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After this:
A sentence that occurs within brackets in the course of another sentence does not generally have its first word capitalized just because it starts a sentence.
Comes this:
The enclosed sentence may have a question mark or exclamation mark added, but not a period.: ... Alexander then conquered (who would have believed it?) most of the known world.
It doesn't seem to serve any purpose here, since we would never use a construction like this in our articles (with a question mark or an exclamation point). This appears to be WP:CREEP added by someone trying to make MoS a general-English style guide for the world (i.e., a how-to article) rather than Wikipedia's guide to writing Wikipedia articles in Wikipedia's voice. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
I remember once reading an MOS about the lengths of sections within an article, i.e. that they shouldn't be too short or too long, but I can't find such. Can anyone help me out? — fourthords | =Λ= | 17:29, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Per MOS:NBSP we should Always insert hard/thin spaces symbolically, never by entering them as literal characters entered from the keyboard. I guess that also inserting them as invisible special unicode characters (es. U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE) should be avoided, right? Can we be more explicit about it? -- Basilicofresco ( msg) 10:41, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 
in place of
or {{
nbsp}}
? If so, then why would you do that? If not, what are you getting at? --
Deacon Vorbis (
talk) 14:38, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 
is being observed in the wild, we don't need to further bloat guidelines warning against it.
E
Eng 14:56, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 
or
. We don't want people to use the raw glyph because when that's done, no one can actually tell it's being done. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:09, 9 September 2017 (UTC)Hi, I don't know if someone can point me in the right direction. I was copy editing a video game article and encountered the word 'mediaeval', in place of medieval. The article also contains 'reflexion' and 'connexion', instead of the more common terms. Now after doing some googling, it appears that these are legitimate, if not very widely used, alternate spellings of words. They are maybe more associated with British English, but I don't believe that any of these spellings are more common than their standard alternatives. Do we have any relevant policies or guidelines that recommend using, all things being equal, a non-archaic spelling when available? Should there be? I understand that in some cases the article content might mean that using a less common form would be less confusing for the reader because it would introduce consistency, but I can't really see the benefit of using weirder spellings just because they exist. On a personal note, I'd never encountered reflexion or connexion before and I'm British and I actually misunderstood what reflexion meant in the context of this article. There are many readers of the English Wikipedia with larger vocabularies than mine, but there are also those with smaller ones and I think we should try to write plainly where possible. Apologies if this is a long answered and addressed question, but I find navigating through the MOS a bit of a nightmare. Scribolt ( talk) 10:56, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Unproductive and off-topic
WP:ASPERSIONS about another editor do not belong here.
If you can
diff sufficient evidence to demonstrate a case of actionable disruptive edtiting, the proper venue is
WP:ANI. |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
|
Folks, can you please stop bashing the editor and focus on the actual MOS question: whether it is or is not permissible to use spellings like "mediaeval", "reflexion", and "connexion" in articles? How about if no one objects? How about if some other editors do object? As for the person you are talking about, I was just discussing the issue at his talk page and suggested bringing the discussion here (not knowing there was already a discussion here) so you can expect him here shortly. You might keep in mind that he is a human being with feelings. -- MelanieN ( talk) 22:00, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
There is a draft proposal at WP:Naming conventions (identity), which is not a naming convention at all but a general style guide, a much-expanded MOS:IDENTITY. Virtually nothing in it is article-titles-specific, so the proposed guidelines belong in MoS. Some of them aren't even applicable to titles at all under any normal circumstances. It even starts out with "When in doubt, or when editing a controversial article, take the time to read the article's talk page before editing", which is article content-editing advice and is unrelated to titles (which are created with first edit and changed by WP:RM process). Much of it is about how write to lead sections of bios.
Several obvious options:
{{
Main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Sexuality, ethnicity, and identity}}
to cross-reference people to where the broader relevant material is. Some cleanup of the new material will be required. [Controversial or policy-conflicting wording would not be merged.]{{
Rejected}}
[might entail a rename so no one is confused that it's actually a guideline]{{
essay}}
[would probably also entail a rename]{{
historical}}
(extended back and forth can go in previous or next section)
{{
Rejected}}
, and redirect the original name to
WP:Naming conventions (people). To the extent it has good ideas in it, several of them are already covered at other pages, and those that potentially should be integrated into a guideline can be proposed and discussed one at a time on their individual merits. It is not an {{
Essay}}
, since it doesn't present a particular viewpoint about a subject, but a list of proposed line-item rules about unrelated subjects. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:20, 13 September 2017 (UTC)I think a lot of what's been drafted at "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" is worth including; it's just misnamed/placed, and almost completely unexamined by the community (and a few points might also be pulled from the misleadingly named but pretty well-written WP:PROJPAGE essay at WP:WikiProject LGBT studies/Guidelines). It might require multiple RfCs to get the proposed guideline additions accepted site-wide, though many are already de facto consensus. E.g., "Do not call more attention to a person's identity labels than is strictly necessary" is a very good way to put the vague rule of thumb that's been hammered out in thousands of requested-move, lead-wording, and infobox-parameter debates over the last decade+, and is also the central premise of MOS:FLAGS.
There's also a potential WP:CONSENSUS problem here. To make even rather minor changes to MOS:IDENTITY required some long and heated RfCs at WP:Village pump (policy). While I'm sure it's not the intent, quietly drafting a detailed style-not-really-naming convention on a wide array of identity and sexuality issues has the effect of trying to do an end-run around something we already know is going to require a great deal of community discussion, redrafting, and consensus building. This quicker this is "mainstreamed" the better.
