Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 194

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A Wikipedia-irrelevant rule to excise?

After this:

A sentence that occurs within brackets in the course of another sentence does not generally have its first word capitalized just because it starts a sentence.

Comes this:

The enclosed sentence may have a question mark or exclamation mark added, but not a period.: ... Alexander then conquered (who would have believed it?) most of the known world.

It doesn't seem to serve any purpose here, since we would never use a construction like this in our articles (with a question mark or an exclamation point). This appears to be WP:CREEP added by someone trying to make MoS a general-English style guide for the world (i.e., a how-to article) rather than Wikipedia's guide to writing Wikipedia articles in Wikipedia's voice.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. A quick search for articles containing "?)" or "!)" returned nought for both. It seems unnecessary. –Sb2001 talk page 23:04, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Deffo. Serves no 'pedia purpose and can only confuse the MOS's role. Primergrey (talk) 23:43, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
I'm moving it to a footnote; the construction could be used in a quotation which we don't want someone to "correct".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:12, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

section length MOS location?

I remember once reading an MOS about the lengths of sections within an article, i.e. that they shouldn't be too short or too long, but I can't find such. Can anyone help me out? — fourthords | =Λ= | 17:29, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Fourthords: MoS doesn't seem to have much about it, just some generalities at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Body sections. One of the content or editing guidelines like Wikipedia:Article size might have more.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:31, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Did some digging around in relevant pages:
We don't seem to have any particular rules about this, and the lack of them all along has apparently not been problematic in any way.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:10, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

U+00A0

Per MOS:NBSP we should Always insert hard/thin spaces symbolically, never by entering them as literal characters entered from the keyboard. I guess that also inserting them as invisible special unicode characters (es. U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE) should be avoided, right? Can we be more explicit about it? -- Basilicofresco (msg) 10:41, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean actually entering a literal   in place of   or {{nbsp}}? If so, then why would you do that? If not, what are you getting at? --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 14:38, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes, use the obvious in preference to the obscure. But unless   is being observed in the wild, we don't need to further bloat guidelines warning against it. EEng 14:56, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. And the "literal character" means what is between these brackets [ ], the actual Unicode glyph that is rendered by   or  . We don't want people to use the raw glyph because when that's done, no one can actually tell it's being done. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:09, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
I rewrote the affected sentence to be clearer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:01, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Use of alternative, uncommon spellings

Hi, I don't know if someone can point me in the right direction. I was copy editing a video game article and encountered the word 'mediaeval', in place of medieval. The article also contains 'reflexion' and 'connexion', instead of the more common terms. Now after doing some googling, it appears that these are legitimate, if not very widely used, alternate spellings of words. They are maybe more associated with British English, but I don't believe that any of these spellings are more common than their standard alternatives. Do we have any relevant policies or guidelines that recommend using, all things being equal, a non-archaic spelling when available? Should there be? I understand that in some cases the article content might mean that using a less common form would be less confusing for the reader because it would introduce consistency, but I can't really see the benefit of using weirder spellings just because they exist. On a personal note, I'd never encountered reflexion or connexion before and I'm British and I actually misunderstood what reflexion meant in the context of this article. There are many readers of the English Wikipedia with larger vocabularies than mine, but there are also those with smaller ones and I think we should try to write plainly where possible. Apologies if this is a long answered and addressed question, but I find navigating through the MOS a bit of a nightmare. Scribolt (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Those are indeed archaic spellings. They shouldn't be used unless part of a proper name. oknazevad (talk) 11:09, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
'Connexion' is a technical term used in some specialised contexts. See Methodist Church of Great Britain for multiple examples, or for that matter see Connexionalism. Mediæval is an affectation and should use the diphthong. The word is often met in names which are intentionally "olde worlde", such as the Mediæval Bæbes. Reflexion is a borrowing from French (see for example Reflexions sur la question juive) and unless being quoted is only designed to make the writer feel more cultured. Oknazevad's advice is good, though I would keep them in direct quotations as well, other than that ignore them. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:39, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
MOS:COMMONALITY. If that doesn't get you there somehow, WP:JARGON probably should. --Izno (talk) 12:10, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Thank you all very much, both for the background information and the guidance links. Scribolt (talk) 13:14, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Agreed with Oknazevad, Martin, and Izno, word for word, and based on previous discussions of these, too [1].  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:44, 5 September 2017 (UTC)\

Adam9007

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Unproductive and off-topic WP:ASPERSIONS about another editor do not belong here.

If you can diff sufficient evidence to demonstrate a case of actionable disruptive edtiting, the proper venue is WP:ANI.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:07, 6 September 2017 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Without knowing the article in question, I will confidently bet that the editor responsible will be Adam9007 (intentionally not notifying at this stage), who has been on a one-man quest to restore what he considers "traditional" spellings and meanings to the English language and has chosen Wikipedia as his personal battlefield. Be glad the article doesn't refer to one of the characters being happy, or he'd have changed it to "he became gay" and then thrown a temper tantrum at anyone trying to explain that "gay" hasn't had that meaning for decades. (This is not hyperbole.) ‑ Iridescent 18:57, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
How the blue hell has that obvious WP:NOTHERE case not get indeffed? Seriously?!? oknazevad (talk) 00:44, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Iridescent wins the cookies. I don't know whether to be impressed or slightly horrified that you managed to ID the user based on just that. You get bonus points for an irrelevant gaiety being introduced into another article I just found. I'm usually pretty relaxed about people's idiosyncrasies in articles, I don't change things that I might think weird as long as the text is still clear as to what's meant, but mediaeval had a snotty hidden text next to it with an irrelevant reference to ENGVAR and after I corrected I got reverted with no justification thus far other than there's no rule why it can't be used. Scribolt (talk) 07:25, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
@Oknazevad, he's not a straightforward WP:NOTHERE case, as he does on occasion make genuine (if often misguided) efforts to help. I'd shed no tears over it—he's one of the most arrogant and objectionable people I've ever encountered on Wikipedia, and has the dubious privilege of being the only editor I've ever banned from my talk page—but I couldn't justify a WP:NOTHERE block. He's survived being hauled off to ANI in the past (albeit over something different), so any admin action wouldn't be uncontroversial, although to judge by his talk page and recent archives community patience with his "I've made up a rule and I'm going to insist Wikipedia applies it" approach is rapidly reaching zero. ‑ Iridescent 19:14, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Should be a WP:ANI, WP:NPOVN, or other noticeboard matter; this page isn't a disciplinary forum, and people trying to use it as one is apt to lead to problems. Just sayin'. The MoS regulars already get false accusations of being a cabal, and being wannabe "enforcers", so let's not insert any grain of truth to them, lest the grains accrete into lumpy pearls. I will say that permitting long-term "style warrior" behavior that includes revert-warring and self-declared WP:TRUTH / WP:GREATWRONGS manifestoes about style matters has also caused problems, and that the proper noticeboards have (eventually) dealt with the matters before. A first step is making sure that such users receive a {{Ds/alert|mos}} so that they're subject to WP:AE if they get out of hand.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:43, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Irie nailed it. I think it's clear that WP:NOTHERE does not apply - Adam does quite a bit of good work. That said, he sure does find ways to be a complete pain in the ass to many of us and a major resource drain on the project. I lived through the whole CSD#A7 fiasco that resulted in him being defacto banned from participating in patrolling CSD nominations. I suspect it's going to take a similar sanction to stop this nonsense as well. Toddst1 (talk) 22:11, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
You all may have accomplished what you wanted, but in a much smaller and meaner way than ANI or equivalent. He just posted "retired" on his user pages, saying "can't do it any more, I've had enough". Please keep in mind, in the future, that what you post at Wikipedia is public and likely to be seen by the person you are talking about - and consider how you would feel if you came across people talking this way about you behind your back. --MelanieN (talk) 22:18, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
I probably should have used {{hat}} [sooner] instead of just asking the discuss to stop. <sigh> I need to better live up to my "This user is NOT an admin, but acts like one anyway" userbox.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
Melanie - that retired banner on Adam's talk page has been up and down more often than a test elevator in an elevator factory (or some other thing which has been up and down on an alarmingly regular basis). He'll be back just in time for another bollocking over another aspect of his inability to collaborate effectively with the rest of the community, probably by Friday. Nick (talk) 22:57, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Obsolescent spellings

Folks, can you please stop bashing the editor and focus on the actual MOS question: whether it is or is not permissible to use spellings like "mediaeval", "reflexion", and "connexion" in articles? How about if no one objects? How about if some other editors do object? As for the person you are talking about, I was just discussing the issue at his talk page and suggested bringing the discussion here (not knowing there was already a discussion here) so you can expect him here shortly. You might keep in mind that he is a human being with feelings. --MelanieN (talk) 22:00, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

