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Someone has just said that consensus trumps the Manual of Style. Is this true? 156.61.250.250 ( talk) 12:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
From MOS:PUNCT:
Where an apostrophe might otherwise be misinterpreted as Wiki markup, use the templates {{'}}, {{`}}, and {{'s}}, or use
< nowiki>
tags.
Straight quotation marks are easier to type and edit reliably regardless of computer configuration.
If we were using the curly apostrophe (and single quotation marks) everywhere, these cumbersome templates would not be needed at all. That’s a huge plus for “authorabilitiy”.
(Searches for Alzheimer’s disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa on Internet Explorer)
This is not an argument to favor either curly or straight marks. It’s an argument to file bug reports for browsers to treat both the same. The same goes for the Wikimedia search engine.
So, the only remaining argument for preferring straight marks is ease of input:
Straight quotation marks are easier to type and edit reliably regardless of computer configuration
Considering autoformatting/autocorrection in Word etc., this could just as well be implemented in Visual Editor, this point is also very much moot. It comes down to this: one looks a bit better, the other is a bit easier to enter.
This doesn’t seem like being strong enough a reason to justify edits to transform a stable article from one style to another. Alas, that happens on a regular basis. So I’d like some backup to revert such minor changes without risking an edit war. Are you with me? — Christoph Päper 20:25, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
21:05, 23 May 2015 (UTC)Do we "correct" the spelling in quotations to the ENGVAR of the article, in the manner that " trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment"? As in, when an article in CanEng quotes an American critic ("in favor of this tatty fetish")—should that favor be "corrected" to favour? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:06, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
You wouldn't change a quote by a representative of Vauxhall saying " boot" to say "trunk", so don't change how they'd spell "colour" either. — sroc 💬 01:56, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
To clarify: I'm talking specifically about spelling, and not about vocabulary. What concerns me is the spelling inconsistency could attract gnomish "corrections", or come across to readers as sloppiness: it looks like a mistake. It's not plausible that a BrEng vocab in a quoted statement in a NAmEng article would come across as such a mistake—I don't think literature readers could be that ignorant. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
contains the phrase "than the section are you are reading now". for some reason I'm not sure of it can't be edited in the typical manner. Primergrey ( talk) 07:59, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I have written this essay on how to avoid pet peeve wars: WP:No Pet Peeve Wars, some regulars here might find it interesting. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:12, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
It might be all the MoS-hate going on at the Village Pump right now, but I thought that essay had an overtone of "And style is not important enough to bother about anyway; stop caring about it." If that wasn't intentional, then a few tweaks might be in order. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 19:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
The discrepancy between our treatment of "prefixes" and "suffixes" (often elements of compounds rather than actual affixes) still strikes me as odd, as AFAIK is idiosyncratic to WP. Just came across the following in The Week, which attempts to be as accessible as possible:
— kwami ( talk) 17:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
There are a lot of articles on princes and so forth in monarchies that did/do not then exist. An example, picked more or less at random: Prince Pedro Gastão of Orléans-Braganza, the article about whom starts:
I confess that I don't understand the term "imperial house", but when this fellow was born there hadn't been any Brazilian monarchy for over two decades. The article does say that he was merely a "claimant", but the article title suggests that he actually was a prince, a notion that's simply delusional (however desirable you may think a return to monarchy might have been).
(Of course there are plenty of encyclopedic Princes who weren't/aren't really princes: not only Prince but also for example Prince Buster. The latter article should be so titled because that's the name by which Cecil Bustamente Campbell is known; obviously that article neither misleads the reader into thinking that he's a prince nor appears to support any delusion about Jamaican royalty.)
There seem to be scads of these articles. (To pluck another, more or less at random: Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia, born over three decades after Russia did away with its monarchy.) Should the titles of these articles parrot their biographees' claims? -- Hoary ( talk) 11:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
When formatting references I had always assumed that 'title case' was used for the titles of journals and books and that 'sentence case' was used for the titles of journal articles and book chapters. This is a style that is used by many scientific journals. I've now discovered that this choice is not explicitly specified in the manual of style which reads:
"The titles of articles, chapters, songs, television episodes, research papers and other short works are not italicized; they are enclosed in double quotation marks. Italics are not used for major revered religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these items should also be in title case." (colour added)
So my question is, which of these items should be in title case? Or does WP:CITEVAR apply? Aa77zz ( talk) 16:48, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
MOS does not seem to apply to references using a style using these (such as BlueBook). In any case, changes to citation style should be made at WT:CITE, not here.. That doesn't address the question however. WP:CITEVAR applies. If your chosen citation style uses title case, then you use title case. If it uses sentence case, then you use that. If it uses italics or underlines, ditto. GregJackP Boomer! 23:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
<ref>"The unlightable beingness of bears", Jane Smith, Underwater Basketweaving Jnl, Jan 2016</ref>
). Per
WP:COMMONSENSE, it would also be reasonable to override CITEVAR for rational reasons, e.g. the first major contributor adding only one such citation, and not raising any objections after other editors added considerably more periodical citations using title case. We also often override ENGVAR for rational reasons, and we must not take "first major contributor" fetishism seriously. (This has been happening; I fairly often see attempts at
WP:RM to extend the "first major contributor" concept to all sorts of things, and this problem is growing not shrinking.)I would prefer if WP settled on "use title case for titles", and just left it at that. It would eliminate all such disputes. It's more important for the project to eliminate recurrent disputes that pointlessly waste editorial time and energy for no reader benefit, than to do what some particular camp stylistically prefers in "their" articles because some journals in their field use sentence case. It's yet another example of the WP:Specialist style fallacy in action. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
PS: I think you misapprehend the nature of WP:ESSAYs and why people mention them. No one is citing them as authoritative (or if they are, they are making a mistake, misunderstanding how WP:POLICY works). There is no assertion of "weight", and accusing me of making one is a straw man. People write essays to lay out frequently-repeated reasoning clearly, so they don't have to keep writing it out again and again every time the same issue comes up. That's all they are, and that's the only reason to link to one. If I or anyone else points to an essay, it means "this has already been addressed, and we don't need to rehash it at length here, unless we're adding something new." (As for that essay in particular, if the specialist style fallacy were not actually fallacious, someone would have long ago written a refutation, given how many people engage in that fallacy and are convinced they are right. Hasn't happened, because the reasoning in the essay is sound.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
"As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved."So if you want to change it, you get consensus to change it. It works the same way as anything else in WP. I'm also familiar with the purpose of essays. When they are good and well-grounded they serve the purpose you state. Unfortunately, the reasoning is not sound, nor, for that matter, does it do a good job of explaining the position, relying instead on
"using emotive, even insulting language that generates heated responses and tends to derail discussions"as above. I get that you don't like CITEVAR and would apparently prefer a uniform system for all articles. But CITEVAR still clearly applies. GregJackP Boomer! 04:37, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi, is there a section anywhere in the MoS pages that deals with the disambiguation of people with the same name in article titles, e.g. the parts in brackets in "Joe Bloggs (actor)" and "Joes bloggs (politician)"? I can't seem to find it, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. 109.157.11.203 ( talk) 14:06, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
Anyway, in this particular extremely unusual case, the obvious answer is to disambiguate by including their middle names instead of some weird criterion like "born in Scotland", a much more obscure fact than the full name of the subject. WP:COMMONNAME, like all WP:POLICY that isn't dictated to us by WP:OFFICE, can be bent by WP:IAR when WP:COMMONSENSE requires it. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Proper noun#Merge?, which has been running for some time without closure, and which if closed right now would probably close without consensus. It needs a consensus one way or the other, as this proposed merge and rename has been raised (pro and con) many times, in multiple forums. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Hello, sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere. Is "articles" meant to be interpreted broadly to include talk pages? In other words, does the MOS apply to talk pages? -- Richardson mcphillips ( talk) 17:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
