real, in some way that everyone else saw as niggling, even nit-picking. But he kept at it, persisting that he had to have his way. This started interfering with co-workers' efficiency, and the cohesive operation of the entire system; others even started imitating him, and causing trouble. The CEO held a meeting about "strife reduction", in a place that had only months before been operating as a smoothly oiled machine. It didn't help. The increasingly vitriolic disruption included threats to quit, threats to refuse to work until mollified, threats to quit and tell others not to work there, even implausible threats to start a competing company, followed by absenteeism and a noticeable decline in productivity due to spending so much time fighting the company and the other employee alleged to have done him wrong. It was embarrassing for now-distant friends in the office. His health began to decline, as his organs were rebelling against all this anger. The CEO eventually had no choice but to bring this all to the board of directors, who were already concerned because of incoming reports that his output was, though technically and eloquently superb and visionary, sometimes grating and even offensive to many, many members of the target market, on top of all the problems being caused internally. He was summarily and without remorse fired, despite years of service and friendship, and being a well-known public face of the company. After a short while his replacement settled in, everyone adjusted, and things not only went back to normal, they were better than ever. The corporation is now about 5x larger than it was then. The fired man did find an even bigger project to work at, but didn't last long and got fired again, as his well-known preceding reputation proved true there as well. He's struggling to find any project that will take him on at all today, and the original employer won't have anything to do with him even after years. A word to the wise: Every single aspect of this story (other than perhaps the future) has a direct analogy in the most active "animal capitalization" wikiproject [or rather its cadre of commando alpha-editors] and their few project-external allies. It's not that any one of them, like any of his traits, was insufferable (well, okay, maybe one), but rather that the combination was toxic, both to the project and to himself in multiple ways. I'll leave it up to you to figure out the riddle. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 16:09, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

This is one of the nastiest diatribes I've seen in a long time. I hope you feel better about yourself. Natureguy1980 (talk) 02:16, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't need to feel better about myself; I don't have self-esteem issues. Calling me "nasty" is, aside from being ad hominem, totally unresponsive to a single point I raised, which number in the dozens. Typical. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:48, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Why do editors who do not usually edit bird articles care?

Alright, for BDD, Hillcrest98 and JHunterJ, why is this so important for you if you don't spend any significant time editing these articles? Do you really think that the birds wikiproject members are suffering from some mass-delusion or mass conspiracy, rather than having spent years birdwatching, reading bird articles and journals and generally enjoying all things ornithological and coming to a logical conclusion about capitalisation? Do you really think our judgment on this issue is this way off? Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:04, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

(a) I didn't bring it up (yet again), and my first response to Apteva's proposal was that I really didn't want to go through this again -- you're right, other things are more important to me. But since you asked, (b) Why haven't reliable general sources like the New York Times and the Oxford English Dictionary reached this supposedly logical conclusion? Coming to an insular conclusion is not always the same as coming to a logical conclusion. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

The OED is a tertiary source and good as a dictionary but I think lacks the ability to distinguish finer points of scientific topics, and I think this holds true for medicine, astronomy and other areas. It doesn't list species generally, only names in a general sense. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:05, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