WP:NCP presently doesn't mention identity at all and should already have a cross-reference to MOS:IDENTITY, even if "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" didn't exist. If/when the new material is integrated, the lead-specific parts of it should be summarized as needed at MOS:LEAD.
The draft does have some "
WP:Writing policy is hard" issues. E.g., as of this writing, it says "For the guideline on referring to individuals by name, see
WP:COMMONNAME", which is wrong in three ways (the actual guideline is
MOS:BIO; COMMONNAME isn't about proper names or individuals, but about the best-sourced choice between multiple valid names (proper or otherwise), regardless of topic; and it isn't a guideline). A few bits (like "two-spirit") might never be consensus-accepted. There's advice it gives that will definitely need revision to be consistent with current policy, guidelines, and editorial consensus (e.g., there's an anti-COMMONNAME provision not long after the mention of that policy). Also has a handful of facts wrong ("Colored" and "Coloured" as ethnical labels aren't the same term). But most of it really does look like it's on the right track to me, which is why I'm inspired to suggest we start integrating it. Much of it seems overdue (some of it dates to 2005) as a codification of best practices, and little of it tries to change practice (those are the potentially controversial parts).
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:37, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
Historical}}
and/or {{
Failed proposal}}
. --
PBS (
talk) 10:54, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
Failed proposal}}
. If someone wants to reanimate the corps they can follow the guidance in {{
Failed proposal}}
. --
PBS (
talk) 09:38, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
Failed proposal}}
(a.k.a. {{
Rejected}}
), b) renaming it to match its content, and c) redirecting its old name to
WP:Naming conventions (people)? —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:37, 18 September 2017 (UTC)Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#RfC: Should the guideline discourage interleaving?. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 02:10, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles says to use italics for "long or epic poems", but quotation marks for "short poems". The problem is, though, that long and short can be kind of relative; " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is definitely longer in terms of line-count (though possibly not other measures -- I haven't checked) than the Song of Everlasting Regret, even though the latter is more "narrative" and so arguably more "epic". Our Bai Juyi article currently uses quotation marks for the name of the poem, which is at odds with the article on the poem itself; clearly someone interpreted MOS one way and someone else the other, and I'm not sure which is "right" (and so which article should be fixed). Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 13:16, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
This is really down to the judgement of an individual editor. I hope that everyone editing has enough common sense to work out what constitutes an epic poem. Anything which is not obviously epic should have its name inside quotes, not formatted in italics. Whether it was published as part of a collection, in a magazine/newspaper or on its own should give you a good idea as to how to format it.
–
Sb2001
talk page 18:19, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
See [3]. Basically, MOS:CHINA tells us to use hanyu pinyin ("Tang"), so the word is spelled consistently in the article's original prose that way, but the source I quoted uses Wade-Giles ("T'ang"). I'm wondering if I should replace the "T'ang" with a "[Tang]", similarly to how I replaced the "The" with "[t]he" to fit how I worked the quotation into the sentence".
Also, it's hypothetical, but if the answer to the above is "No", would that still be the case if it was more substantial, like if I was quoting a source that spelled the name of the article subject "Li Ho"?
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 11:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
I propose that the talk page of any MoS sub-page that hasn't had a post in a year or longer be redirected to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. This will reduce the scattershot nature of discussion, and reduce the likelihood and incidence of PoV-forking MoS pages from each other (among other WP:CONLEVEL problems), as well as reduce the need to cross-post notices about discussions. Any archives from such "sub-talk-pages" can be folded into the main MoS archives, which will enhance searchability. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:56, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
@ EEng: I'm not sure if I agree with you that MOS works remarkably well, or that it is stable to begin with (let alone how hard said stability might have been won). Yes, the main page might work well and have a hard-earned stability, but this is obviously not the case for the subpages that would be affected by this proposal.
I get the impression that your view that MOS works well and is stable is the view of someone who hasn't done much work on the subpages that are the ultimate target of this proposal, though I apologize if I am mistaken.
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 09:55, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyway, one of the ideas behind the talk-page consolidation is to draw more attention to subpages that badly need work. It would help in normalizing the country/culture-specific ones to cover the same cite things with a similar organization and approach, fur example. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
The idea's been discussed before; a proposal for an MoS noticeboard was rejected several years ago, and WP:WikiProject Manual of Style was created with something like this in mind, then went moribund. Ultimately, it's probably too late to do anything about the community's habit of using guideline talk pages as de facto noticeboards for discussion of compliance with and interpretation of them. There's also the issue that noticeboards have a tendency to be used as "enforcement and punishment" venues, not places to ask questions. On the other hand, we now have a profusion of noticeboards, down to a rather micro-topical level, where once there were only a few, for central policy concerns. So the community take on what a noticeboard is and is for may have shifted. In the end, I suspect it would just be a maintenance/bureaucracy layer – that we'd end up spending a lot of time moving posts from here to there, and that the incoming stream of "noticeboardy" posts here would not abate by much. I also suspect that part of the reason MoS is as stable as it is, is the level of churn here. It both keeps people (from all over the project) actively watchlisting, and informs the watchlisters (and more sporadic visitors) in hard-to-miss ways exactly how difficult it is to craft much less change this kind of policy (in the general policy analysis sense of the word) without unintended negative effects. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:08, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Are you aware of the stupid rule at the comics wiki-project MoS, which states that editors should use a hash rather than the numero sign. Is this not defeating the point of the MoS—consistency across the whole of WP? – Sb2001 talk page 19:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Throwing out the "#" style for comics wouldn't seem to buy us anything at all. Everyone understands what "#1" means just as everyone understands what "No. 1" or "no. 1" mean. The "#" style is just a convention with comics. I'm in favor of retaining it, since changing it here would mean many thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of conformance edits, while comics-oriented new editors would virtually always use # until "corrected", and it would just a pick a fight with a group of [hobbyist] specialists when no fight is needed. That last point is why this differs from some previous "gimme an exception" cases, even ones where we did in fact clean up thousands of cases (e.g. capitalization of common names of species). The "specialist style" that comics-oriented editors have been using is not in fact a specialist style but the dominant one in the context, and isn't being fallaciously imposed here, as its use is not confusing, misleading, or otherwise inappropriate for a general audience, unlike so many "WP must write exactly the same way people with my job title do, in the material they write for each other, or I will fight WP consensus unto death" demands we deal with here. WP also doesn't use the "#" glyph in its old role as the "pound sign", sticking by rule with the ISO symbol "lb". So, yeah, "ain't broke".
