Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 228

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"MOS: HYPHEN" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect MOS: HYPHEN has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 5 § MOS: HYPHEN until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 04:02, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

"MOS: MARKUP" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect MOS: MARKUP has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 5 § MOS: MARKUP until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 04:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Clarification on the use of a hyphen or an en dash for "Academy Award winning"

I was recently doing page clean-up with AWB where I (at AWB's suggestion) changed "Academy Award–winning" (with an en dash) to "Academy Award-winning" (with a hyphen) on the article "Society of the Snow" (see this edit[1]). Nardog noticed my edit and reverted it[2] citing MOS:SUFFIXDASH, which does appear to support the use of an en dash in this situation.

There does not seem to be agreement on this topic within article bodies or even within article titles. Articles like "List of Academy Award-winning films", a large number of article bodies, WP:RegExTypoFix, and all mentions of "award-winning" in the MOS documentation use the version with a hyphen (see one example in MOS:FILMLEAD). In contrast, articles like "List of Academy Award–winning families" and "List of Academy Award–winning foreign-language films" use en dash, as do other style guides like MLA[3]. This topic has been mentioned on this board before (such as on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 151#En dashes rather than hyphens for both prefixed and suffixed adjective phrases. (2), and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 140#En dashes and suffixes), but I have not been able to find any clear, final consensus on the topic. Hopefully we can obtain consensus on the topic and unify the styling, or at least get some clear guidance on the topic. Thanks! Wikipedialuva (talk) 09:09, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

"award" in "award-wining" in MOS:FILMLEAD is not part of a larger phrase, so SUFFIXDASH doesn't apply. Nardog (talk) 09:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, the en-dash is correct here, since Academy Award is two words. Gawaon (talk) 10:09, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
En dash is correct per a straightforward reading of SUFFIXDASH. I would favor efforts to fix this up in the few places mentioned, but I wouldn't advise expecting consistency on application of this relatively niche rule. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:53, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
This is much more important when something has an affix (usually a prefix) and the affixing to one word in the multi-word term produces a confusing compound: "anti–American Federalist Party writings" (because "anti-American" is a hyphenated term with its own meaning, not the meaning here). Most such constructions just should be reworded more clearly. Same goes for adjectival temporary compounds that are usually hyphenated but would take an en dash when the modified term is multi-word ("her quitting–Noname Corporation decision"). No reason for such a clumsy construction. Because the en dash seems rather unnecessary for reader comprehension in constructions like "ex–prime minister" or "Academy Award-winning", a hyphen is common in our articles. Does this have implications for whether we should have this rule, or that it should be a rule and not a suggestion, or be changed to apply only when confusion is likely? I'm not sure. PS: The dash is almost completely unattested for some things, such as Proto-Indo-European language, (not "Proto–Indo-European language") despite the existence of Indo-European languages as a separate (related) topic. PIE is treated as a unitary term for its own subject, not a temporary modification of IE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:33, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I nominate "indeed" for "Instructional and presumptuous language"

Whenever I see "indeed" I reach for the edit button. This assertion of "truth" is inserted, I claim, because the writer wants to convince you of a fact, but they do not have sufficient evidence. Rather than provide the evidence they reach for the bold font: Indeed! It addresses the reader "see this is true"; it is in the category of "note that", "of course" and "naturally". (I suppose not every use is bad and not every word need to be in the section, but calling it out explicitly makes editors aware of the issue). Johnjbarton (talk) 03:47, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm sceptical. Like you say, not every use is bad and not every word that can be used inappropriately needs to be in the section. Gawaon (talk) 07:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Indeed. CMD (talk) 08:08, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
No doubt indeed can be misused and annoying, but taking a quick look at instances where it's used, I don't think there's a big enough problem to include it. William Avery (talk) 08:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Tend to agree. We have many debates like this at WT:WTW, with someone wanting to "ban" a particular word for one of the reasons listed there and the answer is almost always "no" because either there are too many appropriate uses, the term is too infrequent in our material to bother addressing, or both. Stuff like this should just be cleaned up when misuse is encountered. You can search for all occurrences of it in mainspace with insource:indeed, and and take all the WP:GNOMEing time you like to fix those that seem wrongheaded (AWB/JWB can be helpful for such endeavors). A common rightheaded use is to begin a sentence with "Indeed," as a counterpoint to the sentence that preceded it; it's a usage in the same class as "However," and "But," and "Nevertheless," and a few others. Some such uses are wrongheaded, though; depends on the context and the implication. The wrongheaded uses are more often in mid-sentence or sentence-final position as blatant editorializing, e.g. "The hypothesis was disproven, indeed, in 2022.", and "Her decision to leave the company was life-changing indeed." Often these are found in material that badly needs other MOS:TONE revision (like that second example, which is magazine-style writing), and were put there by someone injecting so much inappropriate style that the article or section ends up tagged with (or needing to be tagged with) {{Essay-like}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
In conversation (usually written) it’s a form of agreement, used most commonly when agreeing with pertinent facts advanced by another that support an argument both agree with. But in an encyclopedia, away from the talk pages, I cannot imagine that it’s a commonly used, or required, word? Perhaps, in a plot summary, where something that had earlier been suspected is subsequently confirmed…e.g. Sherlock discovers that Mr Barton was indeed the killer”? MapReader (talk) 08:03, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
See my post immediately above yours for distinctions between various types of usage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

A couple of MoS-related essays

Might be of interest. Let me know if anything seems missing from (or crazy in) either of them. One is new, the other was a draft languishing in my userspace for a long time:

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:52, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Another one, made today based on material I posted at WT:BOTANY:

Plant Descriptions

I'd like to have a discussion about plant description style. Is this a good place or is there a better? The basic problem with plants is that they are not very uniform and can look very different in different countries, at times to the point where you can readily recognise the plant in your own country but encountering it in another, think you have quite a different species or be doubtful about what it is. That can even be the case if you see it low altitude and encounter it at high altitude.

Because of this variability of plants, Country/Regional Flora descriptions are usually regionally orientated, describing how a plant presents itself in some local region, and depending on the work maybe it might mention variability in a slightly wider context. So a British flora might (but most probably won't) mention differences the plant shows in France, but undoubtedly won't mention differences the plant takes on in Palestine or up a Turkish mountain.

As well as Flora saying contradictory things due to focus on regional variation, they can also mention useful complementary details, or clarify each other where they are ambiguous (as they can sometimes be). For example, the Aegean Flora says Cymbalaria microcalyx is generally pink, but Flora of Turkey says it is white or pink (I've only seen white here). On the other hand, Flora of Turkey says Cymbalaria longipes is completely hairless, whilst the Aegean Flora says it can be hairy, but is hairless by maturity, providing needed clarity. This situation of Floras saying different or complementary things applies to very much every characteristic of a plant, and is why several always need to be used under any circumstance.

Now when it comes to writing a plant description for Wikipedia, Wikipedia is global so the description needs to be from a global perspective, it's not sufficient just to take a single Flora work to use unless it happens to be a work dedicated to a detailed global perspective on the plant. For example, if you write the plant description just utilising the descriptions found in British flora, the accuracy will be a matter of luck, since you'll only be describing the plant's British form and variety. Instead, descriptions need to be written by utilising the accounts of the plant from as many flora from different parts of the world as possible that you have available or can get hold of. It would probably be excessive to reference them all (though that is done in a strict work), but after reading all that you can, you choose a small number that seem to capture everything you've read; so for example you might select a European description, a Middle-Eastern one and an African one, as your references. If it's a more regionally restricted plant such as the E. Mediterranean, you would do similarly, using for example a Greek, Turkish, Middle-Eastern and N. African account. That's only 3 or 4 references, which isn't much at all. Even if they were hypothetically to all say the same thing, which they never do, you'd still need to reference them as having been consulted, because just referencing a regional work doesn't indicate the resulting description has global scope.

The situation then is how to do the description and where to place the references.

The Description should I think avoid as much jargon as possible, because the average person isn't going to understand 'petiole' or 'pedicel' but will be quite happy with 'leaf stalk' or 'flower stalk' (or 'leaf stalk (petiole)' etc), and be, say (as a template but not being prescriptive), three paragraphs, with the 'easy' qualities for people first (plant is tall, dark and handsome), then paragraph 2 the qualities requiring a more experienced or patient eye (e.g. fruits have a wrinkled surface), probably best kept in terser language so that it takes up less space, then paragraph 3 you might have some details about subspecies etc. But in doing this the references very much embrace the entire description.

My recommendation is to provide the references for a botanic description either at the end or start, which is the standard practice in botany, with extra referential inserts at individual moments for any extra points. Repeating the references identically at the end of each paragraph looks clumsy and is not standard botanical practice. Trying to reference each point made would be excruciating as you'll be repeating the same block of references over and over again. I wonder therefore if there could be something written explicitly about plant descriptions that provides the right workable vision, because at the moment if you use several sources to create a description you're forced to put them at the end and then may get the page labelled as problematic because it's not following the expected style.

An article on a plant would have many other sections, so here we are talking about the globally-relevant botanical description. Meteorquake (talk) 12:42, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@Meteorquake, I suggest raising this issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants. Schazjmd (talk) 17:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Cheers! I'll give a day or two to see what suggestions come in then will do that, taking account of any thoughts here! Meteorquake (talk) 19:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Off-topic: this definitely is not an MoS matter. This is a content and sourcing matter about the phenotypic presentation of plants in different environments. It has nothing to do with writing style at all. The proper venue is WT:BOTANY. To the extent this has anything to do with sensible sectioning of content, it still isn't an MoS matter (nothing at MOS:LAYOUT pertains, as it is about what standardized sections should exist in articles and in what order, and does not address optional sectioning of the main content of the article into what particular sections). That's an information architecture question for the articles in question, and is again something that WT:BOTANY can address, to the extent the matter generalizes to multiple articles within that topical scope; the editors with the most competence at botanical writing will already be concentrated there.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps an example of the problem helps to explain matters. If you take an example article where I've created the page with a description (others will add any other sections) it centres around the page getting flagged as deficient with multiple flags for what seem to me to be stylistic motives -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcea_digitata
David Meteorquake (talk) 06:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
(my aim is to add some pictures to it, which I'll do just now) Meteorquake (talk) 06:51, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Some artile being flagged for copyediting or other style issues is not a reason to open a WT:MOS discussion; it's a reason to improve the text or layout at the article, or open a discussion at the article's talk page if the reason for the tagging is unclear. There are various grammar and clarity issues in that stub, but the MoS's main talk page is not the place to discuss resolving that. This page is for discussion of how to improve the guideline text, or how to interpret application of the guideline to a particular sort of case. If this page were or minor copyediting issues at particular articles there would be several thousand threads open on it, and our browsers would crash trying to render this page. I've opened a thread for you at Talk:Alcea digitata, fixed most of the copyediting issues (two need input from someone more familiar with the topic), and fixed a lot of other issues in the article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template provides some advice about writing plant articles (and covers petiole vs. leaf stalk with "supplemented by plain English to define these terms for a general reader if possible"). Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Inline_citations is probably more relevant than MOS regarding placement of footnotes.
@Meteorquake:, I think you're overestimating how often a description written for a particular species in one regional flora is inaccurate for that species in a different region, and underestimating how often different floras employ different species concepts. Apparently Taraxacum officinale (sensu stricto) doesn't occur in North America (nor in Turkey), but I have never seen any floras covering any region of North America that omit it (they are using a broad species concept, as is the Wikipedia article for the species). Older floras (but as recently as 2005) covering the northwestern United States list Hedera helix as a common invasive species. Newer floras covering the region use a species concept with Hedera hibernica separated from H. helix, with the former as the common invasive, and the latter as fairly uncommon (at least for now).
That isn't to say that regional floras might not mention characters that are invariable among the species in that region (but are variable among the species found in a different region), but if you are consulting multiple floras (especially if written they were written at different points in time) you run the risk of conflating different species concepts. Plantdrew (talk) 22:23, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
@plandrew I'm aware of taxonomic changes etc. But I know British and Turkish plants well and European plants rather generally, consulting a lot of works for each plant I enquire about, and there is far more variability than you might imagine. In the case of Turkey it has a lot of European plants but because it is very mountainous (as are certain other countries, whilst the Aegean is full of islands) there is a lot of scope for variability developing from semi-isolation, and being at the edge of the European continent, adjoining others, tends to be a region where species fray at the edge, whilst a different insect population drives various changes, and the same species on the Asian or Middle-Eastern side has its own semi-disconnection. Obviously we're not talking about globe-trotting aliens which are much more uniform, but plants that are long-established but with a sluggish reproductive travel, which is a lot of plants, exhibit this, especially ones not associated with lowland city-type environments connected by humans, since higher altitude plants are more likely to develop as pockets. It's very apparent as I mentioned because I see Turkish forms of plants I see in Britain and they can be dramatically different in qualities, and the accounts of them I read often reflect this. At any rate, even without that, even just sitting at a desk if you read accounts of the same species in different Flora it becomes clear you have to read several Flora. Meteorquake (talk) 08:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
And again this is off-topic here. How broad the scope of an article is and what taxonomy it is relying on is a content and sourcing (mostly WP:DUE) matter, and has nothing to do with style. Please continue this at WT:BOTANY or at a specific article talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

"Now"

See Borlengo. Is the use of "now" in articles correct? The word "now" is never precise ("now" can also be 100 years from now). JackkBrown (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

It didn't need to say it twice; I removed one of them. This is covered generally at MOS:DATED. However, that section may be written a bit too stridently. In a construction like the remaining one in the lead at Borlengo it is obviously a shorthand for "in the modern era", and does not seem objectionable. Rewriting it would produce longer and clumsier wording for no clear reader benefit. But this is better discussed at WT:MOSDATE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles § About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Korea-related articles § About adding a link to each hangul syllable using Template:Linktext. 172.56.232.220 (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

It has been a week. Any more comments? It is a bit long, but please give it a read and leave a comment there. 172.56.232.26 (talk) 20:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
It has been two weeks. Any more comments? 172.56.232.84 (talk) 20:14, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
By the way, I originally thought of waiting for a month, but it looks like I don't even need to wait that long. Unless something unusual happens, on February 1 (that is three weeks since I opened the discussion), I will add what I wrote on that discussion page to the MOS-KO page and make a bot request. 172.56.232.202 (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Correction and clarification: (Unless something unusual happens,) I will close the discussion at 23:59, 1 February 2024 (UTC); the edit and the bot request will be made after that. 172.56.232.216 (talk) 04:40, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
About 24 hours left. Nothing unusual happened so far. 172.56.232.125 (talk) 23:50, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion closed. 172.56.232.167 (talk) 00:12, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I wonder whether maybe there's a broader MOS issue here than just the specific one of whether we should wikilink each separate glyph of non-Latin scripts even in scripts like Hangul for which the glyphs are not words. (Obviously: No.) It seems to me that most uses of the template in question, {{linktext}}, even when used to link actual words, even in English, are going to be violations of MOS:SEAOFBLUE. Why do we have a template that encourages that? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I am even fine with removing every single instance of Linktext regardless of its location and language/script (I would not complain even if the Linktext template itself does not exist, or even if Wikipedia does not provide any link to Wiktionary at all), but I am not proposing that because that could be way too extreme.
If you want to restrict the use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia, then that should be discussed separately. I guess a page like Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking would be a good place to start a discussion. 172.56.232.49 (talk) 04:16, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Glancing over its use in non-CJK articles (such as Vatican City and Bootstrapping) I see it's often used where a standard [[:wikt:Yourword|]] interwikilink will suffice. I was concerned that it saw legitimate use in linguistics articles, but it's the same generic use in vowel and measure word. It does do the convenient thing of linking to the specific language section in Wiktionary, but otherwise it just wraps what should just be easy markup.
I also noted in the discussion that you should ask for input about other CJK language usage on the language wikiprojects. It seems at a glance that a string of words in a phrase would have little purpose in individually linking out the words, while individually spaced words should be linked with normal interwikilinks as usual. But separating out the non-individually-linked characters in CJK phrases under the template, you'll see how it's actually used. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:37, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Going to the right section of the Wiktionary article is a good reason. This is another of those MOS:STYLERET matters: both approaches are acceptable, so don't change from {{lang|ja|{{linktext|緑|lang=ja}}}} to {{lang|ja|[[wikt:緑#Japanese|緑]]}} or vice versa for no compelling reason. However, use of that template to do things like {{lang|de|{{linktext |Das |Ewig-Weibliche |zieht |uns |hinan |lang=de}}}} is much more dubious, except in certain linguistic contexts. What we normally want to do is {{lang|de|Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan}} 'The eternal feminine draws us on high'. There is usually no reason to link to a Wiktionary definition of a non-English word, and making a reader go off-site to figure out what something means (much less do it word-by-word) is "reader-hateful".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

By the way, if you want to discuss about the general use of Linktext throughout Wikipedia, I recommend that you start a new discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking. 172.56.232.125 (talk) 23:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Surely not American-style capitalisation after a colon in British-English articles?

MOS:COLON states, "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter...". This is American style, but not British. I don't think that this statement is controversial: see for instance Grammarly and our own article Colon (punctuation)#Use of capitals. Wikipedia of course allows both American and British spelling as long as each article is consistent. But it seems awkward to me to have British spelling combined with American punctuation, and I doubt that this was the intention. So I have boldly edited to, "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, American style is to start it with a capital letter, but otherwise do not capitalize after a colon except ...". Everybody happy with that? JMCHutchinson (talk) 11:05, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The Chicago Manual of Style is American. According to your source, it recommends against capitalizing after a colon, unless the colon is followed by two or more complete sentences. DrKay (talk) 11:37, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
But can you explain this revert. It's surely incorrect for British English whether or not the Chicago Manual of Style supports it for American English. DeCausa (talk) 12:06, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
[Edit conflict: replying to Dr Kay here] That's a valid objection to how I rephrased the article, but your reversion to the original does not address my issue. Judging from the current text, I suppose that the consensus is not to allow Chicago style in American-English articles. So the text then needs to be just a little more awkward: "When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter if the article is in American English; otherwise do not ...". If there are no further objections I will make this change. JMCHutchinson (talk) 12:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
That's clearly not consensus. Current consensus is to capitalize if a complete sentence follows, regardless of the variant of English used. Questioning and possibly changing this consensus would require a wider discussion which hasn't yet taken place. Gawaon (talk) 13:16, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia:Consensus#In talk pages says, "Consensus can be assumed if no editors object to a change." So that is why I have been asking here if anyone objects! Or does anyone agree with my proposal? JMCHutchinson (talk) 13:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
I for one would object. I don't think capitalization should depend on the variant of English used in an article. Compare the style of quotation marks used: though British English prefers 'half/simple' ones, we use "double ones" throughout. That's not an ENGVAR issue, and neither should capitalization be. Plus our capitalization rules are already complicated enough, without throwing ENGVAR considerings into the mix. Let's avoid that, by all means. Gawaon (talk) 14:07, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
That’s not analogous. Capitalisation after a colon (excet for proper nouns etc) is considered incorrect in British English. It’s not a style option DeCausa (talk) 14:18, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Who says? AFAIK, such stuff is only/chiefly covered in style guides, so it sure is a style issue. Gawaon (talk) 14:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Be sure to let The Guardian know that it's incorrect. Also the Evening Standard Doremo (talk) 14:37, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Isolated instances where the copy editor slipped up shouldn't distract us here. I don't think there is any serious doubt that the style specified by the preponderance of British style guides differs from American practice. The question is how to deal with that on Wikipedia. JMCHutchinson (talk) 15:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Ha! The Grauniad! DeCausa (talk) 20:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
We don't have to follow the preponderance, we have our own style guide (this one here). Gawaon (talk) 03:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Doesn’t the fact that someone has saved these as examples undermine your case, showing how relatively rare they are? That first one, from over twenty years ago is a reprint of a government intelligence document, written by who knows? Not the strongest piece of evidence IMHO. MapReader (talk) 07:31, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I dislike capping the letter after a colon. Could we compromise and say that either way must be consistent throughout an article? Or ban the capping. Tony (talk) 07:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC) On reflection I prefer the existing provision—though the wording could be improved. Tony (talk) 23:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
    You propose changing to In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. When what follows a colon is a complete sentence, or when it is used in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. Do not capitalize after a colon in other cases except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name. That seems to increase inconsistency across articles, and we should be looking for commonalities.
    How would you handle:
    The report stated: "There was a 45% reduction in transmission rate."
    In a letter to his son, Albert Einstein wrote: "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
    Maggie wears a brimmed cap at all times: Strong light often gives her a headache. She also likes the way it looks. DrKay (talk) 09:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
    Your first two examples count as "segmental colons", which is when a colon introduces speech or a quotation, which may or may not be in inverted commas. As our colon article explains, "British English also capitalizes a new sentence introduced by colon's segmental use." I suppose it is covered in the MOS by "another reason", but it might be helpful to mention explicitly there too if a new guideline is agreed. JMCHutchinson (talk) 09:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
    The last one should be Maggie wears a brimmed cap at all times: strong light often gives her a headache. She also likes the way it looks. because it's two sentences, one of which happens to have a colon in the middle. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
    Could be interpreted either way, and is hair-splitting we should surely avoid when making rules here. The British segemental-use claim quoted above from our article is not supported with an RS citation, doesn't agree with the #Segemental section it links to (which is entirely and only about formatting of dialogue for plays), and does not agree with anything in the sourcing run I did below, except with regard to such dialogue formatting, so it doesn't have anything to do with the examples above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Time for another of my usual stylebook trawls:
  • New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (2014) The word following a colon is not capitalized in British English (unless it is a proper name, of course), but in US English it is often capitalized if it introduces a grammatically complete sentence." But it is just one of various British style guides. It's also making a very broad nationalistic claim of the sort that both NHR and Chicago like to engage in, but which is not actually supportable by much evidence and which few linguists would agree with.
  • The Chicago Manual of Style simply says: "When a colon introduces two or more sentences ... the first word folowing it is capitalized." So, contrary to popular belief, Chicago doesn't support capitalizing if what follows the colon is just a single sentence.
  • The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation (US) waffles a bit: "If a complete sentence follows a colon ... it is up to the writer to decide whether to capitalize the first word. Although generally advisable, capitalizing a sentence after a colon is often a judgment call. Note: A capital letter generally does not introduce a simple phrase following a colon."
  • The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style also waffles: "When a colon introduces a complete sentence, the sentence may begin with a capital letter, depending on the publication's style." So much for the claim that capitalizing after the colon is required/standard in American writing.
  • Butcher's Copy-editing (UK) does not address the question.
  • The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (UK) weirdly claims that "Style manuals agree (Chicago Manual, 2003; Oxford Guide to Style, 2002) that the word following the colon stays in lower case, unless it's a formal quotation, slogan or motto." [I.e., specific forms of complete sentence in most cases, though a quotation can be fragmentary, and the rest of the guide does not suggest to convert partial quotations to look like full ones, so this seems to be a blatant oversight.] This is not at all what either of the other cited style guides says.
  • Oxford Guide to Style (UK) actually says: "Use a colon to introduce direct or paraphrased speech or quoted material more formally or emphatically than a comma would. A capital letter follows. ... A colon may be used optionally in parallel constructions where a semicolon might be equally acceptable", i.e. between two closely related sentences joined into one; the examples OGS show have a capital after the colon when what follows is a complete (short in that case) sentence, but lower-case when it is not. Not only does this contradict the claims made above about British English, this has further implications for WP, because all our material is paraphrase of what the sources say.
  • Dreyer's English (US): "If what follow a colon is a full sentence, begin that full sentence with a capital letter".
  • The Handbook of Good English (US) is probably unnecessarily nit-picking: "Do not capitalize a normally lowercase word after a colon unless what follow the conol in a grammatically complete sentence and the colon is bineg ued primarily to introduce trather than to link." ["Link" here meaning link the opening sentence to the one appended with the colon, mirroring wording used later in the book about such clause-splicing with a semicolon.] Why such a "rule" is a bad idea is even stated explicitly by the author without seeming to realized it: "This rule is often difficult to apply whena grammaticallyh complete sentnec efollows a colon, because it is not always easy to decide whether the colon is primialry introducing or linking. Some older punctuation guides ... advise always capitalizing after a colon when what follows is a grammatically complete sentent—a very easy rule to following, but changing American punctuation practices have made it a poor one." This has two weird assertions in it, that it's an old practice that is dwindling, and that unnamed "changing ... practices" make it a poor choice, but neither is in evidence; the book dates to 1991, and style (American or otherwise) has not demonstrably changed on this point, despire the clear desire of the author that it do so. I cannot find an idea about post-colon capitalization that is this specific in any other style guide.
  • The Oxford English Grammar (UK): "In American usage it is usual for the sentence after the colon to begin with a capital, though occasionally it begins with a lower case letter. British usage prefers lower case."
  • The Elements of Style (US, 4th ed., 2000): states no rule but illustrates usage in a full sentence after a colon without a capital.
  • Oxford Guide to Plain English (UK): "After the colon the sentence will usually continue with a lower-case letter." Hardly a rule, but an observation about frequency, and for all know, the intended meaning was "will usually continue with a lower-case letter, except when it is a full sentence or proper name", rather than "will usually continue with a lower-case letter even if it is a full sentence."
  • The Gregg Reference Manual (US): States no rule, and illustrates both styles throughout.
  • Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language (UK): States no rule, but illustrates the lower-case style throughout.
  • Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation : "Use a lowercase letter after a colon (unless the first word is a proper noun) when the colon is used within a sentence, even if it introduces your own independent clause. Capitalize the first word after a colon when the colon introduces more than one sentence, a direct question, or speech in dialogue." This is a significant divergence from CMoS's "
  • Garner's Modern English Usage (US/UK): "when a complete clause [i.e. something that would be a sentence by itself] follows the colon, authorities are divided on whether the first word should be capitalized. ... [T]he prevalent journalistic practice: the first word is capitalized. But the other view—urging for a lowercase word following the colon—is probably sounder: the lowercase (as in this very sentence) more closely ties the two clauses together. That's the style that's used throughout this book. It's also the house style of The New Yorker .... Although the uppercase convention is a signpost to the reader that a complete sentence is ahead, that signpost generally isn't needed."
  • I've not bothered looking in a pile of journalism style guides because they generally are intentionally in conflict with each other as a form of "branding", and they diverge radically from encyclopedic style in so many ways that our MoS is based on virtually nothing form them at all (news style, which WP avoids, is driven by expediency and simplicity, not clarity).
  • I could do a bunch more of this, but it is probably sufficient.
What I gather from this is that there is a lean in British writing toward dropping the capitalization, and a lean (but a decreasing one over time) in American writing to retain it, and a stronger lean in journalism (not tied to a particular country) to prefer the capital. Some writers have tried to draw a distinction relating to different kinds of relationships between the material before and after the colon, and even different lengths of the material after it. Some have claimed "over-exuberantly" that there's what we'd call an ENGVAR difference, but evidence for this idea is both weak and getting increasingly weaker. And some have suggested that the capitalization is on the way out entirely, but evidence doesn't really seem to support this, either.