No, "articles" excludes talk pages. The MoS does not apply to talk pages. — Quondum 17:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Ok. This was posted on the Caitlyn Jenner page: This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to one of the subjects of this article and need help, please see this page. Is there a hierarchy of Wiki policies? -- Richardson mcphillips ( talk) 22:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
"A, or B, C, D, or E" is logically equivalent to "A, B, C, D, or E". "A, and B, and C, and D, and E" is logically equivalent to "A, B, C, D, and E". Is there something in MOS that prefers the latter? FloraWilde ( talk) 15:56, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It was the highly edit-warred alternative medicine article, where there are some editors who use the alternative thinking styles in their logic. (One of the sources is titled "Alternative medicine and common errors in reasoning".) I made the change to the simpler style, [1] with a talkpage quote of Darkfrog24 above, "It's one of those things that's so obvious that we don't have a rule about it", and so far there are no objections. Thanks. FloraWilde ( talk) 23:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm not huge on the serial comma after D, but that's about as neverending as the God debate. The MOS (basically) says omit them unless doing so causes ambiguity. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:46, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
And be consistent throughout the article. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
PS: Any "A or B, C, or D" structure should definitely use the serial/Oxford comma, even if you would not use one in an "A or B, C or D" case. Because we have no idea what someone will insert in mid-sentence later (hopefully with a one-detail citation, so they don't falsify any existing citation for the rest of the list), I lean more and more toward recommending to always use the serial comma, though I don't use it in my off-WP writing (or even in talk pages here) unless it's necessary in a particular case to avoid ambiguity or other confusion. It's taken me about two weeks to rather painlessly shift my in-article comma style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:04, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Why does Wikipedia break it's otherwise good rules about the most common and recognizable name when referring to people who wish to change their genders? Bruce Jenner is still known more commonly as "Bruce" than "Caitlyn". Everyone who recognizes the name "Caitlyn Jenner" will also recognize the name "Bruce Jenner". Many people who recognize the name "Bruce Jenner" will have no clue who "Caitlyn Jenner" is. I understand that people want to try to be nice to transexuals, but creating a useful encyclopedia is more important. Any website that has an article called Nigger cannot say that is is trying to avoid being offensive to minority groups. Bobby Martnen ( talk) 23:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
There is an issue that has come up in discussion at Talk:Caitlyn Jenner, regarding the application of MOS:IDENTITY in regard to personal names. Currently, MOS:IDENTITY says that there is an exception for gender identity in regard to "pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example 'man/woman', 'waiter/waitress', 'chairman/chairwoman')". The list of examples that is given does not include an example for the personal name of a person – e.g., " Charles" versus " Charlotte" (or, in that instance, " Bruce" versus " Caitlyn"). Should we add a personal name to the list of examples, to help clarify that this issue is intended to fall within the scope of "gendered nouns"? Is this phrase actually intended to cover personal names? — BarrelProof ( talk) 23:25, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree with BarrelProof. Common sense should be used in cases like Bruce/Chelsea Jenner. He competed under his birth name in the men's Olympics, so per the principle of least surprise, we should use that name there. That way, there is accord with sources. Presumably, a less politically charged example would be someone competing under a maiden name. I leave it to the sports folks to give a list of examples. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
How can you say that, it is garbage, he was a man when he competed in the olympics, that was the correct pronoun at the time, you can't change history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.236.81 ( talk) 11:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Red link#Proposal to permit redlinks in navigation templates; subsection is at Wikipedia talk:Red link#Revision proposal. A WP:Permalink for the matter is here. Flyer22 ( talk) 20:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Is "drink-driving" a typo for "drunk-driving or UK English? [2] -- Guy Macon ( talk) 07:35, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I tweaked the lead a bit to close two gaping loopholes that people try to WP:GAME all the time: 1) The MOS applies to encyclopedic content not just in articles, but also in public-facing templates, category pages, and portals. 1b) It doesn't apply to talk pages, project pages, and user pages, so people can stop squabbling over that idea. This should prevent a large number of minor disputes. They don't last long, but they're frequent enough to be a drain on productivity. 2) The main MOS page has precedence, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy, over not just its own subpages but any conflicting style advice given in other guidelines and in wikiproject advice pages. Not policies, of course, but we actually sculpt policies like WP:AT carefully so that the directly defer to MOS on style matters already. This latter loophole has been used, unsuccessfully but incredibly disruptively, to WP:POVFORK various guideline and project advice pages from MOS, and that really needs to stop.
These wording tweaks don't actually change anything at all, they simply state the scope and policy situation more clearly, to forestall more disruptive nonsense of both kinds.
Also cleaned up some wording and flow problems, by clarifying some lead clauses, removing redundant phrasing, and keeping related sentences together. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
The proposed change
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Rationale [originally posted above]: Anti- WP:GAME fix. The MOS applies to encyclopedic content not just in articles, but also in public-facing templates, category pages, and portals. It doesn't apply to talk pages, project pages, and user pages, so people can stop squabbling over that idea. This should prevent a large number of minor disputes. They don't last long, but they're frequent enough to be a drain on productivity. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Don't revert a large edit because ... you don't have time to rewrite the whole thing.' — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:30, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I do understand that some people are perceiving a policy change here, but I've already demonstrated repeatedly that it's not. It seems to me that no matter how many times it's explained to various people in the ... MOS skeptics? ... camp that a description of the policy status quo isn't a change in policy, they just don't understand the reasoning, or refuse to accept it (more likely), yet can't provide a refutation (or provide a weak one that is in turn easily refuted), so they go right back to their original assertion. At some point we just have to move on, whether everyone wants to ride the float or not. I'm all for working out concerns and problems, but they have to actually be articulable and articulated, cogently, or there's no way to address them. Even BRD makes it really clear that when a discussion is going nowhere, it's time to be bold again and see if new eyes and minds have arrived and some progress will be made.
PS: Essays are collections of reasoning, not rules. "I don't agree with [that essay]" means "I don't agree with the reasoning in it". So, what reasoning exactly at DONTREVERT do you disagree with? Have you tried to improve the page? (It does badly need copyediting.) I'm hard pressed to find any reasoning in it that doesn't actually fit how consensus works on Wikipedia. If it were worded better would you agree with it? Surely you don't refuse to accept any opinions about reverts and consensus other than your own? PPS: I understood what you meant by policy, and I too am tired of people jumping on that word and flipping out. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
The proposed change (underlined here for clarity)
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Rationale [originally posted above]: Anti- WP:GAME fix. The main MOS page has precedence, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy, over not just its own subpages but any conflicting style advice given in other guidelines and in wikiproject advice pages. Not policies, of course, but we actually sculpt policies like WP:AT carefully so that they directly defer to MOS on style matters already. This latter loophole has been used, unsuccessfully but incredibly disruptively, to WP:POVFORK various guideline and project advice pages from MOS, and that really needs to stop. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
"The community is more likely to accept edits to policy if they are made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others,"supports such a claim to precedence, on the contrary, it calls out for more input. At the very least, a widely published RfC. GregJackP Boomer! 07:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
It makes no sense at all for the MoS's presumed "authority" to be based on the MoS itself.' It's not, of course; it's based on the clear, directly quoted wording of WP:CONLEVEL policy, and various ArbCom decisions (e.g. WP:ARBATC and WP:RFAR/DDL) that we probably don't need to quote in the guideline. (I had long thought that the policy pointer was sufficient to get the point across, without including legalistic ArbCom stuff.) MOS isn't "claiming" anything. This precedence already exists. WP:BIRDCON confirms this in no uncertain terms. Camps of editors cannot go off and make up their own rules in defiance of site-wide policies or guidelines. MOS is WP's style manual, and if someone doesn't agree with something it advises, the process for resolving that is to seek consensus to change it, not to run off an write your own topical anti-MOS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:14, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
11.4) The Manual of Style is a set of guidelines governing appropriate editing on Wikipedia. The Manual is prescriptive in areas that enjoy broad consensus; where there is no such consensus, the available options are described, but no prescriptive guidance is provided. Editors are expected to follow the Manual of Style, although it is not policy and editors may deviate from it with good reason."
