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New Survey started regarding wording of the MOS-TW and MOS-TM templates

This survey concerns wording on the MOX-TW and MOS-TM templates. You can view the discussion here: Template talk:MOS-TW#Removal of possible WP:POV statement - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:35, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Question on prefered units

Hi all, just a quick question: should the use of astronomical units (ie: lightyears vs parsecs) be added to MOS? I searched but found nothing in the current version. Should I try to come up with some sort of consensus over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Astronomy first? Regards. Gaba ^(talk) 12:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is specified elsewhere, but it would be nice for it to be specified somewhere. Most Wikipedia editors have limited knowledge of astronomical units (just as we have limited knowledge of, say, architecture, or any other specialized field). We would probably appreciate some guidance on what measurements would be preferable. CaseyPenk (talk) 21:15, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi CaseyPenk, I agree that some guidance is definitely necessary. I've opened a discussion over at the Astronomy WikiProject but there doesn't seem to be much consensus that this is needed, at least so far. I'll wait until the discussion comes to a conclusion (or dies off) and report back here. Regards. Gaba ^(talk) 15:52, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Other pronouns

There are some people, such as Justin Vivian Bond who prefer invented pronouns ('v' in the case of Bond.) the current Wikipedia article uses Bond and doesn't ever seem to use pronouns, which makes the language rather tortured. Bond has explicitly stated that use of 'he' would be considered an insult or sloppy journalism (http://justinbond.com/?page_id=323), so he's not taking a 'this is my preference but I understand if you don't follow it' approach. there are other TG people who prefer 'they'. Should Wikipedia accede to their demands in this case, or does the MOS language only apply to the standard he/she, and not extend to 'they' or invented pronouns like hir or shim etc? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Currently MOS:IDENTITY reads as applying only to he/she pronouns. If reliable sources use other pronouns we should go with that. Justin Vivian Bond is a special case, because v has expressed WP:BLP-type concerns about certain pronouns. So it makes sense to avoid he/she pronouns in Bond's case - either use tortured "Bond" phrasing or the v pronoun. CaseyPenk (talk) 18:39, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The MoS should instruct users in correct, general-audience, encyclopedia-appropriate English as that English exists now, not as it might exist in the future or how some people wish it existed. Other than proper nouns and clearly fictional terminology, Wikipedia should categorically reject made-up words and other constructs that are not part of mainstream English. If "v" or "shim" ever enter the standard formal lexicon, we can change the MoS to allow them then.

Otherwise, we'll get linguistic revisionists using Wikipedia as a platform for improvements and "improvements" to the English language. That's pretty much what happened with WP:LQ; popularity won out over verifiability.

As for the singular they, I don't believe it's sufficiently formal for an encyclopedia, but there is a difference of opinion on that. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:54, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying but I would avoid calling alternative pronouns "made-up words and other constructs." Every word was invented at some point, so that's technically tautological. More importantly I think some people take these alternative pronouns very seriously; they use them not so much to play with English but to reflect very deeply-held identities. CaseyPenk (talk) 18:59, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Certainly every word is made up, and (newly) made up words can become standard, but we should not be using words that are generally unknown or limited in scope. Has the "v" vocabulary gained any traction outside of Bond? There are many other gender neutral pronouns, some which are commonly used (the ungendered he, they), and some which are more rare/recent (E, Ey, Hu, Per, Thon, Jee, Ve, Xe Ze, Zhe). Using whichever random one a person prefers will lead to an unintelligible mess (what about if an article is discussing more than one person with different preferences?!) Until a standard develops, or is used by our reliable sources, we should minimize use of pronouns to avoid the problem (although Bond's article reads horribly due to this) or use the most common neutral pronouns. If reliable sources are using a particular pronoun about a particular person, then use that one. Gaijin42 (talk) 19:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

that's not what is suggested - rather, it is that gender neutral invented pronouns have not sufficiently entered the language; and in cases like bond, he made up an entirely new and custom pronoun just for himself (or vself as he'd prefer). But we should document sources. I suggest that we update the language to specifically state that if the subject does not like either he/she, we use the pronoun most often used in RS (either he/she) - And not avoid pronouns which makes the article tortured. Once society/language changes, so can we. We can of course note which gender X identified with - in the case of Bond his gender is transgender (neither male nor female), but 'he' is the most commonly used when they aren't using 'v' or 'Bond'.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:59, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

"we use the pronoun most often used in RS (either he/she)" Unfortunately, that could constitute a BLP violation. And while I'm not planning on pressing charges, I think your use of the "he" pronoun is straying into BLP violation territory, simply because it seems possible for the subject to be harmed by use of that pronoun. CaseyPenk (talk) 20:24, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