In short, no MOS:ENGVAR claim can be sustained on this point, nor is there a clear "single overriding encylclopedic purpose" argument to be made here. Garner's observation in GMEU that there are conflicting reasons to prefer one over the other is correct (though his picking a particular side almost certainly has much to do with the fact that he's the primary author of the related material in both Chicago Manual and Chicago Guide). American usage provably does not require the capitalization, and some British publishers (cf. news sources cited in earlier comments) provably do use the capital. Other sources both British and American are noncommittal on the question.

This should simply be left to editorial discretion at the article like most things, and MoS does not need to so prescriptively legislate on it (WP:MOSBLOAT and WP:CREEP). It seems that our present wording of:

When what follows the colon is also a complete sentence, start it with a capital letter, but otherwise do not capitalize after a colon except where doing so is needed for another reason, such as for a proper name.
should change to something like:
If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter. For a complete sentence after a colon, capitalization is optional. Use a lowercase letter after the colon otherwise.
If this is too much of a change for consensus to stomach, then a compromise version might be:
If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), or multiple complete sentences, use a capital letter. For a single complete sentence after a colon, capitalization is optional. Use a lowercase letter after the colon otherwise.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
One thing that seems clear from your very thorough analysis is that the current wording of the MoS isn’t really supported by the sources. MapReader (talk) 22:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Various bits have made their way in over the years because they seemed reasonable at the time (there is a defensible rationale for that choice, it just happens to have another defensible rationale against it, and it's not unsupported in off-site style guides, simply doesn't dominate in them). Sometimes stuff seemed to make sense to add as an abitrary "dispute stopper", and in the early days these were often added prophylactically without evidence of a need for them to stop recurrent disputes about something.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Jmchutchinson's redraft further above, taking into account the entire paragraph this sentence is found in, could be combined with some of my clarity tweaks above, to produce a total paragraph of:

In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it. If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter. When a colon is used before a complete sentence, or in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize the first letter of what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. Do not capitalize after a colon otherwise.

Most of that is existing wording (the stuff about before a colon, the "taking into account", the title/heading/list details, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:54, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Speaking for myself, I'm happy with any of your suggested tweaks/changes. DrKay (talk) 17:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
As the original proposer, I would be happy with SMcCandlish's text. I feel the ENGVAR correlation (at least the absence of capitals in British English) is more marked in the actual texts I encounter than implied from the survey of style guides, but I can't prove that, and it doesn't much matter. At least not if we give our editors this flexibility. JMCHutchinson (talk) 21:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
This suggested wording sounds fine for me too. Gawaon (talk) 14:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I'm not happy with SMcCandlish's text. Here's better, which differs slightly in substance, as well as being a balanced and clear guide:
"In running text a colon need not be preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, so long as the intent is clear.
A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it if that can naturally be read as a complete sentence: otherwise, it normally does not. But when a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles."
Tony (talk) 23:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Tony1's proposal differs not slightly but considerably in substance. It essentially goes back to the status quo of insisting on a capital if a full sentence follows. Others of us find this inappropriate given that lower case is usual in British English and, it turns out, also not uncommon in the US. JMCHutchinson (talk) 07:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
It does seem to go in that direction. @Tony1: is that the intent? I seem to remember you being Australian, so I'm not sure if this reflects a national-leaning norm not accounted for here (too often these discussions pretend the entire Anglosphere consists of the UK and the US). At any rate, if this were just left to editorial discretion, do you anticipate a recurrent problem? As for the first part (which is original guideline wording, not mine), a blended version might assuage those who lean toward change-resistance: In running text, a colon usually works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it, but this is not necessary when the intent is clear. The "in running text" part is actually important, since the original wording over-states the case and does not account for formatting of lists, etc. The ending part could also blend your concision with the previous RfC consensus about explicit editorial discretion: ... or list item, editors may choose but should consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles. That would also change the guideline link from MOS:STYLERET to MOS:ARTCON which makes more sense anyway, and remove the link to WP:CONSISTENT which is about article titles and not actually pertinent here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
  • It seems that there is now a consensus to substitute in SMcCandlish's proposed text. Tony is the only clear voice against (plus perhaps Doremo from earlier in the discussion), whereas Gawaon, DrKay, SMcCandlish, DeCausa, myself, and probably MapReader now seem to be in favour of this wording or this sort of change. I will go ahead. Thanks to all for expressing your opinons. JMCHutchinson (talk) 20:41, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Responses by Tony1

  • Jmhutchinson, sorry to revert your recent edit: I believe the discussion here is incomplete (it would have been better to ask "Do we all agree that there's consensus for this change? Any further comments?") Earlier you wrote:
"Tony1's proposal differs not slightly but considerably in substance. It essentially goes back to the status quo of insisting on a capital if a full sentence follows. Others of us find this inappropriate given that lower case is usual in British English and, it turns out, also not uncommon in the US."

Let me set out four responses to that:

(i) My text, in which I've tried to be more concise, doesn't "go back to" the status quo. By definition, nothing can go back to what is currently in place. That status quo was an important long-standing provision on the central page of MOS; so let's not lightly assume consensus for change.

(ii) It's simply not true that British English wants a colon never to capitalise what follows it. Consider Fowler, so quintessentially British: In The King's English there's no discussion of this issue, but the examples with a capital include: "Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself."

Fowler's own Modern English Usage says nothing against such a capital; nor does Gower in the second edition; nor does Burchfield in the third, and he repeats the example verbatim: "Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself."

In the fourth (current) edition, Butterfield is careless and inconsistent. He has picked up the supposed rule somewhere, and writes:

2 ... Note that in British English the word following a colon is not in capitals (unless it is a proper name), but in American English it is capitalized if it introduces a grammatically complete sentence: [... example]

But straight after that he contradicts himself:

3 It is regularly used to introduce examples, as:
Always remember the ancient maxim: Know thyself.

(iii) Wikipedia is beholden to no regional authority for punctuation. It selects on rational grounds from all sources: double quote marks from US practice, and essentially British ways (with US additions) for the en dash. Why should the colon be treated differently?

(iv) I think the text that my long-standing friend SMcCandlish proposed (now prematurely put into MOS) is a bit clunky and needs to give clearer guidance. May I be bold and compare the components of his suggestion and mine?

SMcC: In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it.
[Which cases are "most cases"? What guidance is offered?]
Tony: In running text a colon need not be preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, so long as the intent is clear.
[Direct guidance: editors are advised about what is important.]
SMcC: If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter.
[A bit loose and wordy? Of course you'd still capitalise then.]
Tony: A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it if that can naturally be read as a complete sentence: otherwise, it normally does not.
[Direct guidance without fluff.]
SMcC: When a colon is used before a complete sentence, or in an article title, section heading, or list item, editors may choose whether to capitalize the first letter of what follows, taking into consideration the existing practice and consistency with related articles. Do not capitalize after a colon otherwise.
[Too long, directionless, and without clear motivation, I think. Why conflate the case of a full sentence (in continuous text) with those other cases (titles, headings, lists)? The two contexts are quite different.]
Tony: But when a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles."
[Along with the preceding excerpt, treats those two distinct contexts separately, and gives distinct clear guidance for each.]

I don't like reverting, and I respect SMcCandlish's knowledge and research. But could we leave it as is, pending full treatment of these and any other relevant points? And let's try to gain genuine consensus on this important matter.

Tony (talk) 11:26, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Tony, this discussion had gone cold. You had not responded to SMcCandlish's invitation to further discussion on 17th Jan. and the only other contribution since then was Gawaon's agreement with SMcCandlish's draft on 24th Jan. I rather doubt that this will pick up much further comment now; if the consensus remains against you, I would ask you not to revert again please. Leaving aside whether the precise wording can be improved, the main issue is whether editors should have to use a capital in the specific circumstances in which lower case is usual in British English. SMcCandlish and I have argued that we should allow editors the flexibility to decide for themselves but be consistent within an article. There was already a long discussion here deciding that within titles there should be such flexibility. You argue for imposing consistency. What I would say about that is that the current rule is anyway widely ignored on Wikipedia. For instance I noticed a lower-case example in the FA blurb on the Main Page on 23rd Jan: nobody was bothered by it! JMCHutchinson (talk) 13:01, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
I don’t agree with Tony’s alternative approach and broadly support where SMcC is trying to go. But I think his proposed wording does need a bit more work. What the first sentence is trying to achieve isn’t clear; are there really such grammatical rules for what comes before the colon? Sentence fragments such as “These are as follows:” or “Therefore:” or “My wishlist is:” aren’t uncommon. I also raise an eyebrow at the reference to “related articles” - since when did we ever try to harmonise style or optional usage across multiple articles?? And what is a ‘related article’ anyway? MapReader (talk) 13:36, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
With respect to Tony1, I too think this revert was unjustified and the wording by SMcCandlish, while maybe not perfect, is clearly a step into the right and largely consensual direction and therefore should be restored (which obviously doesn't rule out further improvements and wording twists). As for the objections by Tony and MapReader, I notice that they conflate various issues, including stuff that's unrelated to the current discussion. For example, the rule that broadens the allowed use of capital letters in "article title, section heading, or list item" is the result of a previous RfC and entirely unrelated to the issue here. Likewise, the sentence "In most cases, a colon works best with a complete grammatical sentence before it" is old and was neither added nor modified by the suggested change. I too have some doubts about it, but that should be left for a different discussion, not this one! This one is about capitalization or not, while that sentence is about the use of the colon as such. As for the "consistency with related articles", that only refers to article titles, as the link makes clear. Maybe that could be made clearer, but that wording too is entirely unrelated to the change discussed here; it was neither added nor modified by it. So let's not get sidetracked! Gawaon (talk) 14:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Re: "related articles": Just click the link, MapReader. It's about article titles, namely "When a colon is used ... in an article title".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Readers shouldn’t have to click a link to discover that something that appears to be a general provision actually only applies to article titles. It should be explicit from the text. MapReader (talk) 03:33, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
This material has nothing to do with readers, only editors, and they are in fact responsible for learning what the rules actually are by clicking around on WP:P&G-page links to see what they say. That said, I tried a "consistency with related article titles" revision in the samples below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
'"These are as follows:" or "Therefore:" or "My wishlist is:" aren’t uncommon': They're very uncommon in encyclopedic writing. They're not totally unheard of, though, particlarly as list introductions, so Tony1's "if/as long as the intent is clear" seems reasonable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
"Know thyself" is a 'quoted sentence', so it would be 'normally capitalized'. DrKay (talk) 17:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
Except it's not quoted at all, in any of those samples, it's being repeated as an aphorism or conventional wisdom, without quotation marks. Capitalization in such a circumstance after a colon appears to be very common, even among writers who otherwise profess not to prefer the capital there, as demonstrated by Tony1's "Know thyself" samples.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:00, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
There's no rush to implement anything. To go over Tony1's points, in order:
  • A blended version might be: "A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear." This would keep both the original's clear preference for a complete sentence, and Tony1's somewhat more precise idea of "intent" versus just a loose "in most cases". We don't seem to need to say "In running text", but it could be tacked back onto to the front if it's badly wanted.
  • If my "If what follows the colon is something normally capitalized (proper name, acronym, quoted sentence, etc.), use a capital letter" is "A bit loose and wordy", it's because I've learned the hard way to never, ever leave open a potential loophole for wikilawyering. Tony1's alternative is a hard requirement to capitalize if what follows the colon is a complete sentence, but there appears to be a consensus here to avoid doing that. It was also even more wordy, and kind of weirdly implied "agency", that "a colon capitalizes" something, but it doesn't; another principle like being a proper name does that). A trimmed version of what I had could be made though: For anything normally capitalized (proper name, quoted sentence, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. This would keep the important point that quoted full sentences should not be decapitalized just because they are after a colon; the entire reason we have MOS:LQ is to avoid falsifying the content of quotations, and it's a principle we've stuck with for over two decades. So, this particular point is non-negotiable from my position. (A semi-recent change in MOS:CONFORM permits such an aleration before an introduction like "said that", but this is dubious and controversial and probably needs an RfC to see whether this has consensus, since it calls into question our entire treament of quotations and the rationale behind it.)
  • The third bit of material is mostly pre-existing wording, into which "sentence" has been added based on the loose consensus of the above and prior discussions. Tony1's additional points about rationales are already integrated into it. Tony1 asks "Why conflate the case of a full sentence (in continuous text) with those other cases (titles, headings, lists)? The two contexts are quite different." Because the consensus direction in all this discussion is to no longer treat them as different. It's not even my personal preference, which is to always capitalize a full sentence including after a colon. But I'm trying to encapsulate where the community wants to go on this, as best as I can assess it. However, that part can probably be compressed a little more; I tried seven versions, and used the shortest (that doesn't lose anything important) below.
A revision based on the above would look like this:
Version A:

A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear. For anything normally capitalized (proper name, quoted sentence, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. In an article title, section heading, or list item, or before a complete sentence, capitalizing after a colon is left to editorial discretion, mindful of existing practice and consistency with related article titles. Use lowercase after a colon otherwise.

However, there is no revision I can do that will get around the issue that this discussion has gone toward not requiring a capital letter after a colon if what follows it is a complete sentence, yet Tony1 wanting that requirement. It is clearly permissible to so capitalize. Let's consider making it recommended, and I would strongly prefer that, and suspect Tony1 would accept it as a compromise. That could be:
Version B:

A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear. For anything normally capitalized (proper name, quoted sentence, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. In an article title, section heading, or list item, capitalizing after a colon is left to editorial discretion, mindful of existing practice and consistency with related article titles. Prefer to capitalize the first letter of a complete sentence after a colon. Use lowercase after a colon otherwise.

If this does not meet with rebellion (and remember that this discussion is about changing the existing guideline away from having this requirement, so it requires an affirmative consensus to do that in the first place), then the material could be adjusted to combine related themes and also agree better with more off-site style guides:
Version C:

A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear. For anything normally capitalized (proper name, etc.), retain the capital after a colon. Prefer to capitalize the first letter of a complete sentence after a colon, always for multiple sentences or a quoted sentence. In an article title, section heading, or list item, capitalizing after a colon is left to editorial discretion, mindful of existing practice and consistency with related article titles. Use lowercase after a colon otherwise.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC); revised: 23:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
We appear to have had a consensus around the option A approach, and I would suggest this should not be abandoned on the back of a single editor’s objection. If we need to seek broader input, that would be preferable to changing a proposal because of unanimity less one. I would however suggest, in all the options and as per my comment above, that “consistency with related articles” needs “in respect of titles” adding after it, for clarity. MapReader (talk) 03:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Mapreader, now make that on the back of at least two editors' objections. Having reviewed this discussion, I conclude that Tony was right to revert a half-cooked revision. It's a pity Tony did not reply earlier to SMcCandlish, who engaged well with the draft that Tony offered; but where is the detailed to-and-fro discussion of astute points in Tony's later contribution? There remain more unsettled matters than "quoted sentences", for heaven's sake. We should see serious concern about this breezy assumption that the relevance of the Fowler–Butterfield Know thyself extends no further than full-sentence "quotations". Keep paddling, I say. You're not there yet! 49.190.56.203 (talk) 03:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
If it comes down to it, it may be best to have a follow-up RfC that presents various drafts as choices. The problem with the above discussion is it is very few editors trying to change long-existing guidance and declaring they have "consensus" to do it but with nearly no community input, about something that could affect at least tens of thousands of articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree, SMcCandlish. An efficiently and collegially managed RfC would be best, before any change to a long-standing guideline affecting innumerable articles. Drafts A, B, and C (above) are a credit to your wikidiplomacy; but they respond to a tightly circumscribed discussion and present too narrow a range of options. Suggestions:* Any RfC should begin not with prefabricated drafts, but with unhurried consideration of issues. Candidate issues could be listed; and always avoiding premature voting, editors could suggest modifications to that list to uncover genuine core issues for subsequent discussion. I can't initiate that RfC, but I'd be active in it if my participation would be generally accepted here.
* Non-sentence, then colon, then a capped sentence. 49.190.56.203 (talk) 21:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
It's been my long experience with style-related RfCs that if specific wording revisions and their rationales are not presented then it will simply descend into a no-consensus morass. I'm fine with drafting a fourth option if there is some other identifiable principle that might result in a different rule (and one that isn't obviously going to be rejected, like "never capitalize after a colon no matter what" or "always capitalize after a colon no matter what"; we already have a prior RfC that has rejected both of those positions).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:44, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that makes perfect sense also. My main concern was to avoid an excessively narrow range of immutable candidate drafts at the very start. Your A, B, and C (modified now) are good, but they don't differ in their first sentence, for example: "A colon is usually preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, but need not be if the intent is clear."
Let's revisit Tony's initial draft:

In running text a colon need not be preceded by a complete grammatical sentence, so long as the intent is clear. / A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it if that can naturally be read as a complete sentence: otherwise, it normally does not. But when a colon is being used as a separator in an article title, section heading, or list item, consider the need for clarity and for consistency within the article and related articles.

