Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 57

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Wikilinked possessives

I cannot find a consensus for how to treat wikilined possessives. Should the "'s" be located within the link or outside of it? My preference is the former, with the "'s" included in the link:

during Bill Clinton's presidential campaign...

rather than:

during Bill Clinton's presidential campaign...

Stylstically, I think keeping the link intact throughout the word makes more sense than linking only part of a word. Perhaps there is already a consesus on this, but I haven't found anything... Anyone? Porlob 17:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Definitely no existing consensus, and I doubt' we'll get one. - Jmabel | Talk 17:18, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone else have thoughts on which should be the preference? Let's try to work towards consensus. -Porlob 17:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I slightly prefer the 2nd, for cleaner wikicode, and less potential of confusion. --Quiddity 19:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I concur. --Jaberwockynmt 21:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Subpages?

By hitting "random page", I ran across 1,3-Butadiene (data page) today. It's a bit odd in that it has no text, no stub, or anything. My first thought was to put {{context}} on it. But apparently it's linked from the infobox of 1,3-Butadiene, and is meant to be an "expanded infobox" for that page.

Category:Chemical data pages has many other pages similar to that, though at least they give a clue as to their context (eg. Barium hydroxide (data page)). Others are more or less a giant infobox (Bentiromide (data page)), though since they're not remotely like a normal encyclopedia page, they sometimes pick up robotic templates like {{linkless}}. Anyway, is this sort of page to be encouraged, or discouraged? If discouraged, are there any suggestions on how to procede?

I know that some templates sometimes use page-specific "subpages" in template space (eg. Template:Latest stable release/AOL Instant Messenger is pulled in by Template:Infobox Software2), would that be more appropriate for this?

(I wasn't sure where to ask this question, sorry if this isn't the right place) --Interiot 01:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Why would such a supplementary data page be right aligned? I mean, if you've got the whole page anyway, why not make it a normal table, at full width? Shinobu 23:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Re: Avoid self-referential pronouns

How exactly is the word "one" either "self-referential" or "personal"? Isn't One should note... basically the exact same as It should be noted...? I can't see any possible reason to discourage its usage as "unencyclopedic". As far as I can tell it is exactly the same as French on, which mostly has the meaning given above. elvenscout742 17:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that "One should note that..." and "It should be noted..." are basically equivalent. However, it is undesirable to give the reader these directives. Compare:
  • It should be noted that such introductory phrases can be removed.
  • Such introductory phrases can be removed.
If something "should be noted", then it can just be said directly. Gimmetrow 17:40, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I have a different problem with this section - it seems to introduce an irrelevent injunction against the passive voice: 'and it is certainly better than using the passive voice: "When the eyes are opened, something is seen."' There's really no reason for this to be there: the section isn't about using passives, there's no reason to disparage them in general, and leaving this spurious anti-passive sentiment out still gets the intended point across. Really, I think this is just an attempt to seem Strunk and White-ish, which is a Bad Thing. --Dom 02:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Navigation as a standard appendix

The problem
  • Most edits to the navigational templates, categories, and language links show up under one of the standard appendices in the page history (usually “External links” or “References”) because the editor almost invariably uses the section edit link (who wants to deal with more wikitext in the edit box than they have to?) and fails to override the default in the edit summary.
  • While a navigational template is supposed to be visually separable from the preceding text, this often isn't the case in practice.
  • Some newbie editors (such as myself, long ago) want to put the navigational templates under “See also”, which would seem to be the natural location for a collection of wikilinks to related articles.
Solution 1
Solution 2
  • The template {{navigation section}} could be used as a section header instead of “Navigation”. The main difference between this option and Solution 1 is that, within the article, the section header appears to be blank; instead there's just some vertical space, the horizontal rule, and the edit box. (This, of course, applies to the default Monobook skin. While the visual effect is slightly different depending on the skin, it works in all of the skins.) The section still appears in the table of contents, and the section is listed by default as “{{navigation section}}” in the edit history.
  • Examples of this solution can be seen at First Continental Congress and United States court of appeals.

OK, so am I totally crackers or what?