13.1) A guideline such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates can be changed by the Wikipedia community; see the policy on how policies are decided, which provides for consensus decision-making by those users who are familiar with the matter."
There's no mystery here, and no "spin". It's simply logically impossible under what ArbCom has ruled, and under
WP:CONLEVEL policy, for it not to be true that MOS has precedence, on style matters, over other pages (below the level of official policies), or MOS would not be Wikipedia's style manual. Is ArbCom lying? Of course not. MOS is WP's style manual. It says so (as a matter of scope definition, not "authority"); ArbCom says so;
WP:POLICY processes, that led to its formation over years by innumerable Wikipedians, tell us this is so; and CONLEVEL policy tells us we can't go make up our own style guideline to contradict MOS; meanwhile ArbCom reaffirms that rules in guidelines and policies are changed by community consensus discussions, not by defiance. If you want to propose that MOS somehow isn't a real WP guideline, feel free to propose that it be marked {{
Historical}}
. PS: the "users who are familiar with the matter
" ArbCom observation speaks directly to your "consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide" comment. You surely know by now that all consensus on WP is established by editors with enough interest in the matter to weigh in on it. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
05:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
we should first check all the sub-pages in question to see make sure that the MoS contains the best, most correct and most practical rules. This is more than a change in text; this is a project.' All already been done. MOS is centralized because we already went through that process, after VP discussion, several years ago, and it was done as a project ( WP:WikiProject Manual of Style). So, great idea, but "been there, done that". Hecklers who whine "no one should bother" with style/title rule are of no concern as a "threat", though I want very much to resolve the issues they're having with MOS and AT, without undermining their purpose. There are not enough naysayers to dump the site-wide consensus that MOS at AT are both centralized, that they are a guideline and a policy, respectively, and that they are our singular WP style manual and WP article titles policy, not alternatives among an array of optional approaches. It would be productive, not disruptive, in a roundabout way, if they would just get on with it and try to kill MOS and the parts of AT they don't like, so that proposal can crash spectacularly, and we can get back to the business as usual of writing the encyclopedia. This endless firehose of noise from a handful of MOS and AT opponents really just has to be turned off.
PS: I'm not sure why you say "we need to be strict about what goes into the MoS and how it is enforced", when you keep ending up at AN / ANI for evading MOS, and then complain about enforcement. Cf. my earlier citation of the old saying "Everyone is for free speech, as long as it's theirs." MOS shouldn't have "strict rules" that "are enforced". It should have clear, consistent rules that best serve the encyclopedia's needs, and which are followed because we agree that having a set of rules is more important that personally all getting every single rule exactly as we'd prefer it. It's a maturity and collegial behavior issue. Imagine what football would be like if ever player stopped playing to try to change a rule in the middle of the game, or just ignored it without good reason any time they'd like. Welcome to Wikipedia as of 16 June 2015. I certainly agree that "we should... provide the Wikieditors with everything they need to do their best—even if some people think that intra-article consistency and proper capitalization are dumb." I just wish you agreed with this principle when it was about style nit-picks you think are dumb or which aren't the "right version". Maybe your statements in this section are motion in this direction? If so, I welcome that. I also agree with the gist of your analogy to people showing up at articles on TV shows or insect species (aside from the fact that core content policies don't apply to Wikipedia-namespace pages). Yes, if we have a consensus to have a page, for a particular purpose and with a particular scope, "this page is pointless", and "there's no real consensus to have this", and similar sentiments don't carry any weight in discussions with regard to improving the contents or refining the scope of the page. I'm not really sure why people take the view that WP:IDONTLIKEIT-type reasons are valid as long as you apply them to a guideline page you hate. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't get your point about sentence case, niceness, and space. Double quotes could have been here for an arbitrary reason, too, and that would be fine. Lots of rules (not just in MOS) are arbitrary, and have to be if we want one rule instead of inconsistency. We don't impose one unless the inconsistency is problematic, but when we do then it's one rule, arbitrary or not. (And as you know, I don't mean "rule" in some kind of formal policy sense). I believe you that you believe in MOS; see your talk page. I look forward to finding common ground somewhere. Hecklers: I'm not worried about them. They didn't derail the "MOS help desk" stuff; even I !voted against those proposals, after initially being interested in them. The opposes changed my mind. It's fine for us to say people can ask questions here, but we wouldn't be telling people all over that they need to come here. It's more that we can't keep people from asking such questions here and we do a serviceable job answering. It's fine for this to be an informal role.
I share your concern that admins are not discounting WP:JUSTAVOTE noise in RfCs. Its becoming an increasing problem all over, though I think it affects MOS and AT matters more strongly, because a significant number of admins are themselves in the MOS/AT critics camp. Just a fact we have to work with. Finally, on ANI: I cited two style-related cases, but whatever. The point wasn't "you've been to ANI, so you must be bad". I have too. It was the topic of the the ANI cases. Seven years later, you're still riding the same warhorse. WP:TE was written specifically with that kind of never-give-up stuff in mind. Some issues you just have to let go of. If I could get my way in MOS there would e at least 50 things I would change, and plenty of things I'd change in various policies, but it's good that I don't get my way. This isn't SMcCandlishPedia. And over time you actually get used to and change your mind about things. My own usage has changed in quite a few ways based on my editing here. But not all. I will never, ever, ever use spaces instead of commas in long numbers, and off-WP I would ever write "J.R.R. Tolkien" as "J. R. R. Tolkien". I think it's pointless, distracting, and a pain in the butt, but it's MOS's rule, it doesn't really hurt anything, some people to expect it, and it's more important that we have an arbitrary rule on this with one answer, than have a "do whatever you want" mess. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Get on with it: @ Trovatore, GregJackP, and Blueboar: I repeat:'The ArbCom observation speaks directly to your "consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide" comment.' Are you just not reading? We have a centralized manual of style. This is a fact. Policy says so, and refers to MOS specifically, all the time constantly. ArbCom says so. The Guideline tag on it that's been there forever and ever says so. The consensus to consolidate MOS better, which was advertised all over the place, including WP:VP, says so. Most importantly, the fact that the entire community except for a tiny handful of MOS naysayers treat it as our unified style guide says so. That's consensus. If you want to change that consensus, feel free to go to WP:VPPRO and propose a decentralization of Wikipedia's style guidance. But stop pretending that we don't already have a centralized style guide. And your reasoning doesn't fly: Editors who don't care about or care for a centralized style guide are not underrepresented here; they're overrepresented, causing constant text-walls of invective because they don't or won't recognize that style guidance is centralized here. And they disruptively blanket revert anything that doesn't help them decentralize without consensus. Sound familiar? Of course WP:CONLEVEL doesn't specifically mention MOS by name; it addresses all site-wide policies and guidelines as a class. Do you really expect it to list every such page? If you do, then you can probably just transclude the existing lists of policies and guidelines, which I'm sure someone will revert you on immediately since that would be pointless. If you somehow don't believe that MOS is "really" a WP guideline, then go to WP:VPPRO and propose that it be marked "historical". Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
No one made a claim ArbCom was setting a precedent. You're confusing ArbCom making a decision, about what is (a finding of fact) and what will happen (remedies) vs. it setting precedent (which it does not do) that binds it from changing its mind in later cases, or prevents WP consensus from changing in ways that moot its prior decisions. ArbCom is modeled on civil law not common law. The idea that "ArbCom doesn't set precedent" means that nothing ArbCom says really matters, is nonsense, or WP:AE would not exist.
