Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

RfC on removal of MOS:JOBTITLES

No consensus. I find that there is broad dissatisfaction with the guideline, but not to the extent that removing it entirely is preferable to keeping it in its current state.

As there is also no consensus to endorse the guideline in its current form, I have taken on the task of studying the evolution of the section to ensure that every substantial change has been supported by prior consensus:

• MOS:JOBTITLES started out as part of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters. We begin with this version from October 2017, which ought to be uncontroversial to most participants of this discussion (in terms of the ideas expressed, regardless of whether it is a good presentation of them). Note that all it is silent on the controversial issue of whether something like "President of the United States" should always be capitalized, instead going with the ambigious "When the correct formal title is treated as a proper name".
• 03:42, October 23, 2017: The first appearance of the distinction in capitalization of "President of the United States" is implemented as a result of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 25#RfC 2: Specific proposal to revise the third bullet of MOS:JOBTITLES. Some express disagreement with the substance of the change but agree that a standard is better than no standard.
• 14:09, March 12, 2018: The examples are then turned into a table per Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters/Archive 27#Clarification of "Titles of people". Again, several people disagree with the substance but do not object as the table presents the same information in a better way.
• 19:29, June 26, 2018: The text is transferred to its current location in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography per Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2018 archive#Merge MOS:JOBTITLES to this MoS page.
• 16:44, July 25, 2018: A line about commercial and informal titles is added, per Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2018 archive#Proposed MOS:JOBTITLES tweak.
• 14:43, July 29, 2018: The section about hyphenation and compounds is rewritten and moved up a section, with no material effects. This version is essentially identical to today.

Hence MOS:JOBTITLES will be retained in its current form as the status quo. I recommend that another RfC be started to discuss how to reform this guideline. It may help to spend a few days planning out the structure of the RfC instead of jumping straight into discussion and/or !voting. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:07, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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As seen above on this page, MOS:JOBTITLES has been disputed numerous times due to strong disagreements in whether the names of political offices should be capitalised in the lead sentences of political office articles and elsewhere following the article/modifier. A retrospective analysis of 19 of these discussions dating back to 2011 (above) showed that the overall view is against the guideline as it reads now by approximately 2:1, but no discussion has ever been able to come to a reasonable solution.

Should the Manual of Style section be removed entirely as a guideline that does not have "general" support? (A substitute can be added later if it does have general support.) · • SUM1 • · (talk) 18:46, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Pings again (sorry): Ralbegen Cthomas3 Eyer K.e.coffman SMcCandlish Surtsicna Gog the Mild Dicklyon Woko Sapien Mandruss GoodDay Cinderella157 Magidin MelanieN Gnangarra SmokeyJoe Doug butler Number 57 Timrollpickering DIYeditor ErinRC Frickeg David Eppstein Peacemaker67 Bookscale ScottDavis Tinman44 Editing with Eric The Drover's Wife Spy-cicle Coolcaesar Blueboar

Ralbegen Cthomas3 Eyer K.e.coffman SMcCandlish Surtsicna Gog the Mild Dicklyon Woko Sapien Mandruss GoodDay Cinderella157 Magidin MelanieN Gnangarra SmokeyJoe Doug butler Number 57 Timrollpickering DIYeditor ErinRC Frickeg David Eppstein Peacemaker67 Bookscale ScottDavis Tinman44 Editing with Eric The Drover's Wife Spy-cicle Coolcaesar Blueboar As the ping still hasn't worked. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 01:10, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Comments

• Comment While I think the current version of JOBTITLES is basically a mess, I also think it would be prudent to keep some form of it. Maybe it would be beneficial to rollback to a less contentious version, such as the 2014 version and build from there. Editing with Eric (talk) 19:23, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove as a matter of WP:TNT, then build something less issue-filled. (Alternatively, Eric's idea with SmokeyJoe's amendments is not terrible). The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove It's a mess that clearly doesn't have general support and a source of edit wars and frustration. Better to create anew. Timrollpickering (Talk) 21:05, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove JOBTITLES is quite a mess at the moment as seen for the plethora of discussions. Starting from afresh via WP:TNT I think would help. Restoring JOBTITILES to a less contentious version, as pointed out by Eric, from some years ago could also be another option. Either way, JOBTITLES in its current states cannot continue with the constant back and forth, disputes, unambiguity, and possible regional differences.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 21:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Side note SUM1 FWIW, Your pings above did not work since you did not sign within the same diff ([1]). Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 21:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
  • @Spy-cicle: Thank you. I believe I did that because I didn't want the pings to appear in the RfC transclusion. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 17:31, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support the six year rollback to this 2014 version per Editing with Eric, but deleting “only” from “They are capitalized only in the following cases”, and adding something about attending to source use, eg: For exceptions, don’t capitalise when most reliable sources don’t, do capitalise when virtually all sources do capitalise. That word “only” lends to wikilawyering for unintended consequences, and the MOS must always make allowance for the higher level guidance that Wikipedia follows the sources. Accept that there is a modern trend for less capitalisation, and where sources are mixed tend to de-capitalise. Forbid gnomes from gnoming to create a false consistency. English varies with place and time, and capitalisation often carries nuance of meaning beyond “capitalised words are important words”. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:59, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep The principle of adhering to the modern practice of not capitalising job titles is an important one to keep. Where MOS:JOBTITLES is applied, it puts Wikipedia's style in line with modern sources, including the Encyclopedia Britannica. Removing it could create an inconsistent style across the encyclopedia, which in turn could lead to perverse outcomes, such as two officeholders from the same period having different styles applied to them because one is primarily covered by modern sources and one is primarily covered by older sources with a more conservative approach to capitalisation. Removing the section from the MOS wholesale would delegate arguments over style to thousands of articles across the encyclopedia, which is something the MOS should prevent. Guidance on capitalising job titles should remain on this page, as should the strong presumption against capitalising them except in very limited circumstance. That said, I agree that the section could benefit from being redrafted for clarity, just not removal. Ralbegen (talk) 22:56, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep per Ralbegen's comments above. Not only is MOS:JOBTITLES in line with most modern encyclopedic sources, but it's also mostly aligned with The Washington Post, The New York Times, BBC, and other sources. Further, it's aligned with leading style guides like Chicago, Fowler's, Garner's, and New Hart's. —Eyer (If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message to let me know.) 23:03, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
  • External style guides are not sources. They are external styles. Wikipedia does not copy external styles, but follows the best quality sources. The style guides you point to are relevant to modern rolling publication. Wikipedia is not a rolling publication, but an historiographical document, and sometimes it needs to reflect old styles and sources. Within reason. The recent versions of JOBTITLES had gone too far. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:36, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
    • Styles used by the best quality sources follow their style guides (at least for newspapers), which are a condensed way of understanding how they use style. They are a relevant part of this conversation. It's also possible to look at dictionaries of national biography and other high-quality encyclopedias to see that MOS:JOBTITLES isn't avant-garde, it's entirely standard. The current version is more permissive to capitalisation than Britannica. Ralbegen (talk) 13:00, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Just as an aside, I would be cautious when following journalistic style guides and sources as they can vary significantly in quality and accuracy; from "this is quite helpful" (BBC News style guide and Telegraph style book), to "this is inaccurate trash" (Guardian and Observer style guide). Editing with Eric (talk) 12:38, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

