Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Organisms

At long last, WP:Manual of Style/Organisms

I've been working on this, off and on, for over four years. I think it is ready for prime time now. I've researched this so much I feel like I could teach a class about it. I'm not proposing it formally yet, just asking for MOS regulars' input for now. When I formally propose it, it'll be advertised via WP:VP/P and WP:CENT, and the relevant projects invited to comment, of course. Please discuss suggested changes or any concerns/issues here at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Organisms. I've covered things that have never been touched on in MOS before like how to handle hybrids, greges, landraces, natural breeds, etc., etc., etc. It is a one-stop shop for all scientific and vernacular naming questions, including animals, plants, bacteria and viruses. (And yes, it includes the MOS position that capitalizing bird common names is controversial, and why, but I've tried not to be inflammatory about it.) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 10:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

A very quick scan shows up several areas which are problematic/wrong. I suggest trying to agree on this article with some of the taxonomy specialists around Wikipedia before going live. A general issue is that in some places you have tried to describe zoological and botanical nomenclature using the same language when we know that this doesn't work – we've had to split articles into multiple versions in the past for this reason. A good example is the use of connecting terms in infraspecific botanical taxa: both "connecting term" and "infraspecific" are botanical code only. Connecting terms are and aren't part of a botanical name: formally they aren't, so that the plant names Aia bia subsp. cia and Aia bia var. cia are only allowed if they refer to the same type, but on the other hand, the connecting term must be written with the name. (Aia bia subsp. cia var. dia isn't a name but a classification.) All this is quite different from zoological nomenclature. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:23, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Can you suggest specific wording that can be integrated? I realize (more than most – it's taken me years to develop it this far!) that this is a complex topic, but it needs to be kept simple enough that at least "smarter than average" Wikipedians can figure it out and apply it. I have no doubt that "not smarter than average" editors won't ever figure it out, not matter how it's written. This is probably true of the hyphen vs. dash question and various other MOS issues that ultimately simply have to be fixed by very intelligent gnomes. But we need to have something those gnomes can understand here. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:22, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and I invited participation from the two botany experts you recommended on my talk page. I have no problem with correcting misapplication of zoological terms applied to botany or vice versa, even if it means splitting one of the bullet points into two, but I'll need help identifying where this may still be a problem (the issues you pointed out below today I have already edited for). I have also tried to integrate what you're saying above, but am not 100% I have interpreted it correctly. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:32, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Connecting terms

The part beginning "These taxonomic designations are also never italicized: ..." has some problems.

• "Connecting term" is the correct name of the word between specific and infraspecific epithets in the ICN (botanical code).
• "Saxifraga aizoon variety aizoon subvariety brevifolia" is doubly problematic: it's a classification, not a name, and the latin terms "varietas" and "subvarietas" would be used if written in full. The normal way of writing the names is Saxifraga aizoon var. aizoon or Saxifraga aizoon subvar. brevifolia, i.e. normally the connecting terms are abbreviated – it's very rare to write them in full but in a formal name they would always be the latin form.
• It needs to be explained that connecting terms are required in all infraspecific botanical names (although not formally part of the name and not italicized), but are not required in zoological names since there is only one rank below species. We always use "subsp." for plants, never "ssp." because the latter is easily confused with "spp.".

Peter coxhead (talk) 13:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It is not correct that "ssp." is not used for plants; I have used it myself, and there was a concerted effort among several US plant taxonomy journals (at least) to expunge it in favor of "subsp." If you're unwilling to take my word, let me know, and I'll dig up some references.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:07, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, unclear writing. I personally have regularly used "ssp.". I meant WP:PLANTS or perhaps WP:TOL – somewhere there's advice to use "subsp." which I've always followed in Wikipedia, though not elsewhere. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:53, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Feel free to just integrate this stuff if I don't get to it quickly. Thanks also for this earlier clarification; I hadn't noticed it, but seeing it now explains why that part was written with more precision than I remembered bringing. :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe I have covered all of this in this editing run. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:32, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Capitalization of common names of species

I can only say that I regard the text as biassed and highly inflammatory. WP:BIRDS is not the only WikiProject capitalizing common names. Wikipedia:WikiProject Arthropods allows this for Odonata and Lepidoptera. WikiProject:Plants accepts that there is no consensus and capitalization generally varies according to the practice of the country of origin of the plants. Edit warring over capitalization is unproductive and would be encouraged by the wording used at present. Simply state the factual situation. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:05, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not saying anything different than all the other relevant MOS pages say, in my view. The last thing we need to do is swing the doors open wider, with vague or permissive language, for variation on this issue, because it provably leads to confusion and chaos all over Wikipedia, with people capitalizing everything from Mountain Zebra to Domestic Cat, randomly, and fighting over it at article after article for no reason. MOS settled on lower case for a reason, almost five years ago, with almost no push-back from anyone other than (mildly) from you, and (disruptively and tendentiously) from ~1 dozen editors from the birds project. I knew that people from that project would get up-in-arms over this page, no matter what, but am resigned to it, because that double-handful of editors lose their temper completely every time anything about species capitalization comes up, anywhere, for any reason. The WP:ARTHROPODS thing is a weak WP:LOCALCONSENSUS that does not trump WP:MOS. The WP:PLANTS thing doesn't even qualify as that; it's a failure to come to consensus at all, meanwhile MOS has no such failure and provides a default that the plants project has not raised any fuss over. We can't possibly go by something as vague as "country of origin of the plants", because plants often come from more than one country, we may not have that information available (when creating stubs), the sources we have may be published in the UK or US or whatever, using conventions from there but about plants from elsewhere (or simply doing whatever they want, which is actually more common – horticultural publications have a strong tendency toward capitalization for the same reason that animal field guides do: a form of emphasis to make rapid scanning easier, but MOS:CAPS forbids use of caps for that), etc., etc. We cannot reasonably expect editors to capitalize or not capitalize based on what publications in some foreign language from some random country do! I have accurately stated the factual situation: The birds "exception" has been possibly the single most contentious long-running dispute in Wikipedia history, remains controversial, and it is not a dispute supported by the majority of editors in that project, meanwhile MOS has stably said "do not capitalize" for 5 years now.

Taking all that into account, is there particular language you would change? How and why? — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I haven't been uncapitalizing common names of species at all, since I discovered that tree article titles are all capitalized when the common name is used (unusual, but more common for some subcategories like Category:Pinus), and nobody wants to upset the applecart. Art LaPella (talk) 22:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Meh. Almost every single article on rodents was also done this way. I and some others fixed all or most of them. Not one single person that I know of objected. Just because something is done a particular way doesn't mean anyone, or more than a handful, specifically want it that way. A great deal of this capitalization is the direct result of people seeing the birds project do it, assuming it is Wikipedia style, and spreading it, but they don't really care. A lot of the rest of it is because of amateurs noting that field guides always capitalize (as a scanning-aid form of emphasis), and assuming it's "correct" and spreading it, but they don't really care. In a handful of botany and insectology subfields, it's conventional in journals limited to those narrow topics (as with birds), and people who know this assume it is "correct", spread it here, but ultimately don't really care. A handful of stubborn editors who do not understand WP:SSF will continue to insist that WP "must" do what their favored journal does, and will editwar to the death about it. None of these are valid reasons to capitalize common names of species. I have no problem upsetting WP:LOCALCONSENSUS applecarts if doing so ultimately improves the readability and consistency of the encyclopedia at no cost but a few specialists' – instead of millions of everyday readers' – contentedness about a style tweak. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:25, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Further response to Peter coxhead: All anyone really needs to know about this silly issue is that refereed zoology, biology, evolution, ecology and broader science journals, including the most prestigious, do not (with only one known exception!) accept capitalization of bird species common names, even in ornithology papers (or insect or botanical papers). Let that sink in a moment. Not only do mainstream, general-audience publications virtually never, ever capitalize such things, nor do the vastly overwhelming majority of the most reliable sources in science/academia. The only ones that do are comparatively small, one-topic specialty journals. If Nature and Science will not capitalize these names, Wikipedia certainly should not either.

Attempting to arm-twist the WP community into doing so, with canvassed campaigns of poll disruption, hijacking of WP:DRN to launch further attacks on critics of the capitalizing, and threats of editorial walk-outs and boycotts, as various of the "bird capitalization warriors" have, is intellectually dishonest and unethical, as well as a major WP:POINT, WP:DE and WP:BATTLEGROUND problem. (I commend editors from the projects or task forces on those particular two insect topics and few botanical topics, like Peter coxhead, for not behaving like this.) No rational case can be made, in the face of the broader facts than "specialist journals and books in this topic capitalize" (the only fact most proponents of the capitalization ever want to admit into the debate) for pushing a weird convention from a very isolated ivory tower into the most general-purpose publication in history.

The typical argument for capitalization goes: Academic experts in [insert caps-friendly field here] are so used to writing their way that it's onerous for them to not do so, and basically hateful to tell them they can't, and they're all going to run away screaming and quit Wikipedia because they just can't take this level of stupidity and ignorance. This is unadulterated balderdash, of course, because a) it's simply not happening, and b) these very same academics routinely write without this capitalization when they submit papers to journals outside their speciality, as all of them do unless they want to commit career suicide, and submit articles for mainstream publications. It's frankly grossly insulting to imply that professional academics are so brittle-minded that they cannot fathom or tolerate dealing with one particular venue's in-house style guide. Much of their professional lives are spent writing very precisely to a large array of in-house style guides; it's a big part of their day-to-day jobs. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to go over all the old arguments, but I would like to make my position clear. Where there are authoritative lists of common names which capitalise, as there are for birds, lepidoptera and flowering plants in some countries, I dislike the OR required to remove the capitals. Often arbitrary decisions have to be made about de-capitalizing. Etymologically, "Robin" in the bird name is derived from a personal name: the original English name was "redbreast" (which I'm happy to de-capitalise), but following a fashion for personalizing bird names, it became "Robin Redbreast", treated as a personal name + a surname (other such names include "Jenny Wren"). From this the name was shortened to "Robin". Should this now be capitalized or not? I prefer to consult a reliable source rather than rely on arbitrary WP-specific decisions. The Botanical Society of the British Isles uses the common name "Ragged-Robin" for a plant. I have no idea whether this should be de-capitalized to "ragged-Robin" or "ragged-robin". Who is going to decide?

Further, some names were created assuming capitalization and don't work well without. The standard list of moth names used in the UK includes many names of which "The" is part – for example, "The Miller" – not "Miller" but "The Miller" (this is also true for fungi). It's not easy to make such names clear in text without using capitals.

In summary: where sources give common names without capitals, I'm happy to use them, subject as always to consistency within an article. Where they give common names with capitals, then I will continue to use them in articles, and leave it to others to carry out any OR needed to change them. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I have great admiration for your work here on WP, but I would have to respectfully disagree in this instance. To start with the specific question, there are plenty of reliable sources that one could consult about the capitalization of ragged robin. Among sources that do not automatically capitalize plant common names, the USDA PLANTS database uses a lower case "r" in "robin", as do the Merriam-Webster, Random House, and Oxford dictionaries. Googling, I found examples of lower-case "r" at The Guardian and the BBC. Checking out academic journals, it was, again, spelled lower-case "r" in Annals of Botany, Molecular Ecology, and Journal of Applied Ecology. Finally, Google Ngrams shows "ragged robin" to be an order of magnitude more common than "ragged Robin".

Of course, I'm sure there is a better example out there where there is substantial disagreement among sources about whether or not to capitalize an organism's common name, and so the question of what to do in those cases still stands. An agreement to always capitalize common names would avoid such debates, but I don't think that they are so frequent that we need to let it drive Wikipedia's style. Even if we did adopt that policy, there would still be plenty of other issues concerning names. For example, I note that you used a hyphen, "Ragged-Robin", which I assume matches the preferred spelling of the Botanical Society of the British Isles (I tried to look it up, but I found their website confusing). The WP article doesn't use a hyphen, however, and none of the sources I listed above use one. Further, FWIW, the hyphen-less spelling is much more common according to Google Ngrams (although this could be affected by references to the comic book character). The only reason I would see to add a hyphen on the Wikipedia page would be if BSBI were to be treated as having the authoritative list of plant common names. However, it doesn't appear that they are treated that way within the British Isles, much less worldwide, so I would argue that the name should not be hyphenated. Nor do I think that we should change the MOS to say that it is acceptable, much less mandatory, to capitalize common names when the species in question is on the BSBI list. Tdslk (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Be careful, "unadulterated balderdash" sounds like stronger language than "tosh" - which is a de-sysopping offence. I would recommend you use "adulterated balderdash" or "slightly adulterated fiddlesticks" to be safe. Rich Farmbrough, 18:22, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

I think as long as he doesn't fix too many spelling mistakes he'll be ok. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 03:27, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Capitalization inconsistency

From names of breeds: "Breed/variety names are also capitalized logically because they are formal, artificial constructs of fancier and breeder/grower registration organizations, and thus constitute proper-name titles." This touches on the sole legitimate reason to capitalize bird names:

1. If a species is an entity, not a class, its name is a proper name. Scientific names of species have a mixed use, but in many cases they are used as proper names. They are formal, not artificial, but effectively constructs of species naming and registration organizations.
2. Formal English-language bird names have defined (usually 1:1) relationship to species.
3. Thus, the formal bird names are proper names, and should be capitalized.