This makes no spurious pronouncement about what "usually precedes"; it simply counters a common but obviously false supposition: that what precedes the colon must be (or better, must have the grammatical form of) a complete sentence. The second sentence directly and accurately targets situational capitalisation (like start-of-sentence caps) as opposed to fixed capitalisation ("A colon capitalizes the first letter in what follows it"), an efficiency that might with profit be adopted elsewhere in the sprawl that is WP:MOS. And so on.
I put it to you that no such valuable alternatives should be absent, in presenting an RfC for consideration.
Pragmatically, perhaps your three could be reduced to two polished versions for an RfC (after consideration of opinions already expressed here), and Tony's could be put forward as a third – with suitable links incorporated. Good idea? Any of the three candidate versions could be "improved" through early discussion in the RfC, before any voting begins.
An even better way: Break the text into what are already agreed to be three independent components, for consideration in separate candidate versions: 1. what precedes the colon in running text; 2. capitalisation decisions for what follows the colon in running text; 3. capitalisation decisions for what follows the colon in titles, headings, etc. The RfC could also consider the other material concerning colons, with a view to a cleaner structure (compare how dashes are already treated: as sentential punctuation, and separately in their other roles). 49.190.56.203 (talk) 02:20, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I too think Option A is best, since we had already largely agreed that capitalization after a colon should become optional for a whole sentence, and now labelling it as "not preferred" would backtrack from that reasonable decision too much. MapReader's complaint could be addressed by writing "and (in article titles) consistency with related articles" or "and (in article titles) consistency with related article titles". I could also live with Option C, but I think it's weak since it's far from clear how to interpret that "allowed, but not preferred" rule it would introduce. For example, if somebody capitalizes all full sentences after a colon in an article that previously consistently lower-cased them, would that change be justified base on that preference rule? It seems it would, but that also means that RETAIN no longer applies to this rule and the wording essentially comes down to "lowercasing full sentences after a colon is possible only if all editors touching an article prefer it so." Not a good thing, I think, and it would give individual editors too much power to make changes that are not improvements. Gawaon (talk) 04:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
"would that change be justified": Probably, but not over objections. MoS uses "prefer" wording in many places; it means to default to something unless there's a good reason not to. It doesn't mean that such a good reason can be ignored with impunity, it just means a discussion needs to happen if there's a reason to present.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
But what would be "a good reason" to lower-case in such cases? This is entirely a stylistic question – some use capitals for full sentences after a colon, others lower case. A "good reason" would be some argument for "this sentence specifically needs a lower-cased first letter", but I don't see how such an argument could convincingly be made. This is not about individual sentences, but about our general rule set. This discussion originally went into the direction to allow either style after a colon (while striving for article-wide consistency), which I still consider the most reasonable choice. We could also choose to stick with the old "always capitalize" rule. But "preferably capitalize, unless you have a good reason [???] not to" strikes me as a fairly bad compromise, which resolves nothing and leaves everybody unhappy. Gawaon (talk) 03:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Two good reasons would be a) the material is more clear with the capital, e.g. because the lower-case word starting the sentence seems like it "belongs" to the material to the left of the colon, as it might with a sentence that begins with "But"; b) the material to the right of the colon is two or more sentences, in which case it would arguably be a MOS:ARTCON fault to not capitalize the first of them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
But now you got it backwards, suggesting "good reasons" to change to a capital instead of the actually needed good reasons not a change to a capital (if your proposal to "preferably capitalize, unless you have a good reason not to" wins out). Gawaon (talk) 07:10, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Also worth remembering that colons are also used before bulleted or itemised lists, not just sentence phrases or sentences. I was always taught that where the bulleted/itemised points offer alternative ways of completing the sentence started before the colon, then the bullets start with lower case. For example, “The ways that you can do this are: i) this way, or ii) that way. Otherwise, you are sticking a capital letter anomalously in the middle of a sentence. MapReader (talk) 14:35, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Also I would vote for Option A. I expect nearly everyone will have their own habit concerning whether to capitalise and will not be swayed by a mere recommendation. So a recommendation muddies the waters for no real gain. And, since a recommendation acknowledges that either capital or lower-case is allowed, it seems unnecessary work to try to find a consensus about which is preferred. We could have a vote, which might reduced itself to a trans-Atlantic disagreement, but to me the important point is that both preferences have the support of a significant proportion of us. Incidentally, my interpretation of Tony's arguments is that he wanted consistency, or perhaps not to change the status quo, not that he particularly preferred a capital over lower case. JMCHutchinson (talk) 10:58, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Does MOS apply to quotations, titles etc.

I don't know if I'm writing in the right place but I came across this edit [4] and I didn't know if this was a Wikipedia policy. In short, a bunch of titles of references on a page included French punctuation (speech marks that look like << >>), because they were in French. Of course provide a translation into English, but I just felt that it seemed a bit nitpicky to "correct" the punctuation of another language, as much as "correcting" its grammar or even vocabulary. I think User:Mazewaxie may have done this on other pages on my watchlist, but I had never checked the edit because it looked like a non-controversial automated edit.

Only other time I saw something like this that made me "huh" was here though I probably made the same mistake by not including the censorship in the swear words, as I pre-empted a WP:NOTCENSORED intervention. Unknown Temptation (talk) 20:53, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Unknown Temptation, that punctuation mark is a guillemet, and generally should not be used; see WP:LQ. (An exception can be made per MOS:CONFORM.) Schazjmd (talk) 21:03, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
MOS:CONFORM says

*When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks. If there are nested quotations, follow the rules for correct punctuation in that language. If there are multiple styles for a language, the one used by the Wikipedia for that language is preferred unless the punctuation itself is under discussion.

  • The cynical response "L'auteur aurait dû demander : « à quoi sert-il d'écrire ceci ? » mais ne l'a pas fait" was all he wrote.
So, I'd not change those internal guillemets or German high-low quote marks within a quote or title.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:58, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:)(" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Wikipedia:)( has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 8 § Wikipedia:)( until a consensus is reached. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Geocomma: Royal Military College, Duntroon

I’ve copied the following discussion from WP:ERRORS. That’s not a suitable place to sort out guidance. Pinging JennyOz, Dank, Dying, and Peacemaker67. Schwede66 02:25, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

  • Robert Nimmo blurb - at "from the Royal Military College, Duntroon to participate", pls add geocomma after "Duntroon" per Nimmo article and RMC Duntroon (mostly) article. JennyOz (talk) 03:18, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    I agree; the geocomma appears to belong there. However, I don't like mucking around with FA blurbs; could one of the coordinators please chip in? Schwede66 04:15, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    Don't quote me on this because I'm out of my depth here, but some Milhist editors and some British and Australian editors sometimes get offended by the second comma if they think of the expression as a proper noun (as here). They won't necessarily fight you over it, but they won't like it. - Dank (push to talk) 04:19, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    JennyOz, i had spent more time than i'd care to admit looking into this, but i don't think this is a case where mos:geocomma applies. mos:geocomma covers "geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions", and i don't think either "Royal Military College" or "Royal Military College, Duntroon" is necessarily a geographical reference, even though the school has a physical presence. (i also think it would be unusual to consider "Royal Military College" to be a subordinate division of duntroon.) in addition, there is a category named "Royal Military College, Duntroon graduates" that doesn't use a comma after "Duntroon". furthermore, a wikipedia search for "Royal Military College, Duntroon" shows many instances in the prose of articles where a comma is not used after "Duntroon".
    as a result, i am guessing that "Royal Military College, Duntroon" is simply the name of the organization, which happens to use a comma, so there isn't a need to follow it with a comma if one normally wouldn't have done so had the name of the organization not included one. (Dank's comment suggests that this seems to be the case.) perhaps "University of California, Berkeley" is another such example, where there are a few articles, a few categories, and a number of instances in article prose that do not use a comma after "Berkeley".
    that all being said, it's possible that i'm wrong, and all the instances referenced above actually need commas added, since i'd normally bet on you being correct. in any case, in this specific instance in the blurb, i think adding a comma wouldn't make the blurb grammatically incorrect, so i have no personal preference either way. i didn't add a comma myself because i had thought the sentence was already correct as is. dying (talk) 04:59, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    And it doesn't help that our article Royal Military College, Duntroon is inconsistent in the comma throughout. Stephen 05:23, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    Very interesting reflections. Maybe we should work on the guidance to cover the Duntroons and Berkeleys. Schwede66 05:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    In the US and Canada, I usually see a second comma, including for proper nouns. FWIW. - Dank (push to talk) 05:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    Hmm, interesting indeed! Thank you all.
    Royal Military Academy Sandhurst - doesn't have a comma after Academy whereas RMC Duntroon has a comma after College so one could argue a comma is needed as a parenthetical.
    (And Dying, I absolutely know that in your much appreciated meticulousness you would have spent time considering this!)
    We could ask article FA nominator Peacemaker67 to make the call? (I asked PM (a graduate) re comma during the FAC only because at that stage a comma existed in the Early life and education section but not in the lede.
    I just looked at a few Aust Milhist FAs - drat! some articles do use the comma, some don't. The umbrella FA Australian Defence Force includes one.
    I merely see consistency with article helpful to ward off errors reports on the day.
    As my hero would say "As you were gentlemen!" JennyOz (talk) 08:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it is all very confusing. AFAIK, the reason it isn't just "Royal Military College" is because of the other colleges of the same name. Duntroon was the name of the sheep station it was established on, and the suburb in which it is located now. I can live with the extra comma, frankly, and will add it now. We should probably have some MOS guidance written on this one. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

[End of copy-pasted original discussion.] Schwede66 02:25, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Use the second comma. It is necessary for all (not just a comma-averse subset of) readers to be able to parse the material with complete certainty. The fact that we have a mis-named category is not evidence of anything other than that we have a category to rename. This is hardly the first time such a matter has come up. The long-standing, unchanged situation is that various people like, as a matter of their personal writing style, to drop commas (the ones marked with square brackets for clarity here) in constructions such as "in London, Ontario[,] the climate ...", "at the Royal Military College, Duntroon[,] he was ...", "died on May 13, 2023[,] at ...", "according to John X. Smith, Jr.[,] this ...", "Sir Xerxes Youill of Zounds, KBE, RBA, RE[,] was ...". Yet there is a consensus to not drop them because their presence makes the material clearer. MOS:COMMAS does not make any "magical exceptions" for any such cases (Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma), and a consensus change in the direction of topical exceptions is extremely unlikely to happen. Especially when in this case another guideline, MOS:GEOCOMMA, is also saying the same thing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:51, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
PS: "We could ask article FA nominator Peacemaker67 to make the call? (I asked PM (a graduate) ...)." No editor WP:OWNs any article (see also WP:VESTED). There have already been far too many instances of WP:FAC regulars trying to allow nominators and/or principal authors of articles to get their way on not complying with guidelines (not policies yet, that I know of) simply on a WP:IDONTLIKEIT basis, and this has to stop. I've even seen one of FAC's most active reviewers resign their FAC work (and greatly reduce all their WP work) because of this nonsense and the drama it generated. Those with close connections to a subject do not get to decide how we have to write about them (think of the WP:COI implication of that!). Not that we'd make a special pleading exception for a particular institution anyway; see also MOS:TM, MOS:INSTITUTIONS, WP:OFFICIALNAME, etc. – over and over again WP is making the same point that particular establishments with their own style peccadilloes do not in any way dictate the style of WP's writing about them. See also failure to gain consensus of previous attempts to make "style carve-outs" for particular entitles like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Ohio State University, etc. There is nothing new under the MoS sun after 20+ years of this stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:28, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I can understand how, sometimes, the comma may not be necessary. This may be one of those cases. If commas were precious handcrafted symbols made of expensive materials, perhaps we would use them more sparingly, but they are not. It is so much easier to use them and use them consistently to aid the reader and to decrease the need for discussion among editors. I can't get worked up about it being a big deal either way, but Wikipedia's style is to use them consistently and I think we should stick with that.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  14:53, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Lots of such commas are often considered unnecessary and dropped in off-site writing of various styles, but this is on-WP writing and no one's ever made a compelling argument for an exception to Always use a pair of commas for this, unless another punctuation mark takes the place of the second comma. The clarity the commas provide to a large subset of readers is much more valuable than the tiny bit of "micro-concision" gained by omitting them. As with virtually any style matter that doesn't have serious disruption potential, if someone prefers to write without these commas, no one is likely to make much noise about it; it's something another editor will just clean up later. There's only a problem when someone tries to either go around removing these commas from where they belong, or stonewall other editors who are bringing the material into guideline compliance.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I've had a go at documenting the above in the guidance. I'm sure it can be improved upon, but it's a start. Feel free to tweak it. Schwede66 20:51, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Looks good to me. (Well, other than that it may not be "nice" to use the recently disputed case when adding material like this; it can come off as rubbing someone's nose in it. I try to find some other example in such cases. An exception would be when an RfC has come to the resolution, in which case it's a better example to use, and in some cases we cite the RfC in a footnote, especially if it was a "big deal" discussion.) That said, whenever I see the code in MoS sections like that, I wonder whether we should abandon the table-based layout of these yes/no examples and just use simpler list formatting. It's a lot of code bloat.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:45, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Schwede66, for some reason, i don't seem to have gotten a ping to this discussion, so i will ping the others in case they didn't receive a notification either: JennyOz, Dank, and Peacemaker67.
from my current understanding of the updated version of mos:geocomma, i believe that, in the example sentence "Main Street, U.S.A. is in Disneyland.", mos:geocomma suggests that, after "U.S.A.", a comma should be inserted. is that correct? also, does this mean that mos:geocomma does not apply when the last element in the comma-separated list is either not a geographical element, or not used as a disambiguator? for example, in "Balliol College, Oxford", "Oxford" refers to the university rather than a geographical element, and there doesn't seem to be another balliol college notable enough to be the subject of an article on wikipedia.
while we are on the topic, should there be similar guidance regarding commas following names of people? mos:jr actually appears to cover one of the cases noted above by stating that a comma should not be placed before "Jr.", which suggests that one should not be placed after "Jr." either if its sole purpose is to surround the suffix with delimiters. other possibly contentious names include "Charles, Prince of Wales" and "Edward, the Black Prince".
by the way, as i may have been the editor in the conversation quoted above who was most skeptical about mos:geocomma (at the time) being applicable to "Royal Military College, Duntroon", i feel like i should mention that although it hadn't even occurred to me that the new wording could be construed as "rubbing someone's nose in it" until the possibility was raised, i do appreciate the consideration. dying (talk) 07:59, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Mandatory