While yes (and contrary to the belief of some MoS detractors) the general purpose of MoS is cross-article consistency, this is not pursued in a robotic manner against
WP:Common sense. We have numerous variances that are field-specific (
MOS:NUM has quite a few itself, and all the various topical MoS pages have more, though keeping them from wandering off into specalized-style-fallacy territory is a constant low-key effort. It's sufficient that articles be consistent between each other to the extent practical, within a category. What we don't want is to see half the comics articles using "#" and half of them using "No."/"no.", or worse yet for the style to wander in the same article. A good comparison is the use of v. rather than vs. in a legal context, while we use vs. in all other contexts (when versus is abbreviated at all). The real world (in English, anyway) really does prefer v. in legal cases – including in non-specialist works like newspapers – and writers/editors on things like sports really do prefer vs., even in the same publication as an article using v. for a legal case. While we could impose one spelling for "consistency obsession" reasons – as we could with "No." – that would basically be language-change
activism which isn't what we're here for.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
...
(…
), and the pre-superscripted 2
character (²
). Most publications that use numero do it as no.
or No.
, not as №
. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:32, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Side comment: this piece (on topic: uses "No 10" by itself in reference to the PM's office) makes me wonder if we can have an encyclopedic article on the cats of 10 Downing Street. People keep writing about them, going all the way back to the early 20th century, as I discovered while working on the article Manx cat. Heh. We have some separate articles on various US presidents' dogs, but I wonder if they wouldn't be better combined into a single piece on presidential pooches. {end whimsy mode}
In more general terms, the supposition that "[t]he US tends to use a hash (#)" isn't accurate, aside from maybe how individuals write online. Some British writers (the ones following Oxford rather than British-press style about when to drop "." from abbreviations) will also spell it "No." or sometimes (not for an address) "no." The British press are not unanimous in their "death to full points" march, anyway; see "No. 1" used by the BBC here (pp. 76, 96). One can also find British publications actually using the numero symbol, if you dig around, but it seems to be only as a layout decoration thing, e.g. the front cover of the BBC piece already cited. You can find American book covers also using the symbol, but it's rare in running prose. There are also weird cases, e.g. "No.1" with no space [6] but they also appear to be marketing layout gimmickery on covers, only (the same book using "No. 1" internally).
To get back to "#" and comics: RS about comics usually use "#", and the general public does, too. Journalism tends to use "no." or "No.", just because they have house styles against "#" in general, but they rarely write about specific issues of comics, so they don't have a normative effect on the usage in that context. A book entirely about British comics uses "#" throughout [7] (though the publisher is US-based, and the book was actually printed in Canada), for what that's worth. Virtually all books on comics do, even those not produced by comics publishers (e.g. art "coffee table" books from Taschen, etc.). The non-comics-publisher books on comics are probably the most reliable sources from a WP perspective, being independent of the subject and fairly academic in intent and style. Examples: [8], [9], [10], [11] (all from first page of "comics art" Google Books search). Many of them more literally are academic (art history/philosophy works intended for a university audience). WP's allowance of "#" for comics edges toward a WP:Specialized-style fallacy case only on first glance. It's missing the "violates the principle of least astonishment" criterion of an SSF – it's not confusing to anyone, and doesn't produce a "WTF?" reaction in the minds of readers unfamiliar with the topic, because "#" is one of the long-standing, standardized ways to abbreviate "number" in English. While it's not favored by news publishers, it is actually also fairly common in writing about sports (e.g. league and tournament rankings [12]) and entertainment (e.g. pop singles charts [13] [see "Discover which song was #1 the day you were born" sidebar], and movie box office sales [14]), for example, not just comics. But it's really, really common for comics. Another point against an SSF determination is that there's no hint of a camp of specialists trying to tell WP how it has to write, and tendentiously fighting against resistance from all over WP. WP's been using # for comics all along, and virtually no one has been objecting.
Having reconsidered it for half a month, I still conclude that we wouldn't gain anything by trying to "ban" the # symbol for comics; it would require a zillion mostly manual edits, would lead to a "wikirevolt" of comics-focused editors, and would provide ammo to anti-MoS editors, who are presently very few in number. Let's not breed more of them. In effect, such a rule would be like telling biology editors they can't italicize the scientific names of organisms here; the style isn't just what they're used to as specialists, it's what everyone's at least a little familiar with, and it doesn't surprise anyone, though you can probably find someone somewhere who doesn't like it. I'm normally "Captain Consistency" (issue #1 out soon!), but I just can't see a good case for hyper-consistency against "#", especially since we actually don't have consistency on "no.", "No.", "no", "No", "number", and "Number" in general, even for things like addresses and rankings. If we were going to get more consistent, start with that mess first.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:51, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
The British news style seems to be heading for 'No10' (pretty much all tabloids use this, and the Times and Guardian are sometimes daring to go there). I do not know anywhere near enough about comics to say specifically whether the numero sign is better than the hash. I happened to turn up at an article and change the '#'s to 'No.'s. It seemed a little strange that there would be different guidelines. I must point out that your idea that only news style drops the points is simply not true. Internal university style guides are getting rid of them, major institutions and government departments lost them long ago, and even NHR gives acknowledgement to the undeniable trend. The BBC currently does not use full points, except for 'N. Ireland' on the website. It is always written as 'No' (apart from the unavoidable anomalies every establishment suffers).