Belief that MOS is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS stems from simply not reading that policy carefully. It distinguishes site-wide polices and guidelines from individuals or groups of editors, like wikiprojects, making up rules against them or ignoring them out of preference. MOS is a site-wide guideline, so it's in first category. Basic logic. If you really believe MOS is not a Wikipedia-wide consensus, you know where WP:VPPRO is. If you three really believe that misc. comments of "disdain" at VP about MOS/AT represent some new wave of consensus change against centralized style and naming rules, then just go prove it. If you think MOS isn't "really" a guideline, or AT isn't "actually" a policy, go prove it. And be willing to accept the result when your demotion proposal doesn't go the way you'd like. That means an indefinite cessation of all this disruptive ant-MOS and anti-AT activism. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
If you have nothing more to add to anyone else's comment, you should not be discouraged from saying so. Delete per nom. or Keep per User:Username are not useless gestures that add nothing constructive to a debate, especially if an issue is contested. To announce that these opinions should be preemptively disregarded is to ignore the fact that they do constitute evidence of consensus.Hasn't this been explained to you before? Like multiple times? Plus, where is says "per my above comments," it means to look up and read what I have already stated. There is no need to repeatedly post the same thing over and over again. GregJackP Boomer! 02:44, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I made the following tweaks (to my own examples, and in response to a clarification request on my talk page), but someone reverted it in a spate of reverts of everything I'd added any time recently, and with a WP:IDONTLIKEIT-style non-rationale. I'm curious whether there is any actual principled objection to this cleanup and small addition; or more constructively, whether anyone has any ideas for even better wording. (If you want to vent at me personally for something then please use my talk page. Reverts are not a means for expressing inter-editor personality issues.) PS: I made minor copyedits to the "New" version, below, to use more flexible wording in "Styles may be mixed, but should not be when juxtaposed" (vs. "Styles can be mixed, but not when juxtabposd"), and to replace "Siskel and Ebert" with "The reviewer" to shorten the examples and now show how old I am. ;-)
Old | New |
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Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms often wrongly implies to many readers something doubtful regarding the material being quoted (where weasel words such as "supposedly" or "so called" might be implied).
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Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can often seem to imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words, like "supposedly" or "so called", might be inferred.
Styles may be mixed, but should not be when juxtaposed:
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Is there a way to make it even better? I'm hard pressed to think of a content-related outright objection to it, but I'm not the world's best example-maker, and someone may have better cases to use. PS: We should not shorten "The reviewer" to "The review"; inanimate things do not have opinions and do not take actions. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:46, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
#1 – All of those features are intentional, including the "black" (actually grey - adjust your monitor calibration?); that's template {{
xtn}}
, which means a neutral or kinda-ok example, neither red nor green. Good, better and still better are self-explanatory, but if we're labeling something as not good, it can be helpful to say why ("inconsistent", "unnecessary"). People don't really ask why X is good usually, they want to know why Y is deprecated, especially if it's something they would maybe do. Anyway, I've never heard of any confusion resulting from the use of {{xtn}}
. This stuff about the color is an objection to how MOS's examples are written systematically, not about the text at issue here, which is consistent with how {{
xt}}
, {{
!xt}}
, and {{
xtn}}
are used throughout the whole thing. I see what you mean about "good", but none of the example use "good" at all. I also like to keep MOS imperative, but it is intentionally not imperative where things are a judgement call. This too is a matter of how the entire MOS is written; it's not to do with these examples. I don't think we should try to change how MOS is written and colored here.
#2 – There are style guides and writing guides that cover all sorts of quotation mark usage rules, but there's no relevance for them here; MOS already has a rule about when to use quotation marks, these are just examples illustrating judgement to exercise. I'm using my own wording to give common-sense, simple-as-possible examples. I'll continue answering this in detail, but I again feel that you have not carefully read the rationale, since many of the questions you ask are already explained. Moving on: These are not a grammar rules example; they're "don't confuse and visually abuse our readers" illustrations. It's a pretty compact package for all it delivers. There is no style guide to quote that will lay out these exact things as "rules" that can be quoted. It's just specific bad cases I run into fairly often, that are an endemic product of Wikipedia because of the frequency with which it quotes highly truncated excerpts. I'm drawing my own conclusions, yes: A ", ..." construction is a readability issue. A this then later "that and that"" construction is no less readable than "this", "this", and "this", but is less choppy, and in the case provided also adds conceptual clarity by not mix-and-matching unrelated things. The point of the example, however, is not to give that kind of writing advice, but to give an example, at all, of why the two styles could be mixed but not juxtaposed. So, it's necessary for that case to have a reason, to actually be an example that's plausible; I manufactured one by making the first descriptive term unrelated to the other two, thus a reason to separate them and use the non-juxtaposed different styles. Seriously, I did think pretty hard about this. :-) Re: "not wrong": I agree, but we aren't telling them no to do it; you're objecting to something that's not happening. We're using it as an illustration of one of two common cases of the juxtaposition in question, and also incidentally saying which is iffy, visually. There is no "never!" with any of the the non-red example. {{xt}}
means "definitely OK to use", and grey means neither preferred nor deprecated, a standard MOS usage for these template. They were devised specifically for MOS for this purpose (I know, since I created them, or most of them, I forget). One is just a bit sub-optimal, thus grey. There is no style guide to quote for examples that pertain to what is best in a case of Wikipedia-specific editorial considerations. It's not a reasonable request. MOS does not require or make much use of any kind of sources for the construction of any common-sense editing examples. If your sourcing expectations were applied to all of MOS we'd have to delete about 99% of it. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
00:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I've restored the clarifications of the existing material, since I wrote it unclearly the first time, someone on my talk page requested the clarification and thanked me for it when I made it, and no one has raised any cogent concerns about this clarification, despite all the above verbiage, and despite the fact that a revert of the added examples also undid that clarification. I have not restored the added examples since they're still (nominally) at issue here. Are we good with that? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:33, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I ask if that conversation regards this page. They referred me here based on that WP:MOSLOGO. -- IM-yb ( talk) 00:37, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
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 160 | ← | Archive 164 | Archive 165 | Archive 166 | Archive 167 | Archive 168 | → | Archive 170 |
Someone has just said that consensus trumps the Manual of Style. Is this true? 156.61.250.250 ( talk) 12:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
From MOS:PUNCT:
Where an apostrophe might otherwise be misinterpreted as Wiki markup, use the templates {{'}}, {{`}}, and {{'s}}, or use
< nowiki>
tags.
