Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

RfC on JOBTITLES

Should the "Positions, offices, and occupational titles" section be changed to reflect actual practice, namely capitalising titles adjacent to names? ~~~~ A.D.Hope (talk) 19:14, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Survey

• CLOSE for longer RFCBEFORE or OPPOSE ... but might support some rephrasing of the guideline. For context, this discussion started above, with #Conflict between JOBTITLE and SURNAME. The proposer noted that, though JOBTITLES says to only capitalize titles before names, we do, in practice, capitalize some post-name titles, like "William, Prince of Wales". Above, I noted, "Per WP:NCROY, royalty often use titles in lieu of surnames. As such, the title is part of the name. Though subtle, I think there's a distinction between saying, for example, "William, Prince of Wales" vs. "Charles was the prince of Wales". Notably, capitalization seems to be standard practice around the various articles: In this ongoing RFC discussing how a list of funeral attendees should be presented, no one is suggesting lowercasing titles." I'd amend that to note, as NCROY does, that a similar title-in-lieu-of-surname practice is often used for non-royal nobility or consorts (Albert, Prince Consort). That said, there are a few exceptions, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell has both a surname and a title.
  Regardless of the inconsistency, I think the above proposal is too broad. I'd oppose an approach of capitalizing all adjacent titles (I'd prefer "George W. Bush, president of the United States at the time, ..." to "George W. Bush, President of the United States at the time, ...". I might support some explicit clarification to account for the type of British nobility titles OP has mentioned, but I think such an amendment should be tailored to those titles (and probably discussed at the relevant Wikiproject—Wikipedia:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility?—prior to an RFC).--Jerome Frank Disciple 12:11, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• Over the past few weeks I've had a number of discussions about exactly when to capitalise titles; despite JOBTITLES the general consensus on English Wikipedia seems to be to capitalise them when they're directly adjacent to a person's name, except when they're commercial or informal. Rather than contradicting this, as JOBTITLES currently does, would it be worth updating the section? Although my preference would be for the current wording, I don't see any realistic prospect of either changing how titles are capitalised in practice or updating the thousands of articles which must technically be in violation of the MoS. Thoughts? A.D.Hope (talk) 19:22, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  MOS:JOBTITLE already reads:

  When followed by a person's name to form a title, i.e., when they can be considered to have become part of the name: President Nixon, not president Nixon; Pope John XXIII, not pope John XXIII.

  What change is being proposed? —Bagumba (talk) 19:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Captalising when a title follows a person's name. JOBTITLES would currently have 'Richard Nixon, president of the United States', but I propose changing this to allow 'Richard Nixon, President of the United States' to better reflect how Wikipedia editors seem to capitalise in practice. A.D.Hope (talk) 19:36, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree with this proposal. To my eye, the example above is improper for English and promoting it would gradually lead to such words always being capitalized, more as in German. To try to "reflect how Wikipedia editors seem to" do something is not, in my opinion, a rational or sustainable way to organize the MOS.Dayirmiter (talk) 07:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  The above example isn't improper English, to my knowledge, although admittedly it wouldn't be endorsed by the Chicago MoS. I do see your point, but then organising our MoS to work with editors rather than against them is both rational and sustainable, surely? A.D.Hope (talk) 10:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Frankly, I think most editors would use an article there, "Richard Nixon, the president of the United States, ...." Would your proposal also require capitalization there?--Jerome Frank Disciple 12:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  No, it wouldn't. A.D.Hope (talk) 12:19, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Okay, so just so I'm clear: "Richard Nixon, President of the United States at the time" but "Richard Nixon, the president of the United States at the time"?--Jerome Frank Disciple 12:25, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. I know it's anecdotal, but that's the style a lot of editors seem to naturally adopt. A.D.Hope (talk) 12:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  There's a well established principle in a number of style guides where the title preceding the name is capitalized, but not when it follows the name. So "President Nixon" and "Richard Nixon, president of the United States," but not "Richard Nixon, President of the United States." I'd argue that where you see the later happening, it's both against the MOS and generally incorrect. More often, I've seen people misread MOS:JOBTITLE to say that "president Richard Nixon" is correct, probably confusing something like "the president, Richard Nixon," where it would be lowercased. That said, royal titles like "William, Prince of Wales," are a different case in part because you would never say "the President" in running text without the president's name, but you would say "the Prince of Wales" because of how the title acts as name. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I mostly agree with your comment ... although I do want to caveat you would never say "the President" in running text without the president's name seems ... which I suppose might be true if you mean "on Wikipedia", but certainly outside of Wikipedia, "the president announced" is quite common.--Jerome Frank Disciple 14:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  My understanding is that you should write "the President" in running text [w]hen a title is used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office (the second bullet point of MOS:JOBTITLES). Rosbif73 (talk) 15:07, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for this! I was wondering where I had seen that—I wrongly assumed I had seen it in a third-party style guide, but I actually found that most style guides disagree! (In a 1999 article, William Safire announced that the NYT would be joining the AP in not capitalizing president even when referring to a specific person; he said his preference was to capitalize in such a case, though he said the approach was "no longer stylish".[1]) CMoS, AP, and NYT all seem to now agree to lowercase it. I must have seen that passage in MOS:JOBTITLES and just forgot it was there!--Jerome Frank Disciple 15:46, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, at the moment our MoS is very clear on 'the President' rather than 'the president' when referring to a specific person. Again, although that usage seems to have fallen out of favour among style guides it does still seem to be popular on Wikipedia, so changing it is a question of balancing stylistic trends with how editors actually write. As I understand it neither usage is really wrong, after all.

  I do wonder if the best thing would be to make the MoS itself less absolute on this issue and title capitalisation, and aim for consistency within a page rather than across the whole enyclopedia? I think @Mgp28 will back me up when I say that there are pages where the main editors would resist the MoS as currently written being strictly imposed, and not unreasonably. A.D.Hope (talk) 18:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Hurm, the examples there are "Queen" and "Pope", which seem a bit different to me than president, mostly because royal (and to a degree ecclesiastical) titles seem to be referring to the person, while president and governor would refer more to the office (i.e., one is more about WHO it is, the other is about the person's position). But that also sounds like I'm stretching for a rationale ... :) —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that it would feel totally wrong to write "the king" or "the pope" (referring to a specific person at a given point in time) but somehow more acceptable to write "the prime minister" or "the bishop" in the same context. If we are to change the guidance, we need clear rationale for the distinction. Rosbif73 (talk) 08:50, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think there's a clear one to make, and people who are more apt to write "the King" are more apt to write "the Prime Minister" when used in that same while, while those more apt to write "the prime minister" would likely be more apt to write "the king" when used as a stand-in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I have followed this discussion around a few different conversations since Talk:List_of_guests_at_the_coronation_of_Charles_III_and_Camilla#RfC_on_capitalisation_and_peerage_format. At that point it applied to princes, earls, lords and so on. MOS:SURNAME advised to capitalize these names. I was unconvinced that MOS:JOBTITLE should apply to all of these people but there was a possible contradiction so I suggested above that it might make sense to rephrase the example for when the title has become part of the name:

  • When they can be considered to have become part of the name, i.e. when combined with a person's name to form a title: President Nixon, not president Nixon; Pope John XXIII, not pope John XXIII; William, Prince of Wales, not William, prince of Wales

  I still think this could be reasonable, but only in the context of the title being part of the name in that position, not generically whenever a title follows a name. I would not think we should expand it to "Richard Nixon, President". Also, as presently phrased it might suggest capitalizing job titles that are never used as part of a name, "Adam Smith, Butcher", which I don't think it the intent. --Mgp28 (talk) 17:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Well "being part of the name" sort of wording has proven to be confusing and a major sticking point in previous discussions anywhere hear the subject of names and titles; we need to write around that completely, which I've been doing in the drafting so far.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• Now that's its become clear this is about writing ""Richard Nixon, President of the United States" instead of "Richard Nixon, president of the United States", I hvae to oppose, because the comma separates them into separate clauses, and the title is no longer directly connected to the name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose, reluctantly, for the same reason given by User:SMCandlish. Personally, I strongly dislike the trend towards writing titles in lower case (e.g., president in lieu of President). But it is true that several style guides have adopted the distinction between capitalizing a title only when it immediately precedes the name of the title holder and otherwise not capitalizing. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is English, not German, and moreover it's not Benjamin Franklin's English, either. Moreover, I don't support capitalizing a title like "president" when referring to a specific person, because that's a distinction without a difference, and one that is entirely missed by any user who has impaired sight or otherwise isn't using their eyes to take in this information. I only note that last because it was raised by other editors, not to suggest a change at this time.~TPW 18:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

I assumed that foreign language like Führer for Adolf Hitler. In full, Hitler officially styled himself der Führer und Reichskanzler (the Leader and Chancellor of the Reich) does not assume per MOS:JOBTITLE. --2001:4451:8272:C000:284C:2E39:ABD0:3DEA (talk) 11:56, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Neither of those are complete sentences, and it's entirely unclear what you are trying to convey. Probably not relevant anyway, since Führer is a German noun, and German nouns are always capitalized.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:27, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Ethnicity

It seems that the ethnicity section needs more elaboration. There are missing gaps in the policy; how do we reference people that lived in empires? How do we reference people that lived in abstract geographic regions in past times when no political entity existed? It wouldn't make sense to remove any ethnic/geographic reference from the lede.

Checking a number of Wikipedia biographies reveals this inconsistency: Niccolò Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei would be Florentines instead of Italians; Thomas Aquinas would be Sicilian instead of Italian; Jesus would be Roman instead of Jewish; Aristotle would be Chalcidian/Macedonian instead of Greek; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz would be "Roman Holy Empirer" instead of German; Maimonides would be Almoravid instead of Sephardic Jewish; Saladin would be Abbasid instead of Kurdish; Muhammad would be identified as having been born in the Hejaz instead of being Arab.

A new paragraph should be added along the lines of: "Persons who lived under empires and persons who lived in abstract geographic regions in pre-modern times, can be referenced by their ethnicity or by mentioning the geographic region if this supported by a majority of sources as a notable identification." Makeandtoss (talk) 14:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe. Or maybe we should say not to apply ethnic labels to them, since that's primarily a modern concept.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:13, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It’s neither a modern concept nor is it our job to apply any labels; we take what reliable sources have described them to be. Makeandtoss (talk) 17:24, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The word dates to 1765–75, which is well within the Modern English span. But yes, of course, follow the preponderance of usage in the source material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:39, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Modern word doesn’t mean modern concept. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:22, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You claim, It wouldn't make sense to remove any ethnic/geographic reference from the lede. Uh, why not exactly? For my money there's entirely too much emphasis on this nonsense. Editing on bios of fascinating figures is dominated by arguments over their nationality or other sorts of identity. Give it a rest. It just doesn't matter that much, and it's fine to leave it out when it isn't clear. --Trovatore (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. When it's known, it's usually helpful to say where someone lived (e.g. was this an Ancient Greek philopher or a Roman one? Or Egyptian?), but material (often speculative and based on iffy primary sourcing) that delves into alleged ethnic origin is very often better covered in the article body, with sufficient WP:DUE balance.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Sure, when it’s controversial its better to be elaborated in the body. But when it’s not controversial, I see no problems in specifying this in the opening paragraph if supported by a majority of reliable sources; as is currently the case in majority of biographies as demonstrated above. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It's one of the first pieces of context one would be curious about. Readers are used to biographies starting with that. As long as it corresponds with reliables sources, this should be included. If reliable sources only say where the person was born, or lived, or became famous, then we can stick to just that. If it gets into WP:NATIONALIST bickering then yeah it is a waste of our time. —DIYeditor (talk) 19:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, the identification by reliable sources should be used in the opening paragraph. If controversial it could be discussed later in lede. My point is these things should be elaborated so that the policy is applied consistently across Wikipedia. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

When nationality, residency and citizenship information aren’t available, which is often the case in pre-modern times, something needs to be used to contextualize the subject at hand; and this is the case as seen by a large number of Wikipedia biographies I cited above. A greater conflict will occur if these ethnic references are removed. What I am proposing is to elaborate how this identification could be handled by relying on reliable sources. It definitely matters what context this historical figure lived through; especially if reliable sources have given them due weight. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:27, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It matters a little bit. It doesn't matter nearly as much as some editors seem to think. --Trovatore (talk) 19:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It very much matters to me to know for example that Jesus was a Jew living under the pagan Roman Empire; it provides important context. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

There is a significant contingent of editors who think nationality (and similar characteristics) matter more than they do. They do not matter that much. --Trovatore (talk) 19:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

They matter a little enough to deserve a one word mention in the opening paragraph, I don’t think that’s giving these labels that much importance. Makeandtoss (talk) 21:29, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Aristotle would be included in a list of "Greek philosophers" in any reference or scholarly material, would he not? Just stick to the sources. —DIYeditor (talk) 19:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Exactly, he would be. However the policy doesn’t specify this. It says we should use citizenship, nationality or residency and says that we need to remove ethnic references. What I am proposing is allowing ethnic references if supported by reliable sources. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:28, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• If the question is “should we mention this person’s ethnicity somewhere in the article?” I would say, “yes… assuming we have sources to support it, we should”.

