![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
Hi Peter, I just created {{ BotanistTeam}} for use on the Ruiz y Pavón article. It mostly just takes everything from the other two ({{ Botanist}}, {{ Botanist2}}), with slight amendments to fit. I would appreciate if you would have a look, and definitely feel free to modify it. My first and maybe only template. Thanks, Hamamelis ( talk) 09:15, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
{{botanist|Ruiz & Pav.}}
works as it should. (However it doesn't at present alter the wording to be plural, which could easily be done if "&" is present and it's thought desirable to deal with teams.)
![]() |
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
For contributions to plant sciences Michael Goodyear ( talk) 23:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC) |
Hi! There have been new developments. We need to continue the review. Sorry if you are busy, but can you return to the review soon? Sainsf <^> Talk all words 06:01, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for helping on tables at Cucurbita. I hope I'm not bugging you too much, but on the talk page C.Chap thought it would be good to have countries left aligned (maybe trim the column down too), while leaving the production right aligned. I've tried several previews of this but the align text always shows up as text in the table. Any help appreciated. HalfGig talk 23:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
![]() |
The Helping Hand Barnstar | |
For great performance in helping people learn wiki ways, especially tables and flora. Awarded with bar. Great job on the Cucurbita tables, but I don't see what's making the flags left-align. HalfGig talk 21:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC) |
We are colliding - so need to be a bit cautious in keeping edit box open -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 18:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I realized we were editing in parallel, so I gave up after I'd finished a particular fix. I learnt this way of handling multiple chapters in the same book from Stemonitis so far as I recall. One oddity is that by default the {{cite}} templates add a full stop at the end, but {{harvtxt|...}} does not. So to get fully consistent formatting, you need to use "{{cite book |... |chapter=...}} In {{harvtxt|...}}." Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
I hope I didn't frighten you away! Anyway I have put Liliaceae up for GA. Not perfect but not bad.-- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 01:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
So we're going to visit Anatomy, Chemistry, .... Zoology and add "An anatomist (subst. as needed) is a person who practises this science.", etc, to every single one? There was a random boldface addition by an IP so now we have a new policy? I'm not convinced that would be a great idea. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 16:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
![]() |
The Natural History Shield |
For great service to Wikipedia in the area of Natural History. Your efforts in improving these areas and helping other users is greatly needed and appreciated! HalfGig talk 15:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC) |
Hi Peter, would you have time to take another look at Talk:Taxonomy (biology)#Merge proposal, which proposes merging Biological classification into Taxonomy (biology)? You opposed the merger, and I abstained. I now find myself inclined to agree with User:JSquish about merging those two pages (no others!), probably mostly because Taxonomy (general) is no longer so much under attack. I suspect, however, that you may have a good argument that could convince me to oppose the merger. Best wishes, Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 14:45, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Thinking about it some more, the well-sourced section at Taxonomy (biology)#Definition may be the key here. It says that the core of biological taxonomy (agreed by most but not all sources) is the conception (which I take to include diagnosis/delineation, description and identification), nomenclature and classification of groups of organisms. This definition has, as Sminthopsis84 notes above, been fought over, and is certainly not universally agreed by all sources, but seems to have stood in the English Wikipedia for a while now and is probably the best we can do. On this definition, biological classification is part of biological taxonomy, but they aren't the same. Thus alpha taxonomy, taken as the conception of the primary units of biological taxonomy (species) is not concerned with classification; traditional Code-based nomenclature reflects classification but is deliberately not prescriptive of any particular arrangement. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your help with Liliaceae, which I am pleased to announce has now reached GA. Again the reviewer has urged me to push for FA. One good thing about putting so much work into this and Hippeastrum, is that in the process I was able to improve or create many related botany pages, as well as resources. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 12:07, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
![]() | On 24 March 2014, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Liliaceae, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that when the tulip trade reached Antwerp in Belgium in 1562, they were mistaken as vegetables? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Liliaceae. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Thanks for this Victuallers ( talk) 16:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
