Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 156

Bird article names: option 1

1. Option 1 (i.e., adhering to WP:NCCAPS) will always be my choice. Since I recognize the value of compromise, I would be willing to agree to a compromise that observes naming conventions while allowing title-case capitalization in running text. Whether that's a helpful way to meet in the middle or whether it amounts to splitting the baby, I can't quite say. --BDD (talk) 04:53, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
2. Support removal of capitalisation for WP:CONSISTENCY across all WP:NCFAUNA articles, as this is how general style guides (CMOS, etc), and the Encyclopedia Britannica deal with these, avoiding WP:SPECIALISTSTYLEFALLACY and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:53, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   It's not just fauna; WP:NCFLORA has been pushing this, too, with a local "consensus" of what seems to be a whopping two editors. There are some botany fields where some journals capitalize some plants names, and this has been seen as an excuse to force it on articles here. Sames goes for three kinds of flying insects.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:03, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

3. Support removal of capitalization and not only for article titles - the fact that general-purpose references like OED don't need capitalization convinces me that this is just a specialism eccentricity we don't need to follow. I'd have felt less strongly (but would still have taken the same view) if we didn't have the knock-on effect of capitalizing non-avian species in the running text of bird articles. This effect becomes particularly ugly in places like Bald Eagle#Diet and feeding, where the requirement to capitalize species but not families gives us "predators such as Ospreys, herons and even otters". For these reasons, I favour applying WP:NCCAPS to all common names of fauna, without exception, though I would also accept the compromise that BDD suggests for article titles only, not running text. --Stfg (talk) 11:01, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
4. Support per the above comments. Especially when considered with the other style guides, dictionaries and encyclopedias, along with WP:SSF PaleAqua (talk) 11:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
5. Support using the generally correct capitalization (e.g., lowercase for fauna, Title Case for individual animals) for all articles, rather than the jargony Significant Capitalization for Things That Some Find Important. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   To be clear, do you mean "individual animals" such as Tweety Pie or Felix the Cat? --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:09, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   Right, "individual animals" analogous to "individual people". So William Shakespeare or Old Ephraim (or characters like Tweety Pie or Fox Mulder). -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:21, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

6. Support unless we also start writing "Black Rhinoceros" and such. I note that the (external) guideline that supporters of the deviating capitalization cite states that bird names should be capitalized in "an ornithological context. Here we are writing in an "encyclopedical context"... --Randykitty (talk) 15:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   The same camp actually did have us doing just that; see talk archives of Cougar (which was being capitalized mid-sentence) for how indefensible but strident that position got.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:36, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

7. Support per the above, per WP:NCCAPS, and per usage in reliable sources, which nearly uniformly supports lowercasing bird species names by a healthy margin. (See ngram evidence below.) Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
8. Support. The evidence is that generalist publications do not capitalize bird names. An exception for birds would lead to awkward sentences: "An Egyptian Plover cleaning the teeth of an Egyptian crocodile..." Pburka (talk) 01:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
9. Eventually remove captitalisation from the names of bird articles [as we did by consensus at ] black crowned crane – since that lets WP be both more self consistent and more consistent with general-audience publications that talk about birds. Being out of sync with specialist ornithology publications will not make WP look less professional. Dicklyon (talk) 02:40, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
10. Support removing capitalization. The community's overwhelming use of lowercase has been codified in WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. I'm not necessarily against making exceptions to that consensus, but uppercase bird names are far from universal in biology and even in ornithology (good examples include the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, National Geographic, The New Zealand Orinthological Society, The Journal of Avian Biology, and The Journal of Orinthology, which has discussed bar-headed geese, sand martins, European robins, and red-legged partridges in recent years). It's not a critical issue, but if we're going to make project-wide style rules we shouldn't override them when actual use among reliable sources is only mixed.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 05:25, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
11. Support removal of capitalization, per virtually all real-world sources that are not specialist publications for a specialist audience who (wink, wink) already know the convention in those journals and field guides [and the two actually capitalize for different reasons, a fact the pro-caps arguments always try to ignore]. Also remove exceptionalism verbiage from all five relevant guidelines and normalize them to MOS, which is the controlling guideline here, not WP:NCFAUNA; it may need to elaborate, with a focus on article titling, upon what MOS says, but must stop being POVforked to contradict it. Meanwhile, don't panic: Upper-cased (or otherwise different) names provided by reliable sources can be provided in article text, with citation to the source that capitalizes them. See the article domestic long-haired cat for this approach. An extended example of how to handle the naming would be a lead-opening sentence beginning something like "The three-winged death hawk (Acciptermortis tresalas, listed as the Three-wing Death-Hawk by the IOC^[1] and threewing deathhawk by [some regional authority]^[2]) is a species of...." [Whether the IOC form, aside from IOC capitalization, should be preferred for the actual article title is an AT not MOS matter, and despite WP:BIRDS's second radical WP:LOCALCONSENSUS in insisting on always using the IOC name even when reliable sources overwhelmingly prefer something else, WP:AT already tells us that WP:COMMONNAME generally overrules WP:OFFICIALNAME, so whatever spelling is most used by RSes (this time the specialist sources, which are reliable on facts, not style), is the spelling to use on Wikipedia, regardless how we style it, and regardless what some org. like IOC prefers.] I'll elaborate, later, reasons why the capitalization being forced on running prose and on article titles (that's a style matter, not a factual AT naming matter; AT defers to MOS on style, as do all the NC guidelines) is not tenable and is not in fact justifiable with the claims made by its proponents; for now, it's way past my bed time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:53, 10 April 2014 (UTC) I've added a list of 6 reasons why IOC's own statements about capitalization are clear rationales to not use it here at WP, and an analysis of the policy reasons that IOC's real-world lack of acceptance and points of conflict with other sources mean we can't impose it as a standard here to begin with, style questions aside.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:31, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

    If it's necessary for a compromise, so be it, but I really wouldn't want to see ledes cluttered with "alternate" names that differ only in capitalization, even if they are sourced. --BDD (talk) 18:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

    Right; the example I gave had different grammar and hyphenation, not just different capitalization; I was trying to make the point that if there's a significantly different name, it can be given in the lead. The material worked up at #A simple way forward on common names of species shows such a case, too, and then examples where in a similar case, e.g. just a difference of capitalization, this would just be noted in a footnote.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:24, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

12. Decapitalize. But seriously? Why can't we ever file a legit, actual RfC with a clear yes-or-no? There's no actual closing date here. I hope this receives the attention it deserves. Rereading the C/cougar archives (to say nothing of the cheetah) infuriated me yet again, and people just... I mean, it's really not a big thing, but consistency is good. A class of animals is not under any circumstances a proper noun. Red Slash 02:05, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

    Thanks for your comment. It raises an idea: if it improve the process, can we simply advertise this discussion as a request for comment (and add the relevant template at the beginning)? Mama meta modal (talk) 18:12, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

13. Support removing capitalization per User:Pburka's example above (Egyptian Plover cleaning a crocodile's teeth). Ericoides (talk) 04:56, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
14. Decapitalise. Having read most of below, I find JHunterH convincing. Space Shuttle & Assistant Secretary of State should also be decapitalised, as they are not proper names, not referring to specific things. Don't support BDD splitting the baby. Where careful writing can't avoid an ambiguity, use italics. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:43, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
15. Support avoiding capitalization. I see no reason why avian species in particular should not follow the general community consensus on orthography for fauna. Snow (talk) 00:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
16. Support general-English rules. Wikipedia is a general-English publication and, right now, the general English rule is to use lowercase. However, I could certainly live with SchreiberBike's second or third proposal. I'd also like to add that I love all the sources and evidence that have been posted in support of both sides of this issue. This shouldn't be about one person's whim over another's. It should be about what's correct. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:35, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
17. Support as the local consensus on this matter doesn't override the fact that we are a general encyclopedia which should be following standard English capitalization rules. Incidentally, since there seems to be some confusion over what a proper noun is, I'd advise anyone who argues bird names are inherently proper nouns to consult the linked article. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:50, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
18. Support. The current state of affairs seems like an unjustified deviation from our standard practices, as explained in MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. Our policy is that we don't do something just because others do it. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 03:26, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
19. Support. I can see no damage being done to the encyclopaedia from decapitilising and no major damage from keeping the capitals. So for the sake of consistency, slightly improved readability and to hopefully put this ongoing feud to bed for once and all I see this as the best option. AIRcorn (talk) 08:10, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
20. Support Option 1 (no caps) for purely political reasons. My purpose is piling on, specifically to create a supermajority and force a decision. The headcount is running 20-7 in favor of no caps, and I'm putting in with the majority (if it was running the other way I'd support Option 2). I have no opinion on the merits, think that either choice is equally acceptable and that it's not worthwhile to over-think this. I believe that headcount matters and should be taken quite strongly into account for a discussion that's this well attended and is running 3-1 in favor of one of the propositions, and where the merits of the case come down to opinion and personal style preference and so no camp has the clear upper hand on strength of argument. I insist that my "vote" not be discounted for being political; quite the opposite, since I'm thinking first and foremost of the benefit to the Wikipedia of ending this trivial contention which is causing high emotion and bad feeling over a small matter. And I encourage other editors to join me. Herostratus (talk) 12:19, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
21. Support lowercase/no special caps—Not uppercasing is absolutely a legitimate choice for a serious published work; for example, top-shelf journals like Nature use lowercase for bird names. So which do we pick? Well, why not be consistent with other biology articles here? Why not be consistent with normal English writing? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 15:54, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
22. Support Option 1 – well said, Herostratus. And Erik, I like what you're saying too. Tony (talk) 14:01, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
23. Support for option one as this is proper English by almost any standard. The sections below comparing usage of lowercase vs. uppercase is very telling. I also strongly agree with the points raised by SMcCandlish at #IOC's own wording makes it clear it's not intended for use here. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:24, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
24. Support lower case. Correct English usage should be Baltimore oriole, English sparrow, Siberian husky. What barbarity would be next, capitalizing Russian roulette and French kiss? —Neotarf (talk) 04:00, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
25. Support lower case. Style manuals recommend lower case. General reference works use lower case. Lower case can give additional information: "Cooper's hawk" tells us that the bird is named after a person, where "Cooper's Hawk" does not. Lower case for human, cougar and yellow-bellied sapsucker. Usage in running text should also be lower case. Article titles should follow WP:AT. This should apply to birds and all other species. Consistency lends credibility to Wikipedia. SchreiberBike talk 07:29, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
26. Support lower case to match the style used by the large majority of generalist sources, and even most non-ornithological academic journals (and some ornithological journals). Tdslk (talk) 20:11, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
27. Support—Wikipedia is a generalist publication. Imzadi 1979 → 20:26, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
28. Black crowned craneis a common noun, and capitalization would make it a proper noun. In most generalist publications this is the way Black crowned crane is referred to, and Wikipedia is a generalist publication.Ack! Ack! Pasta bomb! (talk) 04:10, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
29. Support, for the reasons discussed above and below. There has never been consensus to deviate from the mainstream convention (lowercase) at Wikipedia, a practice that exists in some specialist publications for reasons inapplicable to a generalist encyclopedia. —David Levy 04:29, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
30. Support per generalism rationales above. —Theodore! (talk) (contribs) 05:32, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
31. Support. I also edit in subfields which capitalize things that WP doesn't, but when in Rome... Homunq (࿓) 20:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC) ps. Please comment on other RfCs such as this one.
32. Support. I've always found it strange that we use such capitalization. Time to restore normal capitalization. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:35, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
33. Support Option 1 Having skimmed through the arguments for and against, and the body of evidence in favour of each option below, I can only conclude that this is the most sensible way forward. WaggersTALK 12:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
34. Support lower case per many of the discussions above. Fredlyfish4 (talk) 23:25, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
35. Support Using capitals looks silly. This should also apply to butterflies and plant names too. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:18, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
36. Support. Lowercase is the standard style, whatever the strange and occasionally tortured rationales put forth by the uppercase proponents. --Calton | Talk 02:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
37. Support lower casing. If I understand correctly, the name of a bird species is currently capitalized in bird articles, but lower cased elsewhere? This is just bizarre, as if bird articles were some sort of independent kingdom. All the style heavyweights say to lower case vernacular species names: Merriam-Webster, Oxford, American Heritage, Random House, Columbia, and Britannica. Two from one (talk) 06:30, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

    You've linked to "articles" (if you can call a dictionary entry that) about groups of birds: eagle, bluebird, finch. WP:BIRDS wouldn't capitalize those articles either. What do those references say about individual species? Nothing! Because they don't write articles about individual species. Apples and oranges, my friend, apples and oranges. MeegsC (talk) 16:06, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

    Good point. What about these? Merriam-Webster, Oxford, American Heritage, Random House, Columbia and Britannica. Pburka (talk) 17:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

    Thanks, Pburka. At least we're comparing like with like now! MeegsC (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

38. Support lower case. WP should be consistent in style across all its topics: we shouldn't have mountain strongholds at individual WikiProjects. WP should also reflect general modern usage: the current capitalization of bird names looks very odd to the general reader. Spicemix (talk) 19:48, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
39. Support My spontaneous reaction on encountering this controversy was "Yeah, sounds sensible to distinguish a white-throated warbler from the White-Throated Warbler...". As I delved into the debates and discussions, I became more and more dubious. It's bad enough with awkwardnesses like "predators such as Ospreys, herons and even otters" in a section on feeding habits mentioned in !vote #4. But my mind was finally made up when I noticed that "bald eagle" was capitalised, in both the body text and the legend in the United Stated article. Further, it had been so for years. If it spreads and remains uncorrected in one of the absolutely most high profiles articles of Wikipedia, what chances are there that this convention is restricted to ornithology pages as meant? We cannot expect and demand of user:Joe Editor to know the very special circumstances of such a convention, both in its origins and applications. As they see birds consistently capitalised in bird articles, it is natural for them that they will tend to do the same all over wikipedia. And as the example from the "United States" article proves, we can't expect this will be corrected, until the spread of inconsistency becomes more and more disruptive in a positive feedback loop.
    In the end, it all boils down that wiki is an encyclopedia and wp:NotAbirdspotterfieldmanual. It is not a helpful convention from a didactic and encyclopedic point of view. ^walk victor falk ^talk 22:55, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
40. Support per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. The evidence provided in discussion above and below seems clear to me that lowercase is generally used. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 08:46, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Comment on option 1

• Support removal of capitalisation. We have no reason to maintain the current fait accompli (and specialist style fallacy).
  We have to chose between following the internal rules of a group of ornithologists (option 2) or respect the Wikipedia community guidelines (and standard practice) regarding animal species name (ensuring quality, clarity and consistency, e.g. naming conventions).
  See also Talk:Crowned crane and Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March#Black crowned crane for more complete explanations.
  Mama meta modal (talk) 06:00, 9 April 2014 (UTC). :vote struck - sock of blocked user - see

  Was it not stated at the beginning of this discussion request to discuss whether option 1 or 2 was correct based on their individual merits and NOT on the fact that that is the way the MOS says to do it. The question is should we change the MOS? and if the argument against changing the MOS is "No, because the MOS says this is the way to do things, therefore that is the best way", then why bother having the discussion in the first place. Sorry It kind of bothers me that the first vote stated this as rationale. speednat (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

  Thanks for your message. Do not worry, the source of my position is not the current rules of our encyclopaedia. My motivation is common sense and standard practice for animal species name, even outside Wikipedia.

  External guidelines may not be consistent; for this and other reasons, Wikipedia has its own conventions. It seems obvious that the usual practice for fauna species name as well as general external style guidelines should prevail here and also apply to birds.

  The reason usually given to support capitalisation is to avoid potential ambiguities. But it is not always a solution and, more importantly, there are many other ways to tackle this issue. For example "common types of starling" or "common starling" or "Sturnus vulgaris" or other formulations allow to precisely define what you would like to write about. Also, even if it would in some cases potentially reduce ambiguities, it make no sense to violate grammar as well as standard practice or to treat differently different groups of animals.

  Mama meta modal (talk) 19:00, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

  What I don't see, is the mass confusion that capitalization will cause. Interspersing Latin names for the laymen is substantially more confusing than the odd Capital.

  I MeaN ReallY whiCh is HardEr to Read?
  

  The in esso previous statement imperium in imperio or this intra muros piece of lohannes est nomen eius writing?
  

  Just checking speednat (talk) 00:03, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

  You make two mistakes because genus names are capitalised and Latin words such as species names are italicised. Mama meta modal (talk) 06:42, 11 April 2014 (UTC).

  I simply see no reason to capitalise these names and no reason to treat birds differently than all the other animals. Mama meta modal (talk) 06:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC).

• Oppose. All my bird (all my moth and buttefly) books capitalise common names. I really don't see why people object to capitalisation. Lowercase just looks weird. Chuunen Baka (talk • contribs) 10:56, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: option 2

If you came here because someone asked you to, or you read a message on another website, please note that this is not a majority vote, but instead a discussion among Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia has policies and guidelines regarding the encyclopedia's content, and consensus (agreement) is gauged based on the merits of the arguments, not by counting votes. However, you are invited to participate and your opinion is welcome. Remember to assume good faith on the part of others and to sign your posts on this page by adding ~~~~ at the end. Note: Comments may be tagged as follows: suspected single-purpose accounts: {{subst:spa|username}}; suspected canvassed users: {{subst:canvassed|username}}; accounts blocked for sockpuppetry: {{subst:csm|username}} or{{subst:csp|sock username|sockmaster username}}.