So the only general sources that count are specialist sources? Encyclopedia Britannica similarly uses sentence case for birds. If we take your approach, Wikispecies (a list of species generally) should capitalize bird names and Wikipedia (a general-sense encyclopedia) should not. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:29, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, first of all, review WP:OWN. You don't have to edit articles to weigh in on them, and editing those articles doesn't make your opinion any more important. I don't ascribe to WPB delusion or conspiracy. I'm not just assuming good faith; it's a certainty. And it makes sense that people interested in ornithology would follow the IOC's guidelines. But those guidelines boldly clash with our own here at Wikipedia, and my fear is that specialist knowledge and respect for IOC conventions is overriding logical arguments about Wikipedia's conventions, which must come first on—you guessed it, Wikipedia. The issue bothers me because inconsistency bothers me, especially in very visible ways such as article titles. See my frustrated RM attempts at Talk:Depictions of Muhammad and Talk:Depiction of Jesus. And mark my words, if we decided all species names should use title case, I would accept that, and I'd like it better than the status quo. But because birds are a minority, and because it's very well established that Wikipedia uses sentence case, the standardization should happen the other way. --BDD (talk) 15:20, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree about inconsistency (and when I started editing here all organisms had title case names), but fact is birds differ from mammals, reptiles, plants etc. by having whole bodies that rule on and concoct official common names (much like there is a similar issue with celestial bodies). How do these guidelines clash with Wikipedia? They clash with some peoples' interpretation of guidelines. For mine, accuracy trumps accessibility, though we try to be as accessible as we possibly can. We use plain English where possible unless accuracy is lost. Which is why (in medicine) for instance Depression is a redirect, Depression (mood) is fairly stubby, but the name of what has been researched for many years and has had thousands of papers etc. is Major depressive disorder. This was the first that came to mind but there are many examples. No-one objects to weighing in but some pursuing it to the nth degree is another thing. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I think inconsistent style makes Wikipedia look a bit silly. Ornithological journals usually have a specified style, and follow it consistently, and this is a small thing that helps them look professional. Other scholarly works have a different style, with similar results. I think WP ought to look at what style is prevalent among sources, then adopt that style consistently. Most writing does not capitalize species names. "I saw a lion at the zoo."—almost never "I saw a Lion." Most scholarly work does not capitalize species names, not even bird names. So it makes sense for us to adopt a style like "species names should be lowercase except when proper names occur, etc". ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:47, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Because it has nothing to do with birds, but with writing an encyclopedia using normal English, instead of trying to force the entire editorship and readership to accept your jargonistic style quirk that no one in the world but ornithologists and ornithoscopists (and not even all of them) agrees with or knows and cares about. About 99.9999% of readers are going to interpret this ungrammatical capitalization as an error. The vast, vast majority of all published sources that aren't bird-specific publications ignore the "convention" because it is non-standard English used by a bunch of academics in their field-specific academic communications, and by aficionados in their field guides (where the practice arose separately, and much earlier, as a form of emphasis - the field guides on everything capitalize the entries in them). Even your presentation of a united front for the alleged logicalness of bird name capitalization is a total illusion. This has all been explained to you again and again and again and again, for years, and you just never give up. It's the very definition of WP:Tendentious editing. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 14:47, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

In case it's still not getting through clearly, consider that in genealogy publications, field-wide, there is a clear and consistent standard to capitalize the entire surname, for clarity (or sometimes not the "c" or "ac" in Gaelic patronymics:
Pepe J. GARCIA
Wilford Milton McDOUGAL
CHUNG Ying-ming
and so on. Proposing that bird common names be capitalized in Wikipedia just because bird specialist publications do so is pretty close to exactly comparable to demanding that all human surnames/family names always be all-capped just because this is how genealogy specialist publications do it. I can provide many more such examples if you like. See WP:Specialist style fallacy for why making quirky exceptions to general MOS rules just to keep one small specialty happy isn't viable (hint: every camp will their want their exceptions, and soon we'll have no style guide at all, just random people writing however-the-hell they like with no regard for readability by anyone who isn't a specialist in the same field just like them. The MoS exists for a reason. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Not again

Okay, after the last protracted discussion, I pretty much gave up on Wikipedia because of the continued discouragement of the establishment who like to force their generic flavor all over Wikipedia. Most people give a rats ass what is in the MOS, and so the MOS is dominated by uniformity warriors. And people working is specialties really have no interest in dealing with that, so they can and will change everything to their liking. So, now we have the "rule" that generic sources trump specialist sources. What a load of crap. Even the Chicago Manual of Style does not do that, they specifically refer to specialist sources. So yes, enforce uniformity. Lose editors. Before you do, consider what the purpose is of Wikipedia. Is it to share knowledge and make an encyclopedia? Or is it an experiment in bureaucracy building?