Is adherence to the MOS mandatory or a preference? I see people going to war over the MOS, even with single edits that are invisible to the readers. The Banner talk 10:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@The Banner: The box at the top says This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Compare e.g. WP:V which says This page documents an English Wikipedia policy. Policies are stricter than guidelines. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
But people are acting as if WP:NOPIPE and MOS:NOPIPE is mandatory and have to be enforced at all times. The Banner talk 13:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
The Banner, I suppose that's their bad for getting bent out of shape. There are good semantic (imo) reasons for it in many cases that I could imagine getting a smidge cranky over, but I'm already too much of a stickler myself. — Remsense诉 13:31, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
@The Banner: Could you be more explicit about the issue that's troubling you? Is it your difference of opinion with Surtsicna here? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 13:29, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
ow, as examples your edit warring here, this discussion, where you decided that my inconvenient edit was not part of that discussion (twice) and about a script you are now using to hammer more edits out to correct links that are already correct. The Banner talk 13:54, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
  • In the first instance, you followed my edit history to a page I'd previously edited, made a series of unconstructive edits without understanding the context, accused me of edit-warring when I reverted you, and then said I was "becoming historical" when I outed your bad behaviour.
  • In the second instance, you blundered into a delicate situation looking for trouble when I was trying to make peace between two well-meaning editors. I didn't want to let your bad behaviour distract from the more important issue, so I put you to one side while I dealt with it. If you come to my Talk page looking for trouble, I'll deal with you as I see fit.
  • In the third instance, I've been testing a script-based solution to the activities of a troublesome and prolific block-evader. The context is explained in the thread you linked above. Discussions are ongoing.
Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 14:23, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
And still no explanation as why you see the invisible (IMHO useless) edits as mandatory. The Banner talk 14:34, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
I don't see them as mandatory. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 14:42, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
But you act as if they are. The Banner talk 14:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps we differ in our understanding of the word "mandatory". Could you explain what you mean? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mandatory But WP:NOPIPE and MOS:NOPIPE never state that is mandatory or obligatory to forcefully enforce it. The Banner talk 15:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Of course they don't, but it's very clear that there's a consistent preference for one form over the other.
☒N [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]
checkY [[Mozart]]
That's why I'd suggest that Surtsicna's edit here was fine, while your reversion of it wasn't. If we all pull in the same direction, we might actually get somewhere. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 15:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
There is no need to change links that are already correct. And that is exactly what you two are doing, with as excuse NOPIPE. The Banner talk 15:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
What does that red cross mean, up there next to [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]? Do you see that the form of link that Surtsicna prefers, and that I prefer, and that the manual prefers, is like the green link below it, while the form that you keep reverting to is the red one with the big red cross next to it?
MOS:NOPIPE and WP:NOPIPE and WP:NOTBROKEN aren't excuses: they're guidelines. If we all follow the same guidelines, we all move towards the same goal. If you don't like the guidelines, there are processes to follow to get them changed. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 16:08, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
I think you are confused with policies. Guidelines are (strong) advice. Not mandatory as policies. And there is no reason the correct links that are already correct. The Banner talk 17:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
That argument can be made, but it's definitely worse to revert them, since you're editwarring over trivia and making the material as least a fraction worse (by the rubric of the three related guidelines cited here).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
So, why changing already correct links? And do that automated with a script? The Banner talk 21:40, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
This has already been asked and answered. If they are against three guidelines, they are not "correct"; they just happen to be incorrect in a way that isn't utterly broken. There's a difference between "kinda works" and "works properly", between "not a fatal practice" and "a best practice", between "okay" and "ideal". Please absorb this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
I've been thinking about this a little more. I think the way I look at it is that no actions are mandatory here, but some are (effectively) prohibited - or at least, strongly discouraged. What that means in this context is that nobody is obliged to change ☒N to checkY, but anyone is free to do so if they choose; and nobody should change checkY to ☒N without a very good reason.
☒N → checkY : checkY
checkY → ☒N : ☒N
Jean-de-Nivelle(talk) 15:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
To answer the base question, no one has to follow MoS (or follow any other guideline of any kind) to edit here. They only have to abide by policy. However, it is disruptive to thwart guideline application by either going around changing compliant material to be non-compliant or editwarring against later editors who are making non-compliant material be compliant (both unconstructive activities have resulted in sanctions before). No one "owns" their edits here, and all content you or anyone else puts into WP is subject to policy-compliant later editing by other users. All that said, there is an actual problem here to fix: MOS:NOPIPE should not read "do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term" as if it were a policy, but should instead say something more like "under most conditions, do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term", or more concisely "prefer a redirected term over a piped link", or something else that leaves at least a little room for editorial judgment (e.g. when the redirected term is darned certain to be something that should never have its own article). The material already explicitly cross-references the WP:NOTBROKEN guideline. Even when such a change should be made, it's important that editors not go around robotically "fixing" things that aren't necessarily faulty, at least not blindly and especially not as the whole edit itself instead of as part of a more substantive reader-facing change or a fix that is editor-facing but actually necessary (this "bundling" of such changes is covered in the human-editing portion of WP:COSMETICBOT). Anyway, the point being: MoS being over-explicit with language like "do not" shouldn't be interpreted as elevating it to a policy-level requirement. MoS shouldn't be using that kind of language except where reiterating/applying a policy requirement or a technical (including accessibility) one. PS: Something from the related user-talk thread: "do not do something" means "fix it when you see it done" is correct, and if the wording were adjusted to something like "usually do not do something" then "usually fix it when you run into it" would be correct; WP:CONTENTAGE is an "argument to avoid" fallacy; no material is exempt from WP:P&G compliance simply because it's not newly added today (or last week, or last year).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
To answer the base question, no one has to follow MoS (or follow any other guideline of any kind) to edit here.
  • I think the base question needs interpretation in the light of The Banner's other remarks. I think he's really asking: "Can I persistently revert other editors' work if I prefer to disregard the Manual of Style?"
All that said, there is an actual problem here to fix: MOS:NOPIPE should not read "do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term" as if it were a policy, but should instead say something more like "under most conditions, do not use a piped link where it is possible to use a redirected term", or more concisely "prefer a redirected term over a piped link", or something else that leaves at least a little room for editorial judgment (e.g. when the redirected term is darned certain to be something that should never have its own article).
  • I wouldn't oppose any of those suggestions. But isn't there already a subtext that guidelines will have exceptions, and disagreements should be resolved with intelligent cooperation? I've been avoiding changing links like [[2014 Scottish independence referendum|Scottish independence referendum]], for example, because, while MOS:NOPIPE would seem to apply, it's quite possible that a second Scottish independence referendum might occur. If it did, the latter part of that link might no longer be a valid redirect to the former.
Even when such a change should be made, it's important that editors not go around robotically "fixing" things that aren't necessarily faulty, at least not blindly and especially not as the whole edit itself instead of as part of a more substantive reader-facing change or a fix that is editor-facing but actually necessary (this "bundling" of such changes is covered in the human-editing portion of WP:COSMETICBOT).
  • While I agree that edits shouldn't be made "robotically" and "blindly", I don't see these changes as purely cosmetic in the sense that WP:COSMETICBOT intends, which is why I don't mark them as "minor". Links are fundamental to the way the encyclopedia is wired up, they affect every page, and I think a more rational and holistic approach to linking would benefit the project as a whole.
Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 12:47, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I think the base question needs interpretation in the light of The Banner's other remarks. I think he's really asking: "Can I persistently revert other editors' work if I prefer to disregard the Manual of Style?" As in: Can I straight ignore objections of others and invent a new rule (it being mandatory)??? And about the cosmic changes: no reader will see your changes. The Banner talk 15:35, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I haven't invented any new rules, I don't think anything here is mandatory, and we're discussing your objections. I also paused my use of Nardog's script as soon as Ritchie333 asked me to, pending further discussion. I'm very keen to continue that discussion in the hope of finding a mutually acceptable way to proceed. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 16:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
It is not so much my objections (I voice them) but the way NOPIPE is used and enforced. But there are more people jumping up and down about how NOPIPE is used. Not only me or Ritchie333. But these objections were ignored with a claim on the mandatory character of NOPIPE. The Banner talk 16:16, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
What do you object to specifically in "the way NOPIPE is used and enforced", and how does that differ from the way any other MoS guideline is "used and enforced"? Who are the other people whose objections are being ignored? If there are enough of them, you may have a case to rewrite the relevant guidelines. I pointed out in August or September that you were the only editor reverting my edits. There have been three cases this month in at least five hundred examples, and one of them self-reverted after I explained my position. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 22:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
And another thing. In making this edit, you cited WP:NOTBROKEN in your edit summary, while the substance of your edit was directly opposed to the advice given in that guideline. Have you read WP:NOTBROKEN? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 00:11, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Did you read it? As it starts with Do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken. So, why do you fix links that are not broken? The Banner talk 00:45, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Look, I know English isn't your first language, but I'm sure you understand that when you omit words from a sentence, its meaning may change. So, "don't paint the bathroom walls green" doesn't mean the same thing as "don't paint walls green", or "don't paint the bathroom", or even "paint the bathroom walls". The sentence do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken contains specific information about the kinds of links ("links to redirects") that shouldn't be "fixed", and the guideline gives examples of the ways in which they shouldn't be "fixed". There isn't an equivalent guideline saying "don't fix piped links" because the manual of style says redirects are preferred. There isn't a guideline that says "malformed but functional links shouldn't be edited".
I'd like to ask you the same question though. Why do you "fix" links that are not broken? You clearly don't feel that functional links shouldn't be edited, because your edit here changed the format of functioning links without changing the displayed text or the target pages. It's just that it did so in a way that's discouraged by the guideline you cited in your edit summary.
And another thing. What were you thinking here? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 11:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Interesting that you have to get personal now... The Banner talk 11:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean? I know that your English is good but not perfect, so I'm willing to believe that you may have misunderstood the guideline you cited. What I'm not willing to believe is that you think omitting the words "to redirects" from the sentence you quoted doesn't alter the meaning of that sentence.
Could you answer a few of the questions I've put to you above? It might help clarify your objections.
  • What do you object to specifically in "the way NOPIPE is used and enforced"?
  • How does that differ from the way any other MoS guideline is "used and enforced"?
  • Why do you "fix" links that are not broken?
  • What does that red cross mean, up there ↑ next to [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]?
  • What were you thinking here?
Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 13:03, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
No, if you start questioning my mastering of the language and get personal, I am done. There is no consensus that NOPIPE is mandatory (due to low number of participants I do not dare to say that there is consensus the other way.) And you have already resumed your campaign of fixing links that do not need fixing. Again you ignore the discussion, so why should I spend time on a discussion if you ignore it anyway? by now, I start thinking about an RFC.... The Banner talk 18:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
In that case, let me leave you with something to think about. The page that's now at "Henry VIII" used to be at "Henry VIII of England". Somebody thought it would be a good idea to "correct" all the links to [[Henry VIII]] into piped links: [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]]. Then "Henry VIII of England" was moved to "Henry VIII", and instead of pointing directly to "Henry VIII" as they would have done, all those links (there are thousands) now go via a redirect at Henry VIII of England. 6,257 pages currently make use of that redirect. If you think direct links really are preferable, you might like to look through that list and turn those piped redirects back into [[Henry VIII]]. I promise, I won't intervene.
☒N [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]]
checkY [[Henry VIII]]
Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 01:18, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Jean-de-Nivelle is entirely correct on this: The sentence do not "fix" links to redirects that are not broken contains specific information about the kinds of links ("links to redirects") that shouldn't be "fixed", and the guideline gives examples of the ways in which they shouldn't be "fixed". There isn't an equivalent guideline saying "don't fix piped links" because the manual of style says redirects are preferred. There isn't a guideline that says "malformed but functional links shouldn't be edited". Failure to understand this at first is one thing, but persistently misapplying the material, after one has been corrected on the matter, as if it meant "don't fix any fix piped links even if malformed or unhelpful", when the entire point of that MoS passage is fixing poor piped links and preferring redirects, would be disruptive. If this is really the basis for the insistent reversion behavior, then this is rather concerning. The Banner: "if [insert tone complaint here], I am done." If you are done, then the reverting should stop. The edits are compliant with the guidelines, even if some of us might find them not required or not very important, or maybe even annoying if not done as part of a more substantive edit. You've raised a lengthy and rather venty complaint here, and from what I can tell a grand total of zero editors agree with you, so it is time to WP:DROPTHESTICK and stop revert-warring.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:36, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
"Can I persistently revert other editors' work if I prefer to disregard the Manual of Style?" is a clear "no". Doing enough of that ends up at ANI. "isn't there already a subtext that guidelines will have exceptions, and disagreements should be resolved with intelligent cooperation?" Sure, but never underestimate the willingness of some people to wikilawyer, especially if they encounter a word like "must". "a more rational and holistic approach to linking would benefit the project as a whole" That generally sounds good, but "holistic" has no real definition in this context, and a lot of editors are concerned with overlinking, and many also with trivial changes hitting their watchlists over and over again; I'm simply advising caution here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
"holistic" has no real definition in this context: I think I could come up with one, but perhaps this isn't the moment for it.
a lot of editors are concerned with overlinking: I'm one of them, but this issue purely concerns the format of the links in question, not their number. I often reduce overlinking as I go.
and many also with trivial changes hitting their watchlists over and over again: I'm aware of the potential for that, having seen some of the opposition to JackkBrown's activities. I'm actually surprised how few objections there have been. My feeling is that most people don't see these edits as trivial, or just don't care either way.
I'm simply advising caution here.: Understood. I would actually welcome a broader discussion of some of the issues involved in this situation, but I'm not trying to provoke one. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 01:32, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
My thoughts are very much that, no the MOS isn't "manditory", and there are certainly edge cases where it's not suitable, but you usually need a good reason to either ignore, or usurp the MOS. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I will take this a step further… one should not disrupt articles by repeatedly reverting other editors… regardless of whether you are following or disregarding the MOS. Edit warring is NEVER correct.
Instead, go to the talk page, and discuss the situation. There ARE times when it is appropriate to make an exception to the MOS… BUT, those are very rare. It is hard, and takes patience and a cooperative attitude to convince other editors that an exception should made in a given situation. Finally, even if you are sure you were correct… accept reality when you have lost the argument. Blueboar (talk) 00:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
WP:BRD: Bold-Revert-Discuss. You make a change that violates WP:NOPIPE and if I feel it could mess up the creation of a future article from the redirect (the kind of links that should not be "fixed") then I will revert you. You can then put your case on the talk page, knowing that at least one editor disagrees with you so you will need to establish consensus. This is not edit warring; it is our usual editing process. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Just chiming in to agree with Jean-de-Nivelle and SMcCandlish. Please don't continue to make edits or reverts contrary to the Manual of Style to conform to your preferred form of link. At some point, that might cross the line into being viewed as a pattern of disruption and would become sanctionable. You would be within your rights to open a discussion to change the MoS to align more closely with your view on this topic, but I suspect that it would be a futile undertaking. Mathglot (talk) 08:20, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
    "Please don't continue to make edits or reverts contrary to the Manual of Style to conform to your preferred form of link."
    @Mathglot: do you mean things like this, and this, and this, and this? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 22:28, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
    There's a bit of a mixed bag there, with some edits having multiple types of link changes, but the common theme, which I'm sure was the point of your post, is that there are a whole bunch of willful WP:NOPIPE violations there by The Banner, and as they were perfectly okay before those edits, the edits were in no way an improvement to the articles in question for the reader, and go against guideline, whether you respect guidelines or not.
    In addition, this isn't only, or even primarily, about ignoring WP:NOPIPE because it is "only a guideline"; much more important, in my view, is that WP:DISRUPTION is involved, and WP:CONSENSUS is policy, and that is the main issue here. I believe Blueboar was first to mention this above, but it bears repeating: besides any only-a-guideline issue, editors here are expected to edit collaboratively, and above all, build an encyclopedia. Every word in this discussion, and every minute spent by editor-builders patiently explaining (now, perhaps, less patiently) to a single editor why they should stop doing what they are doing, is one more word and one more minute not spent building an encyclopedia. At some indeterminate point, that shifts from discussion and consensus-seeking, and shies into WP:DISRUPTION, and that can lead to a WP:BLOCK, even an indefinite one if it doesn't stop.
    So the question becomes, TheBanner, is this the hill you want to die on?[Leo] You've been here 15 years with 116k edits on thousands of articles including hundreds of new ones; we'd all rather have you continuing to contribute to the encyclopedia. Hope that's what you want, too. mvg, Mathglot (talk) 23:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
    Nice to see that Jean is now following me around to find stuff to complain about. How do they call that? The Banner talk 00:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
    @The Banner: what perplexes me is that you choose to pop up on a page you've never edited before just over half an hour after I'd edited it, to violate precisely the guidelines we've been discussing in this thread. You did something very similar here in September. Do you really think anyone will believe it's coincidental?
    At "Pictish language" you made another set of unhelpful edits that introduced spelling errors and errors of logic, just to impose a preference that WP:NOTBROKEN explicitly discourages. What are you playing at? Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 00:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
    Thank you for confirming that you are following me around. Sorry that I do not have the time or the interest to treat you the same as you treat me. But I will do my best to improve the encyclopedia to give the readers the best reader experience. Unfortunately, solving links to disambiguation pages means creating a lot of piping, if I can I will provide a direct link to the intended target. The Banner talk 00:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
    What on Earth are you talking about? None of the edits I've mentioned ([5],[6], [7],[8],[9],[10]) involved fixing disambiguation links. Jean-de-Nivelle (talk) 01:03, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

At some indefinable point above, this discussion seems to have shifted from one about interpretation of the MOS guideline about piped links, and how mandatory guidelines are, into being more about the conduct of one editor, as I alluded to in my "hill to die on" comment above. I believe the behavioral component of it belongs not here, but at the user talk page, and accordingly, I have raised this discussion to address it. Mathglot (talk) 07:42, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Tense switching and MOS:TENSE

Curious to get some opinions on the MOS:TENSE verbiage as it applies to a subject. Generally, we follow the good advice to treat things in present tense save for the historical stuff, which we leave in the past. My question falls as to whether it's better to just stick with one when the alternative is tense-switching repeatedly. The MOS gives Dún Aonghasa is the ruin of a prehistoric Irish cliff fort. Its original shape was presumably oval or D-shaped, but parts of the cliff and fort have since collapsed into the sea. as an example, but as a single occasion it's not really that disruptive. The issue I see is more in cases of something like computer technology, where we're talking about a discontinued product that was sold or offered in specific configurations. Those machines and configurations still exist, but in the case of iMac G3#Release, the result is that you get three tense shifts in five sentences in a single paragraph, and even worse as you go. To me, sticking with historical makes it read much better, short of rearranging the entire section or turning it from prose to bullets or something to avoid the issue. Thoughts? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 19:54, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree that section on iMacs is quite confusingly written. (The new iMacs have no fan... about something released a quarter-century ago is quite jarring.) It either needs to be a description of what design decisions were taken at the time, or a description of the components of the (still extant) machines, in present tense. Currently it is a muddle of the two. As written, I agree it would be easier to shift it into past tense (e.g., "These models were released without a fan..."--Trystan (talk) 02:13, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

No "the" with Inuit

As this guidance from the government of Canada says, since Inuit is already plural (Inuk is singular) and because it already means "the people", phrases such as "the Inuit" and "Inuit people" are grammatically incorrect and I think we could reflect it in a footnote somewhere in MOS as a case of irregular plurals and/or article usage. Unfortunately I can see a lot of that usage by typing "the Inuit" or "Inuit people" in the search tool, including in Inuit topics.

This is a drive-by comment. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 23:52, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Contradictions of the MOS

Hi. Today I reverted an edit by an editor who had changed a title of several bands so the The in the title was changed to the in the article John Miles (musician). I reverted them based on MOS:5, which states: Always capitalized: When using title case, the following words should be capitalized: The first and last word of the title (e.g. A Home to Go Back To) It was reverted back by the editor quoting MOS:THEBAND which states: Mid-sentence, per the MoS main page, the word the should in general not be capitalized in continuous prose, e.g.: Wings featured Paul McCartney from the Beatles and Denny Laine from the Moody Blues. I had not seen this part if MOS before so fair play. However is this not a contradiction? Should we not link MOS:THEBAND as an exception? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 17:15, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

@Davidstewartharvey, I don't think there's a contradiction. The name of a band (organization, company, etc.) is not a title. A title is the name of a work (book, album, movie). Schazjmd (talk) 17:20, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

American English vs: British English

It seems to me that it makes the most sense of that articles covering topics that are occurring in or based in America should generally be written in American English, and articles covering topics that are occurring in or based in the UK or other countries were British English is predominant should generally be written with British English, and that this sentiment should be reflected in the MOS. Comments or questions on this proposition would be most welcome here.
Thanks,
Lighthumormonger (talk) 17:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

It is, see MOS:TIES Martin of Sheffield (talk) 17:10, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

You are correct. Thank you Martin for pointing that out to me. I looked for it but could not find it. Lighthumormonger (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Removing or replacing 2005 ArbCom quote

I'm proposing that we remove or replace the following from MOS:VAR:

The Arbitration Committee has expressed the principle that "When either of two styles is acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change."[a]

ArbCom does not have authority over content, and so their words should not have such a prominent place in a manual of style that governs Wikipedia content. In addition, while a minor point, the quote is nearing 20 years old(!) and feels a bit out of place in a 2024 manual of style.

I'd propose that we remove the quote, as the next sentence beginning "Edit-warring over style ..." seems to cover this topic well enough. However, we could instead replace the quote with a regular old sentence that says the same thing. Ed [talk] [OMT] 19:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC) Ed [talk] [OMT] 19:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

That ArbCom has not authority over content does not affect the validity or consensus of their prior rulings. InfiniteNexus (talk) 19:38, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
That is correct. But for the same reasoning, it's strange to see them quoted as an authority now in 2024. Hence the proposal to remove or replace with similar wording. Ed [talk] [OMT] 20:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
I would agree with this. It is actually outside of ArbCom's remit to govern content (including internal WP:P&G content – ArbCom doesn't even get to rewrite WP:ARBPOL itself). While the underlying point of that material is a behavioral one about edit-warring (which was central to the case in question), the wording taken in its most literal way and out of that specific context is actually a serious over-reach of ArbCom's authority. It would be better for MoS, as a community document, to present the same idea (which appears to have longstanding community consensus), just not as an ancient ArbCom quote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:29, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. This is best expressed in the guideline's own voice. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:39, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I feel that they were probably summarizing guidelines or practice at the time rather than trying to write policy by fiat, but either way, since this page is the guideline and is supposed to document the practice, quoting ArbCom directly seems a bit circular, yeah. --Aquillion (talk) 11:26, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose change In this case, Arbcom is not ruling in favour of a particular style. Their point is a behavioural one; that making such changes without a good reason is disruptive. This seems well-established in cases such as WP:CITEVAR and infoboxes. As conflict over such matters can end up before Arbcom, it's good for editors to understand the risk. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
    • @Andrew Davidson: In its original context, the line is definitely intended to be a content point (specifically, summarizing a content policy). Quoting them as content authorities here is not appropriate, and as Aquillion notes it's even rather circular. Ed [talk] [OMT] 22:59, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
      No, it's a behavioural point. Circularity is irrelevant as our rules are based on consensus and practice rather than authority. The key point here is that Arbcom was on board with this consensus and their enforcement of it is a significant part of our practice. Editors should therefore understand that it's not a rule that they may lightly ignore and so it's good that we make this clear. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:37, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Oppose change ArbCom does have authority to rule in content; it has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors. And their ruling is authoritative, as opposed to most of the MOS. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:59, 25 February 2024 (UTC)


Notes

  1. ^ See ArbCom decisions in June 2005, November 2005, and 2006

MOS:PUFFERY

It's been claimed that BLPs that have "regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/his generation" are unencyclopedic and appear to be indiscriminately removed[11][12][13] with a request to re-write the words are in quotes with attribution as per MOS:PUFFERY.

None of these BLPs have stated the subject is "the best/greatest" but state they're regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best players of all-time/his generation" which is consistent with what's included in BLPs such as Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt and many others.

MOS:PUFFERY states: "Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information". My understanding is that the use of stating that the subject is regarded/considered as the "best/greatest" citing RS is within the policy and guidance as opposed to claiming the subject IS the "best/greatest". Even in the Bob Dylan article, which is cited as an example, states he is "Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever". RevertBob (talk) 10:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to be pedantic but perhaps it is a trait of encyclopedia editors. Muhammad Ali is not a BLP. He died in 2016. Cullen328 (talk) 09:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, it also has to comply with WP:DUE policy. Some random music journalist saying that Neil Peart was one of the greatest rock drummers of all time is not sufficient; what is sufficient is a large number of high-quality sources on music (not random bloggers) saying something like this, and his presence in top-lists at such publications, so that the clear reliable-source consensus is that he was one of the best. You will run into opposition to such labelling if the DUE test is not well-met, and may still run into it anyway even if it is, because it is categorically better to demonstrate to the reader that someone was a great, by listing their awards and other accomplishments (including top-lists from notable publications), rather than tell the reader that various sources say they were one of the greats, which always raises the question of whether sources have been WP:CHERRYPICKed and thus are not a DUE selection.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
The issue with including top-lists from notable publications is then those also get removed with the claim of being trivial. So to use Neil Peart as a hypothetical example: if DUE was met with independent, reliable sources on the topic of music [i.e. not a blog and high-quality source(s)]. Is it unreasonable for the article to then say:
"Considered one of the greatest rock drummers of all-time,[insert source(s)] Peart earned numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the Modern Drummer Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983 at the age of thirty, making him the youngest person ever so honoured."[insert source(s)] RevertBob (talk) 13:49, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes. Various of our biographical articles are written this way, but the sourcing has to be particularly strong (WP:EXCEPTIONAL). Some editors are apt to disagree with it anyway, for the "show don't tell" reason I gave above. [Yes, that was a Rush lyrics reference; couldn't resist.] This sort of question might really be better asked over at WT:FAC: "Under what sourcing circumstances would the Featured Article reviewers accept a claim like 'considered one of the greatest [occupational speciality here]'?" PS: "top-lists from notable publications ... also get removed with the claim of being trivial" – Well, that's not defensible, since they're obviously not trivial when the awarders are notable and pertinent.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:41, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, did you mean yes it's reasonable/no it's not unreasonable?
Your contributions have certainly been helpful in providing more clarify! FYI, my knowledge of drummers doesn't extend beyond Keith Moon and Ringo Starr. I don't think editors should just be able to subjective disagree and remove content within the policy and guidelines as per WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It would be good for consistency to be applied and for the goalposts to not be keep being moved (that was a footballing pun).
It's certainly not a fringe theory or extraordinary claim for Alan Shearer to be widely regarded as one of the greatest strikers of all-time or for Mohammed Salah to be regarded as one of the best players of his generation or for Raymond Kopa for be considered one of the best footballers of all-time. High-quality sourcing would support that. RevertBob (talk) 09:09, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
I mean "yes, it's reasonable". Though, as noted, others are still likely to object to it, because it is hard to sufficiently source, is not necessary, and another approach of showing instead of telling, if often (usually?) better. "Consistency" will never be applied on something like this, because every bio is different and ultimately the writing at each is determined by consensus on an article by article basis. The exact claim will vary by subject, the sourcing level and quality will, and so will the meaningfulness of the claim (there's a big difference between the claim that Babe Ruth was the greatest 20th-century baseball player (perhaps of all time), and Joe Schmoe being hailed by disc golf magazines and websites as the top player of a sport with few players and little public interest.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

When I reverted some of these edits, my edit summary was "Please re-write this puffery in quotes with attribution, per MOS:PUFFERY". The policy literally says, "without attribution", and the example given shows the puffery in quotation marks. All that RevertBob needed to do was follow the policy. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

The policy is referencing using the phrase as being referred as "is" (a claim of act) rather than "considered" or "regarded" (an opinion) i.e. "I am the greatest bird ever!" Even the Bob Dylan article which is referred in the policy has the following in the lead without attribution: "Generally regarded as one of the greatest songwriters ever". RevertBob (talk) 21:50, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Do you know what "attribution" means? Magnolia677 (talk) 21:56, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
"Generally/widely regarded" is one of those WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims that requires exceptional sourcing. I don't really know if taht standard is met at the Dylan article. Being able to find potentially dubious usage in one article does not make it magically permissible everywhere (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). Ultimately, it really comes down to a consensus on a per-article basis. E.g., at an article like Kopa's, how many sources are making such a claim and what is their quality? If we have two sources of reasonable quality, it's probably better to attribute them directly ("according to"); if we have two of low quality, omit it; if we have 50 and many are high-quality, then maybe it's a "generally regarded". (Obviously don't WP:OVERCITE 50 sources; rather, cite the best ones and list the others in a talk page discussion to convince other editors that "generally regarded" is permissible). And did you do what I suggested? Namely: This sort of question might really be better asked over at WT:FAC: "Under what sourcing circumstances would the Featured Article reviewers accept a claim like 'considered one of the greatest [occupational speciality here]'?"?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
I have no beef with "the greatest", or "best kicker in the history of soccer", or "most epic player ever". My request is that it be attributed and in quotation marks; it cannot be in Wikipedia's voice. That is the essence of this policy. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
The thing is, we summarise what sources say. If we have a lot of citations that specifically say that this person is "the best" or "one of the best", then the prose should use these sources, maybe specifically quote them, or just comment on them, but our lede should summarise that information, which quite often ends with that phrasing. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:16, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
SMcCandlish I didn't do what you suggested as the point of contention isn't over whether these can be included or not but a consistent approach of how the content should be added. The issue is, what is the the problem with something being "regarded" or "considered" as something in Wikipedia's voice according to the policy, Magnolia677? It's an objective statement of sources rather than the subjective term of referring to something as "the best/greatest" without the words "regarded" or "considered" preceding it. I'm not trying to make an OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument here but it doesn't seem to have been raised as an issue by other editors on dozens or hundreds of other articles within sport, film, music or other topics (e.g. Messi, Brando, Dylan and many others) where this format is currently used which would appear to suggest a community consensus that it's acceptable. As Lee Vilenski has said it's a summary/paraphrasing of the information in the source. If it's a list then the subject is regarded/considered "one of the greatest..." Adding a quote would suggest that's what's quoted in the source which it isn't.
If you look at Raymond Kopa as an example [14]. I amended "Often considered one of the best players of his generation" (which didn't appear to be sourced) to "Considered one of the best players of all-time" and added the following citations:[15][16][17][18] from Bleacher Report, Sports Illustrated, FourFourTwo and Give Me Sport. RevertBob (talk)
An alternate approach would be to find one very reliable source, and say, -> Sports Illustrated has called him "the greatest player of 1990". Magnolia677 (talk) 20:16, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
That's also a valid approach. There are multiple ways to come at this sort of thing (and I'm not the one who needs convincinging, RevertBob). My personal take is that there is a general and loose consensus that something like "considered one of the greatest" is permissible, but only with a number of high-quality sources, but that despite this general it's-okay feeling, there is no rule requiring it, and various editors aren't comfortable with it, so it's going to come down to a per-article editorial consensus. That is apt to be a butt-pain sometimes, but I'm not sure there's really a way around it. PS: RevertBob, please don't insert blank lines between your reply and what you're replying to (MOS:LISTGAPS).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:32, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
He was 25th in Bleachers Report, 22nd in SI, 34th in FourFourTwo and 22nd in Give Me Sport - you could make the argument that it'd be cherrypicking to select one. However, even if one was selected then it'd get removed as trivial which to be fair using the policy can be argued as being used to "promote the subject of an article" whereas simply stating he's "regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time" is "imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information". RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I am curious whether some of those talking about “attribution” mean to say WP:INTEXT attribution. Reasonable claims (eg, at Tiger Woods: Woods is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time and is one of the most famous athletes in modern history) don’t need more attribution than a one or two strong citations, especially in the lead (which is where I think we’re all really talking about). My main concerns for this type of writing are that a) we don’t say such things in Wikipedia’s voice, and b) we source them clearly. Including explicit quotes is arguably better, but full quotes and in-text attribution can really weigh down the writing, and I really wouldn’t want to push aside multiple strong sources just to provide in-text attribution from one of them, Magnolia677. MOS:PUFFERY should not be an anchor holding us back from describing some of our most important biographical subjects clearly with strong, decisive prose. Of course these kinds of “puffy” statements should be given this leniency only where their claim is largely uncontroversial (NB, not where the statement has been subject to controversy based on hard-line anti-puffery patrollers).