1. Option 2 - my vote is for changing the guidelines to include caps for bird names - we need somewhere (discussion section?) to show external evidence/sources to reflect why we (or anyone) feels we should pursue either option. Agree about opening this up now and a moratorium. If this is tabled and gains broad community input, I will live by the result indefinitely. Life's too short to argue over this repeatedly. Agree that having this out now is much preferable to dickering around with guideline pages to reflect usage that is not guideline. The reason I vote caps is that birds have proper names as per the IOC, plus government departments and guidebooks use caps. There is nothing to lose - it's not as if you can't read a capitalised name either. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   Not to pick on you, you're just first, and listed so many things to address here, in summary form: The preferences of the IOC (not actually a taxonomic authority) are not universally followed in ornithology generally or ornithological publishing, academic or vernacular. They are ignored by zoologists in every other discipline even when writing about birds. Even other ornithological organizations that support capitalization have different standards for exactly how to do it, and frequently also disagree with IOC on the actual names themselves. Everyday publications like newspapers and other encyclopedias do not follow IOC style. Not even all WP:BIRDS members support this capitalization. See User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names for all of these facts being admitted by WP:BIRDS members themselves (mostly in the section that logs previous debates about this at WT:BIRDS itself, in that talk page's archives). Entries apeearing on IOC's list is not what proper name means; please see that article. Government agencies are the worst possible source to attempt to cite for writing style in the entire world; they violate more style rules than they obey. Most field guides on everything capitalize the names of the things to which the guide pertains; it is emphasis [See MOS: "Do not capitalize for emphasis"], to aid rapid visual scanning. In the case of birds, it's pure accident that it also happened to coincide with IOC's recommendations. I find it interesting that no matter how many times these points of yours are debunked, and capitalization proponents fail to refute the debunking, these bogus arguments just get recycled a day or a month or a year later, as if no one is going to remember they were debunked already. We have an essay about that: WP:ICANTHEARYOU. I have a page, just now linked to, that catalogues most of these previous debates specifically so no one is fooled into thinking the pro-caps side has any arguments that have not already been shown to be faulty. PS: All of this groveling toward IOC as an external party dictating what WP "should" do with regard to deciding what correct article names are and even how to style them, is a sterling example of undue weight.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Animal species names are not proper nouns. The fact that committees of specialised scientists study, discuss and define them does not make them proper nouns. Otherwise, diseases, proteins and virtually anything could be classified so... Also, Casliber, could you detail why should not birds treated like any other animal species?

   Mama meta modal (talk) 19:15, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

   Funnily enough, when I started editing here, most animal, plant and fungi names were capitalised. The decision to push lower case in force came through from the efforts of a few editors in 2007 and 2012 in reaffirming the MOS. As I have said elsewhere, no other organism has a big committee made up of experts from all around the world decreeing on common names.^{[citation needed]} And we reflect what the outside world does. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I don't think "most" is actually true, though to some of us it seemed that way. Certainly quite a lot were capitalized. My caps log page covers many of the high points, like an early version of WP:NCFAUNA actually telling wikiprojects to just pick their own rules, WP:BIRDS editors actively promoting the capitalization as a WP-wide idea, even for mammals (despite the fact that there's an explicit convention against capitalizing mammal common names in the zoological literature), etc. It was a time of chaos, not of order. The outside world does not capitalize the common names of species except (and even then not consistently) in some very particular circumstances that do not apply to Wikipedia, typically field guides, and the house-organ science journals of a handful of biological specialties. I don't know why the pro-capitalization argument keeps trying to return to reliable sources, when the RS facts are firmly against it. WP:BIRDS members and other biology editors of all kinds were major participants at the discussions you characterize as "a few editors...reaffirming the MOS". There's a frequent claim by people who disagree with something in MOS that MOS doesn't represent consensus, but they never can seem to demonstrate this. Well, for that matter, people make claims like this about every guideline and policy on the system, the more so it affects content (WP:N, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, etc. are often complained about in this way). There's no actual consensus problem with any of these guidelines and policies or they wouldn't be labelled {{guideline}} or {{policy}} and people wouldn't be following them with remarkable consistency.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   On what RS basis do you suggest that only among birds does a big committee decide common names? Actually, let me ask that below; you raise another point that's part of the same sub-discussion. (Other than me looking stupid.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:01, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

   @SMcCandlish - stop using emotive phrases such as "grovelling" - it makes you look stupid - if you had any idea and actually looked at the names made up of the board it is a collection of researchers and scientists - would only there was more of that in botany. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:51, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   @Casliber: And of course using even more emotive language that's also a personal attack is a huge improvement (especially when you use it as an ad hominem to distract from the fact that you're not addressing a single point I raised. Thanks for conceding so dramatically). Anyway, you're seemingly completely mistaking my argument. I'm not talking about genuflection and catering by members of the IOC naming board to anything. I'm talking about abasement and suborning of Wikipedia, and its goals for its readers, and even its standards in policy (e.g. COMMONNAME over OFFICIALNAME), by a small handful of editors to force the whole project to agree with some external body on style matters simply because they're made up of scientists you most respect on zoological matters. It's confused argument to authority and hero worship. Why would we decide that Stephen Hawking and Neil DeGrasse Tyson must be obeyed on what to italicize just because they're amazing cosmologists and (hypothetically) they decided that we should now italicize the names of stars, galaxies and planets (in cosmology/astronomy journals)?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   I am not sure why we, the bird editors, even bother to instigate change, we are obviously not as smart as these other editors, and should relegate ourselves to just following what others tell us to do. speednat (talk) 23:06, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I am not sure why we, the Wikipedia editors, even bother to have style guidelines; we are obviously not as smart as the bird editors, who are infallible. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   This "us versus them" attitude is a major part of the problem. At no point has anyone outside WikiProject Birds attempted to segregate (let alone subordinate) its members. On the contrary, we ask that you join us in following our common set of style guidelines (which you have as much right as anyone to help shape). It's the WikiProject, through the will of some participants, that seeks to separate itself from the rest of the Wikipedia editing community and disregard the input thereof. —David Levy 23:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Casliber, one group of ornithologists is not a good representation of the outside world. And their internal guidelines are not consistent with the standard practice for animal species in and out of Wikipedia. Mama meta modal (talk) 06:51, 11 April 2014 (UTC).

   Not even consistent among ornithologists, don't forget. IOC's is just the most favored among them of competing naming standards ideas.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

2. Support Option 2 (although I'm quite looking forward to american kestrel as the new style if it happens) Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:25, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   Of course, proper names within bird names should still be capitalized (e.g., American kestrel). If this is not already clear, it should be. Compare to, for example, Przewalski's horse. --BDD (talk) 16:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   Exactly. "The American kestrel (Falco sparverius), sometimes colloquially known as the sparrow hawk, is a small falcon, ..." -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   No one has ever, ever in this debate in the entire nine or ten years its been running has proposed nonsense like "american kestrel", and the wording at all four guildilnes pages says not to do something like that (it's about the only thing they do get consistent with each other). Injecting FUD like that is argument to emotion combined with straw man and red herring: three fallacies for the price of one! We'll pass, thanks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I agree with BDD, JHunterJ and SMcCandlish. And I would like to ask Jimfbleak to explain the motivations of his vote. Mama meta modal (talk) 19:04, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

   I am not sure why we, the bird editors, even bother to instigate change, we are obviously not as smart as these other editors, and should relegate ourselves to just following what others tell us to do. speednat (talk) 23:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I am not sure why we, the Wikipedia editors, even bother to have style guidelines; we are obviously not as smart as the bird editors, who are infallible. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   This "us versus them" attitude is a major part of the problem. At no point has anyone outside WikiProject Birds attempted to segregate (let alone subordinate) its members. On the contrary, we ask that you join us in following our common set of style guidelines (which you have as much right as anyone to help shape). It's the WikiProject, through the will of some participants, that seeks to separate itself from the rest of the Wikipedia editing community and disregard the input thereof. —David Levy 23:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

3. I support allowing editors to capitalize bird names given that this is what the specialist sources do. But I'm confused about what we're voting for here. Where did options 1 and 2 come from? Is this the RfC, or is this a discussion about setting up an RfC, and has this discussion been publicized? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:43, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

   This is not a request for comment or RfC, there are quite specific rules for those. I didn't even initiate the poll, I just asked for discussion on having one. It could become the basis for an RfC, or it may not be necessary, if we reach a clear consensus then WP:SNOW might well be applied. Let's see where it leads. Andrewa (talk) 04:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   But "the specialist sources" don't do it; some of the specialist sources do it. Meanwhile, the overwhelmingly vast majority of reliable sources do not do it, including the most prestigious zoological journals even when they run ornithological papers. There is no policy-based rationale anywhere on Wikipedia for a) ignoring a preponderance of reliable sources because their target audience isn't as narrow as you'd like, or b) ignoring the most reliable academic sources in favor of less renowned ones just because the scope of the former are a little broader and their peer review panels aren't so insular, or c) ever, to begin with, treating reliable sources on scientific facts about a biological category (for example) as the most reliable sources on English language style in an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

4. Per Jimfbleak and BDD. Perhaps MOS needs to better define what a proper noun is. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:48, 10 April 2014 (UTC) Cas Liber. I posit that these bird names should be treated like proper names/proper nouns. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   But BDD supports option 1. As for proper noun, the MoS uses it as defined; there's some misuse of it in application to species, but not in the MoS. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I think you both mean proper name not proper noun. There is a difference. Andrewa (talk) 04:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I think I meant to use the term I was responding too. Some linguists treat them differently, and some do not. You'll note that they land on the same article, which discusses this. I happen to agree with the do nots, but in any event, here I was using the term as it was raised in the comment I was responding to. Now, this difference you see, how does it affect Chris Troutman's statement or mine? -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:18, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Understood. My point is, proper noun either includes or is exclusively (depending as you say on the authority) names that consist of a single word, and those are not at issue here, so I think it might be helpful to use the more specific term. But feel free to use the term you think best. Andrewa (talk) 16:18, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Bird name are not proper nouns and will not become so whatever the result of the vote is. We are not deciding how English grammar should be - we are simply voting about style recommendations. Mama meta modal (talk) 19:08, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

   @Chris troutman: As pointed above you've !voted per someone who opposed capitalization, BDD, but also someone who supported capitalization, Jimfbleak, simultaneously. Furthermore, Jimfbleak provided a demonstrably false rationale (that "American" would be decapitalized as "american"). So, could you maybe clarify what your actual position is?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:51, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   @SMcCandlish:, et al. Sorry for the confusion. Decapitalization of American kestral and the like proves the foolishness of option 1. I'm not sure how that's a "false rationale." Chris Troutman (talk) 17:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   @Chris troutman:: It's a false rationale because no one has proposed such a thing, none of the five guidelines in question would ever permit it, no real-world style guides would allow it, and it's simply never been suggested by anyone in the discussion. Changing "American kestrel" to "american kestrel" would be reverted on sight by anyone on either side of this debate. Hope that is clearer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

5. If we are to capitalize proper nouns and the Chicago Manual of Style states " A Proper noun is the specific name of a person, place, or thing or the title of a work." It then gives examples of John Doe, Moscow, the Hope Diamond, and Citizen Kane. How does American Robin not fit into this class? An American Robin is a specific name of a thing, as much so as John Doe is a specific person. The thing that the American Robin is being specific about is not a specific bird, as that would be like Big Bird, but a specific class of bird, the thing being a class or species.^[1]speednat (talk) 18:27, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
   1. Harper, Russell David, ed. (2010). The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. p. 204. ISBN 0-226-10420-6.

   And plumbers, baseball players and used car salesmen are specific classes of people. Should we refer to them as "Plumbers", "Baseball Players" and "Used Car Salesmen"?
   Under your interpretation of what constitutes a proper noun, what nouns aren't proper? —David Levy 18:51, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Which brings up a fine point, it is all subjective. By definition of one of the rock-solid authorities for the rules that we are basing the MOS on, in its quoted definition, one can break it down, very simply. So, yes there is a problem with the rules that we have based the MOS on. The Manual of Style wasn't just thought up one day, though it was created through the habits, uses, practices etc of our society. Did all of the people wake up one morning and say we capitalize England, but not house, no it evolved and this is what is happening with birds and other fauna. Some people use one style, some use another, and over time who's to say that the Chicago Manual won't change what we capitalize, just like words that weren't, are, and spelling changes. Do we go downe to the local shoppe, do I refer to someone using the word thou, is ain't considered a word. The language and the rules that govern our language are constantly evolving and not based on people standing around saying "This is not the way to speak", or "Ain't isn't a word". I mean how many of us remember being told that last one, but guess what? it is a word. Why because people ignored those that said it wasn't a word and kept using it and now it is. The change is coming, oh you naysayer, accept it or be a footnote in history. :) speednat (talk) 19:44, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   No, it's not all subjective, even if the language is living. The style we use is the current one. It may be different than the style of ye olde Wikipaedia (1650 edition), and it may differ from whatever the 2114 edition of Wikipedia calls itself. That it changes doesn't mean it must be subjective. But let's say that it's subjective. Wikipedia articles would still be subjected to it. So this "fine" point is pointless.-- JHunterJ (talk) 19:51, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   It certainly is true that "some people" capitalize the common names of birds species, but not because they're proper nouns. I'm aware of exactly one ornithologist who advocates that they be treated as such (and even he hasn't claimed that they actually are in the real world). —David Levy 20:09, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   And he's not a linguist anyway. There are probably linguists who think it's stupid that ornithologists concoct pseudo-Latin names like Ninox novaeseelandiae, but we don't treat them as ornithological authorities.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   In wielding The Chicago Manual as an authority (with a footnote!), I'm wondering how User:Speednat somehow missed page 357, section 8.128, which explicitly states, Whether in lists or in running text, the specific "Latin" names of plants and animals are italicized. The genus name is capitalized, and the species name (even if it is a proper adjective) is lowercased [emphasis mine], not to mention section 8.136 (vernacular names of plants and animals) which specifically uses "Cooper's hawk" as an example? --Calton | Talk 03:02, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

   speednat, how many Citizen Kanes have you seen? Know how many Hope Diamonds there are in the world? Ever had a flock of John Does in your backyard? (Yes, there are multiple John Does, just as there are multiple Moscows, but these are merely individuals people/cities that share a name.) --BDD (talk) 19:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   There is one species of birds called American Robin, that is more of a proper noun, if a proper noun can be compared in a superlative manner, then John Doe or Moscow. speednat (talk) 19:44, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Also, I assume there are thousands or millions of Citizen Kanes on DVD, they all get capitalized right?speednat (talk) 19:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Right. And if you wanted to, you could refer to them as "the digital video discs of the film Citizen Kane", since "digital video disc" is the common noun there, not the specific film Citizen Kane. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:53, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Think of it this way. I could have a cage with three American robins in it. Let's say I call them Batman, Robin, and Cobie. Conversely, I could visit Moscow, Moscow, Idaho, and Moscow, Pennsylvania. I could call them Moscow, Potatoland, and Coaltown in my head if I wanted to distinguish them. But still, the relevant analogy would be Moscow is to city as Batman is to American robin. I could use more or less specific terms (settlement, bird, etc.), but it doesn't change the fact that in the analogy, the former term is a proper name, while the second is not. --BDD (talk) 20:14, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   What kind of bird is that in your backyard? Oh, that's an American robin. What kind of bird is that on Sesame Street? Oh, that's Big Bird. Not Oh, that's a Big Bird. American robin is not a specific name of a thing as much as John Doe is a specific person. A specific class of bird is still a common noun (or "class of entities"), just like the specific class of people "plumber". -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:13, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   I agree with David Levy, BDD and JHunterJ. Animal names are simply not proper names. See also my comments above (19:15, 10 April 2014 and 19:08, 10 April 2014). Speednat, do you have other arguments supporting your vote ? Mama meta modal (talk) 19:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

   Of course the aforementioned other authorities that use Caps. speednat (talk) 19:44, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

   Speednat, if you're serious about your !vote, I have five Hope Diamonds I'll sell you. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:52, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