BTW: MOS is a guideline, and can be ignored with reason. That reason is already spelled out.-- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:02, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Great, so you're going to force your flavor all over Wikipedia instead, as the opposing side's uniformity warrior? What a load of crap, indeed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Not as far as I can tell. If someone from Canada edits an article on London, England, while that is very rare, and puts in something in Canadian English about something, it is trivial for someone else to correct it. The intent was not to unify the London article into Canadian, but to add something that was not there. The likelihood of anyone who is using what to them is completely correct terminology editing "all over Wikipedia" is completely zero. There are 4 million articles. 10,000 of them are bird articles. There are also maybe 10,000 Canadian articles. No one is concerned that Canadians are going to somehow use Canadian "all over Wikipedia". If someone puts "Spotted Owl" into an article on old-growth forest,[28] then just like any other edit, if it works in that context, it stays, if not, then someone will change it to spotted owl. This is not a big deal for the encyclopedia, but it is a big deal to try to tell other editors what to do in a guideline. It is not a policy. It is not a principle, but a guideline. Guidelines are helpful if you do not know what is correct. If you already know what is correct, the guideline is less than useless if it contains misleading or erroneous advice, which in some cases can be just left as an exception and in some cases can be corrected. We can not put everything into a guideline, and the more we put in the greater the likelihood is for there to be exceptions that are not included. I before E except after C is a spelling guideline - but there are more exceptions to that rule than words that follow the rule. If your idea of what is correct conflicts with another editors idea of correctness in a particular article, that is what talk pages are for - to discuss that particular article. Apteva (talk) 15:46, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The question, Apteva, is can I move a bird article to lowercase and have it kept there? If I write a new article on a new species, can I put it at a lowercase title and have it kept there? As things are right now, no, I can not do either, and the reason is that "uniformity warriors" from BIRDS are going to stop me—they'll move the article to caps and they'll jump on the RM and defeat it, pointing to the "guidelines" at WP:BIRDS. Shall I point you to examples of this happening in the past? 10,000 of them are bird articles. There are also maybe 10,000 Canadian articles. No one is concerned that Canadians are going to somehow use Canadian "all over Wikipedia". Maybe not Canadian, but there certainly is concern that someone might move all 10k bird articles to lowercase. There are plenty of people ready and willing to go to work on this, Apteva. It's happened before (on a smaller scale). ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:47, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

That does not seem to be a serious question. Why would anyone want to move a bird article to lower case? Doing so would clearly violate both the existing guidelines on bird article names and the uniformity of the other 10,000 articles. I can understand wanting to do it if an editor was not aware of those two facts, and stumbled across an article on Red Fox and moved it to Red fox, and one on American Robin and tried to move it to American robin. Anyone who thinks that American Robin should be at American robin needs to take that up with the editors who think it should be at American Robin and find out why they think that - a question which is trivial to answer - that is what the IOC does, and birds are about the only species that actually do have "official" names, and those names use capitalization. I see zero chance of talking the IOC out of using that convention, and barring that, if the official names use capitalization, a zero chance in getting consensus on WP to not use those official names. I think the closest that anyone could achieve short of creating a new encyclopedia with its own style guide (like Britannica) is to propose using lower case within articles and using capitalized names for article titles and in captions and info boxes. It is also common, though, to use some sort of emphasis if in text someone wants to be specific that they are referring to the species name Red fox, and not just a red fox, and the easiest way to do that is to capitalize the name, using American Robin, instead of American robin. So in summary, no matter how bizarre anyone thinks the spelling rules are for birds, it does not seem practical to try to change them - that proposal would need to come from the people who edit those articles the most. Apteva (talk) 02:38, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

If someone wants to take a bird article to Featured article they should seriously consider it(making it lower case) as Featured article criteria requires that an article follows WP:MOS which MOS:CAPS is a part. Of course they could just change the article to lower case if the issue is raised; or argue the point but I doubt that would be productive in such a scenario. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 12:20, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the situation right now is not exactly that one can ignore guidelines "with reason". If I start an RM to move a bird species article to lowercase and build a compelling case that the vast majority of sources, including top-quality ones (like Nature, etc), use lowercase, then a passel of "uniformity warriors" from WP:BIRDS will swoop in and smack me down, pointing to their rule that we keep bird names uniformly capped. You can not have this both ways, Kim—let's drop the pretense that there's some meta level philosophical question about how decisions are made on Wikipedia going on here and discuss the merits of the different style options before us. The idea that conformity (to something at least) doesn't matter isn't seriously being proposed or discussed here. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:33, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