Consider also the counterpoint at Adolf Hitler, whose lead includes: The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil"., a statement sensibly attributed to a leading Hitler historian, whose inclusion in the lead is not likely to be an erroneous distraction for the reader. But in that context, I actually suggest going further, and noting Kershaw’s place in the field would better inform the reader. — HTGS (talk) 03:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Both myself and User:FMSky reverted this editor after "the greatest" was added to dozens of articles. Magnolia677 (talk) 12:58, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
On a lot of those articles it already had that information and I simply added a supporting source - whether this was correct or not, my intention was to improve those articles and I wasn't intending to be disruptive. After reading into it a bit more, I've tried to be more selective about which articles to add it but it seems Magnolia677 is removing this content from every article that has it stating that it needs to be attributed which doesn't seem to be the case on any other articles. Anyway, to use a football term, I'd like to play the ball, not the player so if we could stay on the topic of discussing the policy and possibly reach a consensus rather than passing judgement of editing history. I've also had the courtesy of not canvassing other editors who may agree with my position. RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree with @HTGS. Sometimes a fact feels exceedingly positive, but is still basically just a fact. When it's true that any particular superlative is commonly used to describe a given subject, then we should just say that and get on with the rest of the article. It does not make sense, and it is not encyclopedic, to write "Elvis Presley was called 'the greatest performer' by Alice, Bob, Chris, Dave, Eve, Frank, and many others.[1][2][3][4][5][6]" Just say he has been called the greatest and move on. If it's DUE, it should be in the article, and you should no more try to downplay that as "only the opinion" of a list of individually named experts than you should write that climate change is believed to be real by a list of individually named experts. INTEXT attribution is for content that can be accurately presented as being the view of only a handful of people. A statement like Sports Illustrated called him "the greatest player of 1990" is appropriate when that is an unusual comment. It is not appropriate if we could name a dozen periodicals and a hundred individuals that said the same thing, or when it's not just 1990, but also a statement that was true over the course of multiple years.
These disputes generally involve content that some editor consider to be subjective or opinion-based, by which they really mean "not actually true". Thus, we see editors who are squeamish about saying "has been called the best runner" but who are perfectly comfortable saying "is the fastest sprinter" (even though "best" and "fastest" are basically the same thing for sprinters). I think this is partly because of some editors' personal biases/ways of looking at the world, but also because we have done a poor job of communicating the need for articles to assert facts about opinions. It is a fact that certain individuals/artworks/whatever are considered the best/greatest/most important by a number of relevant experts that is too large for INTEXT attribution to be appropriate. In such cases (which should not happen in millions of articles, but which should probably happen in thousands of them), we really should use Wikipedia:A simple formulation and simply say that it's true that reliable sources say that a lot about this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
This is my point WhatamIdoing, just writing someone is "considered/regarded as one of the greatest" is a lot simpler "imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information" than complicating it with an incomplete list of Tom, Dick, Harry or others have ranked him in such a position of all-time which could be argued as to "promote the subject of an article". RevertBob (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Regarding this discussion, are we seriously going to compare Roy Kean and Eden Hazard—who I have never heard of until my encounter with this editor—with (look above) Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt, Bob Dylan, and Adolf Hitler? Seriously? Magnolia677 (talk) 21:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
No we're not: Roy Keane and Eden Hazard (if you've watched top-flight English or Spanish football then you'd know who he is) are "regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation" where Messi and Maradona are "widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time". There's a big difference. RevertBob (talk) 22:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
@RevertBob: Please tell me the exact years of Roy Keane's "generation". How about Eden Hazard's "generation"? Magnolia677 (talk) 23:05, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Generations don't come in "exact years". Neither do ages, eons, epochs, eras, or periods. Don't mistake fuzziness for wrongness. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. Imprecision, in things that are by their nature imprecise, is not an error.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:59, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
I certainly appreciate where you’re coming from Magnolia, but I feel that those questions are easily addressable in a way that still informs the reader of a subject’s standing in their field. It’s not really a standard usable in practical ways, but I use the rule of thumb that we don’t paraphrase to anything that would be disagreeable to the average informed reader. If challenged, it should not be hard to convert phrasing to be more specific. Many average readers may be unaware of Tom Bingham, but readers who do know of him would rarely disagree with the statement: On his death in 2010, he was described as the greatest judge of his generation.
Maybe a similar attitude to phrasing would be helpful in those articles? I do think each article will always present its own challenge, and it is better to be specific where it gives the reader more context.
Eg: I like that Hazard’s lead reads: Known for his creativity, dribbling, passing and vision, he is regarded as one of the best players of his generation, but I don’t see “vision” in either source and creativity seems less important to the sources than attack (goal.com: Hazard is widely regarded as one of the best attacking players of his generation) or dribbling (ibid: … is, without any qualms, one of the best dribblers of this generation.), so I would cut those without sourcing. If pressed, the claim of “one of best players of his gen” seems less well-supported than “one of best dribblers of his gen”. It’s also not hard to find similar sources that support the claim (eg, [19]). — HTGS (talk) 00:56, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
The fact that you are not the biggest football fan is not the article's problem. Not every person's who's widely considered great is going to be immediately recognizable to you. AryKun (talk) 15:55, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
And here I was sure it was about a basketballer because I saw "dribbler". :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:00, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

One other distinction. Those types of phrases like "Mike is considered to be one of the best dart players of all time" imply that they are widely considered to have such a quality. And if true, such is information about what the relevant public thinks rather than puffery. Not just that somebody found a few people/sources that said it. So if 3 truly reliable sources say "Mike is one of the best dart players of all time" that does not support it, it just says that three people think that way and anything more than that would be synthesis. If they all say "Mike is considered to be one of the best dart players of all time" IMO that does support it because they are reporting on what the relevant public thinks. North8000 (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I could find a reliable source to say just about anything...that is why we have that gatekeeper WP:VNOT. Why don't we just stick to the facts and let readers decide who is the greatest? Magnolia677 (talk) 22:34, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Because sometimes the relevant fact is that the subject is generally considered the greatest at something. I couldn't tell you who was considered the greatest (e.g.,) Mexican politician, and even if you listed all of his accomplishments, I would still not be in a position to decide for myself whether he was generally considered the greatest. I could only decide whether his accomplishments seem impressive to me. Both public reception and expert reactions are facts. They happen to be facts about opinions, but they are still facts, and they should be reported like any other fact. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If somebody is generally considered X, it should be possible to find high-quality sources that explicitly say that they are generally considered X. TompaDompa (talk) 21:47, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, and that's generally done. The problem is that even if you provide a stack of impressive scholarly works, all of which contain the exact sentence "He is widely considered the greatest ____ of all time", you have editors who personally hate this fact and want it removed from the article. It just subjectively feels wrong to them, no matter how well-supported or obviously justified anyone else thinks it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:47, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
Indeed. Good evidence of this is that Neil Peart makes no mention of the fact that he's widely considered one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, despite that consideration in sources that matter for such an assessment being an easily established fact. I'm pretty certain that the article used to have such a statement, so someone's gone on the warpath to remove it, and make our article poorer, in suggesting that Peart is just one of a zillion random notable rock drummers instead of the overwhelmingly influential and respected figure he remains, even posthumously, in his field. That omission has made me care more about this question when I did not much care ("let it just be decided on a case-by-case basis") when the matter was opened. The closest the Peart articles gets to any of this is body-buried statement that "USA Today's writers compared him favorably with other top-shelf rock drummers. He was 'considered one of the best rock drummers of all time, alongside' [various other names dropped here]." But this is silly, since USA Today is not a reliable source on such matters, and much better sources consistently evaluate Peart as one of the greatest in his genre. (The USA Today bit might be retainable as part of a much longer string of such accolades, but it doesn't make much sense on its own.) I'm at a loss for how this article ended up in the state it's in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
There's a wrinkle, too, which someone at WT:V brought up (someone who says in effect that they're not interested in getting involved in a WT:MOS discussion directly) that there's a difference between WP on the one hand summarizing often emphatic sources then saying in WP's own voice that "X was one of the greatest foo of period", versus on the other hand saying "X is widely considered one of the greatest foo of period" based on the same source material. Most editors seem to prefer the hedging of the second formulation, but that editor suggested that this is WP:OR if sources do not use wording that literally is or paraphasally amounts to "widely considered". This was a new one on me. That is, some editors might actually prefer the first and more emphatic but also more challengable and "surprising" statement as technically better-verifiable with sources that just declare the subject "one of the greatest foo" instead of themselves using hedging language. I don't think I agree with this take, but it is worth mentioning. For my part, I think it's entirely reasonable as part of a WP:DUE analysis for WP editors to come to a conclusion to use something like "widely considered" based on the preponderance of the available high-quality RS (i.e. based on wide consideration), and to avoid declaring "was one of the greatest" as an unquestionable fact rather than as a widely considered opinion found in the source material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
On that point, I think that the "widely considered" style should also be accepted in connection with smaller versions of such a claim: someone or something could easily "considered the greatest" by a particular group of people, even if that view is not generally held outside the group. A person could be the greatest influence in a particular art movement, or among a small ethnic group, without being known at all outside the group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
PUFFERY is relative rather than absolute, no term will always or never be puffery. Anything that focused on the words outside of their specific and unique context is misguided. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 06:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
This is not just a biographical matter, and much of what we're discussing here also pertains to claims such as "critically acclaimed" for films, TV shows, albums, etc. (most especially super-superlative claims like "universally critically acclaimed"). There's been a lot of scattered discussion about this, some of these threads being listed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Film#Number of citations used at Oppenheimer for critically acclaimed, plus some further talk at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#Superlatives.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:16, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC on the use of regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/generation

MOS:PUFFERY states: "Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information".

Request for comment on if "regarded/considered as one of the greatest/best X of all-time/his generation" can be used in Wikipedia's voice without attribution providing there's appropriate supporting reliable sources. RevertBob (talk) 22:25, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Because the WP:FRS is broken right now, lots of people who would have seen this already have not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Generally yes, as long as the sourcing is several and high-quality (and the citations need not be in the lead if already in the body for the same/similar claim). That it, it needs to be attributed in the sense of cited inline in the article to multiple highly reliable sources on the questions, but need not be attributed in the lead more directly with something like "According to Rolling Stone, Spin, the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and Billboard ...". In the article body, it would be more appropriate to attribute direct quotations, to "show rather than tell". I noted above in previous discussion that someone or other (I think at WT:NOR) raised a distinction between us saying "X was one of the greatest ..." and X is widely regarded as one of the greatest ...", and actually agued to prefer the former unless sources actually used the wording "widely regarded". But I think that's backward; "widely regarded" is a WP:DUE assessment of the source material, made by us editorially, while just claiming "X was one of the greatest ..." in WP's own voice would be asserting a subjective evaluation (albeit a common and reliably sourceable one) as if an objective fact, and that will not do. WP already uses phrasing like "widely regarded", "generally agreed among scientists", "there is a scientified consensus that", and so on when it comes to WP:FRINGE claims, so there is no magical reason that the same would not apply to assessments of this other sort.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • It can be used is the optimal word. In the body of an article, it should state this, and then give prose examples of the places when it was noted with sources. In the lede, there should be a part of the article that states this with the sourcing. The biggest issue we face (when sourced), is "Mo Salah is regarded as the best frisbee player of all time" and then unattributed sources. We need to prefix such a statement with prose examples of exactly what people say. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes, Wikipedia articles can and should assert facts, including facts about opinions (both the "public opinion" and the "expert opinion" type). Yes, Wikipedia articles can and should use WP:INTEXT attribution correctly, which means using it when reporting an unusual or speaker-specific opinion ("Oliver Odd and Ulte Unusual said...") or when contrasting views ("The economists think this, but the philosophers think something else") but not using in-text attribution when reporting a widely held opinion (e.g., "According to every single person in the world, Paul Popular was very popular"). I add in particular that the lead might need a relatively vague and imprecise statement (e.g., "widely considered one of the greatest players") as an accurate summary of the body of the article. If the body of the article has multiple sentences reporting that various people/sources gush about how great the player is, then the lead might have a simple, high-level summary that has neither Wikipedia:Attribution (of the [1] type) nor Wikipedia:Intext attribution (of the "according to Alice and Bob and Carol and David" type). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Literally as you’ve written it, no, because the statement you have provided is a comparative judgement (i.e. not merely that the article subject is good, or excellent, but that is better than all or most of its contemporary comparators), and that can only be established by direct, authoritative, citation from a reliable source in order not to be editor OR or SYNTH. If there are reliable sources to support the statement, then attribution is both possible and desirable. MapReader (talk) 18:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Preferably, I'd rather have those phrases/statements be used (in Wiki-voice without attribution) only for the most obvious cases (using the examples from the discussion above: Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt, etc). I oppose the usage of "in/of [his/her/their] generation" (in wiki-voice without attribution), because the statement is vague and has an appearance of WP:RECENCY bias. Some1 (talk) 20:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes, but multiple sources (like, 3+) should be needed. If it has coverage in multiple sources, then it is likely due. However, such a claim should have multiple good sources per WP:EXTRAORDINARY. "Regarded/considered," of course, since it's a statement of opinion. (As opposed to flat-out "is the best x of their y") 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 01:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes: it should be used when the claim is made so often that it would be inadequate to attribute it in prose. For instance, I imagine you could find well over 100 high-quality sources that describe Usain Bolt as one of the best sprinters (or athletes or sportspeople) of all time. It would then be undue to pick out one such source and say "sports commentator Joe Bloggs said in 2013 that Bolt was 'the best sprinter the world has ever seen'". Instead, Usain Bolt currently leads: "[Bolt is] widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time". Terms that are usually puffery are not always so, and we still take care not to say in Wikipedia's voice "Bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time". — Bilorv (talk) 23:43, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Question Does can be used in Wikipedia's voice without attribution refer to WP:INTEXT attribution (e.g. "Mr. Smith stated...") or supplying a citation to a reliable source? For citations, the WP:V policy says:

    ...any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supportsthe material. Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed.

    As for use of "regarded/considered", the more relevant guideline is MOS:WEASEL:

    Words to watch: some people say, many scholars state, it is believed/regarded/considered...The examples above are not automatically weasel words. They may also be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentence of a paragraph, and the article body or the rest of the paragraph can supply attribution. Likewise, views that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions, if those expressions accurately represent the opinions of the source.

    WP:INTEXT attribution is not always suitable:

    Neutrality issues apart, there are other ways in-text attribution can mislead. The sentence below suggests The New York Times has alone made this important discovery: According to The New York Times, the sun will set in the west this evening.

    —Bagumba (talk) 08:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Already allowed. The MOS says that it is just a guideline and should not be applied rigidly. I don't see the need to add yet another disclaimer. Words to watch are not banned words, and editors can use common sense to decide if something is puffery or just an acknowledgement of someone's reputation (like Shakespeare). HansVonStuttgart (talk) 09:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes – note a vote! but placing the argument that the use of stating that the subject is regarded/considered as the "best/greatest" citing RS is within the policy and guidance as opposed to claiming the subject IS the "best/greatest". RevertBob (talk) 22:27, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Plurals

I think MOS:PLURALS should be updated to better reflect North American usage. I'm American, and I've been noticing things like "As it toured Europe for the first time..." at Nirvana and "Because of conflicts with its record label..." at Metallica, uses that sound completely wrong. We need to add something about how it's "Nirvana is" but "they are" here. Esszet (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

The section already says, regarding collective nouns, "In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular". What would you propose adding? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Something like "When referring to the members of the group, however, they is generally preferred over it; thus "I spoke to the committee and they told me..." Esszet (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
But that would appear to conflict with recommended American usage? Whereas in British English, usage is more relaxed and it is common to hear both singular and plural used in both formal and informal contexts (indeed, the example given in the MoS, that it is always “England are playing…” isn’t correct as a search on “England is playing” among British media sites will quickly confirm. I was taught that singular is preferred when the group is acting in unison - so “the team is playing well today” or “the team has just scored”, but plural when the group is in conflict or at variance - so “the team are at each other’s throats” or “the team are all over the place tonight”. Which is related to what you are suggesting - group as a unit is singular, but group as a collection of individuals is plural. But that’s British usage, not American, and I’m not convinced that this guideline is widely observed nowadays, anyway. MapReader (talk) 17:48, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, when you use the noun itself, it's almost always the singular (we would say "a number of them are...", however), but when you use pronouns, they is generally preferred. It may not be completely logical, but then again, neither is "the team are". As a North American, I'm telling you, saying "it told me" in reference to "the committee" is completely wrong, we apparently need to update the MOS to reflect that. Esszet (talk) 17:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm a North American, too, and do not agree with you; it depends strongly on the context and the implication. Any time someone comes here with an "X is completely wrong" attitude, most especially with a nationalistic bent to it, we have little choice but to take this as purely subjective linguistic prescription, which is basically a crank position. The worst period of disruption MoS has ever been through was caused by someone with this "only what I like is possibly ever correct in American English" attitude, and we not need a repeat of that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Did you notice that I said "generally preferred" and not "mandatory" or even much more common"? The "completely wrong" referred to that specific example (and you appear to agree, you said we should say "the band said they were tired..."), and I'm not a nationalistic crank by any means (just look at Trump), you misunderstood my argument and jumped to a completely unwarranted conclusion. I've heard about MOS wars, and you appear to be quite battle-weary, maybe you take a break for a while. Esszet (talk) 02:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Esszet, how arrogant do you want to be – you really think it's going to help your case? 4TheWynne (talk • contribs) 03:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Let's quote you (Esszet) directly: As a North American, I'm telling you, saying "it told me" in reference to "the committee" is completely wrong, we apparently need to update the MOS to reflect that. I'm also North American I do not agree with this. It's an argument to (personal) authority as an arbiter of what is "correct" versus "wrong" in North American English, and it's a bogus argument along prescriptivist lines with regard to American and North American English (the latter often cannot be generalized about anyway, as Canadian usage is palpably shifting on many matters back toward British due to the influences of a variety of national style guides and dictionaries and other works over the last two generations or so). If you were at a committee meeting and the individual committee members (even unanimously) told you X, then they told you X; you were told something by persons. If the committee as a body sent you a letter that collectively informed you of X, then it told you X; you were told by a body. This is normal usage within the US and more broadly. Where this differs regionally is in average handling of less clear-cut cases. AmEng tends toward "it" in reference to bands and companies and boards and such, while BrEng leans toward "they", but usage of both depending on the context is easily findable regardless of country of publication. Some examples from the top of relevant search results:
  • Here's BBC News referring to the EU [20], the UK Parliament and a UK political party [21], a company [22], a fraternal organization [23][24], a local government commission [25][26], an awards jury [27], a some bands [28][29][30] all as "it". The first and third band examples also use "they", depending on context.
  • Here's the same UK source again, now referring to the EU [31], the EC [32], the UK House of Commons [33], the UK Supreme Court [34], a UK government agency [35], a UK government commission [36], a company [37][38], a legal jury [39], a band [40] all as "they". (The House of Commons case is rare, same with House of Lords, because "the House of" calls for a singular.)
  • Moving on, let's pick USA Today, here referring to the US Supreme Court [41], a federal appellate court [42], a Congressional committee [43], a "team" of regulators [44], a state government department [45], a law-enforcement agency [46], a whole city government [47], a city board of commissioners [48][49], a company [50][51], a band [52][53], all as "they". (The Senate and the House of Representatives are rarely given "they" for the same reason as the House of Commons.)
  • Here's the same US paper referring to the US Senate [54], a congressional committee [55], a federal agency [56], the US Supreme Court [57], a state government department [58], a law-enforcement agency [59], an entire city government [60], a city council/board [61][62], a company [63][64], a band [65][66] and many more, all as "it".
The band ones veer back and forth between "they" and "it" in both UK and US articles, depending on context, and this also tends to be the case with companies and other bodies. Any claim that either approach "is completely wrong" in either dialect for any of these things is firmly disprovable with a few minutes on Google News.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Is this really an issue with plural usage or rather using persoanl vs. impersonal pronouns in collective reference to groups of people? older ≠ wiser 18:04, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
You could look at it that way, yeah. Esszet (talk) 18:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
This stems from a discussion at the Metallica talk page (Talk:Metallica#It/They). I, for one, agree that changing to "they", their", etc. would conflict with recommended American usage and just appear inconsistent, especially if we were still going to use "Metallica is...". As an example, "Metallica recorded its second studio album, Ride the Lightning..." is perfectly acceptable, where "James Hetfield performing with the band during their tour for Load in 1996" is not based on current sourced differences in grammar from British English. Esszet used "We went on tour with it..." in their argument, but I feel like that's a poor example, as we would simply change to "the band" or its actual name to make the phrase sound better and maintain consistency rather than use "them"; even above, Esszet has said "When referring to the members of the group, however...", even though we're talking about the group as a whole here. I feel like we need to have several strong sources presented that clearly shows wide usage of "they", their", etc. – not including for proper nouns that are plural in form – if we are to make this pretty significant change to MOS and this article rather than just the word of one person, however strongly they might feel about it. 4TheWynne (talk • contribs) 04:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
This is a quite minor change, and he's Australian, if any North Americans have issues, please, let us know. Esszet (talk) 05:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
And by the way, @4TheWynne:, this is from Metallica's official website, in big bold letters: "Metallica traveled to New York in a stoled U-Haul to record their first album". Esszet (talk) 18:06, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
See here for a source. Esszet (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
We do not need a change on this. MoS is correct about the general dialectal preference, but this does not somehow erase the contextual distinction between a band or any group doing something as a unit and doing something as individuals who happen to be in the group, and shades in between. Use common sense. When a band, for example, is talking about their experiences on the road, these are human experiences, and a plural makes sense. When it/they have issued a joint statement, it's perfectly fine treat them as a singular unit. There is nothing at all broken about "Metallica recorded its second studio album ....". There's no cause of any kind to change "James Hetfield performing with the band during its tour for Load in 1996" to use "their". It would be perfectly reasonable, however, to write "The 2024 tour plans were postponed because the band said they were exhausted and needed to spend more time with their families." (Individuals get exhausted and have families, collective entities do not.) PS: WP doesn't care what style guide (if any) a band's webmaster is following when writing on their own blog; they are not following our style guide and we are not following theirs. If we changed any of the MoS wording at all on this, it should maybe be to soften "In North American English, these words are almost invariably treated as singular" to say something more like "are usually treated".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
How do you know if they were using a style guide at all? Maybe they were just speaking naturally? Esszet (talk) 02:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Wouldn't matter, then, since WP is written in semi-formal English, not "how I talk on the bus" English. PS: In doing the above source review, one thing that lept out at me was that the frequent material quoting various spokespeople from either direct speech or written material in their own words, showed no consistency of any kind; bodies like Supreme Courts and Houses of [X] that in formal writing usually take "it/its" where frequently given a "they/them/their" (especially when disapproving of something, probably a personal blame implication), while bodies like boards and committees and councils that seem more often in professional writing to take the plural form were frequently given the singular, probably as a "faceless officialdom" implication.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC: It/They in North American English

To speakers of North American English: this may sound stupid, but for all of our British, Aussie, and Kiwi friends out there, which of the following sounds more natural?

a) I spoke to the committee and they told me...
b) I spoke to the committee and it told me...