— DLJessup (talk) 15:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Titles Of All Articles

Aren't the first letter of every word in a title supposed to be capitalized? So why aren't the first letters of all the words in Wikipedia articles capitalized? That would mean the section headings too. And then there's the template that says, i.e.: iPod, the first letter of the article is specifically supposed to be uncapitalized. It teaches the reader how to write iPod, but then none of the articles have a lineatthetop to say [something like] how you're supposed to capitalize the word, when you should, when you shouldn't, i.e.: if it is the first word of a sentence of in a title, or if it compounded into a name, and never in all other circumstances. What's the deal?100110100 07:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but Wikipedia:Naming conventions is pretty clear. Martin 08:55, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Or WP:CAPS. If it really bothers you you can always write a user script to change the way titles are displayed for you. Shinobu 09:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Title capitalization is entirely a matter of style; some newspapers, for example, Capitalize All Words In a Headline Except Very Small Ones, while some newspapers Only capitalize the first word. As for the iPod issue, that's why we have the line The correct title of this article is iPod. The initial letter is capitalized due to technical restrictions. Whether to capitalize when iPod or eBay starts a sentence is, again, a matter of personal style; I don't know if it's addressed in wikipedia's style. - DavidWBrooks 10:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
You should write the link as you would outside Wikipedia; i.e. iPod and eBay. The only reason that the articles themselves start with a capital letter is a technical restriction, so that when writing, you can type [[blah]] with a lowercase letter and get it to link to blah, the article with a capital letter. Ral315 (talk) 21:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Data: plural or mass noun?

Merged from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals).

I like to think that the word 'data' should always be treated as a plural, but more often than not it seems to be regarded as a mass noun. I know that it is generally thought that using it in both ways is acceptable, but for an encylopedia it seems to me that it is more 'correct' to regard it is a plural. So "this data" should become "these data", "data is" should become "data are" and so on. Whichever way round people prefer, should wikipedia have a uniform approach? I'd be interested to hear your opinions. Mumby 23:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Though technically correct, treating "data" as a plural sounds a bit old-fashioned and pedantic to me these days. Matt 01:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC).
"Data" is plural for "datum", just as "media" is plural for "medium". --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I see your point Matt, but to me "this data" and "the data is", for example, just sound wrong! But that might beacuse I'm pedantic. If, as you say, it is technically correct, should that not be the way things are done on wikipedia?Mumby 07:39, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say that Wikipedia should not have a uniform approach, because whether one wants to emphasise the mass-nouness or the pluralness of the data depends on the context. --83.253.36.136 18:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

  • You are welcome to fix errors in spelling or grammar wherever you find them. Creating a policy about the usage of a word will not change the way people make spelling or grammar mistakes. >Radiant< 14:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The American Oxford in OS X says:

noun [treated as sing. or pl. ] ...
USAGE Data was originally the plural of the Latin word: datum,... Data is now used as a singular where it means 'information': | this data was prepared for the conference. It is used as a plural in technical contexts and when the collection of bits of information is stressed: | all recent data on hurricanes are being compared....

And my Canadian Oxford has four meanings:

1 quantities or characters operated on by a computer. 2 (treated as sing.) ... 3 (treated as pl.) ... 4 pl. of DATUM. ¶ In scientific writing, data is almost always treated as a plural, but the singular use is standard in all other levels of writing.

I think the first definition must be a mass noun. Definitions 2 and 3 both essentially mean "facts".

And I agree that the style guide should not start dictating the way particular words are used (although I suppose it could remind us about common errors). For definitions we can refer to a dictionary, and for writing, we can let editors write. —Michael Z. 2006-10-13 17:34 Z


I see what you mean about not wanting to dictate to people about how to use a particular word. The reason I asked is that I could imagine a situation in which the objective pronoun was changed from "these" to "this", for example, then changed back again, and again and again in a mini revert-war because people thought that their way of doing it was 'more correct'. If I see, for instance, "this data" in a scientific article here, I think I will change it.Mumby 20:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

What about the sentence "The FBI downloaded 50MB of data from Wikipedia talk pages. After the data were scanned for hidden messages, they were deleted." Does this mean they went and deleted each and every little datum until no data were left? And what is a datum in this case? A bit? A byte? A sentence with a grain of meaning? That's ridiculous. In this case, it's definitely being used as a mass noun, and should be singular. The fact that it's etymologically a plural doesn't mean that it's being used as a plural. I'm also a pedant, but sometimes we go too far in our pedantry. --Slashme 13:14, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
That is exactly what I mean, your example sentence reads correctly in my opinion and would not sound so 'correct' if it said " After the data was scanned for hidden messages, it was deleted.". If you were to use data as a mass noun, shouldn't the sentence begin with "The FBI downloaded a 50MB data..."?