–
Sb2001
talk page 18:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyway, the numero is a weird case, because "No." (and increasingly "no.", at least in dialects not on a dot-dropping bandwagon) is an approximation of a symbol, more often written with an underline under an elevated but shrunken "o". But this symbol itself is an abbreviation of a Latin word, arising in a time before abbreviation styles settled. So, well, it's just odd: an abbreviation that became a symbol and turned back into an abbreviation. No wonder its form is subject to dispute. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
For a few weeks now, a few editors have been removing the honorary "Sir" from the |name =
parameter of {{
Infobox person}} and including it in the |pre_nominal =
parameter. Please see example diffs at
Nigel Hawthorne,
Roger Moore,
John Hurt and
Sean Connery, all edits without an edit summary. I have reverted
86.2.65.41 (
talk ·
contribs ·
WHOIS) a couple of times for making such edits, although I have
been reverted in turn as well. As far as I am aware, a knighthood is not a pre-nominal (as in
The Right Honourable) but part of one's name. Articles such as
Sir Winston Churchill,
Sir Thomas More and other knighted politician articles are unaffected. I see that there is policy concerning
WP:POSTNOM, but is there one that applies to
WP:PRENOM too? Thanks.--
Nevé
–
selbert 22:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Since this keeps coming up again and again, I would suggest an RfC at
WP:VPPOL (or at
WT:MOSBIO and advertised at VPPOL), with
WT:BIO notified, to settle it permanently, or I firmly predict we'll be having this same discussion in 6 months, and 18 months, and 5 years, since we were having it before, that long ago, too.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:06, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#Proposed clarification of reviews' relation to WP:PSTS and MOS:TONE. This is a request for comments in the general sense, but not a WP:RFC at this stage, being an initial discussion draft (broadened to cover writing about fiction generally), building on a lengthy discussion/dispute at the same page. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
The following revision is proposed to the three bullet points of MOS:DATEVAR (a.k.a. MOS:DATERET), which immediately follows MOS:DATETIES. The revision was developed from a very lengthy discussion higher up this talk page.
Proposed wording:
- If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format, this format should be used throughout the article unless there are reasons for changing it based on the topic's strong national ties or consensus on the article's talk page.
- If consensus on a preferred date format does not arise, retain the format chosen in the first major contribution that included a date.
- Where an article uses both date formats with neither predominating, and does not meet the requirements specified in MOS:DATETIES, impose consistency throughout the article by using the date format chosen in the first major contribution that included a date.
Current wording:
|
---|
|
The revised wording was chosen, from quite a selection of proposed variations, for maximum consistency and compatibility with other *VAR provisions, like
MOS:ENGVAR and
WP:CITEVAR. A specific goal of this revision is replacement of "contributor" with "contribution" to resolve
WP:OWN problems. Another is to eliminate the excessive redundancy between the current first and second items. The inclusion of "throughout the article" in the third item is optional, as is "that included a date" in the same item, since both are already given in the first two items. Various minor copyedits can be made after the fact; please do not dwell on trivial punctuation or wording quibbles.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:19, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
PS: Whether we say "chosen in", "selected in", or "used in" is a trivial copyediting matter, as is whether to use "impose" (to match language in WP:CITEVAR) or some other word like "implement" or "ensure". They don't substantively change the meaning, and can be hashed out later. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
Fellow editors,
It's likely that we'll be living with increasing amounts of Wikidata-generated text on the English Wikipedia. Yet it's being generated in Berlin by developers and programmers in the German chapter without reference to the stylistic consensus that has painstakingly evolved on this site over the past 14 years.
I believe we should be taking more than a little interest in the style and formatting of Wikidata outputs. I've sounded a warning at the Wikidata state of affairs discussion that has been playing out during September. That page contians many expressions of caution, dismay, and alarm at the potential pitfalls of Wikidata's ability to roll out text at its whim, and at the lack of control we will have over the inevitable encroachments on en.WP.
Wikidata is an important project that will be riding the transition from biological algorithms (that's us, as creative editors) to electronic algorithms (that's machines that generate and read WP text). It's the latter that will slowly grow to dominate WMF sites from the mid-2020s onward, in a process that will be occurring in the economy at large in the first half of the century.
I urge editors to keep abreast of the developments, and to be ready to insist that Wikidata consult us on style and formatting before releasing on our site each displayed text that it proposes. This should be a matter of established protocol, in my view.
Tony (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
@ User:Tony1, are you indicating a cross-Wiki integration of articles that relies on an algorithm to interpret the nuances of language between language projects and may or may not effectively consider the policies and guidelines that have evolved in each language domain of WP? Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:51, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
The previous discussion [15] ended in general agreement that archaic spellings should be avoided unless necessary, but with no actions or specific proposals. Would anyone object to the following bullet point being added to MOS:COMMONALITY?
Or does anyone have a more elegant, accurate solution? Scribolt ( talk) 06:15, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
OK, how does this sound? If I don't get any objections, I'll insert it and people can copy-edit/clarify as required.
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 190 | ← | Archive 192 | Archive 193 | Archive 194 | Archive 195 | Archive 196 | → | Archive 200 |
After this:
A sentence that occurs within brackets in the course of another sentence does not generally have its first word capitalized just because it starts a sentence.