There are no charges to press. Doing something that a person doesn't like is explicitly NOT a BLP violation. It might be rude. It might be contrary to their wishes.But there is no libel, or defamation or any other policy violation. MOS:IDENTITY is a style guideline, not part of BLP. If BLP worked that way, every negative item in every BLP article we have would be deleted. Further, when we are actively discussing a policy/guideline, it begs the question to accuse someone of violating your preferred wording/interpretation. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:24, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I do not prefer one pronoun or another, but I'm concerned that Bond might find "he" to be libellous. CaseyPenk (talk) 21:32, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Casey, I suggest you look up what the word libel means before tossing it around so lightly. Bond is free to demand that we use an invented pronoun just for him, and we are free to ignore his requests. As I've pointed out on sue gardner's blog, the 'omg people may be hurt/offended by something on Wikipedia' brigade would do well to demonstrate efforts towards correcting massive extant biases/errors/problems, esp outside their special interests, rather than worrying that Bond is annoyed.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:57, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I am familiar with libel, thank you. The point of BLP is to head off offensive content; some may find improper use of pronouns just as offensive and damaging as falsely stating that someone is addicted to heroin. It is theoretically possible that someone would commit suicide because the wrong pronouns were used (this is obviously an extreme example and is quite unlikely, but it's possible, and that's why we have a heightened sense of scrutiny over this). Ultimately what it means for policy is that we should avoid using pronouns the subject explicitly rejects as offensive. If someone states they may face harm from the "he" pronoun, I don't think it's appropriate to question that and steamroll over their biography with "he." CaseyPenk (talk) 22:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

It's theoretically possible that someone might commit suicide over ANYTHING in their wikipedia profile (say, a reminder of a past indiscretion), so your example is rather useless. We have a profile of another trans woman who had been dating somebody who was later killed; she came and asked us to delete her biography since it pained her deeply to see that story every time she pulled up her profile (it was one of the main sources of her notability). She was denied. Again, NOTHING in the BLP says we have to at all costs avoid offending somebody, I don't know where or how people are imagining this to be the point of BLP. In this case, I *do* think it's acceptable to use a standard pronoun even if the subject rejects it. We are an encyclopedia, and we should not be pandering to those who want special pronouns. We're probably going to have to wait until 3rd gender pronouns come into wide use, and then we can start using them.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 11:33, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• More thoughts not encapsulated above - It seems rather arbitrary for us to allow people to self-identify as male/female, but not as third gender. It's not our place to make value judgments on which types of identities are "acceptable," so I think we should either accept all forms of gender self-identification or none. When we start saying "only male/female gender binaries are allowed" we get into dangerous POV territory. CaseyPenk (talk) 19:02, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

  I strongly agree with your first sentence and your last sentence. -sche (talk) 20:00, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with both. While there is some evidence that gender dysmorphia is real, this is not the case with third gender. (The existence of a third gender role is arguable, but not an actual third gender.) The gender binary may not be either-or, but it does seem to be a binary. We've got people with male characteristics, people with female characteristics, people with some of both, people with not very many of either, but we don't have a third set of affirmative characteristics distinct from male and female. That's what it would take to get me to believe that third gender is real. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:44, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts: Especially because Wikipedia already has articles on people who are neither male nor female (third genders are relatively common in the world, both historically and today), it would be a good idea to agree on one or more ways of writing about them.

1. We could eschew pronouns and use surnames, as the article on Bond does. A drawback is that this is clumsy; a benefit is that it is clear and grammatically acceptable.
2. We could use one or more genderqueer pronouns. A drawback is that there are so many such pronouns that no one is likely to be familiar to many people or recommended by more than one (or any?) style guide. Wiktionary documents over thirty (not even including v!), of which seven met criteria for inclusion in the dictionary as words. (Another drawback is that a large number of the genderqueer pronouns look like typos of he, she or the singular they, and might be subject to repeated good-faith "typofixing" by users unfamiliar with them.)
3. We could use the singular they. A drawback is that this irks some people; a benefit is that it has been used for so many hundreds of years by so many respected authors that it is familiar to most (all?) people.

Are there other options? (I suppose "arbitrarily use either he or she" might be suggested as one, but it doesn't comport with WP:NPOV.) -sche (talk) 19:57, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• How would these suggestions impact articles on people who can be described accurately and respectfully using he or she pronouns (e.g. with Manning, although we debate which of the two to use, we are still talking within the he-she binary). Would we write he and she out of the guidelines and use last names/genderqueer pronouns/theyfor everyone? I assume that is not the case and last names/genderqueer pronouns/they would only apply to people to which he/she does not apply. CaseyPenk (talk) 20:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd think that if standard masculine or feminine pronouns were clearly accurate and respectful to use for a person, it would make the most sense to continue to do so, wouldn't it? 50.201.255.38 (talk) 20:17, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Correct, I'm suggesting ways of writing about people who are neither male nor female. It would be possible to write about men and women in these ways, too, but I wouldn't (and I would make discussion of whether or not to a separate discussion). -sche (talk) 20:19, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

It would be cool to write about everyone using "they" - get some of these arbitrary gender implications out of our writing.

For now, we'll talk about people who don't identify as male or female. CaseyPenk (talk) 20:22, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: I'm fine with using singular they in cases of people with non-binary or indeterminate gender. This blog post gives a bunch of reasons why it's correct, but really, I find a BLP subject's wishes to be more important than prescriptivist whining. Sceptre ^(talk) 21:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• Question. Does anyone have an idea as to how many people with biographies on WP have expressed a desire to be called by a pronoun other than he or she? I think it needs to be more than a few before it needs a formulated approach. Formerip (talk) 22:35, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
• I am also fine with using singular they in cases of people with indeterminate gender. While it may not be considered standard English by all sources, it is vastly preferable to the ridiculous pronoun avoidance currently used in Bond's article, ("Bond began attending elementary school, where Bond first became aware that Bond was unlike the other little boys..."). Using neologistic pronouns is obviously not on the table, no matter what the subject's preferences are. The BLP policy is not about respecting the subject's preferences. It is about doing no harm to them. – Smyth\^talk 14:16, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• It occurs to me that we should be discussing something slightly broader that the question that was first posed, of what pronouns to use for people who express a specific desire that authors who write in English refer to them by pronouns other than "he" or "she". We should discuss what pronoun to use for people who are neither male nor female. I would hazard a guess that Wikipedia has articles on at least a dozen English-speaking genderqueer people, like Justin Vivian Bond and Genesis P-Orridge, who have specified that they should be referred to by other pronouns. But I would guess that the number of notable people outside the anglosphere who belong to a third gender (or fourth or fifth gender) is larger. Such people are unlikely to have specified what pronouns they want English-speakers to denote them with, but Wikipedia has to denote them somehow. Wikipedia could, of course, defer to the pronouns used by the reliable sources that describe them, if those sources are in English... but would everyone go along with that even if the sources turned out to use ze and hir? -sche (talk) 17:53, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