I am emphatically not arguing for capitalization, but this is the logical basis for capitalized bird names and many other "common" names. By putting these in the same document, you are basically inviting the proponents of capitalization to pick at the difference.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:16, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not the same. No breeding programs established the various bird species, there are no conformation standards for them, they are not competitive divisions in animal showing competitions, and they are not neologistic coinages that usually do not have anything to do with the geography they reference (or are sometimes made-up nonsense like Toyger and Ocicat, that may be even be subject to trademark law)! We simply observe the existence of bird species and describe them (within the somewhat arbitrary, yes, definitions of "genus" and "species"). They can pick at this all they like. A secondary concern is that virtually no species names are capitalized this way, even in specialist journals (only: birds usually, two kinds of insect sometimes, a few kinds of plant sometimes), and outside of specialist literature no one ever capitalizes any, including those, with only very rare exceptions, even in other scientific journals. The breeds case is precisely the oppose: They're all capitalized by all fancier/breeding/showing organizations, with complete consistency and across all types of plant and animal; very frequently also by the mainstream press.

The "logic" you've outlined would make proper names out of every single thing ever catalog[u]ed and named by any organization of any kind. Every element and mineral and compound, for example. Every philosophical or scientific concept. Every legal or technical term of art. Every piece of construction hardware. Etc. That's just under point #1; "oxygen", "gravity", "defamation" and "two-pound framing hammer" are all "entities" under such a conception, yet we all know these are not proper names. This is English, not German; we actually distinguish (sometimes unclearly) between nouns and proper names. English did not used to do so; we've only been doing it since the 1800s. But we're serious about it. Point number two is irrelevant and tautological; of course the names of species correspond to species, by definition. It's a red herring. Point #3 is thus a doubly fallacious conclusion. I have no doubt that you are correct that people will make this argument, as they've already been doing for 8+ years without convincing anyone. If there's a way you can think to rewrite that will minimize confusion/gameability on this, please let me know. Or just edit.

PS: I'm not 100% in favor of capitalizing breed names. I used to outright hate it. But I'm resigned to the fact that it's so overwhelmingly widespread there's nothing to be done about it, and that mainstream English does not consider it wrong. That's not true of species capitalization, which is widely regarded in botany and zoology, as well as generalist publications, as substandard usage. As far as I can tell after 5 years of consistent involvement in the topic here, the only people on all of WP willing to fight and disrupt to get capitalization are around 12 or so (who knows at any given moment and over time) editors at one project. There are a few others who would prefer it for certain topics, but they understand the larger issues and don't make a scene. I would happily ignore the birds case, if it weren't for the fact that their caps keeps spreading and spreading and spreading (partly because certain members of that project have actively proselytized capitalization to other wikiprojects, and yes I can prove that if it comes to it). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:19, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I still don't think you have made a convincing case that bird names are not proper names (fortunately for your cause, the bird folks don't seem to make that argument much, either). Perhaps it would be best to remove the part about proper names, and let the capitalization stand on convention rather than logic.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:27, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I expanded my comment considerably to address "your" 1-2-3 points. But, yeah, I'll have a look at that section and see what I can do with it. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 05:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

In your addressing of my points, I see that either I haven't made myself clear, or that you're arguing a different question. Point 2 is a tautology only for bird names (and possibly for national lists of other species, such as GB plants, I've been told). Most common names have no clear relation to species, which is why the flora naming convention continues to be successful. And there are arguments (albeit with fewer followers in recent years) that species are effectively individuals, in the same sense that people are individuals, and not classes, such as oxygen and ten-pound hammers. If I disagreed with you, these are the arguments that I would reference and elaborate on, and I have to say that it has always surprised me that the bird editors have limited themselves to more pedestrian arguments.--Curtis Clark (talk) 06:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if I misinterpreted you; I hate straw man arguments, and would never make one on purpose. People from the birds project have actually made all these (and more) arguments before (I have a still incomplete – it's missing most of the article talk page debates – but still rather illustrative history of the whole issue at User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:51, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I've rewritten the section. What's your take on it now? — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 06:13, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Looking quickly, it's improved. I wonder, though, about formatting sentences such as "My Labrador Retriever and German Shepherd dog killed and ate the bald eagle." It doesn't look as jarring as, say, "My Labrador retriever and German shepherd dog killed and ate the Bald Eagle," but it's hard for me to see a logical, as contrasted with stylistic, preference.--Curtis Clark (talk) 06:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, as you say, the case is being made now that it's simply conventional. The difference would be that the breeds capitalization is a convention followed across all breeds/cultivars of everything, and frequently honored in mainstream publications, while the birds caps is something no one does outside ornithology publications, and which the scientific community has mostly outright rejected. Breed caps have "gone viral", bird caps remain an isolated oddity. PS: I'm skeptical that anyone actually says/writes "German Shepherd dog", except in a context in which it would be easily confused with a sheepherder from Deutschland, which is not often. :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:13, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I only see "German Shepherd Dog" (sic) in breed lists (and I didn't even know that was the name of the breed until maybe a decade ago). It must have been late at night when I wrote that, because a better example is a breed I actually own, Toy Fox Terrier, because it illustrates some of the clarity issues. A Toy Fox terrier digs toy foxes from their burrows, and a toy Fox Terrier is a larger breed made of plush or plastic. Still and all, it's not unusual to see the plural in lower-case: "I was accosted by a pack of toy fox terriers."--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:27, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

SMcCandlish: I think your initial doubts about capitalizing breed names were valid.

• Google ngrams on "German Shepherd" vs. "German shepherd" favour the latter by about 2:1, although of course the latter may be picking up non-dog uses. Google ngrams on "German Shepherd Dog" vs. "German shepherd dog" produce low numbers, but roughly equal uses for both styles.
• Are you sure that scientific publications capitalize breed names? I tried "Golden Retriever" in Google Scholar and got a pretty even spread of capitalization and non-capitalization. For comparison, Google Scholar produces plenty of hits for the exact capitalization "American Robin". Naturally these are mostly ornithological journals, but the same issue arises with "Golden Retriever" – a quick look suggests to me that veterinary journals are much more likely to capitalize breed names than non-veterinary journals. Do general scientific journals, like Nature, capitalize breed names? The National Geographic doesn't (any more than it capitalizes common names of organisms) – I skimmed through the back-copies I have and found three articles mentioning dog breeds, all of which have styles like "Jack Russell terrier".

Like Curtis Clark, I think it's very hard to maintain that the two cases (capitalizing breed names and capitalizing common names) are sharply different, particularly if someone cares to research usage in depth. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:58, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Comments

1. Not sure about "viruses only" - just "viruses"
2. Italics - most discussion of viruses mentions hosts, vectors etc, so there are almost always italicized binoms around. Not sure if this affects anything
3. "Do not independently italicize name parts" agree but not style issue.
4. I worry slightly that anything will be seen as an error by most readers - this applies to the "Group" rules.
5. The RS section I think does not belong here. (Do not make up names... People that are that foolish will not read, or probably understand ta MoS)
6. I wonder if we should mention [Persea americana guatemalensis] and creating [Persea americana guatemalensis] == #redirect [Persea americana] {redirect with possibilities} (Example fomatted with WP:QWIKI-NOWIKI)
7. "taxonomic authors" - should this be "taxonomic authorities"?
8. "Give a full surname with at least one initial if there is no author article to link to:" there are specific standards for this, I'm not sure how they work, but I believe it's something like this - if "Smith" is "John Smith" (the first smith to be an authority) then "Joseph Smith" will be assigned "J. Smith." Using J.Smith for John Smith would then be wrong. (Not sure about this but it's a concern unless someone knows better.)
   Rich Farmbrough, 17:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC).
   

Authors of botanical names have canonical abbreviations. Zoological names, not so much.--Curtis Clark (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

9.  Unicorn - is this a genus or a species?

Rich Farmbrough, 17:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

1. Fixed.
2. I don't see that it would; we're already saying to italicize those.
3. How can italics not be a style issue? Other parts of MOS cover link formatting, so this subpage should, too, where it needs to.
4. That's the current case and probably always will be. This page will provide a one-stop stop for showing that a particular correct usage is not an error. Like much of MOS, no one's expected to memorize it; it's a reference page for resolving editing disputes (and hopefully preventing some). Another major incentive for researching and writing this is to reduce the level of admittedly frustrated but decreasingly forgivable hostility shown toward non-experts (especially toward noobs, but it's a broader civility and consensus-building concern than that) by too many academic expert editors (and hobbyists who act like them), who do not understand that they do not own and control articles in their particular topic of interest just because they've made a wikiproject. This is a problem that has been getting palpably worse, not better, and nomenclature is a frequent source of "NO NO NO, don't touch our articles!" outbursts. The problem is two-fold: 1) No page like this has existed for non-expert editors to get up to speed, and for expert editors to cite for why a "weird-looking" taxonomic name is the way it is and isn't an error; and much more seriously, 2) there hasn't been a guideline that lays out a consistent Wikipedia way to handle all of these style matters, with the attendant, inevitable result that many wikiprojects have just done whatever the hell they feel like, ignoring MOS and article titles policy, because they feel it simply doesn't apply to them. They also like to pretend that WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy doesn't exist, but that's another issue for another time. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 06:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

... 5-8 ? Rich Farmbrough, 00:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC).

I think dinner was calling or something. I'll endeavor to get back to this! But dinner is actually calling right now again. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:58, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

5.  You're right that "don't make up names" isn't a style issue, but I added it to address an actual recurrent problem and it is intrinsically related to organism naming. Maybe it can be phrase to be more "by the way..." parenthetical. It would seem unfortunate to me for it to be the only piece of organism nomenclature advice we've come up with that wasn't included here.

6.  Done. Didn't even know about {{R with possibilities}}.

7.  I actually used "authorities" originally but got corrected; apparently "authors" is the term of art. Thus, e.g., List of botanists by author abbreviation. I actually not entirely comfortable with the current wording that major botanical name authors "should" be abbreviated and would prefer to eliminate that advice or at least moderate it to "may". Just because botanists do it in botany journals doesn't magically make it a Wikipedia-appropriate practice. But, I guess the sky won't fall down if people at least link to the article on the author or the list of author abbrevs.

From the ICN: "46A.Note1 Brummitt & Powell’s Authors of plant names (1992) provides unambiguous standard forms for a large number of authors of names of organisms in conformity with this Recommendation. These abbreviations, updated as necessary from the International Plant Names Index (www.ipni.org) and Index Fungorum (www.indexfungorum.org), have been used for author citations throughout this Code." [1]. The value of these abbreviations is that they are standardized and unambiguous. For modern sources, an editor would do well to reproduce the abbreviated form exactly, or else use it to find the long form used by IPNI or Index Fungorum; anything else is OR. For older references, lacking clarification from reliable sources, the authors should be copied as they appear if they are at all ambiguous.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:33, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

8.  The "J. Smith" business needs some looking into. We do of course want to respect the convoluted conventions as much as possible, but not at the expense of encyclopedia readers' understanding. It would be better to just use full author names if no other solution can be found. Anyway, on the specific case you mention but aren't sure of, I would love to get more input on that and see if there's a way to write out how to do this in a way that helps our readers and doesn't conflict with the "official" style. So this one is definitely unresolved for now.

9.  Heh. I would have to think it's a species or common name, since the genus would be Equus.  :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:58, 6 February 2013 (UTC) Actually it would be a common name, as the Latin is ūnicornis, thus a binomial of Equus unicornis! — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 16:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Viruses

Some parts of this sound wrong to me, but I don't know enough about viral nomenclature to comment. Are there WP virus experts you could consult?--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:09, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Surely, though I don't know who they are yet. I based the virus info on WP's own article on the ICTV, with no guarantee that that article is correct on everything. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 06:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I made a change, but I think the previous information it referred to has been changed. But somewhere we need to get across that the norm among animals, plants, and bacteria is that the species name includes the name of the genus (Homo sapiens) but that among viruses, the species name can stand alone ("Hendra virus" vs. "Henipavirus Hendra virus"). Again, if I'm interpreting the rules correctly.--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:53, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I am no expert on viral names, but for a day or so last year I was getting that way (adding to List of viruses mainly). The basic take-away is that that virus community have, ever so politely, done with their naming conventions what makes reasonable sense for the current era, rather than following a centuries old tradition of mock-Latin. There has been some fallout much as there would be on Wikipedia - taxonomists can turn pretty ugly when riled! Rich Farmbrough, 18:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC).