Comes this:
The enclosed sentence may have a question mark or exclamation mark added, but not a period.: ... Alexander then conquered (who would have believed it?) most of the known world.
It doesn't seem to serve any purpose here, since we would never use a construction like this in our articles (with a question mark or an exclamation point). This appears to be WP:CREEP added by someone trying to make MoS a general-English style guide for the world (i.e., a how-to article) rather than Wikipedia's guide to writing Wikipedia articles in Wikipedia's voice. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
I remember once reading an MOS about the lengths of sections within an article, i.e. that they shouldn't be too short or too long, but I can't find such. Can anyone help me out? — fourthords | =Λ= | 17:29, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
Per MOS:NBSP we should Always insert hard/thin spaces symbolically, never by entering them as literal characters entered from the keyboard. I guess that also inserting them as invisible special unicode characters (es. U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE) should be avoided, right? Can we be more explicit about it? -- Basilicofresco ( msg) 10:41, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 
in place of
or {{
nbsp}}
? If so, then why would you do that? If not, what are you getting at? --
Deacon Vorbis (
talk) 14:38, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 
is being observed in the wild, we don't need to further bloat guidelines warning against it.
E
Eng 14:56, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
 
or
. We don't want people to use the raw glyph because when that's done, no one can actually tell it's being done. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 21:09, 9 September 2017 (UTC)Hi, I don't know if someone can point me in the right direction. I was copy editing a video game article and encountered the word 'mediaeval', in place of medieval. The article also contains 'reflexion' and 'connexion', instead of the more common terms. Now after doing some googling, it appears that these are legitimate, if not very widely used, alternate spellings of words. They are maybe more associated with British English, but I don't believe that any of these spellings are more common than their standard alternatives. Do we have any relevant policies or guidelines that recommend using, all things being equal, a non-archaic spelling when available? Should there be? I understand that in some cases the article content might mean that using a less common form would be less confusing for the reader because it would introduce consistency, but I can't really see the benefit of using weirder spellings just because they exist. On a personal note, I'd never encountered reflexion or connexion before and I'm British and I actually misunderstood what reflexion meant in the context of this article. There are many readers of the English Wikipedia with larger vocabularies than mine, but there are also those with smaller ones and I think we should try to write plainly where possible. Apologies if this is a long answered and addressed question, but I find navigating through the MOS a bit of a nightmare. Scribolt ( talk) 10:56, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Unproductive and off-topic
WP:ASPERSIONS about another editor do not belong here.
If you can
diff sufficient evidence to demonstrate a case of actionable disruptive edtiting, the proper venue is
WP:ANI. |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Folks, can you please stop bashing the editor and focus on the actual MOS question: whether it is or is not permissible to use spellings like "mediaeval", "reflexion", and "connexion" in articles? How about if no one objects? How about if some other editors do object? As for the person you are talking about, I was just discussing the issue at his talk page and suggested bringing the discussion here (not knowing there was already a discussion here) so you can expect him here shortly. You might keep in mind that he is a human being with feelings. -- MelanieN ( talk) 22:00, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
There is a draft proposal at WP:Naming conventions (identity), which is not a naming convention at all but a general style guide, a much-expanded MOS:IDENTITY. Virtually nothing in it is article-titles-specific, so the proposed guidelines belong in MoS. Some of them aren't even applicable to titles at all under any normal circumstances. It even starts out with "When in doubt, or when editing a controversial article, take the time to read the article's talk page before editing", which is article content-editing advice and is unrelated to titles (which are created with first edit and changed by WP:RM process). Much of it is about how write to lead sections of bios.
Several obvious options:
{{
Main|Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Sexuality, ethnicity, and identity}}
to cross-reference people to where the broader relevant material is. Some cleanup of the new material will be required. [Controversial or policy-conflicting wording would not be merged.]{{
Rejected}}
[might entail a rename so no one is confused that it's actually a guideline]{{
essay}}
[would probably also entail a rename]{{
historical}}
(extended back and forth can go in previous or next section)
{{
Rejected}}
, and redirect the original name to
WP:Naming conventions (people). To the extent it has good ideas in it, several of them are already covered at other pages, and those that potentially should be integrated into a guideline can be proposed and discussed one at a time on their individual merits. It is not an {{
Essay}}
, since it doesn't present a particular viewpoint about a subject, but a list of proposed line-item rules about unrelated subjects. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:20, 13 September 2017 (UTC)I think a lot of what's been drafted at "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" is worth including; it's just misnamed/placed, and almost completely unexamined by the community (and a few points might also be pulled from the misleadingly named but pretty well-written WP:PROJPAGE essay at WP:WikiProject LGBT studies/Guidelines). It might require multiple RfCs to get the proposed guideline additions accepted site-wide, though many are already de facto consensus. E.g., "Do not call more attention to a person's identity labels than is strictly necessary" is a very good way to put the vague rule of thumb that's been hammered out in thousands of requested-move, lead-wording, and infobox-parameter debates over the last decade+, and is also the central premise of MOS:FLAGS.
There's also a potential WP:CONSENSUS problem here. To make even rather minor changes to MOS:IDENTITY required some long and heated RfCs at WP:Village pump (policy). While I'm sure it's not the intent, quietly drafting a detailed style-not-really-naming convention on a wide array of identity and sexuality issues has the effect of trying to do an end-run around something we already know is going to require a great deal of community discussion, redrafting, and consensus building. This quicker this is "mainstreamed" the better.
WP:NCP presently doesn't mention identity at all and should already have a cross-reference to MOS:IDENTITY, even if "WP:Naming conventions (identity)" didn't exist. If/when the new material is integrated, the lead-specific parts of it should be summarized as needed at MOS:LEAD.