However, if the question is “should we highlight this person’s ethnicity by mentioning it in the lead paragraph?” I am much more dubious. The lead paragraph should focus on what makes the person notable, and often (but not always) ethnicity plays no part in that. Blueboar (talk) 20:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. We can talk about lots of stuff in the body of the article, as long as there are good sources. The first paragraph, and especially the first sentence, needs to be more focused. --Trovatore (talk) 20:20, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

And how would you reconcile that with the reality on the ground, that the majority of articles and editors have given the opening paragraph in the lede, at least a brief mention of their ethnicity? Makeandtoss (talk) 21:27, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Some of it is just inertia and should stop. Some of it is from nationalists, identitarians, or identity-politics advocates, whom I'm going to oppose. And some of it is reasonable — politicians, generals, etc are likely to be persons for whom these things speak directly to why we want to read about them. --Trovatore (talk) 22:07, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You imply the people who disagree with you are doing some kind of WP:ADVOCACY but isn't the same true of your position? Why do you want to change the "inertia" on Wikipedia and elsewhere which is to describe a person's nationality in the beginning of their biography? Britannica generally does so especially of more recent people. De-focusing on national or ethnic identity is an agenda. How does it serve Wikipedia, its pillars, its goals, or its readers other than to promote your worldview? —DIYeditor (talk) 22:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

No. Opposing misuse of WP for advocacy purposes is not magically an "equal but opposite" form of advocacy, it's following our policies, even when we might actually agree, off-site, with what is being advocated.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The position that biographies, particularly of people who were alive when modern countries existed, should not start with identifying the nationality, is quite a bold position, and seems to be ADVOCACY. Again, Britannica describes Alan Turing as a "British mathematician". Of course, Catherine of Aragon is not given an ethnicity or nationality which would be harder to justify. For the average person, the first thing they categorize people by after gender is probably nationality. That's the first question they are going to have about the context for a biography article about anyone who has been alive in recent history. Whether Aristotle is "one of the most important ancient Greek philosophers" or "one of the most important philosophers of ancient Greece" is not a difference worth arguing over, what is important is that it is established up front.

I think you are right, it is not an equal but opposite situation. The advocacy is this novel idea that a biography shouldn't start with nationality if it is possible and appropriate to the person in question. I think if we just stick to the sources, we are going to find most people described with a nationality if possible. For people who predate modern countries indeed a more nuanced treatment may be appropriate, but it should still be in the lead. —DIYeditor (talk) 23:42, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

For example, from a stub I have been working on, is this an improvement? Is it important? —DIYeditor (talk) 23:53, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, removing the "Italian" claim is an improvement, because "Italy" as a nation-state and "Italian" as a concept (other than a vague geographical one that didn't correspond to any political or cultural boundaries), did not exist until much later, with the 19th-century Unification of Italy. Calling Ferrara "Italian" is a terrible anachronism. She was Mantuan, which is not an ethnicity but a geographical specifier and a politico-cultural one to some extent (one temporally limited, like being Pictish). The "from Mantua in modern-day Italy" is perfectly adequate and reasonable, without breaking actual history to pander to racialists/identarians. What we call "Italy" now was back then a patchwork of kingdoms and principalities and whatnot, with a bunch of different languages spoken (some of which still survive as minority languages). For similar reasons, Bridei son of Beli should not be referred to as "Scottish".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:04, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Ok I think we agree there. It is a worthwhile distinction. I'd support something like this being in the MOS. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:06, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

How to craft the wording is open to some question, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Switching for example from Italian to Florentine and Sicilian at Niccolò Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei will set off a huge conflict between editors, especially when no reliable source can be attributed for this label (or if minority do). Although I agree that modern identities should not be imposed on the past, however, this is my opinion, and in no way does that mean reliable sources agree (i.e. original research). I would say we stick to what the majority of reliable sources use. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:22, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Then according to MOS: ETHNICITY, Adolf Hitler should be listed only as German and not Austrian-born German (even though that is exactly what he is) as he is listed. Also, he renounced his Austrian citizenship in 1925. Zapho653 (talk) 22:59, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a different relevant guideline MOS:BIRTHPLACE:

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...

—Bagumba (talk) 00:11, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Then it should go for everyone who was not born in the same country they were raised. For instance, the Young brothers (especially George, Malcolm and Angus) are all cited only as Australians instead of Scottish-born Australians (as they were all born in Glasgow), or the Van Halen brothers, who were Dutch-born Americans (who were born in Amsterdam and raised in Nijmegen), but are only listed as Americans. Or is that irrelevant in their case? Zapho653 (talk) 13:27, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

You would need to establish consensus to change that, as it currently says to mention it if relevant to notability —Bagumba (talk) 13:32, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Understood. But just to be sure, in Hitler's case, is there any consensus saying that his birthplace is relevant for his notability for him to be listed as Austrian-born German? That is all I want to know. Zapho653 (talk) 13:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a question to ask at Talk:Adolf Hitler. WT:MOSBIO isn't really for arguing out the details of every individual bio article, or there would be thousands of threads on this page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

"in modern-day [x]"

I found this discussion via "Margherita Gonzaga, Marquise of Ferrara", which I'd arrived at from a search for the term "in modern day Italy". It seems to me that using "modern-day" (or "modern day", or simply "modern") in this way often leads to absurdities. Earlier today I learnt that "Capsian [neolithic] culture was concentrated mainly in modern Tunisia"; previously, that "Etruscan was the language of the Etruscan civilization in modern day Italy", and that the Third Punic War "was fought entirely within Carthaginian territory, in modern northern Tunisia". Elsewhere, I learn that the Gothic language was "preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern-day Italy".

I'm old-fashioned, and quite British, but is it really acceptable to use "modern" or "modern-day" like that? There are no Ostrogoths in modern-day Italy, the Third Punic War was not fought in modern Tunisia, and the Etruscan civilisation died out long before modern Italy was thought of. Margherita Gonzaga was born in Mantua, and Mantua is now in Italy, but she wasn't born in modern Italy, or in modern-day Italy. Doesn't the Manual of Style have anything to say about this? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 23:37, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

It's a common locution meaning "a place that today is (in) X". Largoplazo (talk) 01:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I understand how it's being used. I just wonder why it's being used in that way, and whether it should be. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 08:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be. It's being used that way because language evolves, words get compressed, and long phrases are collapsed: "taxi" instead of "taxicab" or, before that, "taximeter cabriolet", for example. Similarly, if someone uses the word "nice", we don't worry about the fact that the word used to mean, not "pleasant", but "stupid" or why its meaning evolved. We just use it with the generally understood meaning it has today. Largoplazo (talk) 11:59, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I do understand that language evolves. I suppose my question (and thank you for helping me refine it) is this: has this usage evolved to a point that it can now be considered encyclopaedic? My own instinct is that it hasn't. Britannica, for example, is much more careful in its use of the construction. But I'm old-fashioned. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 13:13, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

In any case where something confusing has resulted from poor writing, like "Capsian Neolithic culture was concentrated mainly in modern[-day] Tunisia", just rewrite it to make sense. This is not rocket science. "Capsian Neolithic culture was concentrated mainly in what today is Tunisia". Likewise, this kind of rewording would fix every single bad example given above. There is not cause for some "new rule" here. Just WP:BEBOLD and fix it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:11, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for a "new rule", and note that I've "fixed" most of the examples I gave above. But I don't want to waste my time "fixing" problems that aren't generally regarded as problems, which is why I asked the question. I've been looking for a more appropriate place to ask, but this will do. "In what is now Italy" or "in what is today Italy" seem more appropriate (to me) in nearly every case, but this use of "modern" is common enough that I wonder if it's acceptable to other readers. What's intended by it is generally fairly clear. In the case of Italy, we could also argue that "Italy" has a geographical sense as well as a political one, and that Mantua was in Italy, if not in Italy, when Margherita Gonzaga was born there. But that's not the case for every country. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 08:51, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I'm just saying excercise your own judgment when there's not a rule about it. I've seen plenty of "modern [Foo]" cases that were not confusing, but the ones highlighted above clearly had potential to be. It's more likely to be confusing when some action/event is the subject, and seems to be implied to have taken place in modern times. But there's no issue with writing "medieval Ossory (modern Kilkenny and western Laois)".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:58, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

If you are going to distinguish between Italy (geographical region) and Italy that is going to need to be clearly linked with no sneaker links from "Italy" to something else. Maybe it would be better to say "on the Italian peninsula" in that article? I made the edit to Margherita Gonzaga, Marquise of Ferrara for illustrative purposes in this discussion, there are two other similar articles I've made of her female relatives (Paola Malatesta and Margherita Malatesta) which are now in two variations (bringing the total to three variations) of how to describe it. I don't think it's that important of an issue as long as you don't equivocate on the meaning of "Italy" or use it in a confusing or potentially inaccurate manner. —DIYeditor (talk) 22:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

"Italian Peninsula" also has an article. My own inclination would be simply to describe Mantua as being "in what is now Italy". Or perhaps we could use "Italian city-state": Margherita Gonzaga ... was a noblewoman of the House of Gonzaga from the Italian city-state of Mantua. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 10:44, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Mantua was always in Italy. Just because there was at the time no sovereign state called Italy (or, indeed, Germany) doesn't mean the terms weren't used for the areas now occupied by those countries. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying Mantua was in Italy, even if referring to a time before the sovereign state existed. And linking Italy is unnecessary per WP:OVERLINKING. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

(ec) ExactlyThere are tens of thousands of articles on Italian subjects predating the Unification of Italy, and there is absolutely no reason not to do what the vast majority do, which is just to link to "Italy". Italy was was a well-understood cultural area from Roman republican times, let alone during the Renaissance, with pretty trivial differences as to the area the term embraced. RS use the term constantly without feeling the need to explain anything. There's no point linking to geographical articles like Italy (geographical region) or Italian Peninsula. Really there's no reason for a link at all, as Italy is well enough known. Tunisia and Germany, even France, are rather less simple cases. Johnbod (talk) 13:41, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

How about this for Caterina de' Medici, Governor of Siena. Or should she just be "Italian" since she had a Mantuan title by marriage? Actually I think "Tuscan" is the most correct in this case? My reason for suggesting it was because Catherine de' Medici is described as Florentine (linked thus). —DIYeditor (talk) 23:54, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

"Tuscan" would make more sense than "Italian".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Two Examples, and Comments

First, I agree with User:Makeandtoss that the ethnicity section needs clarification. That is evidenced, among other things, by two disputes that I am mediating, and I don't usually mediate two disputes about the same class of issue at the same time.

One of them, Marco Polo, really does involve whether you can refer to medieval Italians as Italians, and the specific questions are:

• 1. Can persons born on the Italian peninsula between 476 AD and 1860 AD be referred to as Italian?
• 2. Can persons born in the Republic of Venice between 697 AD and 1797 AD be referred to as Venetian?
• 3. Can a person be both Venetian and Italian?

I think that the answer to all three questions is yes. In particular, Italy was a geographic region, and a part of the Roman Empire, long before the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed. I think that we need a statement to that effect somewhere, because the issue keeps coming up.

The second dispute is more controversial, and has to do with Sergei Bortkiewicz, a composer who was born in what is now Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time. Since blood is being spilled as I write this, we clearly need to be ready to deal with disputes about persons born in what is now Ukraine. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:43, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

The historically accurate name should be used. GiantSnowman 17:59, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

User:GiantSnowman your statement to use the historically accurate name is useful but inadequate. Both Italian and Venetian are accurate for Marco Polo, since Italy was a defined geographic region even when it was not a nation. In the case of Sergei Bortkiewicz, how do you define historical accuracy? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:59, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Except Italian is not "accurate" in this case because it has multiple meanings, and the most common one in readers' minds is the present nation-state of Italy. "Italian" in such a case is confusing and ambiguous at best, and even directly misleading. "Italy was a defined geographic region" in Marco Polo's time is even debatable. We certainly can't have an across-the-board expectation that every reader agrees with this, much less an assumption that each understands that our article means "Italy as a geographic region not a nation-state". There was not even an Italian language in that era, but a continuum of related Italic languages (some of which still separately survive). The idea that what we now call Italy had a consistent culture throughout it and that people living in it thought of themselves as Italians is highly questionable and not something anyone has proven with reliable sources. So applying such a label to Marco Polo is not appropriate. It makes much more sense to say that he was from the Republic of Venice in what today is Italy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:43, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

'Italy' did not exist when Polo was born. So saying he was born in Italy - regardless of what any sources might say - is inaccurate. GiantSnowman 10:05, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: I am only surprised how a discussion about this hasn't been opened here before. They should be able to be referred to as Italian if its supported by majority of reliable sources; while Sergei should be referred to as whatever most RS claim (without contradicting he was Russian Empire citizen). My line of thinking is as follows:

So to identify the problem: it is the presence of conflicting ethnic identifications and the raging disputes around them.

The possible solutions to this: we leave it for editors to decide amongst themselves (an original research disaster as currently seen by the raging disputes and the obvious bigger problem of inconsistency across Wikipedia as evidenced by my examples above); or simply using what the majority of reliable sources have said. The latter option is simple, straightforward and to the point.