The species name can stand alone. I can't see where it is made clear that virus names are not capitalized or italicized, unless taxonomy and nomenclature are the subjects of the discourse. It is correct to write, "a common cause of jaundice is hepatitis A virus", but not correct to write "a common cause of jaundice is Hepatitis A virus" or worse "a common cause of jaundice is Hepatitis A virus". Similarly, when discussing rotavirus, we just say rotavirus, not "Rotavirus". For plant viruses for examples, it's just tobacco mosaic virus and tomato bushy stunt virus and so on. In the following sentence the formal taxonomic usage is correct: The most common viruses that cause gastroenteritis belong to the genera Rotavirus and Norovirus. So it's simply, herpes simplex virus, smallpox virus, varicella zoster virus, etc. most of the time. The exceptions are those viruses whose names are derived from people or places. So it is always Epstein-Barr virus, and Marburg virus for examples. Even virologists often find this confusing and this is one reason why they resort to abbreviations (without the periods as is correctly pointed out. I don't agree with this sentence from the proposed policy, " In a virology article, use within Herpesviridae, genus Cytomegalovirus belongs to the Betaherpesvirinae subfamily, but otherwise use within Herpesviridae, genus Cytomegalovirus belongs to the Betaherpesvirinae subfamily." All of the virus names should be in italics in this context, whether in a virology article or not. Also, virologists always use the definite article when referring to families: it should be "within the Herpesviridae...". In "my" Rotavirus article, I think the usage is correct (although I had to check!) as I think it is in Virus too. Graham Colm (talk) 19:34, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Before I respond, there's clearly a typo here; it should have read "but otherwise use within Herpesviridae, genus Cytomegalovirus belongs to the Betaherpesvirinae subfamily", since genus is always italicized, regardless of branch of biology. Onward: "All of the virus names should be in italics in this context, whether in a virology article or not." If you mean italicizing "Herpesviridae" and "Betaherpesvirinae" outside of virology-focused articles, no one but a virologist, and not even all virologists on WP, probably not even a majority of them, will accept that, because it will lead to an immediately reader-confusing conflict of taxonomic styles in the same article. The #1 rule of MOS is "be consistent within an article". What this draft is saying about writing about viruses outside of virology-focused articles is precisely what it (and more to the point, MOS proper) has said about ornithologists [controversially] capitalizing bird species common names: Don't do it outside articles focused on that field. Virology isn't somehow immune [pun!] to the same reasoning. I would bet good money that the more general/broad refereed science journals like Nature and Science handle this the same way (I know for a fact that they do not permit bird capitalization even in orn. articles, because it's jarring to everyone but bird people, so I'm highly skeptical they would permit non-standard italicization of taxa at levels above genus, just because a virus was mentioned). Agreed that the section needs to make it clear that it's not Rotavius except in taxonomy. A similar clarifiation is needed more broadly. Been meaning to add that all day, actually. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation and WP:COMMONNAME

The assertion was made at WP:EQUINE that "Exmoor pony" is the breed name, implying that a careful consideration of the common name for the breed might determine that Exmoor pony should be the article title. Lest this document be in conflict with WP:TITLE, there needs to be wording to the effect that disambiguation is only necessary when the common name is ambiguous. Making this clear would make a stronger case for a consistent disambiguation style, since it's a way of separating those common names that include "cat", "pony", etc., from those that don't.--Curtis Clark (talk) 23:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

I think the issue is partly there due to the capitalization protocols of WP's MOS, where WikiProject Equine lost a couple rounds of trying to maintain title case for some breeds. Many of these breeds add the modifier "pony" to distinguish them from horses. For example, the Hackney horse is often called a "Hackney" while the Hackney pony is a distinct breed with little common ancestry, just a similar style of moving. The only time you hear people call these pony breeds "Exmoor", "Dartmoor", "Shetland" and so on is when they are comparing one pony breed to another. In some cases, the moniker "horse" is also considered integral to the breed name, such as Icelandic horse or Miniature horse, where those who breed such horses consider it a bit of an insult to have them labeled as "ponies" even if they are small. We fought and won American Quarter Horse staying in title case, but that is one of the few. Montanabw^(talk) 21:04, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Follow up: Just noticed that the rule on parentheticals is pretty much observed in the breach, wiki-wide. An example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan Montanabw^(talk) 21:31, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Well parenthetical disambiguation is only necessary when the name is ambiguous. But in other cases COMMONNAME will demand, as you say, an article name that performs the disambiguation perfectly well. And it would be a bad idea, if, say "Exmoor pony" was merely on the cusp of being the COMMONNAME to use "Exmoor (pony)" instead. This may be too subtle for Wikipedia rules though. Rich Farmbrough, 16:03, 7 January 2013 (UTC).

True 'dat. I think this issue is calming down in the equine realm. Montanabw^(talk) 22:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

A complication is that except out of context, one would not say "Icelandic horse" but simply "Icelandic". Many, and I think most dom. animal projects drop the animal type (Japanese Bobtail, for example, and many horse articles are also named this way), except where it's strictly required (as in American Quarter Horse), and then add the type as a parenthetical disambiguator when the name conflicts with other articles, as it usually does for the very common case of breeds being named after places (Siamese (cat)). You (meaning Montanabw) have me mostly convinced that this is wrongheaded, and that Icelandic horse and Siamese cat (but, because type is mandatory with them and part of the formal breed name, American Quarter Horse and Norwegian Forest Cat) are the better way to go. It's now a matter of figuring out a policy-based explanation for why it's better, and explaining it here as it pertains to breeds/cultivars, to reduce any further confusion on the matter. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:19, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, use would depend on whether you are speaking or writing in a formal or informal manner, AND the context; to say "A Szymphzqh" without further attribution would lead a person to ask: "A Szymphzqh ...what? Cat? Dog? Piece of computer technology? Alien life form?" If horse people are talking about horses, then yes, it would be a "Szymphzqh." But if you were amongst animal aficionados in general, you might say "a Szymphzqh horse," particularly if there were also a Szymphzqh cow. (We have a couple of such cases out there, actually) Likewise, amongst non-animal people, you'd say "a Szymphzqh horse" as well. But in either case, I think a strong argument can be made to prefer natural disambiguation in these cases. As for the capitalization issue, I've given up on arguing with the MOSCAPs people who care, so I just do everything sentence case unless I am convinced we can make a VERY strong case (as in the two examples you cite above) for title case. Montanabw^(talk) 22:17, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm probably missing something, but how about something along the lines of natural disambiguation being preferred to parenthetical disambiguation, when both terms are found as common names in reliable sources, even if the disambiguated form is less common than the undisambiguated form? Montanabw made the point that natural disambiguation is more familiar to readers, and policy firmly supports every part of this except using a less common form.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

When no other factors are in play, natural disambiguation is to be preferred over parenthetical disambiguation, because it is more familiar to readers. This extends to using a somewhat less common naturally disambiguated name for an article title in preference to a more common name that requires parenthetical disambiguation, provided both names can be established in common use in reliable sources.--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:22, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes I would be cool with that, though it is more complex than we like in guidelines. But it's a generic sort of guideline really - the reason we use ", Ohio" in fact, and belongs maybe in the general title guidelines. Rich Farmbrough, 00:10, 11 January 2013 (UTC).

WP:COMMONSENSE, yes, "London (England)" would be patently ridiculous. Montanabw^(talk) 18:28, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I concur as well. I think we're getting somewhere. I've inverted the preference in the MOS:ORGANISMS draft here to now prefer "Siamese cat" over "Siamese (cat)" but did not yet use anything like the Curtis Clark wording in green above. Rich Farmbrough has a point, and maybe this should be clarified all the way up at WP:AT more broadly and less category-specifically. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:56, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Footnote 4

Footnote 4 begins with "(the majority of participants in that project have never voiced an opinion on the matter)". "that project" refers to WikiProject Birds, which the reader is expected to remember from 99 words before the footnote. He is further expected to eliminate alternative meanings for "that project" like "site-wide consensus", on the grounds that each of those possibilities is not a "project". I think it will take him several seconds to understand it. Was that deliberate? Art LaPella (talk) 02:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Art LaPella (talk) 17:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

It was just an artifact of a series of copy-pastes and rewordings without starting from the top and reading it through. :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 04:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Italicisation of common names

You might be interested in this discussion from WP:PLANTS (took me awhile to find it in the archives). I don't think we ever came to a conclusion, but the pitfalls remain.--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I think the only consensus was that where the common name and the genus name were the same, then it's better to try to avoid using the common name in the singular. Thus "most pelargoniums are not frost-hardy" is better stylistically than "most kinds of pelargonium are not frost-hardy". Some preferred the stronger approach of never using a genus name as a common name in Wikipedia articles, but we didn't reach a consensus on this. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Peter, for jogging my memory. That sounds right.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

How would this get integrated? In the "stonger approach", what would one use instead of the genus name, if the genus name and common name coincide? <does not compute...> — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:51, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

In that approach you would still use the genus name (with the italics), and not pretend that it is a different "common" word just because you change the typography, since the Code says that changing typography doesn't change the meaning. So those nutjobs (me) would have you use Rhodendron instead of rhododenron. So the idea is that they are really the same words, with one merely having poor typography; not different words in a paralell, common-use nomenclature system. . --Tom Hulse (talk) 02:02, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Tom's opinion is somewhat of a minority, with other editors agreeing that sometimes organisms have common names that are spelled the same as the generic name. The whole discussion is no doubt tl;dr, but there's no point in repeating it here if you haven't read it. It never fully reached consensus on all the issues, and thus might be best avoided here.--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:25, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, agreed. I came off as the radical in that one, lol. The one good thing that came of it though was that a few agreed it's usually not hard to avoid using the singular form of the common name that matches exactly to the genus spelling when possible, as Peter mentioned above. --Tom Hulse (talk) 05:36, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

To go back to SMcCandlish's specific question, we all agree that in the strict approach you would change "most species and cultivars of pelargonium are not frost-hardy" to "most species and cultivars of Pelargonium are not frost-hardy". To avoid any possibility of edit-warring over this styling issue, my strategy has always been to try to reword uses of the lower-case common name to use the plural rather than change them to the italic genus name.

However, that wasn't the difficult issue, if you look at the archives. I agree with Curtis that we shouldn't go over all this here. But just to inform SMcCandlish, in gardening use, "rhododendron" ≠ Rhododendron because both UK and US sources distinguish between "rhododendrons" and "azaleas", although both are members of Rhododendron. So in this usage, I can correctly write "almost all rhododendrons grown in the UK are evergreen whereas many azaleas are deciduous". (For the US, see e.g. this Oregon State Univ webpage.) This means that some uses of lower-case "rhododendron(s)" correspond to Rhododendron, others don't. Forbidding this, as I think Tom wants, is inconsistent with high-quality gardening sources and the usage of the majority of readers; allowing it makes it extremely hard, if not impossible, to write clearly and precisely. (As an exercise, review OSU page; mostly they've been careful to use "rhododendron" = Rhododendron and then talk about "azaleas and other rhododendrons", but I think there are still some ambiguous uses.) We're not going to reach a general consensus. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:09, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Some comments

Starting in a small way from the top of the page, a couple of points that don't sit well with the botanical code of nomenclature: "Capitalize scientific names from subgenus upward, and italicize them from supragenus downward through subspecies."

Section and series would also be capitalized, see for example Ex 1 of Article 21.1 Arenaria ser. Anomalae. Varieties, formae, and subformae would also (normally) be italicized, e.g., Saxifraga aizoon subf. surculosa in Ex 1 of Article 24.1.

"Formal domesticated varieties/breeds may be capitalized, but not informal landraces or types."

The word "types" in "informal landraces or types" is confusing; to me the default meaning would be Type (biology).

Sminthopsis84 (talk) 07:10, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Except there's no such thing as an "informal type specimen" and the page already discussed type specimens and how, in a very narrow context, "type" can mean "type specimen". English is full of words being used with two meanings, and regardless "type" is in fact a term of art outside academic biology in animal breeding. Biology isn't "better" than animal husbandry, so we can't pretend that the breeder usage doesn't exist, and isn't the proper usage in this context. The biology usage clearly cannot be mistaken for the proper use in this context, since type specimens are never informal and don't have anything to do with breeds and landraces. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

It's quite hard to write the italicization and capitalization rules correctly for both main codes. I think the following are correct:

• Only italicize names at the rank of genus and below (including all ranks derived from genus, like supragenus or subgenus). Connecting terms in such names, such as "subsp." or the hybrid sign, ×, are not italicized.
• The second and third words of two and three part names are not capitalized; all one word names are.