    And more/worse than inaccurate. The Guardian's style guide is driven entirely by expediency. E.g., they are dropping punctuation that other British style guides say to use; they have abandoned italicizing the names of major published works; they will not capitalize any but the first letter in an acronym; and so on. Anything that impedes their ability to shove content out the door as fast as possible with a minimum of typing has been gutted. Even their sister publication, The Observer, bucks some of these changes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:11, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Remove for the reasons stated above. The British English style guides have gone off the rails on this issue and it is a shame that Chicago decided to follow them rather than take a stand for good, clear writing. The United States has always prioritized excellence in education (to the point that now we have crazy college admissions scandals). Yes, that elitism means American English style is conservative and evolves slowly. Fortunately, most American schools, colleges, and universities (especially at the graduate level) continue to teach people how to write properly. (The Ivy League and a handful of other top universities produce most American professors and then everything trickles down from there.) --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:32, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove The lack of nuance in the examples provided encourages over-eager editors to ruthlessly enforce the section rather than see if there is any nuance or exception, especially when the consensus discussion to add this was minimal. Slywriter (talk) 03:04, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Fallacious reasoning. The obvious solution to the alleged problem is to simply use more-nuanced examples. If your car needed to be washed, would you throw it away instead?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:28, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Comment from proposer. I appreciate everybody's concerns, including those who wish to keep the section. I understand that it's in line with more than one style guide. However, my argument, among other things, is to go in line with Wikipedia policy and to ensure that Manual of Style and other guideline sections have consensus. Believe it or not, there was a period before 2019 when most of these offices were capitalised, regardless of MOS:JOBTITLES. It seems the guideline didn't even have an effect (or even got reverted, sometimes I observed) when it was in place, and I think that speaks to its level of non-acceptance. This is the foundation for which I'm basing the proposal to remove it and try again later. It shouldn't therefore have much of an effect. If anything, it was the mass changes to de-capitalisation in late 2019 that introduced inconsistency. That of course is another argument from only one side of the story. But I think that very fact that there are this many sides to the story proves even more so that this section should be removed. (We can't ignore the side of the story of all the government websites around the world that favour capitalisation, for example.) · • SUM1 • · (talk) 17:31, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove & replace with something less confusing. GoodDay (talk) 01:23, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per Timrollpickering. Number 57 01:39, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. MOS:JOBTITLES reflects the world's most reputable English language style guides. I have cited them ad nauseam, and I was never pointed to a style guide contradicting them. MOS:JOBTITLES also reflects the usage in academic works and the most renowned media outlets in virtually every English-speaking country. The idea that Wikipedia should prioritize the preferences of its pseudonymous editors over all this is very odd. And that's an understatement. Surtsicna (talk) 01:45, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Those style guides are usually well written. However, the Wikipedia style guide isn't, it's a badly written confusing mess that was constructed piecemeal and consequently leads to incorrect capitalisation and editor frustration. Additionally, it has been explained the issues with only following style guides, if one chooses to ignore these concerns in favour of restating the same argument ad nauseam then we'll never get any closer to finding consensus. I previously stated that I would be in favour of a 6 year rollback as a sort of compromise, but if editors are too entrenched in this half decade war then I would be happy to remove the whole section. It very obviously doesn't have consensus, if half a decade of arguments don't prove that then I don't know what will. Editing with Eric (talk) 09:37, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
    • This is obviously not about how well written MOS:JOBTITLES is. It is about editors insisting that Wikipedia deviate from mainstream academic and journalistic prose because the said editors just do not like the way this prose has been written in the past decades. That much has been plainly stated several times by multiple editors (e.g. [2], [3]). And there are no issues with following academic and journalistic style guides. There can only be issues with pseudonymous Wikipedia editors deciding that they somehow know better. Surtsicna (talk) 19:21, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
      • Yeah, and everything on Wikipedia is "constructed piecemeal", including every single policy and guideline. That's not any kind of objection. It's just how this site is built, because it's done by a continual process of consensus formation among thousands of individuals with very different backgrounds and expectations. A work like Chicago Manual of Style is hierarchically controlled by a tiny editorial board who can unilaterally force it to be worded a particular way. If you want that kind of style guide (or that kind of rule of any sort), you are in the wrong place, Editing_with_Eric.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:15, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Revert or remove - IF we can agree on a past version that had consensus, revert to that... if not, then nothing has consensus and we should remain silent on the issue. Blueboar (talk) 14:43, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep, obviously. It's Wikipedia's "job" to use English as laid out in current and high-reputability style guides, on which our own MoS is based (except where we address something entirely WP-specific, like how to format infoboxes). WP (and MoS) do not exist to try to defend "traditionalism" regarding certain declining typographic practices simply because some editors prefer them (see WP:ILIKEIT, WP:IKNOWIT, WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, and WP:NOT#FORUM – WP is not a venue for either trying to change English or to forestall its evolving; that's an entirely off-site matter). A few people having completely different issues with the guideline simply means it needs to be copyedited better, and if there's actual dispute over a bit of guidance then discuss that specific thing until it is resolved. We have a WP:Consensus policy for a reason. Failure of a particular discussion to resolve an issue for someone doesn't mean the guideline is broken or that its existence lacks consensus. By way of analogy, if person A doesn't think the murder statutes should call for life imprisonment, and person B isn't clear on exactly what constitutes murder versus manslaughter, and person C thinks the statute of limitations should apply to murder charges, these confusions and objections do not relate to each other and in no way collectively indicate that the murder statutes are invalid and should simply be deleted from the law.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:10, 13 March 2020 (UTC); revised 19:32, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

  As just one example, see the bulk of this combined diff of a series of cleanup edits for why this guideline is necessary. Capitalization of titles/offices varies by whether it is a common-noun usage (e.g. a plural), attached directly to someone's name, etc. While we can't reasonably expect every editor to actually memorize this stuff (and as long as they cite reliable sources, we don't care whether they comply with style guidelines when adding new material), it is not possible to execute basic normalization cleanup if there is no guideline providing rules to follow when doing so. Without a guideline, the style would simply veer back and forth by individual whim, even from sentence to sentence in the same article, and we would have effectively no basis on which do anything about it. We can change what the rules specifically say, but they need to be there one way or another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:55, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

  • It is Wikipedia's job to follow the sources, not about "traditionalism" or "evolution". This entire issue has arisen because Wikipedia is prescribing against overwhelming source usage in many instances and that makes people cranky. The same minority of editors who are content with the status quo have usually angrily opposed (or at best shown complete disinterest in working on) any suggestion of amendments to the guidelines, so the idea that "more discussion" is going to achieve anything beyond years more conflict due to a badly-written guideline is simply wrong, and that everyone who isn't "yay the status quo", even if they have differences in what they want, seems to be coalescing behind "we've reached the time to WP:TNT the thing and form something that actually has a clear consensus so we can end this once and for all" as a way to move forward should be instructive. The Drover's Wife (talk) 19:59, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
  • "..use English as laid out in current and high-reputability style guides..." No, this is not totally correct. Wikipedia is meant to be written in a way that is accessible to as wide of an audience as possible using plain understandable English (see the lead of Wikipedia:Manual of Style). This means that sometimes capitalisation is preferred to avoid ambiguity, or convey meaning. For example, the UK Government style guide recommends that terms such as 'Secretary of State' should always be capitalised. It's not because the civil servants who wrote the style guide are stupid and ignorant to the rules of language, it's because they need communication to be as clear and understandable to the broadest base of readers (like Wikipedia). Editing with Eric (talk) 20:53, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
    • Doing what the dominant style guides for English do is following the sources, and is how we make our prose accessible to the widest readership. It's why we have a style guide in the first place instead of letting our material remain in whatever random idiom or idiolect suited someone's personal whim. That, and it also exists to forestall re-re-re-debating the same style trivia over and over. Removing all our advice on handling of job/office titles would re-open feuding over about two dozen points relating to such matters. The fact that we have one point not as settled as we'd like isn't any kind of evidence that the entire section is "broken", nor even that the stand-out matter cannot be resolved with some further discussion just like everything else on Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:22, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
  • PS: See #A good old tally just above; it's actually quite clear that consensus can and will emerge on this matter (and even probably toward the direction that the "delete a whole section of MoS because I'm not getting what I want" !voters here would have liked in the first place, rendering this attack on the guideline moot). That said, the tally is incorrectly conflating the proposal to capitalize something like "President of the United States" at first occurrence in own its lead section, with the proposal to capitalize it everywhere. These are completely separate questions, for reasons we have been over many times. Consequently the tallies are actually wrong. For example, I'm in favor of the former and against the latter, as are many other respondents in all these related threads. When we open an article about the office of President of the United States, we are addressing the office/title as such, in a proper-name manner. When we speak of how many of the last 100 years' presidents of the united states have been Republicans, we are using it as a common-noun phrase. That certain individual editors have difficulty understanding this is simply an educational gap; it doesn't mean that the guidelines are wrong to draw the distinction, since professional writers (from journalism to high-academia) draw it consistently, as is codified in their style guides, on which ours is based. The people who have trouble with it are amateur writers like the average blogger, and people who are perhaps very well educated in something like mathematics or accounting or detective work or plumbing or medicine, but who have a weak background in English and linguistics.

    The third reason we have a style guide is for English-nerd "gnomes" to use it as a cleanup manual in massaging the content, from a zillion editors with different backgrounds, into a consistent form. It is always going to be the case that some editors will prefer something different than whatever the MoS says on some particular point. (If we all universally agreed on the point in question, MoS would not need to ever mention it after all. Note that MoS doesn't have a rule that sentences need to end with terminal punctuation, or that our material in English is to be written left-to-right.) Someone disagreeing isn't evidence of a consensus failure. Consensus is not unanimity, and when it comes to any guideline like this, some disagreement is a guaranteed pre-condition of the guideline addressing the question in the first place. Shutting down cyclical, productivity-draining rehash of the disagreement is the goal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:30, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

    • The educational gap is between those who learned how to write in countries whose incompetent educational systems prioritize mediocrity over excellence -- as well as those who mistakenly believe those countries should be a model to follow -- and those fortunate enough to learn how to write proper English in the United States. I readily concede that the American style of education is perfectionist and frequently cruel, as vividly dramatized in the 2014 film Whiplash (if you've seen it, "Not my tempo!" will never sound the same again). But drilling young students in close reading and writing mechanics is why America still produces the best writers in the world. Sure, they don't win Nobel Prizes like they used to, but that doesn't matter when they're winning at the box office. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

      I'm not entirely sure what's that getting at, but attempting to nationalize this discussion (even in a tongue-in-cheek manner) is probably contraindicated. This debate really has to do primarily with two factors: 1: Frequent exposure to academic-style English (what WP is written in), and a broad array of other high-level writing in English, and a review of dominant style guides for the language, which together form a learned ability to notice things such as that the over-capitalizing style is a dead stick; versus having "echo chamber" reading habits like depending on a handful of low-end news sites written by and for people with about a high-school level or liberal-arts-college education (or a handful of extremely traditionalist publications on dead trees, like The New Yorker). 2: Probably a measure of age-related preservatism – if you had it drilled into you at age 13 in 1982 or whenever that "President", "Manager", "Judge", and "Baron" must be capitalized every single time, no matter what, by some schoolmarm with no actual linguistic background and just a general-education BA, you have an almost traumatized perception that not doing it the way you learned is a WP:GREATWRONG.