The Genesis P-Orridge example is interesting because, as far as I can tell, [pronoun] wishes to be known by a special pronoun not because of gender dysphoria but because [pronoun] wishes to be considered an amalgam with [possessive pronoun] dead wife. IMO, it's [possessive pronoun] perfect right to do that if [pronoun] wants, but I can't see the why WP is going along with it.

To explain my use of square brackets: Damned if I'm going to keep looking back at the article for reference..

You may need to give some examples of the people you are talking about outside the Anglosphere. This still seems to me a bit like a discussion in search of an issue. Formerip (talk) 01:49, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia should limit itself to words that are already in accepted usage (except when discussing fiction, as in "muggle" and "Klingon"). This is not the place to push new and non-standard coinages. Let them become accepted out in the world (or not); then change the MoS to match (or don't). Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:44, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Gender and direct quotations

I propose changing the following:

Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and " [sic]" may be used where necessary).

to this:

Direct quotations should not be modified to conform with this guideline, but apparent contradictions can be reduced by adjusting the portion quoted or replacing pronouns with the subject's name. " [sic]" may be used where necessary.

I do not believe this to be a change in meaning. The intention of the original guideline is clearly to prevent editors from modifying direct quotations using [brackets] in ways that the source of the quote might reasonably consider to be a misrepresentation. This change would make that intention explicit. It also provides an additional suggested way of resolving the situation: namely, replacing pronouns with names. – Smyth\^talk 11:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Support the change. However, I don't agree that it doesn't change the meaning. There's clearly a difference in meaning between the cautious may need to be handled as exceptions and the direct should not be modified. So I think that there should be some discussion first. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:29, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Support This seems very sensible. If a quotation like this - "If I told him once, I told him a hundred times that he should be careful with his cheese grater." - is thought to be important enough to be quoted in full in an article, but we subsequently learn that the person being referred to is (and was) actually a "she", the modification I would recommend would be this - "If I told him [Smith] once, I told him a hundred times that he should be careful with his cheese grater." This kind of clarifying parenthetical is done all the time when it is unclear which person a pronoun refers to. If there is still some fear that the quote will be misunderstood a lead-in clarification can help - "Jones, talking about Smith when she was believed to be a man, said...." Perhaps adding a "for example" or two to the text might help, but perhaps it is not necessary. 99.192.71.46 (talk) 12:11, 12 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Oppose. There's a contradiction between "Direct quotations should not be modified" and "replacing pronouns with the subject's name". Formerip (talk) 12:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That's why I specifically wrote "should not be modified to conform with this guideline". That would mean actually reversing the gender of the quotation, which would misrepresent the source. On the other hand, exchanging pronouns and nouns, changing tenses, or decapitalizing the start of sentences are all acceptable editorial practices to fit a quotation into its context, as long they are marked with brackets and do not change the quotation's meaning. – Smyth\^talk 14:00, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That's not clear from your proposal. However, in any case the normal style would be "he [Manning]" (not an actual substitution) which I don't think we even need to mention because of course you can do that where it is helpful. It's also a convention for clarifying text out of context, not changing its meaning. So "He [Manning] wrote to his mother" might be OK if it would otherwise be unclear, but "[Manning] wrote to [Manning's] mother" would be an abuse of the convention. Your proposal seems worded to permit that, although it doesn't even require that brackets are used. Formerip (talk) 14:03, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe your last example would be an abuse. That is an acceptable way of editing a quotation which contains a pronoun whose referent is unclear without additional context. As long as the edit is acknowledged with brackets, retaining the pronoun is not required. See here for more examples. – Smyth\^talk 14:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The goal should be to use the minimum intrusion into the quote needed for clarity; it goes with the spirit of direct quotation to be conveying what was actually said. As such, while there may be confusion with simply "after [Manning] wrote to his mother" in some context where there is a third person who is male involved, "after he [Manning] wrote to his mother" would be clear, and less intrusive than "after [Manning] wrote to [Manning's] mother."--Nat Gertler (talk) 14:52, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Change - eliminate the bit about "sic" altogether. Sic is for "erroneous spelling or other nonstandard presentation", and referring to a person by the gender that they displayed by the time is neither. This seems to be taking the current Wikipedia standard and applying it as the generic standard, and doing so retroactively. We would not put the preacher said "anyone born in the year 1965 A.D. [sic] deserves free cupcakes" in an article that otherwise used CE-style dating. How to view transgendered people even in the current state is not universally held to, not everyone will agree that Chelsea Manning is a "she", but would be even further inappropriate to be quoting an article from last year which said "Bradley said that he [sic] liked cookies" when that quote was done in right-to-any-standard form, using the pronoun that both reflected biological sex and how the subjected presented themselves at the time. There's nothing nonstandard about that, and it seems an odd sort of pointless POV shaming. Put a [Chelsea] if needed, or a (referring to Chelsea as "he"), but [sic] is just wrong. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:58, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'd support that change. Formerip (talk) 14:01, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