If this wording withstands scrutiny, it can replace what is there now. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:11, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

That wording seems okay to me except that supragenus is not a term in the botanical code: the prefix sub- is the only one used to make intermediate taxa; "suprageneric" refers to higher ranks such as family. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I know I encountered the term "supragenus" at some point in researching this piece over the last 5 years (it really has been that long!), but can't find it again. It must be rare or obsolete or substandard, so I've removed it. As for "one-word names" I'm skeptical people would know what that means. The current text (as of 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC) [2]) seems to get at it all correctly (it uses most of Peter coxhead's clarifications, but massages the wording for flow/clarity a bit, especially in the nutshell at the top). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Isn't there some consensus out there in RL about taxonomic names? Aren't they almost always italicized? ISn't there a WP:RS out there on this? As for the rest, It is tough to determine the difference between breeds and landraces in many cases, so a difference in capitalization rules will just start edit wars. A "type" that is a group, (i.e. warmblood horses) is an easy call, but Brumby is more complex, particularly when the name of the breed/landrace/whatever it is happens to also most likely be a person's last name, anyway. If a line exists, perhaps it's maverick, which was a man's last name, but is used in a generic sense to describe status of animals, not genetics. Montanabw^(talk) 22:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, there's a consensus on scientific names all right, namely the one that the current text doesn't quite describe correctly. The problem is only to word it succinctly, since the two main codes use different terminology, and some taxonomists of each persuasion are very touchy about using the wrong language (e.g. "specific epithet" in botany = "species name" in zoology).

As for capitalizing breeds and landraces, I have no opinions either way, but I think it's quite illogical to forbid capitalizing the common names of organisms and yet capitalize breed names. What is the logical difference between "German Shepherd" and "Grey Wolf" or "American Robin"? Peter coxhead (talk) 03:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue A: Code conflicts. Actually, I've just read, I think, four different sources that all disagree with the idea that "specific epithet" in botany = "species name" in zoology. The usage of "specific epithet" is the two fields is different; it has one exact meaning in botany, but a more fluid one in zoology, where it isn't often used anyway. And there's really no reason to get into it at all, because "scientific name" as we've described it here covers both cases. This is a (draft) guideline for Wikipedia editors to use in real life to write articles here; it is emphatically not an in depth exploration of every tiny nuance of the ever-changing ultrageekery at the heart of nomenclature codes. For people who want that level of nitpicking, go see pages like Specific epithet. The codes seem to clearly be written to conflict with each other on purpose, for the same reason that Marines call Army guys wussies, and Police Department cops do various insignificant things differently from Sheriff's Department deputies and make fun of them for it. It's a penis-waving contest. We have better things to do than entertain that competition, like write encyclopedia articles. This draft is so very close to good enough for our purposes that I think February 2013 should be the last month we do any more nit-picking on it before promoting it to guideline designation and using it. Super-nerdy minutiae of shades of meaning can be massaged in later if and when doing so proves necessary in order to resolve actual problems like editwarring or incorrect information being added to articles due to a miswording here. We can't keep just sitting on this and not accepting it because it's not quite "perfect". That's actually a classical fallacy. No position is ever perfect, and real life requires that we use the best solution available to us, not pretend that problems cannot be solved. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Issue B: Breed vs. species capitalization. The difference between "German Shepherd [dog]" and "grey wolf" is that probably over 99% of works, academic and non-academic, about animal breeds, of all kinds, and plant cultivars as well, capitalize them (ultimately what they are really are titles of conformance standards and of competitive divisions, as published and administered, respectively, as the official output of breeder/fancier pedigree registry organizations); meanwhile the vast majority of common names of species are almost never capitalized even in academic literature, and many fields, including mammal zoology, have explicit conventions against doing so. The logic is actually entirely different. Formal breeds are akin to trademarks or book titles (iPod, The Lord of the Rings), while landraces and species are akin to general classes of such things (portable digital media player, fantasy novel). Furthermore, the vast majority of breed names are derived from proper names, and some of them are even registered trademarks, and our users cannot be expected to know the difference, but a much lower percentage of species names are based on personal or geographical ones, and 0% of them are trademarks or otherwise intrinsically proper nouns as a whole (they just often contain one). The page already explains all this. Another answer to this question is more prosaic: Virtually no species names are capitalized here, and virtually no breed names are not. Do you want to go change several hundred thousand articles? — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Issue C: Distinguishing breeds and landraces. Landraces and breeds are really not that hard to separate. If a breeder/fancier organization has a published conformance standard and a pedigree database and selectively bred animals, it's a breed. If it's just some local variety that's arisen on farms or whatever in a region, because people keep kinda breeding them that way without paying much attention and the gene pool is limited, it's a landrace, like the Van cat which gave rise to the formal Turkish Van breed but remains distinct from it. Landraces do not even have to be old. The St. John's water dog was a landrace, and the Maine Coon cat originated as one (and is now a formal breed), and arose only in the last couple of centuries. With livestock, we're going to have to come to some kind of line to draw between "this is a real organization, incorporated under the law in their jurisdiction, with a board of directors, an actual headquarters, and dues-paying members, which publishes breed standards, maintains a pedigree database, and holds competitive shows" vs. "this is two farmers with a tiny stud book who are calling a grand total of 5 inbred specimens a 'breed'". What exactly that line is remains to be seen, but like everything else it can be defined one way or another. Separating the cat articles out into landraces, formal breeds and a handful of transitional examples (landraces with formal selective breeding programs but which do not have any major organizational recognition yet), was actually quite easy. Horses are not alien space gods or magical demons or something :-) – they're just bigger animals we breed in the same controlled way, or which breed unselectively when left to their own devices, just like cats, pigs, dogs, goats, etc. Basically, as a matter of WP:NOR and WP:V, the presumption has to be that any purported breed is actually a landrace until such time as breeder/fancier/registry organization documents are cited as reliable sources that they are in fact a formal breed. Basically the very definition of "breed" vs. landrace is that formal, reliable documentation exists for the former. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I fully support keeping scientific names in line with mainstream RL consensus on style, and to do otherwise is WP:SYNTH. As for animal breeds, that capitalization fight has been going on in wiki forever. I favor treating breed names as proper nouns, as we do for the "ethnicity" of humans (at least, my dictionary indicates that "Causasian" is capitalized, as are nationalities) For the rest, the robin and the wolf are distinct wild, natural species or subspecies, where it appears that lower case prevails, in general. However, "German" and "American" are universally agreed to be proper nouns, so you would have a shitstorm making them lower case, but as for the rest, title case works for me, and I'll let the MOSCAPS folks debate it endlessly to the end of time. Montanabw^(talk) 21:03, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

No one has proposed not capitalizeding "American" or "German". MOS already says don't capitalize "wolf", etc. Breed capitalization is actually no longer a controversy here, really. You don't know what a controversy is until you suggest that capitalizing the common names of bird species doesn't make sense; you'd better have an asbestos suit armored with Kevlar. Anyway, the breed articles naming issue that really isn't resolved is disambiguation (is it Siamese (cat) or Siamese cat? I've been on the fence on this for years. You'll remember that you and I cleaned up the donkey category, in the form Poitou donkey a few years ago, but in the interim I got used to WP:CATS doing Manx (cat) and bent WP:EQUINE out of shape by moving some horse articles to use that kind of disambiguation. I think we just need to review WP:AT and WP:DAB, figure out which of the two makes the most sense, have an RFC proposing it as a standard, and go from there. I think it will come down in favor of Poitou donkey and Siamese cat (but further capitalization where the animal type is a necessary and always-included part of the name to avoid confusion, as in American Quarter Horse and Norwegian Forest Cat). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 00:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Be sure to put the asbestos outside the Kevlar, or, better, sandwich the asbestos between two layers of Kevlar.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:46, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Capitalization of common names

MOS:CAPS#Common names has a far less aggressive and more (although not fully) accurate account of the present situation. I see no reason why its wording should not be used here. Peter coxhead (talk) 02:36, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

No one is arguing about species, the naming of dolphins, dogs, or dromedaries with lower case. Common names are not the issue. I can't tell if there is an actual dispute over scientific names, or if everyone is just agreeing that it needs to be fixed. But that also does not appear to be an issue, either. The only issue might, maybe, if someone has a problem with breed names generally capitalized as proper nouns and other factors of consistency. And given that it is an endless debate, it's not worth wasting time on here, IMHO. And, it appears that the current draft reflects this anyway. Out there in editing land, some people don't understand the difference between a breed and a species, sigh... Montanabw^(talk) 19:55, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's an endless debate, and that it's not worth wasting time on here. However, some of the language used in the current draft is unnecessarily confrontational and so more likely to provoke debate and waste time. That's my only point and I won't make it again. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:42, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe just edit the draft? Montanabw^(talk) 18:22, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I've tried to address this a bit, but it's important to note that people keep trying to tweak MOS:CAPS#Common_names itself to subtly (and less subtly over time) contradict MOS. I just undid that, for the umpteenth time over there, though I expect I'll get reverted by someone or other, and the kvetching will start over again until some kind of dispute resolution happens. MOS (as it says right up at the top of it) supersedes it's sub-pages, so it is a pointless to keep futzing with the text to contradict the main MOS page, but people keep doing it anyway. MOS:ORGANISMS here refrains from engaging in that game, and thus, as MOS:CAPS is nudged to diverge from MOS, MOS:CAPS will also necessarily diverge from MOS:ORGANISMS. I have attempted to moderate the language Peter coxhead isn't happy with, but such an effort can only go so far before it sounds like an invitation for every wikiproject on the system to pretend WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy does not exist and start making up their own inconsistent rules again. LOCALCONSENSUS exists, and grew out of a series of ARBCOM cases, specifically to prevent wikiprojects from ignoring broader consensuses at mainstream policies and guidelines. There's really just no way around this, no matter how much a few tendentious participants in one project are liable to have a fit about it, just like they do every single time anyone ever brings up their non-standard typography, for nine years running so far. Really, at some point they are going to have to stop pretending they cannot hear that consensus is against them. The only reason the debate has been endless-to-date is because people who work on MOS are unusually patient and understand how difficult it is to let go of a grammatical or stylistic peeve for the good of the project, and thus no one's bothered to take the matter to ArbCom. But that happening is pretty much inevitable if a dozen or so of them fighting their "capitalization war" (not my term – one of them came up with that) don't drop their WP:BATTLEGROUND anti-MOS positioning; I think we all know which way that case is going to go. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Characterizing those who work mainly on the MOS as "unusually patient" wouldn't be my description! (I note that admins recently warned both sides in a MOS dispute.) It's not a question of being "pro" or "anti" MOS, but more one of how far the MOS should prescribe to editors and how far it should describe the consensuses (plural if there is such a word) they reach. Recent discussions suggest to me that there is strong resistance to the more prescriptivist view.

I would like this new page to be accepted as part of the MOS (accepted, not imposed and parts fought over and ignored). This requires it to have a more consensual and less confrontational style, while, of course, accurately reflecting other parts of the MOS. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that MOS editors on any side of a disagreemnt don't get somewhat hot around the collar about pet issues, but the regulars in my view show a remarkable amount of tolerance for rehash and verbal abuse

Anyway, I've taken another stab at trying to moderate the material you're objecting to (and removed your and my specific attribution, per WP:ARBATC about "personalizing MOS/AT disputes"). I don't see any way around the facts that MOS has a clear standard, one project has fought half-to-death against it, MOS has noted the dispute and suggested that it be resolved eventually, but does not endorse it as an exception, meanwhile people keep twisting MOS:CAPS to make it seem like an endorsed exception with more exceptions as company. This page is was written to the MOS standard not the MOS:CAPS pretend-standard, because MOS supersedes MOS:CAPS. Doing it any other way would require a new consensus discussion at WT:MOS that changes what MOS says, e.g. to endorse the MOS:CAPS approach. Is the new text any better? I'm not sure what else needs to be done to record the facts about the situation while neither supporting nor attacking the birds project (and the handful of individual editors in favor of capitalizing a few insects and plants; neither insect nor botany projects have ever come to a conclusion that they should be capitalized, only that the projects wouldn't take a position one way or another, and this predates MOS taking a clear position). Are there specific changes you'd make to the wording? Most of it's in the birds footnote now. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:58, 6 February 2013 (UTC) PS: I don't mean to imply that you are anti-MOS; I know that you are something of a moderate on this. But several members of the birds project have been literally anti-MOS. Various other "specialist style" advocates have also agitated perennially that the MOS itself should simply be abolished, with wikiprojects left to set topic-specific style rules. I don't think that a majority of WP:BIRDS members are such people; in fact a majority of them have never said a thing about capitalization here, and many who have just have expressed that they don't care and find the debate distracting and tiresome, and are even tired of the project as a whole being blamed for the tendentiousness of some of its members. Personally I try to remember to refer to "some members of WP:BIRDS", etc., not "WP:BIRDS" as if it were a single entity. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