      When this intersects with things like WP:SSF and WP:CSF, we end up with handfuls of editors convinced that tearing down part of MoS that doesn't suit their writing habits is some kind of holy mission (meanwhile, 99.9% of the rest of the editorship just WP:DGAF and don't have an issue with it). I wouldn't mind these flare-ups of crusading pseudo-correctionism except that they're so damned counter-factual and tendentious. It just doesn't matter what the actual reliable sources on English usage actually say. They want what they want, and will not read the style guides even if you put them right in front of their faces. The hypocrisy is staggering. "Follow the sources!", except they absolutely will not do it; the phrase to them means "Cherry-pick the stuff I like to read and imitate the style of it (WP:NOT#NEWS be damned), and pretend all the the sources actually about how to write English don't exist."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep, common nouns should be capitalized as common nouns. That people misunderstand this, or insist on being wrong, is not an excuse to abdicate proper English. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:27, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep per Ralbegen's clear reasoning. Removing it wouldn't prevent disagreement between editors; it'd make it worse. Improvements can be considered. DexDor ^(talk) 19:30, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per WP:CREEP, WP:IAR; WP:NOTLAW, jobsworth, &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:43, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep lowercase for common nouns including political job titles used generically. The great strength and value of WP's caps style as articlated in MOS:CAPS is that caps help convey meaning to the reader. This is different from other styles, where caps are used freely at the writer's whim. If we start by making exceptions for certain high office job titles, where will it end? The general rule that we cap things when evidence in sources shows that it's necessary to do so has served us very well. For things like "list of presidents of...", sources don't, so we don't. Removing the specific clear guidance in MOS:JOBTITLES wouldn't change that, but would likely lead to more arguments about how to interpret the general style guidance. If someone wants to "blow it up and start over", make a proposal about what a better one might look like, and maybe we can do something. Dicklyon (talk) 19:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
  • The problem is that it's frequently leading to areas where the sources do and this prescribes that we don't. No one here is opposed to the general rule of "we cap things when evidence in sources shows that it's necessary to do so"; the problem is that we're prescribing against source usage in too many cases. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:02, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
    • I haven't seen such cases; not convinced they exist. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
      • It's been my long experience that when someone makes the argument The Drover's Wife is making, it is virtually always the WP:Specialized style fallacy at work. Someone with particular reading habits gets habituated to a particular style, convinced that it is "right" or "proper" or "the dominant way to do it", without actually researching the question. We've already researched this and we know what most style guides no longer sanction capitalizing job/office titles except when attached to individuals' names. In this case, there's a particular subset of journalism that still tends to do it, and so someone who read a lot of a particular segment of news is going to get the impression that it's a rule or a norm when it is not; it's simply house style of some unusually traditionalist publishers.

        When even the dominant news style guides are no longer in favor of this, it is a lost cause. AP Stylebook covers something like 90% of professional American journalism, and their style is consistent with MoS's; see 2019 summary here. An influential British one, The Economist Style Guide is consistent with it on this, at § People, 1 Ranks and titles. MoS's take on this also closely follows that of The Chicago Manual of Style 17th ed. (2017) § 8.19 ff., and at least two editions before it; as well as New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide 2nd ed. (2014) § 5.10., and the previous edition, and Oxford Style Manual before that. (NHR observes that some writers like to capitalize "unique compound titles that have no non-specific meaning", like Prince of Wales, but does not actually recommend it. Their recommendation is essentially the same as that of CMoS, though more concise.)

        I'm strongly reminded of the "comma-Jr." thing. There's just a strong and largely American WP:GREATWRONGS feeling in the air around the pro-capitalization side of this, which defies actual evidence in reliable sources on English usage. It will probably be possible to find some style guide somewhere that still agrees with the "traditionalist" viewpoint, but it will either be old, obscure, or a single-publisher house organ that no one else uses (I would almost bet money on The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, because it's so quaintly "preservative" in so many other ways, though I'm disinclined to go dig it up and see.) MoS's main point of divergence from any of main reference works on English usage is actually in trying to accommodate capitalizers at all, by permitting capitalization when the title/office itself is the subject of the sentence. We could probably eliminate most of the fuss by eliminating that "exception", which is clearly being used as a wedge. For example, see #A good old tally above, in which this idea (which permits capital-P "The President of the United States is ..." in the lead sentence of President of the United States), is being wrongly conflated with the idea of capitalizing it at every single occurrence, and is falsely counting support for the one as support for the other.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:07, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

        • Your inexplicable fondness for style guides that reflect rapid linguistic drift resulting from educational systems that value mediocrity over excellence (go see my earlier comments above) speaks for itself. And yes, I am alluding to Hamilton on purpose---a musical that celebrates the American value of excellence at extreme personal cost.
        • The English Wikipedia is getting hit with widespread vandalism in nearly all non-pop-culture articles that's lingering from anywhere from 6 to 36 months, because the number of knowledgeable specialists monitoring them at least once a year is somewhere between one and zero. If you don't see that, you're not editing broadly enough. That situation is not going to get any better as long as people see appalling atrocities on Wikipedia like "president of the United States" or "the president said". Most people who intuitively understand why that's wrong (because they survived running the gauntlet of freshman English at a top-tier American research university) are way too busy trying to earn tenure, make partner, get promoted to C-level executive, launch their next startup, or write their next film to waste time messing around with Wikipedia when the project looks like it's totally overrun by those who weren't taught how to write properly. --Coolcaesar (talk) 20:13, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep if salvageable (preferred), remove and start anew otherwise - I'm on the fence on this one; on one hand the capitalization is consistent with other encyclopedias and reliable sources (which has already been noted), but on the other hand there have been complaints that the policy has been corrupted to the point that recovering a policy with consensus would be difficult. I'm going to remain somewhat neutral and say while I would prefer we salvage this Manual of Style entry, we may need to start from a blank slate if nothing can be salvaged in a way to create consensus. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 20:20, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• NOTE: Please remember this is not about resolving the underlying issue. This RfC is about removing information. —¿philoserf? (talk) 21:22, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you. Suffering this same issue over at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 March 13#Template:Inadequate lead. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 10:50, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep: A difference of opinion about how may be frustrating. It is not justification to remove information. My opinion is this. Resolve the differences or seek an arbitrated answer on the subject and comply with the arbiter's decision. —¿philoserf? (talk) 21:24, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
  • WP:TNT is a long-acknowledged way of resolving those differences: sometimes you're dealing with something that is such a mess that people with quite differing perspectives can agree that the best way forward is to mutually agree to blow the thing up and start again. The basis for this RfC is that the "information" is the problem and is blocking progress forward. People who stumbled into this discussion today without acknowledging any of the six years of conflict due to this badly-worded guideline going "resolve the differences" are just ensuring that there's another six years of issues (notably there is not here, either, any ideas for "resolving the differences" - Wikipedia does not do 'arbitration' on issues.)

I suspect some of these comments are due to SMcCandlish's highly misleading village pump canvassing that suggested that this RfC was effectively trying to short-circuit discussions to come up with a compromise (the notion of which he had fought tooth and nail and everyone unhappy with the status quo despite very different views among themselves had basically given up on; even Editing With Eric's latest compromise attempt here is being resolutely opposed by the minority of editors who like the status quo). The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:34, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

"Issues" will continue (whether JOBTITLES exists or not) until editors like you drop the stick. DexDor ^(talk) 07:29, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. Modify around the edges, simplify, if there's support; but is consistent with English (aside from job ads and yearly reports that seem stuck in the days of typewriter boosterism). Tony (talk) 00:42, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep @SUM1: Incidentally, what do you consider the end of MOS:JOBTITLES? Does it run up to the next section heading at the same level (thus including MOS:CREDENTIALS) or up to the next shortcut (thus excluding MOS:CREDENTIALS)?

Either way, the proposal throws the baby out with the bathwater. The statement of the problem zeros in on "political offices ... in the lead sentences of political office articles and elsewhere following the article/modifier". That's just one part of MOS:JOBTITLES. I rarely encounter that scenario, but deal frequently with novices unaccustomed to formal writing, or whose command of English is poor, perhaps because it is not their first language. They tend to Capitalize Every Word They Can or mimic whatever they see on a random website. Perhaps MOS:JOBTITLES could be better, but I find it useful in those situations.

Many supporters of removal recommend replacement with something less of a mess, less confusing, or more nuanced. If this RfC were considering a specific replacement, I might be able to support replacement, but it does not, it simply moves that the section be removed entirely. --Worldbruce (talk) 05:44, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

• Just the part covered by the shortcut MOS:JOBTITLES. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 10:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

• Remove and replace with something clearer that has consensus. I agree with replacing it with the prior version with modifications as suggested by SmokeyJoe above. The current version, especially the table, is confusing and unhelpful and doesn’t appear to accurately document current global consensus (per discussions above). Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 16:56, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. If passed, this could be en.Wikipedia's Brexit moment – all of the voters, who cast their votefor different reasons, vote on a simple binary (all or nothing) solution that doesn't address any of the underlying reasons, nor does it address the important or essential role that it plays, yet it unifies the fact that many people don't like it for their own reason. I think that the section in its current minimalist form fundamentally upsets many people – principally interest groups who tend capitalise nouns or concepts because it confirms – rightly or wrongly – their own world view, and want to defend each capitalisation as a noun or concept with elevated importance in those circles, whilst failing to recognise the lesser level of importance is warranted when employed in general use, or for example when using the plural form. Removing the section could, IMHO, be used to endorse the argument for the ubiquitous capitalisation of equally important universal concepts such as "Government", "Freedom", "Liberty", "Communism", "Human Rights". -- Ohc ^¡digame! 17:16, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

• MOS:JOBTITLES doesn't cover that at all. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 10:44, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

• Remove, consider working towards replacement. I don't have a strong opinion on the correct guidance for capitalization of job titles but this discussion makes clear that what's there now does not have adequate consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:19, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

  WP doesn't work that way. When consensus does not emerge in a discussion like this, we stick to the status quo ante, which in this case has been stable for a long time (which is itself strong evidence of consensus, in a site-wide guideline with this many watchlisters). We would have to have an overwhelming show of consensus to remove it, and that is clearly not going to emerge. At most we'll have a no consensus about the exact current wording and perhaps a weak and vague consensus that it needs adjustment/clarification, through some followup RfCs/proposals that are specific and practical, rather than "throw the baby out with the bathwater" hysteria.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment from proposer:

Although most of the keepers have been opposed due to the specific issue, I've seen a few understandable concerns of the lack of an immediate replacement. I consider this important but something that has next-to-no weight when it comes to its deletion, as the entire deletion is based on the fact of the section not having general support. Hence, an immediate replacement would need general support as well. Doesn't matter if there isn't one for a short period, as that's the point of a section not having enough support to exist.