  • No: it is not acceptable, unless the context specifically calls for the archaic form. Toddst1 (talk) 22:05, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No (except in proper names that use those spellings like Mediæval Bæbes). Izno's reference to MOS:COMMONALITY is clear enough for me. And the fact that this was raised here by a Brit makes clear that it is not a valid application of WP:ENGVAR. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:07, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No Wikipedia is not a playground to try to reintroduce archiac spellings into mainstream English usage. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:13, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No unless it is in a quote or has a technical defined meaning. Titoxd(?!?) 22:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Generally no, but "spellings like" is too vague. We need to add a provision to not use obsolete or archaic spellings outside of a) quotations and proper names, and b) specialist terminology. That will already be consistent with existing rules at MOS:JARGON and MOS:QUOTE. Then provide a list of some plausible examples of archaisms to not use, including "reflexion", "connexion" (outside the specialist meaning in Methodism), "coöperation", "rôle", "Rumania", "Manks", "to-day", "gay" to mean "happy" or "festive" and similar things if not already covered at MOS:WTW, and whatever else comes to mind (should be stuff still used in but abandoned during the 20th century; it's already a given that we're not going to be using "hwæt", "thine", or "an-hungred"). However, I want to point out that not everyone considers "mediaeval" obsolete yet. MoS itself says to use it in place of "mediæval", at MOS:LIGATURE. Given past discussion [2], it appears that there's enough of a consensus to rule it obsolete for WP purposes, so that example that uses it will need to be replaced (it was only included because someone wanted to be clever and use two examples in the same sentence).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:29, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No unless needed for context/clarity. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:37, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment—and who's to determine whether a spelling is "obsolescent"? Why does this even have to be micromanaged by the MoS, rather than leaving it to WP:BRD? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:01, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
    • RS determine it. That'll mostly be current dictionaries, and N-grams, unless anyone finds any recent linguistic journal material or the like that addresses these words in particular, which is unlikely. It's going to take an aggregated review of all the reputable dictionaries that have editions within, say, the last two decades (or maybe even just one decade; going back to the 1980s or earlier will be a waste of time). That can actually come later; figuring out what to say about the list of words in more important right now that exactly which words to list. It has to be managed here because this is our style guide, and people are engaged in repeated bouts of disruptive disputes about these spellings; the reason we have a style guide is to prevent/stop that waste of productivity and good will (and, of course, to produce a more readable encyclopedia). We already did trying leaving this to BRD and local consensus, and the result has been repeated fights, re-re-re-litigation of the matter at this and other talk pages for years, now an incivil flamewar, and an editorial resignation right on the verge of an ANI. This is a perfect candidate for a line-item in the MoS, and I say that as someone strongly resistant to adding new line-items to MoS. (It might not be best in the main MoS page, but one of its subpages.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:28, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No with the standard "except in quotations or proper names" caveat. It's not an ENGVAR thing, as the spelling as discussed wre already obscure and archaic in the mid-20th-century in British English. Here in the 21st-century 60 some years later they're out right wrong. And this very much is what "commonality" was meant to address. (Which, to address Curly Turkey's comment, is why it's an MOS-worthy topic; it's already part of the MOS, it's just a matter of clarify how it applies.) oknazevad (talk) 00:33, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Generally no... but in specifics yes. In other words, if someone can explain why an article is using an archaic spelling (in a specific context), we should allow it. Blueboar (talk) 01:46, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No with a possible caveat relating to the context as mentioned by several people above. I would support SMcCandlish's proposal for a simple addition along the lines of: If there is two spellings of the same word with the same meaning, and one is not in common use in any currently used forms of English, the commonly used spelling should be preferred unless the context of the article content blah blah blah something clever. Scribolt (talk) 06:14, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
  • No except with the usual "if the editor can justify it" caveats, which apply to all aspects of the MOS in any case so don't need to be spelled out explicitly. Ironically, I've occasionally caught myself using "mediaeval" and had to go back to fix it, but that's because I tend to work with a lot of 19th-century sources so it no longer triggers my "this looks wrong" filter. "Reflexion", "connexion", "shewed" etc outside of very specific instances are no more appropriate than emoji and should be removed on sight, as should instances of people using archaic terms when there's a globally-understood synonym (at least one FA uses "decollated" instead of "beheaded", for instance). ‑ Iridescent 19:31, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
    Shewed is a really good example. Decollated isn't likely to be understood by more than 1% of readers if even that; they'll think it means 'de-collated'.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:06, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Extended discussion of obsolescence RfC

  • In general I'd agree with [SMcCandlish], but claiming "gay" cannot mean happy is political. Possibly because I listen to a lot of folk music, but I always assume "gay" means gay unless used in an obviously sexual sense. For instance from the song "A North Country Maid" the line "The lads and young lassies are pleasant and gay" has no innuendo at all. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 23:05, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
    • That's already covered by both quotations (of lyrics) / proper names (of songs) and jargon usage (the concept of gaeity being retained in still-extant folk music); it's not an adjective that would be used in that sense in WP's own voice (e.g. "After the election results came in, McNabb had a gay party at his campaign headquarters"). Same goes for "queer", which still has some currency in its original sense in colloquial British and Irish usage. But I don't want this to get hung up on any specific word (and both of those are probably WTW matters anyway); I'm mostly trying to get at how to structure the entry in the MoS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:10, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) Innuendo? I imagine that that was an ill-thought selection of word. There is no reason to suggest that 'gay' has any sexual connotations as such; not all homosexuals are sexual in a physical sense. I do not like seeing 'gay' being used to mean homosexual, though, eg 'he revealed himself to be gay' is the sort of thing you would read in a tabloid newspaper. But that is another issue. –Sb2001 talk page 23:17, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
      • Okay, so that's two completely opposite reasons to consider that one a MOS:WTW matter; I'll strike it from my original comment.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC) PS: Journalism style guides (for what they're worth) do recommend "gay" (for males) rather than "homosexual", which they variously consider judgmental or clinical. These things are always a moving target. In my own lifetime, for example, the preferred term for African-American has moved from Colored and/or Negro to Afro-American to African-American, with the first two now branded terrible and the third verging on it. A generation from now the fourth will be a bad word, and we'll be using something else.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:55, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
        • This doesn't seem to be covered by the MOS, but is in Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(identity)#Sex_and_sexual_identities: 'gay' is preferred usage over homosexual. I'd agree with this - 'gay' is standard usage now, I think, in both UK and US English (I can't speak any wider) - it is overwhelmingly preferred by gay people themselves; 'homosexual' is now usually either scientific or pejorative, in my experience. TSP (talk) 13:32, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
          • Good catch. That should be at MOS:IDENTITY. Maybe worth comparing it to WP:NCIDENTITY in more detail for any other mismatches. Some things might even be movable from the latter into the former; an NC page only needs to cover issues that only affect titles, and defer to the MoS for more general matters that also pertain to titles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:54, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment after a quick search, here are some dictionary entries: Medieval Oxford, Mediaeval MacMillan, Medieval Merriam-Webster, Mediaeval Cambridge Reflexion Oxford Reflexion Marriam-Webster Reflexion Collins Connection Oxford Connexion MacMillan make of these what you will, but only one says anything about any of them being archaic. Adam9007 (talk) 02:15, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
    • Good start. It's important to look for more than just the word "obsolete", though. E.g. Collins (a leading British dictionary) says "reflexion" is the "less common" spelling even in BrEng. More importantly, it has a corpus analysis chart that shows that usage of it died down to nearly nothing ca. 1800, and has been flatlined ever since then. That is, thus, a demonstration of "obsolete", with way more data to back it up than just an old-school dictionary entry. Their similar chart for connexion shows a marked decline ca. 1960, and a usage flatline around 2000. For mediaeval, it shows continually declining usage since the 1910s; for medieval, increasing usage since the same period, stabilizing rapidly thereafter and remaining stable to the present. And so on. I'll bet good money that Google N-grams will also show the same patterns. I didn't know that the online Collins had this kind of data; this is going to prove useful in a lot of future discussions. It's got gaps, though; e.g. it has no separate charts for cooperate, coöperate and co-operate, though Google N-grams does; co-operate has been declining since WWII, and the old-timey British journalese spelling "coöperate" was seemingly never picked up by book publishers at all. (I remember first seeing it as a child in the 1970s when I lived in the UK and practiced reading newspapers, and having to ask what it was.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:47, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Having learnt to read newspapers in the early '60s I must be about 10 years older that you and I can only remember seeing "coöperate" very rarely. Co-operative is a lot more common, particularly in its abbreviation. Consider: "I went to the coop to get a chicken". Did I go to the co-operative shop (co-op), or to the chicken's house (coop)? It's easier to read with the hyphen and WP:RF ought to triumph over journalistic imitation. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Sure, Americans write "co-op", too. (And I don't think anyone's contemplating the idea that WP can't have "co-operate" in it; it seems to be the usual UK spelling, and some Americans use it as well.)
This might be getting a little off-topic, but I don't know that I think "coöperate" is "journalese". In the current day, I strongly associate it with The New Yorker magazine; it's a bit of branding for them. But I've also seen it in old novels. --Trovatore (talk) 09:20, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Well, I haven't kept track of usage of it in any detail. Regardless, it's just weird. I've seen a handful of other cases of the "Englaut", like "reëlection", but they seem even rarer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:44, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
It seems to be standard and indispensable in Boötes. I can't think of another such example, but there may be some. --Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Laocoön, Brontë, but all three of those are proper names; the only word I can think of in English where an umlaut is still regularly used is naïve and even that's dying out. ‑ Iridescent 22:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes; we had a thread about that (on one of the MoS talk pages, I think) just last month. Dictionary research showed that the naïve spelling is the secondary spelling choice in every dictionary that includes it, and some no longer include it. So I would list it as obsolescent. Agreed it would be kept in a proper name, like any other diacritic that can be sourced to belong in one (except when the subject doesn't use it: Steve Gonzalez (American football) should not be moved to the González spelling).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:57, 7 September 2017 (UTC) clarified 21:06, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
Oh, thought of one: "über" when used as a prefix denoting an extreme example of a form ("the A380 is an über-airliner"), but in English that's an American colloquialism which should rarely if ever be found in Wikipedia outside of direct quotes.  ‑ Iridescent 13:52, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
Very slang, and usually doesn't have the umlaut, nor spelled with ue, just given as "uber". The usage arose in English mainly in the gothic–industrial music subculture (many of the bands are German), at a time when producing the umlaut from a US or British keyboard wasn't easy and Unicode wasn't widely supported. Doesn't seem to have gone mainstream until some late 1990s to early 2000s movies, games, fanfic sites, etc., converged on using it in this sense in English. Due to the Lyft competitor, the usage is falling off again; it's mostly used, in American English at least, in reference to Uber (company) these days. If you said "I really like uber-fiction" today, most people would be confused, and think there must be a new genre about taxi alternatives.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:06, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
What about an article on Nietzsche? EEng 14:55, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
In that context it's real German, with markup for that, and German noun-capping: Übermensch.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:06, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
OK, then what about if I use my iPhone to call for a ride? EEng 02:09, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
If you're getting a ride from Nietzche, that's a bigger existential issue than WP can handle.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:48, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
I was speaking of getting a Lÿft. EEng 03:56, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment I just came across this, which seems relevant. Especially the quote "Words from the mid to late-20th century, however much millenials might disagree, are not considered archaic". Assuming this includes spellings, this would include "connexion" (at least in the UK: it was still in use as late as 1984, and I think I've even seen instances of it as late as 2001). "Gay" would also seem to fall under this, as it was still in use during the mid, and even late 20th century. Adam9007 (talk) 19:54, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
    No one cares about "instances"; it's about MOS:COMMONALITY and MOS:JARGON, i.e. writing with maximum comprehensibly for a global, modern, diverse audience. I encountered an instance of "yonder" the other day on a mailing list, but we wouldn't use it in an article, outside a quotation. The word actually has some remaining currency in the US South, but who cares? It's a cutesy, nostalgic, almost twee regionalism. Just like "reflexion" (and "twee").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:48, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
    • Support topic ban on Adam9007 from changing valid spellings in articles and other spelling-related issues. This is getting tedious. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:01, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Merge draft WP:Naming conventions (identity) to MOS:IDENTITY?