6. Support per Aldous Huxley. I think I qualify as a disinterested editor: I was unaware that there had been much contention on this topic and to the best of my recollection I have only one bird species on my watchlist and I had to look it up to see if was capitalized. I just thumbed through twelve books on birds, half of them major field guides and the rest hardly obscure, and was surprised to see how many capitalize bird names: all twelve. Other editors note above that the IOC and other relevant entities also capitalize, so it's clearly common practice. Now, the common practice among authorities on birds might not sit well with the taxonomic establishment, but that need not concern us; our articles on birds should reflect the way that myriad reliable sources refer to those birds, not the way taxonomists would prefer they do. There's also a little matter of avoiding ambiguity. I see some silly examples in this discussion, but in fact it's a genuine concern. For instance, the phrase "American yellow warbler" can be read two ways and the lowercase style could introduce confusion in certain contexts (since there's more than one species of yellow warbler and neither respects international boundaries). "American Yellow Warbler", on the other hand, is absolutely unambiguous. As a more general comment, I would note that the MOS has guideline status, not policy status, which ought to mean that the bar we set for making exceptions isn't ridiculously high. So what if birds get treated differently from other clades or classes? Maybe they should be. (If so, that's no excuse for trying to extend the bird exception to other critters, of course.) Rivertorch (talk) 05:32, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   You're quoting incorrectly inappropriately! The Huxley observation, like Emerson's famous "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", is about a person changing his or her mind over time, not about a publication using conflicting style rules or anything even vaguely comparable to that. As far as I can determine (and I've looked, more than once) every well-known quotation on "consistency" refers to personal consistency of opinion and action. You're presenting arguments already dispelled many times. The way to distinguish between the yellow American warbler and yellow varieties of the various warbler species in the Americas is to simply write clearly and use wikilinks, as I just did in this sentence. Bird field guides, like field guides on all topics, capitalize as a form of emphasis; that it happens to agree with IOC practice is blind coincidence. WP:JUSTAGUIDELINE is a fallacy; there is no policy on Wikipedia that conflicts with WP:MOS. The vast majority of reliable sources do not capitalize bird name names; only bird-specific sources tend to do that, and they don't even do it uniformly (you are confusing "specialist sources" with WP:reliable source; see WP:SSF for why that doesn't work). Did I miss anything? I'm not trying to be dismissive, it's just that this is all rehash and people get irritable with me for being wordy, so I'm keeping this short.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:23, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   I just hate it when people are short with me. What I wrote may be rehash, but I conceived most of it independently, before I'd skimmed more than a quarter of the discussion here, so maybe great minds hash alike. I don't believe I claimed that any policy conflicts with WP:MOS, but now that you mention it there's always WP:IAR, which doesn't so much conflict with it as expressly permit conflict with it (and with other guidelines, and even policies, when there is a good reason). Thanks for linking those two essays (the latter of which you wrote). I agree with both of them in part but not completely. Wikipedia has grown more rigid over the years. In some ways this is a good thing, but it doesn't necessarily serve our coverage of a given topic very well. (Incidentally, I didn't quote "incorrectly". I applied a quote for illustrational purposes, never intending to suggest that Mr. Huxley was writing about "style rules or anything even vaguely comparable to that".) Rivertorch (talk) 07:36, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   Sorry, I didn't mean "rehash" to imply you're personally recycling arguments; rather, many of us have been over these arguments so many, many times before. Essays aren't part of a hierarchy of rules, they're jus stored reasoned arguments/rationales we're tired of repeating. I went into this (and just-a-guideline) in more detail on the related thread at WT:CONSENSUS yesterday. All essays were written by someone, and which names those are doesn't determine the validity of the points an essay raises. (And it's not like the "spin" of WP:SSF is any secret.) If this current poll-like discussion concludes clearly against bird capitalization (which seems likely) and the wikiproject were to accept that (which I think is terribly unlikely), I would not be among those interested in de-capitalizing bird articles all day (I would be way more interested in decapitalizing every other kind of creature in bird articles, to stop the spread of the capitalization to rodents and fish and berry bushes and whatever). There are quite a few dragonfly, moth/butterfly and (I forget what) some kind or another of plants articles that are capitalized because of similar academic journal [alleged] conventions that prefer capitalization and few people but specialists in those areas working on these articles here. There's no wave of style stormtroopers lower-casing them. No one really cares as long as a) it's not spreading to areas where many do care (see the talk archives of Cougar, etc.), and b) the us-vs.-everyone wikiproject rebellion stuff stops, which is what I most care about. It's a WP self-governance problem. You're right, I used "incorrectly" incorrectly. My poorly made point was that people in MOS-related disputes rather frequently quote Huxley or more often Emerson without realizing it doesn't apply to this context.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:45, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   Damn, you mean I rehashed Huxley too? I've never seen that quote before on Wikipedia. Ah, well. What you've said here about capitalization vis-à-vis birds and other animals is nuanced and makes quite a lot of sense, but if "no one really cares" about bird capitalization per se I can't help wondering if we're going about this in the best way. If the exception that has been made for birds is being erroneously applied to mammals or fish or whatever, I'd assume that could be addressed without removing the exception for birds—perhaps by codifying the exception and defining its boundaries or maybe just by dealing with it on a case-by-case basis. As for the question of "rebellious" wikiprojects, just how much of a problem is this? A wikiproject is a loose affiliation of users who edit certain topics. If such editors are doing the lion's share (note: I didn't say "the Lion's share) of the work in a given topic area and want to establish stylistic conventions that are particularly appropriate to that topic, I don't necessarily see that as a problem. Sometimes it will conflict with MOS, sometimes it won't, but such conflicts don't seem to me to be inherently problematic. If they lead to behavioral problems, such as tag-teams coordinating reverts of good-faith "corrections", then those can be handled as they arise. I don't know. Maybe I'm naïve. As I said above, I'm not exactly familiar with the backstory here. I just am concerned about MOS being enforced too rigidly and what I see as a one-size-fits-all set of rules being applied across the board in specialized topic areas where it might be better to allow some leeway. Rivertorch (talk) 17:42, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   @Rivertorch: I have seen the Huxley one here before. :-) Wikiprojects making up their own rules against consensus and "enforcing" them has been a serious enough problem to generate the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, and various WP:RFARB cases; some of them are linked from WP:FAITACCOMPLI, I think, though there are others.

   "Conflicts with MOS" is kind of a red herring, I suppose, or at least imprecise. No one has a problem with projects establishing stylistic conventions that they gain consensus for here. I helped do this myself, for articles within the scope of WP:CUE, and MOS is largely made up of material added to it in that way (either by insertion into MOS or by addition of a subpage that is elevated as topical style subguideline, MOS:whatever). The problem is when a project's preferences conflict with broader interests of the encyclopedia and the wikiproject fails to gain consensus to change MOS to account for the "rule" they like. There's a big difference between doing something like italicizing climbing routes because there hadn't been any consensus not to (there probably will be, because the case for it is contorted), and still pushing capitalization of common names of species after a site-wide consensus has been established for two+ year (really more like six, but very clearly for two) to not do that, backed up by WP:CONLEVEL policy. The first "conflicts" in a vague sense with the spirit of the general italicization provisions in a way, and will soon be settled with either a consensus to not do it or a new case for it added to MOS. The second involves the advancement of a wikiproject essay at WP:BIRDS#Naming as a direct competitor to MOS's site-wide style convention, and the essay was even being advertised as a "guideline" at WP:NCCAPS. A major part of the problem here is that, failing to gain consensus at MOS, capitalization proponents have been shaping WP:NCCAPS, WP:NCFAUNA, WP:NCFLORA and even MOS:CAPS (all rarely watchlisted), to diverge from MOS itself more and more.

   Wikipedia doesn't need any "Anti-MOSes". Birds project members were heavily, necessarily, involved (as were other biology projects) in the MOS consensus discussion, a very long one, in 2012 (and the one before that, etc.). That discussion led to the MOS:LIFE do-not-capitalize rule, and just to keep the peace for a while, an observance being included that a LOCALCONSENSUS dispute existed about birds, which was mentioned mainly to "wall off" birds and stop the re-spread of the capitalization. That has not worked, and two years is plenty of time for the pro-caps members of the wikiproject to have gotten consensus at MOS for their position if consensus was going to change. Of course this is just my take, but I've been doing the homework to back it up, and I have a lot more evidence than the 'some ignorant people are just trying to tell WP:BIRDS how to do ornithology' argument does.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

   That discussion led to the MOS:LIFE do-not-capitalize rule, and just to keep the peace for a while, an observance being included that a LOCALCONSENSUS dispute existed about birds, which was mentioned mainly to "wall off" birds and stop the re-spread of the capitalization. That has not worked, and two years is plenty of time for the pro-caps members of the wikiproject to have gotten consensus at MOS for their position if consensus was going to change.

   Not only has it not worked, but some WikiProject Birds members have been citing that text as evidence that an exception for common names of bird species has been formally codified in the MoS. I assume that this reflects a sincere misunderstanding, but that doesn't make the situation any less problematic. —David Levy 02:30, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

   Worse yet, it's led to expanding this to insects and stuff in other guidelines (WP:NCCAPS and WP:NCFAUNA, I think, maybe also MOS:CAPS).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:01, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

1. We should follow the sources that we rely on to write the articles - if the specialist sources use capitals, use them. It makes no sense to use specialist secondary sources for the content but not use the way they format names. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:09, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

   And if general sources don't use capitals, don't use them. It makes no sense to ignore the majority of sources. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:24, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

   The Official Congressional Directory uses all-caps for the names of representatives. Should we mimic this source? Specialist sources use various stylistic tricks to make the subject of their specialty stand out. Wikipedia is not a specialist text, so it does not make sense for us to follow conventions which are used almost exclusively in specialist texts, particularly when we have examples of non-specialist texts demonstrating a more standard style for the same words. Pburka (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

2. Support option 2. To those who say option 1 follows policies, guidelines, etc., I retort with WP:COMMONNAME, it is standard practice for bird names to be capitalised, those (such as the mentioned Nature) that don't are the ones deviating from common practice. Yes, this is different from 'normal English grammar' (whatever that is) and different from all other biological organisms - but that's just the way it is. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:11, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Not much of a retort. With WP:COMMONNAME, it is standard practice for bird names to be sentence-cased; those (such as the IOC) that don't are the ones deviating from that practice. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:51, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Wouldn't COMMONNAME—assuming it made sense to apply it to style issues—suggest that we decide on a case-by-case basis? (I think we can leave COMMONNAME out of this, though: "Bald Eagle" and "bald eagle" are the same name. The question isn't which name to use. It's just how to style that name.) ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Exactly! -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:48, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   And IOC naming for birds already raises frequent WP:COMMONNAME conflicts anyway (see thread below about this).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:32, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   The only sources I have ever seen lowercasing bird names are not sources I would consider reliable on ornithological matters. But it's clear (even without the socks) that this is going to become yet another case where Wikipedia decides to march to its own tune and ignore the way things actually are in verifiable, sourced reality in the name of "proper English". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 21:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   Bushranger, surely you don't mean you've never seen authoritative sources with lowercase bird names. Is Nature really unreliable on ornithological matters? How about National Geographic or the Journal of Avian Biology? Unless you define "reliable on ornithological matters" as "uppercasing bird names," I don't think you want to make such unqualified statements. --BDD (talk) 21:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   I haven't actually read those, so I stand corrected on that point. It doesn't change the fact, however, that both those sources are in error in lowercasing the names. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:01, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   Many top-shelf journals routinely write bird species names in lowercase. I don't think it's meaningful to argue that they are in error; such usage is common enough that it is by definition not in error, unless we decide to be quite wildly prescriptivist. Anyway, I think we can set aside any argument that claims that Science and Nature are not reliable sources. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 22:05, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

3. Support option 2 as they are proper names, and by the typical convention in the field. All the arguments have been opened here & elsewhere, & I won't add more. No heckling please. Johnbod (talk) 11:33, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Just to clarify; nobody is proposing that proper names would be lowercased; e.g. it would be New Zealand scaup not new zealand scaup; that is not, and I'm pretty sure never has been, on the table. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:24, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   But there is clearly a dispute as to whether New Zealand Scaup is a proper name, as I believe it is. Johnbod (talk) 16:54, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Except there isn't. That's a WP:FRINGE idea. No reliable sources on linguistics or the English language would agree with you, and this debate has already been had again and again for years, with zero evidence to support the odd-ball notion that bird names are magically proper names like Michael Jackson and Pakistan. Even ornithologists who like the capitalization don't suggest this, they just argue for treating common names of birds as if proper names, because it makes highly compressed-journal writing and on-the-spot field guide reading easier. As a matter of clear policy, Wikipedia is not a guidebook or journal, and those rationales do not apply here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:32, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Yeah, I don't think the argument that "bird species names are proper names therefore we should capitalize them" can possibly hold water, since there are so many reputable journals, books, etc that don't capitalize them. Are you really arguing that they are all wrong about a basic point of grammar like this? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:52, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

   Sorry to heckle Johnbod, but you have made an inaccurate statement that would be misleading if not challenged out of courtesy. Nils Olav, Mr Percival, Sam the Seagull, Petros and Big Bird are proper names. New Zealand is a proper name. New Zealand scaup is not a proper name. There is no entity that is "New Zealand Scaup". There are few definitives in linguistics, but the question as to what is a proper name is pretty firm. Some fields using capitalisation as a style does not change the definition of "proper name". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:16, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

   That really depends on what you mean by "entity" - the species? - and that leads to a philosophical position is with regard to the species concept based on which it can be a proper name. (See Jensen, Richard J. (2011). "Are species names proper names?". Cladistics 27 (6): 646–652. doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2011.00357.x. {{doi}}: Check doi value (help); de Queiroz, Kevin (2011). "Plural versus Singular common names for Amphibian and reptile Species". Herpetological Review 42 (3): 339–342.) Shyamal (talk) 11:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

   Interesting, thank you. From what I see, it is the nature of "species" that is in doubt, not so much the linguistic meaning of "proper name". The abstract uses difficult language, but I feel "Are species names proper names?" is asking whether a species is (or can be) an entity that can be given a proper name. Personally, I think the answer is "no". No normal species is an entity. Species frequently don't have boundaries, with some variants able to breed with other species, and variants within a species unable to breed together. I understand that this is common in bird species, more so in insects, and increasingly worse in lower organisms. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:27, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

4. Support option 2. Official bird species names function as proper nouns. If it is Wikipedia policy to capitalize the genus in Passer domesticus, how can it be incostient to treat House Sparrow in a similar fashion by capitalizing it? Should we start using "passer domesticus", instead? No. Both refer to a specific species, and a consensus among scientific authorities on the subject agrees with how to write them. A blue jay (of which there are dozens of species) is not the same thing as Blue Jay (which is a particular species). Ornithological authority maintain official lists of birds-- the IOC List which WikiProject Birds uses. This is a longstanding practice that is not decreasing in usage--it is INCREASING and spreading into other fields, like butterflies, dragonflies, and mammals. Why people who know nothing about birds feel the need to dictate what happens on bird pages is beyond my comprehension. Natureguy1980 (talk) 20:23, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

   (Note: this is in response to this version of Natureguy1980's comment above) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blue%20jay -- it's a particular species, even when correctly lowercase. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:34, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

   A dictionary is hardly an authoritative source on ornithology. What a dictionary says in this matter is completely irrelevant in my view. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It covers specialist topics in an in-depth manner. Natureguy1980 (talk) 21:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

   On the contrary, a dictionary is an authoritative source on what "blue jay" means (the species) and whether it should be capitalized (it shouldn't). Its irrelevance in your view is irrelevant. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:34, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

   We will have to disagree. Ornithologists know more about birds (and their names) than dictionaries. Natureguy1980 (talk) 22:27, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

   And dictionaries know more about English grammar than (some) ornithologists. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:59, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   Please, do not confuse common name and binomial nomenclature (Latin name). Firstly, none of them are grammatically proper names. Secondly, by convention, genus name and not species name of all living species are capitalised (e.g. Passer domesticus, Latimeria chalumnae, Salmonella enterica); as virtually everybody respects these convention, Wikipedia also do so. Thirdly, capitalisation of the common name of birds is only recommended by the internal rules of one group of ornithologists and is not widely used by general sources. For these reasons, as Wikipedia is not a database for specialised ornithologists but a general encyclopaedia, there is no reason to capitalise bird common names. Another important argument against capitalisation of common names is that there is no reason not treat them as all other animal species. Mama meta modal (talk) 06:47, 19 April 2014 (UTC).

   This comment I found in another forum is, I feel, worth repeating here: "When I'm providing links for non-birding friends I sometimes refer them to Wikipedia when, for instance, Cornell's All About Birds site doesn't have the information they need. But, perhaps irrationally, Wikipedia will SEEM less authoritative if they start behaving like a newspaper or popular magazine/website and not capitalizing bird common names. Every time I visit a bird-related Wikipedia page I'll notice what, to a birder, will look like non-standard use and start to wonder who wrote the article and why they dropped the capitalizations. I'll probably stop referring non-birders to it, even when the information seems to meet their needs, partly because it seems less authoritative but also because it sets a bad example to prospective members of the birding community." For better or worse, when many birders and ornithologists see uncapitalized bird names, they automatically think the source is not credible. Regardless of whether it is silly, it is true, and the result of Option 1, above, will certainly be decreased traffic from birders and ornithologists, both as users and--detrimentally for Wikipedia--contributors. Is a decrease in traffic and quality of content worth what seems to me to be a misguided crusade for ideological purity? Natureguy1980 (talk) 02:22, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   You realize everything you're saying also applies to Nature, right? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:50, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   Yes. Natureguy1980 (talk) 14:55, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   From a bird expert in another forum: "And this is why I no longer edit Wikipedia. Don't understand why non-bird people are even getting involved. " Natureguy1980 (talk) 14:56, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   They left because they don't understand Wikipedia's pillars? How they don't own their contributions, and the contributions might be mercilessly edited by others? -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:21, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

5. Support option 2. MeegsC (talk) 01:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

   As everybody is automatically warned when commenting this page: "If you are coming to express an opinion on a topic of discussion, please include a rationale that addresses Wikipedia policy, or your opinion may be ignored." So, please, explain us the rationale of your vote. Mama meta modal (talk) 07:02, 22 April 2014 (UTC).