No. Would you say "The FBI raided a 50 kg cocaine."? No. You say "The FBI raided 50 kg of cocaine." That's how mass nouns work. --Slashme 08:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It all comes down to what people think sounds 'more correct' and I am happy to admit that there is no absolute correct or incorrect in this case. However, in a peer-reviewed scientific journal you would not expect to see data used as a mass noun, so I think that is a strong arguement for not using it as a mass noun in scientific articles on wikipedia.Mumby 15:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Realise, though, that we're going to hit up against an American vs. British issue in a moment as regards mass nouns. To use an easier example:

American: The committee was unanimous in its decision
British: The committee were unanimous in their decision.

Adam Cuerden talk 15:56, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

In my experience, that is only an issue with groups of people: organizations, companies, musical groups, etc. —Michael Z. 2006-10-20 19:22 Z

Depending on context, it is correct to use 'data' as a singular or mass noun, a plural noun, or even an adjective. I'd say use the form that best fits what you're trying to say. In my experience, data is universally singular in the context of information technology hardware representations. Even so, I can't say I've ever seen the construct 'a data' in the context of computing, unless 'data' is an adjective. One might say, "The carry flag holds a data bit." I'd never say, "Read a data." I might say, "Read the data, compare data, and then write some data." I'm not sure what to make of this. In a computing context, data is used as a singular noun, as a mass noun, and occasionally as an adjective, yet it's never used as a noun with the article 'a' preceeding it. Hmm. --Loqi T. 18:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I think I have it. When I use 'data' in the context of scientific studies, it follows the old-timey convention of data/datum: a single measurement is a datum, a list of such samples is a collection of data. "The data neatly fit the linear regression; only a single datum was much of an outlier." In a computing context, 'data' is an abstract mass noun, referring to a substance. In this context, data follows the same gramatical rules as 'water' or 'heat' might. "The FBI pumped 50 gallons of water from my well. After the water was examined for sulfur content, it was discarded." --Loqi T. 05:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that is a good a summary as anyone is likely to give. Mumby 09:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Awe, shucks. --Loqi T. 06:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

We Need A Definite Policy On ==External links== And ==See also== Content

I've encountered {{sisterlinks}} templates in both sections; i.e.: some articles have their templates in ==See also== and other articles have their templates in ==External links==. The same goes with footer templates like {{china}}, {{japan}}, {{Provinces of Mongolia}}, {{communisim}} and {{social sciences-footer}}, etc..100110100 06:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I hope you don’t mind: I’ve turned those template references into links instead of transclusions to make your message easier to read.
Anyway, I’ve never really considered footer templates like those to be part of any “section.” Instead, I think of them as being footers, formally after the last section, but for technical reasons belonging to whatever the last section happens to be. Thus, to dictate which section they belong to is to specify whether “External links” or “See also” comes last. That’s covered by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)#Standard appendices and Wikipedia:Guide to layout#Standard appendices, and both say that “See also” is among the first of the appendices, not the last. Does it need to be said somewhere that no further sections should come after those footer templates?
As for links to sister projects, since they’re all part of Wikimedia, I think it makes sense for them to be in the “See also” section. “External links” should be reserved for links that are truly external — that Wikimedia really has no control over. However, when a “See also” section only has interwiki links and no links to other Wikipedia articles, it looks awkward. In that case, I’d favor putting those templates wherever they’ll fit. --Rob Kennedy 07:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, but then it doesn't make sense in the last case; wouldn't it make the article cohesive and coherent if there was a special section for the {{sisterlinks}} template? I've tried using ==Related miscellania==. What do you think? Also, what about the footers? They don't fit anywhere, so I thought of putting the footers in ==Related miscellania==. Thoughts please.100110100 04:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
But why do they need a section of their own to begin with, though? They're meant to be at the visual bottom of the page, and aren't really part of the content per se; that they happen to appear in the edit window when a certain section is edited can be regarded merely as a quirk of how MediaWiki works. Kirill Lokshin 05:35, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
That’s exactly what I meant by saying the footers are really after the last section. It’s only for technical reasons of the editing page that the footers appear in any particular section at all. I don’t see a reason to put them in a special section of their own just to fix that. In particular, the name “Related miscellania” tells me, as a reader, that the authors couldn’t come up with any way to describe that content — in other words, that they don’t really think it belongs there. It puts the footers in the same boat as “trivia” sections. We don’t need to apply labels to every last bit of an article. Readers will recognize a navigation footer by the fact that it’s at the foot of a page and it facilitates navigation. --Rob Kennedy 18:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
So these templates are for navigation. There are other templates that span the side of an article though. The are not found at the bottom of the article. Maybe they don't span the whole length of the article but they span A length of the article. So if these templates are for navigation, I would be most conveninent if they followed you wherever you scrolled in the article. [Sorry what would be the term for that? I'm not a Comp Sci major. Danke.]100110100 07:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I’d call them sidebars. It’s not so much a computer-science term as a publishing term. I see no reason to have them statically positioned on the screen, though. They take up space that can be better used for article content. With a stylesheet you can make Wikipedia’s own navigation sidebar be statically positioned, but that’s different — it’s not really taking space away from the article. It gets a column to itself anyway. --Rob Kennedy 06:47, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
That's an idea (since it's in its own 'section' per se, it not part of the article, it will be easy to understand and make the article coherent and cohesive). But I've thought about it, & isn't ==See also== a section for Navigation? Shounldn't Navigation templates be there?100110100