Straight quotation marks are easier to type and edit reliably regardless of computer configuration.
If we were using the curly apostrophe (and single quotation marks) everywhere, these cumbersome templates would not be needed at all. That’s a huge plus for “authorabilitiy”.
(Searches for Alzheimer’s disease will fail to find Alzheimer’s disease and vice versa on Internet Explorer)
This is not an argument to favor either curly or straight marks. It’s an argument to file bug reports for browsers to treat both the same. The same goes for the Wikimedia search engine.
So, the only remaining argument for preferring straight marks is ease of input:
Straight quotation marks are easier to type and edit reliably regardless of computer configuration
Considering autoformatting/autocorrection in Word etc., this could just as well be implemented in Visual Editor, this point is also very much moot. It comes down to this: one looks a bit better, the other is a bit easier to enter.
This doesn’t seem like being strong enough a reason to justify edits to transform a stable article from one style to another. Alas, that happens on a regular basis. So I’d like some backup to revert such minor changes without risking an edit war. Are you with me? — Christoph Päper 20:25, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
-- [[
User:Edokter]] {{
talk}}
21:05, 23 May 2015 (UTC)Do we "correct" the spelling in quotations to the ENGVAR of the article, in the manner that " trivial spelling and typographic errors should simply be corrected without comment"? As in, when an article in CanEng quotes an American critic ("in favor of this tatty fetish")—should that favor be "corrected" to favour? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 11:06, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
You wouldn't change a quote by a representative of Vauxhall saying " boot" to say "trunk", so don't change how they'd spell "colour" either. — sroc 💬 01:56, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
To clarify: I'm talking specifically about spelling, and not about vocabulary. What concerns me is the spelling inconsistency could attract gnomish "corrections", or come across to readers as sloppiness: it looks like a mistake. It's not plausible that a BrEng vocab in a quoted statement in a NAmEng article would come across as such a mistake—I don't think literature readers could be that ignorant. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 10:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
contains the phrase "than the section are you are reading now". for some reason I'm not sure of it can't be edited in the typical manner. Primergrey ( talk) 07:59, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
I have written this essay on how to avoid pet peeve wars: WP:No Pet Peeve Wars, some regulars here might find it interesting. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:12, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
It might be all the MoS-hate going on at the Village Pump right now, but I thought that essay had an overtone of "And style is not important enough to bother about anyway; stop caring about it." If that wasn't intentional, then a few tweaks might be in order. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 19:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
The discrepancy between our treatment of "prefixes" and "suffixes" (often elements of compounds rather than actual affixes) still strikes me as odd, as AFAIK is idiosyncratic to WP. Just came across the following in The Week, which attempts to be as accessible as possible:
— kwami ( talk) 17:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
There are a lot of articles on princes and so forth in monarchies that did/do not then exist. An example, picked more or less at random: Prince Pedro Gastão of Orléans-Braganza, the article about whom starts:
I confess that I don't understand the term "imperial house", but when this fellow was born there hadn't been any Brazilian monarchy for over two decades. The article does say that he was merely a "claimant", but the article title suggests that he actually was a prince, a notion that's simply delusional (however desirable you may think a return to monarchy might have been).
(Of course there are plenty of encyclopedic Princes who weren't/aren't really princes: not only Prince but also for example Prince Buster. The latter article should be so titled because that's the name by which Cecil Bustamente Campbell is known; obviously that article neither misleads the reader into thinking that he's a prince nor appears to support any delusion about Jamaican royalty.)
There seem to be scads of these articles. (To pluck another, more or less at random: Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia, born over three decades after Russia did away with its monarchy.) Should the titles of these articles parrot their biographees' claims? -- Hoary ( talk) 11:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
When formatting references I had always assumed that 'title case' was used for the titles of journals and books and that 'sentence case' was used for the titles of journal articles and book chapters. This is a style that is used by many scientific journals. I've now discovered that this choice is not explicitly specified in the manual of style which reads:
"The titles of articles, chapters, songs, television episodes, research papers and other short works are not italicized; they are enclosed in double quotation marks. Italics are not used for major revered religious works (the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud). Many of these items should also be in title case." (colour added)
So my question is, which of these items should be in title case? Or does WP:CITEVAR apply? Aa77zz ( talk) 16:48, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
MOS does not seem to apply to references using a style using these (such as BlueBook). In any case, changes to citation style should be made at WT:CITE, not here.. That doesn't address the question however. WP:CITEVAR applies. If your chosen citation style uses title case, then you use title case. If it uses sentence case, then you use that. If it uses italics or underlines, ditto. GregJackP Boomer! 23:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
<ref>"The unlightable beingness of bears", Jane Smith, Underwater Basketweaving Jnl, Jan 2016</ref>
). Per
WP:COMMONSENSE, it would also be reasonable to override CITEVAR for rational reasons, e.g. the first major contributor adding only one such citation, and not raising any objections after other editors added considerably more periodical citations using title case. We also often override ENGVAR for rational reasons, and we must not take "first major contributor" fetishism seriously. (This has been happening; I fairly often see attempts at
WP:RM to extend the "first major contributor" concept to all sorts of things, and this problem is growing not shrinking.)I would prefer if WP settled on "use title case for titles", and just left it at that. It would eliminate all such disputes. It's more important for the project to eliminate recurrent disputes that pointlessly waste editorial time and energy for no reader benefit, than to do what some particular camp stylistically prefers in "their" articles because some journals in their field use sentence case. It's yet another example of the WP:Specialist style fallacy in action. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
PS: I think you misapprehend the nature of WP:ESSAYs and why people mention them. No one is citing them as authoritative (or if they are, they are making a mistake, misunderstanding how WP:POLICY works). There is no assertion of "weight", and accusing me of making one is a straw man. People write essays to lay out frequently-repeated reasoning clearly, so they don't have to keep writing it out again and again every time the same issue comes up. That's all they are, and that's the only reason to link to one. If I or anyone else points to an essay, it means "this has already been addressed, and we don't need to rehash it at length here, unless we're adding something new." (As for that essay in particular, if the specialist style fallacy were not actually fallacious, someone would have long ago written a refutation, given how many people engage in that fallacy and are convinced they are right. Hasn't happened, because the reasoning in the essay is sound.) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
"As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved."So if you want to change it, you get consensus to change it. It works the same way as anything else in WP. I'm also familiar with the purpose of essays. When they are good and well-grounded they serve the purpose you state. Unfortunately, the reasoning is not sound, nor, for that matter, does it do a good job of explaining the position, relying instead on
"using emotive, even insulting language that generates heated responses and tends to derail discussions"as above. I get that you don't like CITEVAR and would apparently prefer a uniform system for all articles. But CITEVAR still clearly applies. GregJackP Boomer! 04:37, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi, is there a section anywhere in the MoS pages that deals with the disambiguation of people with the same name in article titles, e.g. the parts in brackets in "Joe Bloggs (actor)" and "Joes bloggs (politician)"? I can't seem to find it, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. 109.157.11.203 ( talk) 14:06, 31 May 2015 (UTC)
Anyway, in this particular extremely unusual case, the obvious answer is to disambiguate by including their middle names instead of some weird criterion like "born in Scotland", a much more obscure fact than the full name of the subject. WP:COMMONNAME, like all WP:POLICY that isn't dictated to us by WP:OFFICE, can be bent by WP:IAR when WP:COMMONSENSE requires it. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Proper noun#Merge?, which has been running for some time without closure, and which if closed right now would probably close without consensus. It needs a consensus one way or the other, as this proposed merge and rename has been raised (pro and con) many times, in multiple forums. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
Hello, sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere. Is "articles" meant to be interpreted broadly to include talk pages? In other words, does the MOS apply to talk pages? -- Richardson mcphillips ( talk) 17:03, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
No, "articles" excludes talk pages. The MoS does not apply to talk pages. — Quondum 17:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Ok. This was posted on the Caitlyn Jenner page: This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to one of the subjects of this article and need help, please see this page. Is there a hierarchy of Wiki policies? -- Richardson mcphillips ( talk) 22:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