And to make clear, I oppose the originally suggested change. After this bit ends, I should probably propose eliminating the sic portion as a separate !poll. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Change. The incorrect use of "[sic]" should be removed. If changes in pronouns within direct quotes are necessary, necessary, then they should be treated with, "Smith said that [she] was the finest soldier ever" or "Smith said that [Surname] was the finest soldier ever." Either of those would indicate that the original text had been changed. However, the part about treating these things as exceptions may be relevant. If the quote is about the subject's gender, then the pronoun selected indicates the speaker's own conclusions, as in, "The subject's mother said, 'I don't believe in this transgender nonsense. He will always be my little boy.'" Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Consensus on anything?

It has been over a week now on both proposals and I just want to know where we stand? Is there a clear enough consensus to make any changes to MOS:IDENTITY? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:17, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that RFCs are generally left open for 30 days. GabrielF (talk) 00:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistent pronouns

A lot of the debate over MOS:IDENTITY stems from the assumption that we have to be consistent in what pronouns we use in an article... but I am going to question that assumption.
Take look at how we present pronouns in our article on Lassie... This is a case where we successfully use two different pronouns in different parts of the article... when discussing the fictional character of "Lassie" we use the pronoun "she", because the character is presented as being female. However, when discussing the actual dogs that portrayed Lassie, we use "he", because all of these dogs were in fact, biologically male.
I think we can deal with pronouns for people in a similar fashion... by separating gender identity from biological gender. When discussing the person's gender identity, it would be appropriate to use "he" or "she" according to that identity... while in other contexts it is more accurate to refer to the person by the appropriate biological pronoun.
And before you assume bad faith... Please note that I don't mean to imply that gender identity is "fictional" like the character "Lassie"... I know it is not. I am not suggesting an exact parallel here. I am merely noting the "Lassie" article as an example of a situation where we were able to successfully use two different pronouns in an article, each depending on context... and suggesting that a context based use of pronouns can be done in other situations. Blueboar (talk) 17:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

For the benefit of others, I note that what you term "biological gender" is now usually termed "sex". (If I recall past discussions on this page correctly, you or another user strongly preferred to use the term "gender" rather than the term "sex"; I don't mean to encourage you to change your words, I mean only to clarify things for those who may be unfamiliar with how you use them.) -sche (talk) 18:02, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Don't think it was me... you may be thinking of another user. Blueboar (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I was thinking of Darkfrog. In any case, editors may find it helpful to peruse Sex and gender distinction. -sche (talk) 19:25, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

That article provides input from several dictionaries and has a brief criticism section. I recommend it as well. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that "biological gender" is inappropriate here. "Sex" suggests intercourse and "biological gender" does not. Also, strictly speaking, the state of being male or female is usually referred to as "gender," if "usual" refers to something that happens more frequently than something else. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Please explain when it is best to refer to a trans woman as he/him (besides direct quotations.) Georgia guy (talk) 18:01, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I think it is best to use "he" in the context of referring to his biological gender, and to use "she" in the context of discssing her gender identity. Blueboar (talk) 19:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Admittedly anecdotal evidence: Speaking as a cis person with a pile of trans friends and acquaintances, who actively tries to be less of a dick, I'd tend to "never ever". I'd say "never ever unless they say so", but I know of literally no examples from my personal sphere. FWIW - David Gerard (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• First off, I believe you should rethink your Lassie reference. You are comparing a fictional character (And the animals that portrayed her) with a trans person, which seems to be suggesting that you feel trans people are just actors for their gender roles playing a part. I'm not sure if this is what you are intending, but if it is then I feel it is out of line, especially for this discussion. This supposed to be about pronouns to apply to trans people, not a debate about if trans people are even the gender they identify as, which seems to be where you want to take it.

Second, you are ignoring all other facets of gender to focus on one specific part of biology: Genital. You are even excluding stuff like genes or the brain, along with non-biological things such as general mental and social aspects. Again, this is not even in line with what Wikipedia itself already states on gender. And, despite my requests, you have provided nothing in the way of references or evidence to support your position, which appears to be either "current genitals" or "whatever I decide they were born as" (I'm not entirely sure which). Simple Sarah (talk) 19:28, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Biology is very big. If a man loses his penis, he does not cease to be a man because he still has so many other physical and chemical things that make him male. Darkfrog24 (talk) 20:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion about collapsing music track lists

Dear All: There is a discussion about whether the track lists for Music of the SaGa series should be collapsed in the article at Talk:Music_of_the_SaGa_series#Collapsed_sections. Please visit the talk page and take a few moments to share your feedback on this issue. --Jax 0677 (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Falklands units

Kindly take note that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject South America/Falkland Islands work group/Units. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 09:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

There is a similar discussion at the Falkland Islands talk page. Michael Glass (talk) 13:46, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Gender, direct quotations, and sic

I propose changing the following:

Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions, and " [sic]" may be used where necessary).

to this:

Direct quotations may need to be handled as exceptions (in some cases adjusting the portion used may reduce apparent contradictions).