Navigation templates which form a box across the bottom of an article are clearly not in any section. They create a visual break as strong as any section heading.

The sisterlinks remove themselves visually from the flow of the article by their appearance in a box on the right. But the way they are usually placed at the top of an "external links" section, they do have a clear relationship with it—and this makes sense, since they link to things which are not part of Wikipedia (Wikipedia has a strong identity to its readers, the Wikimedia Foundation not so much).

The only difficulty is when they are placed in an article with no "external links" section. Having them hang from an empty header is ugly. —Michael Z. 2006-10-18 18:59 Z

Hi. I've got an experimental template, named {{footer section}}, which can be used to demarcate the footer. (It is currently transcluded in one article, United States House election, 1800.) From its usage section:
This template is intended to be used as part of a technique for separating the footer of an article from the body of an article, both visually and in editing. Basically, an editor inserts the wikitext line “=={{footer section}}==” immediately before any navigational templates, categories, or interwiki links. This creates a section which appears to have a blank section header. (Simply inserting “== ==” fails to work because MediaWiki refuses to generate an empty h2 element.) In essence, it adds some vertical space, a horizontal rule (in those skins that use a horizontal rule with h2 elements), and an “[Edit]” wikilink visually. Now, by default, the starting edit summary for the section is “/* {{footer section}} */”, which is much clearer than the normal “/* External link */” or “/* References */” in terms of describing what is being affected.
There is at least one problem with this hack. Because MediaWiki doesn't do a very good job of creating anchor elements for section headers containing MediaWiki metacharacters, the backlinks in the history will not take the user to the section head, but leave them at the top of the article.Footer
I think that this may address some of the issues raised by 100110100. (Alternatively, the navigational templates could simply be put in a section labelled “Navigation”, but Kirill Lokshin and Rob Kennedy would probably be hostile to that notion.)
— DLJessup (talk) 05:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the idea DLJessup. I think it would be more clear if we made it policy that there would be a specific section heading: ==Navigation==, personally. I'll restated my concern that has not been addressed: for {{Politics}} and other verticallyoriented templates, these templates are obviously not at the end of the article. They do not address the issue that Navigation, or ==Navigation==, must be at the bottom. Another plus for inaugrating ==Navigation==.100110100 07:31, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, ok, the case is that I'm fine with footer templates & verticallyoriented templates from being in a section. But you have mentioned that the purpose of these templates are for navigation. When that happens, that means that they are not even part of the article. That means that we should put them always at hand. Maybe Mediawiki can be reprogramed? What I'm saying is that we could have Navigation templates in their own window, with their own scrollbar (have you been to a website like that, do you know what I mean? (Sorry I don't know the term.)) or have them follow you when ever you scroll (somthing like that (You know what I mean?)). It's like the functionality of the close button on Internet Explorer; (it's always there, [at the top]).100110100 08:35, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Please some comments; I want a definate anwser so I can change the articles when I encounter them.100110100 10:50, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the "footer section" template causes unacceptable usability and accessibility problems. The section appears as "Footer" in the page's contents box, but in visual browsers it appears as an underline with no heading. This can only cause confusion. Furthermore, in text-only browsers, search engines, and probably many screen readers for the handicapped, the "Footer" heading will appear. Hiding content for users of visual browsers while blowing off handicapped readers is bad accessibility practice, and has no place in an open encyclopedia. —Michael Z. 2006-10-21 15:04 Z
Mzajac:
You're correct about the accessibility problems, so I've gone ahead and speedied Template:Footer section since I don't know of any way to correct the issues you've raised. I think that the ultimate solution to this issue is going to be a MediaWiki plug-in that creates a wikitext entity, say, “<footer>”, to demarcate the footer section.
— DLJessup (talk) 16:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Hhmmm that might be a smart idea. I'm for it, but is everyone else for it? I mean, footers don't have to be at the end, hence footer, but haveit'sownscrollbarwindow,thatkindofthing[sorryIdon'tknowthetermforit] or but what about {{politics}} and other verticallyorientedNavigationtemplates? We need to make them footers? Yes, I'd vote for it if it I had to take a side. If so, could we please make them footers?100110100 06:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that trying a one-size-fits-all approach here is a bad idea. Some templates may work better as footers, some as vertical bars, some as other layouts. Similarly, some may be placed at the bottom, while others may look better in other places, depending on the structure of the article itself.