Let me also clarify that practically the only statement in MOS:JOBTITLES not at some point involved in the disagreement is

"Even when used with a name, capitalization is not required for commercial and informal titles: OtagoSoft vice-president Chris Henare; team co-captain Chan."

Even the statement right after it:

"The formality (officialness), specificity, or unusualness of a title is not a reason to capitalize it."

was used in the justification of capitalising office titles.

The rest of it was entirely and fully immersed in the disagreement, including the entire table, all 3 bullet points and the first paragraph.

Fundamentally, what my posts showed is that people were largely ignoring what MOS:JOBTITLES said until a large wave of de-capitalisations in 2018 and late 2019 (probably stemming from the 2018 move of the section to MOS/Biography and table update with shaky support), which were met with some resistance and a lot of opened discussions on relevant pages like this one. This means a) a deletion will go largely unnoticed (according to the pre-2019 state of affairs) and b) the section was being used (2019 onwards) to justify a practice that doesn't have widespread support on Wikipedia, seemingly majority (or at least half) opposition in fact.

This is the basis for it going as it concerns now. Later can be decided later. Anyone is free to propose an RfC for a replacement in the time being, including those suggesting the 2014 version.

Currently, we're in an awful deadlock where MOS:JOBTITLES has no consensus but deleting MOS:JOBTITLES has no consensus. To me, this paints the clear picture that the logical action should default to the entire problem going away by deletion of the section as it is now. The burden shouldn't be on a policy or guideline to be deleted, it should be on it to exist. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 10:27, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't call this a deadlock; everything in there has been arrived at by consensus, and changes should have consensus, too. If you don't like that provision that "capitalization is not required for commercial and informal titles", that might be easier to fix; did you try? Incremental changes are generally how WP works. Your theory that a lack of consensus on something means you get your way is a bit too radical here. Dicklyon (talk) 01:30, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Result count: there are currently 12 keeps and 11 removes. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 10:52, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep per Headbomb, User:Dicklyon, and User:Ralbegen and others above. Written style guides are an absolute necessity for manuals, journals, newspapers, technical pages, and encyclopedias — any professional printed text really. You can't write professionally without the cohesion of an over-riding style. We also don't have to re-invent a style, as we have several to choose from that have been quite effective for academia and business for many decades. Among others, the Chicago Manual of Style, Hart's Rules, the MLA Handbook, etc. are all viable guides we could largely follow. We can pick one and try to emulate it as much as possible while discussing the outliers as needed. A standardized JOBTITLES can easily be aligned with one of these.

Today's propensity for copy writers' headline hyperbole, self-important bureaucratic titles, and advertising-driven monikers are having a devastating effect on proper grammar and the written word. Arguments for Wikipedia's Ignore All Rules, Wikipedia's Not the Law, etc. are straw man arguments when applied to style. These rules re designed to govern content, not style. Style for a written work is of a higher law, if not the paramount law. You can't have 5 million users all ignoring the rules. The binding glue –STYLE– which holds our encyclopedia together won't work if we are using 5 million different styles of writing. Nor should our encyclopedia's writing style be beholden to sources, as mentioned above. Many sources have terrible written styles, with no underlying grammatical philosophy.

Per the RfC, we absolutely cannot blow-up our existing guide(s) without having something in the wings to replace it. Regards, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 21:35, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Let’s not over-react here... No one is talking about “blowing up” our entire manual of style. They are talking about removing ONE small section (one that does not enjoy a consensus) - AND then working on a replacement (which, hopefully, will have consensus). It will be a TEMPORARY omission at worst. Blueboar (talk) 01:21, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep - This is something the manual of style should comment on; thus, there is no cause to remove it. What it should or should not say can be resolved through consensus. If there is no consensus, that can be iterated in the section itself. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 00:50, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
  • @Godsy: - what would be the point of stating something for the point of stating that what we just said doesn't have consensus? (Not quibbling, it's not an outcome I disagree with if people could agree to do that instead.) The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:19, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@The Drover's Wife: So that editors know that consensus is up in the air and do not continue searching for such advice on the matter in the manual of style to no avail. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 01:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Simplify it to its bare parts, then establish consensus on the details. >>BEANS X3t 13:29, 16 March 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by BEANS X3 (talk • contribs)

The problem is that I am not sure if we have a consensus even on the “bare parts“. What would you consider the bare parts to be? Blueboar (talk) 14:18, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

As pointed out above, the issue of decapitalising corporate, commercial, unofficial (ect.) job titles seems to be uncontroversial (if anything, this part could be elaborated on). However, consensus falls apart when dealing with higher rank political and judicial job titles. Editing with Eric (talk) 14:47, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: As I stated above, I think de-capitalization should be used when referring to the job title in the general sense and not to any particular officeholder (i.e. List of governors of Michigan, List of prime ministers of Canada, List of vice presidents of the United States), as well as when referring to the office in the plural ("There are four living former presidents of the United States", "All the former energy and HUD secretaries attended the conference."). --Woko Sapien (talk) 16:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Keep but remove some parts I want to modify my comment by saying that we should probably remove the most controversial part, which seems to be what to do when using the definite article. I suggest we change it to say capitalization is acceptable in such cases: Nixon was the 37th President of the United States or Theresa May was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, especially when being used as part of an introduction to the subject in question.--Woko Sapien (talk) 17:18, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep I am all for continuing discussion and modifying as necessary, but I don't believe the answer is removing an entire section from the MOS without anything to replace it. If the current version is such a mess, there's no reason that discussions/workshops can't be initiated that start from a blank sheet of paper. Once those workshops reach some state of acceptance by that working group, I would welcome an RFC to choose between the new wording and the current version. Until that time, however, we should keep the current guidance. CThomas³ (talk) 18:23, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per David Eppstein mostly. Having a guideline as confusing as this one is worse for the cohesion of the encyclopedia than having none at all. XOR'easter (talk) 01:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. I mean, having nothing is not good. That leaves things completely up in the air... it's not clear that there's not guidance because of a deliberate decision to forgo guidance (as proposed here) or because nobody thought it worthwhile to write any (the usual cause of lack of guidance). These are different. At least replace it with "We're don't provide guidance on this, you're on your own" rather than just flat deleting it altogether and leaving editors entirely at sea as to what they're supposed to do. Or something like

You can write "Mitterrand was the French president" or "Mitterrand was the French President". It doesn't matter, we don't care, and overly worrying about stuff like this detracts from what we are trying to do here. Write it as you think best, but leave alone what somebody else has decided to do.

Or keep it like it is, if you want to actually provide a rule. It's fine. Herostratus (talk) 04:32, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• Remove. Utterly needless rule. The MOS generally has overgrown and would benefit from a thorough pruning. This particular rule is exceptionally bad. Let editors write articles in the way that makes sense to them at the time. Consistency of writing style on Wikipedia is a hobgoblin.—S Marshall T/C 16:55, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per WP:CREEP (or vastly strip down to only the most uncontroversial essentials, at least. or explicitly state "there is no rule, follow your heart" per Herostratus if desired.). We don't need a rule for every situation. If we end up with inconsistent capitalization of Vizier vs. vizier in some articles - so what. MOS:RETAIN has been one of the most successful Wikipedia policies ever: just stay consistent within a single article, that's all we can ask for a global project with contributors with incompatible expected styles. What works for varieties of English should apply for varieties of "style" as well. The fact that JOBTITLES is one of the most discussed and "violated" rules is a warning sign - if all the common editors keep making the same "mistake", maybe it's not a mistake, from a descriptivist perspective. SnowFire (talk) 18:16, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

  The "so what" is that people will fight and fight and fight about it, page after page, until there is a rule that discourages this from continuing. Removing this section would rekindle a whole slew of such disputes, and cause a very large number of trivial style-twiddling edits across tens of thousands to possibly 1mil+ pages, in turn leading to edit-wars and angry talk-page squabbles, and further escalation. So, we would just end up with similar rules again later, but not after a whole shitload of editorial time and goodwill was just lit on fire for no reason other than satisfying a few individuals' pet peeve. Shutting down unproductive disputes that do not actually help us improve the encyclopedia is how we end up with pretty much every WP:P&G line-item we have, and it's certainly how we ended up with the majority of MoS line items. If you actually watchlist these talk pages, you'll see that people come here all the time and want to add new MoS line-items but they are turned away if they can't demonstrate that there is recurrent, intractable dispute about that specific matter. This has been written up at WP:MOSBLOAT.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:30, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. Having a rule in the MOS saves me a lot of time having to look up what other style guides recommend. The fact that there is disagreement about this capitalisation issue is a strong reason to have it covered in the MOS. That saves a lot of day-to-day argument. I don't care so much what the rule is, just that there is a rule to follow that is accessible to find. Jmchutchinson (talk) 20:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep The rule itself is generally correct. However, we must remember that the English language is never consistent and "rules" are broken all the time. --Enos733 (talk) 05:03, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove – MOS guidelines that don't have overwhelming consensus support aren't worth the pixels spent on them, and end up being used by a subset of MOS-fixated editors to "beat up" on an editors who don't agree with them. This one doesn't have overwhelming consensus support, as shown by multiple discussions, and thus should be stricken. This thinking should be applied across the MOS in my opinion, as it will reduce editor conflicts. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 13:25, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

  I'm actually in the opposite camp here. The fact that something is contentious, and continues to come up as an issue, means we probably do need a rule in the MOS so we resolve the issue for everyone rather than coming to different conclusions on every talk page. Conversely, anything with overwhelming consensus probably doesn't need a rule, since everybody most likely already does it anyway and any deviations would simply be fixed as an error without comment. CThomas³ (talk) 18:18, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

  Right. As I noted above, we don't have MoS rules like "Write English in a left-to-right direction", because there's no dispute about this, thus no need for a rule (this is what WP:CREEP is getting at, and is also addressed by WP:MOSBLOAT and and WP:AJR in different terms). The entire purpose of all policies and guidelines to is to address things that are subject to dispute and resolve the disputes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:19, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