As I understood it, the intention of this page was to replace existing separate guidance for fauna and flora, making life easier both for users and for maintainers of the MOS. A new page also offers the opportunity to clarify and, where possible, simplify. So it seems reasonable to me to say that the page should reliably reflect all existing guidance as expressed in the MOS (which includes its subpages). If that guidance gets changed (as we both think it should, although not in the same way!), there should of course be changes here. This isn't the place to initiate or discuss such changes. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:47, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Only where the subguidelines do not contradict WP:Manual of Style proper. The main MOS page supersedes its subguidelines, very explicitly, for the very reason that people keep trying to POV-fork the subguidelines. I.e., you're making an argument that POV forking is okay here, and that this new MOS page should accommodate that editwarring. Quite the opposite is the case. MOS is engineered on purpose so that POV-forking is pointless. If you can't get consensus to change something at WT:MOS, then changing it in some subguideline page isn't going to work, sorry.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  20:49, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Author information after epithets

I encountered this on a page about cactuses/cacti:

• ''[[Acanthocereus]]'' <small>([[George Engelmann|Engelm.]] ex [[Alwin Berger|A.Berger]]) [[Nathaniel Lord Britton|Britton]] & [[Joseph Nelson Rose|Rose]]</small>

which renders as:

• Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose

It raises three questions (to me – maybe there are others):

1. Should <small>...</small> be used here? Some people have raised WP:Accessibility concerns with ever using it, but I'm not sure how convincing they are (and it is regularly used in various templates likes infoboxes). I think it improves parseability in such a case, quite dramatically: Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose vs. Acanthocereus (Engelm. ex A.Berger) Britton & Rose I've not recommended the small style in the draft guideline (yet).
2. Should the "ex" (Latin for 'from') be italicized here? As in: Engelm. ex A.Berger vs. Engelm. ex A.Berger. I beging by thinking it should be, but if there's an explicit convention against doing so, it's not a big deal (we regularly do not italicize Latin borrowings into English if they're loosely considered "familiar" enough). I've suggested in the draft guideline not using the italics, on the assumption that it's a convention (I make that assumption based on the fact that f., var. and other connecting terms based on Latin (in this case on Latin: forma and Latin: varietas, not the English words "form" and "variety") are not italicized in the same context of taxonomy. We also regularly don't italicize "ex" in particular (e.g. Dave Grohl ex of Nirvana).
3. Should A.Berger be A. Berger? I have to say yes, even if there is a convention in some journals to drop the spacing (and there is, at least in bibliographies). It's very annoying and impedes readability. In the draft guideline, I've included the space, and not noted doing so; it seems a no-brainer. That said, if there really is such a convention, it could be approximated with a "thin space" character, without impeding accessibility and usability: A. Berger: A. Berger. It's just readable enough that it's not a problem, and it does help group the initial(s) with the surname.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  21:01, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The italics

"ex" is not italicized in the ICNAFP. I can't find that use of "ex" is even mentioned in the ICZN, which is particularly unfortunate, since botanical and zoological practice differ in whether the person to whom authorship should actually be attributed appears before or after the "ex". I'd go with keeping it unitalicized. Plantdrew (talk) 22:53, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Italics beyond "ex": What about this case: Synonyms: Striginae sensu Sibley & Ahlquist from a bird family article? Why would we italicize sensu here but not ex, other than ex being kind of familiar in English? I think we would prefer to always italicize or always not italicize these author-info Latinisms, unless there's a published RS rule about it that is consistently followed in the real world.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:54, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

That's a little different. Sibley & Ahlquist aren't being cited as authors of Striginae, but sensu indicates that it's their circumscription of the subfamily that is being discussed (the authorship is still Striginae Vigors, 1825). There are other Latin terms that may be interpolated into scientific names that aren't actually part of the formal name+citation, but which provide additional information. Sensu lato (s.l.) and sensu stricto (s.s) for different circumscriptions, not specifically attributed to a particular taxonomist. cf./aff.' for uncertain identification (e.g. Strix cf. occidentalis). These are usually italicized, as they are Latin, and are not actually part of the name. There's also "non", as in "Strix varia Jones, 1835 non Barton, 1799 for discussing a homonym and "auct. non" for misidentifications that are widespread in the literature. My impression of actual practice with these is that "auct. non" for a misidentification is more often italicized than "non" for a homonym. I think the difference is that the homonym "non" is used in the middle of an unitalicized string of author names, while "auct non." is used in between the italicized name and the unitalicized author citation. And this might partly explain why "ex" isn't italicized; it's in the middle of the unitalicized part of name+citation (but in contrast to "non", "ex" may be part of the formal author citation). So I'd suggest that MOS should mandate italicization of all Latin interpolary terms (including use of "non" with homonyms), but "ex" should be left unitalicized as a quasi-integral (see next paragraph)) part of the nonitalicized author citation. Does that make sense?

Another thing. MOS should maybe have a clause about including authors on both sides of an "ex". "Ex" is a means of giving credit to somebody who isn't the actual formal author of the name. E.g., if somebody dies and leaves an unpublished manuscript, somebody else might revise and publish it (with "ex" giving credit to the dead person). Botanical and zoological practice differ in whether the dead person's name is before the ex or after the ex. In either practice, the credited persons name may be omitted from the author citation. I have trouble keep straight which way is which, and always include the authors on both sides of the ex to play it safe. These days, it seems to be pretty rare for taxonomic source to omit the credited persons name. I realize this kind of contradicts what I said above about the "ex" being integral to the author citation, but it's not really an interpolation like "non". Plantdrew (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that sort of stuff would be outside the scope of this MOS [draft] subpage. People should just give that info the way the sources do. I was just concerned with the styling of it; going with italics is the easiest rule to offer, and seems to be what the sources mostly do, other than some journals never italicise or do anything special, because their readers already know what this stuff is and don't need typographic hints, and some more field-guidey books don't italicize ex because, I'm guessing, it is so familiar. Here, I'm just talking about or things like ex and sensu as used with author information. Interpolation into epithets like "cf." in Strix cf. occidentalis aren't italicized; I was bashing my head against the ICNCP last night, provision by provision, and ran across an explicit rule about that, and there are similar examples, with "subsp." and "subgenus" in the ICN and ICZN (neither of which set style rules, but clearly enough illustrate what they'd prefer)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:40, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

The spacing

The spacing issue is complicated. I'd prefer to include the space, but unspaced author citation is far more common on Wikipedia. The ICNAFP says:

Brummitt & Powell’s Authors of plant names (1992) provides unambiguous standard forms for a large number of authors of names of organisms in conformity with this Recommendation. These abbreviations, updated as necessary from the International Plant Names Index (www.ipni.org) and Index Fungorum (www.indexfungorum.org), have been used for author citations throughout this Code.

When authors are cited in the code itself spaces are consistently included. In contrast, the sources for author citation that the codes explicitly recommends Brummit & Powell (the printed book), and IPNI consistently omit spaces. I've always assumed this was due to limitations in a 1980's database (the printed B&P is basically a straight dump of a database). B&P and IPNI don't anywhere discuss their reasons for omitting spaces.

The Plant List follows B&P and omits spaces. TROPICOS and ARS-GRIN include spaces. Template:Botanist is widely used on botanist biography pages, and runs a query of IPNI's authority data. The IPNI query fails to work if a space is included. I'd prefer to follow the example of the Code, but I don't think there's enough consistency in botany to support support one practice over the other (and I'll admit, when I'm adding an authority to a Wikipedia article, I usually copy-paste it from The Plant List, so it is unspaced). Plantdrew (talk) 22:53, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

For plants, the author information used in the English Wikipedia is NOT the person's name but the person's "standard form" as per the IPNI; see List of botanists by author abbreviation. The precise and exact standard form is used: where this has spaces, use them; where it does not, don't. This enables the author to be found by searching the IPNI database (http://www.ipni.org/ipni/advAuthorSearch.do) for the standard form.

@SMcCandlish: It's not meant to be "readable", it's a code. Is "L.f." (the standard form for Linnaeus' son) less readable than "L. f."? Is "Sch.Bip." (the standard form for Carl Heinrich Schultz) less readable than "Sch. Bip."? It would be quite wrong to space because the string would not then be the standard form, but a version of the person's name. Note that the characters before a non-spaced full stop in a standard form are not always initials, as per the examples above and the standard form "Dw.Moore" for Dwight Munson Moore or the standard form "Ram.Goyena" for Miguel Ramírez Goyena.

I frequently have to correct standard forms which are made up by people. If someone's name is "Roberto de Visiani", for example, you must look up the standard form. It might be "R.de Visiani", it might be "R.Visiani", it might be "de Visiani", it might be "Visiani", it might be "Vis.", it might be "de Vis.", etc. There's no way of telling.

Summary: for botany, there is a standard form; it's recommended by the ICN; we should (and do) use it. (For zoology, it's different.) Peter coxhead (talk) 17:25, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmph. You (Plantdrew (talk · contribs) and Peter coxhead (talk · contribs)) seem to both be botanists and don't seem to be agreeing, so I'm not sure what we should write in here for the sanity of WP editors. It's not WP's job to capture every possible nuance of what some particular journal, or name list, or organization might do [and it can raise WP:NPOV problems when any given would-be standard isn't universal - WP isn't in the standards approval business, either]. If ICNAFP, TROPICOS and ARS-GRIN include spaces but B&P, IPNI and Plant List don't, but they all otherwise use the same standard forms, this seems to demonstrate that the lack of spacing is not in fact part of the standard form code, but a style preference of some sources who use it, which is honestly what I would have expected. Perhaps it's nominally a part of the standard form but is widely treated as optional (yet the source seems to be B&P who do it by example, not by written rule). In either of those cases, MOS would say "space them apart just like we do with 'J. R. R. Tolkien'" for obvious WP:CREEP and WP:BUREAUCRACY and WP:ASTONISH reasons: Don't add a geeky rule people won't understand or obey, for no net gain. Countervailingly, one would think no one but professional botanists would be adding such stuff anyway, and would get it right, so no need to mention it at all. Yet Peter says he has to correct amateurs messing it up all the time, so that assumption is out. The lack of an actual formal rule in RS to omit the spacing really matters for the MOS's "what do the sources do and why?" analysis.

Other minor points: "L.f." and other two-letter forms like that would seem to be acronyms/initialisms, so not spaced anyway. "Sch. Bip." is more readable than "Sch.Bip." or we (I mean English writers generally) wouldn't space abbreviations apart at all. I agree that readability isn't the only concern though, maybe not even a major one, given the symbolic nature of these bits of text. More importantly, ee have to account for the fact that because anyone can edit, there has to be a default for people with no way to look up the standard form, or awareness of what one is. That is obviously the actual name of the author. It can't be "incorrect", but only not the preferred form for this information, and any botanist who knows/can find the correct standard form can put it in later. I think this will help stop people from trying to make up incorrect standard forms. It's an immediately leap to see a real one like "A.Berger" (or "A. Berger") and assume that the one for Xavier Youill Zounds you want to add should be given as "X.Y.Zounds" (or "X. Y. Zounds"), possibly conflicting with an already existing std. form for another author. ANYWAY, back to the elephant:

Is there a compelling reason to stick with the non-spacing, that addresses Plantdrew's objection/evidence? I'm not trying to suggest there isn't a standard form code, mind you, or that WP should ignore it. It just that "It would be quite wrong to space because the string would not then be the standard form" doesn't seem supported in the reliable sources by any written standard that explicitly calls for no spaces, and that form seems supported by (so far as has been discussed here) just about 50% of the RS in practice.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:54, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

A key question for me is whether you can come up with simple clear instructions as to how to insert spaces into the botanical standard form, which everyone agrees is originally as per the IPNI author listing. The algorithm should be reversible, so that it's possible to link to IPNI automatically. Saying that "A.Berger" should be changed to "A. Berger" but "L.f." should not be changed to "L. f." is a problem, in my view, because it requires careful explanation, and can't be automated. For example, can you produce an algorithm which can be coded into Template:Botanist, so that it would work with {{Botanist|A. Berger}}? I think that if the rule were that starting from the IPNI standard form, every occurrence of . followed by an alphabetic character is to be expanded to . + space + the character, and vice versa that starting from the spaced form, every occurrence of . + space + an alphabetic character is to be reduced to . + the character, it could be made to work algorithmically, since I can't at present find a standard form with . + space. But this would require "L.f." and similar forms to be converted to spaced forms.