(And just to be clear: I strongly oppose changing all navigational templates to footers without considering the issue on a per-template basis. On articles where multiple such templates are present, they look much cleaner spaced along the margin than they would bunched up at the bottom; on articles with few images, particularly, margin space tends to be cheap, while the bottom-clustering produces a rather unreadable block of boxes and links.) Kirill Lokshin 06:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
100110100, what you’re looking for is to have the footers be statically positioned at the bottom of the page. In normal HTML, that’s done using frames. But frames frequently create more navigation problems, especially for non-visual browsers, but also for bookmarking. With CSS, we can make something stay put without using frames. Doing that for something along the side of a page isn’t so bad, but making pages work properly with static elements along the top or bottom edge is tricky to get right when multiple makes of browser are involved.
Some of the footer navigation templates are big. I see you’re familiar with the Bill Clinton article. It has five navigation footers. If all those were statically placed at the bottom of the viewport, I wouldn’t be able to see any of the article’s text anymore. The text is the reason I visit an article. The navigation aides at the bottom are a way of placing a subject within a broader context. They don’t need to be taking up screen space at all times. --Rob Kennedy 06:47, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Viewport? Huh?100110100 11:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
The viewport is the area of your browser window where the page appears. (The rest is often categorized as chrome — the scroll bars, status bar, tool bars, title bar, and everything else that isn’t provided by the Web page you’re viewing.) --Rob Kennedy 19:40, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • This is a solution looking for a problem. What would be the benefit from this? Titoxd(?!?) 06:28, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. Before talking any more about solutions, I’d really like to have a clearer description what what the problem is, and its severity. --Rob Kennedy 06:47, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem is disorganization. As I've mentioned before, there are many articles that have templates all over the place. And different articles have the same templates in different sections of their respective articles. We have a reason we have a Manual of Style; and we have a reason we have {{wikify}}.100110100 11:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
As I see it, the problem is that, within the wikitext, there is no demarcation between the body of the article and the footer. This causes certain symptoms:
  • Many edits to the navigational templates, categories, and language links show up under one of the standard appendices in the page history (usually References or External links) because the editor almost invariably uses the section edit link (who wants to deal with more wikitext in the edit box than they have to?) and fails to override the default in the edit summary.
  • While a navigational template is supposed to be visually separable from the preceding text, this often isn't the case in practice.
  • Some newbie editors (such as myself, long ago) want to put the navigational templates under See also, which would seem to be a more natural location for a collection of wikilinks to related articles than under References or External links.
Is it a minor problem? Certainly. It is, nonetheless, a problem. — DLJessup (talk) 14:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
OK. But those are different problems from the one that 100110100 just described, which seems to be about the placement of interwiki templates, like {{sisterlinks}}, {{wiktionary}}, and {{commons}}. (At least, I can’t think of any other templates that qualify as being “all over the place.”) I’ve already expressed my opinion on those in my first reply.
On the other hand, your problems have to do with placement and appearance of footer navigation templates, and documenting of changes to the pages. When a footer is placed somewhere other than the foot of the article, I can’t imagine that it stays there for long. Even as a newbie, it must have occured to you when you saw the page that something didn’t really look right. Sure, it’s a problem when it’s misplaced, but I don’t think it’s worth decreeing in the stylebook that footers go at the foot. As for edit summaries, I think that edits to the footer area are so seldom that the problem is not just minor, but insignificant. --Rob Kennedy 19:40, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
No, I believe that we need templates in a separate section. Look, in a nonwesteren culture, they many not see that footers are separate from an article. They need their own section. But it seems like this is a problem with the program, not a problem with the stylebook. But if it is a problem with the stylebook, we DO need to include it; if wikipedia is to be for everyone, it can be just for the West who understand it. And insignifiance is irrelevant.100110100 20:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
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