And it doesn't "resolve disputes" if many people disagree with it. Hence "guidelines without overwhelming support" are worthless. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

More importantly... in this case, the guidance seems to be causing more disputes than it settles. That is the opposite of what is intended. Blueboar (talk) 22:45, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessarily true. While there has definitely been a lot of virtual ink spilled on this, without this guidance this same debate would very likely be happening on dozens of article talk pages where handfuls of editors would be disagreeing on how it all should be capitalized. In fact, that's usually how guidance winds up in the MOS at all: editors have a local dispute on a talk page and bring it here for a more central discussion. If it's something that tends to come up often, we try to codify it in the MOS so we can hopefully resolve the issue once, with a much larger number of contributors, rather than with handfuls of editors on dozens of individual talk pages. Issues simply don't come up unless someone disagrees, so it's rare if not nonexistent for anything in the MOS to be entirely unopposed. But that's okay, in my opinion, as overwhelming consensus has never been the measuring stick for policies and guidelines here on Wikipedia, in theory or in practice. CThomas³ (talk) 18:39, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Then you don't understand the purpose of the MOS and guidelines in general (and you likely aren't alone) – they are supposed to reflect common practice, not "impose a rule" on other editors. Doing the latter when there is insufficient consensus support accomplishes nothing, increases inter-editor conflicts, and will simply be widely ignored by editors. That achieves absolutely nothing. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep: A flawed rule is better than no rule at all. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:32, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep but modify I'm in general agreement that these should generally be lowercase, but what isn't included is when the title is referring to the position as a title rather than the officeholders generically. I'm sure people will disagree with me on this, but the capitalization should be retained when saying "The Governor of Delaware is the chief executive of the first state" rather than "The governor of Delaware lives in the governor's mansion", or "The Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs is a position held by a member of the foreign service" – namely the article title and first mention should generally be capitalized, referring to a specific position (which would affect the recently moved List of presidents of the United States, or least the first line).
• It depends. Is the Mos supposed to be prescriptive, and tell editors how to format articles? In which case the current guidance is fine. Or is it supposed to be descriptive, and tell editors what the common practice is? In which case it completely fails. Personally, I think the preference should be to treat job titles as common nouns, but there's a lot of ambiguity, both in the guideline and in what we consider a job title, and I'm not sure how we can resolve that without being overly prescriptive (bear in mind that most people who write most of our article have never read the MoS, may not even know it exists, probably don't care, and will most likely fall back on their own education). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:31, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Rewrite I can see both sides on this. One one hand, I completely understand how the MOS can cause a fair deal of contention (the dispute over capitalizing president of the United States in the lead paragraph of its own article), but I also recognize the need for guidance on this manner. I honestly think the only real solution here is to have an intense discussion about specific (and I mean specific) sections that cause contention and try to slim the guide down to its most simple, and easily understandable, form possible. I think the idea of reverting back to its 2014 version holds a great deal of merit. Garuda28 (talk) 22:38, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep: noting that the substantive proposition is to remove.
  • The "complaints" are that it is: confusing, unclear, too long, not nuianced (not long enough?), just wrong and not supported. They are largely unsubstantated opinion.
  • If this was a matter in which there was consistency of practice then there would be no need for guidance on the subject. This is a truism.
  • While not identified herein, the greatest point of contention is an insistance to capitalise "the president of the United States" (and similar) despite the definite article and a refusal to recast without the definite article, which would permit capitalisation.
  • Having made all of these broad criticisms, there has been no attempt to identify what is specifically confusing, unclear etc, let alone how it might be remedied - except perhaps, to wind it back to version that is silent on the matter. There is a tacit assertion that silence would be tantamount to permission. My forecast based on past observation is that silence will be taken as a matter unresolved that demands a solution.
  • English is an evolving language. A decrease in capitalisation is just one aspect that is evolving. Stalwarts of an older standard of capitalisation deny this fundamental nature of our language. They deny the authority of the most widely used generalist style guides that reflect the contemporary status quo because it is not consistent with the anachronistic standard they wish to preserve. This is cherrypicking. WP is guided by sources. More weight is generally afforded the most recent, independent and scholarly works. On cental issues of style, we would naturally draw on those works which consider the matter wholistically rather than researching the matter ourselves.
  • Searching WP articles for the terms "president", "prime minister", "governor" and "secretary", there is cumulatively over 1 million articles to which the guideline relates for just this small set of the terms to which JOBTITLES applies. Even allowing for the duplication of terms within articles, the guideline potentially relates to 10 - 20% of WP articles. By removing the guideline or removing the "contentious" elements of the guideline, the questions of capitalisation would be addressed within each article individually. Many of these would be similar cases with duplicated arguements. The assertion is that such a situation would be less disruptive than the present situation. I cannot see how this can be seen as a reasonable alternative. It will not just go away.
  • Some of the possible "confusion" is that JOBTITLES is more permissive of capitalisation than say CMOS, which only capitalises public offices when used as an honorific.
  • I acknowledge that JOBTITLES could be improved in a number of ways. It could be modified to accommodate the underpinning issue. I believe that this would be a much more productive course.

Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:22, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

• Keep, we need to be discussing improvements, not redactions. Changing a word here and there can make a large difference in interpretation. —guywan (talk • contribs) 22:59, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per Timrollpickering. Tinman44 (talk) 17:37, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep per Herostratus. I find nothing wrong with JOBTITLES and the anarchy from removing it would not be better than the current disagreement. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:45, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep, but modify and simplify: Ultimately, the best answer depends on what we're looking for, prescriptivism or descriptivism. Now, I don't believe that, as it's written, MOSJOBTITLES should be wholly scrapped; but the things that are there should be simplified, with the offending portion returned to its late 2014 state. — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 21:17, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove. Another option is to Hold RfC for each example case. If no consensus for the example case, remove just that example. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:37, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
• Remove. It clearly does not have general support. Guy (help!) 21:48, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
• Rewrite, As written this lacks clarity, further it also appears the version as written does not have, and has never had widespread consensus behind it. The 2014 version seems like a reasonable starting point for a rewrite as mentioned above, though there may well be a better one. Otherwise I have no strong feeling about what final guidance should look like. Spectrum {{UV}} 2604:2000:8FC0:4:68BA:3B32:8613:8B6D (talk) 03:22, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. Wikipedia will get to look cheesy very fast unless there is guidance against unnecessary capitalization. Pay attention to WP:SSF; government sources often wallow in gratuitous use of upper case that is anything but encyclopedic. Chris the speller ^yack 01:12, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
• Keep per SMcCandlish and Chris the speller. Tony (talk) 02:57, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion for revised guidelines

I'm going to BE BOLD and leave this as a suggestion for how to revise the current guidelines. It takes much of the old 2014 guidelines, while taking the less controversial parts of the current ones. Basically, stick to capitals when (1) there is no modifier, or (2) when the modifier is a definite article referring to a specific officeholder. But decapitalize when (1) the modifier is an indefinite article, or (2) when talking about the office in the plural. Clearly, there's a desire to change to current guidelines. It doesn't have to be this exactly, but hopefully this can be some food for thought. --Woko Sapien (talk) 16:08, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

When to capitalize (denoting a title)	When to decapitalize (denoting an office)
Unmodified: Richard Nixon was President of the United States. The resignation of President Nixon was followed by his pardon from President Ford. Modified: Richard Nixon was the President of the United States. Nixon was the 37th President of the United States. Mao met with U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972.	Singular: Richard Nixon was a president of the United States. A controversial American president, Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. In the United States, the president manages the executive branch.* Plural: Nixon was one of the more controversial American presidents. Camp David is a mountain retreat for presidents of the United States.
Unmodified: Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2016. Prime Minister Theresa May addressed the opening day of the conference. Modified: Theresa May was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.	Singular: Theresa May is a former prime minister of the United Kingdom. The prime minister is the head of the British government.* Plural: Of all the prime ministers in British history, Theresa May is only the second female.
Unmodified: Louis XVI became King of France and Navarre in 1774, later styled King of the French (1791–1792). Modified: Louis XVI was the King of France when the French Revolution began.	Singular: Louis XVI was a king of France. The French king, Louis XVI, was later beheaded. Plural: All the kings of France were crowned at the Notre-Dame de Reims.

(* These are the only I'm not really sure of. Honestly, I think the guideline could be "either upper case or lower case is acceptable".)--Woko Sapien (talk) 16:17, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Woko Sapien, Mao met with U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972. is modified. U.S. is modifying President. Move that down to the modified section and you have my full support. As for the two marked with *, it should depend on situation. In those case, we should ask the question is the term being used as a substitute for a single real person holding the title at the time. Or is the position the subject of discourse. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:35, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Good catch! I've since updated it. Cheers! --Woko Sapien (talk) 13:19, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

It makes no sense to me that the capitalization should change between "Nixon was a president of the United States" to "Nixon was the 37th President of the United States". The first says he was a member of a group of presidents; the second indicates where he placed chronologically within that group, nothing more. Simply specifying the sequence should not change "president" from a job to a title. Chris the speller ^yack 16:21, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC MOS:LEADBIO death info clarity

There is a clear consensus that the current guidance in MOS:LEADBIO about death info in the lead is sufficient. The consensus is that how much coverage of the death in the lead is due weight should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Cunard (talk) 00:57, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

"Unless the cause of death is itself a reason for notability, a single sentence describing the death is usually sufficient, and often none is included in the lead at all, just a death date."

Is this guideline clear enough to be useful to a user trying to determine whether somebody's cause of death should be included in the lead of their bio? What I see as a lack of clarity - especially with wording like often none is included - can lead to long animated discussions such as this recent one. Those discussions wouldn't be such a waste of time and effort if briefer, or if altogether unnecessary, given we had a clearer guideline.