...And I'll make good use of it!! Hamamelis ( talk) 21:39, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
{{
R from alternative name}}
? I.e., is there something more bio specific than that template? —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼
06:41, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
{{
R from alternative name}}
. It's pretty uncommon with plants, so a more specific template hardly seems needed, but it might be useful for animals.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
09:10, 6 April 2014 (UTC)I gave a clear rationale for linking to a dispute here. You reverted it with an edit summary that is an obvious straw man fallacy, here. That's not how WP:BRD works. If you do not have an actual policy-cognizant reason to revert, then don't revert. You also don't get to make a dispute go away by deleting references to it. Please note that while I disagree with your reasoning at WT:NCFLORA, I've gone out of my way to work up a variant of your proposal that resolves the issues I had with it (and anyone else would who understands taht NC guidelines do not apply to article content, only titles), instead of just rejecting it, and have not questioned your personal motivations for taking the positions you do, or labelled you disruptive for taking them. (Actually imposing anti-MOS content-guideline changes on NCFLORA would definitely be disruptive, though, like pushing alternative reliable sources rules, that contradict WP:RS, into some other guideline). I assume even better faith about you than I do about many of the other pro-capitalization editors. While you are unbending on the issue, you have not engaged in disruptive tactics, and I don't see any evidence of WP:NOTHERE behavior. I do not believe that you intend to try to have NCFLORA or any other NC page usurp MOS guidance on article content, I just don't think you thought thorugh the material very carefully in relation to NC guidelines' scope. Please don't make me change my mind about your good faith, by engaging in revert warring for silly reasons like that one, or borerline-attacking me with clear assumptions of bad faith as you did here. We don't have to agree, and we can knock holes in each other's arguments all day, but it doesn't have to be personal. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼ 05:51, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
The guidance of the MOS on style matters is certainly above that of other WP guidance on style matters. That is precisely how WP works. WP:RS is not more authoritative on consensus than WP:CONSENSUS, which in turn is not more autoritative on reliable sources than WP:RS. The very idea that we'd have an well-developed MOS, watchlisted and participated in by hundreds, yet it would not actaully be our definitive stile guide just does not compute. Even WP:AT policy very clearly defers to MOS on style matters, linking explicitly to it more than once. So do the NC guidelines. This pretense that NC pages are somehow immune to the broader consensus at MOS, and only on capitalization, and only were 1 (or 2 or 4) topics are concerned, is simply untenable. The way that particular page has been developed has been explicitly to WP:GAME the system by trying to intentionally diverge from MOS. I am seeking maximum consensus, and much of it already exists at MOS (no amount of "MOS isn't a real consensus" stuff from a handful of people is going to change that). I haven't said anything about English plants in particular that I recall. (Sorry, I'm now responding in series to what you were saying above, and am hitting some points about which I have little to say, so they're coming off as one-liner non sequiturs.)
I hereby insert {{ talkfact}} on your fleeing botanists claim: Show me editors who are in fact botanists who have quit WP because they can't capitalize. It's nonsense. YOu know as well as I do taht all academics who come form fields that have style quirks are entirely willing and able two write precisely the same material without those quirks, because they have to do so professionally all the time, when submitting articles to more mainstream journals that do not honor their style quirk. It is just not plausible that professional botanists or ornithologists or entomologists are saying "I can't believe it! Some jerks on Wikipedia say I can't capitalize common names of species! My head is going to explode! Screw this place, I quit!" It is not happening. The failure of that "draft capitalization guideline" page cataloguing all the run-rampant capitalization and anti-capitalization "standards" that were all over the map even as last as 2011 is concrete proof that this Chicken Little story is false: When MOS settled on lower case, it reversed a large number of projects there, and except for WP:BIRDS, every single one of them (that was still active) went along with it without any fuss at all. No editors resigned in a huff. No one canvassed and manipulated polls to try to reverse it. No one called for editorial boycotts and strikes. No editors became confused or enraged. No readers were confused. Strife was markedly reduced. nothing bad happened at all. Except all the angst generated as a result of one project being inveterate hold-outs who will not give up until a really big RFC that can't be effectively canvassed, or an RFARB case leaves them little choice but to stop beating that dead horse.