The sentence to be added as part of the only solution: "Persons who lived under empires and persons who lived in abstract geographic regions in pre-modern times, can be mainly referenced by their ethnicity or the geographic region only when this supported by a majority of sources as a notable identification." Makeandtoss (talk) 18:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Something like that could work. It defaults to the "use the historically accurate term" position that GiantSnowman just posted and which I also argued in the thread above (and which I regularly observe to be our general practice; we don't call Julius Caesar an Italian, but a Roman), while leaving room for this default to be overridden by sourcing. More specifically, that should only happen when a preponderance of modern, independent, reliable sources use not the historical term we would default to but agree on another alternative term. If they don't largely agree on a particular alternative, then our default should still apply, even if it is not found in the majority of sources (if chaos reigns, then it will be our chaos, not one of competing external chaoses). Needs a little other wordsmithing, like "is" missing between "this" and "supported", and "notable identification" not really meaning anything concrete. That's not how we use the word "notable". But the germ of the right idea is in here. PS: On Marco Polo, I would think it would be "Venetian" not "Italian", which is in at least some senses anachronistic as well as unhelpfully (for that time period) vague.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:40, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

We don't call Julius Caesar an Italian because the majority of RS call him a Roman. Similarly for Marco Polo, a quick Google search reveals that he is more referred to as Venetian rather than Italian. I stress again that we must follow RS, like we do for anything else on Wikipedia, rather than leave this to original research and thus apply it inconsistently across Wikipedia as it is the case currently. And to stress, we are currently talking about ethnic identification in the opening paragraph, which doesn't negate the fact that conflicting identities could be elaborated elsewhere in the body. Ex: Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant... And in the body: Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant, but a number of sources have also referred to him as being Italian. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:47, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I entirely agree that the answer to all three questions is yes. However, we don't need to say "Venetian and Italian" (any more than we need to say "English and British"). "Venetian" is fine. Stick to RS, per usual. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:16, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Necrothesp: That's precisely the problem, sticking to RS isn't highlighted in the guideline, which states instead that any ethnic identification must not be included in lede, and thus leaving us with countless of raging disputes. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:18, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Some of these people might only be included in a book on e.g. Italian subjects and never described in a particular RS as being from the sovereign state they were born in. —DIYeditor (talk) 10:22, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@DIYeditor: Again, also the problem lies here. If we identify people using the sovereign state they were born in, then Jesus would be a Roman and not a Jew. He was indeed a Roman citizen, but the notable identification is that he was a Jew ethnically, and that is only because this is what most RS have used. However, this rationale is not specified here in the guideline, and leaves raging disputes. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:47, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Going by consensus across RSs seems like a good rule of thumb. I think there can be a false consensus due to what I described with some sources being more general and only making a passing or brief mention of the person whose information is being cited, even if when mentioned as the primary subject they might be called something else. —DIYeditor (talk) 11:19, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

"Going by consensus across RSs seems like a good rule of thumb." Again, this is the current situation, and has failed to stymie disagreements. The policy needs amendment. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:22, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Jesus was not a Roman citizen. In the provinces of the Roman Empire, Roman citizenship was the exception rather than the rule. Roman citizens who were put to death were not crucified. That is why St. Paul was beheaded while St. Peter was crucified. What this illustrates is that the modern concept of citizenship may cause confusion when we try to apply it to earlier times. That is, of course, why we are here, and why this discussion is complex. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:32, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough but St. Paul is not called a Roman citizen either, rather a Christian apostle. Again, my argument remains the same: usage of what majority of RS are reporting. Makeandtoss (talk) 09:34, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Proposal for the adoption of a new rule regarding anachronism

I started a Village pump (proposals) discussion regarding the problem of anachronism in the articles, considering that the articles are uneven in this regard. If there are sources that speak differently about a historical person, I don't think we can use that argument alone ie only RS argument. Because with the will of most editors and some sources if there are any, we can have anachronistic information in the article. Thus, for a certain Roman emperor, we could put information in the article that he was the Italian emperor. The key problem is that we do not have any guidelines regarding anachronism in the articles. If you want to discuss this problem, feel free to join. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Rule_that_will_cover_anachronistic_informations_in_the_articles

Mikola22 (talk) 07:21, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

The discussion at Village pump (proposals) has largely fizzled out. In my opinion, it was in the wrong forum. Mikola22 did not specify what they wanted to do about "anachronisms", so that their idea was a partially baked idea rather than a proposal, and should have been at the Idea Lab if anywhere. I think that if there are any remaining issues that need to be addressed (and I think that they are), they can be addressed here. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:22, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I proposed to adopt a new rule concerning anachronism in articles. The only place for that procedure is Village pump (proposals). And in that sense I presented the proposal there. Mikola22 (talk) 05:53, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

You presented a proposal to present a proposal, and the community was not interested. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:42, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Do we want to discuss further? Do we have consensus? Has this discussion fizzled out?

Is there agreement that the MOS can be left alone? Do we need to formalize anything, such as that we should state what the majority of reliable sources say? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:52, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Majority of reliable sources can say that someone is Italian even though he lived in the Roman Empire and the Roman era. So most of the sources in this case mean nothing as an argument. As far as I know, the information in the article must be presented in a time context, at least as far as the biography of famous people is concerned. Mikola22 (talk) 06:02, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The specific case of medieval Italy

A specific question that recurs from time to time has to do with people born in the region of Italy between 476 AD and 1860 AD, who are often referred to as Italian, but also often the subject of arguments because there was not an Italian state. Should we specifically discuss either a rule that this characterization should be avoided, or that this characterization is permitted? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:52, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's just a problem of medieval Italy. This is problem of all European countries, historical peoples, etc. What I know from experience is that information in articles must be presented in a time context. This would mean if Italy as a country existed only from 1860 AD then from that year we can talk that someone is Italian. Mikola22 (talk) 06:19, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The issue here is that there is often overlap between the names of modern political states, and the names of geographical area in which they exist. It is not anachronistic to talk of “Germany”, “Italy”, “Ireland” (etc) in a geographical context - even for periods prior to the formation of the modern nation states of the same name. Similarly, “German”, “Italian”, “Irish” (etc) can refer to ethno-geographic peoples as well as citizens of modern political units.

Context is important. When you say “Florence was one of the most influential cities in Italy during the Renaissance” it is understood that you are using “Italy” in its geographic context and not its modern political context.

There are limits, however. While it is not anachronistic to say that Normandy was an important region of medieval France, it would be anachronistic to say that Julius Caesar invaded France and defeated the French. This is because “France” and “French” are not used in an ethno-geographic sense in relation to Caesars’s time frame. Blueboar (talk) 17:53, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Fictional characters known by initials - what qualifies as the "preferred style for their own name" ?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction#Fictional characters known by initials - what qualifies as the "preferred style for their own name" ?

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

---

MOS:INITIALS

WP:Requested moves has consistently interpreted the "Initials" section as also applying to names of fictional characters.

An initial is capitalized and is followed by a full point (period) and a space (e.g. J. R. R. Tolkien), unless:

• the person demonstrably has a different, consistently preferred style for their own name; and
• an overwhelming majority of reliable sources use that variant style for that person.

In such a case, treat it as a self-published name change. Examples include k.d. lang, CC Sabathia, and CCH Pounder.

Would the "preferred style for their own name" for fictional characters be the owner's name for the character? Examples:

1. Owner: E.T. for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, style followed in secondary source
2. Owner: C.C. for C.C. (Code Geass), style followed in secondary source
3. Owner: MJ for MJ (Marvel Cinematic Universe), style followed in secondary source
4. Owner: JD McDonagh for JD McDonagh, style followed in secondary source
5. Owner: O.B. for Ouroboros "O.B.", style followed in secondary source
6. Owner: K.K. Slider for K.K. Slider, style followed in secondary source
7. Owner: B.A. for Knights of the Dinner Table#Boris Alphonzo "B.A." Felton, style followed in secondary source

starship.paint (RUN) 13:37, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• I would support the above in adherence to key content policies, when we adhere to the owner's name of the character, we satisfy WP:V and avoid WP:OR, and we are less likely to run afoul of WP:NPOV because sources tend to follow the official name as the WP:COMMONNAME. However, if the official name differs from the most widely used name in reliable sources, then the official name would not qualify for the exception. starship.paint (RUN) 13:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

  There is absolutely nothing like a "key content policy [to] adhere to the owner's name" of anything. Quite the opposite. See WP:OFFICIALNAME and MOS:TM. And WP:V and WP:OR and WP:NPOV are satisified by doing what a large majority of independent reliable sources are doing, not what is found in a primary source. Making up your mind based on a movie poster or a title card that the trademark holder must be upset about spacing or dot placement in a name just because they style it one way and we and various other publishers style it another way is OR by definition. Bending over backwards to satisfy trademark holders' stylization demands is entirely a POV exercise. And V is dependent on independent secondary sourcing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• WP cares most what independent sources are doing, not (per MOS:TM) what the trademark holder prefers, when it comes to any style questions. Fictional characters do not have feelings that can be hurt and preferences that can be offended, so the "self-published name change" idea (or anything else derived from WP:ABOUTSELF) cannot apply to them. This initials stylization stuff is pretty much arbitrary, so there's no particular reason not to just follow MOS:INITIALS's default of "J. D. McDonagh", except in a case where a style like "JD McDonagh" is pretty close to universal in independent reliable sources. However, some of the above are not initials, but two-letter acronyms/initialisms, including E.T. and C.C., so the question about them would really be whether to remove the dots. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a work title, so we'd generally be inclined to leave it alone (unless "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" was well represented in sources, too), and thus to write the character as "E.T." to agree with the work title. As for C[.]C[.], I dunno. If the indepdendent sources near-univerally write it as "C.C.", then we would, too. But if they sometimes use "C.C." and sometimes use "CC", we would probably use the MOS:ACRO default of "CC". PS: Googling around, I see some highly speculative claims the C[.]C[.] character actually has an original human name in her backstory, that also has initials of "C. C." (though they can't decide what that name actually is), so that case might be futher complicated/debatable. But only weakly because of lack of any definitive and reliable sourcing at all. Expecially since the human name is not the source of the acronymic CC code name, but just an [alleged] fictional coincidence.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
• BTW, this really is a matter for WT:MOSWAF; it has nothing to do with MOS:BIO.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:58, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

  I moved the entire discussion over there, with all comments, since it's just completely off-topic here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:03, 30 October 2023 (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.

Nothing wastes more editor time than WP:JOBTITLES

Just look at this talk page. Look at the archives. JOBTITLES is constantly discussed. Not even people familiar with MOS understand it. Alternatively, pay attention to Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors: the most common point of contention there is capitalization because mere mortals cannot wrap their minds around what JOBTITLES is trying to say. It is absurdly convoluted, to the point that it does not reflect either academic and journalistic usage or government usage.

To illustrate, this mumble is the only correct way to capitalize per MOS:JOBTITLES:

John F. Kennedy was President of the United States. He was the president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. Before he became president, Kennedy served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. The President served at the height of the Cold War. In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated.

We will all be spared the eyesore of apparently random capitalization as well as the incessant questions about the intention of MOS:JOBTITLES if we just adopt the style that is almost universally used in academic and journalistic writing, namely:

John F. Kennedy was president of the United States. He was the president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. Before he became president, Kennedy served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. The president served at the height of the Cold War. In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated.

Only capitalize job titles when preceding the person's name. That's it. No "when not in plural", "when not preceded by a modifier", "when not a reworded description" and all those other conditions that make MOS look like a computer code. Just do as academic and journalistic style guides do.

So, to spare us yet another unproductive discussion about this, I beg your answer to two questions:

• Would a proposal to simplify JOBTITLES have a chance of succeeding or are we stuck with this horrid halfway that none of us actually likes?
• How would one go about officially proposing a change such as this one in the most clear, succinct manner?

Thanks and bear with me. Surtsicna (talk) 19:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

A proposal like this could probably grow legs, since the section in question has mutated over time into a palimpsestuous mess. I think workshopping it here and seeing what the general reaction is will be a good first step. If it comes to a local consensus, I think I would propose it at WP:VPPOL, because the change would affect a wide swath of articles. For my part, I'm in favor of the idea, because I agree the current system is complicated and confusing and produces text that might be reader-confusing (at least as to whether any rationale is at work); WP, like Chicago Manual and various academic-leaning publishers has a default-toward-lower-case or "downcasing" position across the board already; and we have too much of a MOS:BLOAT problem with tiny nitpicks being added all the time instead of sticking to general principles and not making exceptions unless a need for one seems overwhelming.

That said, there are apt to be some tweaks and codicils, e.g. some titles come after instead of before names, so it's really a matter of the title being directly attached to the name, fore or aft. (But then people will argue about whether a comma makes a difference, as in "John James Jingleheimer-Schmidt, Baron" versus "Baron John James Jingleheimer-Schmidt". So, we'll have to settle that. I'm not sure there are lot of other complications; "Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States" but "when President Kennedy was". And "according to Queen Elizabeth II" and "when the queen wrote". One of our confusing practices is writing "king" or "duke" when refering to such a position in the abstract but "King" or "Duke" when used as a stand-in for a specific person's name. While the practice is certainly attested elsehwere, it's arguably not helpful to the reader in any way, and just leads to needlessly distracted readers wondering why the case keeps changing.