The reasons have been spelled out over and over again. They are there and will be used. This discussion is the same rehash that has been going on for many years now. Ultimately, it is a guideline, hence you have to obtain consensus page by page. Go ahead. I am ready to provide my arguments against them. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:23, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Guidelines I disagree with, meaningless! -- you have to obtain consensus page by page! The guidelines may as well not exist at all! (Except the guidelines I agree with, of course. Those are suitable for using to demonstrate consensus. Guidelines I disagree with do not have obvious consensus.) The preceding is a load of crap, because WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is a policy, not a guideline. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Style guide are guidelines. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 22:39, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Yep, and guidelines are what WP:LOCALCONSENSUS addresses. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:02, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Except that there is no community consensus with the capitalisation is contra Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:31, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Except that there is consensus on naming conventions for fauna, which a limited group of editors dismisses for birds. (If I understood your objection correctly; it appears to be missing or misspelling a word somewhere, and I can't quite figure out which one.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:19, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Civility is also a policy. It is not disputed that some editors would prefer to use lower case, and do use lower case. It is not disputed that the naming guideline for bird articles regardless of where they are, and they are repeated in multiple places, state that bird name capitalization of species names follow the "official" spellings, including whatever capitalization is used. It is not disputed that there are 10,000 article names that follow that convention. Now, if someone wants to change that convention, this page is not the place to do that. That convention does not appear on this page, and should not be paraphrased on this page. All that is needed is a link. The place to have that discussion is on the talk page of that convention. It seems to me though, that the positions are so thoroughly entrenched that no consensus to change is possible, short of the IOC changing their names first. It would be helpful, though, as new editors join Wikipedia, and as random RM's are proposed, that a clear guideline exists here, not one that says that there is a proposal to capitalize bird names, which as I read it would indicate that none of the bird articles use capitalized names but that there was a proposal to capitalize them - until I read the guideline on bird names itself, which clearly says to capitalize bird names. See proposal 4 above. Apteva (talk) 02:09, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

To me it is very similar to the British English vs. American English issue. In articles that are clearly about the United States, use American English. In articles that are about Great Britain, use British English. In articles that are about birds the convention that has been used since forever is to use bird capitalization. In articles that are not about birds the convention that has been used since July 2004 is to not capitalize animal species names other than birds, although even that may have been disputed, until 2009, and the official guideline simply said that either format was acceptable. Apteva (talk) 02:25, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

I've said this a hundred times: Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. That means non-specialist sources are preferred, as the majority of Wikipedia readers are not birdwatchers nor ornithologists, as determined by common sense. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 01:36, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I've also told you a hundred times that WP:BIRDS cannot do any ownership-like action on articles in its scope. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 01:39, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Finally, I as I said elsewhere in the discussion, I support the opinions of the other opposers. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 01:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(capitalization)#Blue-gray_gnatcatcher. Please fix the definition of "specialist source". Currently it's just a catch-all for every source whose main topic is birds, including all sources that are intended for a general audience. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:27, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Kim did not "give up on Wikipedia", she played the WP:DIVA game that she has already played twice before, as can be proven by admin-recoverable, now-deleted versions of her user page where she "quit Wikipedia" in a dramatic huff over this issue after failing to win the debate, and then reappeared after a short wikibreak. She's WP:GAMING the system, and it's not conducive to finding consensus on this issue for her to inject a spurious claim that the WP community is at fault here. As I said regarding the entrenched behavior of another WP:BIRDS editor, above, these years and years of re-re-re-re-raising the same logically bankrupt arguments, as if never addressed, and doing so sometimes several times in the same discussion in the same month, even the same DAY, and most importantly in the face of opposition by almost the entirety of the rest of Wikipedia, even most other biology groups, is the very essence of WP:Tendentious editing.