   Right. For clarity then. To indicate the name of the species as clearly as we indicate the name of a car model (i.e. Ford Galaxy). I've written many, many newspaper articles, including some which included references to bird species. As you say, very few newspapers capitalize bird names (though a few do). And more than once, I've had well-meaning editors completely screw up bird names while "revising" the articles. One, for example, removed the "little" from every reference to "little blue heron" after the first instance (i.e. leaving "blue heron", a non-existent bird) and later told me "Well, I thought you'd already said it was little." If such mistakes happen with careful editors, I expect even more to happen here on Wikipedia. MeegsC (talk) 22:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

6. Support keeping capitalization. Example: "Joe returned from a trip out west and was happy to have seen a blue jay." Without capitalization this is confusing because we do not know if Joe saw a Blue Jay, an eastern species rare in the west, or a jay of that has blue plumage which could be any one of several species such as Stellar's, Scrub, or Mexican Jays— Preceding unsigned comment added by Haans42 (talk • contribs) 00:45, 23 April 2014‎ (UTC)

   Another likely sock/meat puppet. One other edit in the previous six years before this !vote, and timing is also suspicious, coming on the heels of the other likely puppets. Dohn joe (talk) 14:45, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

7. Support option 2. Experts in a given domain often have a good reason for their idiosyncrasies. The birders have explained this one to my satisfaction; it is not, or at least not purely, a mere caprice, but has some plausible advantages. Experts may be presumed to know what facilitates communication on the topic, probably better than general style experts do. If they were asking for something really weird, that would be different, but it doesn't seem to me that they are. --Trovatore (talk) 00:48, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   Compare WP:JARGON. Experts in a given domain often do not know what facilitates communication to general audiences. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   That can happen, but it does not appear to have happened here. As I say, if they were asking for something really weird, that would be different, but they don't seem to be. The "general audiences" line is often overdone at WP. WP should not talk down to "general audiences", but should be their tool for entry to the material at an expert level. When experts have found by experience that a certain choice improves precision of discourse, that needs to be taken on board. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   To interject quickly: 9 years of documented continuous dispute over this matter conclusively proves that it very definitely has happened here. And forced re-education to use the One True Way of writing according to one field of scientists and enthusiasts is not what Wikipedia is about in at least 5 different ways listed at that page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:59, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

   Taken on board alongside the expert experience from Nature, National Geographic, Journal of Ornithology, Journal of Avian Biology, etc., etc. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   Our bird experts are more qualified to weigh those various inputs than our style experts are. --Trovatore (talk) 20:54, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

8. Support option 2. Capitalizing bird names imparts clarity in a very simple, elegant way. Capitalized names may look like 19th century poetry to someone who does not read, write, and think about bird species, but lower case names look amateurish to those of us who do. The sentence "The arctic tern is a common tern" is confusing nonsense that would require much verbiage to explain. Unambiguous and totally different in meaning are: "The Arctic Tern is a common tern" (perhaps written about the species at Potter Marsh near Anchorage) and "The Arctic Tern is a Common Tern" (perhaps written regarding a photo of a bird photographed at a lake in Arizona). And to say "The Common Tern is an arctic tern" has yet another totally different meaning, but it would be a false statement. Birdernaturalist (talk) 17:07, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   I truly hope that we're not relying on capitalization where clear writing would be preferable. If a sentence relies solely on capitalization to avoid ambiguity it's in need of editing. "The arctic tern is a seabird commonly found in maritime habitats." "Common terns have occasionally been spotted north of the Arctic Circle." (NB: Arctic Circle is a proper noun.) Pburka (talk) 17:52, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   To be fair, your example sentences would have to express the same ideas as mine. For example,"The species known as arctic tern is a common species of tern." Or "The bird claimed to be the species known as arctic tern is actually the species known as common tern." So, I'd mirror that if a sentence relies solely on excess verbiage to avoid ambiguity, it's in need of editing. Capitalized bird names are merely an extremely useful, simple, and elegant way to refer to actual species and to avoid memorizing scientific names, and there really should not be any controversy over it. While it may rub some people wrong from a stylistic point of view, they would eventually change their minds if they ever started trying to communicate about birds on a regular basis. Birdernaturalist (talk) 20:00, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   But the point is that Wikipedia can't really rely simply on capitalization to clarify how to parse the sentence. "The Arctic Tern is a common tern." is probably not a sentence we should have in any article here, since few readers will know this convention. The ability to write otherwise-difficult-to-parse sentences, in and of itself, ends up not really being much of a benefit to Wikipedia. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:36, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   (ec)Ah, no. This is a general encyclopedia and the style should reflect that. Why should everyone learn a different style when they are reading an article on birds? Your argument for capitalization, is based on maintaining a specific style while choosing to ignore the style that is in palace for all other articles here. The encyclopedia style is what needs to be maintained within the encyclopedia, right? Maybe you have us confused with Wikispecies? Why should an external style drive us? How does it help the readers? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:43, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

   I admit I didn't express the same ideas as your sentences, largely because, as a non-expert, I couldn't discern what those sentences meant, even with the specialist capitalization. Are there examples you can point to in actual bird articles which would be ambiguous without the capitalization, and can't be easily reworded? Pburka (talk) 00:08, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

9. Support editors who build content, and oppose hectoring. I would have liked to have seen some discussion regarding the issue, but any sensible points are lost—sorry MOS advocates, but repetitive walls-of-text to dominate opponents is not the way to build an encyclopedia in a collaborative project. Double-crested Cormorant#Taxonomy seems clear ("White-crested Cormorant") whereas alternatives seem artificial. Johnuniq (talk) 02:29, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

   WP:AGF. Are you saying that positions should be challenged? Or that only those supporting option 2 contribute content? Also, the encyclopedia is for readers and not for editors. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:00, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

# Support Option 2 The Bald Eagle is the national bird of the United States of America. The bald eagle would be an eagle that is bald, "lacking the natural or usual covering" as of feathers. Whistling duck and whistling duck are correct because that article is about a sub-family of birds. Black-bellied Whistling Duck is a common name for a species and correct when writing about birds of that species; black-bellied whistling duck refers to any whistling or tree ducks with a black belly such as the White-faced Whistling Duck. Capitalization convention for bird names was adopted by ornithologists centuries ago for clarity. The reasons are still valid. I read a scholarly piece about why the common names of birds are capitalized a few decades ago. I'll try to find it and add a link if I locate it and find that it's available on-line. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 02:52, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Found it as well as opposing commentary. I'm a bird geek who will continue to follow the AOU convention of capitalization when I write for birding publications but I find the arguments for lower case in Wikipedia compelling. I can write well enough that it will be obvious from context whether black-bellied whistling duck refers to all tree ducks with black underbellies or to a specific species. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 04:50, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Comment on option 2

• Oppose capitalization. The excessive capitalization just looks weird, like bad 19th century poetry. If someone wants to use it in some specialist publication, that's one thing, but Wikipedia is for a general audience. —Neotarf (talk) 04:00, 18 April 2014 (UTC). [Moved *oppose* vote back from where David Levy moved it out of Option 2 and IP 144.85.187.212 moved it into Option 1. Tsk, tsk. —Neotarf (talk) 16:34, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Removed the number sign wikiformatting, since this should not be counted in the list of supports for option 2. (No tsking needed.) This should be re-positioned to the discussion below. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:02, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Aye, it seems to be a !vote for option 1, but Neotarf already has a !vote in that section. This one is actually clearer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:26, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support option 2. I agree that all proper bird names should include capitalization. Using the "Black Crowned Crane" example, it is clear with capitalization that we are referring to a Black Crowned Crane, and not a crane with a black crown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chuck Slusarczyk Jr. (talk • contribs) 23:02, 22 April 2014 (UTC) — Chuck Slusarczyk Jr. (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

I smell a WP:SOCK. And not a well-disguised one.... Dohn joe (talk) 23:33, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Hardly. I know Chuck in real life. https://www.flickr.com/photos/2154chuckstreet_pics/ Natureguy1980 (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

But Chuck has never before made a wikipedia edit; why is he entitled to an opinion about a guideline subtlety? Sounds more like a meat puppet than a sock puppet. Dicklyon (talk) 05:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Dicklyon is right, "While Wikipedia assumes good faith, especially for new users, recruiting new editors to influence decisions on Wikipedia is prohibited." (Wikipedia:Meat puppet). Mama meta modal (talk) 06:27, 23 April 2014 (UTC).

• Capitalizing the names of actual species is important to avoid confusion. This should be considered for all species, not just birds. For example, "cardinal" is not a species, and should not be capitalized. "Northern Cardinal" is a species, and should be capitalized. If I say, "a northern cardinal," I may be referring to a bird that lives in Canada. If I say, "Northern Cardinal," I'm referring to a particular species, and referencing all of the collective knowledge that name encapsulates. Similarly, "a yellow warbler" is saying something entirely different than saying, "a Yellow Warbler." A "Blue Tit" is very different from a "blue tit." Ornithologists and birders capitalize the English names of species to be clear in what is being said. Inasmuch as Wikipedia has an interest in maintaining clarity of expression, it should use this convention, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Urracahermosa (talk • contribs) 23:17, 22 April 2014 (UTC) — Urracahermosa (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

I smell a WP:SOCK. And not a well-disguised one.... Dohn joe (talk) 23:33, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

People are only allowed to comment if they're longtime Wikipedia content-generators? What's your proof this is a sock? Did you check the IP address? This topic is getting a lot of discussion in birding and ornithology fora. These are undoubtedly people coming here to voice their valid opinions. It's pretty sad that you have to put them down.Natureguy1980 (talk) 05:04, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Please stop inviting your friends to make accounts just to vote with you. Dicklyon (talk) 05:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

We do not need a proof that it is a sick puppet. Indeed, "While Wikipedia assumes good faith, especially for new users, recruiting new editors to influence decisions on Wikipedia is prohibited." (Wikipedia:Meat puppet). Mama meta modal (talk) 06:27, 23 April 2014 (UTC).

• Support option 2. Regardless of the debate about what constitutes a proper name or naming other animal species, in terms of clarity, retaining capitalization is the clear choice. There can be many "yellow warblers" or "meadow pipits." Distinguishing the "common grackle" from a "common grackle" is confusing: are you referring to the "Common Grackle," Quiscalus quiscula, or a "common grackle" for the region, which may be Boat-tailed or Great-tailed? Capitalizing bird names, therefore, eliminates confusion and makes it clear to what you are referring: a specific bird or a species? Furthermore, capitalization emphasizes that you are speaking about the specific species. As Wikipedia is a "general encyclopaedia," it would be most clear to both biologists and the general public that the phrase "Cliff Swallows" is referring to the species in general, not swallows that nest specifically on cliffs. 68.40.49.28 (talk) 22:53, 22 April 2014 (UTC)HOLA

I smell a WP:SOCK. And not a well-disguised one.... Dohn joe (talk) 23:33, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, it looks like a Wikipedia:Sock puppet or a Wikipedia:Meat puppet. Please not that: "While Wikipedia assumes good faith, especially for new users, recruiting new editors to influence decisions on Wikipedia is prohibited." (Wikipedia:Meat puppet). Mama meta modal (talk) 06:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC).

This—disappointing. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

My apologies, Mama meta modal. I honestly did not realize the good faith provision does not apply to new users when it comes to discussions like this one. Regardless whether their votes "count", I think they're worth listening to. Many of them are undoubtedly Wikipedia users. Natureguy1980 (talk) 16:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Assuming good faith does apply to new users. It's the recruitment of new users to influence decisions that's bad faith. New users are worth listening to in general, but new users specifically recruited to stuff a ballot box often don't say anything new; they're just parroting the recruiter. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:35, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

You mean like how the last 15 people voting for option 1 just said, "what those guys said"? Natureguy1980 (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't mean like that, no, since they weren't recruited in a show of bad faith. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:23, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Respectfully, you should not accuse someone of bad faith when he was not aware of a rule. I've apologized once, and I'll do it again. I'm sorry I broke a rule of which I'm unaware, even though I've been editing articles on Wikipedia for nigh on 10 years. That was not my intention. I'm now aware of the rule, and it will not happen again. I'm sorry. That doesn't change the fact the most of the "yeah, I agree with Fred" posts are less substantive then the "meat puppet" posts that were a result of my actions. I really don't understand how those posts are ok. It seems like a double standard. Natureguy1980 (talk) 20:30, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Wow. Seriously? Canvassing again off-wiki for meatpuppets? [Someone from WP:BIRDS did this in 2012 and at least one previous debate on this as well, as I recall, to stack polls in precisely the same way. And still did not gain consensus outside their own project page to do what they're doing.] You know, if I made one post, not even a "rise up! rise up!" advocacy one, just a simple, neutral "isn't this interesting..." post on a single English-language writing e-mail list I can think of, or on another group I can think of, on Facebook, I could deluge this page with probably 100+ meatpuppets in favor of down-casing, within an hour. That's not how consensus is built here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:08, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: option 3

• Abandon this discussion. This is a re-run of previous non-conclusive discussions, which are disrupting the work of those who edit bird page. Capitalization of bird names is established on the Wiki. Snowman (talk) 17:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  There is nothing here that could disrupt bird-page editors' work. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:05, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  I've replied above regarding the re-run claim. Very, very important point, obviously. Andrewa (talk) 19:28, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  Asking birds editors to follow the same style guide as the rest to the encyclopedia is not "disrupting the[ir] work" at all; their own decisions to insist on their way at all costs is doing that. Capitalization of bird names was "established" by WP:FAITACCOMPLI editwarring, against years and years of consistent opposition (much of which I've catalogued at User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names). It was then given a totally WP:FALSECON seal of imprimatur by an early version of WP:NCFAUNA, created mostly by the same handful of editors, directing wikiprojects to just use whatever convention they wanted. We're still cleaning up after this utter chaos, explicitly overridden by MOS:LIFE in 2012, after in a discussion that was actually dominated by WP:BIRDS members who failed to convince others of their preference's validity/advisability here. We've already left this alone for two solid years, since the early 2012 debate that stabilized MOS on this subject. The result of MOS being wishy-washy, and advising that people just leave the birds dispute alone, on the feeling that hopefully it would just resolve itself amicably over time, has been nothing but more strife.

  PS: The only two other projects who even faintly care about this sort of thing are WP:BOTANY who note without trying to force it on everyone that capitalization is preferred by some journals in some plant specialties, meanwhile WP:INSECTS observes the same thing about two kinds of flying insects, again without trying to push a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS against MOS:LIFE, though a couple of editors keep trying to promote the idea at some of the NC guidelines (on the basis of arguments that mostly seem to be anti-MOS rather than pro-capitalization, and about making expert editors rather than average readers happy).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:54, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The project you quote is, of course, the one that uses lower case, but not English common names, so its default style is Corylus avellana not "common hazel". Apparently not a problem. It amused me also that that some of the style fanatics (not you,  SMcCandlish) actually took my "american kestrel" seriously Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:41, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

@Snowmanradio: as much as I disagree with the MOS on this particular issue, I am a fan of conformity and strongly support the idea of a coherent- and professional-looking wikipedia, so I'd rather it either be incorporated as official or sunk rather than float along as a guideline-not-a-guideline. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:40, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Taking your seriously presented statement as serious does not make the reader a "style fanatic"; it's simply indicative of poor writing ability. It amuses me also to see fanatics call others fanatics. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:55, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: discussion

• Thanks for your vote, BDD. But why do you think that WP:NCCAPS give the best answer? That's what I'm asking here. Step back from all previous claims of consensus (however local or not-so-local) and let's ask, what's the best way of writing and (particularly) naming these articles, and why? Andrewa (talk) 08:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  AndrewA we need an evidence section below so folks can put all external sources below - and quickly. I am a bit tight for time for several hours. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:45, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  OK... although I would have preferred someone else to do it, and don't really see the rush. Andrewa (talk) 08:50, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  NCCAPS is so well established that I think the burden of proof should be on those who want to deviate from it. But in a nutshell, I would say that whether or not a letter is capitalized can convey specific information, so there should be a default, a baseline of either all small or all large caps. Small caps work well because they're more common in the English language in general. But my position is merely that we should follow our own internal standards. Were the positions reversed, and bird articles used sentence-case capitalization, my position would be the same: stick with our naming conventions. --BDD (talk) 16:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  Agree about the burden of proof, but off-topic. Please reread the proposal. Andrewa (talk) 19:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal. I note that the evidence for option 2 comes mainly from guidebooks, while evidence for option 1 comes from general sources. WP:MOS: "Plain English works best; avoid ambiguity, jargon, ..." -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:14, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  True. But the MOS represents a local consensus (and this clause arguably also concerns content rather than style, but we don't need to go there). The purpose of this section is to step back, and consider only the question: What makes for the best articles? Andrewa (talk) 19:01, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  As far as capitalization of bird species names, isn't the answer the same whether you follow the MOS, or if you follow usage in WP:Reliable sources? Dohn joe (talk) 19:20, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  That's exactly what many have assumed or implied. But this is taking a step back from that, and even from the usage criterion, the problem with which is: Which reliable sources do you consider, and which do you disqualify? Andrewa (talk) 19:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  That's easy - we consider all reliable sources. See Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliable_sources. It even gives a handy list of types of reliable sources: academic and peer-reviewed publications; university-level textbooks; books published by respected publishing houses; magazines; journals; and mainstream newspapers. Why would you want to disqualify any reliable source? Dohn joe (talk) 20:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  Agree totally that we consider all reliable sources. My point exactly. But read the whole paragraph you quote... the handy list of types of reliable sources you quote is introduced by Editors may also use material from reliable non-academic sources, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include: (my emphasis). Surely that includes sources such as guidebooks? But others wish to disqualify them (I assume you've seen examples of this without my needing to quote diffs). Andrewa (talk) 00:34, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