One bit of advice: When proposing such changes, it is good to do to a {{tqb}} of what the current guideline wording is, and another showing what the proposed wording would be, so people don't have to try to compare text in two different browser windows and whatnot.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:33, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Demanding consistency via one size fits all simple rules is superficially attractive but cannot work. And using only super-famous job titles like PrEsIdEnT oF tHe Us or qUeEn Of EnGlAnD (random capitalization chosen to avoid bias in favor of any specific capitalization) as your starting examples is a really bad way of matching how job titles are used more widely. Job titles like "Florida Photonics Center of Excellence (FPCE) Endowed Professor" must be capitalized, for instance; no source uses any other capitalization. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:04, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, there are always wrinkles like named endowment chairs. Though "no source uses any other capitalization" by itself is not always a good argument. No independent source, among many independent sources using any other capitalization would matter, but what would not matter would be whether non-independent sources like to capitalize something, or when there are nearly no independent sources to examine, or hardly any sources at all to examine.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:07, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Um. Basic logic. If "no source uses any other capitalization" then it is also automatically true that "no independent source uses any other capitalization". Also, why the fetish for independence in this context? Sources can be reliable for matters like "what is the job title of this organization's employee" without being independent. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:30, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Because internal sources have an overwhelming tendency to capitalize everything to do with the company (or school, or whatever it is). From job titles down to "Staff Break Room". They are not reliable sources for English-language norms, even if they are valid primary sources for someone's job title being "assitant custodian" versus "assitant janitor".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:58, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

FWIW - I try my best to abide by WP:JOBTITLES, even though I disagree with its lower-casing preferences. IMHO, we should've stayed with capitalising. But, I doubt the community will choose to return to those days. GoodDay (talk) 16:36, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

• JOBTITLES will continue to be a time sink no matter what we say… because someone will always disagree with it, no matter what we say. The capitalization rules vary depending on a) the style guide you prefer, b) when you went to school (I grew up at a time when it was standard to capitalize almost most job titles, but today that is considered over-capitalization). Personally, I just want it to be consistent within an article. I’m not overly concerned if one article capitalizes where another does not. Blueboar (talk) 17:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

I understand what you mean. Unfortunately, correctly applying JOBTITLES leads to internal inconsistency. See my examples above. The correct application of JOBTITLES leads to capitalization that must seem entirely random to a casual reader. Surtsicna (talk) 18:10, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

And a side concern is that various editors do care about consistency across articles on such matters, both for reducing recurrent editorial strife about them, and for presenting content that doesn't stylistically veer all over the place from page to page, for the reader. But anyway, having a simpler MOS:JOBTITLES, even if like most style rules it's ultimately pretty arbitrary, is surely preferable to the current complex mess. It is correct that someone will disagree with it no matter what it says (this is true of pretty much every style rule anyone has ever written, here or elsewhere), but we can at least in theory reduce the number of things to object to, while also just making it simpler. PS: I share Blueboar's generational experience, but am nevertheless in favor of downcasing. Just because I was taught to do something in 7th grade doesn't mean it was a good idea at the time much less that it remains one in 2023. Lots and lots of what was taught to us in elementary and secondary schools was nonsense, and we need to not hold onto it as if it's somewhow precious. This stuff is not religious doctrine or a core element of cultural identity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

if you want a simpler MOS, how about: never use capitals for any purpose ever. there. done. simplicity is not always best. there is a reason we went from having a single case in classical latin to using mixed cases in modern languages, and that reason is that capitals convey a certain amount of extra information, lost from intonation in spoken speech. information like: this is the official title used for a certain job and not merely the colloquial meaning that the same words would have if they were lower case. "Head Doctor" means the chief physician (or would, if anyone actually used that as a job title). "head doctor" could be a low-level psychiatrist. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:36, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Which of the two capitalization styles shown in the sample paragraphs in my opening comment do you prefer? Surtsicna (talk) 15:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Neither. They are both far too repetitively worded. The capitalization is a secondary issue that calls attention to the problem but is not the real problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:32, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

The capitalization is the issue we are discussing here. You can find these styles of capitalization in a four-paragraph section but having four-paragraph samples here would not help illustrate the issue or the proposal. I am quite sure that this is clear to you, so I am left with the impression that you do not wish to address the issue. That is fine as well. Surtsicna (talk) 16:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

To put it more bluntly, your examples at the lead of this thread are bad examples. One can get the same haphazard-capitalization effect in any sentence crafted to use a proper noun and the corresponding improper nouns in close alternation. For instance, "Lotus cars are cars made by Lotus Cars. Lotus Cars is named for the lotus flower, and Lotus cars are named for their manufacturer, Lotus Cars." Getting that effect does not mean we need to change our capitalization rules for corporations and the brand names they manufacture; it means we need to not put prose like that into our articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:51, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

In none of those instances is the word "president" a proper noun; and the problem highlighted here is the difficulty of interpreting JOBTITLES's random (and elsewhere unattested) capitalization instructions even for short text such as the Main Page blurbs. Surtsicna (talk) 17:00, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Unhelpful snarky silliness like "how about: never use capitals for any purpose ever. there. done." just short-circuits meaningful discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:59, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

This is what consistent rules that are consistent with the linked articles would look like:

JFK was the president of the United States. He was elected to the office of the President of the United States. (Note that President JF Kennedy should not be confused with President of Ireland JF Kennedy or the president of Kennedy, Ireland, which maybe exist at some point.) On his best days as president, President (of the US) Kennedy wore silly hats with his crayon-drawn personal presidential seal on them {not the official seal of the president of the United States or the Great Seal of the United States -- but the one emblazoned on his pajamas nonetheless}. The first lady that JFK married became his first lady for his presidency, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who would be seen to embody the Office of the First Lady and the public role the first lady of the United States should take.

I agree with the suggestions for simplifying the existing rules, which would be in line with a few style guides. But a lot of capitalization will still look weird and inconsistent since in the end we're at the mercy of the articles. SamuelRiv (talk) 12:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

We're not at the mercy of our own articles. No one is expected to read and memorize MoS or any other guideline here before editing. Our guidelines and even several of our policies exist primarily as reference works for later cleanup (and for settling disputes). Articles that don't comply with guidelines should be gradually edited to comply with them. WP:CONTENTAGE is not a factor; a article that has for a long time been non-compliant is not magically immune to conformance cleanup. And a non-trivial frequency of non-comformance isn't a factor either. A very large number of editors over-capitalize all sorts of things because of a feeling they are "important" (MOS:SIGCAPS behavior, and often MOS:DOCTCAPS and MOS:SPORTCAPS in particular). It's easily the no. 1 style error I fix in articles, and I'm sure others have the same experience. But this is not a rationale to delete MOS:CAPS or alter it to permit a whole bunch more capitalization of things that are not proper names.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I wish we had stuck with using 'uppercase', fwiw. But, enough editors wanted to go 'lowercase', so that's the result. GoodDay (talk) 16:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

It's not just about something like random editorial whim; we have a general principle at MOS:CAPS: "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia", and the rest of the style guidelines that involve letter case have to descend from that, or we end up with a WP:POLICYFORK. The real-world fact is that capitalization of these things varies widely by publisher, and use of the capitalization is decreasing in more and more publications over time, especially when the title is not directly attached to a name. So, this necesssarily means our default is to lower-case them except when attached to a name, a circumstance in which the dominant practice in English usage remains to capitalize them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

JOBTITLES simplification proposal

Following on the suggestion above to workshop specific reivsion ideas, and drawing on Surtsicna's sound idea to "just adopt the style that is almost universally used in academic and journalistic writing", I will propose [this is workshopping, not an RfC!] that the way to fix MOS:JOBTITLES to be easy to remember, and more importantly to produce less reader-confusing results, is to simplify it down to something like:

... They are capitalized only in the following cases:

• When they are directly attached to a person's name (with no modifiers, including an ordinal number or a definite or indefinite article, and no intervening interpolations, including punctuation), and are not descriptive re-wordings.
  • Even then, do not capitalize them if they are commercial jobs (chief operating officer) or are non-unique, non-administrative governmental roles (sherrif's deputy, building inspector, but Chief of Police, Minister of Finance).
• When a title is used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office ... [keep existing examples].

Then eliminate the third extant bullet point and the table that follows it, this material being almost the entire source of confusion and strife. (Honestly, I think the second item, about use of a title as a name substitute, could also go, but some people are probably in favour of retaining it.)

Also remove the now-redundant "Even when used with a name, capitalization is not required for commercial and informal titles ...." sentence below the list. Alternatively, keep this line but remove the simpler but stricter indented sub-bullet from the proposal above.

If we used this replacement material in the sectional introduction, we could possibly also pare down the material that follows into more concise sets of examples of what to do and not do, and spend less verbiage on covering various types of titles. But the main point is eliminating the material causing confusion and impractical complexity.

The current wording, for comparison

Offices, titles, and positions such as president, king, emperor, grand duke, lord mayor, pope, bishop, abbot, prime minister, leader of the opposition, chief financial officer, and executive director are common nouns and therefore should be in lower case when used generically: Mitterrand was the French president or There were many presidents at the meeting. They are capitalized only in the following cases: When followed by a person's name to form a title, i.e., when they can be considered to have become part of the name: President Nixon, not president Nixon; Pope John XXIII, not pope John XXIII. When a title is used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office, e.g., the King, not the king (referring to Charles III); the Pope, not the pope (referring to Francis). When a formal title for a specific entity (or conventional translation thereof) is addressed as a title or position in and of itself, is not plural, is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article), and is not a reworded description: Unmodified, denoting a title Modified or reworded, denoting a description Richard Nixon was President of the United States. Richard Nixon was the president of the United States. Richard Nixon was a president of the United States. Nixon was the 37th president of the United States. Nixon was one of the more controversial American presidents. Mao met with US president Richard Nixon in 1972. A controversial American president, Richard Nixon, resigned. Camp David is a mountain retreat for presidents of the United States. Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2016. Theresa May was the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Theresa May is a former prime minister of the United Kingdom. Louis XVI became King of France and Navarre in 1774, later styled King of the French (1791–1792). Louis XVI was a king of France. Louis XVI was the king of France when the French Revolution began. The French king, Louis XVI, was later beheaded. Even when used with a name, capitalization is not required for commercial and informal titles: OtagoSoft vice-president Chris Henare; team co-captain Chan. The formality (officialness), specificity, or unusualness of a title is not a reason to capitalize it. Note that for "president of the United States" or "prime minister of the United Kingdom", the name of the country remains capitalized even when the title is not, as it is always a proper noun. When writing "minister of foreign affairs" or "minister of national defence", the portfolio should be lower cased as it is not a proper noun on its own (i.e. write minister of foreign affairs or, as a proper noun, Minister of Foreign Affairs; do not write minister of Foreign Affairs). [Subsections follow on various title/role types.]

To be clear, this proposal would completely eliminate the weird "half-way" provision that is confusing people, the notion of capitalizing:

"When a formal title for a specific entity (or conventional translation thereof) is addressed as a title or position in and of itself, is not plural, is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article), and is not a reworded description".

This is something many people have had difficulty parsing, and there is no question that the results are confusingly inconsistent for readers. The long-contentious examples like:

"Richard Nixon was President of the United States", "Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom", and "Louis XVI became King of France and Navarre, later styled King of the French"

would all become lower-cased to match:

"Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the United States", "Theresa May was the prime minister of the United Kingdom", and "Louis XVI was a king of France".

It would also eliminate the confusing conflict between:

"Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the United States" style and (still common in our articles on people with peerage titles) "Richard Walter John Montagu Douglas Scott is the 10th Duke of Buccleuch" style.

All of this would also be consistent with our move to writing, e.g., "president of the United States" at the article on the title (President of the United States), moving "List of Lord Mayors of London" to List of lord mayors of London, etc., etc. (though there are a few straggler articles still at over-capitalized page titles).

This would mean writing "Micaela, countess of Paris," instead of the style "Micaela, Countess of Paris," that presently dominates in articles on people with nobility titles, due almost entirely to the preferences and activities of WikiProject Royalty and Nobility (and technically against the guideline even as it currently stands). If we didn't want that result, then "including punctuation" in the above wording could be replaced perhaps with "other than a comma conventionally placed between the name and the title". But I think it would actually be better to use lower-case here for increased consistency and less confusion potential. It will be weird to have text like "Foo Bar, 7th Baron of Elbonia, met with Baz Quux, the prime minister of Kerblachistan", which also has the WP:NPOV problem of treating people with noble titles as somehow better and more important than everyone else, even when their notability and relative social stature are actually lesser that those of the other, non-ennobled, party.

This proposal is obviously moving in the direction of less not more capitalization, because this site (like Chicago Manual of Style and others) is "down-casing" where possible, using lowercase as the default which should only be diverged from when necessary. In particular, the guiding principle here is the lead of MOS:CAPS: "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." All of our guideline sections that apply capitalization need to descend from this principle and not contradict it. Consequently, WP should not be capitalizing titles except when they are directly attached to names as if they've become part of the name, because that is the only situation in which usage across English-language writing consistently applies capital letters to them, and even that is becoming less common with corporate and low-end governmental role titles. (And the argument can maybe still be made to keep things like "the Queen" when Elizabeth II is the specific referent.)