There is a draft proposal at WP:Naming conventions (identity), which is not a naming convention at all but a general style guide, a much-expanded MOS:IDENTITY. Virtually nothing in it is article-titles-specific, so the proposed guidelines belong in MoS. Some of them aren't even applicable to titles at all under any normal circumstances. It even starts out with "When in doubt, or when editing a controversial article, take the time to read the article's talk page before editing", which is article content-editing advice and is unrelated to titles (which are created with first edit and changed by WP:RM process). Much of it is about how write to lead sections of bios.

Several obvious options:

  1. Merge it, with edits, to existing pages: This material may best belong in a "Sexuality, ethnicity, and identity" section (replacing the current "Sexuality" one) at WP:Manual of Style/Biographies (MOS:BIO), with a concise summary in the main MOS page at the extant MOS:IDENTITY. Some of the verbiage already in that summary could probably be moved to the expanded MOS:BIO section and pared down at MOS:IDENTITY, to make room for summaries of the incoming material. If anything remains from "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" that can only pertain to titles, it can be be covered briefly at WP:Naming conventions (people) (WP:NCP) in a short section that has a {{Main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Sexuality, ethnicity, and identity}} to cross-reference people to where the broader relevant material is. Some cleanup of the new material will be required. [Controversial or policy-conflicting wording would not be merged.]
  2. Move it (merge it as an MoS subpage): An alternative approach could be to just move WP:Naming conventions (identity) to WP:Manual of Style/Identity, still in draft proposal state, and work on it from there. It can be argued that it's better at this stage for there to be no more new MoS pages (or NC pages), just sections; people already complain that it can be difficult to find things. However, if more drafting is needed, then later the accepted parts could be moved into MOS:BIO (and a MOS:IDENTITY summary), and the sandboxing page eventually removed and redirected. [Controversial or policy-conflicting wording would not be merged.]
  3. Reject the whole, but integrate some pieces: A third option would be to reject it as a proposal, but start incorporating key bits of it one at a time into MOS (and NCP, for anything titles-specific), via more narrow discussions over time. [Controversial or policy-conflicting wording would not be merged.]
  4. Reject it: Consensus could conclude that it's too flawed to work with, and should be tagged {{Rejected}} [might entail a rename so no one is confused that it's actually a guideline]
  5. Convert to {{essay}} [would probably also entail a rename]
  6. Redirect to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Identity
  7. Redirect to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Self-published name changes
  8. Take to WP:MfD (or WP:RfD if any other option would be accepted and result in the original page becoming a redirect)
  9. Redirect to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) or a subsection thereof (other than the one included in #7)
  10. Tag {{historical}}
  11. Redirect to Wikipedia:Article titles

Comments on the options

  • Tag {{rejected}} (option #4). Seems an excellent example of a proposal that failed for lack of distinction between article titling issues (AT) and article content style issues (MOS). Would oppose a top-down injection of any of its material in current guidance: e.g. WP:GAY? is currently already far more nuanced than the first bullet of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (identity)#Sex and sexual identities (don't see what the tentative guidance could improve there); WP:SPNC is what we decided, after a long consensus-seeking process, to include in WP:NCP in this context (more detail seems unnecessary there). Similar for MOS's WP:IDENTITY: much has been proposed to add to these paragraphs, and what isn't there now has been rejected for multiple reasons (would be unfortunate to unbalance that section by injecting material nobody seems to have cared for for a long period). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:14, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Added options #5 to #8: I might be sympathetic to some of these new options: #8 might even become my preference, unless someone is devoted enough to upgrade it to an acceptable essay (option #5), which would then probably take a lot of work. I'd avoid option #6 (for the AT/MOS confusion); Option #7 could maybe be acceptable, but there's more to identity than the identity of individual persons (identity as a group, etc). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:35, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, I probably should have thought to include those (other than the MfD one, since we don't delete old proposals; they get marked Rejected, or occasionally Historical if they were never actually proposed). On the redir question, I would redir it to NCP, without the # part.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:58, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Please don't change the numbering, my reply above would become unintelligible without it. "Take to MfD" means: ask the community whether it should be deleted or kept: maybe there's little chance the result of the discussion would be delete, but it can be taken there. I'd not take option #9, while too confusing. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:21, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
If the page would be renamed as a consequence of option #5, it is still to be decided what to do with the original page name: as a redirect it would probably better not go to the subsequent essay, and the redirect left after a page move may, in fact, better be taken to MfD, or in that case probably better WP:RfD, to avoid further confusion (option#8). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:27, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Added #10 while that option was suggested below in the extended discussion section: I'd not do that though, a clean rejection (#4) seems preferable as far as I'm concerned. That, in combination with going back to the pre-2017 version (as suggested below), seems acceptable to me; would still prefer #8 though. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:34, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
I don't see the point of this profusion of mostly redundant options, some of which would never happen (proposals get {{Rejected}}, not {{Historical}}; RfD doesn't address pages, e.g. to turn them into redirects, it only addresses existing redirects; MfD does not delete proposals, they get {{Rejected}}). But whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:09, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Shortish !votes

(extended back and forth can go in previous or next section)

  • Option #11 (which I just added). I realised that option #4 would freeze the AT/MOS confusion under a project space title that would normally indicate a page with WP:AT-related content only. Redirecting a non-viable separate "naming convention" article title to the general AT policy seems the only viable option. Also, so many article titles are one way or another identity-related (think e.g. Myanmar/Burma: identity was an underlying current of many of its related article title discussions). Many years ago we folded quite a few subsidiary naming conventions (especially quite a few former naming conventions that were transcending topic areas) back into the general policy page, so it is not as if we would be doing something exceptional when proceeding with option #11. As a second choice I'd still see a cycle at WP:MfD possible (option #8): if kept the page would need to be purged of general MOS type of advice, retaining only what relates to article titling directly. Sorry that it took me a few intermediate steps to come to that realisation, but I struck quite a bit of text above which would make your reading time shorter again. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:36, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: MOS:IDENTITY, and that includes MOS:GENDERID, has been discussed/debated/reformatted so many times that I'm content with what is there now. I'd rather that what is essentially an essay (written by a smaller group) not be merged into the existing text. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:49, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Do 2, 4, and 9: Move it to WP:Manual of Style/Identity (proposal) to reflect its actual content, tag it {{Rejected}}, and redirect the original name to WP:Naming conventions (people). To the extent it has good ideas in it, several of them are already covered at other pages, and those that potentially should be integrated into a guideline can be proposed and discussed one at a time on their individual merits. It is not an {{Essay}}, since it doesn't present a particular viewpoint about a subject, but a list of proposed line-item rules about unrelated subjects.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:20, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Extended discussion about the new identity material

I think a lot of what's been drafted at "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" is worth including; it's just misnamed/placed, and almost completely unexamined by the community (and a few points might also be pulled from the misleadingly named but pretty well-written WP:PROJPAGE essay at WP:WikiProject LGBT studies/Guidelines). It might require multiple RfCs to get the proposed guideline additions accepted site-wide, though many are already de facto consensus. E.g., "Do not call more attention to a person's identity labels than is strictly necessary" is a very good way to put the vague rule of thumb that's been hammered out in thousands of requested-move, lead-wording, and infobox-parameter debates over the last decade+, and is also the central premise of MOS:FLAGS.

There's also a potential WP:CONSENSUS problem here. To make even rather minor changes to MOS:IDENTITY required some long and heated RfCs at WP:Village pump (policy). While I'm sure it's not the intent, quietly drafting a detailed style-not-really-naming convention on a wide array of identity and sexuality issues has the effect of trying to do an end-run around something we already know is going to require a great deal of community discussion, redrafting, and consensus building. This quicker this is "mainstreamed" the better.

WP:NCP presently doesn't mention identity at all and should already have a cross-reference to MOS:IDENTITY, even if "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" didn't exist. If/when the new material is integrated, the lead-specific parts of it should be summarized as needed at MOS:LEAD.