"A, or B, C, D, or E" is logically equivalent to "A, B, C, D, or E". "A, and B, and C, and D, and E" is logically equivalent to "A, B, C, D, and E". Is there something in MOS that prefers the latter? FloraWilde ( talk) 15:56, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It was the highly edit-warred alternative medicine article, where there are some editors who use the alternative thinking styles in their logic. (One of the sources is titled "Alternative medicine and common errors in reasoning".) I made the change to the simpler style, [1] with a talkpage quote of Darkfrog24 above, "It's one of those things that's so obvious that we don't have a rule about it", and so far there are no objections. Thanks. FloraWilde ( talk) 23:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm not huge on the serial comma after D, but that's about as neverending as the God debate. The MOS (basically) says omit them unless doing so causes ambiguity. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:46, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
And be consistent throughout the article. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
PS: Any "A or B, C, or D" structure should definitely use the serial/Oxford comma, even if you would not use one in an "A or B, C or D" case. Because we have no idea what someone will insert in mid-sentence later (hopefully with a one-detail citation, so they don't falsify any existing citation for the rest of the list), I lean more and more toward recommending to always use the serial comma, though I don't use it in my off-WP writing (or even in talk pages here) unless it's necessary in a particular case to avoid ambiguity or other confusion. It's taken me about two weeks to rather painlessly shift my in-article comma style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:04, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Why does Wikipedia break it's otherwise good rules about the most common and recognizable name when referring to people who wish to change their genders? Bruce Jenner is still known more commonly as "Bruce" than "Caitlyn". Everyone who recognizes the name "Caitlyn Jenner" will also recognize the name "Bruce Jenner". Many people who recognize the name "Bruce Jenner" will have no clue who "Caitlyn Jenner" is. I understand that people want to try to be nice to transexuals, but creating a useful encyclopedia is more important. Any website that has an article called Nigger cannot say that is is trying to avoid being offensive to minority groups. Bobby Martnen ( talk) 23:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
There is an issue that has come up in discussion at Talk:Caitlyn Jenner, regarding the application of MOS:IDENTITY in regard to personal names. Currently, MOS:IDENTITY says that there is an exception for gender identity in regard to "pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example 'man/woman', 'waiter/waitress', 'chairman/chairwoman')". The list of examples that is given does not include an example for the personal name of a person – e.g., " Charles" versus " Charlotte" (or, in that instance, " Bruce" versus " Caitlyn"). Should we add a personal name to the list of examples, to help clarify that this issue is intended to fall within the scope of "gendered nouns"? Is this phrase actually intended to cover personal names? — BarrelProof ( talk) 23:25, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree with BarrelProof. Common sense should be used in cases like Bruce/Chelsea Jenner. He competed under his birth name in the men's Olympics, so per the principle of least surprise, we should use that name there. That way, there is accord with sources. Presumably, a less politically charged example would be someone competing under a maiden name. I leave it to the sports folks to give a list of examples. Sławomir Biały ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
How can you say that, it is garbage, he was a man when he competed in the olympics, that was the correct pronoun at the time, you can't change history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.236.81 ( talk) 11:52, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Red link#Proposal to permit redlinks in navigation templates; subsection is at Wikipedia talk:Red link#Revision proposal. A WP:Permalink for the matter is here. Flyer22 ( talk) 20:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Is "drink-driving" a typo for "drunk-driving or UK English? [2] -- Guy Macon ( talk) 07:35, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I tweaked the lead a bit to close two gaping loopholes that people try to WP:GAME all the time: 1) The MOS applies to encyclopedic content not just in articles, but also in public-facing templates, category pages, and portals. 1b) It doesn't apply to talk pages, project pages, and user pages, so people can stop squabbling over that idea. This should prevent a large number of minor disputes. They don't last long, but they're frequent enough to be a drain on productivity. 2) The main MOS page has precedence, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy, over not just its own subpages but any conflicting style advice given in other guidelines and in wikiproject advice pages. Not policies, of course, but we actually sculpt policies like WP:AT carefully so that the directly defer to MOS on style matters already. This latter loophole has been used, unsuccessfully but incredibly disruptively, to WP:POVFORK various guideline and project advice pages from MOS, and that really needs to stop.
These wording tweaks don't actually change anything at all, they simply state the scope and policy situation more clearly, to forestall more disruptive nonsense of both kinds.
Also cleaned up some wording and flow problems, by clarifying some lead clauses, removing redundant phrasing, and keeping related sentences together. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
The proposed change
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Rationale [originally posted above]: Anti- WP:GAME fix. The MOS applies to encyclopedic content not just in articles, but also in public-facing templates, category pages, and portals. It doesn't apply to talk pages, project pages, and user pages, so people can stop squabbling over that idea. This should prevent a large number of minor disputes. They don't last long, but they're frequent enough to be a drain on productivity. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
Don't revert a large edit because ... you don't have time to rewrite the whole thing.' — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 01:30, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I do understand that some people are perceiving a policy change here, but I've already demonstrated repeatedly that it's not. It seems to me that no matter how many times it's explained to various people in the ... MOS skeptics? ... camp that a description of the policy status quo isn't a change in policy, they just don't understand the reasoning, or refuse to accept it (more likely), yet can't provide a refutation (or provide a weak one that is in turn easily refuted), so they go right back to their original assertion. At some point we just have to move on, whether everyone wants to ride the float or not. I'm all for working out concerns and problems, but they have to actually be articulable and articulated, cogently, or there's no way to address them. Even BRD makes it really clear that when a discussion is going nowhere, it's time to be bold again and see if new eyes and minds have arrived and some progress will be made.
PS: Essays are collections of reasoning, not rules. "I don't agree with [that essay]" means "I don't agree with the reasoning in it". So, what reasoning exactly at DONTREVERT do you disagree with? Have you tried to improve the page? (It does badly need copyediting.) I'm hard pressed to find any reasoning in it that doesn't actually fit how consensus works on Wikipedia. If it were worded better would you agree with it? Surely you don't refuse to accept any opinions about reverts and consensus other than your own? PPS: I understood what you meant by policy, and I too am tired of people jumping on that word and flipping out. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:11, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
The proposed change (underlined here for clarity)
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Rationale [originally posted above]: Anti- WP:GAME fix. The main MOS page has precedence, as a matter of WP:CONLEVEL policy, over not just its own subpages but any conflicting style advice given in other guidelines and in wikiproject advice pages. Not policies, of course, but we actually sculpt policies like WP:AT carefully so that they directly defer to MOS on style matters already. This latter loophole has been used, unsuccessfully but incredibly disruptively, to WP:POVFORK various guideline and project advice pages from MOS, and that really needs to stop. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:06, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
"The community is more likely to accept edits to policy if they are made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others,"supports such a claim to precedence, on the contrary, it calls out for more input. At the very least, a widely published RfC. GregJackP Boomer! 07:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
It makes no sense at all for the MoS's presumed "authority" to be based on the MoS itself.' It's not, of course; it's based on the clear, directly quoted wording of WP:CONLEVEL policy, and various ArbCom decisions (e.g. WP:ARBATC and WP:RFAR/DDL) that we probably don't need to quote in the guideline. (I had long thought that the policy pointer was sufficient to get the point across, without including legalistic ArbCom stuff.) MOS isn't "claiming" anything. This precedence already exists. WP:BIRDCON confirms this in no uncertain terms. Camps of editors cannot go off and make up their own rules in defiance of site-wide policies or guidelines. MOS is WP's style manual, and if someone doesn't agree with something it advises, the process for resolving that is to seek consensus to change it, not to run off an write your own topical anti-MOS. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 05:14, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
11.4) The Manual of Style is a set of guidelines governing appropriate editing on Wikipedia. The Manual is prescriptive in areas that enjoy broad consensus; where there is no such consensus, the available options are described, but no prescriptive guidance is provided. Editors are expected to follow the Manual of Style, although it is not policy and editors may deviate from it with good reason."