PS: It used the wording "directly attached to a person's name" rather than "followed by a person's name" to account for cases of titles (mostly from other languages) that are post-nominal in position. It is not a reference to constructions like "Micaela, countess of Paris" which has a parenthetical title divided from the name by a comma.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:35, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The form "US president Nixon" & "US president Richard Nixon" always was a toe banger for me. I'd of thought "US President Nixon" & "US President Richard Nixon" would've been the correct form. Nevertheless, I support your proposal. GoodDay (talk) 04:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

One might suggest axing the "modifiers" clause, but that still wouldn't result in capitalization here since "US president" isn't the actual title but a "descriptive re-wording" (or in the original material, "reworded description"), like "French king". There seems to be a general understanding that conventional truncations like just "President" are treated as if the full title. There might be a "devil in the disamiguation details", though. A modifier might be added to the entire title+name phrase to distinguish two or more people of similar titles, e.g. "the first meeting of Scottish Queen Mary and English Queen Elizabeth I", but that would surely be better rewritten in other wording ("of Scots", "of England"). That "of" style would seem to work for president and PMs and premiers and such, too. Maybe address it in a footnote?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

A footnote would certainly be the solution. GoodDay (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps you could explain how this proposal would affect academic job titles, as in sentences like (current capitalization): She is Marjorie Roberts Professor of statistics and chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a professor in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. In this case the Marjorie Roberts Professorship does not appear to be attached to the department of statistics, hence the choice to use lowercase for the first "statistics"; the second "professor" is just an ordinary English-word job title hence lowercase. I'm hoping the answer is no intended change to this capitalization, but you can see that "Marjorie Roberts Professor" is a job title, is not grammatically attached to the person's name in the sentence (as the name does not even appear), and yet is capitalized. A literal reading of this proposal would seem to imply that in such sentences we should write "marjorie roberts professor" instead, a nonsensical outcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, the proposed changes above wouldn't seem to affect this at all. There appears to be a consenus (not just here but in the real world) that named endowment chairs like "Marjorie Roberts Professor" (which, yes, does not include "of statistics") and "Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunications" (there are several AFM professorships that do have "of [Something]" in them) are proper names. They're more like awards, while simply being a professor at, and a department chair at, the university are job titles. If this needs to be addressed somewhere, it should probably be in "#Academic or professional titles and degrees" a bit lower down. Suprised it's not in there already. Maybe we'd probably need to note that WP would not refer to this person as "Marjorie Roberts Professor Bo Li", but maybe that would already be obvious enough since we wouldn't do "Professor Bo Li", either. (As for "the Department of [Subject] at [Institution]", that should only be capitalized, per MOS:FIELD, when it's the actual department name, and sometimes it's not in various cases I've seen, but just a descriptive phrase for something the real name of which might be "College of [Subject]" or "[Memorialized Person] [Subject] School", or "Department of [Subject1] and [Subject2]" or whatever.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Two comments:

1. There's still going to be confusion about which "high-end" roles are entitled to retain capitalisation when attached to a name. The idea that a chief of police is somehow better and more important than a chief executive officer seems contrary to the NPOV position you are advocating.
2. Suggesting lower case for substantive titles (which are traditionally comma-separated after the person's name) is likely to be a blocking point.

Rosbif73 (talk) 07:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I knew there would be wrinkles, which is why to workshop this instead of just launch a !voting RfC. In the same order:

1. I'm just trying to reflect where sources are leaning and where consensus is likely to lean. Governmental job titles of an administrative nature are generally capitalized in sources, commercial ones (even "chief executive officer" and "executive director") increasingly are not, and more generic job titles like "night-shift manager" and "animal control officer" increasingly are not regardless of sector. But it does result in a conflict and potential NPoV issue, I guess.
   • Maybe we'd need to suggest capitalizing or lowercasing them consistently in the same construction?
   • Maybe the change from "capitalization is not required for commercial and informal titles" to "do not capitalize them if they are commercial jobs" was too much?
   • And I suppose re-integrating the bit about "informal titles" like being an amateur sport team co-captain is worth retaining; I missed that.
2. I suspected that it could be, especially with regard to British subjects with nobility titles. But it's worth talking about, and at least seeing what rationales pro and con might emerge. If there would be no budging toward writing "Infanta Elena, duchess of Lugo", then:
   • Maybe substantive titles is clear enough. But given the complicated definition of "to be distinguished from a title shared among cadets, borne as a courtesy title by a peer's relatives, or acquired through marriage", having a specific rule about STs in particular might be too much complication, of just the sort we're trying to avoid here.
   • We might could go with something like "post-nominal titles conventionally separated from the name by a comma" and just live with the fact that a form of interpolation has slipped in (but is distinguished clearly from using a comma to separate different clauses, as in "Barack Obama, president through January 20, 2017".) Not sure if this would result in capitalization of some other kind of post-nominal, comma-separated title we'd rather was not capitalized.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, I appreciate the work you've put into this proposal. The topic is a longstanding sticking point, and you've given it the attention it requires.

I do have a query – does the first bullet effectively prohibit capitalising titles after a person's name, and would it therefore be clearer to state that explicitly? I'm struggling to think of an example of a title attached after a person's name which isn't modified. A.D.Hope (talk) 22:11, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, see a bit above for some discussion of "substantive titles" of nobility and possibly some other classes that are comma-separated.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I've missed something, but could all three bullet points not be condensed to something like:

• They are capitalised only when used as a proper noun, i.e. when they directly precede a person's name without intervening punctuation.

That would lead to Pope Francis, President Biden, and Admiral Nelson, but 'Francis, the pope', 'Joe Biden, president of the United States', and 'Felipe, the king of Spain'. This could also solve the issue of which titles deserve to be capitalised, since the titles which can be placed before a name are also the ones which tend to be capitalised anyway. A.D.Hope (talk) 09:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

See above about post-nominal substantive titles; while some of us might like to see them lowercased ("Felipe, king of Spain") it is unlikely that anyone from WP:ROYALTY will go along with it. And if we've learned one thing through years of MoS and RM agony, it is that Wikipedians will ever, ever agree on what "proper name" means (in part because there are conflicting linguistic and philosophical definitions, and in part because of a very common misunderstanding that anything capitalized [in whatever someone is used to reading] is a proper name and that all proper names are capitalized. It would also confuse the title with the name (which is definitely a proper name) that the title is attached to, and probably further the nonsense argument that a title juxtaposed with a name "becomes" a new unitary proper name unto itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but the policy as re-written by you mandates 'Felipe, king of Spain' as there is an 'intervening interpolation, including punctuation' between the name and title. A.D.Hope (talk) 10:58, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and someone pointed out an objection, and I've acknowledged the objection and suggested two potential revisions paths in response to it. I'm getting the impression you didn't actually read the thread but are just responding to points in isolation. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

My suggestion is not related to the objections raised above; my original comment is a direct response to your proposal rather than a continuation of the earlier conversation. A.D.Hope (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Okay. It's noted in conjunction with the similar comment above; next draft will try to address this with something like "or a post-nominal title conventionally separated from the name by a comma", since the odds of a consensus against capitalizing substantive titles is very low.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Would that be added to the first or second bullet point? A.D.Hope (talk) 23:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Likely the first; the bit about "no intervening interpolations, including punctuation" would seem to have been an over-simplification.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Sincere thanks, SMcCandlish, for taking this up. I strongly believe that we should propose removing the second point as well. Surely we have had enough of this neither-here-nor-there attempt at a style. We should take the opportunity to go all the way towards matching this guideline with well-established modern practices. "The Queen" vs "the queen". "The President" vs "the president". "The Professor" vs "the professor". "The Bishop" vs "the bishop". Wikipedia is the only publication that I know of that makes an exception for titles "used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name during their time in office". This produces text that looks internally inconsistent. We have "the queen" in one sentence and "the Queen" in the next for reasons that are unclear even to most editors, let alone readers. I also find it jarring to have to use "the King" when writing about a historical figure when all the books I am citing use "the king". I do not think we have a valid reason to retain this. Surtsicna (talk) 20:36, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The style is actually pretty common (perhaps more common in British writing, and less common than it used to be), but I'm not aware of a style guide that specifically enumerates it. Then again, I have not gone looking for it yet, and while I don't have a huge style guide collection any longer, I do keep some major ones around (and there are various of them online now), so it might be worth looking into to see what they say. Personally, I would like to do away with the 2nd bullet and stop capitalizing such things, but here I'm trying to massage into shape something that will actually pass consensus muster, and that probably is ultimately going to boil down to removing the material everyone hates and leaving the rest of it alone (at least in a first pass) even if some particular subset of editors hate it. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

It is fairly common in British English to capitalise certain offices when they're effectively proper nouns. Fowler goes into it:

Titles of office-holders. In certain cases and certain contexts these are virtually proper names of persons: HM the Queen, the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The extension of this principle depends on the context: the President (of the USA, of Magdalen College, Oxford, etc.). Similarly, the Bishop of Hereford, the Dean of Christ Church; and in a particular diocese, the Bishop, or within a particular cathedral or college, the Dean (referring to a particular individual, or at least a holder of a particular office: the Bishop is ex officio chairman of many committees). But in contexts like when he became bishop, the bishops of the Church of England, appointment of bishops—such instances are better printed in lower case, and the same applies to other office-holders.

The rule is essentially to capitalise when the title unambigiously refers to a single person or office. It's worth noting that Fowler also says:

Apart from certain elementary rules that everyone knows and observes, such as that capitals are used to begin a new sentence after a full stop, for the initial letter of quoted matter (but see punctuation), and for proper names like John Smith (with rare exceptions like the idiosyncratic e. e. cummings) and those of the days and months, their present-day use shows wide variation from one publishing house to another, and even within the pages of the same book, newspaper, etc.

This is borne out in practice, with the BBC and gov.uk capitalising:

• A new photo of the King and Queen with the Prince and Princess of Wales at Buckingham Palace has been released.
• The new Bishop of Lincoln has formally been installed in his post at a ceremony at the city's cathedral.
• The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the government’s chief financial minister...

...and the Guardian and some academic books not:

• The king, whose father was born in Corfu...
• The king was then described as a man of great goodness...

A.D.Hope (talk) 09:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

A.D.Hope, I do not think that this capitalization is more common in British English than in US English. Rather it appears that in both the US and the UK, as well as in other English-speaking countries, government websites and government-affiliated media capitalize titles, obviously out of deference, while academic publications have not done so for over half a century. But interestingly enough, the BBC only capitalizes titles of Brits; US presidents,[2] foreign kings,[3][4] and foreign clergy[5] apparently have to contend themselves with lower case. Obviously Wikipedia should neither be seen as deferring nor as preferring. Surtsicna (talk) 15:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, all of that, exactly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Personally I'd be quite happy to use lowercase for all titles except when directly preceding a person's name (e.g. President Macron, Pope Francis, Sir Winston). It will simplify the rules considerably, and if Fowler is anything to go by even the style guides admit capitalisation is largely arbitrary, so we may as well set our own standard. A.D.Hope (talk) 18:10, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

One thing with your third example is that it refers to the office itself, not the office title in substitution for someone's name. So for example there is a president of the United States, and there is an elected office known as the President of the United States. Also when I said in my previo0us post that we defer to articles (and their sources), I mean in particular that they guide such capitalizations, as in the case of the first lady, which despite having an official office, still does not have her office title capitalized in official publications (except as attached to her name, so e.g. "the first lady of the United States is First Lady Jill Biden.")

I support breaking down the convoluted grammar rules, but there should be some good examples of how to give deference to sources as established in our main articles. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:57, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

"there is a president of the United States, and there is an elected office known as the President of the United States" is one of the notions that has been the most contentious and which has caused the most confusion. It has proven difficult to write in a way that consistently follows this distinction, readers generally do not understand it (it just looks like random, inconsistent typographical chaos to most of them), many editors do not agree that the distinction exists (as a typographic matter), and off-site usage of English doesn't consistently support such a typographic distinction. That's why the thrust of this proposal, whatever other revising it may need, is deletion of the bullet point about this alleged distinction and the huge, confusing list of examples that follows it.

I have no idea what "how to give deference to sources as established in our main articles" is supposed to mean. Our style manual is informed by external style guides and by demonstrable patterns of usage that are overwhelmingly consistent across English, but we are not in any way obligated to adopt a particular style just because particular newspapers or other publishers are fond of it, and most especially not when we have years of discord and confusion resulting from doing something along those lines. If what you wrote has something to do with whether some title/role is "official" in some way (or officially named a particular way, or officially style a particular way with capital letters in specific places in governmental or other non-independent source material), that's a primary-source matter, and we do not defer to assertions in primary sources about official names and mandatorily use that exact string that stylization of it (see MOS:TM, WP:OFFICIALNAME, MOS:DOCTCAPS, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

This is why I gave the example of the seal of the president of the United States versus the Great Seal of the United States, the former of which I would not have guessed was not given some formal title. Whatever debate there was over capitalization has already happened in its article/talk space, and that should be respected elsewhere. And for something like a president or sheriff, referring to the office means referring to the office, not the job, so I don't see how any confusion an editor would have would be typographical and not semantic.