It has to stop. Maybe a site-wide poll can help settle whether anyone but about 12-20 editors at WP:BIRDS and maybe that many more distributed through other projects, and a few random editors who may be German or otherwise like to capitalize nouns simply for being nouns. I'm going to propose this at WT:MOSCAPS. Enough is enough. WP:BIRDS is not to blame, just a few charismatic people at that project who sometimes appear to be WP:NOTHERE to write an encyclopedia, but to re-write an encyclopedia to read like an ornithology journal. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 14:59, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, always nice when someone else knows better what I am doing than myself. It is so much easier to hurl all kind of accusations to your opponent when you cannot get your way.-- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 08:20, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Either that, or he was responding in self-defense. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:35, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not inclined to comment further other than to mention that beside the blanket condemnation of "everyone who doesn't agree with Kim", basically, KimvdLinde has not only repeatedly personally attacked me at WT:BIRDS (e.g. "there is no good faith in SMcCandlish", etc.) behind my back, and also abused WP:DRN as a platform from which to attack me personally instead of engaging in the dispute resolution she ostensibly agreed to (and in which my side was written so neutrally that one of the DRN admins wrote "This is how it should be done."). — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Not responsive to the poll proposal, Kim. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

And people at Wikipedia are surprised that they cannot retain specialist editors

I think this protracted caps discussion is a prime example why Wikipedia cannot retain expert editors. Somewhere along the road, in an obscure discussion, some people decide that it is right to add local consensus section to the consensus policy. And start wielding it as a club when they do not get their way to impose their will to the whole encyclopedia, running of expert editors left and right because of it. Good job. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 12:04, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

If expert editors are those who do not wish to write a general encyclopedia, I can understand why they would become frustrated. Doesn't mean the general encyclopedia needs to adopt their expert jargon though, any more than we need to adopt Variety jargon to retain those experts. Some experts wield their jargon as a club when they do not get their way. Good job. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:54, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I concur with JHunterJ. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 14:30, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Good to know that you guys are in favor of running of experts. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 16:40, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

But it's just as good to know you're not in favor of writing a general encyclopedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Not by your definition of a general encyclopedia. In think that is a dumbed down version. I rather produce quality. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:04, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Right, that's the disagreement. Not a load of crap, not a running off of experts, but a disagreement over whether using general capitalization for birds is dumbing down, or whether using Title Case for birds is an unnecessary affectation in a general reference. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:13, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I think it is a load of crap! -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 18:52, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Then you might reconsider who is wielding clubs when they do not get their way. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The uniformists. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 19:44, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Then put down your clubs. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:53, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Self-defense is permitted. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 22:47, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

But not relevant here, since no editors were being attacked, unless you intend my "self-defense" against your "load of crap" club. Otherwise, it's just hypocrisy to claim that one group of "uniformity warriors" is club-wielders while the other group of "uniformity warriors" is self-defenders. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

You are not the arbiter of how I see it. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

But I can see the hypocrisy of it. You are not the arbiter of the case of Wikipedia v. expert editors. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:27, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

That is correct, it is my opinion. And I really have no problem with it that you think it is hypocritical. I do not think it is. Again, it is my opinion. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 15:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Who is surprised? Most specialists have careers to pursue, etc. Very few editors of any kind stick around for long periods of intensely active time in any endeavor. The idea that WP is falling apart because X number of specialist editors are leaving is spurious, because WP isn't falling apart, and new specialist editors are incoming all the time. And, most importantly, most specialist topics are not only well-covered on WP, they're often far better-covered than more general ones. Or are you telling us you believe all the bird articles are terrible, and that this is because the specialists have all fled, because of arguments about this capitalization quirk? It's you and dozen or so other participants in that project that are creating the arguments. The entire issue was dead quit until you returned from "quitting" WP (for at least the third time) recently. Coincidence? I certainly think not. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 15:06, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I am not surprised. If you ask why experts bail out, it is because they have no time to fight with the resident uniformists, edit warriors, the POV-pushers. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 08:19, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