13.1) A guideline such as Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates can be changed by the Wikipedia community; see the policy on how policies are decided, which provides for consensus decision-making by those users who are familiar with the matter."
There's no mystery here, and no "spin". It's simply logically impossible under what ArbCom has ruled, and under
WP:CONLEVEL policy, for it not to be true that MOS has precedence, on style matters, over other pages (below the level of official policies), or MOS would not be Wikipedia's style manual. Is ArbCom lying? Of course not. MOS is WP's style manual. It says so (as a matter of scope definition, not "authority"); ArbCom says so;
WP:POLICY processes, that led to its formation over years by innumerable Wikipedians, tell us this is so; and CONLEVEL policy tells us we can't go make up our own style guideline to contradict MOS; meanwhile ArbCom reaffirms that rules in guidelines and policies are changed by community consensus discussions, not by defiance. If you want to propose that MOS somehow isn't a real WP guideline, feel free to propose that it be marked {{
Historical}}
. PS: the "users who are familiar with the matter
" ArbCom observation speaks directly to your "consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide" comment. You surely know by now that all consensus on WP is established by editors with enough interest in the matter to weigh in on it. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
05:58, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
we should first check all the sub-pages in question to see make sure that the MoS contains the best, most correct and most practical rules. This is more than a change in text; this is a project.' All already been done. MOS is centralized because we already went through that process, after VP discussion, several years ago, and it was done as a project ( WP:WikiProject Manual of Style). So, great idea, but "been there, done that". Hecklers who whine "no one should bother" with style/title rule are of no concern as a "threat", though I want very much to resolve the issues they're having with MOS and AT, without undermining their purpose. There are not enough naysayers to dump the site-wide consensus that MOS at AT are both centralized, that they are a guideline and a policy, respectively, and that they are our singular WP style manual and WP article titles policy, not alternatives among an array of optional approaches. It would be productive, not disruptive, in a roundabout way, if they would just get on with it and try to kill MOS and the parts of AT they don't like, so that proposal can crash spectacularly, and we can get back to the business as usual of writing the encyclopedia. This endless firehose of noise from a handful of MOS and AT opponents really just has to be turned off.
PS: I'm not sure why you say "we need to be strict about what goes into the MoS and how it is enforced", when you keep ending up at AN / ANI for evading MOS, and then complain about enforcement. Cf. my earlier citation of the old saying "Everyone is for free speech, as long as it's theirs." MOS shouldn't have "strict rules" that "are enforced". It should have clear, consistent rules that best serve the encyclopedia's needs, and which are followed because we agree that having a set of rules is more important that personally all getting every single rule exactly as we'd prefer it. It's a maturity and collegial behavior issue. Imagine what football would be like if ever player stopped playing to try to change a rule in the middle of the game, or just ignored it without good reason any time they'd like. Welcome to Wikipedia as of 16 June 2015. I certainly agree that "we should... provide the Wikieditors with everything they need to do their best—even if some people think that intra-article consistency and proper capitalization are dumb." I just wish you agreed with this principle when it was about style nit-picks you think are dumb or which aren't the "right version". Maybe your statements in this section are motion in this direction? If so, I welcome that. I also agree with the gist of your analogy to people showing up at articles on TV shows or insect species (aside from the fact that core content policies don't apply to Wikipedia-namespace pages). Yes, if we have a consensus to have a page, for a particular purpose and with a particular scope, "this page is pointless", and "there's no real consensus to have this", and similar sentiments don't carry any weight in discussions with regard to improving the contents or refining the scope of the page. I'm not really sure why people take the view that WP:IDONTLIKEIT-type reasons are valid as long as you apply them to a guideline page you hate. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I don't get your point about sentence case, niceness, and space. Double quotes could have been here for an arbitrary reason, too, and that would be fine. Lots of rules (not just in MOS) are arbitrary, and have to be if we want one rule instead of inconsistency. We don't impose one unless the inconsistency is problematic, but when we do then it's one rule, arbitrary or not. (And as you know, I don't mean "rule" in some kind of formal policy sense). I believe you that you believe in MOS; see your talk page. I look forward to finding common ground somewhere. Hecklers: I'm not worried about them. They didn't derail the "MOS help desk" stuff; even I !voted against those proposals, after initially being interested in them. The opposes changed my mind. It's fine for us to say people can ask questions here, but we wouldn't be telling people all over that they need to come here. It's more that we can't keep people from asking such questions here and we do a serviceable job answering. It's fine for this to be an informal role.
I share your concern that admins are not discounting WP:JUSTAVOTE noise in RfCs. Its becoming an increasing problem all over, though I think it affects MOS and AT matters more strongly, because a significant number of admins are themselves in the MOS/AT critics camp. Just a fact we have to work with. Finally, on ANI: I cited two style-related cases, but whatever. The point wasn't "you've been to ANI, so you must be bad". I have too. It was the topic of the the ANI cases. Seven years later, you're still riding the same warhorse. WP:TE was written specifically with that kind of never-give-up stuff in mind. Some issues you just have to let go of. If I could get my way in MOS there would e at least 50 things I would change, and plenty of things I'd change in various policies, but it's good that I don't get my way. This isn't SMcCandlishPedia. And over time you actually get used to and change your mind about things. My own usage has changed in quite a few ways based on my editing here. But not all. I will never, ever, ever use spaces instead of commas in long numbers, and off-WP I would ever write "J.R.R. Tolkien" as "J. R. R. Tolkien". I think it's pointless, distracting, and a pain in the butt, but it's MOS's rule, it doesn't really hurt anything, some people to expect it, and it's more important that we have an arbitrary rule on this with one answer, than have a "do whatever you want" mess. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:56, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
Get on with it: @ Trovatore, GregJackP, and Blueboar: I repeat:'The ArbCom observation speaks directly to your "consensus of people specially interested in a centralized style guide" comment.' Are you just not reading? We have a centralized manual of style. This is a fact. Policy says so, and refers to MOS specifically, all the time constantly. ArbCom says so. The Guideline tag on it that's been there forever and ever says so. The consensus to consolidate MOS better, which was advertised all over the place, including WP:VP, says so. Most importantly, the fact that the entire community except for a tiny handful of MOS naysayers treat it as our unified style guide says so. That's consensus. If you want to change that consensus, feel free to go to WP:VPPRO and propose a decentralization of Wikipedia's style guidance. But stop pretending that we don't already have a centralized style guide. And your reasoning doesn't fly: Editors who don't care about or care for a centralized style guide are not underrepresented here; they're overrepresented, causing constant text-walls of invective because they don't or won't recognize that style guidance is centralized here. And they disruptively blanket revert anything that doesn't help them decentralize without consensus. Sound familiar? Of course WP:CONLEVEL doesn't specifically mention MOS by name; it addresses all site-wide policies and guidelines as a class. Do you really expect it to list every such page? If you do, then you can probably just transclude the existing lists of policies and guidelines, which I'm sure someone will revert you on immediately since that would be pointless. If you somehow don't believe that MOS is "really" a WP guideline, then go to WP:VPPRO and propose that it be marked "historical". Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
No one made a claim ArbCom was setting a precedent. You're confusing ArbCom making a decision, about what is (a finding of fact) and what will happen (remedies) vs. it setting precedent (which it does not do) that binds it from changing its mind in later cases, or prevents WP consensus from changing in ways that moot its prior decisions. ArbCom is modeled on civil law not common law. The idea that "ArbCom doesn't set precedent" means that nothing ArbCom says really matters, is nonsense, or WP:AE would not exist.