For the MOS you might clarify that you get elected or appointed or hired for a job, not an office (or vice versa -- that would indeed be an MOS decision). Thus "Andrew Jackson was elected the 7th president of the United States. He increased the relative power of the office of the President of the United States. He also left the office of the president of the United States in the White House (the Oval Office) in a pigsty that the cleaning staff absolutely did not appreciate." SamuelRiv (talk) 14:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Original-research opinion that doesn't seem to be based on anything. Most sources I've familiar with (and I have a history as a professional activist in US politics) treat "the Office of the President of the United States" as a proper name (and not meaning "the room, the Oval Office, in which the president works", of course).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you mean something synonymous with the Executive Office of the President of the United States. I was referring to the elected office as a government institution and unit of power, which may or may not (you would know the convention) have the word "office" in something like "the elected Constitutional office of the President of the United States" capitalized. (For these examples I've been specifically trying to not name a specific bureaucracy called the "Office of X", but rather an institution in the abstract.) (And again, the first lady example I gave is notable because it has a official bureaucracy called the Office of the First Lady, but per the convention of our article the institution of the first lady of the United States is not capitalized.) SamuelRiv (talk) 00:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I understand the desire to change something rather than nothing. I would suggest asking the community whether they would support a) removing second point, b) removing third point, c) removing both second and third point. That way there is a good chance that either or both would be dealt with. Surtsicna (talk) 15:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Maybe, but my instinct and experience in MoS RfCs that would affect a large number of articles strongly tells me to approach this one major change at a time. We'll see, though. This is all still in a workshopping phase, the main point of which is to identify conflicts with other practice, loopholes, exceptions, inclarities, and other problems that need to be addressed before opening any RfC at all. Maybe there really is sufficient disapproval of writing "according to a letter from the Premier", with "Premier" standing in for a specific officeholder's name, to include it, but it would complicate the proposal, and increase the likelihood of anyone not patient enough to parse it all in detail to reflexively !vote "No change". Cf. recent failure of the ISBN formatting proposal at VPPOL to come to a clear consensus; that unhelpful "I'm confused, so change nothing!" reaction is exactly what happened.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

If we are looking for a single incremental change, I would be much more inclined to support removing the second point (when a title is used to refer to a specific person as a substitute for their name...). "The king met with the pope..." isn't how I personally would style it, but looks quite natural to me. If I am understanding the current proposal correctly, it would mandate "Louis XVI became king of France and Navarre in 1774, later styled king of the French," which I find borders on confusing. Our current guideline already requires, "The Parliament of Ontario consists of the lieutenant governor of Ontario and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario," on the questionable conclusion that the definite article indicates "lieutenant governor of Ontario" is merely a description and not the proper name of an office. I think there is a lot of room to improve the third point, but oppose getting rid of it.--Trystan (talk) 20:09, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Then how would you improve it, in a way or in ways that counter the growing concern that it is not only confusing to try to understand and abide by, it produces confusing output for all the readers who've never read the rule and the big table of examples below it? The idea that this material is reparable at all seem fairly dubious.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Plot twist, SmcCandlish 😄 Surtsicna (talk) 06:44, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to more closely adopt the approach used in the Chicago style. That would get rid of points 2 and 3. (Chicago does allow for “the King” in BrE, but I won’t argue for it here.) The major exception Chicago carves out is to capitalize noble titles when given in full. I think that would address a common point of contention here. I would also get rid of the justification wording about common nouns, as it is debatable and just encourages justifying a departure from the style. The rule is always going to be somewhat arbitrary and that is fine. That would leave us with:

Possible wording

Offices, titles, and positions such as president, king, emperor, grand duke, lord mayor, pope, bishop, abbot, prime minister, leader of the opposition, chief financial officer, and executive director should be in lower case: François Mitterrand, president of France. They are capitalized in two cases: A title is capitalized when followed by a person's name, i.e., when the title can be considered to have become part of the name: President Nixon, not president Nixon; Pope John XXIII, not pope John XXIII. Noble titles are capitalized when not abbreviated: the Prince of Wales; Prince William; the prince; William, Prince of Wales.

I think the nobility exception is justified both by common usage and the need for clarity. (William is undoubtedly the Prince of Wales, but I would argue Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was the last prince of Wales.)

I don’t think it will be possible to get rid of all exceptions and complexity, but as a general rule I think the above would be much simpler to apply than what we have. It has some aspects I don't personally like (like the lower case LGs I mention above), but nothing that I can't live with.--Trystan (talk) 16:07, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

It's funny you mention the Prince of Wales, because both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopaedia Britannica use '[Name], prince of Wales'. I think that just goes to show that, outside a few universal examples such as days of the week, capitalisation is largely arbitrary. A.D.Hope (talk) 17:26, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

What are "LGs"? Llywelyn ap Gruffudds? I'm going to repeat that language like "when the title can be considered to have become part of the name" has previously caused great confusion and strife, and we need to stay far, far away from it. Something like "A title is capitalized when immediately followed by a person's name, without any interpolations" is sufficient and precise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:29, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I would be fine with that. "Without any intervening words or punctuation" might be a little more accessible language. LGs are lieutenant governors.--Trystan (talk) 16:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Minor consolidation merge

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks#Minor consolidation merge - Idea to merge a line-item (about stylization of stage/pen names) out of MOS:INITIALS (where the one of the examples is only semi-pertinent anyway) and into MOS:TM, leaving behind a cross-reference to MOS:TM from MOS:NAMES.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:22, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Initials derived from names with "Jr."

MOS:INITIALS reads:

With initials, it is not necessary to spell out why the article title and lead paragraph give a different name. For example, H. P. Lovecraft has that title, H. P. Lovecraft appears in his infobox, and his lead sentence just gives Howard Phillips Lovecraft ... was an American writer ..., without "explaining" to the reader what "H. P." stands for.

Would this also apply for people with "Jr." in their name, for example, D. J. Hayden, whose full name is Derek Sherrard Hayden Jr.? —Bagumba (talk) 08:10, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I don’t think MOS:INITIALS is relevant since he is known as “D.J.” and not “D.S.” … This example seems to be more a case of an initialized nickname than a true use of initials (at least I assume that “D.J.” stands for “Derek Jr.”) (Blueboar (talk) 12:21, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

My main question is whether "D. J." should be presented in the lead sentence or not. And whatever is decided, does it warrant some mention in the MOS? —Bagumba (talk) 12:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Should likely be in the lead sentence, since it's what he's best known as but is not instantly apparent from what his full name is (especially since "DJ" or "D. J." is also used occupationally/avocationally, from "disc jockey"). Edge cases like this nearly never need new MoS line items (WP:MOSBLOAT!) since they don't come up often, aren't a subject of recurrent "stylewarring", and are easy enough to figure out from the existing rules after a short discussion).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

MOSBLOAT: For the record, it did come up here with edit summary Don't need to add DJ here if it's obvious where it comes from. —Bagumba (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's not obvious where it comes from. Even my 95% sure assumption that it's from "Derek Junior" could be flat-out wrong, and he could have picked up the nickname from DJing at parties.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

"<first-name initial>. J." is common for people named "Jr.". However, I only came to know this later in life, and I'm guessing a lot of readers might not even be aware of it. —Bagumba (talk) 05:36, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

And it might be largely an Americanism; I've learned the British "Juniors" typically drop the Junior after the death of the father rather than treating it as lifelong and indelible part of their name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:48, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Even its use in the first place is an Americanism; in British English it is incredibly rare. Indeed giving the child the same first name as the father (or mother, I guess) is itself considered somewhat naff and almost never done. MapReader (talk) 17:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Go with MOS:QUOTENAME: Derek Sherrard "D. J." Hayden Jr.? Largoplazo (talk) 13:01, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Cleaner markup: Derek Sherrard "D. J." Hayden Jr. .... But it would probably be more appropriate to go with: Derek Sherrard Hayden Jr., best known as D. J. Hayden, ..... What we have here is an unsual case where someone is habitually called D. J. as short for "Derek Junior", so it's really a form of hypocorism (as WP broadly uses that term, to include shortenings), not a nickname like "Spanky" or "Killer", so it really doesn't belong in quotation marks as a nickname.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:53, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

...case where someone is habitually called D. J. as short for "Derek Junior", so it's really a form of hypocorism (as WP broadly uses that term, to include shortenings), not a nickname like "Spanky"...: I think many might stumble on the nuance between a nickname and hypocorism to determine whether to quote or not, or simply mix this up with MOS:INITIALS. —Bagumba (talk) 00:51, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't much matter, because someone else will clean it up later if they care, and it's not hard to remember anyway: if it's not something kind of silly like "Thunderman" or "Cheeks", or a weird half-descriptive half-praising phrase like "Wonder from Wolverhampton" – i.e. if it's not an actual nickname in the usual sense, as opposed to a simple name-shortening like "C. C." or "Beth" – then don't put it in scare-quotes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:48, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• Just throwing out there that Robert Downey Jr. is often nicknamed "RDJ". BD2412 T 18:30, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  That's in the same class "JLo" and "WinRy" and "JenLaw" - shortenings made up by fans and sometimes the intertainment press but which aren't generally used by the subjects themselves. Sometimes called "nicknames" anyway, but really a different class of things, and probably not encyclopedic except in some cases to mention but not to use in Wikipedia's own voice.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:27, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Death cause parameter in infobox

Quite a while I posted on the person infobox template talk page to ask about this. I checked back again just now and saw my attempt at a discussion disappeared but an identical one is there now from another editor. Someone suggested to try here. The template doc says to only include this parameter when "the cause of death has significance for the subject's notability." However, it appears this is inconsistently enforced and honestly it seems extremely objective and in some cases difficult to prove. The prime example is Michael Jackson. Can we honestly and truly say one of the best selling and most popular artists of all-time's cause of death had significance to his notability? The death itself, absolutely. But the actual cause? Not necessarily. He's the only one I can come up with that's a good example but I'm sure there's others. People like Tupac Shakur, John Lennon, that were murdered and had their legacies live on partially due to how they died makes sense. Elvis had his for the longest but it was recently removed (I've since added it back). I'm looking to either change this silly having "significance for the subject's notability" rule or make it a little more clear as to what exactly this means. There's a single editor I will not mention by name that has been on a tear over the last couple of years of removing death cause parameter, sometimes for articles that have had it up for years (like Elvis).--Rockchalk717 05:52, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Deadnames of the deceased – yet again

Well, we've had rather big discussions about former names of deceased transgender and non-binary subjects, and we kinda-sorta settled on wording along these lines:

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their birth name or former name (professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in their main biographical article only if the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person.

but addition of this text has now been reverted by three different editors, so it seems like another discussion is in order, tedious as this may be. What are the issues with it?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:34, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I have a technical problem: A transgender or non-binary person who already had a gender-neutral name may choose to keep it, yet the rule taken literally says we can't use any name at all in those cases. So I propose to add ", if different from their current name," following the parenthetical part. I believe that just clarifies the intention and isn't a substantive change. Zero^talk 06:34, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Is that needed? If someone only ever had one name and met WP:GNG then there would have to be multiple references to their name in secondary and reliable sources? But if that is a concern, how about removing birth name or so it only refers to former names? Or any former names?

I’m afraid I do not know the concerns that are leading to the whole paragraph being removed. Mgp28 (talk) 08:53, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I have to agree with @Mgp28 — it's not a former name if the person kept it and it will, in that case, always be true that there will be the name is documented in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person, surely? —  OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 10:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Not necessarily if they're notable by a SNG like WP:NACADEMIC. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 18:37, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the issue here. If the trans or non-binary person didn't change their name, regardless of whether they're alive or dead, surely the name provisions of GENDERID wouldn't need to apply? We would simply use whatever name they used. Of course the pronoun and gendered words provisions might apply, if contextually relevant (eg, their birth name was Sam, and want to use they/them pronouns and gender-neutral terminology), but that's already covered in the first paragraph of GENDERID. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:14, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Currently, going by the text of this provision only, if there were an academic called, say, Sammy, who passed WP:N on WP:NACADEMIC and not WP:GNG, that would mean there would not be multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person. Therefore, we could not mention Sammy's birth name, Sammy, at all. Now, if you see the first name-related paragraph as introducing the rest, it's of course different. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 19:24, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that this is a problem. When an academic achieves academic notability but not general notability under their deadname, this wording would make it impossible to write about them in a way that makes sense. This doesn't match the cases of academically notable trans people that come to my mind but it seems likely enough to happen occasionally. We don't want our clumsy rule-crafting to restrict our coverage of notable trans people by making it difficult or impossible to write articles about them. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:56, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure it would be a serious problem. Suppose a deceased trans person had achieved academic notability per WP:PROF#C1, based on citations to papers published under their deadname. We could write about their work without using that deadname in the text proper; it would appear at most in the author lists within the bibliography, quite possibly only as a last name and first initial. That seems within the spirit of the provision. If they achieved academic notability per any other prong of WP:PROF, their deadname would be documented in the secondary sources that establish notability (e.g., their listing in the IEEE Fellows database). So, the criterion would likely be met anyway, and we could include their deadname (although we probably wouldn't need to). I agree that We don't want our clumsy rule-crafting to restrict our coverage of notable trans people by making it difficult or impossible to write articles about them; I currently think that this particular edge case isn't truly troublesome in that regard. XOR'easter (talk) 00:59, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Does the IEEE Fellows database contain "non-trivial coverage" about its fellows, as the proposed wording would require? It has the fellow citations, not just names and years, but that's not true of some other major society fellowship listings, and I think GNG-purists would discount the depth of its coverage. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Hmmmm, while paragraphs 2 and 3 of GENDERID apply in different contexts (ie, notable under former name or not) and as such are mutually exclusive with each other, I'd have thought that they're generally read in context with the other paragraphs of the guideline. I can't see why that would be any different in this case, unless you're reading each paragraph in isolation from the others?