Being rather a strong anti-sensationalist myself, hoping always that Wikipedia articles about people will not develop into tabloid-type material, perhaps I have misunderstood the guideline along those lines. If normal (statisticlly) suicides, car crashes, drug overdoses, for example are to be considered by Wikipedia as defining factors in what's notable about those people, then I am wrong in removing them from leads, whereas with a clearly notable death such as that of Christine Chubbuck I would not do that. If a celebrity's cause of death is widely reported in media, and that alone makes the cause of death in itself a reason for notability, then I am also wrong in feeling it should be removed from the lead as non-notable.

I am inviting other editors to chime in here, and to help write a clearer guideline in this detail. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 11:14, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• I think the current guidance is sufficient and that this is one of the cases where trying to make more specific guidance across all kinds of situations right across the world causes way more disagreements than it helps resolve. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:41, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  Thank you! Do you think that every suicide, car crash & drug overdose belongs in the leads of those persons' articles? Some people interpret the current wording thus, and others quite the opposite. The lack of clarity has quite a vast effect on this project as a whole. I can't see how a clearer wording would lead to even more problems than the ones we're already having. Your answer to my question will be interesting. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 08:28, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

• The current wording seems sufficient. Leave it to consensus on a per case basis how much is due in the lead. It's likely that WP:RECENTISM will result in some mention in the lead. Try some time if you want to see if consensus changes.—Bagumba (talk) 17:43, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
• The wording seems clear enough to me, given that it cannot be specific, and it matches generally with WP:WEIGHT. Unless the cause of death got so much coverage that it is the most (or close to it) covered item of their life, then it's just not suitable to give much article space to it nor any LEAD mention. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 00:30, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Is consensus here that every suicide, car crash & drug overdose belongs in the leads of those persons' articles? --SergeWoodzing (talk) 09:07, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

• That would be a silly take. The people who've responded have suggested that the current guidance is sufficient, and determining it on a case-by-case basis is the best way of going about it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:12, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• Per the above, the current wording is fine. In the example given above (of Flack's article), the article sticks to the guidance: i.e., there is "a single sentence describing the death". This isn't "tabloid-type material" or anything of the like, but when you have a notably short life (Flack was 40) then a single mention of the cause is proportionate to the letter and spirit of the current guidance.

Per WP:RFCBRIEF, the opening statement to this RfC should be neutral and brief. This is one of the most un-neutral statements I've seen on an RfC and well short of "brief". - SchroCat (talk) 09:24, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

• No. The consensus is that our existing MOS is fine. A retired physicist dies in a car crash, or even takes their own life because they were old, ill and weary? Not lead-worthy. A young media personality under a lot of pressure from tabloid journalism takes her own life? That's very different. PamD 09:21, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• The consensus at Talk:Caroline Flack has been very clear that we should be mentioning her death and suicide in the lead section, since the OP proposed removing it last week. Now we find ourselves here, with the same poster trying to change the guidelines. As per others above I think the current wording is fine, and the Flack case demonstrates why local consensus is best for determining these matters. Anecdotally, to answer the second question posed here, I would imagine that the majority of suicide, car crash and drug overdose deaths would be worth mentioning in their article's leads - see Adolf Hitler, Julia Lennon and Amy Winehouse for a WP:GA example of each of those things. But as I and others have said, there is no need to legislate for that here - it depends on the context and consensus in the article in question.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:58, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• The wording is perfectly clear. The reason for the long discussion that you linked to was not a lack of clarity in the guidelines; it was that you misquoted the guideline in order to support your position. The fact that nobody agreed with your misinterpretation of the guideline, or even agreed that your interpretation was a reasonable one, suggests to me that it is perfectly clear; you just don't like it because it does not support your position. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:17, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• It is my humble opinion that the guideline is clear enough. I think that making it more specific would be a case of regulation cruft. Even if occasional discussion might arise in specific cases, whether or not to include a certain reason of death in the lead, that would in my opinion be preferable to specifying types of cases in the guideline in a case of regulation cruft. Debresser (talk) 11:23, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• I am also of the opinion that the current guidance is rather clear, and ought not be changed without consensus here. After all, it's not sensationalist to follow the reliable sources, now, is it? — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 12:16, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• The current guidance is sufficient, no change needed. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 21:12, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

  Sincere thanks to you all, except anyone whose main input was to make this personal as a bad reflection on me. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 08:35, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

• Current guidance is sufficient. Yes, it will result in discussions sometimes, but the community wants discussions to happen in edge cases, rather than some bright-line rule being followed even when common sense would dictate otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:56, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per WP:CREEP. I've written numerous biographies without any regard to this supposed guideline. The extent to which one covers the death in the lead obviously depends on the specific details of each case. We don't need any rule for this or other phases of a person's life – their birth, education, marriage or whatever. People who want to do this in a systematic way should use an infobox. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:19, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Where to place a "Personal life" section?

Dear fellow editors,
I have looked in MOS:LAYOUT and here, in MOS:BIOGRAPHY, and found no guidance on where a Personal life section (distinct from Early life) ought to be located in a biographical article. I have seen that section quite close to the top (e.g. Nat King Cole), or about halfway down (e.g. John F. Kennedy), or closer to the back matter (e.g. Jane Fonda).
I have also seen that section called Personal relationships (e.g. Paul McCartney), even though there is often more than relationships in someone's personal life.
Question: Is that guidance documented somewhere else in the MOS, or nowhere at all? In the latter case, would it not be useful to have it documented in this article, with a shortcut of MOS:PERSLIFE, for example?
Personally, I would tend to locate that section close to the back matter of an article, essentially because notability is not primarily derived from someone's personal life, even though many notable people are also quite "notorious", shall we say.
In any case, thank you for any pointers to where that guidance is documented if it exists, as I can't find it.
With kind regards; Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(become old-fashioned!)} 17:11, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Isn't it usually located as the very first section? PPEMES (talk) 18:26, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I prefer to place it close to last (not counting references and external links), because it is the section that is least likely to be important for the subject's notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:07, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

If a person has a list of accolades or the various bibliographies or -ologies, the personal life should be before those sections (Which should be seen as "reference material" to the body of the article - highlights of these should already be indicated in the body). But this is not a fixed rule. A case I know where it comes earlier is on Stan Lee where the personal life stuff is dealt with early so that the rest of the article deals with his comic book influence. --Masem (t) 01:42, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Should there be a separate section? Isn't all life personal? Shouldn't various events just be chronological?--Jack Upland (talk) 05:47, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Typically a person's adult personal life is not first, since Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biography#Order_of_events says that events are usually listed chronologically. Their career or other claim to fame is typically in the middle of their life. If their personal life is unrelated to their career or notability, it makes sense to just list the major points towards the end of the page.16:00, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Changed name usage

MOS:CHANGEDNAME says if a surname changed due to marriage (for example), mention the birth name in the lead. MOS:SURNAME says subsequent uses should normally use just the surname. What is not clear to me is which surname to use throughout the article. There are some bios that use the birth surname in sections covering the pre-marriage period (e.g. childhood), and then switch to the married name post-marriage. This doesn't seem right to me. MB 17:23, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Usual procedure is to use the final name throughout unless there is a very good reason for not doing so. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:38, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

A LOT depends on the specific person who is the subject of the article. Certainly we would mention the pre-change name in the lead if the person was notable when using that name (example, a sports star who changes name mid carrier). And we would mention both names in the lead when someone becomes notable BECAUSE OF a name change (rare). That said, I would agree that when someone becomes notable only AFTER a name change, we can omit the pre-change name from the lead.

As for which name to use in the rest of the article... use the one that is historically appropriate to the section we are working on. We do the same for ANY name change (for example: cities that have change names, such as St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad... we use the appropriate historical name when discussing different historical eras). Blueboar (talk) 12:59, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Blueboar, pretty much word-for-word.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:59, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Blueboar, except for the word "sports".--Jack Upland (talk) 07:48, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Previous names and surnames should only be publicized if there is relevance, i.e. the person is/was famous under that previous name or if multiple *contemporaneous* RS publish it as well. Onus should be to the person adding the name that it is important information, otherwise it can lead to doxxing of BLP's families who might not be public people. Special caution should be given to not publicize names that are of the incorrect gender, for people who have transitioned. cave (talk) 15:11, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

The de facto standard is that one's birthname is mentioned in the lead sentence, and that practice is more or less how MOS:CHANGEDNAME reads.—Bagumba (talk) 16:12, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Responding to personal attack and again reiterating what is wrong with User:SMcCandlish's edits to the Manual of Style

I am posting this separately because the RFC was closed above before I got around to responding. This is my response to User:SMcCandlish's personal attack above at 21:19, 20 March 2020.

I'm much younger than User:SMcCandlish seems to realize; I strongly suspect the same is true of most of the editors who have objected to User:SMcCandlish's revisions to the Manual of Style. I earned both my bachelor's and law degrees in the current century. I merely attended better schools with better teachers, nearly all of whom earned master's degrees from Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, Yale, and Cambridge (just to name a few). I scored in the 99th percentile on both the SAT and LSAT (specifically, a perfect 800 on the SAT verbal portion) and was also a National AP Scholar. As an attorney, I read graduate-level academic writing every day. I have regularly read magazines and newspapers online from all over the world for over 20 years. So yes, I do know a little bit about what I'm talking about.

Although I have repeatedly raised the point (e.g., my comments above at 20:13, 20 March 2020), User:SMcCandlish has not directly responded because there is no defense for the indefensible: anyone who actually cares about good writing and has the ability to write properly will not waste their time editing an encyclopedia written by those who do not understand what is wrong with writing "president of the United States." As a result, we are seeing vandals running amok and vandalism left unchecked for many months in hundreds (if not thousands) of articles because the few remaining active editors are stretched far too thin. Until appropriate sanctions are imposed and the Manual of Style is reverted back to something that makes sense, the damage will only get worse.