The draft does have some "WP:Writing policy is hard" issues. E.g., as of this writing, it says "For the guideline on referring to individuals by name, see WP:COMMONNAME", which is wrong in three ways (the actual guideline is MOS:BIO; COMMONNAME isn't about proper names or individuals, but about the best-sourced choice between multiple valid names (proper or otherwise), regardless of topic; and it isn't a guideline). A few bits (like "two-spirit") might never be consensus-accepted. There's advice it gives that will definitely need revision to be consistent with current policy, guidelines, and editorial consensus (e.g., there's an anti-COMMONNAME provision not long after the mention of that policy). Also has a handful of facts wrong ("Colored" and "Coloured" as ethnical labels aren't the same term). But most of it really does look like it's on the right track to me, which is why I'm inspired to suggest we start integrating it. Much of it seems overdue (some of it dates to 2005) as a codification of best practices, and little of it tries to change practice (those are the potentially controversial parts).
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:37, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Update: I've done a cleanup pass on it, without deleting/changing anything controversial in it, just fixed flat-out errors, bad formatting, and other issues no one's likely to revert me on. Also flagged two line-items in it as having policy problems, and outlined them in detail on the draft's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:56, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment Anything to do with the title of articles should either be in the Article Title Policy or in one of its guidelines which are called naming conventions. Placing guidance in the MOS—which is a manual of style for the text inside an article, and is not directly tied to Article Title Policy—is a recipe for future confusion and bickering. This is because those who are very active in the MOS prefer rule base dictates over following usage in reliable sources (which is the fundamental guidance in Article Title Policy).
  • If you want to redirect a naming convention to remove the content such a page, the place for this discussion to take place is on the talk page of the proposed redirect/deletion not here.
  • Why have you not advertised this at WT:AT?
  • This has been a proposed guideline since it was created in 2008. So why have you recently updated it instead of marking it historical?
From what I have read of the draft it is not a naming convention as it specifically says in the lead "labeling people and organizations in Wikipedia articles". So I for one would tend to suggest options 1,3, or 8 but definitely not a redirect for the reasons I have given. My preference is to revert it to the edit before you edited it and mark it {{Historical}} and/or {{Failed proposal}}. -- PBS (talk) 10:54, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
You seem to have answered your own questions to the extent they're not answered by the maybe-merge-maybe-mark-Rejected proposal itself.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:06, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment - Whatever happens, this is something that needs to be decided by a broad swath of the Wikipedia community, and is not something that can be determined by a relatively small clique of "MOS regulars". Please advertise this discussion in as many different venues as possible to bring in more comments. Blueboar (talk) 14:29, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. WP:LGBT should obviously be alerted since the MOS:IDENTITY disputes have mainly concerned LGBT people. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:49, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Post pointers as you like; the notice at WP:VPPOL and WP:VPPRO seemed sufficient to me. My principal concern here is that we no longer have something that dates at least in part to 2005 continue to have "proposal" on it as if it's under current discussion when hasn't been for ages. Discuss it and decide what do with it (either in one fell swoop, or piecemeal). Note that I haven't !voted at all this, just suggested some of it may be salvageable. I may pick an option or combination of options from the list at some point. [Have now done so.]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:10, 13 September 2017 (UTC) [Updated. 02:22, 13 September 2017 (UTC)]
I think it a very bad idea to move it and redirect it. Just mark the thing as rejected. The reason for this is redirects between WP:AT naming conventions and the MOS should be discouraged as many new editors (and it seems to me some more experienced ones) have difficulty telling the difference. I really do not know why you have created a storm in a tea cup over this. Be bold (or I will) and mark it as {{Failed proposal}}. If someone wants to reanimate the corps they can follow the guidance in {{Failed proposal}}. -- PBS (talk) 09:38, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
But it's the very fact that this is proposed style guideline material – with nothing in it pertaining to naming conventions in particular – that is the key problem. Pages like this, regardless what tag is on top of them (and we do tag and preserve them, not delete them), perpetuate and worsen the confusion between NC and MOS pages, and encourage further PoV-forking of guideline material on NC vs. MoS grounds (we've had serious problems with that in the past, which I need not dwell on in detail here). The solution I'm aiming for at this point is that the old [i.e. current] name of that page redirect to WP:NCP, the actual NC guideline on biographies, while the failed proposal full of style material be moved to a name that describes its actual content, and be marked failed/rejected. So long as it remains with its present content at its present name it continues to sow confusion between what is a style guideline and what is a titles-only naming convention (and what is a perennial proposal and what is an actual guideline). I raised this at all because someone, on this very page, recently cited NCIDENTITY as if it were an actual guideline (and no one in that discussion bothered to check). This is also why I want to not move it to WP:MOS/Identity but to WP:MOS/Identity_(proposal) so that it is never again unclear that it is not a guideline. In retrospect, it might have just been better to be BOLD on all of this, but a) people tend raise an alarm any time people get very bold with guideline-related material of any kind, and b) this page in particular has been argued about for years, and the actual guideline material we do have on the topic, at MOS:IDENTITY, has also been highly controversial, so "discuss before acting" seemed wise in this case.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:36, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
Does anyone actually object to a) tagging it {{Failed proposal}} (a.k.a. {{Rejected}}), b) renaming it to match its content, and c) redirecting its old name to WP:Naming conventions (people)?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:37, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Should the WP:TALK guideline discourage interleaving?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#RfC: Should the guideline discourage interleaving?. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:10, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Italicizing names of "medium-length" poems?

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles says to use italics for "long or epic poems", but quotation marks for "short poems". The problem is, though, that long and short can be kind of relative; "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is definitely longer in terms of line-count (though possibly not other measures -- I haven't checked) than the Song of Everlasting Regret, even though the latter is more "narrative" and so arguably more "epic". Our Bai Juyi article currently uses quotation marks for the name of the poem, which is at odds with the article on the poem itself; clearly someone interpreted MOS one way and someone else the other, and I'm not sure which is "right" (and so which article should be fixed). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:16, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Quotation marks seem most appropriate, as a sub-work or minor work. It was first published article-style in a literary journal, then later as a chapter in an all-Eliot book. If it's ever been published as a stand-alone work at all, it would have been posthumously.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:30, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: Sorry, I wasn't clear. I don't have a problem with the way "Prufrock" is formatted. I came here primarily because I was wondering whether MOS watchers thought it would be better to fix the Bai Juyi article (which uses quotation marks) to conform to the Chang hen ge (poem) article (which italicizes), or vice versa. I'm kind of leaning in favour of changing the Bai Juyi article to use italics, if only because that article is a mess, while the article on the poem was italicized by User:In ictu oculi, who is usually pretty good with MOS issues. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:45, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
I wouldn't take my italicizing as gospel, I have found the guidelines somewhat confusing. But generally in academic publishing a work of fiction would be italicized to show that e.g. Bai Juyi is a created work and not a Mr Bai Juyi. If our en.wp guidelines contradict this (do they?) then the guidelines need correcting to real world best practice. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:50, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
@In ictu oculi: Sorry, I did it again. I meant that you italicized the name of Bai Juyi's poem in our standalone article on the poem, but in the main Bai Juyi article the same poem's name is not italicized. I'm not talking about any work named Bai Juyi. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:56, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
And it's not a choice between italics or nothing, but between italics and quotation marks, both of which indicate a title of a work (just of different sorts). At some point the distinction between what should get italics and what should get quotation marks is fuzzy and arbitrary, e.g. that between a novela and a novelette. In the case of "Chang hen ge", it should clearly be quotation marks since it is not an "epic poem", but is quite short (full text with translation here). It seems to be a traditional title that is treated as the "real" title of the work; it's not a constructed designation (e.g. first few words from the first line) or a description, so it doesn't appear to be one of those "neither italics nor quotation marks" cases.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:29, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
No that's my fault I didn't read carefully what you said above. As far as titles goes Chang hen ge (poem) need italics. In the article body I would have thought "Quotation marks seem most appropriate, as a sub-work or minor work" as SMcCandlish says. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:39, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

This is really down to the judgement of an individual editor. I hope that everyone editing has enough common sense to work out what constitutes an epic poem. Anything which is not obviously epic should have its name inside quotes, not formatted in italics. Whether it was published as part of a collection, in a magazine/newspaper or on its own should give you a good idea as to how to format it.
–Sb2001 talk page 18:19, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, in this case it's old manuscript material. But anyway, I don't understand the idea it belongs in quotation marks but the same editor wants to italicize the title of the article on it. That's not how it works.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:02, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Applicability of MOS:PMC to variant romanization styles?

See [3]. Basically, MOS:CHINA tells us to use hanyu pinyin ("Tang"), so the word is spelled consistently in the article's original prose that way, but the source I quoted uses Wade-Giles ("T'ang"). I'm wondering if I should replace the "T'ang" with a "[Tang]", similarly to how I replaced the "The" with "[t]he" to fit how I worked the quotation into the sentence".