At what article is someone pushing a POV or editwarring? Those are noticeboard issues, and don't have anything to do with naming conventions. Please show me the poll or other source where experts say, in any significant numbers, they have left the project for the reason you just stated. Show me any bird expert in particular who says (s)he has left the project over the capitalization issue (and actually has, in fact, left). You're doing what's called "terribilzing" or "optimizing for the possible rather than the probable", imagining that if ornithologists are asked not to capitalize in WP articles that their heads will explode and they will run away screaming. In point of fact, however, all academics are very well adjusted to the fact that one publication venue has one style guide and another has a different one. They deal with this on a daily basis when submitting articles to journals, and they're far, far more intelligent and adaptable than you give them credit for. I would be insulted by what you've posted here, KimvdLinde, if I were an ornithologist, since it implies I would childishly stamp my feet and leave the Wikipedia just because I'm too emotionally immature to handle a debate, and too stupid to adapt to a simple orthographical change. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Birds are already covered at WP:NCFauna

The "guideline" at Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds seems to be a way to circumvent the current naming convention already in existence at WP:NCFauna, and ignore the capitalisation rules therein. There are no special circumstances here to exclude birds from these conventions, so the "guideline" at Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds should be removed, and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (birds) should be redirected to WP:NCFauna. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:50, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Uh - what about this section of WP:NCFauna:

"If the article is about an animal belonging to a group where Wikipedia editors have agreed on a non-controversial standard for choosing among two or more common names, follow that standard.

For ornithology articles, Wikipedia uses the bird species and subspecies common names published by the International Ornithological Congress at the World Bird Names database." Apteva (talk) 22:52, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't mention capitalisation style - just the naming! However in the capitalisation section it does mention referring to individual projects, which personally, I think should be removed. It's just a way to circumvent the accepted Wikipedia style at WP:TITLEFORMAT and elsewhere. What makes birds so bloody special? --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:40, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

That they contrary to any other group, have standardized names (IOC). Which makes them Proper Nouns. Which are Capitalized! Which the Chicago manual Of Style suggest you follow. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 15:17, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Can you quote the paragraph that deals with birds specifically in the Chicago Manual of Style? --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:00, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

See discussion here. I never wrote down the exact sections, but anybody with access (mine lapsed) can find it. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 17:53, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Looking at that discussion, I can see that this is an issue that will never be resolved. I'm withdrawing any involvement... --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:26, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Wise move. Natureguy1980 (talk) 15:41, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

That's precisely what it is, now. It originated as an innocent attempt to mirror what the academic sources were doing, without regard to whether doing so was appropriate here stylistically, which is not the same as factually. It became entrenched and politicized after MOS said "don't capitalize common names" starting in 2008. It's still entrenched now that NCFauna agrees with MOS. The "birds exception" (found as euphemistically vague language like "a group where Wikipedia editors have agreed on") that appears sometimes in these guidelines is the result of years of editwarring by a handful of people at the birds project against everyone else on the system.

Most WP:BIRDS editors don't care and want to move on; they're just tired of feeling demonized, and are resultantly being collectivized into a group position they wouldn't individually support. I bet if you *individually and privately* polled every WP:BIRDS member who can be e-mailed from here, "Would you support editwarring and policy-fighting for 8 more years past these last 8, wasting all that editorial time and energy, just to keep capitalization of bird names per academic standards in a non-academic encyclopedia?", 90+% of respondents would answer "No" without hesitation. I'd bet cold hard cash on that, in fact.