Also, User:SMcCandlish professes not to know what I'm getting at above about attempting to nationalize this discussion. It's simple: Americans actually fund their schools properly (at least in the suburbs) and drill on mechanics more ruthlessly, so American English evolves more slowly. The philosophy driving Wikipedia's core policies is that it never leads, it only follows. --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:38, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

I believe the correct place for this comment is at user talk:SMcCandlish. Would you care to cut and paste it there? --Izno (talk) 18:54, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Birth date and place

The section Birth date and place in these guidelines, doesn't actually have any content concerning birthplace. I was looking for info to answer a Helpdesk question. The guideline needs instructions about how to handle the birthplace when it no longer exists e.g. Yugoslavia, Sudan before it split, etc - X201 (talk) 10:17, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

"Birth and death places, if known, should be mentioned in the body of the article, and can appear in the lead if relevant to notability, but not in the opening brackets alongside the birth and death dates. ... The opening paragraph should usually provide context for the activities that made the person notable. In most modern-day cases this will be the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, or if the person is notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable." DrKay (talk) 10:30, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I believe the consensus is to name the birthplace as it was at the time of the subject's birth. A lot of Wisconsin legislators (one of my specialties) were born in places which have changed name, province, and even country; but if a subject was born under the King of Prussia, we name the town, province and country as it was called back in 18xx, even if that town now has a Polish name and is in Poland. That's what redirects are for. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:21, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

This is covered by WP:HISTORICALNAMES - it's the historical name at the time of the subject's birth. Caesar wasn't born in Italy, for example. GiantSnowman 22:32, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Any broad consensus, etc on inclusion of vital stats?

I can recall some past disputes about including measurements from PlayBoy that could use some revisiting, but I'm looking for any general guidance, and specific guidance for models like Bella Hadid (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).

My understanding is that there's broad consensus for including statistics in infoboxes related to aspects of notability, and exclusion of such information when it's far removed and distracting from notability. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 21:49, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

The devil is in the details regarding when it is notable.—Bagumba (talk) 01:53, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Do you know of any RfCs, style guides, etc that would help us determine if Bella Hadid's height belongs in the infobox? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 03:04, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Walled garden of "royalty"

I just accidentally stumbled on a mess of articles about people like Amedeo, Duke of Aosta (born 1943) a/k/a Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta (born 1943): pretenders to the Italian and other thrones. All of these have been titled thus: Prince Humperdinck, Duke of Farfaraway, rather than Humperdinck, Duke of Faraway or just Humperdinck. Is this gratuitious "Prince" in front of everybody who claims to be the rightful Prince of Farfaraway in accordance with the MOS? The real-life George IV of the United Kingdom is not titled King George IV of the United Kingdom. Comments? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:50, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Orangemike: I think this appears to be a misunderstanding of the naming conventions. I reverted your page move. I think according to WP:NCROY, under Royals with a substantive title, No. 3 applies to this individual. Interstellarity (talk) 20:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I think your moves are misjudged because Prince Amedeo was an actual prince before he became a private citizen, and moving his son to Aimone, Duke of Apulia, makes little sense because he's more of a pretend duke of Apulia than he is a pretend prince. His actual name is Aimone di Savoia-Aosta. The move elevates the pretend dukedom over the defunct princeship. DrKay (talk) 20:45, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, both of you. I just get so irritated with articles like this about posturing nonentities whose ancestors butchered somebody else's ancestors and terrified a bunch of unfortunate peasants, so I fear I just get impatient about the whole bunch of them. Sometimes I suspect that many if not most of them should have been hung up next to Mussolini when the Partisans had a chance. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:17, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Pronouns for males performing as females (aka drag queens)

I searched this page unsuccessfully for guidance about pronouns for people who identify as male and perform as female, commonly known as drag queens. The question came up when I was editing India Ferrah. In the article, the pronoun "she" is sometimes used to refer to the person as a performer, which seems reasonable to me but which made following the flow of the text a bit challenging.

I'll be happy to abide by whatever guidance is provided via consensus, but finding no guidance at all, I am uncomfortable making it up as I go along. Pinging Another Believer, who is the primary editor of the article in question. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Drag queens are not women. Unlike trans women, who know themselves as actual women, drag queens know they are men and that they sometimes perform as women. A drag queen must be referred to with male pronouns. Georgia guy (talk) 01:39, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Is that the consensus view? Is it recorded in a discussion somewhere on Wikipedia? It does not appear to be the consensus usage in articles. FWIW, there are female pronouns in use at Tyra Sanchez, Sharon Needles, Bianca Del Rio, Violet Chachki, Sasha Velour, and Aquaria (drag queen), among others. I clicked on all of the names in the winners' list at RuPaul's Drag Race, and of the people who identify as male (according to Wikipedia), most of them have "she" pronouns describing their drag personas in the articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:48, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Jonesey95, We use "she" for the drag personas. We use he, she, or they for the individual outside their drag persona. You can find examples for each: India Ferrah identifies as a male drag performer, Peppermint identifies as a trans woman drag performer, and Valentina identifies as a non-binary drag performer. Hence we see uses of he, she, and they, respectively. Faux queens are cisgender female drag performers. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 02:48, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Georgia guy, Um, that's not true. Some drag queens are men, some drag queens are women, and some drag queens are non binary. We do NOT use male pronouns for drag queens by default. We use pronouns based on how people identify when referring to someone outside their drag persona, and we use 'she' when referring to the drag persona. Even the first sentence of Drag queen says "usually male". I'm not sure why you're speaking about this so assuredly when you're very clearly wrong. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 02:35, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• I second both of the excellent remarks given here by Another Believer. I would also add that if you click through the sourcing used in articles on drag queens, you will note that WP:RS exclusively use feminine pronouns to refer to drag personas—except in rare cases like Aja, who has stated (according to RS) that both their in-drag and out-of-drag pronouns are non-binary (i.e. singular they). Over at Wikipedia:WikiProject RuPaul's Drag Race, we try to always make an effort to source drag performers' preferred pronouns for both their in-drag and out-of-drag identities (the MOS says to give precedence to self-designation here). Armadillopteryx^talk 03:20, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Agree with Another Believer, and Armadillopteryx. Drags queens can be of any gender and gender identity, commonly they are all referred to in the feminine as that is their public identity, but if they make a pronoun preference statement then we refer to that. Gleeanon409 (talk) 03:43, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

honorific titles

A discussion regarding honorific titles was initiated at Talk:Ghasidas. If interested, please participate. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:35, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Little Richard

FYI

There is discussion at Talk:Little Richard on this point, and it may be useful to have some input from editors here. The singer Little Richard was born Richard Penniman, and his real name was known throughout his career although it was never used as part of his performing name. The article currently refers to him throughout, except in quotes, as "Penniman". Some other editors have objected that "Richard" (or "Little Richard") should be used throughout, presumably even when his biography discusses matters unrelated to his recordings or performances. I think there's a general agreement that the article should be consistent throughout. Similar examples, I guess, might be Madonna, Lady Gaga, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, etc. Do any editors on this page wish to express an opinion, or point to any clear guidance on the point? Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:11, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

RFC on post-nominals for Catholic bishops

With articles such as this in mind, can post-nominals be used in lists of bishops and other places? WT:CATHOLIC#Post-nominals RFC. Elizium23 (talk) 08:50, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

The RfC is asking much more than this, and includes proposals to make topic-specific potential exceptions to MOS:POSTNOM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Gro Harlem is not Harlem

I'd like to suggest changing the following example in MOS:BIRTHDATE to something that does not use a person's name that sounds like a placename:

• Gro Harlem Brundtland (... born Gro Harlem; 20 April 1939) is a Norwegian politician ...

At one point I went looking for whether placenames should be inside the birth/death range, and misinterpreted Gro Harlem as some version of that Harlem in New York. Then, based on MOS, I began inserting placenames into the birth and death date range on new articles (since corrected).

It might also be worth adding "places of birth and death do not belong in the birth-death date range parenteheses", and where they do belong, in a shortcut like MOS:BIRTHPLACE that is not a redirect, but actually tells you where to put the birth/death places. Just for confused editors like myself. Hopefully there are not too many of us.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 01:13, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It says "Birth and death places, if known, should be mentioned in the body of the article, and can appear in the lead if relevant to notability, but not in the opening brackets alongside the birth and death dates." DrKay (talk) 06:55, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Well I must need new glasses. I still find Gro Harlem isn't helping.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 14:10, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Um... “Gro Harlem” is the subject’s actual NAME. It has nothing to do with his birthplace.Blueboar (talk) 14:27, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

She was born in Oslo. Bus stop (talk) 15:30, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Blueboar: yes, but the point is it sounds like a placename (Harlem or Haarlem).ThatMontrealIP (talk) 16:46, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't say "born in Gro Harlem". Bus stop (talk) 17:17, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Generational suffixes - US / British English variants

It seems to me that the form of "generational suffixes" (or generational differentiations/disambiguations) is is more a matter of British English versus US English. It's quite usual in British English to refer to Thomas I Walsingham, Thomas II Walsingham, Thomas III Walsingham, etc., as ways of distinguishing generations. In the US they do it differently (as in the current Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Generational and regnal suffixes) as in "Henry Ford I", "Henry Ford II", etc., which are in substance quasi-peerage titles (they certainly are used as indicators of social importance), or as close as Americans can get to them. This latter style is alien to British English. I think if a Brit referred to his son as "John Smith II" there might be some ribaldry suffered by him down the boozer. It's not British usage and would be considered highly pompous and self-important, even by a wealthy and prominent, but untitled, Brit. The reason Americans get confused by mid-name nominal letters is that they are accustomed to see in that position an initial of a second fore-name, as in "George W. Bush" (or even "Donald J. Trump", where no disambiguation is required from his father's name). That form of mid-name initial is alien to British usage. I therefore propose a restating of the MOS section to allow what I have suggested above to be a British usage, where the article concerned has a "use British English" tag. I've done a WP:BOLD to kick off the discussion.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 11:20, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