Esszet (talk) 00:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

  • They Esszet (talk) 00:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Completely depends on the context and implication as discussed above. This question is also disingenuous, because the nominator is trying to change a particular band article, nothing about a committee, and different sentences in that article are and should be worded differently, due to whether the material is about the band collectively or about bandmembers as people. Furthermore, it is not proper to open an RfC in mid-discussion (especially not about a trivial matter on which you are not getting agreement from anyone). This should be closed as premature at best. RfCs consume community editorial time and energy, and need to happen after regular discussion has failed to come to a clear answer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Excuse me, but I was trying to word the question as simply as possible. The underlying grammatical structure is identical, and I was not trying to mislead anyone. I started an RfC because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I read WP:PROPOSAL without reading Wikipedia:How to contribute to Wikipedia guidance, and I apologize for that. I guess close it, and we'll continue waiting. Esszet (talk) 01:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
The proposal process is for introducing new draft policies and guidelines (and usually done at WP:VPPRO and "advertised" at WP:VPPOL or vice versa). RfC is usually used for making minor changes to extant policies and guidelines, but not right in the middle of an ongoing discussion. It's for when discussion has failed to come to a clear conclusion and needs to do so (or has come to a conclusion that the community needs to affirmatively do something with, like decide whether to make it part of a policy.) You've been here 11+ years; surely you know by now that RfCs are time-consuming and not triggered for every minor argument. And RfCs are for making internal decisions, not for doing WP:OR on what dialectal norms are; that's a matter for source research, if we needed an answer to this question, which we don't, since we've already known for a long time that one dialect group leans one way, and the other the opposite way, with both contextually flexible on it. PS: The RfC is sorely confusing anyway, since it purports to ask about NAmEng usage, but then specifically solicits the input of everyone but NAmEng users (British, Aussie, and Kiwi); we have no reason to care what non-NAm people think is more natural in a dialect that isn't theirs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Jesus Christ. This is my first (and last) time doing anything with the MOS, I assumed it was necessary because the MOS is held to a higher standard, bit you know what? Do whatever the fuck you guys want. There's no point wasting my time in a dark corner of the internet like this. Esszet (talk) 00:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
What's with the angry victim posture? You openened an RfC (about trivia) in mid-discussion and it's been suggested that was inappropriate, and shown what appropriate RfC uses are. The RfC asked us to answer a question that's not pertinent to our purposes here and asked the wrong audience for the question anyway. You wondered about WP:PROPOSAL process, and have been informed what it's for and where it usually happens. What exactly is the problem? If you do something other editors find confusing or unhelpful, they'll say so. That doesn't mean you're being put-upon or mistreated. And what "higher standard" (of what) do you think is not being applied here?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:40, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Meh, I feel sorry for you (and everyone else here) at this point. Good luck. Esszet (talk) 01:09, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Close as premature per above. 4TheWynne (talk • contribs) 03:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Also, don't start an Rfc under a sub-heading! Johnbod (talk) 05:47, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
    Why not? That seems pretty common, actually.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
    I would say that starting under a subheading should be the normal practice. It demonstrates that there has been prior discussion, as required by RFCBEFORE; it links the two together so that the first may easily be referred to from the sacond (as in as I noted earlier in this discussion) and also in a manner that means that one won't be archived independently of the other; and avoids accusations of WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah, though sometimes done separately, especially if an earlier dicussion has wound down and is long, and/or way up near the page top with lots of intervening threads. Just seems like something we don't need a rule about. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:37, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
  • It As we are talking here about one band or one committee. The Banner talk 20:29, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Pointless Rfc. I'm interested in the general topic, but I won't up- or down-vote this, because after 30+ days and a cast of thousands weighing in, what do we have? We have a consensus on how to treat the word committee wrt sg/pl agreement. So, the next word in the dictionary after committee that is a collective noun that might have an issue with this type of AE/BE distinction is council, as in : "The council [have / has] decided to implement new policies." I'm going to take a nap, now. Somebody please ping me when this is over, so I can start an Rfc about council. Or, maybe "Cream" (the band) is a better example, and it comes soon after council, and maybe they are handled differently. Oops: maybe it is handled differently? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I set out my understanding of the ‘correct’ position on British English above. But taking your question as written, asking what sounds more “natural” to an (one) experienced user of written English, “they told me” sounds more natural, and would be the form chosen most often at least in spoken English, and probably not uncommonly in writing. But had you replaced “…told me” with “…decided”, I would answer “it decided” sounds more natural for written English, and probably spoken English as well, at least in a formal context. And as someone who’s been a councillor for many years, it’s wording I have used and heard very frequently. As to why there’s a difference, I can only surmise that being ‘told’ something by a committee conjures up an image of a group of people whereas something being decided makes one think of a decision making body. MapReader (talk) 04:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

RFC: Imperial/U.S. customary units in astronomy object infobox

An RFC has been created at the WikiProject Astronomy talk page titled "RFC: Imperial/U.S. customary units in astronomy object infobox". Jc3s5h (talk) 16:35, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

MOS:COLLAPSE

Does MOS:COLLAPSE support the collapsed infoboxes as used at, for example, Montacute House and Little Moreton Hall? I don't believe it does, but at Talk:Montacute House, @Nikkimaria has argued the reverse, so wider input would be helpful. A.D.Hope (talk) 10:28, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

My position is that the MOS doesn't support automatically collapsed infoboxes except under specific circumstances; the general position is "Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading".
The fifth paragraph of the section gives one exemption for infoboxes, stating that "A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details." I don't believe this provision applies to the examples above, both of which use use template:infobox historic building. The same template is used with all relevant parameters un-collapsed in several 'good' and 'featured' articles (e.g. Cragside and Ham House), so it's difficult to argue that they're considered "infrequently accessed". A.D.Hope (talk) 10:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it does. This is a compromise, agreed locally, for information that otherwise should not be in the infobox at all - heritage listing registration dates and such, spread over many lines. Unfortunately, like the unbelievably useless UNESCO world heritage site template (ok its not as bad as that), the template:infobox historic building has been overrun by editors who think Wikipedia is a database rather than an encyclopaedia. Johnbod (talk) 12:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm not unsympathetic to your position, Johnbod, but I don't think the consensus is with you on heritage listings. Template:infobox historic site is used in many 'good' and 'featured' articles, and besides the two mentioned above I don't think any collapse those parameters, which implies a consensus against doing so. Nevertheless, a proper discussion of the issue at template talk:infobox historic site would be worthwhile and help settle the issue one way or the other. For what it's worth, I'm not sure if I agree on removing all the listing information, but I do think it should be condensed from a box to a single line.
It's also worth noting that the heritage listing is not the only collapsed parameter in these cases – the type, location, co-ordinates, building date, builder, architectural style, and owner parameters are also collapsed. A.D.Hope (talk) 13:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
On the point of examples, it's worth considering others such as Belton House, Bramshill House and Buckingham Palace. All are FA, none have infoboxes. You could equally well write one with a collapsed infobox, indeed I could collapse the one at Cragside. The point is that the presence, absence, or collapsed or un-collapsed state, of the infobox is wholly secondary to whether or not the article is well-written, comprehensive, well-researched, neutral, stable and compliant with Wikipedia's copyright policy. The secondary issue of whether, or how, an infobox should be used is better left to an article's main contributors. Trying to impose a "standard" approach through MoS will, in my view, alienate editors and work to the detriment of readers. KJP1 (talk) 21:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd generally take the view that, where an optional feature is included in an article, it should follow MOS. A given article might work with or without a table, for example, but if a table is included it shouldn't be bright red so as to comply with MOS:COLOUR. In a similar way, the MOS has rules about collapsing which apply to infoboxes. A.D.Hope (talk) 21:24, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Yep. Collapsing content has accessibility and usability issues; it's why we don't do it to the content per se, just to crap that's not really necessary like navboxes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:58, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
What's your general stance toward infoboxes, if you don't mind me asking? A.D.Hope (talk) 15:27, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Now that I am trying to mediate the infobox issue at Montacute House, I will add my opinion on collapsing of infoboxes in general. It is my opinion that collapsing an infobox as a compromise between having an infobox and not having an infobox is a compromise that leaves everyone equally unhappy. It is therefore anti-utilitarian because it results in more dissatisfaction than choosing one way or the other. So my question is whether we should add a statement that the use of a collapsed infobox as a compromise between having an infobox and not having an infobox is discouraged. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:47, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Robert - just as a thought - if the compromise leaves 100% of editors 50% happy, is this actually a worse outcome than leaving 50% of editors 100% happy, and 50% of editors 100% unhappy? KJP1 (talk) 08:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Oh, we're having THREE discussions on the same issue now? I've lost track of where the 2nd one is. Johnbod (talk) 19:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

A worsening MOS:DASH issue (causing mounting WP:CONSISTENT problems)

At some point (I don't have the patience to history-dig for it), we lost the line-item in MOS:DASH that said something along the lines of using an en dash between the name parts of merged jurisdictions and other compound/merged/commingled/spanning/encompassing entities and things (other than, mostly, corporations, the post-merger/acquisition names of which take rather random forms like "DaimerChrysler" and "KPMG Peat Marwick" and so on). This principle was consistently used numerous times for establishing various article names, such as

What brought this to my notice was an RM at Talk:Carson–Newman University to convert the en dash to a hyphen, in a case where this is a merged entity of institutions individually named Carson and Newman, not a case of a unitary insititution having been named after two people.

Ever since the MOS:DASH wording changed along the way somewhere, various cases that called for, or at least originally called for, en dash are now at hyphens. Some examples include:

Locus of the problem: The remaining MoS wording that seems applicable is only this: Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. ... Wilkes-Barre, a single city named after two people, but Minneapolis–Saint Paul, an area encompassing two cities.

The latter point of this seems to still vaguely suggest using, e.g., Gilgit–Baltistan, Moravian–Silesian Region, Carson–Newman University, etc., but it is too unclear to reliably result in this at RM. People just see "Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities", without regard for the intent (or at least former intent) for the products of merging to be en-dash treated. The seizing upon this first part is so firm for some editors that the second just gets ignored, and we end up with titles like Mount Carmel-Mitchells Brook-St. Catherines and Long Harbour-Mount Arlington Heights and Grand Falls-Windsor which are akin to Minneapolis–Saint Paul (combined name for a fused area encompassing multiple individually named places) not to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (always one place, that happens to be named after two people).

Even the "Generally" in that wording now no longer makes sense, because the case in which it didn't apply is now so obscured as to be almost missing.

So, we have something of a WP:CONSISTENT policy crisis that has developed over the last few years, with various articles on subjects of this merged/commingled/spanning nature being at en-dash titles and various of them at hyphen titles, and people willy-nilly RMing them at cross purposes to each other, with different moves concluding for conflicting results (plus sometimes just some manual moves, and sometimes pages simply having been at one or the other format the entire time without being moved). A prominent recent example is AFL–CIO being stable at that title for years, on the basis of the merged-entities reasoning, then suddenly moved to AFL-CIO on the preferences of a total of three editors.

We really need to settle one way or the other on this, and record it clearly in MOS:DASH.

PS: There are also a handful of outright errors, like:

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:41, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Fully agree. As I said the other day at Talk:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, all of these articles should immediately be moved back per the MoS. As a style matter, these really don't have anything to do with COMMONNAME. Perhaps a mass RM? InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Regarding names of major universities (for example), why wouldn't we give deference to the formatting on their own letterhead (whether hyphen or en, spaced out or not, depending on font), just as we give deference to random corporate branding like "DaimlerChrysler"? SamuelRiv (talk) 06:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Because the MoS specifically recommends this style. As I noted at the Carson–Newman RM, the only reason most websites avoid using en dashes in their style guides is that it's not on a standard keyboard. But Wikipedia has its own style guide, which doesn't defer to external style guides used by other publications. See also MOS:CONFORM; we always normalize dashes, apostrophes, quotation marks, all caps, etc. InfiniteNexus (talk) 06:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
That seems like a massive assumption that they "only" use a hyphen because it's not on the standard keyboard. Additionally, some of these universities are two names, which MOS:DASH suggests we should stylize with a hyphen. I fail to see why we should rely on an assumption towards en dashes when all reliable source indicate the commonname and desired name uses a hyphen. glman (talk) 14:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
@Glman have you got endash and hyphen the wrong way round here? YorkshireExpat (talk) 16:53, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
No, sorry, you're right. YorkshireExpat (talk) 17:54, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
It's not a matter of "deference". Names like DaimlerChrysler and KPMG Peat Marwick do not involve "horizontal lines", so the question never arises for them. If we had "Daimler[- or –]Chrysler", then it would. At least until recently, the decision would have been "Daimler–Chrysler" as a merger em dash. But the way MoS has drifted from clarity on this matter over the years, it would now be about a 50/50 toss-up, some arguing for consistency with other en-dashed names of merged entities, and some arguing for consitency with hyphenated ones of the same sort, when all of them in this class should be using the same style. I'm not even sure I care which direction it goes in, as long as one is picked and recorded clearly in MoS so the conflict stops.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
But University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a completely different case to Carson–Newman University, and I agree this should be a endash when going by the style guide. WP:COMMONNAME is a different argument. At that point one would be arguing for the occasional exception espoused by WP:MOS. YorkshireExpat (talk) 17:47, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, yes, they are completely different cases, but both call for en dashes for different reasons, the first because it serves and is named for multiple cities, the second because it's a merger of a Carson institution and a Newman institution. Or least both used to call for en dashes, but MOS:DASH has gotten confusingly messed with over time so that the second of these categories is no longer clear (the first still is, despite someone arguing below to keep the hyphen in the university name).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
@InfiniteNexus: The point of this thread is that the MOS:DASH material has become so muddled that it's unlikely that such an RM would conclude with a consensus, and if it did it would be on a very split basis that pits one "consistency" and against another, because the guideline material no longer offers the clarity required to be certain. Anyone can spin it to mean what they want it to mean, and cite the "precedents" in RM history that agree with them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
I think the rule "use en-dash if two entities merged, hyphen if it was named after two persons/entities from the start" is entirely impractical, needlessly hard to follow, and confusing to readers, so I'm not sad that that line item was lost (assuming it ever existed, which I don't know). A rule I know that's way easier to follow and makes (for me) more sense is to use an en-dash if one of component parts consists of multiple words (e.g. Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Grand Falls–Windsor), but not otherwise (e.g. Gilgit-Baltistan, Moravian-Silesian Region). Let's not multiply the en-dashes without good reason. Gawaon (talk) 16:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
A rule I know that's way easier to follow and makes (for me) more sense is to use an en-dash if one of component parts consists of multiple words. I'm sorry but this makes no sense, why would this be a rule? WP:MOS makes absolutely no mention of this. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
It used to; I'm not sure what happened to that. But it's a different kind of en dash usage not relevant to the sort under discussion here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Rather than try to shoehorn this into the reply chain, I'll point out here that the official Representation Order for Canadian federal electoral district uses emdashes, not endashes, between geographical entities. Moving them all to endashes would often be erroneous. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 20:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Nope, it's just an arbitrary style choice, not even consistently followed by the responsible agency, much less anyone else. I demonstrate this clearly below in a sub-thread.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Generally, use a hyphen in compounded proper names of single entities. I think discussion ends here. Carson–Newman University is a single entity, including compounded names, so it gets a hyphen. The fact that it wasn't a single entity in the past is neither here nor there; WP:MOS makes no reference to that. Why should the history of a university determine the current naming? The argument for University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is entirely different. Urbana–Champaign is a metropolitan area comprising multiple single entities, and that's why it gets the endash. Why WP:CONSISTENT should apply here is anyone's guess. Certainly there should be no mass RM based on that policy.
However, I might go further. For Urbana–Champaign, which is not a single entity, we can do what we wish and render that in our own style. For the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a single entity, the people who run it choose to render it in that style, with a hyphen. More importantly (for WP:ARTICLE) secondary sources render it in that style. It is arrogance to say that we know better, and we will change how it is rendered for our purposes. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
That's confusingly inconsistent with regard to Urbana[– or -]Champaign, and is exactly the opposite of the intent of all of MOS:DASH, MOS:ARTCON, and WP:CONSISTENT policy. To the extent that argument for "University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign" with a hyphen has a kind of logic to it, it is contradicted by other logics. The university's name is exactly like that of Seattle–Tacoma Airport; it indicates a two-city service/coverage area, which calls for an en dash. The above is exactly what I mean by people latching onto the first half of the "Generally, use ..." rule and ignoring the rest of it. This happens because the wording has gotten unclear.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Well I think I've been perfectly clear. Nowhere in policy does it say that names of entities after merger get endashes. Nowhere does it say anything about component parts consisting of multiple words. I'm going by what it says now. I don't think my second argument is confusingly inconsistent. For the institution it's all about how sources render the name, and replicating the style that the sources use (WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE). Otherwise it's single vs multiple entities. YorkshireExpat (talk) 19:20, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
This is my thinking as well. A single entity, such as a school or corporation, is akin to a hyphenated surname resulting from a marriage. It should be a hyphen. Whether or not a company is named for two people who co-founded the company at one point in time, or the company is named for two previously independent predecessors, it's still one company named after two things, not an alliance of still independent entities. The Baden-Württemberg principle. Another example is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, named for the three predecessor studios, but a single, hyphenated, entity. oknazevad (talk) 21:35, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, that is definitely one interpretation/preference that has grown over the last several years due to the wording here becoming unclear. That perception used to be in the minority, maybe it's now in the majority; I'm not really sure. But various editors do not agree with that interpretation, and there remains a conflict, with RMs concluding for opposite results due to whichever "camp" shows up and comments more at that particular move discussion. Maybe we just need to RfC this to pick one option or the other and record it more clearly?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Right, writing Baden–Württemberg or Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer would be absurd. So SMcCandlish's original conjecture (that this would be a generally usable and useful rule) can be considered refuted. Gawaon (talk) 03:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
"Gawaon doesn't like it" isn't a refutation, it's just you being firmly in one of the "camps of interpretation" already clearly identified. If there was general agreement that this use of the en dash was an absurdity, then the entire first block of examples posted above could never have existed. We have two competing views on this, and no clear resolution on getting past it. I think an RfC on what the wording should be about this kind of case is probably in order, to settle it one way or the other clearly, though I have not drafted one yet. I kind of figured that would be the case when I opened this, but it was worth checking to see if there was already a clear resolution. When the first comment, from InfiniteNexus, is pretty much diametrically opposite yours, that's not a good sign for there already being agreement.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:20, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Sure, but how many examples of Baden–Württemberg or Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer with en-dashes can you find out there in the wild, especially in WP:RS? I know that "Wikipedia does it differently from all the rest of the world" is a theoretically possible policy, it just doesn't sound like a very well-conceived one. I'm not opposed to an RfC, but would still like to point out that the other "camp" you mention doesn't seem to exist outside of our little bubble. Gawaon (talk) 05:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
The infrequency of it is definitely an argument against doing it (though statistical analysis of this is not very practical since ngrams, Google Scholar, etc., treat – and - as equivalent). An argument for doing it is rule simplicity: any time names of two entites are run together with a horizontal line, use the en dash not the hyphen. [shrug]. I'm not a partisan on this issue, but I'm interested in the question being resolved clearly so that we no longer have two diametrically conflicting article titling patterns for such cases. Assuming the hyphen were preferred for such cases, we would still have the question to resolve of whether Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area being retained with an endash as multi-city juridictional label should also result in Champaign–Urbana Courier, Champaign–Urbana Challenger, and University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign for consistency with that, or instead produce Champaign-Urbana Courier, Champaign-Urbana Challenger, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for consistency with other "single entities" that are "named after" multiple things. This is one of numerous cases of warring consistencies. Then there's Center Point–Urbana Community School District in the middle. Is that a multi-city jursidiction that takes an en dash or a single entity that takes a hyphen? It could qualify as either, so how do we rewrite the MoS item clearly enough to pick one or the other for such a case? I'm pretty good at the challenges of clear policy writing, but this one is thorny.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
I'd give all of those hyphens personally. Also love that fact that the Champaign–Urbana Courier was previously owned by Lindsay–Schaub Newspapers :D (which is inconsistently rendered in that article, but I'd also give a hyphen btw). They're all proper names. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:51, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Whether "they're all proper names" is completely irrelevant; the question is which line to use between the proper names, in which contexts.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Just explaining my thinking. YorkshireExpat (talk) 15:56, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
YorkshireExpat: The entire point of this thread is that the wording has become confused over time and is subject to "warring interpretations", so just insisting that you have an intepretation of its currently messy state isn't exactly telling us anything. Everyone has an intepretation, and they conflict. More to the point of what you said, nothing about style matters on WP is ever about what the sources are doing (or we literally could not have our own style guide at all, and would always have to do, on every style question of every kind, exactly what 50.0000001% or more of the sources were doing – the common-style fallacy), except where we explicitly state otherwise, and that pretty much is only when it comes to one single thing: whether to capitalize something (see top of MOS:CAPS). That's a special rule the community adopted to (mostly) put an edit to disruptive squabbles over capitalization. If WP's MoS was to just use hyphens any time they are the dominant punctuation, then we'd simply delete almost everything in the MOS:DASH section and use hyphens for almost everything, because the bulk of publishers (mostly in news) have abandoned hyphen vs. dash distinctions that are preserved predominantly in academic-leaning writing, and the former no longer use dashes for any function at all other than a form of parenthetical punctuatiion – like this. WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE is entirely and only about facts, not internal style decisions about how we choose to write about the facts. Confusion to the contrary is fairly common, but it is still a confusion. If your idea that WP had to follow the most common style were correct, the only style guide that WP could ever have would be just a tiny document addressing a handful of MediaWiki technical limitations, with style otherwise being just determined by majority use in sources. Of course, WP is not actually written that way, we have a large style guide, and we have a policy at WP:NOT#NEWS that Wikipedia is not written in news style. One upshot of this is that a style that dominates in news material but not in academic and other non-news material is not a style we'll adopt (unless we have a good reason to do so as determined by project-internal consensus for some other particular reason).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
If the standard is boiled down to single vs multiple entities (the wording is pretty clear and mentions neither mergers nor multiple words as brought up in this discussion) then it's quite simple to follow (far easier than requiring a history of the entity(ies) involved) and conveys information about the nature of the construction of the thing that is being written about (this would be entirely lost with the multiple words thing). That's why I think it should stay as it is, perhaps with some better examples to clear up this confusion in the future.
The thing about WP:COMMONNAME was only ever a secondary argument from me anyway, so I'm happy to concede that, despite the arrogance involved in retitling an institution, not to mention the assumptions made when doing that. YorkshireExpat (talk) 18:40, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
It's just a house-style matter. Names of things (like whether to "obey" silly trademark stylizations, whether to abbreviate things like "Incorporated" and "Limited" in company names (and whether with or without a trailing "." and whether or not preceded by a comma), whether to capitalize a leading "the" or include it at all, whether to put spaces between initials, etc., etc., are all arbitrary style decisions that vary from publisher to publisher. You can wish all you want that it were not so, but it provably is so. Using silly argument to emotion tactics like bemoaning things as "arrogance" are not going to convince anyone of anything, and just make you look like a crank PoV pusher of entirely subjective prescritivist notions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:41, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Yep, that's fine. I'm just going with the policy (as currently written). YorkshireExpat (talk) 16:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
Some of the examples above don't seem especially well chosen, since they can be explained in other terms – i.e., Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and San Antonio–Austin metroplex can be explained in terms of MOS:ENBETWEEN / Dash#Attributive compounds. But Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area and Seattle–Tacoma International Airport are not cases of MOS:ENBETWEEN / MOS:PREFIXDASH / MOS:SUFFIXDASH. It would be nice to get more clarity over "an institution created by merging prior institutions" and "a unitary institution/place that was named after two people" and "an area encompassing two non-merged places" or "an institution named after two non-merged places" and "a place/city/nation formed by merging previously-distinct places". I've seen opinions expressed in RMs based on such considerations, but the MoS hasn't seemed clear, and I am not aware of very relevant external style guidance. (Talk:AFL-CIO#Requested move 16 August 2023 was more a matter of the outcome for Talk:SAG-AFTRA#Requested move 20 July 2023 than the three editors who commented.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:10, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Well, yes, the "MoS hasn't seemed clear" issue is what this is about. It needs to be clear, but there's clearly not agreement on what it should say, and there are a lot classes to consider. Not an easy RfC to whip up, but I'll put it on my list.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