The draft does have some "
WP:Writing policy is hard" issues. E.g., as of this writing, it says "For the guideline on referring to individuals by name, see
WP:COMMONNAME", which is wrong in three ways (the actual guideline is
MOS:BIO; COMMONNAME isn't about proper names or individuals, but about the best-sourced choice between multiple valid names (proper or otherwise), regardless of topic; and it isn't a guideline). A few bits (like "two-spirit") might never be consensus-accepted. There's advice it gives that will definitely need revision to be consistent with current policy, guidelines, and editorial consensus (e.g., there's an anti-COMMONNAME provision not long after the mention of that policy). Also has a handful of facts wrong ("Colored" and "Coloured" as ethnical labels aren't the same term). But most of it really does look like it's on the right track to me, which is why I'm inspired to suggest we start integrating it. Much of it seems overdue (some of it dates to 2005) as a codification of best practices, and little of it tries to change practice (those are the potentially controversial parts).
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 07:37, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
Historical}}
and/or {{
Failed proposal}}
. --
PBS (
talk) 10:54, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
Failed proposal}}
. If someone wants to reanimate the corps they can follow the guidance in {{
Failed proposal}}
. --
PBS (
talk) 09:38, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
{{
Failed proposal}}
(a.k.a. {{
Rejected}}
), b) renaming it to match its content, and c) redirecting its old name to
WP:Naming conventions (people)? —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:37, 18 September 2017 (UTC)Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#RfC: Should the guideline discourage interleaving?. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn ( talk) 02:10, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles says to use italics for "long or epic poems", but quotation marks for "short poems". The problem is, though, that long and short can be kind of relative; " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is definitely longer in terms of line-count (though possibly not other measures -- I haven't checked) than the Song of Everlasting Regret, even though the latter is more "narrative" and so arguably more "epic". Our Bai Juyi article currently uses quotation marks for the name of the poem, which is at odds with the article on the poem itself; clearly someone interpreted MOS one way and someone else the other, and I'm not sure which is "right" (and so which article should be fixed). Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 13:16, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
This is really down to the judgement of an individual editor. I hope that everyone editing has enough common sense to work out what constitutes an epic poem. Anything which is not obviously epic should have its name inside quotes, not formatted in italics. Whether it was published as part of a collection, in a magazine/newspaper or on its own should give you a good idea as to how to format it.
–
Sb2001
talk page 18:19, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
See [3]. Basically, MOS:CHINA tells us to use hanyu pinyin ("Tang"), so the word is spelled consistently in the article's original prose that way, but the source I quoted uses Wade-Giles ("T'ang"). I'm wondering if I should replace the "T'ang" with a "[Tang]", similarly to how I replaced the "The" with "[t]he" to fit how I worked the quotation into the sentence".
Also, it's hypothetical, but if the answer to the above is "No", would that still be the case if it was more substantial, like if I was quoting a source that spelled the name of the article subject "Li Ho"?
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 11:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
I propose that the talk page of any MoS sub-page that hasn't had a post in a year or longer be redirected to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. This will reduce the scattershot nature of discussion, and reduce the likelihood and incidence of PoV-forking MoS pages from each other (among other WP:CONLEVEL problems), as well as reduce the need to cross-post notices about discussions. Any archives from such "sub-talk-pages" can be folded into the main MoS archives, which will enhance searchability. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 09:56, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
@ EEng: I'm not sure if I agree with you that MOS works remarkably well, or that it is stable to begin with (let alone how hard said stability might have been won). Yes, the main page might work well and have a hard-earned stability, but this is obviously not the case for the subpages that would be affected by this proposal.
I get the impression that your view that MOS works well and is stable is the view of someone who hasn't done much work on the subpages that are the ultimate target of this proposal, though I apologize if I am mistaken.
Hijiri 88 ( 聖 やや) 09:55, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyway, one of the ideas behind the talk-page consolidation is to draw more attention to subpages that badly need work. It would help in normalizing the country/culture-specific ones to cover the same cite things with a similar organization and approach, fur example. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 19:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
The idea's been discussed before; a proposal for an MoS noticeboard was rejected several years ago, and WP:WikiProject Manual of Style was created with something like this in mind, then went moribund. Ultimately, it's probably too late to do anything about the community's habit of using guideline talk pages as de facto noticeboards for discussion of compliance with and interpretation of them. There's also the issue that noticeboards have a tendency to be used as "enforcement and punishment" venues, not places to ask questions. On the other hand, we now have a profusion of noticeboards, down to a rather micro-topical level, where once there were only a few, for central policy concerns. So the community take on what a noticeboard is and is for may have shifted. In the end, I suspect it would just be a maintenance/bureaucracy layer – that we'd end up spending a lot of time moving posts from here to there, and that the incoming stream of "noticeboardy" posts here would not abate by much. I also suspect that part of the reason MoS is as stable as it is, is the level of churn here. It both keeps people (from all over the project) actively watchlisting, and informs the watchlisters (and more sporadic visitors) in hard-to-miss ways exactly how difficult it is to craft much less change this kind of policy (in the general policy analysis sense of the word) without unintended negative effects. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:08, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Are you aware of the stupid rule at the comics wiki-project MoS, which states that editors should use a hash rather than the numero sign. Is this not defeating the point of the MoS—consistency across the whole of WP? – Sb2001 talk page 19:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Throwing out the "#" style for comics wouldn't seem to buy us anything at all. Everyone understands what "#1" means just as everyone understands what "No. 1" or "no. 1" mean. The "#" style is just a convention with comics. I'm in favor of retaining it, since changing it here would mean many thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of conformance edits, while comics-oriented new editors would virtually always use # until "corrected", and it would just a pick a fight with a group of [hobbyist] specialists when no fight is needed. That last point is why this differs from some previous "gimme an exception" cases, even ones where we did in fact clean up thousands of cases (e.g. capitalization of common names of species). The "specialist style" that comics-oriented editors have been using is not in fact a specialist style but the dominant one in the context, and isn't being fallaciously imposed here, as its use is not confusing, misleading, or otherwise inappropriate for a general audience, unlike so many "WP must write exactly the same way people with my job title do, in the material they write for each other, or I will fight WP consensus unto death" demands we deal with here. WP also doesn't use the "#" glyph in its old role as the "pound sign", sticking by rule with the ISO symbol "lb". So, yeah, "ain't broke".