  I certainly would not wish to disqualify guidebooks, or any other reliable source. They're all part of the mix. But looking at all of the reliable sources, it seems clear that the MOS is in fact in line with a clear majority of reliable sources in using lowercase, which was my point. I don't think the MOS is infallible or universally mandatory by any stretch, but especially when its guidance matches the format found most often in the real world, I don't see why we shouldn't go along. Dohn joe (talk) 17:49, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

  Nobody is disqualifying guidebooks as reliable sources. However, we've got a situation where different reliable sources differ in the style in which they present the same information. Since there's a conflict between the reliable sources (on style only), and because many of us believe that Wikipedia should strive for consistency, we need to choose which style to use. As Wikipedia is intended for a general audience, it only makes sense for us to lean towards the style which is favoured by most non-specialist reliable sources. Pburka (talk) 02:23, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

  What makes for the best articles? Sentence casing. Using jargon or Significant Capitals for Things That Don't Need to Be Capitalized hinders readers who are not specialists or steeped in the IOC rules. -- JHunterJ (talk)

  A belief that MOS "represents a local consensus" is a failure to understand WP:LOCALCONSENSUS at all. We don't disqualify any reliable sources, we just note that pretty much the only reliable sources that capitalize this kind of stuff are some but not all field guides and some but not all academic journals in ornithology, following a convention the authors of which specifically state is intended for ornithological publications. The vast majority of reliable sources in English do not capitalize bird species common names, or anything comparable to them. No reliable sources about English writing (which matter for Wikipedia's writing purposes more than specialist science journals, which are reliable about science facts not writing) capitalize such things. Capitalizing them here offends of the grammatical sensibilities of nearly all readers. "What makes for the best articles" is not taking an ungrammatical convention created by an annual meeting of scientists (not a nomenclature authority or any other sort of actual organization) specifically for ornithology journals, that not even all such journals agree with, and forcing it on an encyclopedia, for no clear gain. One can recycle one's pro-capitalization position endlessly and it will never change these facts. The argument that MOS is some local consensus one can ignore is an argument that has already lost; the entire reason the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy exists (read it – wikiproject cannot make up their own rules against the consensus established in broader guidelines and policies; this was originally codified at WP:PROJPAGE) is specifically to put an end to such misapplications of WP:IAR. If you believe that MOS is missing something or has something wrong, then seek to change it. This is how WP:consensus works. You'll find, if your reasoning is logical, instead of contorted and circular, and your presentation grounded in policy and collaboration, not demands and ego, that WT:MOS frequently comes to a consensus to make additions and other changes. You'll also find that in this case the issue has been talked to death for 9 years, and consensus emphatically has not changed in favor of bird (or other) species common name capitalization; the consensus against it has become progressively more obvious. If you believe that MOS itself should be deleted, you know where WP:MFD is, and you'll rapidly find that virtually no one agrees with you.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:13, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: related Wikipedia guidelines and essays pages

Mama meta modal (talk) 21:41, 9 April 2014 (UTC).

Bird article names: evidence supporting option 1

• Organizations that consistently downcase bird names
  • Royal Society of the Protection of Birds
  • National Geographic
  • Ornithological Society of New Zealand
  • Journal of Avian Biology
• "crowned crane" in the Encyclopedia Britannica. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• EB only covers birds very generically - usually only by broad common terms (e.g. magpie, and is often outdated. See bell-magpie (word not used for 70 years+) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Questionably relevant; this isn't about whether their taxonomy is correct, it's about what they do with style; you still keep confusing the two. Also, "thee" and "thine" aren't current usage, but you'll find them in the same dictionary. "Contains obsolete entries" is a feature not a bug in dictionaries.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• The Oxford English Dictionary do not capitalise bird species name. Mama meta modal (talk) 09:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC).

• Many quotes of the use of bird names are capitalized in the OED showing a long history capitalized bird names. Snowman (talk) 16:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• The English language until the late early 1800s, and even in some places the late 1800s, had a tendency in common with the rule in German to capitalize nouns and noun phrases. It isn't evidentiary of what you think it is, sorry.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• Nor does Merriam-Webster. See its entry for golden eagle, for example --Stfg (talk) 10:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

CMOS recommends following Merrian Webster, as it happens. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:25, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Merrian Webster only covers birds very generically too. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Not relevant; this is not about whether the source in question covers every species, it's about what they do with style.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• The RSPB don't seem to favour capitalisation, either. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:24, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• "black crowned crane" in National Geographic -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:04, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• "black crowned crane" in the Chicago Tribune -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:04, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• ngram comparing "the Snowy Owl" to "the snowy owl" Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• ngram comparing "the Snowy Egret" to "the snowy egret" Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• ngram comparing "the Great Blue Heron" to "the great blue heron" Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• ngram comparing "the Emperor Penguin" to "the emperor penguin" Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• ngram comparing "the Barn Swallow" to "the barn swallow" Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• "American kestrel" at Reno Gazette-Journal -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• "American kestrel" at Houston Chronicle -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• "American kestrel" (and many others) in The Bird Almanac: A Guide to Essential Facts and Figures of the World's Birds -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• "American kestrel" in The American Kestrel: Falcon of Many Names
• "American kestrel" as a Library of Congress subject heading -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:54, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• The Chicago Manual of Style (16th [online] ed.). U. of Chicago Pr. 2010.; full access requires paid account or hardcopy – explicitly lower-cases bird species common names and all others:
  • "Sec. 8: Names and Terms, Subsec. 8.127 Vernacular Names of Plants and Animals—additional resources" says "In general, Chicago recommends capitalizing only proper nouns and adjectives, as in the following examples, which conform to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: Dutchman's-breeches, jack-in-the-pulpit, mayapple, Cooper's hawk, rhesus monkey, Rocky Mountain sheep". Note "Cooper's hawk".
  • It says in the same section: "For the correct capitalization and spelling of common names of plants and animals, consult a dictionary or the authoritative guides to nomenclature, the ICBN and the ICZN", meaning the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, recently renamed the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, and International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Note they don't open-endedly say "authoritative guides", but specify the two guides they consider authoritative.
  • Here are some big interpretation hints: Dictionaries do not capitalize common names of species, including birds. The ICZN (which is an actual nomenclature authority, unlike the IOC) does not capitalize common names of species, including birds. The ICN/ICBN does not capitalize the common names of species, at all, despite some botanical groups liking to capitalize; see next source entry below.
  • At neither section does CMoS drill down to the narrow level of the IOC, much less suggest following different conventions for different orders of animals, nor academic/scientific conventions at all if they conflict with general usage.
  • At "8.118 Scientific style—additional resources", CMoS defers to [only] the ICZN and ICBN, here, too. At "8.119 Genus and specific epithet", it gives several examples of common names of species, and all are lower-case.
  • See also "7.48 Capitals for emphasis", which says: "Initial capitals, once used to lend importance to certain words, are now used only ironically (but see 8.93 [Platonic ideals])."
  • Common names of species also do not qualify as proper names/nouns under the terms at "5.6 Proper nouns", which can only be "the specific name of a person, place, or thing" [a species is not a thing, but a categorical classification of things; one might as well capitalize "Chevrolet Four-door Automobile"].
  • CMoS does not give a single example of a common name of any species being capitalized, except where it contains a proper name.
  • The 15th ed. is identical on all of these points, other than the section numbering, including "Cooper's hawk" as exemplary.
  • CMoS is generally considered the leading American style guide for non-journalistic writing.
  • Note that this is even after CMoS has had plenty of time (the 15th ed. dates to 2003) to pick up on this debate at WP and offline and change their mind, but they still side firmly with lower case.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
• The International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. Intl. Botanical Congress, Intl. Assn. for Plant Taxonomy. 2011. "Preface". (formerly Intl. Code of Botanical Nom.): "[T]ypography is a matter of editorial style and tradition not of nomenclature." Doesn't cover animals, of course, but this is a general statement about style in nomenclature, not a statement about plants in particular.
• Anselm Atkins in The Auk in 1983:

  ...what is the authority against [capitalization]? As Anselm Atkins wrote in The Auk in 1983: "Any American dictionary. Look up "blue jay."

  Atkins continues:

  Most field guides and some other books do use capitals. On the other hand, birds are confined to lower case in the writings of Darwin, Thoreau, Muir, Aldo Leopold, Stephen Gould, and many others. Highly literate magazines such as Audubon, Smithsonian, National Geographic and National Wildlife do not capitalize birds' names. Neither do Science or Scientific American. A great number of writers and editors thus follow the dictionary rather than the CBE [Council of Biology Editors, which follows the IOC rule for bird names, or at least did at the time Atkins was writing]. ...

  Language changes; grammatical usages come and go. There are no eternal verities here; convention and consent are all. Rules of grammar are not handed down from on high--they are merely a codification of actual usage. The dictionary says "what is," not "what should be." Nevertheless, it is proper to follow "what is" as determined by the compilers of current dictionaries. Professional ornithologists and lepidopterists, whose writings surely constitute only a fraction of today's literature, cannot possibly win the day (but what a gallant showing of nets and binoculars against all those typewriters, word processors, and printing presses!). Lacking an Archimedes' fulcrum, we shall never change convention but only succeed in violating it. Meanwhile, our idiosyncrasy causes confusion among those who want to write birds' names correctly. It would be most helpful if we would generously concede and conform. As Humpty-Dumpty said (it's impossible to make it through a reflective essay without quoting Lewis Carroll), it is a question of who is to be master. In this instance, let us surrender to the dictionary. Until we do, we ornithologists, with our Important Capitals, continue to look Curiously Provincial.^[1]

• --JHunterJ (talk) 12:55, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: evidence supporting option 2

• The World Bird List, established by the International Ornithologists’ Union, has gone about assigning proper and standard names to all bird species. Their rules on capitalization are here (i.e. capitalise). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

A specialised source which acknowledges that they are going against convention and states that capitalisation is "preferable for the name of a bird species in an ornithological context". An article on Wikipedia is not "in an ornithological context". It also seems like they have an axe to grind with standard convention. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes. See the relevant capitalization page, which says outright, "this is contrary to the general rules of spelling for mammals, birds, insects, fish, and other life forms." --BDD (talk) 16:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

That's hilarious. That's enough to just put this silly matter to bed, forever, right now.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• ngram comparing "the Rainbow Lorikeet" to "the rainbow lorikeet" - slight edge to caps Dohn joe (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• RSPB Handbook of British Birds, by Holden and Cleeves. Snowman (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• A Field Guide to the Birds of Australia, by Graham Pizzey. Snowman (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern Northern America, by David Sibley. Snowman (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• A Field Guide to the Birds of North America, by Robbins et al. Snowman (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• The Book of Indian Birds, by Ali. Snowman (talk) 18:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

  All these field guides are invalid examples of this capitalization being a birds standard in particular; virtually all field guides on all topics capitalize the names of the things to which the book is a guide. It is nothing but use of capitalization for emphasis to aid visual scanning. It's coincidence that it happens to agree with IOC's preference (usually - there are very particular and peculiar devils in the details of IOC's capitalization rules, which I helped explain at WP:BIRDS#Naming), and the guide practice preceded the existence of IOC by generations.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• IUCN. Snowman (talk) 18:12, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

The IUCN Redlist consistently uses title case in the Common Name/s section, but generally uses lower case in running text see e.g. G/giant P/panda. It does conform sometimes to specialist practice; i.e. birds are often capitalized in running text, but IUCN doesn't always capitalize even bird names (California Condors are "condors" in running text). IUCN certainly does not support always using capitals. Field guides usually use title case for emphasis in headings (as has been mentioned previously in these discussions). Do the field guides you mentioned capitalize in running text.? Plantdrew (talk) 19:43, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Not just in headings; field guides on all topics usually capitalize and/or otherwise emphasize the name of anything that has an entry, e.g. "Note that Basalt is visually distinct from Schist and Quartz" or whatever, including in running prose. It is field guide style, not a naming convention.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

IUCN uses upper case for the West African Manatee here in the text. Snowman (talk) 22:43, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Grasping. That's a blog article not likely subject to much if any editorial control; it's not something formal produced by IUCN to indicate a convention.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, wait a minute, that's a mammal! This does not support the birds case at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:46, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

The point is the IUCN uses upper case consistently for mammal and bird name. Snowman (talk) 15:42, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Which again does not support the birds case at al. WP:BIRDS claims that bird names are special and different, not that all species common names should be capitalized. The IUCN article contradicts this by treating them as subject to the same convention in their style guide, which happens to capitalize. IUCN, therefore, supports the pro-MOS, pro-consistency position here. D'oh! — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:44, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

IUCN also also capitalizes all species where it capitalizes any of them, not just birds. It does this for mammals, which brings it into direct conflict with, well, virtually everything ever written about mammals, including in academic literature; see Talk:Snow_leopard#Secondary_and_Tertiary_Sources_on_Capitalization for a much longer list of references than we've built here so far. Oh, and elsewhere in IUCN materials, they use BLOCK CAPS for species common names. So much for your "they capitalized like I do" theory. All of this demonstrate that IUCN not a reliable source on style in taxonomy at all. Which makes sense, since they're not a taxonomic group or a style guide, but an species conservation organization.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:46, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• Wiki Commons. Snowman (talk) 18:13, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
• Wikispecies. Snowman (talk) 18:13, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Wikis cannot be cited as reliable sources; you know that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:07, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
    • The point is that consistency is importance across the various English language Wiki projects. Snowman (talk) 15:42, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

      Why? An encyclopedia is not a species list. Wikicommons is not an encyclopedia. Wiktionary distinguishes between wikt:Bob and wikt:bob, but Wikipedia cannot, so that level of consistency isn't possible. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:05, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

      Right. Cross-article consistency is way more important inside Wikipedia than between Wikipedia and some other site.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:44, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

• Google Books Ngram results looking at a whole family (the terns) shows upper case more common for the majority of species:

Tigershrike (talk) 11:24, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

• • • Tigershrike, you have a lot to learn about the books n-grams. These comparison are all wildly biased toward title case because the n-grams include a lot of titles and headings (many birds species names appear seldom other than in tables and headings). You can remove much of the bias by including lowercase "a" or "the" in front of the bird name, or "is" after it, to narrow the search to certain sentence contexts. Some birds, especially rare ones mentioned only in birder books, may still survive as mostly capitalized, but I'd be surprised if many of these terns do. Like the black noddy; of course, many more variations are too rare to be in the database. Dicklyon (talk) 02:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Yeah, that's a huge pile of skewed data. I demand a re-count!  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:00, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

• Many (not all) ornithology journals. An incomplete list:
  • someone should add some here

• Some more sources using capitals:
  • Handbook of the Birds of the World – does capitalize, but using a different scheme from IOC's, which the HBW editors explicitly reject as confusing
  • The Birds of the Western Palearctic
  • 'The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World
  • Regional lists: AOU Checklist of North American Birds, South American Classification Committee, British Ornithologists' Union, Association of European Records and Rarities Committees, African Bird Club, Ornithological Society of the Middle East, Oriental Bird Club, Birdlife Australia
  • Organisations: BirdLife International, American Birding Association, British Trust for Ornithology, BirdWatch Ireland
  • Websites: All About Birds, BirdWeb, Xeno-canto, The Internet Bird Collection – only reliable sources if not self-published and not reader-edited
  • Magazines: Bird Watching, Birdwatch, British Birds, Birding
  • Site guides: RSPB Where to Discover Nature, Helm's "Where to Watch Birds" series (e.g. Where to Watch Birds in Britain), ABA Birdfinding Guides (e.g. A Birder’s Guide to Washington), Falcon Guides (e.g. Birding Northern California)
  • Garden birds: Our Garden Birds, Stokes Bird Gardening Book, RSPB Pocket Birdfeeder Guide, Audubon Birdhouse Book
  • Reference books: Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds, Birds & People, Extinct Birds, Bird Atlas 2007-2011, Birds in England, The Bird Watching Answer Book, National Geographic Birdwatcher’s Bible, Sibley's Birding Basics, Wild Costa Rica, Australian Bird Names
  • Other books: Skomer: Portrait of a Welsh island, Silent Fields: the long decline of a nation's wildlife, Birdsong, Kingbird Highway, Falconry, Birds: Through Irish Eyes, A Bird in the Bush: A Social History of Birding, The Urban Birder, Birding with Bill Oddie Tigershrike (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Notice that they're pretty much all bird specialty books, and largely field guides? Haven't we been over this already about 50 times?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:15, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

• Parkes, Kenneth C. (1978), "A Guide to Forming and Capitalizing Compound Names of Birds in English" (PDF), Auk, 95: 324–326 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·ʇuoɔ) Join WER 04:03, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: questions

• I am trying to understand why people think that there is a conflict between MOS and BIRDS in the first place... I thought that (under MOS) proper names were always capitalized. For example, we capitalize names like Statue of Liberty, New York Public Library and Memorial Day (as opposed to: Statue of liberty, New York public library or Memorial day). Am I missing something? Why is a name like Black Crowned Crane causing such controversy... isn't it a proper name? Wouldn't it be capitalized under both the MOS and BIRDS? Blueboar (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

See MOS:CAPS#Common names. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:20, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Right, proper names are capitalized, but "black crowned crane" isn't a proper name. If I had a black crowned crane that I named Dark Phoenix, "Dark Phoenix" would be a proper name, identifying a particular black crowned crane. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

JHunterJ, the question is why the Black Crowned Crane isn't regarded as the proper name for a type of crane, as in "the French" (a type of person) and "the Alps" (a range of mountains). A German shepherd is someone in Germany who looks after sheep, as opposed to the German Shepherd; a toy poodle is something a Toy Poodle might play with. The style guides are inconsistent on the point; even the ones that prefer no caps make exceptions, often for birds and companion animals. No one has explained why some editors want the MoS to adopt a "no exceptions" position. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:16, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