To anyone following this I've started a move request here, if anyone's interested and has a viewpoint. I think it's an interesting case. YorkshireExpat (talk) 15:49, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Canadian federal electoral districts

Moving reply here so as not to put a large block of links in the main thread above: G. Timothy Walton above asserts: the official Representation Order for Canadian federal electoral district uses emdashes, not endashes, between geographical entities. Moving them all to endashes would often be erroneous..

Nah, it is easily demonstrable that which horizontal line to use is just a completely arbitrary house-style choice, and we do not follow the Canadian government's house style, nor they ours. More to the point, they don't follow their own, anyway. The Canadian government is not consistent at all on an unspaced em dash, even within the same agency – the one responsible for administring electoral districts – and for the same electoral district; cf. their official usage here, which is unspaced double hyphens (an old typewriting convention standing in for an en dash, with an em dash represented by three), and their equally official usage here, which is an unspaced en dash not an em dash. This idea that these districts "officially" require an em dash seems to be an assumption about what what is done in a particular webpage or other document without any regard to what's done in others, in reference to the same districts. And it wouldn't matter anyway, since WP doesn't follow some other entity's house style even when it's "official".

Other agencies use whatever they want; e.g.: Library of Parliament uses spaced hyphens for this [67][68]; Statistics Canada uses unspaced double-hyphens again [69], and same at main Canada.ca government site [70][71]; Parliament of Canada prefers the unspaced em dash [72], and ditto for Elections Ontario [73] and Public Prosecution Service [74]; Federal Redistribution uses unspaced en dash [75] as does the government's Canada Gazette [76], but not always (here with unspaced em dash [77]); the City of Toronto uses an unspaced hyphen [78]; Legislative Assembly of Ontario uses unspaced en dash and unspaced hyphen in same document [79].

Independent source usage generally doesn't follow this alleged but disproven em dash convention, either: Ontario Community Health Profiles Partnership uses unspaced double-hyphen [80], GeoCoder uses unspaced hyphen [81], University of Calgary Canadian Elections Database confusingly uses unspaced double-hyphen for federal [82] and unspaced hyphen for provincial [83], StudentVote.ca uses unspaced em dash [84], Toronto.com (combined website of the newspapers The North York Mirror, Scarborough Mirror and Etobicoke Guardian) uses unspaced hyphen [85], Canada Gazette sometimes uses unspaced em dash [86], but otherwise unspaced en dash [87]; CBC News uses unspaced hyphen [88], and so do The Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-toronto-election-results-map/], Toronto District School Board [89], Global News [90], CTV News [91], CityNews [92], and Canadian National Multilingual News Group [93]; Toronto Star uses the unspaced em dash [94] or unspaced hyphen [95] on different pages; Simon Fraser University uses spaced hyphen [96]; Ontario Public School Boards Association uses mostly spaced en dash, some unspaced em dash, and at least one case of hyphen spaced on one side, all in the same document [97].

This is all just from the first page of search results on the same electoral district. Clearly demonstrates this is entirely a house-style choice, with some (both within and without the government) not caring at all which one it is even from page-to-page on the same site, sometimes not even on the same page. WP has no reason at all to do anything but follow it's own MOS:DASH rule, which calls for Toronto–Danforth with an unspaced en dash, with parenthetical disambiguation as needed for multiple districts. The idea of ever trying to disambiguate these just by which tiny little horizontal line they have in them is not even vaguely practical.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree. WP:CANRIDINGS (a.k.a. MOS:CANADA#Ridings) seems rogue. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:10, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

When is a local, non-proper loan word (that is synonymous with a more recognizable term used in the same context) acceptable in titles?

WP:COMMONALITY states Use universally accepted terms rather than those less widely distributed, especially in titles. For example, glasses is preferred to the national varieties spectacles (British English) and eyeglasses (American English); ten million is preferable to one crore (Indian English).

When does WP:TIES override this guidance? JoelleJay (talk) 23:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't, I think. TIES refers to cases where no opportunities for commonality exist. Gawaon (talk) 06:56, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
I agree with this; it makes the most sense from the perspective that we are trying to write an encyclopedia that our readers can generally understand, and I would support clarifying TIES and COMMONALITY to make this clearer. BilledMammal (talk) 22:17, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
It seems to me that the key words in this question are "synonymous" and "non-proper". Some varieties of English contain words that are not synonymous with their closest equivalent in other varieties of English and that, while they are loan words, are proper within their ENGVAR. For example, Québécois as a term is not fully synonymous with "Quebecker", which may linked explain why the linked article has the title it does.
The terminology used in the WP:HQRS on a topic will typically reflect the formal register of the ENGVAR associated with the topic and, where other terms are not fully synonymous, should generally be reflected in enwiki articles. As I see it, this isn't a matter of "overriding" COMMONALITY, but of defining where it ends and TIES begins. Newimpartial (talk) 17:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
How are editors supposed to determine which terms are non-synonymous, or which terms are most prevalent within an ENGVAR? Does the mere existence of some HQRS using one local term mean that term should be preferred even if the vast majority of HQRS use the more recognizable term? JoelleJay (talk) 20:39, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
As I understand it, editors are supposed to follow HQRS in general - reading for content, accepting distinctions that are documented in the literature and treating ad synonyms terms that are treated in the literature as synonyms. In my experience, hit counts from search engines are of little if any use in making such evaluations. Newimpartial (talk) 00:08, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

MOS:BLOCKQUOTE

According to this discussion, a transparent background is applied to quote boxes in article space because of the guidelines established in MOS:BLOCKQUOTE and MOS:COLOR. I think this choice makes the pages using this template look cluttered and visually appalling. Furthermore, as pointed out by @Belbury, these models have been employed in over 22,000 times across Wikipedia, which means the current orientation is interfering with readability in many places. I would like to suggest that article space quote boxes should have a guideline that encourages neutral tones, such as the default grey colour (#F9F9F9). As a last argument to support this change, I will also cite @Light show: "Light background colors can make a document more visually appealing by adding a layer of design and sophistication, which can make the text more engaging to readers [...] large pages of black and white text can be monotonous to read, so having some light background colors for block quotes with borders can break this monotony, making the reading experience more pleasant and less tiresome". GustavoCza (talk • contribs) 01:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

The {{quote box}} background was made transparent across all articles a few days ago, citing MOS:BLOCKQUOTE. Is a floating sidebar quotation really a blockquote, though? Belbury (talk) 12:16, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Technically it is, I'd say, but still I don't think MOS:BLOCKQUOTE needs to, or should, apply here. Gawaon (talk) 13:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
I too was very surprised to see such a major change (affecting many thousands of articles, including FAs) implemented without either discussion or notice. I just don't think such wide-reaching changes should be made unilaterally. The wording says "Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged". It doesn't say why, nor does it actually prohibit their use. I completely understand the need for style conventions. I also get that colored boxes may cause accessibility issues. But to overturn a approach that has been widely used for many years without any discussion doesn't seem the right way to go. KJP1 (talk) 07:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm not really involved with that, but I think you could simply revert the style change to the {{quote box}} background and wait what happens (second step of the WP:BRD process). Gawaon (talk) 08:08, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
That seems like a simple move, even for a technical numpty like me. But I note the template is used on 803,000 pages! I'd prefer that the editor who made the change self-reverted. And then we could have a discussion about the whys and wherefores and whatever else. KJP1 (talk) 10:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't think there is anything broken about the current template, which displays a transparent background in article space, per two MOS guidelines. I have been told in the past by administrators that BRD does not apply to templates (something I do not believe, but I taste good with ketchup, so I do not meddle in the affairs of administrators), so I am reluctant to self-revert in this case. I think the discussion here should determine if there is a community consensus to change our MOS guidelines, specifically: do not use colored text or background unless its status is also indicated using another method, such as an accessible symbol matched to a legend, or footnote labels (MOS:COLOR) and Block quotations using a colored background are also discouraged (MOS:BLOCKQUOTE). – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:27, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that line from MOS:COLOR applies to the question of the template's default colour, as that grey isn't communicating the "status" of anything. It's the same shade of grey you get around an image thumbnail or infobox. It generally seems to be the case that when Wikipedia floats something in a box at the side of an article, that box gets an #F9F9F9 background. Belbury (talk) 14:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I am following this thread and am willing to modify the template once the guidance here on the MOS page(s) has/have been clarified. If neutral background colors are acceptable in some situations, I'm fine with MOS explicitly allowing a neutral background color for {{quote box}} and similar block content in article space, as suggested above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
A full rainbow of background colours are already acceptable "in some situations" under the part of MOS:COLOR that you're quoting! It allows background colours that communicate information so long as that information is also indicated using another method.
I could imagine an article that interleaved multiple quotes from two different sources (perhaps a green paper and a white paper), and used background colours in addition to in-text attribution to distinguish them as an aid to readability.
MOS:COLOR doesn't appear to take a view at all on the background colour for infoboxes, navboxes, thumbnails, graphs and so on. I don't know if the recurring design for all of these (#F9F9F9 with a 1px #AAAAAA border) is part of a higher level Wikimedia style document. Belbury (talk) 09:12, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
I too think that MOS:BLOCKQUOTE doesn't apply to quote boxes, since blockquotes are part of the normal article text, while quote boxes are outside of it – like images, say. So the white background requirement doesn't apply, and the change to the styling should be reverted. Gawaon (talk) 17:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think any change to the MOS is needed for the sake of the issue at hand apart from maybe an explanatory note that quote boxes are not block quotes under the MOS, which is how everyone here apart from Jonesey95 seems to understand it (myself included).

However, the root cause of the problem is that we've been sticking our heads in the sand in regard to the use of quote boxes for nearly a decade now. I previously raised the issue back in 2017, and SMcCandlish explained that the lack of mention stemmed from wishful thinking that it'd make quote boxes go away, which it didn't. I'm not updated on the issue, and the last major discussion I'm aware of is the 2016 RfC, where there was consensus against pull quotes but not much agreement on what other uses of quote boxes are appropriate. It's such a lack of agreement that's preventing them from being documented in the MoS. Has there been any attempt in the intervening years to find some agreement on this? --Paul_012 (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I like the suggestion that we distinguish between a quote box, which is closer to an image, and block quotes which are part of the main text. Can that work? KJP1 (talk) 20:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Quote boxes are not block quotes, but a form of sidebar, which typically (for images, infoboxes, navboxes, etc.) have at least a slightly different background color. However, the vast majority of uses of quote boxes in our articles are inappropriate per one or more policies and should be converted into normal block quotes. People do it because they like stylizing things, but it draws a gross amount of attention to a particular party's statement versus that of other parties (that fails WP:UNDUE), or in article on a particular author/speaker, document, etc., draws a gross amount of attention to some WP editor's personally selected "most important" or "favorite" part, which fails both WP:NPOV generally and WP:NOR, in the vast majorityof cases.

We probably should have an RfC about this, well "advertised" at the relevant policy pages and at WP:VPPOL. Most of the objections to pull quotes also apply to highlighted quotes of any other kind. What has happened is that pull quotes were community deprecated, so people insistent on injecting undue "decorated" quotes all over the place, have been evading it by using quoted content that technically isn't a pull quote because it does not repeat material already quoted inline in the main text. Literally the only way to tell the difference is to read every word of the article from top to bottom and see whether the decorated quote material is or is not unique on the page (and that might change at any time anyway). This is clearly a pattern of WP:LAWYER / WP:GAMING, and it needs to stop. Legitimate uses of templates like this in mainspace are extremely rare, and zero of them are actually necessary. There is not a single case that could not be replaced by an in-context block quote (and many are so short they should not be in block quotes at all, but inline quotations in quotation marks). I'm gratified to see that the quote-boxing has been replaced by normal blockquotation at various articles on famous speeches. This is a move in the right direction, presenting the material encyclopedically both as to contextual placement in the article and as to visual presentation, instead of doing it like a magazine or a click-bait website.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

What Candlish said. I can't say I'm a fan of these quotes, they are almost always inappropriate Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:15, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
Absolutely fine with a wider RFC, but is there not sufficient consensus to revert to the status quo, while we have the discussion? KJP1 (talk) 09:57, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
""decorated" quotes" I don't mind having quote boxes in the articles, the same way i don't mind having a thumbnail to provide some additional context. It's much more annoying that everything thinks their own color/border is more important than everyone else's.

The quote box template has more styling commands than I can count. Whereas a few behavior switches with accompanying standardized styles in classes should be all that is needed. (which is not to say that i think they should all be gray, I think that our gray is horrible as a text background and not suited for pieces of text like this [nor for captions of thumbs honestly]). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:42, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Essay suggestion: "How to ignore the MOS"

Of course, we have learned—or are still trying our best—to internalize that the MOS is a set of guidelines, and there are exceptions of some quantity to nearly every prescription therein. Especially regarding the niche-er points with tables and markup, I like the idea of surveying pages that clearly, intentionally contravene points of the MOS, but

  • It is done intentionally
  • It is done for a compelling reason, possibly one very particular to that article's topic,
  • It works; moreover, it works for everyone, and following the MOS would likely make the article obviously worse to read.

I know this is going to be more subjective than most collaborative ideas on here—it's coloring outside the lines, but I think it's possible to create something educational, right? Remsense诉 03:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

What goal are you trying to achieve by doing this? More to illustrate the sort of case that, when editors come across it, they should understand the point and leave it alone; to encourage editors to recognize circumstances where they should do this; to explain to them how to do this; or something else? One way of looking at is that if you're seeing cases where it's been done nondisruptively and successfully, then maybe no help is needed from the guidelines, but maybe that isn't the case. Largoplazo (talk) 04:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
Largely the first two reasons you gave. (I realize many editors might read a headline like this and have heart palpitations because someone's trying to be clever again—I promise, I'm not actually interested in guideline-flaunting for its own sake.) Maybe "exceptions that prove the rule" are equally in order? Remsense诉 05:03, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't really title it like that. The key point is what to do when you believe that the MOS and core policy (NPOV, OR, or V) or higher-priority policies (BLP, FRINGE, MEDRS) come into contradiction. Those policies do override the MOS in situations where they actually, genuinely come into direct conflict; however, caution should be exercised before assuming that that's the case in any specific instance, because the MOS is usually written with an eye towards core policies anyway and because what seems like a sufficiently clear-cut V or NPOV issue as to override the MOS to you may not seem so clear to anyone else. I think a good rule of thumb is that if the contradiction you've identified is narrow and specific then you might have a case, although you still have to convince people if anyone objects; but if you have some sweeping objection to an entire aspect of the MOS (eg. "using BCE anywhere is obviously POV!") then it's usually safe to assume that the community considered that when writing the MOS and didn't agree with you. --Aquillion (talk) 05:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
    If I'm being honest, I did a clickbait. My tongue was lodged firmly in my cheek, I wouldn't pick this title either. Remsense诉 05:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Spelling § International organizations and MOS:TIES

I have some difficulty in working out the point of Spelling § International organizations. As written, it is non-prescriptive, at least explicitly, and therefore seems out of place in the MoS.

Given this, the natural reading to me is an implicit extension of an MOS:TIES-style principle to articles with a strong ties to international organizations. I may have missed an explicit statement of such a policy in this connexion, but, if I have not, and am nevertheless right, it would be good to be clearer. Docentation (talk) 04:15, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Spelling#International_organizations is mostly listing the variants that Wikipedia allows and the differences between them. MOS:ENGVAR, MOS:TIES and MOS:RETAIN cover how to apply them and whether you can/should/shouldn't change from one form to another.  Stepho  talk  05:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
  1. The point of MOS:SPELLING might simply be to describe the proper use of different varieties of English. But in that case why mention international organizations? Whether or not the World Bank uses US English does not change how US English is spelled.
  2. If the point of MOS:SPELLING is to list acceptable varieties of English,
    1. it is both incomplete and redundant: it says nothing about Pakistani or Malaysian spelling in English; and nearly all the varieties of English it mentions are listed at MOS:ENGVAR or MOS:TIES;
    2. the inclusion of international organizations’ preferred varieties of English remains inexplicable—whether some international odganizarion uses a variety doesn’t change how that variety is actually spelled; and
    3. any such purpose, as far as I can tell, remains implicit given the wording of the page.
  3. I therefore remain of the view that listing international organizations’ preferred variants only is useful as part of the style guide if that gives some guide as to which variant to use. Accordingly I think either
    1. the section should be deleted, or
    2. it should be made explicit that strong ties to an international organisation listed give reason to use its preferred variety of English.
I am minded to propose this at some point, but raise this query informally in particular to establish whether there is any other explicit reason for MOS:SPELLING § International Organizations to exist in its current form; in such a case my proposal would be misconceived. Docentation (talk) 17:39, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
The point is to make clear that articles about these international organizations use the style used by those organisations for their own publications and internal documentation, and do not necessarily follow the style of the country in which their HQ is located. MapReader (talk) 17:48, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree that that’s the only plausible point of the section—otherwise, it seems to be pointless. But is that explicitly stated anywhere? Docentation (talk) 23:43, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
The other question is whether it's even relevant for us. We don't otherwise follow any organization's style guide when writing about them – so why should we make an exception here? Gawaon (talk) 07:19, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
Adopting the same variety of English as an international organization is articles about it is rather less deferential than adopting the style guide wholesale. It seems to me that extending MOS:TIES to international organizations is more analogous to using the right national variety of English when there are strong national ties. Docentation (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree. And it avoids an ultimately futile argument as to which style to use for an organization like the UN, which exists above national boundaries. MapReader (talk) 21:42, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
I propose to insert the following text in MOS:TIES: Articles with strong ties to an international organization listed under a variety of English at Spelling § International organizations should use that variety, and to amend Spelling § International organizations accordingly. If nobody objects for a week, I shall go ahead; otherwise, I shall raise a proper RfC. Docentation (talk) 22:08, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

MOS and Unlinking

2604:3D08:9B7B:E800:AC7D:A86B:5EE4:14B7 (talk · contribs) seems to be on a quest to unlink United States from every Simpsons article. What's the MOS on that?? Q T C 04:05, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

MOS:OLINK indicates that major countries are generally appropriately unlinked. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Inline spacing templates

I really wish we didn't need inline spacing templates like {{-?}} and {{'s}}. It feels like they're just trying to compensate for bad kerning that browsers ought to be handling automatically. Sdkb talk 04:58, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Italics for foreign words that refer to the article's topic?