Also, it's hypothetical, but if the answer to the above is "No", would that still be the case if it was more substantial, like if I was quoting a source that spelled the name of the article subject "Li Ho"?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to do that if confusion could result if the name were not normalized, but in a case where the alternative version has already been given, or the difference is very slight, the likelihood of confusion seems low, thus the practice might be unnecessarily nit-picky. The material in question mentions Mao Zedong, who to anyone around my age is Mao Tse-tung. We probably would not change quoted material that used the latter to read "According to Mao [Zedong]", or the like, for the same "it's not really necessary" reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:14, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Do not change the quote to fit the rest of the article, just because it is a different spelling. As long as it is clear to the reader what is meant, you should leave it as it is. In my experience, quotes are only changed when there is an error, rather than a stylistic difference. I am sure the MoS says this somewhere. SMcCandlish mentions that it should be standardised if confusion could be a result of leaving it unchanged; I do not see how readers could struggle to understand it. Maybe the language reference desk could offer you some advice. Regarding different spellings of the article's name: include a note in the lead, to mention the other spellings.
–Sb2001 talk page 18:04, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Right, that section is WP:PMC. Where there's a "massive" name difference, it may be seen as beyond a matter of mere style. E.g., to most people over about 30, Zhuangzi (book) is unrecognizable (to us it's Chuang Tzu). But WP is using the most modern romanizations pretty consistently, like it or not. Normally, we'd resolve potential confusion by linking. But we also try to avoid linking inside quotations (other than in square-bracketed editorial insertions), though Wikipedian feelings about this may have softened a little. If we were quoting "According to the Chuang Tzu ...", we could conceivably do something like "According to the Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] ...", or "According to the Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] ...", or "According to the [Zhuangzi] ...", as the context seemed to warrant. This sort of thing is really most apt to arise when there are multiple very different names from different languages, though, rather than just a change of romanization approaches. Anyway, the point is that an editorial change is permissible if it's square-bracketed, helpful, and doesn't alter the meaning in any way. What we definitely don't want is un-bracketed stylistic shifts that are beyond the very limited normalizations permitted by MoS (e.g. converting guillemets and other non-English quotation marks inside a quotation to the type used in English).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:50, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely agree with everything that SMcCandlish says. There is an useful useful template for inserting square brackets on either side of the added or modified content, here: {{Bracket}}. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:24, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to consolidate some MoS discussion

I propose that the talk page of any MoS sub-page that hasn't had a post in a year or longer be redirected to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. This will reduce the scattershot nature of discussion, and reduce the likelihood and incidence of PoV-forking MoS pages from each other (among other WP:CONLEVEL problems), as well as reduce the need to cross-post notices about discussions. Any archives from such "sub-talk-pages" can be folded into the main MoS archives, which will enhance searchability.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:56, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

  • It's peripherally related, but honestly, I kinda wish there was an "MOS noticeboard" similar to RSN, BLPN and FTN. I kinda feel like the talk pages of policies/guidelines should be reserved for discussing amendments to said policies/guidelines, but it seems like the vast majority of threads in the archives of this page are people asking questions about how MOS applies to this or that specific article or group of articles. At least, this is how I have often used it, and no one has ever called me out on it, apparently because I had no other choice. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:50, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
That said, I am leaning toward supporting the proposal as presented. Subpages are messy and encourage WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and (in cases where a sub-page has only one or two active editors watching it) WP:OWN. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:54, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
  • I think this is a good idea but let's proceed carefully. MOS works remarkably well, its stability has been hard-won, and we musn't accidentally screw that up. I think our guiding principle should be to reduce the isolate of the less-watched pages, not to consolidate all pages (less-watched or not) just for the sake of some blind principle that everyone interested in any MOS issue should see all MOS issues. EEng 19:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

How MoS works

@EEng: I'm not sure if I agree with you that MOS works remarkably well, or that it is stable to begin with (let alone how hard said stability might have been won). Yes, the main page might work well and have a hard-earned stability, but this is obviously not the case for the subpages that would be affected by this proposal.

  • SMcC may remember the MOS:KOREA flareup over romanization last year. MOS:KOREA is controlled by the Korea-focused members of WP:KOREA, and I don't think that's a particularly well-kept secret. Said editor group, by definition, has a systemic bias in favour of the "official" English spellings used by the South Korean government, while English Wikipedia is supposed to be based on high-quality English-language sources, which tend overwhelmingly not to use the post-2000 "official" spellings.
  • The same is essentially true of several other MOS subpages such as MOS:CHINA, though in a less obviously problematic fashion (the Chinese government's "official" romanization system has much broader, though hardly universal, acceptance among western academia).
  • At least one subpage I could name was essentially "ruled" by a single user for several years (it would be borderline gravedancing if I were to name him, and I honestly think he was a great editor in everything but his localized OWN behaviour, so I really don't want to do that).
  • Many of the other subpages are, frankly, terrible and need serious attention -- why, for instance, is MOS:INDIA so much shorter than those for other regions that honestly present far less complex style issues than India (which is home to literally over 1,000 languages, almost none of which traditionally use roman as their primary writing system)? I can't help but feel that has some relation to the sorry state of a lot of our India-related articles that MOS:INDIA gives hardly any instruction.

I get the impression that your view that MOS works well and is stable is the view of someone who hasn't done much work on the subpages that are the ultimate target of this proposal, though I apologize if I am mistaken.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:55, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Dispute at obscure subpages, and subpages that need a lot of cleanup, don't change the fact that ten thousand potential editorial disputes are avoided each day by the guidance MOS provides. By that measure it works well. EEng 14:39, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
I don't doubt that there is still a lot of conflict about details, even on this page right now, but I think overall it's still a great success. I think those who created this and monitor it deserve a lot of credit. Our MoS is big and unwieldy, but Wikipedia is beyond big, and needs a comprehensive style manual. For instance Chicago Manual of Style's new 1,146 page 17th edition is ginormous, and for specialist areas it refers to other style manuals for details. We've got work to do, but I think we should be proud of what we have.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:53, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm proud of MoS (and its not-excessively-sub-topical side pages). To get as far as it has – given often nationalustic conflict between off-WP style guides on virtually every style question, and very strong and sometimes idiosyncratic views about style matters from editor to editor – yet not be a Chicago- or New Hart's-length pile of WP:CREEP, and manage to cover a lot of specialized stuff most style guides would skip ... well, that's really quite remarkable.

Anyway, one of the ideas behind the talk-page consolidation is to draw more attention to subpages that badly need work. It would help in normalizing the country/culture-specific ones to cover the same cite things with a similar organization and approach, fur example.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Noticeboard or help desk?

The idea's been discussed before; a proposal for an MoS noticeboard was rejected several years ago, and WP:WikiProject Manual of Style was created with something like this in mind, then went moribund. Ultimately, it's probably too late to do anything about the community's habit of using guideline talk pages as de facto noticeboards for discussion of compliance with and interpretation of them. There's also the issue that noticeboards have a tendency to be used as "enforcement and punishment" venues, not places to ask questions. On the other hand, we now have a profusion of noticeboards, down to a rather micro-topical level, where once there were only a few, for central policy concerns. So the community take on what a noticeboard is and is for may have shifted. In the end, I suspect it would just be a maintenance/bureaucracy layer – that we'd end up spending a lot of time moving posts from here to there, and that the incoming stream of "noticeboardy" posts here would not abate by much. I also suspect that part of the reason MoS is as stable as it is, is the level of churn here. It both keeps people (from all over the project) actively watchlisting, and informs the watchlisters (and more sporadic visitors) in hard-to-miss ways exactly how difficult it is to craft much less change this kind of policy (in the general policy analysis sense of the word) without unintended negative effects.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:08, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes: noticeboards sound like daunting places—mainly because of the most famous one. Editors may be reluctant to ask for advice at somewhere they think they will be sanctioned. This page serves the function well enough; there is no need to create another layer of hassle. And for inexperienced editors, when they go to the support venues, they will be directed here.
–Sb2001 talk page 17:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Yep. The primary source of opposition to the idea of an MoS noticeboard was exactly that people feared they'd be "prosecuted" at it over style nitpicks, though such was never the idea. In retrospect, they may well have been correct, since there's no way for the originators of a noticeboard to control how that page is used a year or 5 or 10 later, and most of the noticeboards do in fact have a complaint-and-punishment air about them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:00, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
I do agree with what you are saying, however I think that there is more to be done. My main concern with the sectional talk pages is that one very often receives no reply. Well, until another editor turns up months later to offer some advice for a problem which passed some time ago. The idea of adding redirects to here if there have been no comments in a year is good, but we certainly need to be looking at adding them for when fast replies are not received. This turns the task into something considerably larger.
–Sb2001 talk page 17:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Baby steps. :-) The problem you point out has a lot to do with why I'm proposing the talk-page consolidation above. The more MoS questions are directed to the WT:MOS page, the more likely they are to be addressed at all, quickly, and with input from multiple editors. A handful of MoS subpages' talk pages are themselves well attended, e.g. WT:MOSNUM and WP:MOSCAPS, but the rest mostly are not.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:00, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Suggestion... what if we called it "MOS help desk" instead of "MOS Noticeboard"? Blueboar (talk) 19:15, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
That would probably go over better. In actuality, people are free to go create that page or (even and) an MoS noticeboard right now; if people hated it, they could try to delete it at MfD and redirect it back here, but they'd have to have a good reason. I'm just skeptical that either type of new page would be very useful; people would likely continue to come to this page to post style questions and disputes. But I've been wrong about things before. Maybe it would work out really well. A potential upside I could see to a help desk page is that it might help avoid Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language giving answers that conflict with MoS, which has happened several times; a disambiguating hatnote would help, directing people to one if they have a question about English usage in general versus one about usage on WP in particular. However, the WP:HD does not appear to have any topical sub-pages, so this would be a new animal entirely.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:41, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes... "MOS Help Desk"... Wonderful idea. They'll come like lambs to slaughter!
  • No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no to any kind of MOS help desk or noticeboard. We get enough trivial stylistic disputes on individual articles forum-shopped to the various WP talk:MOS/X pages without actually inviting it. If there's a recurring problem that a change to MOS would alleviate, that's different, and is what the various WP talk:MOS/X pages are for. As noted in the earlier thread I suspect consolidating many of them is a good idea. At least let's do that first before thinking again about any kind of noticeboard or help desk. EEng 19:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
  • If anyone's curious (and a glutton for punishment), there are about 19,000 words on the question at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 122#Proposal: creation of "style noticeboard". It seems like a good idea to me, probably as a help desk, but many people see grammar, spelling, style, etc. as tools of <exaggeration> punishment and terror to be abused by despots </exaggeration> and don't want any more of it.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  20:55, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Now manning the MOS Help Desk
Aye, that's the thread I was thinking of. The only way something like that would ever fly (and I share EEng's skepticism about the utility of the idea) is Blueboar's "help desk" version. I wonder who would volunteer to staff it? I don't want to spend all day answering style questions. I address them here primarily to indicate "yes, we already have an answer, so no, you don't need to go change MoS", because I care about guideline stability. On a help desk that wasn't also the talk page of the guideline, the preservative motivation wouldn't be present.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:37, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Draw near, new editor, that you may learn from these WP policies conveniently arrayed about me!
Which makes me question whether this 'help desk' would turn into another WP:RD/L. If editors are offering opinions at such a venue, they will be treated as fact. As least if they come here, others may dismiss—quickly—the initial answer. The trouble is, none of us know every section of the MoS back-to-front (well, except for SMcCandlish), so it would be difficult to regulate the sorts of answers being given. It is not reasonable to ask people to learn all of the guidelines, so we would need to trust the judgement of the 'staff'. I cannot see many people willing to man it, simply because of the pressure which would be placed upon them by observers who perhaps have slightly better knowledge on one particular issue. Whilst in theory I support the idea of a help/reference desk, I cannot see it working. What we could work on is publicising this page a little more effectively. There could be some sort of reforms, to turn it into more of a welcoming environment. I would find that a far more attractive as an idea. A softer approach, eg not all biting a newbie for wanting to change something due to ignorance, would certainly not go unappreciated. My problem was that I did not know there was an MoS—we could do with a system that notifies new editors of its existence, and encourages them to have a glance over it before making grammatical/stylistic edits. Then, they could ask questions at our bang-up-to-date MoS information centre. That said, I do not know how the 'welcome' templates look at the moment. Maybe they are directed here already.
–Sb2001 talk page 23:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Personally I think anyone using eg for e.g. should be barred from this discussion.[FBDB] EEng 00:28, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
OK, so I was having lunch and eating a scotch egg. Then I read "eg not all biting a newbie" and had this weird vision of the aforementioned in pursuit of a hapless IP user! :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 11:48, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
Aggressive egg. EEng 14:45, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
But remember that if you summon minions that are not random, that's WP:Canvassing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:46, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
It probably would save a lot of trouble to add a link to MoS (or at least the summary version) in all the "here are important basics" welcome templates that don't already have one.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:38, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Comics MoS