The main reason that professional academics quit Wikipedia has nothing to do with style. Rather, WP is a foreign and to their eyes low-grade culture of reliance on journalistic secondary even tertiary sources, and with unreasonably suspicious treatment of primary sources because any attempt at even basic interpretation and synthesis is immediately attacked as WP:OR. WP is not a user-friendly environment for editors, and pro academics rarely last long here: They are not sufficiently respected, because we have no means of giving them more editing rights because of their preeminence, achievements, degrees, etc. They can't cite their own peer-reviewed work without being accused of WP:COI. They can't write about cutting-edge research here with being called WP:POV-pushers or even WP:FRINGE. And it's really, really geeky: They can't just use word-processors, but have to learn XHTML, wikipmarkup, parserfunctions and a templating language. Then an enormous soup of complicated, everchanging rules. Style tweaks are the least of their concerns here. It's a really cheap shot to suggest that I'm a big lame-o and am personally driving away high-end academics just because I'm not shutting up like a good little peon on a issue you simultaneously declare to be trivial yet devote enormous amounts of time to being contrary and combative on. I am not buying it, and I don't think anyone else would either.
Readers need content (less and less, the more we write) and they also need style, because it helps keep that content parseable and consistently interpretable, as well as sanely editable, and the more consistency there is the less verbal combat there is. MOS has definitively ended 99% of the style and grammar fights that were chronically erupting here. You don't think about it much because they're just GONE. If MOS were deleted today, just no longer here and not being consistently obeyed on just about everything, several thousands disputes per DAY would erupt over style/grammar/spelling/punctuation matters that are forestalled because of that guideline and its clarity, and, yes, its prescriptiveness. If you don't believe that readers need style, then quit devoting your time to style debates. You're one of the top-10 editor/commentators on this stuff. You're being that enormous dude stuffing himself full of cupcakes and double cheeseburgers, with his huge gut hanging out from under... his "No Fat Chicks" T-shirt. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼ 13:06, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't find expressing this kind of stuff in writing easy, so it may well be my fault. But you just don't seem to get the point of what I'm trying to say.
I don't care very much one way or the other as to the small details of style. What I care about, deeply, is maintaining a tolerant culture on Wikipedia. To me, this means trying to achieve consensus above all, and tolerating divergence where true consensus cannot be achieved.
Doubtless you will say that there is a consensus over the issues that concern you. There is not a consensus, so long as a significant minority is not persuaded to go along with it.
You've returned to Wikipedia after a considerable absence or reduction in editing. Suddenly there is what another editor (not me) has described as "a wall" of posts and a "hectoring" tone. I'm as responsible for the first as you (I can't judge the second). It's unhelpful to the project. This is what drives people away. Of course I never said that capitalization per se drives people away. What drives them off is that editing Wikipedia stops being fun and becomes a battle. All of us, me as well as you, need to work hard to ensure that it remains fun. Yes, there is an issue over giving "experts" respect. One way of doing that is to allow them to join WikiProjects and then listen very carefully and respectfully to what those WikiProjects say. One way of not doing it is to constantly link to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but only in relation to WikiProjects, not in relation to those who watch the MOS (whether me or you).
I'll search later for links, but another issue you perhaps didn't see was a long discussion of whether American editors could use their traditional typographic quotation style in articles in the US ENGVAR. The refusal to allow this alienated yet another tranche of editors. (Note that I personally strongly prefer LQ.)