(Note, this arose during a side comment on this earlier discussion which seems to have stalled without consensus. I am now just separating out this concern.)

Sic is for "erroneous spelling or other nonstandard presentation", and referring to a person by the gender that they displayed by the time is neither. This seems to be taking the current Wikipedia standard and applying it as the generic standard, and doing so retroactively. We would not put the preacher said "anyone born in the year 1965 A.D. [sic] deserves free cupcakes" in an article that otherwise used CE-style dating, and even though the Wikipedia standard is to leave out the AD or CE for dates which will be clear without them. How to view transgendered people even in the current state is not universally held to, not everyone will agree that Chelsea Manning is a "she", but would be even further inappropriate to be quoting an article from last year which said "Bradley said that he [sic] liked cookies" when that quote was done in right-to-any-standard form, using the pronoun that both reflected biological sex and how the subjected presented themselves at the time. There's nothing nonstandard about that, and to specifically encourage its use seems an odd sort of pointless POV shaming. Put a [Manning] if needed, or a (referring to Manning as "he"). Removing this clause will not, of course, ban the use of [sic] when there truly is erroneous spelling or other nonstandard presentation. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. When this was first mentioned, I thought I supported it. But consider this: If someone writes an article today about Jethro Tull (not to be confused with Jethro Tull and in the article refers to Tull as "he", it would be correct if quoting to put a "[sic]" after it. Jethro Tull (the band) is a "they" not a "he". Similarly, if someone were writing about the band's former keyboardist, Dee Palmer, and used "he", it would be correct if quoting to put a "[sic]" after it. Dee Palmer is a woman. The fact that no one knew that she was a woman while she was in Jethro Tull (the band) does not change the fact that the source got it wrong. So as ugly as "[sic]" is to use and as much as I would recommend quoting to avoid it because it is ugly, it is still correct. 99.192.89.57 (talk) 18:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Getting it wrong is neither a non-standard usage nor a spelling error. We quote many people getting facts wrong. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC) Added to note: And someone referring to Dee Palmer as "him" is reflective of a complex history and situation that is more complex than calling it simply "wrong". If we were to include some simple allusion to the history that would clarify the matter, we wouldn't need a "[sic]", as meaning would be clear from context; and if we do not allude to the history and use the "[sic]" anyway, we are (assuming we're quoting a living person) creating a WP:BLP problem, as we are painting someone as incorrect, perhaps even creating the suggestion that they were being snide, that would not be there if the use was given appropriate context. --Nat Gertler (talk) 20:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Putting "sic" after quoted pronoun references that were correct at the time acording to how a person presented themselves or was generally understood is simply wrong. If confusion about who the quote is referring to is likely then this needs to be handled in some other way, not by making it look as if the original author made a mistake. 86.128.4.139 (talk) 13:36, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The original author did make an error in a case like this. A perfectly understandable and excusable one, but an error nonetheless. I think no less of an author who makes such a mistake, but that does not mean it is not a mistake. No one could possibly blame a writer for thinking that Dee Palmer (then known as "David") was a man while she was in Jethro Tull, but thatwas an error. 99.192.69.164 (talk) 17:18, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Nonsense. 86.128.4.139 (talk) 18:49, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. At the time the quote agreed with the person's self identification for gender, which the person later changed; that does not mean that at the time of the quote it was wrong. RJFJR (talk) 16:42, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I do think it should be pointed out that this may be true for some situations, but in some percentage of other situations it won't be, namely in cases where only the presentation changed and the self identification never changed. Unfortunately, I'm not personally aware of any good research that could be used to determine which of the two situations is more common. And, of course, there would still be the argument that the self identification at the time was wrong, so perhaps you'd have to look at what the person thought of it both at the time and now. Simple Sarah (talk) 17:05, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

This is the problem though - you are taking an essentialist view of gender as opposed to a socially mediated one. Thus, even if person X felt, internally, they were a woman at age 13, if they were on the boy's soccer team and went to the boy's locker room and were part of the boy scouts and played with other boys who thought they were a boy, in many ways they "were" a boy. There is no absolute finding of fact to be had here - unlike the other cases, like person X thought they were born in Texas but were actually born in California. Gender is a bit fuzzier and you have to consider the social aspects of it and how that plays into life experiences.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 17:38, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Even then, Sarah, while it may be argued that a factual error was being made, factual errors are not what sic is for; it is for "erroneous spelling"(and even those, we would generally simply correct) "or other nonstandard presentation". The person who is referring to someone who appeared to be and was presenting themselves as a woman as "she" is actually using a standard presentation, and if we quote someone as writing "She was seven foot nine and had breath like a demon" about someone who was 6'1", we don't add a "sic" in there to denote factual error. Even to refer to someone who is known as transgender by the pronoun that accords to their sex is not, per se, an error; it is a POV and one might understandably judge that POV to be wrong, but it is within the realm of standard presentation. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:46, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I should clarify what I was attempting to say above. I was responding specifically to what I interpreted RJFJR's comment to be saying and was simply pointing out why I felt it would not generalize well.

It was not intended to be a comment on the broader issue of how direct quotes using pronouns and gendered terms not matching the current gender identity of a person should be handled on Wikipedia. Quite the opposite, I'm not even entirely sure what my personal position on that issue is right now and I mostly certainly do not think I have sufficient sourcing or general reasoning to support any particular position as things stand. I apologize for not being more clear about that in my prior response. Simple Sarah (talk) 19:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification! I apologize for misconstruing your intent. --Nat Gertler (talk) 21:03, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Enforcement of parameters in infoboxes? Requesting comment

Input would be appreciated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#Enforcing infobox parameters (or not)?