Are you aware of the stupid rule at the comics wiki-project MoS, which states that editors should use a hash rather than the numero sign. Is this not defeating the point of the MoS—consistency across the whole of WP? –Sb2001 talk page 19:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

It has been this way at WikiProject Comics for about a decade now on perhaps a couple thousand articles, for the same reason Projects devoted to biochemistry or other specialized fields have MOS specifics appropriate to that field. In this case, the vast, vast majority of secondary-source references reporting on comic books, as well as the industry standard itself, uses the number sign (#) rather than "No." — which, it could be argued, is less accessible than # to non-English speakers. To put it colloquially, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." --Tenebrae (talk) 20:07, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Yep. This was actually added into the main MoS a few years ago (at WP:Manual of Style#Number sign, maybe at my own prompting, for consistency with MOS:COMICS; I'm not sure at this late date). It should also be mentioned at MOS:ABBR for completeness there; that page doesn't presently cover abbreviations for "volume" and "number" at all. We don't like exceptions, as a general rule of thumb, but permit them when they're strongly reflected in the real-world source materials that aren't just specialist-only insider publications. While news publishers in particular do frequently use "No." or "no." in reference to comics, they're following their own house stylebooks, and news style diverges from other styles and general usage.

Throwing out the "#" style for comics wouldn't seem to buy us anything at all. Everyone understands what "#1" means just as everyone understands what "No. 1" or "no. 1" mean. The "#" style is just a convention with comics. I'm in favor of retaining it, since changing it here would mean many thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of conformance edits, while comics-oriented new editors would virtually always use # until "corrected", and it would just a pick a fight with a group of [hobbyist] specialists when no fight is needed. That last point is why this differs from some previous "gimme an exception" cases, even ones where we did in fact clean up thousands of cases (e.g. capitalization of common names of species). The "specialist style" that comics-oriented editors have been using is not in fact a specialist style but the dominant one in the context, and isn't being fallaciously imposed here, as its use is not confusing, misleading, or otherwise inappropriate for a general audience, unlike so many "WP must write exactly the same way people with my job title do, in the material they write for each other, or I will fight WP consensus unto death" demands we deal with here. WP also doesn't use the "#" glyph in its old role as the "pound sign", sticking by rule with the ISO symbol "lb". So, yeah, "ain't broke".

While yes (and contrary to the belief of some MoS detractors) the general purpose of MoS is cross-article consistency, this is not pursued in a robotic manner against WP:Common sense. We have numerous variances that are field-specific (MOS:NUM has quite a few itself, and all the various topical MoS pages have more, though keeping them from wandering off into specalized-style-fallacy territory is a constant low-key effort. It's sufficient that articles be consistent between each other to the extent practical, within a category. What we don't want is to see half the comics articles using "#" and half of them using "No."/"no.", or worse yet for the style to wander in the same article. A good comparison is the use of v. rather than vs. in a legal context, while we use vs. in all other contexts (when versus is abbreviated at all). The real world (in English, anyway) really does prefer v. in legal cases – including in non-specialist works like newspapers – and writers/editors on things like sports really do prefer vs., even in the same publication as an article using v. for a legal case. While we could impose one spelling for "consistency obsession" reasons – as we could with "No." – that would basically be language-change activism which isn't what we're here for.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Why would the MOS specify the numero sign in the first place? At least where I'm from that symbol is virtually never seen. --Khajidha (talk) 13:27, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. We're actually advising against various other obscure Unicode symbols, e.g. the one-glyph character for ... (…), and the pre-superscripted 2 character (²). Most publications that use numero do it as no. or No., not as №.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:32, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Even the abbreviation "No." is pretty rare in my experience. --Khajidha (talk) 15:17, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
I think it's a US/UK division. The US tends to use a hash (#), the UK tends to use "no". For instance you would never see a headline "Talks at #10" in the UK, whereas "No 10" is immediately obvious as referring to the Prime Minister's residence. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 16:13, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Yes. That does appear to be the case. And the full point afterwards seems to be heading for extinction. –Sb2001 talk page 19:32, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
It's not an ENGVAR matter, because there's neither a "clean break" internationally, nor intra-national consistency. To look at this Downing side matter in detail: No[.] 10 [Downing Street] is a proper name in this context, not just an address; it's used as a metaphoric (technically metonymic) stand-in for "the British prime minister, or the collective office thereof", in the same way that "White House" and occasionally "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" are used to mean "the US President, or the administration thereof". No 10 Downing Street is also sometimes just called "10 Downing Street" [4] or even (mostly in headlines) "Downing Street" [5], and might even turn up as "10 Downing" or even just "Downing" if the context is clear enough. "Street" is also sometimes abbreviated. If the first bit is included, it would be rendered "No." in US publications, though they're not apt to use it as a PM reference, since it's too opaque to their audience; but it's the typical abbreviation of "number" in American journalism, with capitalization or not being a matter of house style, though it'll always be capitalized for an address. American address style doesn't use "No." or "#" for street addresses, though often uses one or the other (usually "#") for unit numbers if they're not identified more specifically ("Apt. 12", "Suite 200").

Side comment: this piece (on topic: uses "No 10" by itself in reference to the PM's office) makes me wonder if we can have an encyclopedic article on the cats of 10 Downing Street. People keep writing about them, going all the way back to the early 20th century, as I discovered while working on the article Manx cat. Heh. We have some separate articles on various US presidents' dogs, but I wonder if they wouldn't be better combined into a single piece on presidential pooches. {end whimsy mode}

In more general terms, the supposition that "[t]he US tends to use a hash (#)" isn't accurate, aside from maybe how individuals write online. Some British writers (the ones following Oxford rather than British-press style about when to drop "." from abbreviations) will also spell it "No." or sometimes (not for an address) "no." The British press are not unanimous in their "death to full points" march, anyway; see "No. 1" used by the BBC here (pp. 76, 96). One can also find British publications actually using the numero symbol, if you dig around, but it seems to be only as a layout decoration thing, e.g. the front cover of the BBC piece already cited. You can find American book covers also using the symbol, but it's rare in running prose. There are also weird cases, e.g. "No.1" with no space [6] but they also appear to be marketing layout gimmickery on covers, only (the same book using "No. 1" internally).

To get back to "#" and comics: RS about comics usually use "#", and the general public does, too. Journalism tends to use "no." or "No.", just because they have house styles against "#" in general, but they rarely write about specific issues of comics, so they don't have a normative effect on the usage in that context. A book entirely about British comics uses "#" throughout [7] (though the publisher is US-based, and the book was actually printed in Canada), for what that's worth. Virtually all books on comics do, even those not produced by comics publishers (e.g. art "coffee table" books from Taschen, etc.). The non-comics-publisher books on comics are probably the most reliable sources from a WP perspective, being independent of the subject and fairly academic in intent and style. Examples: [8], [9], [10], [11] (all from first page of "comics art" Google Books search). Many of them more literally are academic (art history/philosophy works intended for a university audience). WP's allowance of "#" for comics edges toward a WP:Specialized-style fallacy case only on first glance. It's missing the "violates the principle of least astonishment" criterion of an SSF – it's not confusing to anyone, and doesn't produce a "WTF?" reaction in the minds of readers unfamiliar with the topic, because "#" is one of the long-standing, standardized ways to abbreviate "number" in English. While it's not favored by news publishers, it is actually also fairly common in writing about sports (e.g. league and tournament rankings [12]) and entertainment (e.g. pop singles charts [13] [see "Discover which song was #1 the day you were born" sidebar], and movie box office sales [14]), for example, not just comics. But it's really, really common for comics. Another point against an SSF determination is that there's no hint of a camp of specialists trying to tell WP how it has to write, and tendentiously fighting against resistance from all over WP. WP's been using # for comics all along, and virtually no one has been objecting.