You put up straw men, such as not having a MOS. This is simply not what I have ever said. Of course we need a MOS. Of course we need style guidance. But in many areas we respect diversity of view: allowing different ENGVARs, citation styles, etc. All I argue is that there needs to be more such respect, e.g. for the style for the English names of organisms, the different punctuation styles in different ENGVARs, or the different conventions in different branches of learning. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not inclined to drop matters I see as crucial to WP's future just because resolving them involves some disputation.This is precisely and exactly the difference between us. To say that ensuring that the MOS enforces some particular kinds of style (while allowing others to vary widely) is in any way
crucial to WP's futureseems to me simply ridiculous and in practice harmful. Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
@
SMcCandlish: you wrote You're one of the top-10 editor/commentators on this stuff
. Can you tell me where you got this interesting statistic from? It certainly surprises me! Comparing
[2] with
[3] suggests to me that I spend very little of my time on editing WP or WP talk pages compared to you, particularly when you account for the time spent on my user pages being largely work on article material. So it does seem a little like the pot calling the kettle black! :-)
Peter coxhead (
talk)
16:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
No one but a few dozen editors on the whole project wants to capitalize that stuff, and it causes endless dispute.I don't think that any of us really knows how many editors would support capitalisation in some circumstances, because many have never engaged in the MOS talk pages. I can only say that as I work on plant articles, I see a significant number of highly respected editors using capitalized forms, often for national connection reasons. We need to attract more editors, of all views, to comment on this and other matters in the MOS. It wasn't a point I had ever made, but I agree with those who say that the current MOS is just a local consensus, as much as WP:BIRDS or any other WikiProject pages. Noetica was fond of pointing out that the hyphen/dash guidance was based on a 70 editor discussion (I may be wrong about the exact number). This is a ridiculously small number in relation to the number of active Wikipedia editors.
Hi Peter
I'm a complete novice here (and in fact rarely log in these days), but I found your name on the history of one of the pages referred to from this one: /info/en/?search=Paintbrush_lily You seem to be well-informed and experienced enough to add a few notes on each of the pages referred to here just to relate the two, for those readers who find their way to one but not the other. I wonder if you'd be kind enough to add it to your list of "things to do"?
Cheers (with apologies if this is not the right place to contact you about this kind of thing - I could not find a way of messaging you privately.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chelseawoman1 ( talk • contribs) 10:33, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Peter. Yes, I noticed that there were some crossed wires there too. I'm just not confident enough in my editing capabilities (and am lacking in botanical knowledge - would have to rely on what I could find) to offer to do it myself.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
Hi Peter, I just created {{ BotanistTeam}} for use on the Ruiz y Pavón article. It mostly just takes everything from the other two ({{ Botanist}}, {{ Botanist2}}), with slight amendments to fit. I would appreciate if you would have a look, and definitely feel free to modify it. My first and maybe only template. Thanks, Hamamelis ( talk) 09:15, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
{{botanist|Ruiz & Pav.}}
works as it should. (However it doesn't at present alter the wording to be plural, which could easily be done if "&" is present and it's thought desirable to deal with teams.)
![]() |
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar | |
For contributions to plant sciences Michael Goodyear ( talk) 23:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC) |
Hi! There have been new developments. We need to continue the review. Sorry if you are busy, but can you return to the review soon? Sainsf <^> Talk all words 06:01, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for helping on tables at Cucurbita. I hope I'm not bugging you too much, but on the talk page C.Chap thought it would be good to have countries left aligned (maybe trim the column down too), while leaving the production right aligned. I've tried several previews of this but the align text always shows up as text in the table. Any help appreciated. HalfGig talk 23:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
![]() |
The Helping Hand Barnstar | |
For great performance in helping people learn wiki ways, especially tables and flora. Awarded with bar. Great job on the Cucurbita tables, but I don't see what's making the flags left-align. HalfGig talk 21:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC) |
We are colliding - so need to be a bit cautious in keeping edit box open -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 18:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I realized we were editing in parallel, so I gave up after I'd finished a particular fix. I learnt this way of handling multiple chapters in the same book from Stemonitis so far as I recall. One oddity is that by default the {{cite}} templates add a full stop at the end, but {{harvtxt|...}} does not. So to get fully consistent formatting, you need to use "{{cite book |... |chapter=...}} In {{harvtxt|...}}." Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:02, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
I hope I didn't frighten you away! Anyway I have put Liliaceae up for GA. Not perfect but not bad.-- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 01:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
So we're going to visit Anatomy, Chemistry, .... Zoology and add "An anatomist (subst. as needed) is a person who practises this science.", etc, to every single one? There was a random boldface addition by an IP so now we have a new policy? I'm not convinced that would be a great idea. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 16:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
![]() |