The gist: I cut down the number of parameters used in the infobox for the article I wrote for The End of the Road (a novel) with the intention of making the infobox generally applicable to all the many editions of the book. Three editors at WikiProject:Novels decided that the infobox must contain ISBN, page count, publisher, and cover image of the first edition. We see the infobox as performing different purposes, and I would like to get input from the community on the scope and purpose of {{Infobox book}} and of the WikiProject. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:04, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Blank lines and section headings

This is a very minor issue, but I'm looking for consensus to change: "Include one blank line above the heading, and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window."

Proposed edit: "Include one blank line above the heading (where the heading is preceded by text), and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window. There is no need to include a blank line between two headings."

The issue is that one of the bots keeps adding space between headers using AWB, which is gumming up the watchlists. This MoS sentence is being cited as the reason for the edits. It means we end up with the following in edit mode, which (if there are a lot of these in an article) is a nuisance on small screens:

==Level 1==

===Level 2===

====Level 3====

Does anyone mind? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:43, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion one way or the other. On Wiktionary, headers are usually separated by blank lines, and I think it improves legibility. On the other hand, it's also very rare (on Wiktionary) to have more than two headers next to each other without any intervening content. If that situation is more common on Wikipedia, I can see how it might be more legible to reduce the whitespace. IMO, the solution to the specific issue you raise is to tell the bot owner to leave the whitespace alone, since the MOS explicitly does not require anything one way or the other: it says including the whitespace is "optional", but "there is no need" for it. -sche (talk) 19:36, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Why have you added "(where the heading is preceded by text)"? This creates doubt if the last thing in the previous section is a table, image, or other coding rather than text. There should, however, be an exception for anchor tags (where a heading has been renamed but a tag is required so anchor links to that section still work). —sroc 💬 01:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I normally do not add a blank line below a heading, just as a personal preference. However, it should be noted that while a single blank line is generally disregarded by the software when it follows any parsed code (i.e. section headers, templates, thumbnails, etc.), two blank lines will affect the resulting article. Regardless, the bot in question should not be making purely cosmetic adjustments - as per bot policy - for just the reasons raised here. In other cases, WP:HIDEBOT has info on hiding the edits of specific editors/bots from your watchlist. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 08:31, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I know we should be able to ask the bot owner not to do this, but that hasn't worked; it's part of AWB and he won't remove it because the MoS says to do it. So I'm hoping if we change the MoS it will stop.

I'm going to add: "Include one blank line above the heading (where the heading is preceded by text, an image, table or other coding, except for anchor tags), and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window. There is no need to include a blank line between two headings."

That should take into account the issues sroc raised. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:21, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

oppose. I contest the addition. Adding more if/unless statements make things harder... Add a blank line, unless. Also, this was done for readability. This make things harder to read, especially when there are three and four headings in a row. It would have been nice to invite the AWB people to the discussion. Bgwhite (talk) 07:29, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Oppose by me, too. It's hard enough to find headings without blank lines after them. Let's not compound the problem. Dicklyon (talk) 01:32, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The issue is that AWB is inserting blank lines between subheadings; editors remove them and AWB restores them. Are people opposed to me restoring: "There is no need to include a blank line between headings and subheadings"? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:41, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Gender self-identification

In the section MOS:IDENTITY there is, "Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman") that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. "

There doesn't seem to be any weight given to the person's physical state, gender legal status, or history of how the person was referred to in the past or presently in reliable sources. Would anyone care to explain? Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:39, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Any variant of it that you propose changing it to that gives appropriate weight to such things?? Georgia guy (talk) 18:45, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd just like to know the reasoning behind the sentence that doesn't give any weight to those other aspects. Could you help out in that regard? Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to know if there's a statement you would prefer it to be that gives weight to them. Could you give any suggestions?? Thanks. Georgia guy (talk) 18:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't feel that I have a good enough understanding of the situation here to do that, hence my request. I think I'll wait to see what anyone else has to contribute with regard to the info I requested. Thanks, anyhow. --Bob K31416 (talk) 19:05, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Because, per for example evidence submitted in the current arbitration case, there's quite a lot of evidence that gender identity is particularly sensitive in this manner. I'll refer you to that rather than attempt to prove it on the spot here, as you seem to be asking - David Gerard (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Current arbitration case. --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Two things: 1) Trangenderism is a mental/emotional identity, not a physical state. Physical state and legal status are medically irrelevant, and changes to such may depend on an individual's ability to pay for surgery and legal actions. 2) When writing or speaking about a transgender person, we are writing/reading or speaking/hearing in the present, and therefore even when referring in the present to the person's past, the pronoun choice as it is currently known should be used.