Having reconsidered it for half a month, I still conclude that we wouldn't gain anything by trying to "ban" the # symbol for comics; it would require a zillion mostly manual edits, would lead to a "wikirevolt" of comics-focused editors, and would provide ammo to anti-MoS editors, who are presently very few in number. Let's not breed more of them. In effect, such a rule would be like telling biology editors they can't italicize the scientific names of organisms here; the style isn't just what they're used to as specialists, it's what everyone's at least a little familiar with, and it doesn't surprise anyone, though you can probably find someone somewhere who doesn't like it. I'm normally "Captain Consistency" (issue #1 out soon!), but I just can't see a good case for hyper-consistency against "#", especially since we actually don't have consistency on "no.", "No.", "no", "No", "number", and "Number" in general, even for things like addresses and rankings. If we were going to get more consistent, start with that mess first.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:51, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

The British news style seems to be heading for 'No10' (pretty much all tabloids use this, and the Times and Guardian are sometimes daring to go there). I do not know anywhere near enough about comics to say specifically whether the numero sign is better than the hash. I happened to turn up at an article and change the '#'s to 'No.'s. It seemed a little strange that there would be different guidelines. I must point out that your idea that only news style drops the points is simply not true. Internal university style guides are getting rid of them, major institutions and government departments lost them long ago, and even NHR gives acknowledgement to the undeniable trend. The BBC currently does not use full points, except for 'N. Ireland' on the website. It is always written as 'No' (apart from the unavoidable anomalies every establishment suffers).
–Sb2001 talk page 18:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, they're doing "No10" for the same reason they do "9pm"; it's to save column space; journalism will generally sacrifice clarity for space-savings at every turn. BBC is news; same boat, just sinking less rapidly. NHR correctly observes that the style exists (the post-Ritter editions are taking pains – arguably too-strenuous ones – to be descriptive as well as prescriptive), but it's still not Oxford U. Press style. Universities' internal style guides for how they present to the world (like those of other corporate entities) are marketing style, which is a derivative of news style. MoS doesn't take anything at all from government/military/legal style guides other than a handful of militarisms and legalisms, and grudgingly at that; it's simply a different writing world. I wasn't meaning to imply that no one in the world is dropping all dots from all abbreviations other than British journalists. Rather, they're the ones pushing this style strongly, and of the sources with that style, they're the only ones that have an influence on WP reader and editor expectations about semi-formal English to any notable degree.

Anyway, the numero is a weird case, because "No." (and increasingly "no.", at least in dialects not on a dot-dropping bandwagon) is an approximation of a symbol, more often written with an underline under an elevated but shrunken "o". But this symbol itself is an abbreviation of a Latin word, arising in a time before abbreviation styles settled. So, well, it's just odd: an abbreviation that became a symbol and turned back into an abbreviation. No wonder its form is subject to dispute. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Using "Sir" as a pre-nominal

Resolved
 – WP:Village pump (policy)#RfC: Should "Sir" and "Dame" be treated as part of someone's name, and be given such recognition in infoboxes, etc? (permalink) – RfC concluded to treat them as pre-nominals, and that no additional rule-making is needed.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:13, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

For a few weeks now, a few editors have been removing the honorary "Sir" from the |name = parameter of {{Infobox person}} and including it in the |pre_nominal = parameter. Please see example diffs at Nigel Hawthorne, Roger Moore, John Hurt and Sean Connery, all edits without an edit summary. I have reverted 86.2.65.41 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) a couple of times for making such edits, although I have been reverted in turn as well. As far as I am aware, a knighthood is not a pre-nominal (as in The Right Honourable) but part of one's name. Articles such as Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Thomas More and other knighted politician articles are unaffected. I see that there is policy concerning WP:POSTNOM, but is there one that applies to WP:PRENOM too? Thanks.--Nevé–selbert 22:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm glad I live in the US where we don't have to worry about such folderol. But then we have Trump. EEng 22:46, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
The impetus for removing the "Sir" in the infobox probably stems from our decision to omit the "Sir" from article titles... however, I don't see that infoboxes need to have the same rules as titles. Blueboar (talk) 22:52, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
They probably should. It's surely sufficient to have it in the lead sentence. We're all aware by now that certain British/Commonwealth editors are insistent that such a title "becomes part of the name" in some magical sense, and the rest of us generally aren't buying it. More to the point, and rarely given these titles in material written for a global or even a non-UK audience (this is even more true of long-dead subjects, like Walter Raleigh and Thomas More). We should follow that off-WP trend. Our general rule is to drop any stylization preferred by a particular camp if it is not done with overwhelming consistency off-wiki by reliable, independent, general-audience sources. While this is typically applied to stylistic changes like typeface shenanigans, the principle is general and can be applied to styles and titles. After all, we are not referring to Elizabeth II as Her Royal Highness. We can also see that other sites providing comprehensive information about bio subjects are dropping Sir/Dame as well; see e.g. Judi Dench at IMDb.

Since this keeps coming up again and again, I would suggest an RfC at WP:VPPOL (or at WT:MOSBIO and advertised at VPPOL), with WT:BIO notified, to settle it permanently, or I firmly predict we'll be having this same discussion in 6 months, and 18 months, and 5 years, since we were having it before, that long ago, too.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:06, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

As SMcCandlish points out, this discussion belongs at WT:MOSBIO, where it recurred only last month – see Request for changes to "honorific prefixes" in infoboxes there.
Please read MOS:HONORIFIC which gives specific (and correct) guidance for the honorific titles Sir, Dame, Lord and Lady: any other titles, such as Her Royal Highness are irrelevant to this discussion. — Stanning (talk) 10:19, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Of course it should be part of the name. It's always bolded in the first line; it should be in the infobox as well. And a note to SMcCandlish: Bob Geldof is a very bad example to pick as his knighthood is honorary, so he doesn't have a title in any case! Giving him a title is completely incorrect. Neither would anyone with any knowledge of the subject ever refer to Her Majesty Elizabeth II as Her Royal Highness! Which is an honorific form of address in any case and not a title. British media sources rarely use honorifics when referring to people; they do, however, use titles. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:39, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
I stand corrected on trivial details, and will restate what you skirted and what actually matters: The real world, outside the UK, is mostly writing Judi Dench and Winston Churchill. We should do likewise.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:42, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
The US entries for Judi Dench and Winston Churchill at the online Oxford Dictionary includes both "Dame" and "Sir" as part of the name.--Nevé–selbert 21:21, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
Repeat: "The real world, outside the UK ...". Guess where Oxford is? What we're dealing with here is a regional style matter, and not a universally applied one even in the region (and sometimes out of it, in other parts of the Commonwealth). It's clearly optional style.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:28, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
Missed the bit where the website says "Home > North American English > Churchill, Sir Winston"? Then again, perhaps the US Congress should have consulted you before passing "H.R. 4374 (88th): An Act to proclaim Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States of America"? It is normal practice to acknowledge honours gained in a citizen's own country even if they would not be recognised in one's own. In the UK we would not strip the "Honourable" from US judges or congressmen, perhaps a little reciprocity is called for.Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:12, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
Oxford U. Pr. is still a British publisher, one with its own house style (a very well-documented one). The US Congress is apt to use formal titles, especially with regard to foreign dignitaries. That's part of diplomacy. WP is not diplomacy. You're essentially making my point for me: "In the UK we would not strip the "Honourable" from US judges or congressmen", yet WP does so, as does most writing that is isn't diplomacy, a eulogy, a merit citation, or otherwise highly formalized or ceremonial.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:50, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
If they were using his full formal title, they would have said The Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill. Note the part of it they omitted (the honorific) and the part they left in (the title). Which is what we do. It's really very simple. And you've essentially just made our point for us. Even the US Congress was able to distinguish an honorific from a title. Pity some WP editors are incapable of doing so too. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:37, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
  • As a new editor to this discussion, it would seem strange to ignore the Sir/Dame from a name. SMcCandlish, Neve-selbert specified that it was the US entry at which they were looking. My brief research has failed to recover any results not using Sir as a pre-nominal. I do think—however—that 'Vince Cable' is used more often than 'Sir Vince Cable' (I have some much better names for him ...) on BBC television and radio coverage. I would say to stick with the Sir etc, as it is part of their name. Whilst it may not be my personal preference to allow the monarchy such power, it feels somehow 'wrong' to ignore these as part of a name. That said, I have nowhere near enough royal knowledge to give you an argument which is not largely on a WP:ILIKEIT basis. –Sb2001 talk page 23:17, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
    The fact that this keeps turning circular (my repeat rebuttal to this would be that we refer to Elizabeth II as such, not as Queen Elizabeth or Her Majesty; and that the idea "Sir/Dame is part of the name" in some special way that isn't true of other prenominals is a subjective, and primarily British and royalist, feeling, not something which can be demonstrated to be true objectively in overall use of the English language) is why I suggest this should go to an RfC. The debate is not going to end on its own, and has already continued for many years without clear resolution.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:55, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
    Again, you demonstrate your lack of knowledge of the subject you're pontificating about. "Queen" and "Her Majesty" aren't titles. The Queen is what she is (just as Donald Trump is the President) and Her Majesty is an honorific, just like The Honorable as applied to US judges (which is why we don't include either of them). -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    I'm not unaware of the differences, I'm glossing over them intentionally, because for WP intents and purposes they are the same thing: something honorific prefixed to a name, which we don't do in encyclopedic writing. They're all different categories of this, but are within the category. You keep wanting to split hairs within the category, and I have no interest in doing so, nor is doing so relevant to resolution of the matter.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:50, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    Another great reason to abolish the monarchy ... make life easier for Wikipedia editors! –Sb2001 talk page 00:06, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    Oh really, isn't it time to drop prominent mention of "Sir" this and "Lady" that and "Lord" this? Why is WP, a supposedly neutral site, giving succour to an outmoded British class system? It's embarrassing. If you must, a discreet mention of the title somewhere in the main text bio section. Tony (talk) 10:26, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    Because it's a fact and WP reports facts without a political agenda. It's not non-neutral to report facts or to use names by which people are known. It's a great pity that some don't seem to understand that. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:28, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    I cannot say that I am a fan of honours, etc, but we cannot decide when they become out-of-date. As Necrothesp says, we provide readers with factual information. We should not let out own political preferences get in the way of that. It is like we would not provide the alternative name for the health secretary on his page, because it is an opinion. Including Sir etc is not—dropping it would be. Anyway, I support SMcCandlish's proposal for this to go to RfC: we are never going to agree on something like this. And please, for heaven's sake, make it a factual debate, rather than this republican v royalist nonsense that we have going on here (as enjoyable as it may be). If nobody objects, I shall start one at WP:VPPOL; is that OK Neve-selbert? –Sb2001 talk page 16:02, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    Sure, that's a good idea.--Nevé–selbert 16:15, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
    Agreed. I would have done it myself, but I've done sufficient numbers of MoS-related RfCs in my time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:50, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