The Natural History Shield |
For great service to Wikipedia in the area of Natural History. Your efforts in improving these areas and helping other users is greatly needed and appreciated! HalfGig talk 15:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC) |
Hi Peter, would you have time to take another look at Talk:Taxonomy (biology)#Merge proposal, which proposes merging Biological classification into Taxonomy (biology)? You opposed the merger, and I abstained. I now find myself inclined to agree with User:JSquish about merging those two pages (no others!), probably mostly because Taxonomy (general) is no longer so much under attack. I suspect, however, that you may have a good argument that could convince me to oppose the merger. Best wishes, Sminthopsis84 ( talk) 14:45, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Thinking about it some more, the well-sourced section at Taxonomy (biology)#Definition may be the key here. It says that the core of biological taxonomy (agreed by most but not all sources) is the conception (which I take to include diagnosis/delineation, description and identification), nomenclature and classification of groups of organisms. This definition has, as Sminthopsis84 notes above, been fought over, and is certainly not universally agreed by all sources, but seems to have stood in the English Wikipedia for a while now and is probably the best we can do. On this definition, biological classification is part of biological taxonomy, but they aren't the same. Thus alpha taxonomy, taken as the conception of the primary units of biological taxonomy (species) is not concerned with classification; traditional Code-based nomenclature reflects classification but is deliberately not prescriptive of any particular arrangement. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:25, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your help with Liliaceae, which I am pleased to announce has now reached GA. Again the reviewer has urged me to push for FA. One good thing about putting so much work into this and Hippeastrum, is that in the process I was able to improve or create many related botany pages, as well as resources. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 12:07, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
![]() | On 24 March 2014, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Liliaceae, which you recently created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that when the tulip trade reached Antwerp in Belgium in 1562, they were mistaken as vegetables? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Liliaceae. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page ( here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page. |
Thanks for this Victuallers ( talk) 16:58, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
...And I'll make good use of it!! Hamamelis ( talk) 21:39, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
{{
R from alternative name}}
? I.e., is there something more bio specific than that template? —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼
06:41, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
{{
R from alternative name}}
. It's pretty uncommon with plants, so a more specific template hardly seems needed, but it might be useful for animals.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
09:10, 6 April 2014 (UTC)I gave a clear rationale for linking to a dispute here. You reverted it with an edit summary that is an obvious straw man fallacy, here. That's not how WP:BRD works. If you do not have an actual policy-cognizant reason to revert, then don't revert. You also don't get to make a dispute go away by deleting references to it. Please note that while I disagree with your reasoning at WT:NCFLORA, I've gone out of my way to work up a variant of your proposal that resolves the issues I had with it (and anyone else would who understands taht NC guidelines do not apply to article content, only titles), instead of just rejecting it, and have not questioned your personal motivations for taking the positions you do, or labelled you disruptive for taking them. (Actually imposing anti-MOS content-guideline changes on NCFLORA would definitely be disruptive, though, like pushing alternative reliable sources rules, that contradict WP:RS, into some other guideline). I assume even better faith about you than I do about many of the other pro-capitalization editors. While you are unbending on the issue, you have not engaged in disruptive tactics, and I don't see any evidence of WP:NOTHERE behavior. I do not believe that you intend to try to have NCFLORA or any other NC page usurp MOS guidance on article content, I just don't think you thought thorugh the material very carefully in relation to NC guidelines' scope. Please don't make me change my mind about your good faith, by engaging in revert warring for silly reasons like that one, or borerline-attacking me with clear assumptions of bad faith as you did here. We don't have to agree, and we can knock holes in each other's arguments all day, but it doesn't have to be personal. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼ 05:51, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
The guidance of the MOS on style matters is certainly above that of other WP guidance on style matters. That is precisely how WP works. WP:RS is not more authoritative on consensus than WP:CONSENSUS, which in turn is not more autoritative on reliable sources than WP:RS. The very idea that we'd have an well-developed MOS, watchlisted and participated in by hundreds, yet it would not actaully be our definitive stile guide just does not compute. Even WP:AT policy very clearly defers to MOS on style matters, linking explicitly to it more than once. So do the NC guidelines. This pretense that NC pages are somehow immune to the broader consensus at MOS, and only on capitalization, and only were 1 (or 2 or 4) topics are concerned, is simply untenable. The way that particular page has been developed has been explicitly to WP:GAME the system by trying to intentionally diverge from MOS. I am seeking maximum consensus, and much of it already exists at MOS (no amount of "MOS isn't a real consensus" stuff from a handful of people is going to change that). I haven't said anything about English plants in particular that I recall. (Sorry, I'm now responding in series to what you were saying above, and am hitting some points about which I have little to say, so they're coming off as one-liner non sequiturs.)