I am currently working on an article about a Malagasy zebu-wrestling sport. Its names are tolon'omby and savika—Malagasy words. Should they be italicized and/or use the lang template throughout the article? What about the bolded first uses in the lede? Zanahary (talk) 22:42, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Use {{lang-mg}} and {{lang}} as appropriate for any Malagasy text in an en.wiki article so that screen readers pronounce the text correctly. Use bold markup where approriate.
{{lang|mg|tolon'omby}} → tolon'omby
{{lang|mg|savika}} → savika
{{lang-mg|tolon'omby}} → Malagasy: tolon'omby
{{lang-mg|savika}} → Malagasy: savika
—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:46, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Should I do the same in the articles for kangina, masonjoany, akazehe, and okujepisa omukazendu? Zanahary (talk) 23:59, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Why would you not?
Something to mind, cf:
Kangina ← {{Lang|prs|Kangina}} – not correct
Kangina ← {{Lang|prs-latn|Kangina}} – correct
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:19, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! And should the titles of these articles be italic? Zanahary (talk) 01:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
WP:ITALICTITLE.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:35, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
That policy says it should be done for foreign phrases, which I think is natural, but does it apply to single words, when the word itself is not the article's topic? Quick search gave me mehndi, bedhaya, buda, debtera. Zanahary (talk) 07:24, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
when the word itself is not the article's topic What? If the article title is not the article topic, one of them needs to change so that the article title is the article topic.
In WP:ITALICTITLE, 'foreign phrases' is linked to MOS:FOREIGNITALIC which begins with this:
Wikipedia uses italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that do not yet have everyday use in non-specialized English.
I read that to mean single words and foreign phrases should be marked up.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:19, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Mention of table of contents

In the section organization section, there's the text If an article has at least four section headings, a navigable table of contents appears automatically, just after the lead. This appears to have been removed in newer versions of Wikipedia, as the table of contents was moved to the left of the article. I'm not sure how to address this text, so I welcome other editors to take a look. —Panamitsu (talk) 09:23, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I believe that the behaior is browser dependent: I'm still seeing the TOC after the lead. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:57, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
@Chatul: It's skin-dependent. Vector 2022 puts the TOC in the sidebar; all other skins put it between the lead section text and the first heading. Logged-out users get Vector 2022. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:24, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Is the skin kept in a cookie? I get different behavior depending on which machine/Firefox I'm using, for the same user id. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Is the skin kept in a cookie??? Yikes! Remind me to keep my nieces and nephews away from your house on Halloween. EEng 22:04, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Since the location is skin-dependent, can we just say "table of contents appears automatically"? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:06, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Parenthetical citations in explanatory notes

Does the manual of style take any stance on parenthetical citations within an explanatory note?

A post by an editor at Help talk:Shortened footnotes [98] objects to an example because it "seems to maintain that parenthetical references are still allowed inside explanatory notes. That might have been true at some stage, but WP:PAREN now says "deprecated on Wikipedia"." If this is true, that example should be removed, but after looking through the RFC this appears not to be so. {{harv}} still has several thousand uses, and pages like the Holy Roman Empire article seem compliant with the Manual of Style. The documentation for {{harv}} should also be updated. Template:Harvard citation/doc should either make clear that the template is now meant for explanatory notes, or state that its usage is deprecated outright. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 02:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Haven't closely followed this, but it may be possible to finesse this by the simple measure of using {{harvnb}} insted of {{harv}} in some of these cases. I've replied at the thread and given one example of how to do this for the § 5 example. Not sure to what extent that is extensible to other examples, as I haven't examined them. Mathglot (talk) 03:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
Or nicer still, {{harvp}}, which (like the primary {{sfnp}}), produces references with the year in parentheses like CS1. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:10, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
It is INLINE parenthetical referencing that is deprecated, not parenthetical referencing per se. When {{harv}} is used within a <ref>....</ref> pair there is nothing wrong with it. It is however more work when you consider that {{sfn}} does the same job with less typing! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Relevant discussion...

at the WP:Articletitles talkpage, to do with italic titles. Primergrey (talk) 00:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Kind of a design question

Some folks here might be interested in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Islam#RfC on using the crescent and star symbol or Allah calligraphy. It's not directly MOS-related, but it's a design-related question about whether we want to use a unified symbol/logo for various items (e.g., sidebars, navboxes), and if so, which one (of the two main candidates). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:10, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

"Media" doesn't work

Hi. I noticed that in the infobox when adding the lang it (e.g. on the page Bica (coffee)) "media" doesn't work; why? JacktheBrown (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@JackkBrown: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Manual of Style, it is not a help desk. I don't see how your problem is related to the Manual of Style.
Anyway, {{infobox food}} expects the |name= parameter to be plain text, without markup. You should use |name=Bica|name_lang=pt|name_italics=true. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:02, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Quotation marks and internal links: visually identical examples

Apart from the colour, the "correct" and "incorrect" examples under Quotation marks and internal links both display identically and behave identically when I click them. So the only way to compare them is to open up the section for editing. Maybe include a code snippet for each? Not necessarily the whole fragment—I'm thinking perhaps just [[" "]] and "[[ ]]" so things don't get too cluttered.

NB I've not checked for other instances of this—I just happen to have encountered this one. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

In the correct example, the quotation marks are outside of the linked title, while in the incorrect one they are part of the link text. If you look closely, you should see it. Gawaon (talk) 13:42, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps someone can come up with a way to make the difference more obvious. EEng 13:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@Gawaon I did, and in the app they appeared as part of the link in both cases. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:20, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
OK, scrub that. The difference is visible in the app. I had to take a screenshot then zoom in. Apologies. I might add something about them showing in the link colour in one and in the surrounding text colour in the other. Musiconeologist (talk) 15:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I've now made the change, before seeing the replies. I decided it was minor enough to just do it. Feel free to change it if something else would be better. Edit: I've since changed it, to a brief comment noting whether the quotes are the same colour as the link or as the surrounding text in each case. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I took the liberty to revert that since I think that your earlier version (with the code examples) was actually more helpful. Gawaon (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
@Gawaon Thanks—I saw just after saving a change here. I'm happy with that. Musiconeologist (talk) 17:53, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME, "Parmesan" page

Continued at Talk:Parmesan#Parmesan vs. Parmigiano-Reggiano. DeCausa (talk) 22:54, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

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


According to this rule, if a valid English translation exists it must be used, but in the case of "Parmigiano Reggiano" the situation becomes very complicated. In order, a user changed the name of the page ("Parmesan") to "Parmigiano Reggiano"; I deleted his changes, but after further investigation, and based mainly on the sentence (on the page) "Outside the EU, the name "Parmesan" can legally be used for similar cheeses, with only the full Italian name unambiguously referring to PDO Parmigiano Reggiano.", I was wondering whether, since "Parmesan" outside Europe is almost always a bad imitation, it's wrong to write Parmesan under the ingredients of Italian foods; this might make them less authentic. JacktheBrown (talk) 05:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the current situation is fine. The Italian name is given in the lead sentence and is a redirect to the article, but it shouldn't be printed in bold, as it's not a "common name" widely used in English. And it shouldn't be the main article title, for the same reason. Gawaon (talk) 06:26, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I guess that depends on where you are? I checked the websites of three major UK supermarkets, and all of them sell under the label "Parmigiano Reggiano". I remember the 'Parmesan' moniker from decades back, but it's now uncommon; typing a search and all three supermarket sites redirect to Parmigiano; on one the Parmesan name doesn't appear and on the other two it is only used for a couple of products, lower graded usually grated cheese. It's not really used nowadays for the whole cheese or solid pieces of it. MapReader (talk) 06:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@MapReader: also in my opinion. If we came to the conclusion to change the title, we would have to change all the "Parmesan" (to "Parmigiano Reggiano") from thousands of articles, I see this as very difficult. JacktheBrown (talk) 06:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
An interim solution would be to put both names in the lead sentence, in bold. Gawaon (talk) 07:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, but establish the correct position and over time WP will conform; meanwhile the redirects will do the job. Defending the current position with arguments based on merit is fine, but retaining an incorrect or unsupported position (and IMHO using 'Parmesan' as the article title is now just wrong) simply because changing it leads to some work isn't really acceptable. MapReader (talk) 07:01, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I wonder if this usage persists in North America? There is a similar issue over "Swiss cheese" which is not made in Switzerland and "Emmenthal" which is a PDO in Europe. @Johnbod:, who may be able to advise but may choose not to get back into this culture war again. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 08:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Yes, "Parmesan" in US, Australia etc can be locally made. It's just a style of cheese there. Certainly in the US "parmesan" would be the dominant name. This is covered in the current article. There's two different topics covered in this article. I think they should be split out: an article on the global generic style under "Parmesan" and another "Parmigiano Reggiano" covering the "real" stuff. If it's left as currently written "Parmiagiano Reggiano" wouldn't be a correct name for this article. DeCausa (talk) 09:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@MapReader Isn't that just supermarkets trying to make their parmesan sound special and non-generic, though? Or trying to avoid saying that it's parmesan since people think of that as a low-quality grated thing? They'll avoid the everyday word if there's an alternative that sounds worth paying more for. I don't think supermarket usage is a particularly good guide. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Of the names mentioned so far, parmesan is the only one I'm familiar with, but I haven't checked whether it's usually in upper or lower case. (I think cheddar cheese is usually lower case and not really associated with the place any more.) Musiconeologist (talk) 13:14, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Checked and they're both uppercase, or were in 2005 (the date of my Oxford Spelling Dictionary edition. They may have moved to lowercase by now.) Musiconeologist (talk) 13:25, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I don’t think so. You only hear very elderly people taking about Parmesan nowadays; it dates back to the Delia Smith era when cooking anything foreign was adventurous and the brave pioneers bought a pot of grated second rate Italian cheese to sprinkle on their Spag Bol. The next generation are rather more familiar with international travel and international food, and happy to call things by their proper names. MapReader (talk) 19:33, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@MapReader Steady on. I'm only 61 . . . ! Last time I went to an Italian restaurant I was asked if I wanted Parmesan. I'm not at all happy with this stereotype. It could be considered quite ageist. (I'm trying not to consider it that way, but not succeeding very well.)
What I'm finding online is a fair number of articles which try to explain Parmesan as a generic name for things which aren't strictly Parmigiano Reggiano and distinguish the two. Also one about Parmigiano Reggiano having an advertising campaign to promote that as "the only real Parmesan", which rings alarm bells for me.
It's good that people have adopted the Italian name, but I'd hardly say the other one has gone out of use. Musiconeologist (talk) 21:04, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Hence why I think DeCausa has a point that really the material needs splitting into two articles, particularly if Parmesan is actually still ‘a thing’ in the US. MapReader (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I really agree with MapReader. Today we hear very little about "Parmesan", and it might happen that if a non-native Italian speaker (e.g. resident of Louisiana) reads "Parmesan" on an Italian food page, he might think it's an American ingredient, creating a huge misunderstanding and misinformation about Italian cuisine (an American would never want misunderstandings about the culture of his state, e.g. Louisiana, so it would be right to respect us Italians too). Of course, as already written, it's not enough to rename the page, but all the words "Parmesan" must be changed to "Parmigiano Reggiano", otherwise it would be even worse and create even more confusion and misinformation. This definitely requires the help of a bot; we are in luck, because "Parmigiano Reggiano" is capitalised, so the bot in question cannot make a mistake, and it would only be a profound act of indifference not to do so if consensus is reached. JacktheBrown (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
DeCausa makes a valid point above, however - the current article covers both the historic, genuine Italian product and the fake American knock off stuff. There should definitely be an article about Parmigiano - using the American title for this information is clealry inappropriate - and in that article maybe there’d be a cross link and single sentence mentioning the fact that in some English speaking countries, the term Parmesan is used to describe a pale imitation product. If Parmesan is still a particularly significant US product, then it would be notable enough for its own article. MapReader (talk) 20:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree. There are two kinds of cheese: "Parmigiano Reggiano" (a controlled name only from a specific place in Italy) and "Parmesan" (the cheap American knock-off, often sold as a white powdery cheese-like substance). The differences between these are maybe larger than between Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano. They are separate enough that we should have two separate articles for them. Then there would be no dispute over the name. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:50, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@David Eppstein I've a feeling they might *both* officially have that restriction here (UK), but I'm not sure. It's not something I habitually buy, so I've not needed to know. Musiconeologist (talk) 21:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
If there's a place that only allows "Parmesan" to refer to cheese from the province of Parma, we could mention that in either or both articles, but that doesn't change the basic facts that there are two distinct types of cheese and we should have articles on types of cheese not on commonly-conflated names of cheese per WP:NOTDICT. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@David Eppstein I'd certainly agree with that. Musiconeologist (talk) 22:05, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment - first of all, this is not the appropriate venue to be having this discussion, at least if you expect some binding result to emerge from it. If someone wants to propose splitting, then a discussion at Talk:Parmesan Is in order, and similarly an RM for a proposed move. I don't see any questions here that rise to needing clarification at MOS level. As for the question itself, I'm surprised at the suggestion that "Parmesan" is obsolete or only used by old people. I live in the UK and I'm not sure I recall anyone saying Parmigiano, informally in conversation and also Italian restaurants still seem to generally offer it as Parmesan. Perhaps the packaging on supermarket cheese does say that though, if only for legal reasons. A thorough analysis of sources would be required in any case.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@Amakuru: could we move this discussion to the Parmesan talk page and continue there? Thank you. JacktheBrown (talk) 22:34, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. There's actually a thread opened on this at Talk: Parmesan (which I've just posted to) which was opened in January. Someone should just close this thread and note the continuation there. DeCausa (talk) 22:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@DeCausa: no, we need to move these comments, they're important. JacktheBrown (talk) 22:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I don't see why. A link would do - and I'm not sure what's here is that enlightening! DeCausa (talk) 22:47, 24 March 2024 (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.

"Manual of Style/Gender identity" Examples

In the MOS, it uses the example "The article about The Wachowskis, for example, is better without any pre-coming-out photos since the way they looked is not well known as they shied away from public appearances.", yet their article does include pre-coming-out photos, should the images in the article be removed, or should a new example be found?
Thanks,
I can do stuff! (talk) 03:45, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think any specific example is required for this guideline—what it means should be obvious to the reader. Remsense诉 03:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

MOS orphan sidebar category: languages

Currently the MOS sidebar template "By topic area" includes "Regional", which links to vaguely language-related and language-region cross-topics. However, the MOS has significant subpages on specific languages which are very difficult to find on main page navigation -- basically I have to guess. Furthermore, there is no corresponding Category:Wikipedia Manual of Style (languages) (or similar, something like which can be made immediately).

For example, under the sidebar is linked WP:Naming conventions (geographic names); but going through the sidebar to MOS/Korea-related articles, we are linked to WP:Naming conventions (Korean), which is then part of a large category of language conventions with lots of near-orphans. Additionally, there is no way to access stalled proposed guidelines that may be served as essays for the time being, or do with eyes for improvement, such as MOS/Arabic (which by the way is not linked in a regional category, but under MOS/Islam-related articles).

There's a lot of potential disentangling and cleanup to do between region, language, and culture guidelines (or not); or some could be referred back to subpages of WP:WikiProject Languages instead of here as P&G. Regardless, all MOS pages need to be somehow findable, because usually it seems people don't even realize they exist. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

An additional orphan: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (foreign languages) (just 2004), whereas the only way to navigate archives is the WT:MOS/Archive index -- I found this by chance using the search box, so there are probably other orphaned MOS Talk Page archives? SamuelRiv (talk) 22:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Silently correct an error if it's in a title?

Shortcut

Per MOS:TYPOFIX "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected". But, what if the error is in a title being cited? Correcting the error is going to make it hard to find that article if the link changes. E.g. "Neflix star returns to his West Sussex roots". Clearly Neflix means Netflix, at Timothy Innes, and I know some would correct that, but I'm not sure. Thanks for your thoughts. SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:45, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Don't see any problem correcting the ref title, but of course the underlying url has to be left alone. - Davidships (talk) 22:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Yeah I'd correct that without hesitation. Popcornfud (talk) 22:30, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
As the OP wrote, correcting the typo makes it more difficult to find the article if the link changes and it needs to be found again. I would not correct but give some inline comment <!-- not a typo --> or {{not a typo}}. Other readers will figure out the meaning just as you did. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 23:35, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
He could correct it and have a hidden comment next to the ref that clarifies what the actual title is. —El Millo (talk) 23:38, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
@Facu-el Millo: "correct it and have a hidden comment next to the ref that clarifies what the actual title is." I like that. It hides the error. It doesn't require a disruptive {{sic}}. If at some point in the future it needs to be searched for again, the original will be easy to find. I'd probably put it in hidden text right next to the word that was corrected.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  02:11, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
@Davidships, Popcornfud, Michael Bednarek, and Facu-el Millo: Based on what seems like a consensus above, I propose the following change to the MoS. At the end of the paragraph that ends "be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically).", we could add the sentence If there is a typo in the title of a source, the source could be hard to find after the typo has been corrected, so when correcting the typo, add a hidden note (<!-- -->) near the error to indicate the original text. I hate to add anything which makes the MoS longer and more complicated, but is this worth the distraction? What think you? SchreiberBike | ⌨  11:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Comment: Where the ability to find the ref is not compromised because there is an underlying URL (as in this example), this is not necessary; otherwise a [sic] would seem more appropriate. But I am just a passing editor, so I leave this to those with broader persective on MOS. - Davidships (talk) 12:06, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I think this is such a rare borderline case that it doesn't deserve to be mentioned. I also have some doubts that it's really necessary. Presumably, when the original URL disappears, people will just enter it into the Wayback Machine and hopefully retrieve it there. If not, they may google it, but search engines are fairly tolerant of misspellings and I suppose the typo-corrected title may be nearly as findable as the original one. Maybe more so, if the publisher had in the meantime spotted and corrected the typo. Gawaon (talk) 12:54, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
@SchreiberBike I think it's too specific—it's OK to draw attention to it as a issue to be aware of when editing, and maybe suggest possibilities for handling it, but prescribing which to choose seems premature. Something like One way to handle this is . . . seems better. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
That is, the recommendation would be to bear the issue in mind when correcting a title. Use of a hidden note would be an example rather than a guideline. Musiconeologist (talk) 13:55, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Gawaon's point: it's rarely occurring and not worth mentioning. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:41, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
I agree with the notion that a source may be harder to find the the typo is silently correct, but a hidden note cannot be the best solution to this. This matter would be relevant not only to editors like us but also to several external users (e.g. non-Wiki researches) who will not even be aware that such a hidden note exists. The format of such notes will also be wildly inconsistent. The simplest solution here, in my opinion, would be to leave the typos as-is. They are not in the prose text, so they don't really hurt anyone except maybe AWB typo searchers; a [sic], either unlinked ({{sic|pronounciation|nolink=yes}}) or hidden ({{sic|pronounciation|hide=yes}}) would solve even that. IceWelder [✉] 05:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I have to say I think you're right. The typo is part of the information about the source or about how to find it (depending whose typo it is), so a correct citation includes the typo. Hiding the typo, or leaving the reader to guess whether it's ours or not, would be putting aesthetics before accuracy. Musiconeologist (talk) 10:09, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
We do allow silently correcting harmless typos (MOS:TYPOFIX), that was the starting point of the discussion. Hopefully, reliable sources won't often have typos in titles, but if they do, there is no reason to treat them differently from any other typo. Gawaon (talk) 10:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I'm a confirmed gnome and I've got a collection of delicious errors that I go through every once in a while to make corrections. In the past I would mark errors in titles with {{sic}}, but then other editors would correct them with the explanation "insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected" and not leave any sign of the original error. This is a small problem as a percentage, but there are at least thousands, and a surprising number of the errors are in quality sources. (Over the last day I've made corrections linking MOS:TITLETYPOCON 61 times, 35 of them for twelvth.) I agree that a hidden note is not a perfect solution, but it's the best I've seen so far. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:51, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
I think the point here is that in a title, it's not necessarily an "insignificant typo" (in the words of that section) and not necessarily 100% harmless. So there can be a reason to treat the individual typo differently when editing. (I'm saying that a reason has been given in the discussion, based on the reader's potential needs, and that it's made me change my mind.) But the situation doesn't need treating differently in our advice, since it's a matter of judgement about a specific typo. It's treated the same in that the editor uses their own judgement as to whether it's significant. But the outcome of their judgement might be different for the particular case. Musiconeologist (talk) 12:53, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I've boldly added the shortcut MOS:TITLETYPOCON to the top of this discussion to make it easy to link to this consensus without adding clutter to the Manual of Style. I've only seen that done once before, so I'm not sure if others will agree that this is helpful. SchreiberBike | ⌨  12:10, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

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