I really don't see that all this work would offer benefits over the simple rule: use the standard form as per the IPNI and as we use in the many pages of List of botanists by author abbreviation. (Incidentally, would all these require changing if it were ever agreed to use spaced forms?) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:10, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

May be less painful, then to just say "do it IPNI's way, and clean up after people who space them apart". <sigh> The problem is basically that if we used unspaced, everyone familiar with MOS and, well, normal Englihs writing will "correct" these "typographical errors", while if we used spaced, everyone familiar with IPNI will "correct" these "incorrect author name codes". Which one is less of a pain the butt? We also have to keep in mind that an author citation that provides the actual full name of someone isn't actually an error in the WP context, just a decision to be clearer than IPNI will allow us to be. I would normally side with "do what MOS does, because editors should not be forced to learn geeky rules from somewhere else in order to edit here", but the idea that not using the unspaced version may break things like {{Botanist}} is a problem. Will have to go ask around over there about a technical solution. I don't see any way to strip whitespace, at WP:Parser functions. Which is kind of stupid, but oh well. If there's not, then I don't see that there's a solution to would allow A. Berger, other than multipole fields in Template:Botanist.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The small font

I'm seeing this author information in <small>...</small> very frequently, though not consistently, throughout our articles, and am not seeing anyone having fits about it, so it seems worth codifying here. It really does help the reader focus on the non-minutiae.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:54, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's exactly standard practice in the literature, but it's certainly not unheard of (this probably comes down to the MOS for individual journals). I agree that using small caps is helpful to the reader. The only objection I can come up with is that adding the extra markup is a pain in the ass, but the MOS needn't be bound by convenience to editors. And I've found it less painful since I discovered Template:au. Plantdrew (talk) 20:36, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm talking about small font size, not small capitals style. 01:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it's not standard in the literature, but that the use of small text for author information in Wikipedia is useful to readers, since the great majority aren't interested in the author citation and it helps to de-emphasise it and also set it off from the rest of the name. There are some other templates which make life easier for editors, e.g. lists of synonyms or divisions of genera or families can be created more easily using {{Species list}} (which in spite of its name is fine for lists of genera too). Peter coxhead (talk) 14:12, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Right; hadn't thought to mention any of them yet.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:40, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

ICNCP use of Group

The International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants always capitalizes "Group" when it has its specialized meaning. Thus the following contradicts the ICNCP, and should be changed: "The sole exception is the horticultural designation of cultivar "group", which is capitalized when (and only when) it follows a group name: Mishmiense Group but not some members of the Group were reclassified."

It should read "The sole exception is the horticultural designation of cultivar group, which is always capitalized: Mishmiense Group; some members of the Group were reclassified."

Peter coxhead (talk) 17:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Please. Why would we capitalize the label for a category of names just because ICNCP does, in their publications for their purposes? This would be like capitalizing not just common names of bird species, but also the word "Species" itself, in any bird-related construction or context, simply because IOC does it [hypothetically; they don't really]. I'm sure ICNCP capitalizes all sorts of things we wouldn't. I checked. They do. 13:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC) Our coverage and use of "cultivar group" here is based on that in all reliable sources, not just ICNCP. And on this they're outnumbered. Usage is all over the map, including "cultivar group", "cultivar-group", "Cultivar-group", "Cultivar Group", "Cultivar-Group", "CULTIVAR GROUP", etc., etc. That's a green light to use normal English here, avoiding both non-standard hyphenation and non-standard capitalization.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:02, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Reading up on this further, I see that the current ICNCP only uses (and capitalizes) "Group" alone, and that this entire usage is a peculiar ICNCP recentism to drop the "cultivar" from "cultivar group" (evidently just for brevity) in 2004. The change is not well-supported in other reliable sources, which mostly use "cultivar group" (sometimes ungrammatically hyphenated, sometimes ungrammatically capitalized) in running prose, as Wikipedia itself does (we have an an article at cultivar group but not Group (botany) or Group (horticulture). Those didn't' even exist as redirects, another hint that this weird change isn't propagating the way ICNCP would like. I actually wrote up a longer analysis, looking at various sources and at ICNCP's other style "sins" (including over-capitalization of all sorts of things that don't have anything to do with botanical nomenclature, BTW), and so on, but it might be overkill here. The gist is that WP's job is to look at the preponderance of reliable sources, not decide that INCNP is somehow "more official" or preferable to others, much less just as an excuse to do something ungrammatical at their behest. WP:BIRDS pushed this sort of angle with regard to IOC, but an actual examination of real-world deference in other reliable sources to IOC's naming (much less their exact styling of the names they publish, and acceptance of their "Rules" for those decisions) showed an enormous gap between assumption of adoption and actual adoption. "Fool us twice, shame on us." We should stick to "cultivar group" like most sources (however they inconsistently style it), even if we note somewhere that ICNCP uses "Group", alone and capitalized. This strikes me as likely to be a case in which were we to go with just group/Group, without the leading "cultivar" for which we have piles of sources, horticulturists will fight to the death to capitalize it, while everyone else, even other botanists probably, will recognize it as a truly classic WP:SSF and want to lower-case it, for the same reason we don't capitalize Texas hold 'em, spades, or full house, even if most poker specialist publications insist on it. Because the longer term "cultivar group" is well-sourceable without style shenanigans, using it just short circuits the entire dispute before it really gets started.

PS: The cultivar group article needs re-writing. I already fixed where it was making false statements about what ICNCP said (and citing non-existent sections). It still cites nothing but one edition of ICNCP for the whole article. That's like citing only the ICN and ICZN at species and ignoring all other sources.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

It's a tricky issue. On the one hand, I prefer to follow such formal codes, but maintaining the distinction between "Group" and "group" is likely to be a problem in Wikipedia, so using "cultivar group" instead seems a possible compromise. It can be revisited if the ICNCP style catches on in the future. What's important is that if "Group" has been used in the ICNCP style in an article, it should not just be de-capitalized, but converted to "cultivar group".

(As for the general capitalization in the Code, I think this is just an ENGVAR; it seems to me to follow standard British style in formal publications of this kind which tend not to be up-to-date with the latest fashions in typographic style. It partly connects with the issue discussed elsewhere of "capitalizing elliptical or abbreviated proper names". Everyone agrees that a title like "International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants" should be in title case (but should it be italicized?), but when this is abbreviated to "the Code", practice differs. It seems more common in the UK than elsewhere to capitalize phrases like "the Code", "the Rules", "the Regulations", etc. when these are references to specific codes, rules or regulations. It's like "Page 37" versus "page 37". Practice varies widely. I note, for example, that the ICN uses "the Code" but "the rules", and always capitalizes "Art. 12", "Ex. 3", etc.)

The problem with referencing earlier versions of the ICNCP is that they don't seem to be online, and aren't readily available in libraries either – at least I couldn't find a copy of the previous version when I tried last year. The IC(B)N and ICZN usually say more about changes, whereas the section comparing the 2004 ICNCP with the 2009 version just lists section numbers, which is not very helpful. There is a need for a much fuller historical account, especially at International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The goal here

The main objective of MOS:ORGANISMS is just laying out how to style what the sources tell us, in a consistent way that can be understood by fairly smart editors who are not professional biologists. We needn't get into every rule, like which authorities are put in what order and notation; editors here should be copying that information from the sources they cite. Another objective has been to do lay this out in a way that doesn't allow any particular specialty to arm-twist all other editors into requiring style quirks that conflict with general usage or with other specialties, but to otherwise encourage compliance with all such stylistic conventions even if they're not formally codified, simply because it keeps experts happier at very little cost, and tends to agree with usage in more sources. This can be more important than it seems. E.g. the ICN makes a big point of specifically stating that it does not even require italicization of genus and species, but all hell would break loose here if actual style minimalists, which I keep getting accused of being, were to seize upon this and start de-italicizing scientific names of plants.

A WP:BEANS / WP:CREEP danger also lies here, in explaining these codes and their exact details in too-specific terms, that inspire people who don't know what they're doing to attempt to apply principles we could describe here to contexts in which they should not be used. E.g. if someone adds a photo of a frog or deer or an orchid to an article, but isn't personally sure what species it is, we don't want them to guess with a "cf." construction in the image caption. Academics can do that in peer-reviewed journals, but here, it would just be a weird form of original research.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

When I started Wikipedia editing, I would have fully endorsed the view that the MOS should explain simply for non-specialists the style to adopt. However, as you well know, it's not so simple. The fiercest disputes and hence the greatest need for clarity in the MOS involve specialists. So there are, I think, two requirements, which are hard to reconcile:

1. Simple instructions for non-specialists.
2. A clear definitive guide which addresses in a rigorous way the concerns of specialists.

My preference would be for the MOS to deal with (1) and, where they exist, allow WikiProject pages to deal with (2). Since you don't accept (2), you have to deal with both (1) and (2) within the MOS, which is difficult. Even if you replace (2) with subpages of the MOS, you have a problem, since normally the summary version bows to the detailed version other than in broad principles (consider insurance terms and conditions), but you want the main MOS to have precedence over its subpages, which means that it necessarily needs to go into quite fine details. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:50, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

It is thorny. I agree that this creates a tension between the MOS main page and its subpages. I don't see too many cases where the subpages are telling MOS proper to go to hell. Periodic cleanup attempts will hopefully minimize conflicts. So will ensuring that a change gets cross referenced. The main MOS vs. this subpage problem (aside from hopefully rare POV-forking attempts) is going to be cases where a detailed rule is added to this page (e.g. making single quotes for cultivar epithet in a botanical name actually be part of MOS) and is not contradicted by MOS:LIFE's little summary, but does seem to be contradicted by something else, like the single-quotes rules, because we forgot to briefly mention it there. I and a few other people have the patience to wade through that stuff I think.

My main concern here is a constant stream of thing like someone coming along and demanding that (for example) because the current ICNCP uses what looks like it might be a full space between + and × and the epithet following it, that WP must do so to because [insert ranty "officialness" mumbo-jumbo here that ignores what all other reliable sources are doing, which in many cases is not spacing or thin-spacing]. I mean, really, that's what this whole bird dispute really comes down to, and so many other SSF nit-picks. At some point we have to say "look, this is good enough for this audience". It's already way more close-to-standards-perfect than anything at the undergraduate textbook level, I would think.

And this particular tension between what all the sources tell us and what one source that some editors heavily insist is The Source to End All Sources in their field is going to be non-trivial issue, for NPOV/COI/V/RS/NOT reasons far beyond MOS's concerns. That already been happening in a few cases. It's taken me a long time to figure out that IOC does not have nearly the real-world buy-in its boosters have claimed here (and gotten a lot of pages renamed for), and I would say that WP as a community has not figured that out. So what are we to make of a claim that, I dunno, the ICNCP trumps all other sources on cultivated plants, that any critics of it are bogus? Or that the ICZN supersedes anything that regional, more order- or family-specific authorities say? Or vice versa, that it's hide-bound and years out-of-date? Or whatever. I'm imagining what some off-WP disputes may be, not reporting actual ones that I know of. I was surprised how much disputation is going on the real-world ornithology community.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:34, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I wasn't specifically thinking so much of the desire of specialists to use specialised styles as of their knowing and using complex cases where a simple rule doesn't work. When someone later "corrects" one of these complex cases based on the simple rule, naturally the specialist wants the simple rule expanded. Result: instruction creep and no more simple guidance understandable by everyone. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, right. My hope would be that the talk page consensuses on stuff would be enough to deal with that. Like, I haven't seen any moves to remove the single-quotes from glosses. MOS doesn't mention that "rule" last I looked. It's been discussed before and not objected to, and that seems to've been enough. I guess we'll see!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

A recent example is this edit. The instructions re hyphens and dashes are already ridiculously complex (a comet named after two people has an en-dash but a city does not – surely a classic case of WP:ASTONISH) and definitely tl;dr for most editors. Doubtless in some contexts this is an important addition, but should it really be in the main MOS? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the en-dash vs. hyphen mess, though I try to comply without agonizing over it. I think these cases lead to a natural and inevitable principle that: WP does the best it can to keep the largest number of readers and editors satisfied, recognizing that it is impossible to satisfy everyone all the time, and preferring conventions that are least likely to confuse or otherwise negatively impact readers. We presume that our actual editors are intellectually robust enough to figure things out. For those who are not inclined to comply with stylistic nit-picks, it's perfectly fine for them to write new material as they prefer, as long as they understand that, per the Pillars, their material will be mercilessly edited later to comply with whatever the rules really are. I'd really like to see this codifed somewhere, like MOS's lead.

Anyway, I'm sure that various hair-splitting cases will arise. That more of them keep arising during the drafting process is why this proposal's been in development for several years. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:12, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Distinguishing formal breeds from landraces

Editors sometimes suggest that because there's no "official" distinction between a breed and a landrace, that we shouldn't care or try to distinguish them here. First, there's no such thing as "official" in such a context (who are the officials, in what office, and who gave them authority, of what sort?). Words mean what they mean, based on documented usage in the real world. In point of fact, however, breed registries do in fact clearly distinguish was is and isn't a breed, so this assumption is actually false, from a reliable sourcing point of view (the breed-standards publications of such organizations are "official" within their purview). The main source of such objections seems to be simple unfamiliarity with the term "landrace", or it's confusing use in certain formal breed names (i.e., some think the suggestion is that the Danish Landrace pig is not actually a breed, but a landrace, when clearly is a breed named after the landrace from which it was derived. A second source of cognifitive dissonance on the issue is the false perception that not using the word breed is somehow a devaluation of a topic, e.g. that the St. John's water dog and the Van cat are less notable somehow for being correctly described as landraces not breeds. In reality, some landraces are more notable that formal breeds derived from them, and our articles on them reflect this. It's not a contest between breeds and landraces (and feral populations, and hybrids, and...).