I hereby insert {{ talkfact}} on your fleeing botanists claim: Show me editors who are in fact botanists who have quit WP because they can't capitalize. It's nonsense. YOu know as well as I do taht all academics who come form fields that have style quirks are entirely willing and able two write precisely the same material without those quirks, because they have to do so professionally all the time, when submitting articles to more mainstream journals that do not honor their style quirk. It is just not plausible that professional botanists or ornithologists or entomologists are saying "I can't believe it! Some jerks on Wikipedia say I can't capitalize common names of species! My head is going to explode! Screw this place, I quit!" It is not happening. The failure of that "draft capitalization guideline" page cataloguing all the run-rampant capitalization and anti-capitalization "standards" that were all over the map even as last as 2011 is concrete proof that this Chicken Little story is false: When MOS settled on lower case, it reversed a large number of projects there, and except for WP:BIRDS, every single one of them (that was still active) went along with it without any fuss at all. No editors resigned in a huff. No one canvassed and manipulated polls to try to reverse it. No one called for editorial boycotts and strikes. No editors became confused or enraged. No readers were confused. Strife was markedly reduced. nothing bad happened at all. Except all the angst generated as a result of one project being inveterate hold-outs who will not give up until a really big RFC that can't be effectively canvassed, or an RFARB case leaves them little choice but to stop beating that dead horse.
The main reason that professional academics quit Wikipedia has nothing to do with style. Rather, WP is a foreign and to their eyes low-grade culture of reliance on journalistic secondary even tertiary sources, and with unreasonably suspicious treatment of primary sources because any attempt at even basic interpretation and synthesis is immediately attacked as WP:OR. WP is not a user-friendly environment for editors, and pro academics rarely last long here: They are not sufficiently respected, because we have no means of giving them more editing rights because of their preeminence, achievements, degrees, etc. They can't cite their own peer-reviewed work without being accused of WP:COI. They can't write about cutting-edge research here with being called WP:POV-pushers or even WP:FRINGE. And it's really, really geeky: They can't just use word-processors, but have to learn XHTML, wikipmarkup, parserfunctions and a templating language. Then an enormous soup of complicated, everchanging rules. Style tweaks are the least of their concerns here. It's a really cheap shot to suggest that I'm a big lame-o and am personally driving away high-end academics just because I'm not shutting up like a good little peon on a issue you simultaneously declare to be trivial yet devote enormous amounts of time to being contrary and combative on. I am not buying it, and I don't think anyone else would either.
Readers need content (less and less, the more we write) and they also need style, because it helps keep that content parseable and consistently interpretable, as well as sanely editable, and the more consistency there is the less verbal combat there is. MOS has definitively ended 99% of the style and grammar fights that were chronically erupting here. You don't think about it much because they're just GONE. If MOS were deleted today, just no longer here and not being consistently obeyed on just about everything, several thousands disputes per DAY would erupt over style/grammar/spelling/punctuation matters that are forestalled because of that guideline and its clarity, and, yes, its prescriptiveness. If you don't believe that readers need style, then quit devoting your time to style debates. You're one of the top-10 editor/commentators on this stuff. You're being that enormous dude stuffing himself full of cupcakes and double cheeseburgers, with his huge gut hanging out from under... his "No Fat Chicks" T-shirt. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(Ʌⱷ҅̆⚲͜ⱷ^)≼ 13:06, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I don't find expressing this kind of stuff in writing easy, so it may well be my fault. But you just don't seem to get the point of what I'm trying to say.