"The French" is a specific people, not a type of person. ("What kind of person is he? Oh, he's the French!" No. "What kind of bird is that? Oh, it's a black crowned crane!" Yes.) Common nouns are classes of things. The Alps are a specific mountain range, not a class of mountains. Yes, good writing is needed for clarity. This is true with or without Significant Capitals for Things I Like. No one wants a "no exceptions" policy; we do want to adhere to the exceptions that help improve the encyclopedia policy. No one has explained why some editors want the MoS to adopt exceptions that not only don't improve the encyclopedia but worsen it for the typical reader (the reader who is unfamiliar with the IOC). -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:41, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

@JHunterJ: That answer should win awards. Saving for later, because it very succinctly and clearly gets at two of the most serious cognitive dissonance problems in the pro-caps argument, and they get rehashed constantly. It's like verbal Whack-a-Mole. @SlimVirgin: "German shepherd dog" is the proper name of the breed [in registries that use that name at all; it's a.k.a. the Alsatian dog and the deutsche Schäferhund], whether you capitalize the dog/Dog part of it or not; it's not the capitalization that disambiguates. This is even clearer in an example like Norwegian Forest Cat (or Norwegian forest cat, as you prefer). To some, calling a dog just "German Shepherd" doesn't sound as weird as calling a cat just "a Norwegian Forest", but it's only because German shepherd dogs are more common and familiar to English speakers than Norwegian forest cats are, by and large. In context, I can call a cat a Burmese, but otherwise it's presumed I mean a person (or python or whatever best fits the non-feline context). A breed name isn't a proper name beyond the proper names (usually geographical) it may already contain. Arguments can be made that the published names of formal breeds are in fact proper names, but that has nothing to do with the present debate, there is no consensus on the question on WP yet, and it's not at all a good analogy for the species question. "Italian" [person, food, whatever] is capitalized because it an adjectival proper name, derived from the proper noun Italy. Some languages don't even capitalize that far (e.g. Spanish: Italia, italiano. But "Italian Woman", "Recipe from Italy" and "Italian Language" are not capitalized like that. These are more closely analogous to a bird species name like [[Sunda cuckoo-shrike]; it contains a proper name but is not one in its own right. See also the canine landrace St. John's water dog, and so on. They're identifiable categories that contain individual members, nothing more.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:23, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

To elaborate on the examples, Statue of Liberty is a specific statue, New York Public Library is a specific library and Memorial Day is a specific holiday. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but Black Crowned Crane is a specific type of bird. Wouldn't it compare to something like Space Shuttle (capitalized as the proper name of a type of space craft... even though the individual Shuttles were named "Columbia", "Challenger", etc.) Blueboar (talk) 14:02, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

The point is that all style guides and non-specialist publications do not recommend capitalising for common names of fauna. For some reason the bird folk want to be different. There should be no difference between how we treat pot-bellied pig and black crowned crane. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

There should indeed be no difference. And capitalization of these is not logical, it's like capitalizing "dog", "cat", "human". --JorisvS (talk) 14:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and "playwright" is a specific type of human, but playwright is not capitalized while William Shakespeare is. We easily say "a human", "a playwright", "a bird", "a black crowned crane", or "a grizzly bear", but not "a William Shakespeare" (just "William Shakespeare") or "an Old Ephraim" (just "Old Ephraim") or "a Statue of Liberty" (just "the Statue of Liberty"). Species names are not proper names, no matter if they are capitalized generally (that is, not capitalized) or jargonly (that is, with Significant Caps). -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:47, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

And as for Space Shuttle, we should fix that one too. http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/the_shuttle/ -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

@JhinterJ.... Should we also change the capitalization of Assistant Secretary of State... that is not a specific person (there are multiple Assistant Secretaries of State), but a specific type of governmental official.

@JorisvS... Um... we do capitalize Dog, Cat and Human... but since those are single word titles, they are poor examples.

@Robsinden... I understand that non-specialized style guides say to not capitalize the names of fauna ... and I also understand that bird specific, specialized style guides disagree and say to capitalize the names of birds... what I am trying to wrap my brain around is why these various style guides say what they say. We can't settle the debates between MOS editors and the members of WikiProject:Birds until we understand why generalized style guides say to not capitalize types of fauna... why bird specific style guides say to capitalize them... and why we woundn't treat them both the same way we would treat other things, such as types of space craft. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

If you read this, which I believe to be the source of all of this, it seems some bird guy decided one day that the rules and conventions of the English language didn't apply to them. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Who invented USA spelling? Snowman (talk) 15:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Funny you should ask... It seems that Some guy decided one day that he did not like the existing rules and conventions of the English language ... and so invented USA Spelling. Blueboar (talk) 15:56, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Ummm - I really hope you don't think that's really what happened! Besides, non-specialised style guides take those established differences into account. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

@Blueboar. "Cat", "dog", etc. are not capitalized. Look at the articles; do they capitalize these words mid-sentence? No. They're perfectly good examples. --JorisvS (talk) 21:02, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

When species caps were proposed for everything, this actually would have included both "Dog" and "Cat" in their species-specific senses, and that may be one of the main reasons the idea (sanely) failed to gain total WP:FAITACCOMPLI-level traction. Some articles like this were already being rewritten to uppercase Lion and Cheetah and Cougar. See the talk archives of Talk:Cougar for how inane that putsch was, a campaign championed by a brow-beating WP:BIRDS pundit (now disappeared) insisting that the capitalization was "required" and "a standard" and blah blah blah, when there's actually an explicit convention against capitalizing the common names of mammals. The whole exercise should win some kind of Ultra-lame Disruptive Nonsense Award. It was positively shameful. But before it was over, almost every single article on rodentia, primates, cetaceans, ovids, bovids (I think) and other orders of mammals (among many other life forms) were all capitalized in a tendentious, editwarring avalanche we still haven't entirely cleaned up. And it was pushed by many of the same now claiming they fear an incautious WP:RANDY rush to decapitalize their work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:57, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@Blieboar: I think you've got it: the specific office is the Assistant Secretary of State, even though there might be multiple assistant secretaries of state, just like the NASA program is the Space Shuttle program, even though there might be multiple space shuttles (or orbiters). -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:45, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar, we capitalize dog, cat, and human? What?? Only if they start a sentence, or are being used as a proper noun (e.g., I say to my dog, "Hi, Dog."). Are you thinking of the MediaWiki restrictions that make all initial letters of article names capitalized? --BDD (talk) 16:30, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

See the talk histories of Cougar and Lion. "Dog" and "Cat" have actually been debated about, back when there was a putsch to capitalize common names of mammals too (advanced by - you guessed it - style activists from WP:BIRDS, who were blissfully unaware that there's a formal zoological convention against capitalizing mammals' common names). Cat and dog are borderline examples because they're ambiguous, and many argue that the "real" zoological vernacular names are the domestic cat and the domestic dog, and many people on the bird-caps site also want to see this as Domestic Cat, etc. Just yesterday someone in this debate (SlimVirgin I think) on one of the other pages (WT:NCCAPS, I think), said there a difference between a dog and the Dog. So, yes, some of these people do even want to capitalized Dog and Cat when they mean Canis familiaris and Felis catus. Meanwhile seriously about 0.001% of English speakers would ever capitalize "the Dog" like that. It's clear (not just from this) that people exposed for a long time capitalization of common names of one type of organism have a tendency to "believe" in it and to start proselytizing it. I've observed that the pro-caps arguments are usually wallowing in confirmation bias and the false consensus effect (in the real-life, off-WP sense). So, no, it is not just about the fact that article titles have first letter capitalized by the software on en.wiki; people were literally capitalizing in mid-sentence, e.g. "The Cougar or Mountain Lion is..." in real Wikipedia articles, I kid you not. Proponents of this farce were arguing with (in retrospect hilarious) self-righteous puffery and superiority that this was "required" and "correct" and "a standard". This is a big reason why this bird exceptionalism has to go. It inspired people every single tday to go capitalize something else that should not be capitalized. And I'm just talking about on Wikipedia. I can't imagine how many people have embarrassed themselves in school or work writing by capitalizing common names because they saw it here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:23, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Just noting that I have never suggested capitalizing Dog (unless it's part of a proper name). SlimVirgin ^(talk)

• @SlimVirgin or whoever: are there sources that suggest that bird species names are proper names? From what I've seen, that was not the basis for their recommended capitalization (by the IOC) in ornithology writings, but if it's going to be invoked here as a reason, we should know whether there's any support for that concept. Dicklyon (talk) 02:32, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Dicklyon, Jon S Greenlaw (a biologist) of the OIC discusses them as proper names:

The value of capitalizing the English names of animals seems obvious to me. Somewhere deep in the history of our language, we came to regard vernacular and “common” names as second-class citizens. Thou shalt not capitalize them. I believe that it has something to do with the (mis-)perception of species by folks in the humanities as “categories” or “classes” rather than as real entities (to the extent that we can know them). Well, biology has come a long way from that typological view. The standardized English names now have graduated from the realm of “common/vernacular” names. From my perspective, the strongest argument for capitalizing the English names of birds is that we now have a single, unique name ... for each of the biological entities that we call bird species. These names must be regarded as proper nouns (thus receive capitals in all English publications), rather than as common nouns (vernacular names).

SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:02, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that answer. I can understand the logic/desire of some to do it that way. But since it hasn't really caught on widely in English writing, I still feel that WP should stick with the old pattern until it is generally agreed that species names shall be treated like (or even as) proper names. His statement that "These names must be regarded as proper nouns" seems to be more about his wishes than any analysis of linguistic practice or reality. Dicklyon (talk) 21:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: I admit to being puzzled that people will accept Rocky Mountains as a proper name but not Black Crowned Crane. I can't see a difference. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:20, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

You don't need to find a logical explanation for the difference if you just note that in normal English usage it is a longstanding tradition to give mountain ranges proper names (or to capitalize the names of unique mountains ranges, as we'd say more empirically), whereas the same has not traditionally been the case for species names – not even birds, in spite of organizations trying hard to make it so. Or if your point is that "Rocky Mountains" is not a unique range but a group of ranges, what can I say? It's based on longstanding usage, which is why people accept it. Now if you can explain why some people are happy to accept caps at Oregon Coast or Andromeda Galaxy, in spite of longstanding lowercase usage, I'd like to hear... Dicklyon (talk) 23:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Rocky Mountains is a proper name. It is a specific mountain range. Is that a Rocky Mountain? Black crowned crane is a common noun. It is a class of birds. Is that a black crowned crane? I do not know why you cannot see the difference. Let's get back to the Alps. The Alps is a specific mountain range, but through back-formation, "alp" is now also a common noun meaning "a high rugged mountain". And you still can't say Is that an Alp?. You have to say Is that an alp?, because it's a common noun. The difference is clear and simple. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:50, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I'll simply copy and paste my message from four days ago:

It certainly is true that "some people" capitalize the common names of birds species, but not because they're proper nouns. I'm aware of exactly one ornithologist who advocates that they be treated as such (and even he hasn't claimed that they actually are in the real world).

—David Levy 21:53, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: notifications and publicity

We have jumped the gun above. I was asking for comments on the proposal. Instead we have implemented half of it. Less than half of it, actually, and jumped to a poll.

I don't think that's surprising or even a bad thing, all things considered. But this discussion will only be helpful if it becomes a true wiki-wide discussion, and it's not that yet. It's mostly (not all) just the same old hands. There has been a little discussion of that above, but it's mixed in with the poll. This subsection #Point one and notification is where it now should be.

What other notifications are necessary to achieve this? Is a wiki-wide banner justified? I was hoping someone else might suggest that. If not that, then what? Will anything else be adequate? Andrewa (talk) 20:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

With hindsight (sorry) it might have been better just to have the proposal itself at the top, and then a subsection for discussion of what the options should be. When I arrived this morning, UK time, it was already divided into !voting subsections, and I didn't even realise that was premature. Which is a pity, because I'm not sure that we yet have the right questions: your proposal was "that we immediately and directly seek a community-wide consensus on the question of captitalisation of bird names", but your first set of questions only address article titles. That may be simpler, as you say, but I don't really see the point. We have mandatory redirects for article title capitalization. Are we just mired in our history here? If so, better admit it and not waste any more time. If not, since this is an attempt to get a community-wide consensus, and maybe the last such attempt we can hope for for a long time, shouldn't we try to get a consensus on the real issue? --Stfg (talk) 20:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

In hindsight, maybe. But now we need to run with what we have IMO. Agree that it doesn't seem to make much difference, but it seems to be very important to many.

I think it's important to focus on building the best encyclopedia, which means a focus on the needs of readers rather than those of editors. But also think that this focus will, long term, best serve the needs of editors, too. So it's a win/win. Andrewa (talk) 20:44, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, I agree with the first sentence of your last paragraph. But the best encyclopedia has the best text, not merely the prettiest article titles. And indeed that won't make much difference, and it will have the negative effect that we'll never get to solve the real problem, because if we try at some time in the future, everyone will point to the solution to the non-problem and say "We discussed it! We discussed it already!" And I'm sorry this is being kicked into the long grass with "too late", because from what I can see, the discussion was never had. --Stfg (talk) 21:19, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

• Added to WP:CENT. While my position on the issue is clear, I think the wording I chose is about as neutral as it can get. --BDD (talk) 20:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Hmm, that'll do. I wouldn't have said "new" but whatever. Agree on having a note there and folks can read up here. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:41, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• shrug* That was just the name of the section I linked to. I'm not the one who said it was new. --BDD (talk) 19:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• I added links to this page (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style) on the twelve following pages:
  • Talk:Crowned crane
  • Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2014 March#Black crowned crane
  • Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Portal talk:Birds#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Portal talk:Biology#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animals#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Talk:Species name#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (fauna)#Bird article name (capitalisation)
  • Wikipedia talk:Consensus#Bird article name (capitalisation)

Mama meta modal (talk) 20:41, 9 April 2014 (UTC).

• Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Capitalisation_of_bird_names. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird article names: concerns about parameters of the debate

Andrewa's third demand request, expectation, whatever up top – no editing anything relevant until this huge proposal plays out, which could take a very long time to produce no better consensus – is unacceptable. There's already a level of revertwarring going on that I'm going to take to WP:ANI very soon if it does not abate; this proposal process cannot sanely be used to stamp actual approval on that behavior! Some of these 5 guidelines' wording in relevant sections is directly contradictory, extremely POV-forking, factually incorrect, even ungrammatical, and there is no reason that incremental changes cannot be made, per WP:BOLD policy and per normal WP:BRD process or any other reasonable consensus-building process (BRD is not mandatory, remember). I imply no intent that it should have such a result, only observe the effect, but even the notices of this debate added to the other pages listed above were done in a way that tended to short-circuit ongoing discussions in those places that need to be resolved in the short term, not delayed for the outcome of this one, and may have no relation to it at all in some cases. I agree that material that would change MOS itself on this matter should not be altered for now. MOS:CAPS, a real mess, can be mostly left alone for the short term because it's tagged as disputed in the relevant section, as well it should be; MOS supersedes it's own subpages, but MOS:CAPS has been POVforked into another galaxy. WP:NCFLORA has a proposal for simplification on its talk page, and that should not in any way be held up by discussion here. I've engaged in four days of consensus discussions on even the most minute changes to WP:NCCAPS (which is just a summary page of capitalization-related rules in other guidelines and how they apply to titles – except of course where it's been POV-forked to contradict MOS on this one topic), I just fixed that stuff to the extent that it would not impinge on this discussion here, about an hour ago. I don't know if the tweaks will stick this time, but they need to be made, because the text there is simply bad, incorrect guidance in several ways. WP:NCFAUNA needs some cleanup too. I'm not even talking about removing stuff that tries to add new "exceptions", I mean just basic wording.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:21, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

My third demand was and is for a voluntary moratorium. I further said that if this was not respected, it was no big deal. That's a demand?

This seems to me to be the clearest example yet of a long post which adds no value at all to the discussion. Perhaps even negative value. Other views?

The problem is, such posts do have the effect, whether intended or not, of impeding progress towards a consensus. We are I think making some progress, but given the distractions, I'm pleasantly surprised by that. And they seem so unnecessary. Again, interested in other views on that. Andrewa (talk) 16:03, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry you seem to feel that no one but you gets to have any say in the appropriateness of this straw poll and the negative effects it's having on ongoing discussions elsewhere. Just because you presonally don't care what is going on the five guideline pages in question does not mean no one else does, BTW. I'll take the more obvious concern with what you just posted to your user talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:42, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Focus and distractions

Can I just recap part of the proposal that has been largely overlooked above:

• This discussion should be notified wiki-wide, to produce as global a consensus as possible within English Wikipedia.
• The discussion should focus on simply making the articles (our bottom line) the best possible, rather than conforming to any existing policy, guideline, etc..
• A voluntary moratorium should be observed on related changes to policies, guidelines, MOS, etc. until this consensus is either achieved or the discussion concerning it bogs down.

As I also said, the third point is no big deal, but the first two are essential. Andrewa (talk) 20:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Your phrasing of point two assumes the conclusion, doesn't it? We can probably all agree that how we title these articles doesn't directly impact their quality. --BDD (talk) 20:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you see what I'm trying to say? How would you phrase it? Andrewa (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I would omit everything after the comma. We create policies and guidelines to the end of making our articles the best possible. If they're failing to do that, we should be discussing their removal. --BDD (talk) 20:38, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

And would this change the meaning? How?