While yes (and contrary to the belief of some MoS detractors) the general purpose of MoS is cross-article consistency, this is not pursued in a robotic manner against
WP:Common sense. We have numerous variances that are field-specific (
MOS:NUM has quite a few itself, and all the various topical MoS pages have more, though keeping them from wandering off into specalized-style-fallacy territory is a constant low-key effort. It's sufficient that articles be consistent between each other to the extent practical, within a category. What we don't want is to see half the comics articles using "#" and half of them using "No."/"no.", or worse yet for the style to wander in the same article. A good comparison is the use of v. rather than vs. in a legal context, while we use vs. in all other contexts (when versus is abbreviated at all). The real world (in English, anyway) really does prefer v. in legal cases – including in non-specialist works like newspapers – and writers/editors on things like sports really do prefer vs., even in the same publication as an article using v. for a legal case. While we could impose one spelling for "consistency obsession" reasons – as we could with "No." – that would basically be language-change
activism which isn't what we're here for.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 22:54, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
...
(…
), and the pre-superscripted 2
character (²
). Most publications that use numero do it as no.
or No.
, not as №
. —
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:32, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Side comment: this piece (on topic: uses "No 10" by itself in reference to the PM's office) makes me wonder if we can have an encyclopedic article on the cats of 10 Downing Street. People keep writing about them, going all the way back to the early 20th century, as I discovered while working on the article Manx cat. Heh. We have some separate articles on various US presidents' dogs, but I wonder if they wouldn't be better combined into a single piece on presidential pooches. {end whimsy mode}
In more general terms, the supposition that "[t]he US tends to use a hash (#)" isn't accurate, aside from maybe how individuals write online. Some British writers (the ones following Oxford rather than British-press style about when to drop "." from abbreviations) will also spell it "No." or sometimes (not for an address) "no." The British press are not unanimous in their "death to full points" march, anyway; see "No. 1" used by the BBC here (pp. 76, 96). One can also find British publications actually using the numero symbol, if you dig around, but it seems to be only as a layout decoration thing, e.g. the front cover of the BBC piece already cited. You can find American book covers also using the symbol, but it's rare in running prose. There are also weird cases, e.g. "No.1" with no space [6] but they also appear to be marketing layout gimmickery on covers, only (the same book using "No. 1" internally).
To get back to "#" and comics: RS about comics usually use "#", and the general public does, too. Journalism tends to use "no." or "No.", just because they have house styles against "#" in general, but they rarely write about specific issues of comics, so they don't have a normative effect on the usage in that context. A book entirely about British comics uses "#" throughout [7] (though the publisher is US-based, and the book was actually printed in Canada), for what that's worth. Virtually all books on comics do, even those not produced by comics publishers (e.g. art "coffee table" books from Taschen, etc.). The non-comics-publisher books on comics are probably the most reliable sources from a WP perspective, being independent of the subject and fairly academic in intent and style. Examples: [8], [9], [10], [11] (all from first page of "comics art" Google Books search). Many of them more literally are academic (art history/philosophy works intended for a university audience). WP's allowance of "#" for comics edges toward a WP:Specialized-style fallacy case only on first glance. It's missing the "violates the principle of least astonishment" criterion of an SSF – it's not confusing to anyone, and doesn't produce a "WTF?" reaction in the minds of readers unfamiliar with the topic, because "#" is one of the long-standing, standardized ways to abbreviate "number" in English. While it's not favored by news publishers, it is actually also fairly common in writing about sports (e.g. league and tournament rankings [12]) and entertainment (e.g. pop singles charts [13] [see "Discover which song was #1 the day you were born" sidebar], and movie box office sales [14]), for example, not just comics. But it's really, really common for comics. Another point against an SSF determination is that there's no hint of a camp of specialists trying to tell WP how it has to write, and tendentiously fighting against resistance from all over WP. WP's been using # for comics all along, and virtually no one has been objecting.
Having reconsidered it for half a month, I still conclude that we wouldn't gain anything by trying to "ban" the # symbol for comics; it would require a zillion mostly manual edits, would lead to a "wikirevolt" of comics-focused editors, and would provide ammo to anti-MoS editors, who are presently very few in number. Let's not breed more of them. In effect, such a rule would be like telling biology editors they can't italicize the scientific names of organisms here; the style isn't just what they're used to as specialists, it's what everyone's at least a little familiar with, and it doesn't surprise anyone, though you can probably find someone somewhere who doesn't like it. I'm normally "Captain Consistency" (issue #1 out soon!), but I just can't see a good case for hyper-consistency against "#", especially since we actually don't have consistency on "no.", "No.", "no", "No", "number", and "Number" in general, even for things like addresses and rankings. If we were going to get more consistent, start with that mess first.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 00:51, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
The British news style seems to be heading for 'No10' (pretty much all tabloids use this, and the Times and Guardian are sometimes daring to go there). I do not know anywhere near enough about comics to say specifically whether the numero sign is better than the hash. I happened to turn up at an article and change the '#'s to 'No.'s. It seemed a little strange that there would be different guidelines. I must point out that your idea that only news style drops the points is simply not true. Internal university style guides are getting rid of them, major institutions and government departments lost them long ago, and even NHR gives acknowledgement to the undeniable trend. The BBC currently does not use full points, except for 'N. Ireland' on the website. It is always written as 'No' (apart from the unavoidable anomalies every establishment suffers).