British people don't use numerical generational suffixes in the middle of the name, or usually at the end. No change is needed. DrKay (talk) 11:30, 16 May 2020 (UTC) Amended DrKay (talk) 12:28, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

DrKay, British people don't, that's correct, but Americans do. You have emphasised my point - there is a difference in usage in this area, which needs to be addressed in the MOS.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 11:36, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It's really very difficult to assume good faith when you come out with such self-evident crap. I can find no reliable sources whatever for Thomas III Walsingham or Thomas I Walsingham, and only one for "Thomas [II] Walsingham" (brackets in the original) which is a book written by American professor Arthur F. Kinney published in North Haven, Connecticut, in 1973. DrKay (talk) 11:44, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

And the point of opening this discussion here is? The guidance is elsewhere, i.e. WP:JR (to be discussed at WT:MOS), and, for article titles, WP:JR/SR (which, in this respect, generally follows the decisions at WT:MOS). Might be a good idea to introduce a British English example with an ordinal number at WP:JR/SR, that is: if you have one. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:32, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Francis Schonken, if it's a question of introducing a British English example with an ordinal number, I don't think we'll find many of the "Henry Ford I, Henry Ford II" variety in English historical works. I think the closest we'll come is "Henry I, Henry II", with the surname omitted entirely, which may be unclear in certain contexts.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 11:41, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Dr Kay, you have found a reference to "Thomas [II] Walsingham" in your source. That confirms my point, surely? Can you now find any reference to "Thomas Walsingham [II]" - or even without the brackets?Lobsterthermidor (talk) 11:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

You are so badly deluded you now appear to think that Connecticut and Amherst are in England. Your point is disproven. DrKay (talk) 12:04, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

"Thomas Walsingham II": In search of Christopher Marlowe (1965) by A. D. Wraight, p. 249; The History of Chislehurst (1899) by Edward Alfred Webb (brother of Aston Webb), pp. 116–7; Archaeologia Cantiana (1986) volume 102, page 8: all British authors in British sources found literally within 5 minutes of searching. DrKay (talk) 12:10, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Dr Kay, "self-evident crap" and "deluded" are not examples of WP:Civility.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 12:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The text of my proposed amendment is as follows:

For Roman numeral generational disambiguations, usages may differ between US and British English. The usual US form is "Henry Ford I, Henry Ford II", etc, which is not used in British English, certainly not in the spoken form. The normal convention in British English when referring to historical people is to place the Roman numeral mid-name, as in "Thomas I Walsingham, Thomas II Walsingham, Thomas III Walsingham", etc. The British variant should be used where the article has a "use British English" tag. Where the US form is used do not place a comma before a Roman numeral name suffix, whether it is patronymic or regnal: use Otis D. Wright II, not Otis D. Wright, II.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 12:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I've proven without doubt that what you've written is garbage, but you persist in pushing it. In my view this is Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. DrKay (talk) 12:21, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Dr Kay, you have made your position clear, albeit in an uncivil way, you or I alone will not decide on the consensus on this issue, this talk process is supposed to invite a wider discussion, so let's wait and see if we can get elucidation and opinions from other users. Thanks.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 12:29, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

"It's quite usual in British English to refer to Thomas I Walsingham, Thomas II Walsingham, Thomas III Walsingham, etc." - err I am British and I have never seen that ever. GiantSnowman 12:39, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

1957: "it's pretty much cutting edge" - but we ain't talking radios!

GiantSnowman, are you familiar with the Victoria County History? It's how the Victoria County History series does it, a highly reputable and academic source. See for example the history of the manor of Nuneham: William acquired large estates in several counties and an important position in the feudal hierarchy: he held his honor of Stogursey by the service of 25¼ knights. (fn. 96) He was dead by 1130 and had been succeeded by his son William (II) de Courcy, who was probably dead by 1155, and by his grandson William (III) de Courcy, whose younger brother John conquered Ulster. (fn. 97). William (III) de Courcy's second wife, Gundreda de Warenne, had Nuneham as her dower... ('Parishes: Nuneham Courtenay', in A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 5, Bullingdon Hundred, ed. Mary D Lobel (London, 1957), pp. 234-249. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol5/pp234-249 [accessed 16 May 2020]). (The brackets are as printed in the text). It's in this context of descent of manors when the disambiguation is most necessary, as several generations of men with the same name is often talked about in the same paragraph. VCH clearly thought about how best to do it, and came up with mid-name numerals. I think that's a persuasive precedent. That text is from 1957, so it's pretty much cutting edge. Another point in its favour, it makes for less clumsy English, compare: William (III) de Courcy's second wife and William de Courcy III's second wife, the latter's a bit of a mouthful, but I can't second-guess the reasons for VCH's editorial decision. Lobsterthermidor (talk) 13:14, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

In Wikipedia,

• William (I) de Courcy → William de Courcy (died before 1130)
• William (II) de Courcy → William de Courcy (died 1171)
• William (III) de Courcy (no separate article, mentioned in his father's article: "... a son, William de Courcy, who died in 1194", so, likely, this William's article would be William de Courcy (died 1194), if continuing the series)

However, Wikipedia also has an article on the father of William de Courcy (died before 1130): that father, unsurprisingly, was also called William de Courcy. His article is at William de Courcy (died c. 1114). Which illustrates the system with intermittent parenthetical ordinals ... is useless in Wikipedia. Or would that be William (0) de Courcy for that last one? Or give them all a different ordinal? Until a French ancestor with the same name is found, and they'd all be renumbered? No, doesn't work, should be kept out of guidance. If you'd like to test this new type of ordinal numbering then conduct WP:RMs on the Williams found at William de Courcy – I'd predict WP:SNOW fails for such attempts. So until if and when such RMs would be successful this should be kept out of guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:43, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Francis Schonken, you are possibly mixing up two areas, page naming and referring to people in the body of text within an article. Both seem to have different conventions in WP. We are here discussing the latter not the former. Furthermore, what you seem to be suggesting is that the whole system of using Roman numerals should be scrapped. We are talking here merely about whether they should go at the end or in the middle of a name, we are not (as far as I have understood it) discussing whether using Roman numerals is "useless in Wikipedia", as you suggest. The numeral system as used in VCH starts at "I" with the first of that name to hold/acquire the manor, thus if his father had the same first name but was seated elsewhere, he would not be referred to as either "I" - or as you suggest "0". Once a (mediaeval/pre-modern era) gentleman moves to a new seat, he effectively starts a new branch of a gentry family, the counter is reset to I, that's just British genealogical convention, see for example Burke's Landed Gentry, where families are listed by seat, not by common ancestor, it would just get too complex. For example "Howard of Glossop" is a different family to "Howard of Castle Howard", although both share common ancestry.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 14:45, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

• To my way of thinking, the issue here is whether we want to adopt the “ordinal in the middle” convention for UK oriented articles. And the key to that is determining whether it is commonly used in the UK (as opposed to being something used by just one or two sources). I accept that at least one source uses it, but I don’t think it is common. I read a LOT of British history, and I have never come across it before. Thus, I don’t think we should adopt it. Blueboar (talk) 15:07, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Fully agreed. GiantSnowman 15:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) At John de Courcy article:

[John de Courcy's] grandfather, William de Courcy I, married Emma of Falaise. His father, William de Courcy II, married Avice de Meschines and died about 1155, leaving the family estates in Somerset and elsewhere in England to his son, William de Courcy III, John's elder brother.

For clarity, that is: "[[William de Courcy (died before 1130)|William de Courcy II]], married Avice de Meschines and died about 1155" (emphasis added) – had a second lease on life surely? At Stogursey article:

... William and Geva's daughter, Emma, was betrothed to William de Courcy, ...

At Nuneham Courtenay article:

..., Richard de Courcy. It remained in his family until the death of his great-grandson, William (III) de Courcy in 1176.

... which seems the least helpful (while "III" cannot refer to any person if it's not used in article titles, and there is no wikilink to an article – and the given death date apparently does not correspond to any known "William de Courcy"). As such, all of this seems to indicate that the I/II/III indications, whether given in the middle of the names of these persons or at the end, whether in brackets or not, are anyhow always confusing, at least to Wikipedia editors... leave alone to readers. Don't use. Use disambiguators corresponding to article titles, so that also in print or PDF versions it is always clear which one of these persons is meant. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

• Blueboar, this is not a matter related to "British history" per se, where usually only one member of a family is under discussion within a wide context, and thus disambiguation is not necessary. It's not something a reader of general British history would expect to come across. I can think of the two William Pitts in this connection, but it's rare to come across it in broad subjects. It mainly becomes necessary when multi-generations of the same family, with the same first name, seated at the same manor, are being discussed. That is what manorial history is all about, and that's a huge topic about which thousands of books and articles have been written over the centuries. The VCH is by far the most authoritative and up-to-date source and they chose to use mid-name numerals, based on the deliberations of a (no doubt) huge editorial team. I'm not necessarily suggesting a rigid convention to be followed in all British history articles, rather just an option for use where the context seems to require it, for example in articles on multi-generational manorial histories. So in conclusion I'm saying, A: it's a British convention, and B: it should therefore be an option when writing British English wikipedia articles.Lobsterthermidor (talk) 15:59, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

It has already been demonstrated that it is not a British convention. DrKay (talk) 17:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

From John Hudson (historian)'s Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, Volume II, pp. 80–81 "William de Courcy I", "William de Courcy II", "William de Courcy III"

From Sussex Notes and Queries (1935), p. 160: "William de Courcy (III.)"

From Duffy's essay on John de Courcy in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland, p. 4: "William de Courcy III was the son of William de Courcy II"

Also from Duffy in Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia, p. 181: "a brother of William de Courcy III (died 1171)"