Anyway, back to the main question, WT:MOS + subpages emphatically is where consensus on Wikipedia style issues is forged, and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS makes it clear as a matter of actual policy that wikiprojects do not get to make up their own rules. The end, game over. The only reason this hasn't gone to ARBCOM in a mass tendentiousness case is because MOS regulars, including me, are really, really patient. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 15:20, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

To me the solution is to not try to make rules that anyone would want to break. We know that people are going to use British English and American English, so we do not try to make a rule saying that you have to use one or the other. We allow articles to use scientific names because that is what they are going to do anyway. WP is such a huge project that serves such a broad market, that being overly restrictive about how it is constructed is counterproductive. Apteva (talk) 05:25, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Almost everyone who knows English will want to use, well, real English. The only people who are going to want to capitalize bird common names are ornithologists. This isn't anything like WP:ENGVAR, which is about two massive populations who are never going to agree on a standard. It's about one little ivory tower that wants to tell everyone else how to edit if birds are involved. We allow biological articles to be at scientific names when appropriate, because (when appropriate) all reliable sources use them, consistently. By contrast nearly zero reliable sources capitalize bird common names outside of ornithology journals (the main exception being bird field guides, but they do it because almost all field guides on any plants or animals capitalize like this to make entries stand out when you're trying to read fast in the field; it's a coincidence). — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:34, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Other opposers, including me, have found that WP:BIRDS has also violated policies and guidelines other than WP:TITLE. Among those policies and guidelines violated are WP:CONSENSUS, WP:OWN and, during enforcement of their convention, WP:DISRUPTION. Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 17:10, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

There was also massive, intentional, coordinated disruption of WT:MOS and more specifically the blatantly canvassed total derailment of a poll there, back in in the first quarter when this issue was under discussion there. Par for the course with the handful of WP:BIRDS editors pursuing this in militaristic fashion. It's not the entire project. There are even people in that project to don't agree with IOU's capitalization scheme offline, outside of journals directly beholden to that organization. I see no evidence that more than maybe 20 people at that project support or participate in this "capitalization war" as they call it. And well they should not. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Why would you want to exclude all the field guides? Sounds like you are sifting through sources to align to your point of view SMcCandlish. Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (birds) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:Naming conventions (birds). You might want to participate in the redirect discussion. JHunterJ (talk) 11:36, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Example of the problem bird names outside of bird articles

See [29] for an example of the problem. This is not an ornithology article, and should use standard caps. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:06, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Bad example - it is very much an ornithology article. Maias (talk) 12:30, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

It's an article about a floodplain, not an article about a bird. The Bird Project might include it as well, but it's not an ornithology article. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:59, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

*groan* there is a section that is only about birds. WP:NCFAUNA does not provide guidance on this. Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds. As far as I know, the capital names rule applies only to articles that are wholly about birds. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:49, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:MOSCAPS#Common names also supports their standard casing (lowercase) outside of ornithology articles. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:23, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Another result of a "ceasefire". Hill Crest's WikiLaser! (BOOM!) 19:14, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The only thing I would do there is use uniform capitalization within the article - and capitalize stilt - "Yellow-billed Spoonbills and White-headed stilts". It is too radical a change to change all of them, and it might as well be an ornithology article as it only has two paragraphs and one is only about birds. Can anyone spell edit war? Apteva (talk) 20:20, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

• 11:30, 15 October 2012‎ B (rv gfe)
• 11:03, 15 October 2012‎ A (caps per WP:FAUNA, and not that this is not an ornithology article)
• 23:27, 14 October 2012‎ B (recap)
• 23:26, 14 October 2012‎ B (restore standard caps)
• 22:49, 14 October 2012‎ A (copy edit and clean up, use normal caps in a non-Bird Project article, add convert templates)

And not one word on the talk page. Apteva (talk) 20:26, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure what this is referring to, but my guess is correcting obvious errors like changing Grizzly Bear to grizzly bear, not changing Bald Eagle to bald eagle.

As of March 2012, wikiprojects for some groups of organisms are in the process of converting to sentence case where title case was previously used. Some articles may not have been changed yet. This is true of many mammal articles, notably rodents and bovids, as well as amphibians and reptiles.

Apteva (talk) 20:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

So individual species (e.g., bald eagle) should be capitalized but individual subspecies (e.g., grizzly bear) shouldn't? Huh? --BDD (talk) 20:42, 15 October 2012 (UTC)