The landrace article, with its sources, is actually clear on what the difference is: A breed has selective breeding for specific traits, with pedigrees tracked by some organization, while a landrace does not, and has any more-or-less distinctive characteristics mostly or entirely because of a limited geographical gene pool with limited if any selective breeding. The Breed article is really clear: A breed is a specific group of domestic animals or plants having homogeneous appearance (phenotype), homogeneous behavior, and/or other characteristics that distinguish it from other organisms of the same species and that were arrived at through selective breeding.[3] All breed registries, across all species, understand this distinction. There are long and involved processes to go through to establish a breed of any kind of animal, and they are either a) controlled, pedigreed breeding to fix, further develop and breed-true some traits found in a landrace population, or b) controlled, pedigreed breeding to develop, fix and breed-true some trait(s) desired for aesthetic or practical reasons using specimens from diverse populations (modern genetic tampering with highly-controlled varieties like lab rats also falls under the latter).

The problem arises in places like Wikipedia, and fancier magazines, that some people gloss over the difference and call them all "breeds" as a form of shorthand, which complicates the sourcing. This is especially true of non-English sources in many languages. E.g. in Spanish the term is raza ('race'), and a formal breed isn't distinguished from a landrace with a simple word change, but by describing it in further prose as pedigreed or not, as free-breeding or not, etc. English sources often have to be read carefully in such a regard, too, especially when produced for a general audience (e.g. "X Breeds of the World books, fancier/kennel/conformance club magazines, etc., versus formal breed standards publications. Landrace only dates to the 1930s in English, so older sources have to be read critically for indications of controlled breeding, because "breed" was used in a much looser manner.

If you really want to create a pseudo-official "standard" on Wikipedia of what is or is not a breed (do we really need to) the way to do this under WP:V/WP:RS, and WP:N/WP:NFT, would likely be to ask "Is there a breed standard published by a national or international organization of breeders and fanciers, a government agency, or some other notable body? If yes, is breeding pedigreed?" If either answer is "no", it's not a breed for WP purposes. But all of this is already implicit in the very meaning of the word "landrace". If we insisted on it, however, a rubric like that would eliminate four WP:NOR problems:

1. Landraces that organizations recognize the existence of and describe, but for which there are (of course) no breed standards (standard of points, rules of excellence, points of conformance, etc. - the term varies from organization to organization), because their breeding isn't regulated
2. Two random dudes in Arkansas declaring they have a new "breed" based on their studbook of 8 animals
3. Incorrect identification of a landrace as a breed on the basis that some organization has permitted it in shows and has a conformance checklist, but the breeding isn't controlled (e.g. the long-haired domestic cat and some other landraces, due to pet owner pressure, have their own category "Household Pet" or "Other" category in many cat shows, and you can technically register and start pedigreeing your mutt or "moggie" cats if you want to waste the money, but they're not a breed.
4. Incorrect identification of a feral population as a breed [or a landrace for that matter] on the basis that a herd is "managed" (i.e. subject to population control and isolation from out-crossing), but where breeding is not pedigreed, much less selective with the intent to fix traits.

It comes down to selective breeding for delineated traits, with pedigrees verified and tracked by a formal organization. Very simple.

At any rate, the important point is that conflating some sources' imprecise use of "breed" with the formal meaning of the word as used by breed pedigree organizations is the fallacy of equivocation and is impermissible WP:Original research. The actual establishment of a breed, like any other technological achievement, is a factual claim that has to be verifiable with sources that are unmistakeably reliable on the relevant points. "This website used the term 'breed'" isn't sufficient by itself, because we know the word may be used misleadingly or confusedly. Show us the breed standards (or for extinct breeds that there was one).

PS: The concept of "natural breeds" (i.e. landraces that have been formalized into pedigreed breeds) is also covered at the Landrace article and accounts for a lot of breeds of all species, and can be linked as natural breed; it could probably be developed into its own article.

Finally, if one just doesn't like the word landrace because horse (or whatever) people don't use it much, then use piped links, e.g. "The Cthulhian pony is an ancient breed of small horse..." The important point is not falsely stating or implying that landraces (or feral populations) are formal breeds. Our own Breed article is unmistakeably about formal breeds, not a looser sense of what "breed" can sometimes mean. This is perfectly fine, because WP:NOT#DICTIONARY.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The actual establishment of a breed, like any other technological achievement, is a factual claim that has to be verifiable with sources that are unmistakeably reliable on the relevant points. "This website used the term 'breed'" isn't sufficient by itself, because we know the word may be used misleadingly or confusedly. Show us the breed standards (or for extinct breeds that there was one).

You do claim, that the following are no breeds? Any of them? That there is even one breed, these pages include, that does not have a standard?

• http://www.poultryclub.org/ --> http://www.poultryclub.org/breed-gallery/ (see also British Poultry Standards, 6th Edition, including Blue Swedish duck that was the origin of this discussion)
• http://www.amerpoultryassn.com/ --> http://www.amerpoultryassn.com/PDF%20Forms/APA%20Recognized%20Breeds%20and%20Varieties%20Sept2012.pdf
• http://www.entente-ee.com/
  • --> http://www.entente-ee.com/deutsch/sparten/gefluegel/dateien/2013/Verzeichnis%20R%20F%2028042013.xls (Listing Breed and Colour in the EE Standard)
  • --> http://www.entente-ee.com/englisch/sparten/tauben/Dateien/2014/Reglemente%20Listen%20neu/ELRT,%20Status%20%2001%20-12-2013.pdf

I hope you do know, that, without given permission, copying the original standard and giving it to you is a copyvio? --PigeonIP (talk) 10:21, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

No idea what you're going on about. Why would I argue that breeds, the formal breed standards of which you've just linked to, aren't formal/standardized breeds, when my entire point is that formal/standardized breeds are such by the fact of their being specified in a formal standard, which you're providing. And there's no copyvio in sharing breed standards that these organizations are posting online themselves.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:21, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

• There is no universal definition of a "formal breed". Even in plants, where the landrace concept is more extensively used, defining it has been a bugbear. For animals it's even fuzzier: in horses at least, some researchers consider the landrace to be a stage in breed formation:[4] I cannot locate a consistent definition that says a "breed" is only a breed after a formal breed registry has been created. And I disagree that the breed article]] contains such a definition. That said, there is room to improve the breed registry article to explain the "formalization" process in more detail. I also must remind people of WP:SYNTH. Montanabw^(talk) 04:12, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

In plants, the relevant term nowadays is "cultivar" rather than "breed". This is defined in the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants, which is online here.

Any classification of organisms, whether into scientific taxa or into landraces, cultivar groups, breeds or cultivars, is bound to have some fuzziness, and this needs to be acknowledged. I think it's also important to distinguish between the group of organisms and its name. A breed of animals or a plant cultivar may have an "official" name via a formal registration process, but it has to exist before it can be named – the name doesn't create the group. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:38, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Sure, but until it has a formal name, it's questionable whether it's notable in the vast majority of cases, so we'd have no need to write about it, much less give it a Precious Capitalize Name. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:21, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I think we're well past this dispute really, if not all of the heat of it. We have enough sources for terms that we can distinguish between landraces and standardized breeds, and avoid ambiguous, confusing usage of the word "breed" by being more specific.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:21, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Peter is right - the name follows the group - AND it can be "notable" without some group saying it is "official." The FAO, for example, lists hundreds of landrace breeds, which clearly would thus meet wikipedia's GNG criteria.Once again, as we have discussed all over the wiki, there is no universal definition of "breed" or even "formal breed" or "standardized breed." Biologists don't go there for the most part, taxonomists don't go there, what a "breed" is varies from one animal group to another (often as much due to politics as anything else. (look at the issue with the Russell Terrier, Jack Russell Terrier and Parson Russell Terrier. You can't tell me that those splits were not somehow more political than practical ). This stick really has to drop. Montanabw^(talk) 19:39, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to enter the discussion of "breed", because it's not something I'm really interested in. Our own Breed article is unmistakeably about formal breeds, not a looser sense of what "breed" can sometimes mean. Um... The article is poorly referenced and self-contradictory, so I'm not myself sure what it's really about. The only breeds of animal in which I have any interest are "rare breeds". The definition of breed by the UK Rare Breeds Survival Trust is a general and loose one: "A breed is defined as a group of animals that has been selected by humans to possess a set of inherited characteristics that distinguishes it from other animals within the same species." This definition applies equally well to "landrace" and many "rare breeds" could equally well be called "rare landraces" – at least within my understanding of the term. It seems to me that "breed" is a classic example of a broad concept and so needs a broad concept article, with sections on the different usages of the term "breed" – from a very broad use equivalent to landrace, the notion of "rare breeds", through to more narrow uses such as standardized breeds which have to fit published descriptors, or pedigree breeds where the animal can only descend from specified ancestors. It would be wrong to say that "breed" means only one or some subset of these possible meanings.

As for the concept of "landrace", when applied to plants it is of more interest to me. I've now read Zeven (1998) "Landraces: a review of definitions and classifications". The plural in the title is apt; there are at least 15 definitions discussed, some of which seem to be more-or-less in agreement, others not. His conclusion is repeated in the publicly accessible abstract and begins "As a landrace has a complex and indefinable nature an all-embracing definition cannot be given." He then suggests his own preferred definition of an "autochthonous landrace" – but the qualification makes it a narrower concept than just "landrace" (e.g. a landrace only preserved in a gene bank is still a landrace but no longer autochthonous). This suggests to me that "landrace" as applied to plants is also a broad concept, and we need to be careful not to commit OR or SYNTH by choosing one of the very varied definitions in the sources or trying to synthesize a common definition from them. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:48, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I doubt there will be found a bright line between a "breed" and a landrace, particularly in the area of rare breeds, which is where a lot of debate in the real world exists - many rare breeds are dismissed as "landraces" in the derogatory sense of being a "mongrel" of some sort. Keeping the status of a "breed" as opposed to a "mutt" is critical for these creatures' preservation. I view it as SYNTH and OR to try to create a bright line where there is none. Montanabw^(talk) 18:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Landrace and mongrel have totally different meanings. The distinction we need to look at is between landraces and standardized breeds/cultivars: either there is a documented pedigree and/or standard of some sort, or there's not. If there's not, that doesn't make them mongrels if the genepool isn't actually mixed, it just means artificial selection pressure is low compared to natural. A grey area here is historical breeds that pre-date any known recordkeeping. We don't really have any evidence these are "breeds" in the modern sense of the word at all; they're simply variations of some kind or another, produced with at least some, but indeterminate, effort at artificial selection for fixed traits. We often have no idea even what traits were being selected for. When a source tells us there was an unusually long-legged and shaggy breed of dog in Romania in the 1300s, this really tells us jack. We have no idea if they were bred intentionally for these traits and to what extent, or whether they were local adaptations to the environment in a population that was actually being selected upon for something else entirely, like herding or hunting skills, or resistance to disease, or whatever. Especially in some place like Romania, subject to centuries of constant invasion by radically different peoples from sometimes thousands of miles away, all bringing their own dogs, there's a good chance such traits are simply a matter of hybridization. In most cases we cannot know. There's been way, way too much going on here of people who assign a special "magical unicorn" cachet to the word "breed" and then use WP:OR to try to force sources that just mean "some recognizable population of [dog, horse, whatever]" and call this a "breed" in plain English, to be misinterpreted to mean a standardized breed like we have today. It generally was not happening, and when it was in few cases (it's been suggested that Roman war dogs, at least in one period, were the subject of focused breeding programs) there's little evidence for any particulars.