MOS:TONE, WP:PSTS, and reviews of fictional works

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#Proposed clarification of reviews' relation to WP:PSTS and MOS:TONE. This is a request for comments in the general sense, but not a WP:RFC at this stage, being an initial discussion draft (broadened to cover writing about fiction generally), building on a lengthy discussion/dispute at the same page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Specific proposal to clarify DATERET (DATEVAR)

The following revision is proposed to the three bullet points of MOS:DATEVAR (a.k.a. MOS:DATERET), which immediately follows MOS:DATETIES. The revision was developed from a very lengthy discussion higher up this talk page.

Proposed wording:

  • If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format, this format should be used throughout the article unless there are reasons for changing it based on the topic's strong national ties or consensus on the article's talk page.
  • If consensus on a preferred date format does not arise, retain the format chosen in the first major contribution that included a date.
  • Where an article uses both date formats with neither predominating, and does not meet the requirements specified in MOS:DATETIES, impose consistency throughout the article by using the date format chosen in the first major contribution that included a date.
Current wording:
  • If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format, this format should be used throughout the article, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic or consensus on the article's talk page.
  • The date format chosen by the first major contributor in the early stages of an article should continue to be used, unless there is reason to change it based on strong national ties to the topic or consensus on the article's talk page.
  • Where an article has shown no clear sign of which format is used, the first person to insert a date is equivalent to "the first major contributor".

The revised wording was chosen, from quite a selection of proposed variations, for maximum consistency and compatibility with other *VAR provisions, like MOS:ENGVAR and WP:CITEVAR. A specific goal of this revision is replacement of "contributor" with "contribution" to resolve WP:OWN problems. Another is to eliminate the excessive redundancy between the current first and second items. The inclusion of "throughout the article" in the third item is optional, as is "that included a date" in the same item, since both are already given in the first two items. Various minor copyedits can be made after the fact; please do not dwell on trivial punctuation or wording quibbles.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:19, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

PS: Whether we say "chosen in", "selected in", or "used in" is a trivial copyediting matter, as is whether to use "impose" (to match language in WP:CITEVAR) or some other word like "implement" or "ensure". They don't substantively change the meaning, and can be hashed out later.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Short comments

  • Support Makes sense, anything to discourage meaningless bickering over arbitrary changes is good. --Jayron32 01:13, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Support and ditto. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:39, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Perhaps this is a vain hope, but how about we just stop pointlessly re-writing dates? Alsee (talk) 03:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
    Because consensus has determined it's not pointless, or we wouldn't have MOS:DATE, and the biggest "style fight" in WP's history would not have been about date formatting. If you weren't around for that, count yourself fortunate. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Longer discussion

Wikidata and the English Wikipedia's stylistic integrity

Fellow editors,

It's likely that we'll be living with increasing amounts of Wikidata-generated text on the English Wikipedia. Yet it's being generated in Berlin by developers and programmers in the German chapter without reference to the stylistic consensus that has painstakingly evolved on this site over the past 14 years.

I believe we should be taking more than a little interest in the style and formatting of Wikidata outputs. I've sounded a warning at the Wikidata state of affairs discussion that has been playing out during September. That page contians many expressions of caution, dismay, and alarm at the potential pitfalls of Wikidata's ability to roll out text at its whim, and at the lack of control we will have over the inevitable encroachments on en.WP.

Wikidata is an important project that will be riding the transition from biological algorithms (that's us, as creative editors) to electronic algorithms (that's machines that generate and read WP text). It's the latter that will slowly grow to dominate WMF sites from the mid-2020s onward, in a process that will be occurring in the economy at large in the first half of the century.

I urge editors to keep abreast of the developments, and to be ready to insist that Wikidata consult us on style and formatting before releasing on our site each displayed text that it proposes. This should be a matter of established protocol, in my view.

Tony (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

@User:Tony1, are you indicating a cross-Wiki integration of articles that relies on an algorithm to interpret the nuances of language between language projects and may or may not effectively consider the policies and guidelines that have evolved in each language domain of WP? Cinderella157 (talk) 10:51, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Cinderella, I don't know enough about the structure and processes of Wikidata to say. All I know is that there's been no consultation—and that does not augur well. If Wikidata outputs are somehow filtered for each language-WP, well yes, it needs to write and implement algorithms according to our style guides. Tony (talk) 11:33, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
The problem is that it's often very difficult to determine the parts of the MoS that apply to a given article, because of the wide variation that is allowed. I think that we may have to agree to mark articles more clearly as to their ENGVAR, date formats, citation styles, etc. if there's to be reliable automated mapping between data sources and the English Wikipedia. Eventually, I suspect, the pressure will be to allow less variation.
It's a bit off the style issue, but nevertheless I think the following is relevant. Wikidata now handles the links between articles in different language Wikipedias (the language links you see in the left margin in the desktop website). However, Wikidata works on the basis that there's a 1:1 mapping between articles. This is simply false, for all sorts of reasons. If there's only member of a taxon, we have only one article with an appropriate redirect; some other Wikipedias always have one article for each rank regardless of how many members there are. Concepts vary from one language to another; thus we have an article at Berry covering the ordinary language concept, and another at Berry (botany) covering the botanical concept. Some topics are more important to some language Wikipedias than others, so their articles have been split to keep the length down, whereas other Wikipedias have a single article. When the mapping between languages isn't 1:1, then it's pretty random which pair get linked. I and others have raised more than once the need for Wikidata to reflect reality and change the design of this part of the system so that non-1:1 mappings are handled. Nothing happens, so we're stuck with a mess. I fear this doesn't augur well for the future.
Peter coxhead (talk) 13:03, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. I've had concerns along these lines for years, going back to my focus on cue sports. What "billiards" means, for example, varies wildly between varieties of English, and once you start trying to map an article here to one at it.wikipedia or es.wikipedia or ru.wikipedia you run into some conflicts. Hell even what "pool" means varies, and worse yet there's a conflict between eight-ball and eightball pool (they're different but related). When non-English Wikipedias cover these topics they often conflate them, or cover only one of them, or have them as sections a bigger article, or whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:09, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Commonality update re archaic spellings

The previous discussion [15] ended in general agreement that archaic spellings should be avoided unless necessary, but with no actions or specific proposals. Would anyone object to the following bullet point being added to MOS:COMMONALITY?

  • When more than one variant spelling for a word exists within a national variety of English, the most commonly used current variant should be preferred unless the article subject is better served by using the older form.

Or does anyone have a more elegant, accurate solution? Scribolt (talk) 06:15, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

  • Support in principle. I would copyedit "unless the article subject is better served by using"; that's not our typical approach. More like "unless there is consensus at the article's talk page to use". Also, "the older" isn't always going to be applicable; use "a less common". Could also add a point that the usual way to determine this is to see which spelling is listed first in modern dictionaries, though this could be added later, and is probably better as a footnote. This may also need a clarification that it does not apply to specialized term-of-art or jargon usage, e.g. connexion in Methodist connexionalism, or provenience in archaeology versus provenance in art dealing (they have distinct meanings, and an artifact can actually have both a provenance and a provenience). We probably would not need more than two examples. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:31, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Agree with your suggestion to identify an agreed consensus as the reason for inclusion, and for less common vs older. I would have thought that this change would also address your subsequent point in that if there is a legitimate reason to include something specialised, it would have to be explained and agreed via discussion. Scribolt (talk) 14:53, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Well, much of the disputation about this before has been about jargon and terms of art, so this seems like a likely source of future dispute. It's better to curtail a zillion talk-page agruments about in-context jargon by mentioning that it's permissible (within the bounds of MOS:JARGON, of course) rather than have people fight it out again and again.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:24, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, how does this sound? If I don't get any objections, I'll insert it and people can copy-edit/clarify as required.

  • When more than one variant spelling for a word exists within a national variety of English, the most commonly used current variant should be preferred unless there is a consensus at the talk page of the article to use the less common alternative. This would not apply in cases where the less common spelling has a specific usage in a specialised context e.g. connexion in Methodist connexionalism.Scribolt (talk) 14:27, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
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