I don't care very much one way or the other as to the small details of style. What I care about, deeply, is maintaining a tolerant culture on Wikipedia. To me, this means trying to achieve consensus above all, and tolerating divergence where true consensus cannot be achieved.
Doubtless you will say that there is a consensus over the issues that concern you. There is not a consensus, so long as a significant minority is not persuaded to go along with it.
You've returned to Wikipedia after a considerable absence or reduction in editing. Suddenly there is what another editor (not me) has described as "a wall" of posts and a "hectoring" tone. I'm as responsible for the first as you (I can't judge the second). It's unhelpful to the project. This is what drives people away. Of course I never said that capitalization per se drives people away. What drives them off is that editing Wikipedia stops being fun and becomes a battle. All of us, me as well as you, need to work hard to ensure that it remains fun. Yes, there is an issue over giving "experts" respect. One way of doing that is to allow them to join WikiProjects and then listen very carefully and respectfully to what those WikiProjects say. One way of not doing it is to constantly link to WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but only in relation to WikiProjects, not in relation to those who watch the MOS (whether me or you).
I'll search later for links, but another issue you perhaps didn't see was a long discussion of whether American editors could use their traditional typographic quotation style in articles in the US ENGVAR. The refusal to allow this alienated yet another tranche of editors. (Note that I personally strongly prefer LQ.)
You put up straw men, such as not having a MOS. This is simply not what I have ever said. Of course we need a MOS. Of course we need style guidance. But in many areas we respect diversity of view: allowing different ENGVARs, citation styles, etc. All I argue is that there needs to be more such respect, e.g. for the style for the English names of organisms, the different punctuation styles in different ENGVARs, or the different conventions in different branches of learning. Peter coxhead ( talk) 13:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not inclined to drop matters I see as crucial to WP's future just because resolving them involves some disputation.This is precisely and exactly the difference between us. To say that ensuring that the MOS enforces some particular kinds of style (while allowing others to vary widely) is in any way
crucial to WP's futureseems to me simply ridiculous and in practice harmful. Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
@
SMcCandlish: you wrote You're one of the top-10 editor/commentators on this stuff
. Can you tell me where you got this interesting statistic from? It certainly surprises me! Comparing
[2] with
[3] suggests to me that I spend very little of my time on editing WP or WP talk pages compared to you, particularly when you account for the time spent on my user pages being largely work on article material. So it does seem a little like the pot calling the kettle black! :-)
Peter coxhead (
talk)
16:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
No one but a few dozen editors on the whole project wants to capitalize that stuff, and it causes endless dispute.I don't think that any of us really knows how many editors would support capitalisation in some circumstances, because many have never engaged in the MOS talk pages. I can only say that as I work on plant articles, I see a significant number of highly respected editors using capitalized forms, often for national connection reasons. We need to attract more editors, of all views, to comment on this and other matters in the MOS. It wasn't a point I had ever made, but I agree with those who say that the current MOS is just a local consensus, as much as WP:BIRDS or any other WikiProject pages. Noetica was fond of pointing out that the hyphen/dash guidance was based on a 70 editor discussion (I may be wrong about the exact number). This is a ridiculously small number in relation to the number of active Wikipedia editors.
Hi Peter
I'm a complete novice here (and in fact rarely log in these days), but I found your name on the history of one of the pages referred to from this one: /info/en/?search=Paintbrush_lily You seem to be well-informed and experienced enough to add a few notes on each of the pages referred to here just to relate the two, for those readers who find their way to one but not the other. I wonder if you'd be kind enough to add it to your list of "things to do"?
Cheers (with apologies if this is not the right place to contact you about this kind of thing - I could not find a way of messaging you privately.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chelseawoman1 ( talk • contribs) 10:33, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Peter. Yes, I noticed that there were some crossed wires there too. I'm just not confident enough in my editing capabilities (and am lacking in botanical knowledge - would have to rely on what I could find) to offer to do it myself.