• http://www.abct.org/docs/Members/FactSheets/LGBT_for_therapists.doc
• http://www.counseling.org/Resources/Competencies/ALGBTIC_Competencies.pdf
• http://transgenderlawcenter.org/archives/8975
• http://www.glaad.org/files/MediaReferenceGuide2010.pdf?id=99

Startswithj (talk) 20:02, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

In your third link there was the suggestion, "Avoid pronoun confusion when examining the stories and backgrounds of transgender people prior to their transition. In Private Manning’s case, she may simply be referred to as Private Manning." --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:38, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Respectfully, User:Bob K31416, I don't understand the reason for presenting your quote from the third link I posted above. What exactly is your question, please? Thank you, Startswithj (talk) 05:50, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I was trying to point out that this transgender advocacy group recognizes that there are technical writing problems when it comes to writing about the part of a transgender person's life before they made their transition. I thought we could consider whether we would like to add some corresponding advice into this guideline. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Their suggestion is to avoid confusing (mixing) pronouns, even when referring to past events, and to use gender-neutral language wherever possible. I think Wikipedia's MOS agrees, but I would not oppose making it clearer. Startswithj (talk) 16:34, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I think their suggestion was more general than mixing, but who knows for sure. In any case, I'd suggest adding something like, "Avoid pronoun confusion when making edits about the backgrounds of transgender people prior to their transition. For example, consider avoiding or minimizing the use of pronouns there." --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:33, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

GLAAD initially uses the exact same language as TLC, but adds "It is usually best to report on transgender people's stories from the present day instead of narrating them from some point or multiple points in the past, thus avoiding confusion and potentially disrespectful use of incorrect pronouns." http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender Startswithj (talk) 18:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Comparing the GLAAD and TLC advice, I thought the TLC advice was more careful. Here is an example taken from the article Bradley Manning. "Manning's father told PBS that she excelled at the saxophone, science, and computers, creating her first website at the age of ten." By using the pronoun "she", it suggests that Manning's father considered Manning as a child to be female, which wasn't the case. This seems to be a counter example to GLAAD's conclusion "thus avoiding confusion", because it doesn't avoid confusion in this case. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Bob K31416, "By using the pronoun "she", it suggests that Manning's father considered Manning as a child to be female". No, it does not. Take a sentence like this: Fred Smith trained for 6 hours per day as a child. Smith's father discouraged the future Olympian from working so hard. In that sentence, the phrase "the future Olympian" is not attributed as a belief of the father's at the time. The father might have thought Fred was hopeless at sports. The phrase merely points out that it is true that Fred became an Olympian in the future. Now replace the phrase "the future Olympian" with "him" or even with "her". In either case the same thing is going on. The pronoun does not attribute something as a belief of the father at the time, it just says something that is true about the person.

Try another case: Manti Te'o was famously duped by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (a man) into believing that he (Ronaiah) was a woman named "Lennay Kekua". In discussing what happened it is perfectly natural to say "when Te'o was talking to Tuiasosopo" or "when Te'o was talking to him" because the person Te'o was talking to was a man named "Tuiasosopo", even though Te'o believed neither of these things at the time they talked. The phrasing does not imply anything about Te'o's beliefs about who he was talking to.

The is the very essence of how the "misrepresenting the sources" argument is entirely nonsense. 99.192.88.23 (talk) 23:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

My point was that the excerpt suggests that Manning's father referred to Manning as "she" when he communicated with PBS. ""Manning's father told PBS that she excelled ..." I don't think the examples you gave had this aspect in them. --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:26, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I know what your point was, and you are wrong. Smith's father told PBS that he discouraged the future Olympian from working so hard. Same result. 99.192.88.23 (talk) 23:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Break1 GSI

• I think Bob's question is ultimately why gender identity gets such an elevated privilege over biological sex when referring to a person. Is it because referring to someone by their biological sex (when it doesn't match their gender identity) is insulting, or otherwise might hurt their feelings? Since when has that been a consideration when writing Wikipedia articles? I'm sure that Ayman al-Zawahiri doesn't appreciate being labeled a terrorist in his Wikipedia article, and probably doesn't self-identify as a terrorist. There are probably a number of people on the List of people with bipolar disorder who feel uncomfortable about being on such a public list. However, the feelings of BLP subjects generally do not factor into how we write an article on them. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that contains objective facts. "Chelsea Manning is a woman" is not a fact, and is not correct. "Chelsea Manning is biologically male, but identifies as a woman" is a fact, and is correct. In my opinion, using female pronouns to refer to someone who is clearly biologically male is just confusing. This doesn't mean that I hate transgendered people, or that I think transgenderism is not real. It just means that, just like any other biographical article, presenting objective facts is more important to me than considering the subject's feelings. ‑Scottywong| speak _ 23:11, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Scottywong, if you are asking why Wikipedia does things the way they do, then the answer is because that's how the rest of the world does it. If you are asking why the world does it the way they do, then that seems to be a more complicated question. But the answer is probably something like this: If everyone had a sex and gender that "matched" the question of which of these features of a person a pronoun was referring to would not even make sense. So it is only in the case of transgender people that the question even arises. For people who experience their sex and gender not matching, there is nearly universally the view that pronouns should refer to gender, not sex.

For fans of science fiction it also seems to instinctively that pronouns should track gender and not sex. Think of any sci-fi story about one person being transported into another person's body. If John Smith wakes up one morning in the body of Mary Jones, people in the story who know him and are told about the magical body switching will call him "John" and "he" despite the fact that he is now in a female body. Identity that matters to people is internal, not external. The experience of John Smith as described here is actually similar to how transgender people often explain how they feel - that they are in the wrong body.

Philosophers have studied the question of personal identity for hundreds of years, long before anyone thought that being transgender was something that could actually happen. Some have argued that physical continuity is what matters, but most have thought that mental continuity is what counts. So the sci-fi case mentioned above tracks what most philosophers think makes sense for how identity really works. This means that if a person feels (in their mind) like a man but look (in their body) like a woman that they really are a man. So it follows that male pronouns must be used to accurately refer to the person.