Anyway, I really don't know where the idea in the heads of some (especially dog and horse) people comes from that "landrace" is some kind of demotion, dismissal, slur, etc. There is no support for this interpretation in reliable sources. A landrace is (in this context) simply an identifiably distinct regional population of domesticated organism the breeding of which is just loose enough to allow it to adapt to an extent to the local environment (e.g. long coats on cattle in the Scottish Highlands as protection from the cold), even when being bred to some (even a great) extent for other specific traits. If there is no strict pedigree recordkeeping system, and consistently complete control over breeding, then what you have is a landrace by definition, not a breed in any meaningful sense of the word. I think we had concluded that the attested term "landrace breed" (which is synonymous with landrace) is the way around the propensity for people in certain breeder and fancier circles to freak out any time the word "breed" is absent. We can do that, but we can't fudge facts and wrongly imply to most readers that something is a pedigreed, standardized breed when there's no evidence for it, especially not on the basis that some writers use the word "breed" to mean "any identifiable domestic population".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Plants: The divergence of meanings is something we'll need to address as we would in any "definitional" article-writing context: Use as a baseline what the major strings of RS agree on, then note additions/subtractions, and also note attempts at radical redefinition, if the sources are mainstream enough to bother with. WP wrestles with this, with aplomb, in many thousands of articles, often with far more complexity (what is "culture"? "religion"?)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Abbreviating

The proposal says The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material. While this is true in technical writing, we need to keep in mind that the Wikipedia is not technical writing, see WP:Manual of Style#Technical language. It can be very annoying to track back to see what the genus is when a link takes a reader to a specific section. There are not the space limitations of paper, as the guideline notes. I find that it would do a disservice to our non-scientist readers to incorporate this as a standard abbreviating technique in our guideline. I note that previously this was not included at either WP:Manual of Style#Abbreviations or WP:Manual of Style/Abbreviations. --Bejnar (talk) 01:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it depends on the context. I agree that if this is interpreted to mean "the full version has occurred previously in the article" it's not a good idea. On the other hand within the same sentence it can look a bit clumsy: "this feature is present in Longgenusnamea smithii, Longgenusnamea jonesii and Longgenusnamea williamsiae, but absent in Longgenusnamea pallida, Longgenusnamea curvifolia and Longgenusnamea boydiae". Here I see no reason not to abbreviate: "this feature is present in Longgenusnamea smithii, L. jonesii and L. williamsiae, but absent in L. pallida, L. curvifolia and L. boydiae". Whether it's possible to explain "sensible" uses of the abbreviated style in the MOS I'm not sure. I suspect this is best left to the collective wisdom of editors. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:38, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm confortable with the abbreviation policy. The entire name is usually included in the lde and in the infobox. After that, most readers are going to get it, it's not unlike MOS use of acronyms or abbreviations of elements and such in other contexts. Montanabw^(talk) 04:59, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

It is unnecessary, but not a terrible problem when an article is a stub and the name being abbreviated is that of the topic organism. But all too often, the name being abbreviated is not the name of the organism described in the infobox, and the abbreviation is the first noun in lead sentence of a section. The current wording is too broad. If it were limited to "within a sentence" as suggested by Peter coxhead, or even "within a short section" it would be acceptable. --Bejnar (talk) 21:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

My understanding is that most (technical or not) manuals of style discourage abbreviating the scientific name when it begins a sentence or paragraph. I can't keep count of the number of articles I've come across where the scientific name only (or at least predominantly) appears at the beginning of sentences or paragraphs; it is natural writing to open a sentence with the noun that is the subject of the sentence. And it is also natural writing to use a pronoun such as "it" for subsequent mentions of the subject in the same sentence/paragraph. Generally speaking, from how I see abbreviation being employed in Wikipedia articles, they should usually be discouraged; use unabbreviated names to open sentences, and use pronouns for subsequent mentions. But there are cases like Peter's example with several species in the same genus mentioned in running prose where abbreviation makes some sense.

I've come across some editors on missions to replace unabbreviated lists of species in a genus or family article with abbreviated lists. I don't see any benefit to that, and some possible downsides. It clutters the markup even more with piped links. And if I were to come across a redlinked species in a genus article and I wanted to learn more about it, I'd copy-paste the binomial into Google, which I couldn't do if the binomial was abbreviated. Plantdrew (talk) 22:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree. There's no reason to abbreviate in species lists – each line is a piece of information in its own right. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:47, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the point was missed - the FIRST time a name appears, the full scientific name is given, after that, the standard abbreviation. I have no problem with that style. I agree that the full name needs to appear in some logical "first" spot. Montanabw^(talk) 23:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

See for example, dwarf corydoras. The scientific name (abbreviated or in full) occurs five times in the body of the article. It's written in full twice: at the beginning of the lead (as it should be), and another time in the middle of a sentence (where it could be abbreviated). The abbreviated form appears three times: twice at the beginning of a sentence and once in the middle of the sentence. Should all four subsequent uses of the scientific name (after the first instance in the lead) be abbreviated, even where the scientific name opens a sentence? Plantdrew (talk) 00:48, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I'd rewrite the sentence to avoid the problem. Other than that, I'd respect the mainstream MOS for the real world on the matter. WP should not be inventing its own style save for those situations where there is no predominant style and we simply must pick one out of the crowd. Montanabw^(talk) 07:50, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

• Based on this discussion it appears that the current version of the proposal regarding abbreviation is over-broad, specifically with regard to the beginnings of sections, lists, where the genus being abbreviated is not the topic of the article (hence does not appear in the infobox), and, for some, at the beginning of sentences. I propose the following for the /* Abbreviating */ subsection:

Instead of:

The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material (and the material does not discuss multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation): Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen died of an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus) or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.

Say:

The conventional abbreviation in technical writing of bi- or tri-nominal names, namely the substitution of the first letter of the genus for the genus name, should be avoided. WP:Manual of Style#Technical language However, where the full name has previously occurred in the same section, subsequent occurrences in that section may be abbreviated, e.g.: Captive Eudorcas thomsonii are more subject to disease. ... The zoo's E. thomsonii specimen died of bluetongue It is inappropriate to abbreviate the genus name in lists. Abbreviating the genus is also inappropriate where the section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation, e.g.: Captive Eudorcas thomsonii are more subject to disease. ... The zoo's E. thomsonii specimen died of an E. coli infection.

--Bejnar (talk) 23:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we're there yet. I can see several problems (ironically also of overbreadth) in that formulation. For example, it is often desirable to abbreviate in a list, especially a nested one (e.g. Canis, C. lupus, C. l. arctos in series). It depends on the nature of the list. If it were the article on wolves, we might want the full taxa spelled out, but perhaps not in a list of wildlife found in a particular county in Alaska or Nunavut. Let's actually see what the majority of such articles are doing and why. A guideline's purpose is to codify rather than try to invent best practices, and when we forget that we can give impractical or WP:BEANS and WP:CREEP advice that has to be rescinded later. Moving on: The limitation to "in the same section" won't make sense when the entire article is on a particular species and we're re-re-re-repeating the same taxonomic name over and over again (many plants, fossil species, etc., have no common names, or too many to use one). And so on. I think I can reassemble something from this discussion that gets at all the concerns without opening unintended loopholes, though. If I'm good at anything, it's policy analysis.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:10, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Nomina

This 2012 thread on nomina and their dates may be worth re-reading to see if MOS:ORGANISMS needs to address any of it further [5].  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:02, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Authorities citations rarely appear in running text. When they do, it's usually in the lead (and I tend to remove the authority citation from the lead when I see one and feel like editing the article). Authorities should be presented descriptively in the running text of a taxonomy section (e.g. "Smith described the species as Aus bus in 1820. Jones transferred it to the genus Cus in 1950"). Lists of subordinate taxa (i.e. species in a genus) outside of taxoboxes are a mix, but I think tend to have authority citations more often than not. The proposal that authority citations be diffused downwards from subordinate taxa lists is untenable. We simply don't have enough genera where all the species are blue links to make that an obvious standard practice. I think it looks bad to remove authorities only from blue links while leaving them with red links. I could be OK with removing authorities from all subordinate taxa in a list, but that seems to go against the more widespread practice of including them.

Lists of subordinate taxa in a taxobox is another matter. There are (not very widely used) templates for listing species in a genus taxobox that support authority citation (though it can be omitted). I do see taxobox lists that account for homonyms (the case where author citation is necessary).

Parenthetical authorship gets screwed up not infrequently. Doesn't seem to matter much if it's a list in text or a list in the taxobox. Including authority in the lead is a sure-fire way to encourage parentheses errors by editors who don't understand what parentheses mean taxonomically; it's pretty natural to see the authority as a digression that could be parenthesized, even when parentheses must be omitted according to the taxonomic rules.

If this MOS says anything about authorities, I think it should recommend against them appearing in running text unless homonym are being discussed. I'm not sure that the MOS should take a position on authorities in lists. Plantdrew (talk) 16:58, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree entirely with these points, other than being perhaps keener on encouraging explicit listing of authorities in lists and taxoboxes. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Abbreviations again

So, I have constructed a new wording of the Abbreviating section. The current wording is this:

The bi- or tri-nominal name is conventionally abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same material (and the material does not discuss multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation): Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.

The new wording would say this:

The bi- or tri-nominal name should generally be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same second level section (the lead, in this case, will be considered a second level section). This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.

Basically what this means is that the full tri/binomial would have to be given at the first occurrence in the lead section and each second level section. This addresses the problem of readers having to search for the first occurrence of some genus or species name. Thanks! RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 19:49, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm, wouldn't that be the same as giving the full name of an author at the start of every single section, whereas we usually only give the last name after first occurrence? FunkMonk (talk) 19:56, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: It would be similar, but not the same. For example, let's say we have an organism called Fancialatinnom examplus, and that is our subject. In one section, say taxonomy, we mention its relation to Differentius samplusia, and then in, say the brehaviour section or something, we mention how F. examplus, say eats D. samplusia. It would be much better to expand the name of D. samplusia, in my opinion, in both sections. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 20:03, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't a glance at the taxobox (or the article title) be enough to show what taxon is the article subject? Anyhow, I don't have a strong opinion on this, but I think we should follow what is done in the literature. FunkMonk (talk) 20:09, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

The word "conventionally" in the current version clearly refers to "what is done in the literature". I'm not sure what it means in the proposed new version. William Avery (talk) 20:25, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

@William Avery: I will remove it. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 20:34, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

In practice, it seems to me that many if not most editors do follow what RileyBugz suggests, namely the first mention in each section is given in full. There's also an argument that as we're not a paper encyclopedia so space doesn't matter, we shouldn't abbreviate at all. What's done in the "conventional literature" isn't always the best guide here. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:33, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Oppose as currently written, mostly support general principle. This proposal does not merely change it so that the full name should be given on first occurrence in each section it occurs in at all; it also makes it mandatory to use the shortened version for every occurrence in that section afterwards. Were 'is to be' to be replaced with 'may be', that problem is solved.

I also can imagine there are cases where it is not wholly necessary for every bi- or trinomial name to be given in full at least once per section in which it occurs, but the most common case (species/subspecies in the same genus) is already written in as exception, and everything else is well-enough covered by the fact that this is a guideline (thus 'used most of the time except where justified exceptions apply') not policy, I suppose. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:10, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Will change wording - "is to be" to "should generally be". RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 01:17, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Should generally be still gives strong preference to abbreviating over non-abbreviating after first in-section occurrence, which I'm not entirely sure I agree with, but meh. At least it doesn't make it mandatory, so thanks. :) AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:25, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

• I oppose "should generally be". There are two different issues here. (1) Should the first mention in a section usually be in full? I think it should. (2) Should subsequent mentions in a section usually be abbreviated? I think it should be left to editor discretion. If you need to put a list of species in running text, then abbreviating the genus is sensible. If there are few mentions, not abbreviating may be sensible. Leave this to editors. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:18, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

In response to the criticisms here, I will now submit a new proposal: New wording:

The bi- or tri-nominal name may be abbreviated if the full version has occurred previously in the same second level section (the lead, in this case, will be considered a second level section). This does not apply when a section discusses multiple taxa at the same level that would share the same abbreviation: Thomson's gazelle (Eudorcas thomsonii) is easily distinguishable from the red-fronted gazelle (E. rufifrons), but not the zoo's E. thomsonii specimen survived an E. coli infection. The final element of the name is never abbreviated: the arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) is a subspecies of gray wolf (C. lupus), or subspecies of Canis lupus include C. l. arctos and C. l. dingo, but not Canis lupus arctos is a subspecies of C. l.

Thoughts on this one? @Peter coxhead, AddWittyNameHere, William Avery, and FunkMonk:

"may be abbreviated" as huge step in the right direction. Having a mandate FOR abbreviation in the MoS was nuts; it should up to editor discretion when abbreviation is appropriate. I think abbreviated binomials at the beginning of paragraphs look like crap. Having the MoS suggest writing out the name in full in the first instance per section goes along way towards getting full name at the beginning of paragraphs. Some other style guides (e.g. APA, Chicago) even recommend against beginning a sentence (not just a paragraph) with an abbreviation. Plantdrew (talk) 01:08, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Ping to me failed. Ping to the others may have failed as well. I can support the proposed new wording. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 07:50, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Will ping again. @Peter coxhead, William Avery, and FunkMonk: RileyBugz (p)^Yell | _Edits 12:52, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

The increased latitude is definitely an improvement to MOS as it stands. William Avery (talk) 13:07, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. FunkMonk (talk) 13:28, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that we have enough editors to make a decision here, but maybe we do. It might be beneficial if people could reach out to other WikiProjects. RileyBugz (p)^Yell | _Edits 20:59, 30 March 2017 (UTC)