There's no suggestion that they're failing to do that generally. They work remarkably well most of the time. But in this particular case, we're bogged down. If this discussion can reach a consensus, it should then be reflected in changes to guidelines and perhaps even policies. Andrewa (talk) 21:18, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Because the current wording suggests that "conforming to [an] existing policy, guideline, etc." is of secondary concern to "making the articles." I think that's a false dilemma. --BDD (talk) 00:55, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, that explains a lot. Strongly disagree. The article namespace is our bottom line, and that is a key consideration, and basic to our fundamental policies and polity. The policies, guidelines etc are all there just to help us achieve the best possible results in the article namespace.

There is no false dilemma. That's exactly what having the third option prevents. Andrewa (talk) 03:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Not really; in a polarized dispute like this, the "third party" option is like voting for Libertarians or Greens in US elections, and everyone here knows that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:42, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand your point there. Andrewa (talk) 16:50, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

It's a "wasted vote" if you want to actually affect the outcome more than you want to simply show moral support for the policies that more closely match your beliefs but which are not going to be put into practice.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:12, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Irrelevant. The point is, people do have the option to waste their vote if they so choose (and I disagree that it's been wasted, although that's exactly what the major parties want you to believe... it is very important), and this is important as it allows us to escape the false dilemma and design an unbiased poll. Without this third option that's nearly impossible; With it, it's not even difficult. It does mean that the result may be uncertain, if enough people waste their votes (and again I don't think it's a waste at all, for that very reason), but it also makes a far clearer result possible, if not many people do. Andrewa (talk) 11:36, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

You really need to stop declaring everything you disagree with "irrelevant". If it weren't relevant, we couldn't be having a discussion about how it relates. I never said people did not have the option; I pointed out they won't generally use it for the same reason people generally don't vote for the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. You've not done anything to dismiss that idea. Also, if editors here feel that a poll is too binary, they'll create the additional options themselves.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:13, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Bird names are not special; the proposal is inappropriate favoritism to one wikiproject

The entire notion that birds should have some special rule all to themselves on Wikipedia just because a handful of editors insist on it is divisive, violates WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, will lead inexorably to every other wikiproject on the system demanding exceptions to guidelines it doesn't like, and is not based on any solid factual basis, only outright falsehoods about bird capitalization in real-world sources. (Short version of the real facts, many of which are touched upon above, and which are dealt with at the User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names log in detail : It is not a univeral standard in ornithology; even ornithology organizations and journals that capitalize common names of bird do not do so with consistent rules; some do not use it at all; virtually no non-ornithology journals, including the most prestigious science journals in the world, do no permit the capitalization even in ornithology articles; much more important for MOS purposes, virtually no mainstream, non-specialist works like other encyclopedias, newspapers, dictionaries, science magazines, etc., capitaliz this way; and it is not a special convention in bird field guides, but is a common form of emphasis for easy visual scanning in most field guides on all topics).

This really needs to be settled by an RfC on whether wikiprojects, on any topic, can continue to defy WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy indefinitely. Two years (since the last major discussion of this species capitalization idea, with lots of participation by WP:BIRDS members, resulted in the current language at MOS:LIFE after that project failed to gain consensus to capitalize bird common names, or all common names generally, or to have no rule. Two years is more than long enough for a project to try to change consensus. It did not happen. Close the issue, remove the reference to bird capitalization from MOS and other guidelines, and move on.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:53, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

It is your assertion they are not special. We're trying to explain why but you're not listening. I agree with you that guidelines should be decided by consensus and that having non-guidelines intrude on guideline pages is wrong. This is why we're going to have this out once and for all here and now. We supply all evidence supporting our respective cases above, have a wide input of hopefully over fifty editors so that it's not just the partisans on either side, and live by the decision. If a decision is reached that lower case it shall be, I will abide by it and drop the push for caps. We're just wanting settlement once and for all. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:13, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree that we will eventually need an RfC. All that we can establish here is a wiki-wide consensus on one narrow question. Both sides are claiming that the other is using local consensus, and of course that's true, in that almost all consensus is to some extent local. The only way I can see to unbog the issue is to establish a non-local consensus. Otherwise we just continue in circles.

Agree that we should not have a special rule for birds, but that should also be a community decision. One thing at a time.

And again, I find your rhetoric unhelpful. The facts please, Ma'am, just the facts. Andrewa (talk) 03:17, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

There already is a non-local consensus; read MOS:LIFE, let it sink in, and get on with productive editing. If you agree that we shouldn't have a special rule for birds (you just wrote that you did), stop helping lay out piled-on, misleading alleged reasons for a special rule for birds! We've been listening to (well, reading) this birder exceptionalism for ten nine (feel like 25) years now. It's simply not convincing. This is self-evident; no group of editors has fought consensus for so long, so many separate times in so many forums over one issue with so little success at changing anyone's mind.

I haven't even started a refutation (yet again – every single point raised by the pro-capitalization side has been refuted again and again and again previously) of the above "wall of text", a phrase so often thrown in the face of anyone who takes the time to argue against this one-speciality, incessant demand for special treatment by a tiny fraction of our editorship. I'll do that tomorrow; it's dark:30 my time and it will take several hours.

You're also contradicting yourself again. This discussion isn't an RfC, it's a one-sided presentation of entrenched exceptionalism in which you assert "we're going to have this out once and for all here and now", yet you also say you don't think it'll be resolved except by an RfC.

No, not one thing at a time. This divide-and-conquer game has already been played and splayed across at least 5 guidelines in a big shotgun pattern of FUD. This is not really about one project and "their" articles; it's a general Wikipedia self-governance issue.

NB, and I mean that in the full, literal meaning of the Latin phrase it abbreviates: A significant number of participants here (and at WT:AT, etc.), would take plenty of exception to your own rhetorical approach, too, Andrewa. If you have an issue to raise in this regard with me or anyone else, use user talk; attempting to cast aspersions on someone's argument on a talk page like this on the basis of how you feel about their presentation is the ad hominem fallacy and is not fooling anyone. For now, be reminded that the entire WP:AT/WP:MOS topic area is under WP:ARBATC discretionary sanctions (because of people pushing capitalization demands, I might add), participants in which are warned to avoid personalizing style or article naming disputes, broadly construed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:32, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Nothing at all that's both new and relevant here, as far as I can see after several minutes spent on it, and I don't think it's worth any more time than that. Agree strongly with some points, disagree strongly with some others, and everything in between. I'm happy to comment on any of the points made, but only if another editor wishes me to. Please be specific. Andrewa (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The thing is, Andrewa, you don't get determine for everyone else what is relevant. I shouldn't have to make this point twice with you in the space of a few minutes on two different threads. What could be more likely to be thought irrelevant and to be ignored that pointed declarations that others' opinions are irrelevant and should be ignored?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:42, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree that I don't get determine for everyone else what is relevant, and nor do you... they make up their own minds. That's why I've explicitly asked whether anyone else wants to discuss any of your points. Andrewa (talk) 03:32, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

And in that nobody speaks, it would appear to me that either nobody else is listening, or they agree with me that it's not worth discussing. Either way, we have empirical evidence (not proof) that this particular post was at best just a waste of time and bandwidth, do we not? Andrewa (talk) 06:45, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

About the request for comments

Discussion has wandered away from the topic of making a RfC? At this pace, the RfC won't be done. Maybe we should gather the different wordings proposed, and make a poll to see which wordings should be presented in the RfC? --Enric Naval (talk) 15:58, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Is this sub-discussion about making a request for comments really useful? Didn't you realise that the discussion about bird article name capitalisation was already set as a request for comments (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#A new proposal regarding bird article names)? Mama meta modal (talk) 16:55, 17 April 2014 (UTC).

Also, no matter what the exact wording of a request for comments could be, the consensus is clear up there, in the ongoing request for comments. Mama meta modal (talk) 16:58, 17 April 2014 (UTC).

In a topic as contentious as this, it seems to me that the request for comments voted upon should be very clear, otherwise the faction on the losing side may refuse to accept it. Look at the wording of the proposal above: "Eventually remove captitalisation from the names of bird articles such as black crowned crane." First, it only refers to "names of bird articles", not usage in running text. Second, reading it literally, it says that article titles should begin with a lower case letter, which is a very big change. Third, it only mentions bird articles and leaves unaddressed other areas in which there has been a local consensus for capitalization of species names. I think it was a good faith attempt to cut this Hydra to its stump, but it may become an opportunity for the growth of more heads. I think that if a clear decision is going to be made, the plan for how the decision is made should have a consensus around it first. Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 17:53, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree in the strongest possible terms with the general direction here, thank you!

This was an attempt to gather a widely based consensus, one way or another, around a very restricted and specific question, and I still see something along those lines (wide discussion, tight focus) as the only possible way forward. Any other decision either will not be stable or will nor be conclusive or (probably) both, in my opinion.

It hasn't worked. Partly at least, that seems to be because people just didn't understand the proposal. Some of the comments so blatantly ignored, rather than discussed, those key points that one must wonder.

I'd now be very interested to see your proposal for the way forward in concrete terms... You've criticised my scope and that is exactly what I originally asked for, but how would you word your alternative? It's not easy, take it from me! And the difficulty in wording is, in my opinion, an important indicator of deeper issues.

(I still am unconvinced that the original proposal can be improved. But it needs a more careful reading than it's generally had so far, at the very least. Your criticisms are all valid and I wrangled with exactly those issues in writing my scope etc.. It's just that I suspect that the cure will be worse than the disease.)

And perhaps discuss it in a new subsection with an accurate title? But let's not change the title of this section now. There's been too much of that already! Andrewa (talk) 00:24, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

This RfC is a gathering of opinions for the "real" RfC. People started voting for some reason. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:40, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the desire to keep some semblance of parliamentary order here, but that car may have left the barn. I think whoever winds up closing the current RfC will have plenty of fodder for consensus-reading. If the closer sees consensus for a comprehensive solution, fantastic - that would make this the "real" RfC, and no need for another. If not, we should at least be somewhat closer to finding one. Despite the wording and intent of the "original" RfC, I think most people have made it clear their stances on the overall topic - a narrow reading of that wording is not the likeliest option for the closer. Not to toss out wiki-jargon for its own sake, but we are not a bureaucracy. Dohn joe (talk) 20:58, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yup; the RFC is already going and has been for several days. I would have liked to see more care in getting it started, per Schreiberbike's efforts, but I don't think I see another one being necessary; it doesn't seem to be getting derailed or anything. It's well-advertised, etc/etc. Rewording it/etc would probably do more harm than good at this point. Maybe we can hat some of this or something. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:42, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Please, don't hat this. Premature declarations of consensus will only cause further disagreements in the future. This RfC won't be accepted by everybody if we give the perception that parts of it were closed prematurely. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I didn't declare consensus and I don't see how this is part of the ongoing RfC. But if you like it then by all means we'll leave it unhatted. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 15:31, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, agree.

I've been only sparingly online for the last few days owing to musical and sporting commitments, but I would strongly suggest we immediately stop using the term RfC so (good Aussie modifier deleted) carelessly.

Sorry to shout (and for the word deleted look to Henry Lawson's The Drover's Wife where it's used as an adjective, it may be a milder term than you would use), I don't do it often, but the terms RfC, request for comment and request for comments (and other variations) all have an important technical uses here at Wikipedia, and AFAIK we do not yet have an RfC, nor even a draft of one. I'm not even sure we have a proposal for one (have I missed it? I may have), and I certainly have not yet attempted to propose having one, and if you think I've done so please reread what I actually said and perhaps even tell me (perhaps on my talk page not here) how I could have said it more clearly.

But we may soon have an RfC, or decide not to, and we go around in circles quite enough. So let's try to be clear on what we're proposing and discussing, and bear in mind that some contributors here (and everywhere on Wikipedia) may be relative newcomers, and are particularly disadvantaged by misuse of technical terms by old hands. Andrewa (talk) 23:54, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion was "RfC'd" mid-stream by User:RedSlash. You can see the RfC banner at the top of this section. Not the usual move, but certainly not unprecedented in the annals of WP. Dohn joe (talk) 00:25, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

OHO! Thank you, what a mess. No, not unprecedented. That doesn't make it a good thing. Andrewa (talk) 07:53, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't the evidence also lean toward WP:FACTION?

"Blackmail to make a point"? Let's look at some evidence. Each of these quotes comes from a different WP:BIRDS participant in just one thread on one WT:BIRDS archive page, here, and there are many, many more of them:

• After one blatant and one veiled threat to quit if they didn't get their way by two different birds-focused editors, and a long stream of arguments full of hyperbole and psychological projection, with many assumptions of bad faith and outright personal attacks (mostly against me in particular, I might add), comes this bomb:
• "A thought: why don't we just go on strike? If all of our big names (all of whom seem to be in agreement that capitalisation is fine) were to stop editing for an agreed period, progress on bird articles will almost certainly grind to a halt. That would, if nothing else, demonstrate the strength of feeling." To their credit, one member of the wikiproject did observe that this was a WP:POINT problem.
• But another response was "I like that. But I think a better way to go is to start thinking about WP+ (Wikipedia Plus) ... for experts to flag articles, sections, paragraphs or sentences that are correct." I.e. an editorial board of self-selecting specialists who get to tell Wikipedia it's wrong.
• See also, in the same thread, Godwin's law in action, with non-capitalizers labeled a "totalitarian power ... crushing the neck of [WP:BIRDS] under their jackboots". There is no "power" seized by consensus being made openly on site-wide pages that attract the attention and participation of the widest variety and number of potentially interested editors.
• Note also the WP:GREATWRONGS and WP:BATTLEGROUNDing inherent in this stuff, e.g. "This is just another chapter in an age-old struggle, that of those daring to be free-thinkers striving for excellence, against those desirous of the accumulation of power ...." Freethinking is usually not characterized by demands to follow an external convention, on pain of mass resignation.

Note that I'm not naming any names here; if you want that, you can go look it up yourself. There's no point in personalizing the debate here; what's important is illuminating the walled city-state mentality prevalent collectively at that wikiproject page.

Let's continue. Is it just me, or does this read like a boldly published plan to manipulate WP:NCFAUNA so the wikiproject can feel justified in simply treating MOS:LIFE like it doesn't exist, here?

• "I editted the Manual of Style to accurately reflect that standard [i.e., the WP:BIRDS preference editwarred into it -SMcCandlish] from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna).... But I may have just opened a small can of worms."
• The response was this: "I've... suggested reverting your change .... We don't need to change the MOS so long as we can quote Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna), it was upsetting too many peeps."

And people wonder why some of us call NCFAUNA and related pages (WP:NCFLORA, WP:NCCAPS) disputed, and consider this a policy debate much more than a style debate. How is that not a well-intentioned but ultimately disruptive plan to use faction-based editing and multi-editor ownership to game the system, by intentionally ensuring that one rarely-watchlisted NC guideline agrees with the wikiproject in their tight grip on all bird articles, no matter what the main style guideline says, and to resist efforts to synchronize the guidelines? Am I missing something? Doesn't this all sound familiar? It sure seems like precisely the pattern that's been maintained for the last two years.

But this isn't the only policy violation that looks to be collectively engendered here. See, e.g., here for an unmistakable admission that WP:BIRDS's demands for IOC naming practices are a side-taking, tenacious, activist exercise in pushing IOC names as a convention, against the desires of more regional nomenclature authorities, there ironically deemed "officious":

• "The tenacity with which [we] bird project editors now defend the initiative [to require IOC names] is in large part because we have all seen the need for the homologation of the English Common Names of avian taxa."

I.e., it's a crusade? What happened to WP:Neutral point of view? (Note also the false assertion of unanimity.)

I could go on, quite a bit, but this is enough evidence to chew on for a while. I'm not even touching on more recent antics, just focusing on material that may indicate how the debate can easily be interpreted as having been steered (whether carefully or incidentally) over the last several years against not just consensus but the entire consensus-building process.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:00, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

But another way of looking at it is that a group of content contributors are asking to be left alone to contribute content about which they have specialist knowledge, without editors who otherwise have no interest in those articles telling them how to write. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:19, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

which runs up against WP:OWN and the third WP:PILLAR: "any contributions can and will be mercilessly edited". And of course we do have interest in those articles; that's why this keeps coming up. I also don't care how you write the content you contribute, as long as you don't object to it being edited mercilessly to improve its style within the encyclopedia. -- JHunterJ (talk) 02:25, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

If the birders wish to be "left alone", they're welcome to create an ornithology wiki (with every bird-related Wikipedia article copied over, provided that the licensing terms are followed) and operate it under whatever rules they believe are best. If they wish to edit Wikipedia, they need to accept the fact that they belong to a community extending beyond their WikiProject's walls. —David Levy 02:44, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

This isn't about improving anything, just about changing it, because some editors have a style preference. The MoS itself warns against doing that, but that's conveniently ignored. The "we can and will edit mercilessly" approach is one of the reasons good editors have felt run off Wikipedia in recent years. You risk being left with no caps and no editors.

Seriously, why not adopt a "live and let live" attitude here? There is nothing major at stake – no neutrality issues, no BLP violations – just a minor style issue that non-specialist readers won't even notice. It isn't worth making anyone unhappy over. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

This isn't about improving anything, just about changing it, because some editors have a style preference.

Editors on both sides of this debate believe (and actively assert) that applying a particular style improves the encyclopedia.