In the case of our hypothetical academic Sammy, I would first apply the relevant parts of paragraph 1, then depending on their circumstances (notable under former name, or not, or deceased) apply whichever of paragraph 2-4 fits, before finally looking at applying any relevant parts of paragraphs 5-8. Our article would therefore refer to them as Sammy, as that name reflected their most recently expressed self-identification.

Alternatively, I guess you could add something like who was not notable under a former name (mirroring the language in paragraph 2) or who changed their name. Gets a bit clunky though. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:02, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Thinking on this further, while I still don't understand what the objection is, would tweaking the order of this to

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their former name (birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) ...

resolve the issue? It would mean that the clause only applies to those trans or non-binary people who have changed their name. Those who kept their original name would not be covered, because they would only ever have a current name, not a former name. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Why don't we just remove "birth name" from the paragraph entirely? If the birth name is a former name, then the paragraph applies; if it isn't, then the paragraph doesn't.

I copied it from In the case of a living transgender or non-binary person, their birth name or former name (professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article only if they were notable under that name, but thinking about it I don't see any benefit of it being included either there or here. BilledMammal (talk) 03:10, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

So for the living counterpart to this, the "birth or former name" is, I think, to create parity of guidance between someone like Ellen Page (someone whose former name was not their birth name), and Chelsea Manning (someone whose former name was their birth name).

That's still an important distinction to keep in the guidance I think, there are plenty who would be confused as to what to do if we don't mention it at all. And in the same way we occasionally get drive-by edits that intentionally insert deadnames, I could easily imagine drive-by comments along the lines of "but it's not a former name, it's their birth name". That said, we could somewhat simplify both of those paragraphs by moving "birth name" in with all of the other types of former names. You could also footnote the list of former name types, and reuse it in both paragraphs. There's enough potential for tendentious Wikilawyering that I wouldn't want to remove it entirely though. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

That's reasonable; no objection from me. BilledMammal (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 09:55, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest their former names (including birth name, professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should be.... Although I don’t see this as a problem. Guidelines aren't meant to be drafted to cover every possible eventuality, but to be interpreted using common sense and good faith. I think it would be clear the wording at the top of this section is not intended to prohibit mention of an unchanged name.--Trystan (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm still not sold on the should be included part of this, preferring may be included instead, but after skimming the last in-depth discussion about this I might have been the only editor who wasn't. As I said previously, I'd prefer for the guideline to allow for inclusion if the circumstances are met, and not mandate inclusion when the circumstances are met. But I wouldn't oppose this guideline addition simply because of that. Other than that, I don't really have an issue with this.

As for it being reverted three times. I guess the only way to truly resolve that would be to have a straight up yes/no RfC on whether we include this paragraph. Is that necessary? I guess we could directly ask the editors who removed it for their opinions, whether they're opposing because it wasn't RfCd, or if there's some other issue they have with it. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:01, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I definitely agree that inclusion of deadnames should not be mandated.

I would go further on that second point, though. There appears to be consensus on this Talk: page to include that paragraph and there is not consensus to remove it. I think we should treat such removal as vandalism. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 23:13, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I dunno. The reasons in the first revert's edit summary do make some sense, even if I don't agree with them. There are good faith reasons to oppose this being added in this manner (ie, without an RfC), as this can (to some) represent a substantial shift in how the guideline operates, so I would hesitate to call it vandalism. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Was this paragraph settled on by an RFC? If so could I see a link? I think as is this paragraph could be read as mandating deadnames of trans people, even though WP:BLPPRIVACY applies to recently deceased people and is a main basis for the current deadname policy for living people. Rab V (talk) 03:07, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I can see that it's unclear here — while the intention is to avoid mandating deadnames, it's easy to read as the opposite.

Would it be better if we change

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their birth name or former name ... should be included in the lead ... only if ...

to

For deceased transgender or non-binary persons, their birth name or former name ... may be included in the lead ... but only if ...

perhaps? — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 13:28, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I like “may”. Blueboar (talk) 13:55, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't, specifically because activists will use it to editwar against inclusion of them anywhere on the basis that it "is not required". We'll simply never hear the end of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with "may". Loki (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't feel all that strongly about it, but various editors do, and have made this very clear. I don't think anyone in this discussion is unaware, from numerous previous discussions here and at VPPOL and elsewhere, going back 5+ years, of the fact that there is a large body of editors who consider former names of long-deceased notable subjects to be encyclopedic information, period. So, if the intent here is to change "should be" to "may be", to enable what's going to amount to socio-politicized editwarring to remove all deadnames, even of long-deceased persons, simply because they are former names of TG/NB people and because the guideline has been changed on the basis of nearly no discussion to seem to permit their exclusion, then I think that is a recipe for long-term drama-and-disruption disaster, without an RfC establishing that the community actually wants wording so vague and gameable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

@Rab V: It's a bit off-topic, but I don't think WP:BLPPRIVACY is the main basis for the current deadname policy for living people, as BLPPRIVACY only applies to names that have not been been widely published by reliable sources, and our deadname policy goes far beyond that. BilledMammal (talk) 03:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

of the fact that there is a large body of editors who consider former names of long-deceased notable subjects to be encyclopedic information, period There was a very well attended recent RfC on this guideline, and in the close it said With around a hundred editors responding across these RFCs taking place at VPP, it is obvious that there is a consensus against using the former names of transgender or non-binary people, living or dead, except when of encyclopedic interest or when necessary to avoid confusion. Also, there is clear consensus that a former name is not automatically of encyclopedic interest. Emphasis from the closer.

Accordingly, mandating inclusion by saying should be included in the lead ... only if <conditions are met>... would run counter to the first of our two recent RfCs on the guideline. For myself, changing "should be" to "may be" is nothing more or less than respecting the closure of the first of two recent RfCs on this guideline. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I disagree; encyclopedic interest is established by the use in multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage of the person - exceptions may exist, but they can be handled by WP:IAR.

Further, it will reintroduce issues that would be resolved by the current wording; the current wording will stop most disputes over the inclusion of a deceased trans persons former name, but your wording will only stop disputes over the inclusion when the name doesn't meet the criteria. BilledMammal (talk) 03:04, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

On "encyclopedic interest", I'm not sure that's the case. Encyclopedic interest is one of those terms that we don't really define in a single, clear manner. The closest we get is the paragraph at WP:NOTEVERYTHING.

Additionally, the following paragraph of the same RfC said Where, exactly, the lines of encyclopedic interest and avoiding confusion are is not simple or clear and will likely need discussion on individual articles, although there is definitely space for more guidance in the MOS. By setting a floor for inclusion, multiple secondary and reliable sources containing non-trivial coverage, we're providing more guidance. And by stopping short of mandating inclusion, we're recognising that what encyclopaedic interest is something that is contextually specific to each individual article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

In other words, the RFC did not mandate the verbiage that was just added. This seems like a harsher policy towards deceased transgender people than what was intended in the closing statement of the RFC. Names that are not of encyclopedic interest but had been mentioned in secondary sources would be included. An example would be this edit on Brandon Teena's page. Though current secondary sources do not include the deadname, at the time of Brandon's murder the press treated trans people with curiosity or more open contempt and would often refer to them by their deadname. I think we should remove or soften the added paragraph to GENDERID while it is being discussed per WP:BRD as it is not mandated by the RFC closure. Rab V (talk) 07:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I found the original edit that added the paragraph to the MOS here. The editor admits it is a BOLD addition in the edit summary even linking to WP:BOLD, so per BRD, it should be removed while being discussed. Rab V (talk) 07:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Floating an idea: Moratorium on GENDERID changes

How many megabytes of discussion are we at yet over this, without much real change? Many of the participants in these discussions don't actually write much about transgender topics. For those of us who do, MOS:GENDERID doesn't offer much practical guidance, so we figure things out according to common sense, and that actually works fine.

I spoke about some of this^20:23 on WIKIMOVE a few months ago. And now every time it looks like we're approaching some kind of consensus, more discussion is needed. People show much more interest in arguing about this guideline than actually enforcing it: The Gloria Hemingway article went through a high-profile RM and subsequent news coverage while in blatant noncompliance with the guidance for quotes; articles about Caitlyn Jenner's athletic career, perhaps the most obvious application of the changed-name other-article rule, violate that rule more often than not. Arguing about GENDERID has become more of a moot court than a productive exercise.

What if we just imposed a moratorium and let people focus on writing good content and enforcing the guideline as it exists? Say that for one year, no new discussions may be started to amend MOS:GENDERID, nor may substantive changes be made to the section. Clarifying questions on talk would still be allowed, as would copy-edits to the section.

If people don't like that idea, then all right, I've long realized that these discussions go nowhere, so I'm not the one who has to keep arguing in the absence of a moratorium. But I thought I'd suggest it. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 16:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

On the Caitlyn Jenner point, about a year ago I went through every article that mentioned Elliot Page to make sure that they were compliant with the guideline. In doing so, I discovered a lot of articles that used his old name, and when I looked into the article history, in almost all cases it was due to vandalism. After I finished the tidy up, I added the articles to my watchlist, and in the time since I've had to revert more than a few drive-by edits restoring Page's deadname to the article.

Skimming over the search results of Jenner's deadname, I do see a similar issue as with Page, where a lot of articles are using Jenner's deadname in prose. Spot checking a few, some seem not to have been updated in a while, some seem to be vandalised, and there's at least one odd case where a local consensus seems to exist to ignore GENDERID entirely.

It seems a sad truth that pretty much any high profile trans or non-binary person whose deadname is known will have this issue occur on a semi-regular basis. And it would be great if more editors could be aware of this and help enforce the guideline. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:10, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Jenner is a somewhat unique situation. She was heavily discussed back when we were first adopting GENDERID - and even then was considered a notable exception due to having Olympic medals won and records set under the name “Bruce”. The sports editors were insistent that the “name used when competing” should be maintained. Caitlin herself has commented publicly that she does not mind when her “deadname” is used in historical contexts (or even if people use “he” in such contexts) so there is no privacy/compassion issue. However, back when we agreed to make an exception in Jenner’s case, it was agreed that this should BE an exception and not a precedent. Blueboar (talk) 00:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I think a moratorium is a good idea. I find it hard to escape the conclusion that there simply isn't a consensus on any specific changes at the moment. (There is consensus on some broad points, but it always breaks down when trying to nail down the specifics.) Taking a break from trying to find what isn't there and focussing instead on productive editing would be of much more direct benefit, and may help a clearer consensus form in the future.--Trystan (talk) 00:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I have two specific concerns with a moratorium, but only in relation to the proposal above. The first is, if we do take a 12 month pause on this discussion, will the impasse actually resolve itself in any meaningful way? It seems that in the in the 3 months since the last discussion ended, little has changed. Will 12 really bring a resolution here? Secondly, I have a concern that if we did put a pause on discussions until December 2024, when we come back to the lack of guidance on how to handle the former names of deceased trans and non-binary people, there will be the question of "well why didn't you deal with this twelve months ago when the two RfC consensi were relatively fresh?" We've had two RfCs, one in August/September 2021, and one in May/June 2023, both of which demonstrate a need for guidance relating to the deadnames of the deceased. So how do we square that circle?

As for a moratorium on the rest of the guideline, I don't have an issue with that. Could it be better? Sure, but so could a lot of our policies and guidelines. But it's also not completely broken either. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good idea for largely the same reasons Sideswipe listed above. A moratorium won't do anything to resolve the issues being discussed, one of which is a relatively recent RFC. Delaying the consensus of that RFC would cause more problems than it solves. Loki (talk) 03:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

How would such a moratorium be imposed and enforced? Per WP:EDITING policy, people are free to post whatever proposal they like, absent some kind of community decision implementing a restriction. The only ways I can recall that such a moratorium has been imposed and obeyed are three: ArbCom imposes one, a consensus at ANI or another noticeboard imposes one, or an RfC comes to a consensus to impose one about the topic of the RfC and the closer of the RfC imposes it as part of the close; in all three cases there is either a community consensus behind it or ArbCom acting as a delgate of community consensus. But just some random editor like you or me unilaterally wanting to see it happen doesn't make it happen. Just, say, five people on a talk page "declaring" a moratorium isn't going to work, or factions of PoV pushers all over the place would have a field day, implementating year-long false-consensus blockades against anyone doing anything about their PoV pushing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Honorifics in infobox headings

While the "Knighthoods, lordships, and similar honorific titles" subsection says, "The honorific titles Sir, Dame, Lord and Lady are included in the [...] infobox heading", the "Honorific prefixes and suffixes" subsection says, "In general, honorific prefixes and suffixes should not be included, but may be discussed in the article", with no provision for including them in the infobox heading. Yet, some prefixes (e.g. "The Honourable") are typically included in the infobox heading. Could the guideline please be clarified re honorific prefixes such as "The Honourable", "The Reverend" etc. in infoboxes. Nurg (talk) 22:33, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, I've been interested in knowing why, out of all the titles of nobility and honorary titles in the world, there's an exception for two pairs (male/female) of specific titles from one specific country (UK). Largoplazo (talk) 23:28, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

My assumption is that it stems from WikiProject Succession Box Standardization/Guidelines § Peers and nobility (and maybe older versions of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility) § British nobility?) that privilege their titles when talking about British nobles — because that is the way that nobles have historically been described in academic works and encyclopædias here.