–
Sb2001
talk page 18:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
Anyway, the numero is a weird case, because "No." (and increasingly "no.", at least in dialects not on a dot-dropping bandwagon) is an approximation of a symbol, more often written with an underline under an elevated but shrunken "o". But this symbol itself is an abbreviation of a Latin word, arising in a time before abbreviation styles settled. So, well, it's just odd: an abbreviation that became a symbol and turned back into an abbreviation. No wonder its form is subject to dispute. :-) — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 04:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
For a few weeks now, a few editors have been removing the honorary "Sir" from the |name =
parameter of {{
Infobox person}} and including it in the |pre_nominal =
parameter. Please see example diffs at
Nigel Hawthorne,
Roger Moore,
John Hurt and
Sean Connery, all edits without an edit summary. I have reverted
86.2.65.41 (
talk ·
contribs ·
WHOIS) a couple of times for making such edits, although I have
been reverted in turn as well. As far as I am aware, a knighthood is not a pre-nominal (as in
The Right Honourable) but part of one's name. Articles such as
Sir Winston Churchill,
Sir Thomas More and other knighted politician articles are unaffected. I see that there is policy concerning
WP:POSTNOM, but is there one that applies to
WP:PRENOM too? Thanks.--
Nevé
–
selbert 22:40, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Since this keeps coming up again and again, I would suggest an RfC at
WP:VPPOL (or at
WT:MOSBIO and advertised at VPPOL), with
WT:BIO notified, to settle it permanently, or I firmly predict we'll be having this same discussion in 6 months, and 18 months, and 5 years, since we were having it before, that long ago, too.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 23:06, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#Proposed clarification of reviews' relation to WP:PSTS and MOS:TONE. This is a request for comments in the general sense, but not a WP:RFC at this stage, being an initial discussion draft (broadened to cover writing about fiction generally), building on a lengthy discussion/dispute at the same page. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
The following revision is proposed to the three bullet points of MOS:DATEVAR (a.k.a. MOS:DATERET), which immediately follows MOS:DATETIES. The revision was developed from a very lengthy discussion higher up this talk page.
Proposed wording:
- If an article has evolved using predominantly one date format, this format should be used throughout the article unless there are reasons for changing it based on the topic's strong national ties or consensus on the article's talk page.
- If consensus on a preferred date format does not arise, retain the format chosen in the first major contribution that included a date.
- Where an article uses both date formats with neither predominating, and does not meet the requirements specified in MOS:DATETIES, impose consistency throughout the article by using the date format chosen in the first major contribution that included a date.
Current wording:
|
---|
|
The revised wording was chosen, from quite a selection of proposed variations, for maximum consistency and compatibility with other *VAR provisions, like
MOS:ENGVAR and
WP:CITEVAR. A specific goal of this revision is replacement of "contributor" with "contribution" to resolve
WP:OWN problems. Another is to eliminate the excessive redundancy between the current first and second items. The inclusion of "throughout the article" in the third item is optional, as is "that included a date" in the same item, since both are already given in the first two items. Various minor copyedits can be made after the fact; please do not dwell on trivial punctuation or wording quibbles.
—
SMcCandlish ☺
☏
¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 12:19, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
PS: Whether we say "chosen in", "selected in", or "used in" is a trivial copyediting matter, as is whether to use "impose" (to match language in WP:CITEVAR) or some other word like "implement" or "ensure". They don't substantively change the meaning, and can be hashed out later. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 15:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
Fellow editors,
It's likely that we'll be living with increasing amounts of Wikidata-generated text on the English Wikipedia. Yet it's being generated in Berlin by developers and programmers in the German chapter without reference to the stylistic consensus that has painstakingly evolved on this site over the past 14 years.
I believe we should be taking more than a little interest in the style and formatting of Wikidata outputs. I've sounded a warning at the Wikidata state of affairs discussion that has been playing out during September. That page contians many expressions of caution, dismay, and alarm at the potential pitfalls of Wikidata's ability to roll out text at its whim, and at the lack of control we will have over the inevitable encroachments on en.WP.
Wikidata is an important project that will be riding the transition from biological algorithms (that's us, as creative editors) to electronic algorithms (that's machines that generate and read WP text). It's the latter that will slowly grow to dominate WMF sites from the mid-2020s onward, in a process that will be occurring in the economy at large in the first half of the century.
I urge editors to keep abreast of the developments, and to be ready to insist that Wikidata consult us on style and formatting before releasing on our site each displayed text that it proposes. This should be a matter of established protocol, in my view.
Tony (talk) 10:17, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
@ User:Tony1, are you indicating a cross-Wiki integration of articles that relies on an algorithm to interpret the nuances of language between language projects and may or may not effectively consider the policies and guidelines that have evolved in each language domain of WP? Cinderella157 ( talk) 10:51, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
The previous discussion [15] ended in general agreement that archaic spellings should be avoided unless necessary, but with no actions or specific proposals. Would anyone object to the following bullet point being added to MOS:COMMONALITY?
Or does anyone have a more elegant, accurate solution? Scribolt ( talk) 06:15, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
OK, how does this sound? If I don't get any objections, I'll insert it and people can copy-edit/clarify as required.