The MoS itself warns against doing that, but that's conveniently ignored.

Firstly, the MoS advises against switching from one MoS-compliant style to another without a good reason. This isn't an invitation to lock in any style in existence (in which case there would be absolutely no point in maintaining a style guide).

Secondly, I haven't seen the birders agree to retain lowercase styling of common bird species names in ornithological articles written that way originally. Presumably, said articles constitute a small minority, and I've seen members of WikiProject Birds argue that it's illogical to apply a conflicting style to a handful of articles. Many other Wikipedians agree, but we see Wikipedia articles, not WikiProject articles.

The "we can and will edit mercilessly" approach is one of the reasons good editors have felt run off Wikipedia in recent years.

In other words, they were driven away by the fact that Wikipedia is a wiki.

You risk being left with no caps and no editors.

As Cas Liber and I agreed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization), quitting the project because one's preferred style (irrespective of which that is) isn't selected is quite an overreaction. No matter how this turns out, I hope that we don't lose many editors as a result. Either way, we mustn't set a precedent that encourages such threats. And if someone vows to leave Wikipedia if the birders' preferred styling remains, my response will be the same.

There is nothing major at stake – no neutrality issues, no BLP violations – just a minor style issue that non-specialist readers won't even notice.

That undermines one of the birders' main arguments in favor of capitalization (that it clarifies prose for Wikipedia's general readership).

Non-specialist readers do notice the unusual styling. They just don't understand why it exists.

It isn't worth making anyone unhappy over.

As in all matters of style, it's impossible to make everyone happy. —David Levy 04:14, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, seriously, I don't think everyone at the Birds project would hold your proposed "live and let live" attitude if I started fixing all of the names of birds in Wikipedia articles to use the lowercase, even though there's nothing major at stake. When I changed the bird species names to lowercase at an article not about birds but about a particular wetland, those generated the usual drama, including the claim that it was still a bird article because the Birds project banner was on the talk page. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

David, just a point about your sentence: " ... the MoS advises against switching from one MoS-compliant style to another without a good reason." That's not correct. People have tried to add that a couple of times, but it has been rejected. The MoS simply says: "Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia. Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason." The MoS is advisory only, unless someone is using a style that is unheard of, or that most people would regard as a mess or wrong. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:25, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

The MoS simply says: "Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia. Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a good reason."

The MoS's purpose is to document the styles considered acceptable at Wikipedia. If the wording in question meant "acceptable someplace", it would carry absolutely no objective meaning; editors could simply reject the entire MoS (apart from that statement) and lock in whatever styles they personally consider acceptable, which would accumulate in various combinations throughout the encyclopedia (thereby requiring editors to analyze each article individually and attempt to somehow determine which potentially undocumented styles have been established there and mustn't be disturbed).

Even under your interpretation, ensuring compliance with the best practices agreed upon by the Wikipedia community and described in the MoS is a "good reason" to make a style change. Heck, we even switch articles from one English variety to another for reasons like enabling the use of a title that doesn't require parenthetical disambiguation, so it's odd to suggest that we're supposed to honor style decisions that contradict the MoS outright.

The MoS is advisory only, unless someone is using a style that is unheard of, or that most people would regard as a mess or wrong.

I've seen you make similar statements elsewhere, seemingly reflecting a belief that Wikipedia's guidelines are optional and may be disregarded whenever an editor or group of editors disagrees with them (not because an exception is called for, but simply because they'd prefer to do something else). This is inconsistent with policy and common practice. —David Levy 21:53/22:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

David, it's the same with WP:CITE. No one is obliged to follow it. If someone comes up with a consistent referencing style that makes sense and isn't too wild for others to follow, they have every right to use it, and anyone arriving at the article to force in a change would be in the wrong. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:32, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

There are many areas in which we consider multiple styles acceptable when used consistently within an article. WP:CITE certainly is a noteworthy example, in part because an article's citation style (when consistent) is particularly self-evident and easy to duplicate.

But even WP:CITE documents preferred and non-preferred formatting, with encouragement to replace the latter with the former. And no citation style must be retained despite consensus that another is better suited to the article. The idea that any non-"wild" implementation is set in stone simply isn't accurate. —David Levy 05:22, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

One of the most vocal pro-capitalization people I'm quoting here left Wikipedia for multiple reasons, one of which was ostensibly to do precisely that ["to create an ornithology wiki"]. The idea was introduced as "Wikipedia+", but then later changed to to a sort of BirdPedia plan to "build a far better bird wiki than ever could be made here". [It's discussed in at least three topics in the same archive page, e.g. here.] No idea if that went anywhere. I know how I'd wager, but you never know. Various other wikis (for some fiction franchises like "Star Wars" for example) blow away WP coverage when it comes to their specialty, but their content, style, article management/ownership and other practices would not be appropriate in many ways for WP.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:57, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Last I looked, SlimVirgin, we have a policy about that called WP:Ownership of articles. They're not asking to be left alone to contribute content, but to dictate how others may contribute content. No one is telling them they have to user lower case; if they want to write in upper case, they can cite WP:IAR and get on with it. But they don't have a special right to editwar against people who are following MOS:LIFE and changing this to lower case (or adding new material using lower case) while editing the same and related articles. Another way of looking at it is that a much, much larger group of content contributors are asking to be left alone by bird specialists, who are not grammarians, trying tell them how to write in bird articles just because birds are involved and the others are supposedly not specialist enough to edit there.

No specialist knowledge is required to not capitalize common names of species. A boatload of specialist knowledge is required to properly capitalize them according to IOC's quite complicated system. That's enough by itself to end the debate in favor of lower case immediately.

Why would you think that people who aren't outspoken pro-capitalization participants of WP:BIRDS are "editors who otherwise have no interest in [bird] articles"? There's no evidence for such a notion, and clear proof in edit histories to the contrary, isn't there?

I'd bet real money that when site-wide consensus finally can't be ignored any longer [didn't we hit that point 2 years ago?] and the bird articles use normal English, that there'll be very little fuss except at first, and then wikilife will continue as normal. How do I know this? Because it's already happened again and again; see how many of these projects were capitalizing before MOS:LIFE made it clearer not to do that in 2012. Proof many times over that decapitalization did not destabilize anything at all, no one quit WP over it, and it and put to an end a large number of pointless debates (see here and here, with regard to everything but birds, for a very incomplete list of them).

PS: Promotion of the IOC names as a must instead of a maybe, perhaps a default, actually does raise WP:NPOV concerns, as I already noted (even aside from the capitalization issues).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:57, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

My deepest sympathy goes to the admin who has to read all this mess and make a decision. I've scanned over this point of contention and find myself echoing SMcCandlish: "No specialist knowledge is required to not capitalize common names of species. A boatload of specialist knowledge is required to properly capitalize them according to IOC's quite complicated system. That's enough by itself to end the debate in favor of lower case immediately." Xaxafrad (talk) 03:53, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

This is simply untrue. The whole point of the IOC names is that they are standardised. All you have to do is to copy precisely the name used by the IOC. It's de-capitalization which can be problematic, as noted above. If the source has "Cooper's Hawk", to de-capitalize you need to decide whether "Cooper" refers to an individual, in which case "Cooper's hawk" is the correct form, or whether it refers to an occupation, in which case "cooper's hawk" is the correct form.

For me this remains a key issue. Vernacular names should be sourced as with all other information. If the source has "Cooper's Hawk" then what gives Wikipedia editors the freedom to make decisions on how to de-capitalize it? It's argued that other encyclopaedias do this, so it must be ok. However they don't have the strict policies against WP:OR and WP:SYNTH that we do. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:19, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Moot; "Cooper's hawk" et al. are easily sourced. And hey, this allows us to avoid confusion with Cooper's Hawk! -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I quite agree that if there is a source which shows that "Cooper's hawk" is the same species as the one with the IOC name "Cooper's Hawk", and that source is referenced in the article, then there's no sourcing problem with de-capitalizing. My objections were (a) to the idea that there's something complicated about using IOC names – there isn't (b) to de-capitalizing based solely on a style rule in Wikipedia's MOS – this can tell editors to use the de-capitalized form, but it should also say that this form needs sourcing in its own right.

Note that the Washington Post article doesn't confirm that "Cooper's hawk" is Accipiter cooperii. A much better source would be . It's dangerous to jump to assumptions about the connection between a vernacular name and the scientific name even when it seems "obvious".

Incidently, I think it's quite wrong at Cooper's Hawk#External links for the link name to have the word "hawk" capitalized. This is the title of the website and should not be altered. Both "sides" in this argument hold the belief that Wikipedia editors have almost total freedom to alter the style of sourced material; they differ only on the relatively trivial matter of which style they prefer. I'm much more concerned about whether, when and why it's right to manipulate sources in this way. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:06, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The Cooper's Hawk article currently has references that use both upper and lower case. I would think that this is true for many, many bird articles. Are you suggesting that we use lowercase in a sentence where a fact is taken from a source that uses lowercase, but use uppercase in the next sentence where a fact is taken from a source that uses uppercase? Or simply that once it is established that sources use both, then either uppercase or lowercase is theoretically acceptable for use throughout that article? And if the latter, is it then appropriate for MOS to express a preference? Dohn joe (talk) 16:19, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

How about sources that show the "Cooper" in Cooper's hawk is William Cooper, not some cooper off the street, and notes its binomial name Accipiter cooperii? Is there some source for a cooper's hawk that shows it is named after a cooper? There's no need in manufacturing problems where there isn't one; this area has enough actual problems. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:14, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Many sources do associate "Cooper's hawk", and a few even "cooper's hawk" with both William Cooper and Accipiter cooperii; some capitalize Hawk, but certainly it's not predominant to do so. We don't need to follow them, any more than we'd follow those that lowercase Cooper's name. WP style is to use caps in a way that convey what's a proper name and what's not. My original point in mentioning the concept of a "cooper" was just to reinforce that, not to suggest that anyone would seriously propose downcasing cooper. Dicklyon (talk) 18:05, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: you wrote Promotion of the IOC names as a must instead of a maybe, perhaps a default, actually does raise WP:NPOV concerns. Indeed it does, and it would be wrong. However, I see suppression of the IOC names (or the BSBI names of plants, for that matter) as equally raising NPOV concerns. The IOC name of Accipiter cooperii is "Cooper's Hawk", not "Cooper's hawk" (just as the BSBI name of Arum maculatum is "Lords-and-Ladies", not "lords-and-ladies" or "lords and ladies" or any other stylistic variant). Where there are sourced English names in the de-capitalized style the MOS prefers, then they should, of course, be given; but so should sourced capitalized English names. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

There is no suppression of IOC names. There are sources for Cooper's Hawk, cooper's hawk, Cooper's hawk, COOPER'S HAWK, Coopers Hawk, and Coopers hawk.p How Wikipedia deals with capitalization, however is a question of house style, not of suppressing 5/6 of the options. -- JHunterJ (talk) 17:20, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Precisely. And style aside (since at some point this sort of thing always turns to WP:AT questions, necessarily), the imposition of IOC names is a huge WP:COMMONNAME policy problems, as well as WP:NPOV/WP:ADVOCACY issues, WP:NEO/WP:NFT concerns ones. Too often IOC names are not the commonest names (the WP:COMMONNAMEs), but only made-up "names in common-English words" i.e. "vernacular wording not scientific Graeco-Latin names", that do not even exist outside of IOC's list, and which contradict real-world usage. IOC is standardized in the sense that its a proposed standard that many ornithologists and ornithological publishers have adopted for their in-house usage because it simplifies their work, but not all of them have, and WP's job is to be accurate, not to advance a simplification preferred by one camp of researchers.

This one wikiproject advancing it as "the only international convention", both "official" and "universal", advanced by a "taxonomic authority" "organization" are all falsehoods. Not a single one of those scare-quoted claims is true (not even "organization" - the IOC is just an annual meeting to vote on bird names). Yet at a never-ending stream of WT:BIRDS and WP:RM discussions, and here at WT:MOS, and at all sorts of previous discussions at WT:AT, WP:VPP, etc., every one of those claims is made with regularity. And worse yet, IOC naming is consistently misrepresented by this WP:FACTION as a formal, unquestionable Wikipedia standard. (One of many examples: "FYI, Wikipedia uses the IOC (Internationl [sic] Ornithological Congress) bidlist [sic] as it's [sic] official english [sic] names list.") This is just not acceptable.

The whole "move this article from a well-sourced common name to the IOC one and capitalize it in the article title and running prose because this is a WP standard based on the universal IOC official global name of this species" isn't just a house of cards, it's a house of cards in a wind-tunnel of fire. Even before we ever get to the style question, IOC naming has to survive all of these other policy challenges, and it frequently does not. Perhaps this is why WP:BIRDS so programmatically makes use of its own in-house "pet" admins to speedily perform loads of move requests that never see the light of WP:RM day, but which would clearly be controversial in many cases because of precisely what we're talking about here? Hmm?

As usual, see User:SMcCandlish/Capitalization of organism names for the diffs. It's not like I'm making this stuff up, it just takes a lot of research to dig up and gather. I'm sure I'll be personally attacked again for doing so, too. Examples of most of these can be seen in the stuff I added yesterday alone, mostly the Archives 59 to 61 material from WT:BIRDS, plus some WP:RM requests and an ANI case (WP:BIRDS admin and another editor blocked for move-warring) in the article- and user-level section. My log page on this stuff is now better sectionalized for easier reading. Just for WT:BIRDS Archive 61 alone, I added 11 relevant entries and summaries of them. I may add some diffs and links directly to this post when I have this page and the that one open at same time, since copy-paste is easy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I whole-heartedly agree with you that specific sources can be cited for the occurrence of capitalized names, from sources that specifically state that the capitalization is part of what they advance as a standard (otherwise it's just typography not nomenclature, and we have reliable sources including nomenclature authorities as well as English writing guides saying nomenclature and any typography applied to it are separate). I've been saying this for years, but no one (except you, to an extent) on the pro-caps side ever wants to hear it. The response is typically along these lines: "Any proposal that would alter the Capitalization [sic] rules at WP:BIRD is unacceptable." (Note that claim of a formal rule on WP about this again. We actually do have one, called MOS:LIFE.) I.e. "compromise = death". No thanks.

Anyway, nomenclature systems in which the standard-issuing body says that capitalization is a mandatory part of a standard are very rare, not a norm, and I can't find a single example in biological common names where it's not explicitly stated that the convention is specifically intended for communication between experts in that field in specialist publications in that field. The IOC itself and, e.g., the American Fisheries Soc. and IC[B]N are pretty clear on this, as three examples that pop into mind. ICZN doesn't suggest it as a convention even in biological publications at all. There simply isn't any group of people in the world except WP:BIRDS trying to tell other writers in non-specialist contexts "you must capitalize common names of [these] species"!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:57, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

If typography is just a freely variable factor which doesn't alter nomenclature [which I find hard to accept], then it's a purely stylistic choice. It's just as reasonable to have all English names of species capitalized in articles about birds as it is to have British English spelling in articles about English towns. It's more reasonable than allowing some articles to use one citation style and others different ones with no demonstrable reason other than editor preference. (A point User:SlimVirgin has made before.) Why get so het up about what is (on the supposition that Wikipedia can freely alter typography from sources) just a "which end of the egg to open" issue? It really doesn't matter, and endless arguments about it just alienate everyone else.

As for choosing IOC names over others as titles, I see this as being for precisely the same reason as the WP:PLANTS preference for scientific names over English names. English names for organisms vary from country to country; the most common name is frequently imprecise (e.g. "robin" for Turdus migratorius) and WP:COMMONNAME must be balanced against WP:PRECISION. Imprecision is utterly unencyclopedic. If there were an internationally standardized list of the English names of plants, then they would be excellent candidates for use as article titles. It's fortunate that there is such a list for bird names and it's eminently sensible to use it. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:18, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Just a caution on using WP:PLANTS as an analogy here. In the case of plants, we don't actually have a case of needing to balance WP:COMMONNAME against WP:PRECISION - since COMMONNAME and PRECISION both favor the use of the scientific (latin) name over the vernacular. Remember that COMMONNAME does not mean "the name that the common people use" (that's the "vernacular")... it means "the name most commonly used in reliable sources". An analysis of sources shows that the vernacular names of plants do vary from country to country (and even local region to local region within countries), and because of this, no single vernacular name is significantly more common than the others... However, the scientific (latin) name is used as an alternative in every country and region ... in other words, the scientific name is actually more COMMON than the various vernacular names. From what I gather, this is not the case when it comes to birds. Blueboar (talk) 11:36, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:It's not freely variable, it's just not tied to nomenclature (except in rare cases, and even then only within specialist publications in certain fields, when it is accepted at all, and we have evidence that the IOC practice is not as well-accepted as some claim it is anyway). Surely you don't find that hard to accept? This is English, not German; we don't (any longer, since the early Victorian era) capitalize nouns and noun phrases simply for being "nouny", except in informal writing like advertising. It's not like "should I use big red lettering on this poster?" or some other actual freely variable factor of typography. Capitalization serves specific purposes in formal, general-audience English writing. Capitalization of species names is pure specialist jargon.

The IOC World Bird List is potentially a good idea in theory. It does not have the real-world buy-in that it's bordering-on-aggressive promotion at WP would have one believe. I'll cover that in more detail in a separate post. The facts in it are important enough it shouldn't be buried 6 indents deep in some sub-thread.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:24, 17 April 2014 (UTC)