Given that we are a global publication, not a British one, we have already chosen not to privilege those titles thus, it seems reasonable to remove this weird exception from infoboxes. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 10:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

We include them because, as endlessly stated, they are effectively part of the person's name and almost invariably used by reliable sources. If John Smith is knighted, he is no longer simple John Smith but Sir John Smith. He is no longer referred to as Mr Smith, but as Sir John. It would therefore be doing a disservice to Wikipedia users not to use the standard style. It is tiresome to continually have to explain this. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

We do that in text. We don't put "Mr" in the infobox. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 13:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Mr, Mrs, Ms, Mx, are essentially meaningless strings/utterances that children use toward adults, a handful of especially old-fashioned newspapers still use before surnames for some reason, and people use in business and other interaction when trying to be particularly polite, so they really don't serve any encyclopedic purpose to mention, much less to highlight in an infobox. In policy terms, they would be a form of WP:INDISCRIMINATEly trivial verbiage to use here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

(This is about "Sir" and "Dame" again, if anyone hadn't already figured that out.) Wikipedia doesn't refer to him as "Mr Smith", either, so the distinction Necrothesp is trying to draw is immaterial. It's really tiresome to have a handful of editors refuse to drop the stick about this. To go over it yet again: It is common but not universal (even within the same publication) for many British and some other Commonwealth writers to use Sir/Dame for most but not all of the persons with such titles (depending on the exact wording of the material, among other factors), but it's virtually unknown everywhere else (or used in a tongue-in-cheek manner), nor is it commonly used (albeit not unheard of) in various contexts even within Britain, e.g. in film credits, journal citations, etc. Plus, various people who have these titles do not publicly use them, or only use them in particular contexts (same goes for Lord/Lady, etc.).

But frequency of use in particular source types really is immaterial in the end. WP does not go around calling people Sir This and Dame That at every possible mention, and there is a very long and stable consensus to this effect. Such a title is sometimes used once or even a few times when particularly pertinent, when the full name is given ("Sir John" and "Sir John Smith" are proper British style for this title, but "Sir Smith" is not). As WP doesn't refer to subjects by first name except under unusual circumstances, and usually refers to them by surname after first mention except under unusual circumstances, there is little call for "Sir" or "Dame" even when someone felt like applying it. In someone's own bio article, the Sir/Dame that applies to them will always be in the lead sentence (except in the rare case of someone who openly insists on not using it at all).

But in mentioning, outside their own bio, that so-and-so won a snooker tournament or narrated a documentary or starred in a TV show or died in car crash, there is very little appetite for Sir/Dame among either editors or readers. And it should be this way, since it has major WP:POV implications about endorsement of the British class-and-honours system, which is generally unrecognized anywhere else except particular Commonwealth jurisdictions, has has no more meaning to most readers than any other honorifics generated by any other authorities in other places, and has considerable opposition even among Britons and the broader Commonwealth public, as a product of royalism. This is not SupportTheBritishMonarchyAndClassHierarchyPedia. It's not our job to not-so-subtly choose a side in that ongoing and (post-EII) intensifying off-site socio-political debate.

It is entirely enough that WP sometimes uses these titles in running text when they are especially contextually pertinent, and almost always in the lead of a knight/dame's own bio. This is WP:DUE. We are not hiding the fact of the honour and title where it's relevant, but we are not bandying it about all over the place to drive an impression that the person is the "social better" of everyone without the title and somehow deserves greated reader attention and interest – notability – as an article subject, higher authority as source of virtue, or most importantly more trust as a source. As a simple example of the first sort, it is unquestionable that Sir John Burdon, a rather minor provicial politician (and as a writer, downright unimportant), is at least an order of magnitude less notable than David Bowie (who turned down a KBE) and various other world-famous Britons never offered one, e.g. George Harrison, Florence Nightingale (OM), William Blake, Charles Dickens, Alan Turing (OBE), J. R. R. Tolkien (CBE), Charles Darwin, etc. (Consider further that three of Darwin's children were knighted as adults, but are barely notable.) As an example of the second sort of concern, see Albert Henry (politician) and Jean Else, who had Knight/Dame Commander revoked after criminal activity, within recent memory. As an example of the third sort, Sir Thomas Innes of Learney might be referred to as such in his role as Lord Lyon (a role firmly embedded in the British class and nobility system), but in a source citation to one of his books (and in prose about his role as a writer) should not use "Sir", because his material outside his professional scope isn't, through some power of noblesse, more reliable than everyone else's even within subjects he liked to think of himself as something of an expert on (his material on tartan and Highland dress, for example, has various outright errors as well some very bold and documentarily unsupportable claims that are dismissed with good evidence by later leading researchers on the topic; and even his material on Scottish heraldry, his actual expertise, is laced with novel ideas that he claimed were rooted in Scottish tradition but were not).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Well put. Thank you. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 15:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, a useful comparator might be Malaysian honorifics. How often does anyone refer to her as Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh?

(As it happens, we do put that in the infobox, which is why I deleted my previously-typed rant and replaced it with what I actually wrote 5 hours ago. I'm not sure we should do, though; I think I'd be happy with them only being down in an "Honours and accolades" section or whatever, but it should certainly remain consistent with what we do for British honorifics.) — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 15:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

How often does anyone refer to her as Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh. Exactly. They don't. Probably not even in Malaysia. How is that in any way comparable to someone knighted under the British honours system who is commonly referred to using their title? Have a look at the BBC website, for example. It is standard practice there to use titles when people have them. No, they don't always appear (journalists can be as ignorant about these things as anyone else), but they usually do. All the guff about titles not necessarily being used in other countries is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is whether they are commonly used in the country of origin. And they very, very clearly are. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The provincial titles not so much, but a Google search for "Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh" shows that the national honorifics are quite widely used there.

But also, people here widely talk about "Paul McCartney" or "Alan Sugar", without the "Sir" prefix, and likewise baronets.

I don't think they're as essential here as you claim. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 20:23, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

They definitely aren't. They're a deferential courtesy thing favoured by some-but-not-all British writers, and even those only some-but-not-all of the time. Here's a simple test: Google News search on "Sean Connery" [6]. The occurrences of "Sir Sean Connery" are downright rare, when it happens it's almost always a British source, and it is not universal in British sources (e.g. this Daily Express article [7] of a few months ago does not contain "Sir" anywhere in it. It took less than 30 seconds to find that, and there are more. What this tells us, inescapable, is that this is entirely optional and is a PoV-laden honorific. It hass not "become part of the name", it not "inseparable from the name", it is not "always used", so it is not anything Wikipedia should be doing, either in running prose when the title is not relevant (e.g. in reference to a film role), nor by violating the purpose of infobox parameters to leave |honorific_prefix= empty and make the blantantly false claim |name=Sir Sean Connery. And what's been done at the Margaret Thatcher infobox is even worse, filling |name= with an honorific phrase that disagrees with the article title and lead, is virtually never used in RS, and is just something one might use (if she were still alive) in polite personal address, like when writing a letter or introducing her to someone. Utterly unencyclopedic approach. Similar PoV-pushing screwup at the article on actor Christopher Guest, with |name=The Lord Haden-Guest. This is absolutely not what |name= is for, and any title that adheres to him as 5th Baron Haden-Guest since the death of his father belongs in other parameters or not in the infobox at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

What an absolute surprise that editors who oppose the use of titles are completely misrepresenting the points I made. My point is that "Sir, "Dame", "Lord" and "Lady" are almost always applied before the names of people with those titles. You can argue they're not until you're blue in the face. That doesn't make it any more true. The fact is that in British RSs they almost invariably are. How is it helping our readers if, for dogmatic WP:IDONTLIKEIT reasons, they are omitted from the beginning of the articles? it has major WP:POV implications about endorsement of the British class-and-honours system... And that sums it up in a nutshell. It's a POV argument. The NPOV, on the other hand, is clearly to use titles that are used and not to omit them. It is not Wikipedia's job to omit facts because editors do not like them or to take some sort of stand against the British honours system. They should clearly appear in the lead and the infobox of the individual's own article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably every reliable source refers to the UK's current monarch as "King Charles" and his elder son as "Prince William", yet for some reason "Sir" and "Lady" get this treatment on Wikipedia based on the rationale you're giving but those same people's higher-ups don't. I realize that they're distinguished in the guidelines by designating them, respectively, as "honorary titles" and "job titles", but being someone's son isn't a job, and it's an artificial division for what most people probably just think of as "titles". The distinction has no meaningful relevance to the considerations here. Largoplazo (talk) 17:44, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It does indeed have a great deal to do with source usage, and with a difference of type between the titles; "Sir/Dame" are honours, while "King/Queen" is a functional role of major societal significance. The fact that the latter is also a form of nobility and not a fully republicanist role like president is immaterial. It's instructive to look at RS treatment of Christopher Guest, then look at the trainwreck infobox in our article on his. He is virtually never referred to (except in old coverage of his brief stint in the House of Lords) as Baron Haden-Guest, Lord Haden-Guest, or Haden-Guest at all. He is known to the world almost entirely as Christoper Guest, and should be referred to by that name by us everywhere but in his own lead where we need to give more detail, and maybe in any coverage in another article of his short political career, but only in wording that makes it very clear we're talking about the notable Christopher Guest not some random non-notable guy named Lord Christopher Haden-Guest that no one's ever heard of. But abusine the |name= parameter to jam in a nearly unrecognizable title is ridiculous and "reader-hateful".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The material is clumsily written, and consequently does not match actual practice. It should probably read something like: In general, honorific prefixes and suffixes should not be used when refering to persons, but may be discussed in an article about that person, and included in the |honorific_prefix= or |honorific_prefix= parameter of their biographical infobox. In particular, "honorific prefixes and suffixes" include: ...

The other option would be to actually remove the parameters from the infoboxes, or sharply limit their use with some kind of re-documentation, backed up by clearer guideline wording about infoboxes and titles, but I think that would require a really big contesus discussion (like an RfC at WP:VPPOL, as we did with getting rid of the |ethnicity= and |religion= parameters years ago after they were abused for WP:OR all the time).

See also Template talk:Infobox person#Placement of "Sir", yet another perennial discussion of treating Sir/Dame as "magically special", with a propososal to stick them into the |name= parameter instead of |honorific_prefix=.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Given a choice, I'd delete all such titles from bio infoboxes-in-question. Seeing (for example) "Right Honorable" in Canadian prime ministers' bio infoboxes, appears fluffery in nature. GoodDay (talk) 20:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree when it comes to this "The Right Honourable" stuff. These are not titles, they are "styles" used as forms of address or honorific reference, and should not be used in infoboxes much less in running prose. It is noteworthy and very important that articles like Charles III and Elizabeth II do not have |honorific_prefix=His Majesty or |honorific_prefix=Her Majesty (and several more such styles could probably be added to it by obsessives, judging from what's in articles like List of titles and honours of Elizabeth II). There is a clear consensus at royalty articles to not do this. What's happened in that fanbois of the British class system who have not got their way on this have jumped over to less-watchlisted articles on lesser figures and tried to get their way at those instead. Maybe it's a WP:FAITACCOMPLI thing, where if enough articles on knights and premiers and baronets and duchesses and lords mayor and etc. are festooned with this craptrap, they'll be able to re-force it back into top-level royalty articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

|honorific_prefix= should be used for these titles, that is what it is there for. GiantSnowman 18:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

That something exists isn't proof that it should.

OK, so,in real life, people aren't like "I'm going to the Sir Elton John concert". They just aren't, is all. Since that is sky-is-blue true (source: if you don't know this you should get out more), our job is is to look for refs that will support us speaking like normal people rather than finding excuses to not speak like normal people. Serve the reader, not the editors at the Times.

(FWIW, I don't know about British newspapers, but book authors basically never use Sir Elton John either), it appears.

But, you know, on the other hand...this is a hill the Brits will die on, clinging to the remnants of a glorious past (which, fully understandable). It'd be heavy lifting to make a change, maybe just leave it lie. We won the Revolution, let them have this one.

On the hand, Brits should realize that this "Sir" stuff is actively offensive to some Americans (and maybe Indians, I don't know). We're republicans, citizens not subjects (yeah I know about the recent change, but still) and some of us take it seriously. Fourth of July and all. Article 1 of the American founding constitution says "...no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall...accept of any... Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." That only applies to federal offices, but still. So, Americans aren't really on board with any of this stuff, mostly. True, few Americans are very offended, but why even annoy readers with snobbish Medieval claptrap? Herostratus (talk) 02:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

IF anybody wants to open an RFC (or whatever else is required) to see about deleting 'honorific_prefix' from bio infoboxes? I'll go along with it. GoodDay (talk) 03:14, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

"MOS: SURNAME" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect MOS: SURNAME has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 5 § MOS: SURNAME until a consensus is reached. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 04:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:DEADNAME has an RfC

MOS:DEADNAME has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. BilledMammal (talk) 18:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)