Belief that MOS is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS stems from simply not reading that policy carefully. It distinguishes site-wide polices and guidelines from individuals or groups of editors, like wikiprojects, making up rules against them or ignoring them out of preference. MOS is a site-wide guideline, so it's in first category. Basic logic. If you really believe MOS is not a Wikipedia-wide consensus, you know where WP:VPPRO is. If you three really believe that misc. comments of "disdain" at VP about MOS/AT represent some new wave of consensus change against centralized style and naming rules, then just go prove it. If you think MOS isn't "really" a guideline, or AT isn't "actually" a policy, go prove it. And be willing to accept the result when your demotion proposal doesn't go the way you'd like. That means an indefinite cessation of all this disruptive ant-MOS and anti-AT activism. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:09, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
If you have nothing more to add to anyone else's comment, you should not be discouraged from saying so. Delete per nom. or Keep per User:Username are not useless gestures that add nothing constructive to a debate, especially if an issue is contested. To announce that these opinions should be preemptively disregarded is to ignore the fact that they do constitute evidence of consensus.Hasn't this been explained to you before? Like multiple times? Plus, where is says "per my above comments," it means to look up and read what I have already stated. There is no need to repeatedly post the same thing over and over again. GregJackP Boomer! 02:44, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I made the following tweaks (to my own examples, and in response to a clarification request on my talk page), but someone reverted it in a spate of reverts of everything I'd added any time recently, and with a WP:IDONTLIKEIT-style non-rationale. I'm curious whether there is any actual principled objection to this cleanup and small addition; or more constructively, whether anyone has any ideas for even better wording. (If you want to vent at me personally for something then please use my talk page. Reverts are not a means for expressing inter-editor personality issues.) PS: I made minor copyedits to the "New" version, below, to use more flexible wording in "Styles may be mixed, but should not be when juxtaposed" (vs. "Styles can be mixed, but not when juxtabposd"), and to replace "Siskel and Ebert" with "The reviewer" to shorten the examples and now show how old I am. ;-)
Old | New |
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Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms often wrongly implies to many readers something doubtful regarding the material being quoted (where weasel words such as "supposedly" or "so called" might be implied).
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Concise opinions that are not overly emotive can often be reported with attribution instead of direct quotation. Use of quotation marks around simple descriptive terms can often seem to imply something doubtful regarding the material being quoted; sarcasm or weasel words, like "supposedly" or "so called", might be inferred.
Styles may be mixed, but should not be when juxtaposed:
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Is there a way to make it even better? I'm hard pressed to think of a content-related outright objection to it, but I'm not the world's best example-maker, and someone may have better cases to use. PS: We should not shorten "The reviewer" to "The review"; inanimate things do not have opinions and do not take actions. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 11:46, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
#1 – All of those features are intentional, including the "black" (actually grey - adjust your monitor calibration?); that's template {{
xtn}}
, which means a neutral or kinda-ok example, neither red nor green. Good, better and still better are self-explanatory, but if we're labeling something as not good, it can be helpful to say why ("inconsistent", "unnecessary"). People don't really ask why X is good usually, they want to know why Y is deprecated, especially if it's something they would maybe do. Anyway, I've never heard of any confusion resulting from the use of {{xtn}}
. This stuff about the color is an objection to how MOS's examples are written systematically, not about the text at issue here, which is consistent with how {{
xt}}
, {{
!xt}}
, and {{
xtn}}
are used throughout the whole thing. I see what you mean about "good", but none of the example use "good" at all. I also like to keep MOS imperative, but it is intentionally not imperative where things are a judgement call. This too is a matter of how the entire MOS is written; it's not to do with these examples. I don't think we should try to change how MOS is written and colored here.
#2 – There are style guides and writing guides that cover all sorts of quotation mark usage rules, but there's no relevance for them here; MOS already has a rule about when to use quotation marks, these are just examples illustrating judgement to exercise. I'm using my own wording to give common-sense, simple-as-possible examples. I'll continue answering this in detail, but I again feel that you have not carefully read the rationale, since many of the questions you ask are already explained. Moving on: These are not a grammar rules example; they're "don't confuse and visually abuse our readers" illustrations. It's a pretty compact package for all it delivers. There is no style guide to quote that will lay out these exact things as "rules" that can be quoted. It's just specific bad cases I run into fairly often, that are an endemic product of Wikipedia because of the frequency with which it quotes highly truncated excerpts. I'm drawing my own conclusions, yes: A ", ..." construction is a readability issue. A this then later "that and that"" construction is no less readable than "this", "this", and "this", but is less choppy, and in the case provided also adds conceptual clarity by not mix-and-matching unrelated things. The point of the example, however, is not to give that kind of writing advice, but to give an example, at all, of why the two styles could be mixed but not juxtaposed. So, it's necessary for that case to have a reason, to actually be an example that's plausible; I manufactured one by making the first descriptive term unrelated to the other two, thus a reason to separate them and use the non-juxtaposed different styles. Seriously, I did think pretty hard about this. :-) Re: "not wrong": I agree, but we aren't telling them no to do it; you're objecting to something that's not happening. We're using it as an illustration of one of two common cases of the juxtaposition in question, and also incidentally saying which is iffy, visually. There is no "never!" with any of the the non-red example. {{xt}}
means "definitely OK to use", and grey means neither preferred nor deprecated, a standard MOS usage for these template. They were devised specifically for MOS for this purpose (I know, since I created them, or most of them, I forget). One is just a bit sub-optimal, thus grey. There is no style guide to quote for examples that pertain to what is best in a case of Wikipedia-specific editorial considerations. It's not a reasonable request. MOS does not require or make much use of any kind of sources for the construction of any common-sense editing examples. If your sourcing expectations were applied to all of MOS we'd have to delete about 99% of it. —
SMcCandlish ☺
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¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼
00:28, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
I've restored the clarifications of the existing material, since I wrote it unclearly the first time, someone on my talk page requested the clarification and thanked me for it when I made it, and no one has raised any cogent concerns about this clarification, despite all the above verbiage, and despite the fact that a revert of the added examples also undid that clarification. I have not restored the added examples since they're still (nominally) at issue here. Are we good with that? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:33, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
I ask if that conversation regards this page. They referred me here based on that WP:MOSLOGO. -- IM-yb ( talk) 00:37, 20 June 2015 (UTC)