So Chelsea Manning is a woman, not a man. It does not matter what her body looks like. Her mental identity is the only identity that matters. That's what philosophers, science fiction fans, and transgender people all tell us. Your opinion about pronouns does not reflect this reality. 99.192.90.227 (talk) 03:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Absolutely not true, actually. Robert Heinlein's classic novel I Will Fear No Evil is exactly about this topic, a man's brain being transplanted in a woman's body. The resulting person, after thinking about it for a while, decides to consider herself female. Heinlein was one of the "big three" science fiction writers. I suspect you're just making your facts up as you go, and would appreciate you cite specific sources for your statements from now on. --GRuban (talk) 08:02, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

"I suspect you're just making your facts up as you go" So much for assuming good faith. Now here's why you are wrong. (1) In your example, the character chooses to identify differently. It is not that others impose this new identity on the person based on their body. So it's not a counter-example at all. (2) Even in this novel we get a passage like this: "this Court now rules that identity must therefore reside in the brain and nowhere else." The brain, not the body. So the novel supports the idea that bodies don't determine identity. (3) The story of this novel is a lot like the plot of the film All of Me. In that film after Edwina becomes a co-inhabitant of Roger's body and controls half of it, she still always identifies as "she" and is always referred to that way. (4) There are many (mostly awful) "body switching" movies out there. Among them are The Hot Chick, It's a Boy Girl Thing, and Dating the Enemy. In every one of these, people who know about the switch use the pronouns appropriate for the mental identity, regardless of the body it is in. Are those enough specific sources for you? 99.192.84.150 (talk) 12:27, 21 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192...)

Thanks for the specific sources. Everywhere else, you write that what matters is what the person in the body feels, and not what others call them. Here, you write that what matters is what others call them, not what the character chooses. It seems a rather contorted argument. --GRuban (talk) 13:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

It only looks contorted if you put the cart before the horse. What matters for gender is the person's internal psychological identity. What the "pronouns-should-refer-to sex-not-gender" people argue is either that we DO choose what pronoun to use that way or we SHOULD choose that way. My examples show that people DO choose what pronoun to use based on their knowledge of the gender identity of the person. If you know you are talking to a female-in-a-male body, you use "she". The use of "she" is not justified by the fact that "that's what people do". What people do is explained by the fact that pronouns go with gender.

Since you seem to have trouble understanding let me summarize as succinctly as I can:

(1) The sex of a person is determined by their body (external).

(2) The gender of a person is determined by their psychology (internal).

(3) Which gendered pronoun (like "he" and "she") is appropriate to use is determined by the person's gender, not their sex.

(4) All competent users of the English language know #3, even small children.

(5) That #4 is true is proven by cases like sci-fi stories of body switching where people who are aware that a switch has happened use the pronouns (and names) that go with the psychological (internal) identity, not the physical (external) identity.

Any questions? 99.192.84.150 (talk) 13:34, 21 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Yes. As requested above, please give the sources for all of these assertions. For example, (4) seems a lot like No true Scotsman - as some people in this very discussion seem to be disagreeing with you, would you therefore say they're not competent? Using sci-fi stories as a source is problematic for lots of reasons, only one of which being that one I cited, the main being that citing science fiction as a guide for we should write an encyclopedia seems patently silly. --GRuban (talk)

"For people who experience their sex and gender not matching, there is nearly universally the view that pronouns should refer to gender, not sex." Why do they get to decide that for the rest of us? CombatWombat42 (talk) 18:19, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

They get to decide it because they are the people who have actually carefully considered the issue free of the prejudice against transgender other people have. When philosophers have done their thought experiments (for centuries now) they come to the conclusion that mental identity is what matters. Students of philosophy who study personal identity come to the same conclusion. Sci-fi fans who have read stories with body-switching elements come to the same conclusion. Very young children come to the same conclusion. It is only when put in the specific context of transgender people that some (and only some) begin to balk. This is the strongest evidence one could have that those people are objecting for reasons that have nothing to do with language. I bet if you scratch those folks a bit deeper you will find somone who rejects the legitimacy of a person even being transgender. I choose to go with what smart people free of prejudice say (not to mention any linguistically competent 8 year old child) over the shallow and angry mob of bigots. You get to choose who you side with as well. 99.192.69.164 (talk) 18:55, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Just couldn't resist that ad hominem attack/ appeal authuthority I see, nice job combining 2 terrible argument strategies. I actualy tend to agree with many of your points, but it is important to note that all of your points are made in a context ouside of transgendered people, and as you admit context matters. If even young children came to the conclusion that we should call transgendered people by their perfered pronouns we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. I do tend to think that baring any good reason we should refer to transgendered people the way they want to be refered to, but the only reason I have seen so far for that is "they want to be refered to that way" and "it makes them feel better" which, no matter what you are talking about is a weak argument. I do still have an issue with historical revisionism, i.e. changing the gender used to refer to them in the past, retroactivly. CombatWombat42 (talk) 19:17, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

"...the only reason I have seen so far..." Then you have not been looking at what people have been saying. 99.192.88.23 (talk) 23:20, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Assume I am dumb and repeat those other reasons please. CombatWombat42 (talk) 14:13, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

"Assume I am dumb" I can do that. I have argued that what pronouns a person - any person, whether or not they are transgender - wants us to use does not and should not matter. I have also argued that how our use of pronouns makes a subject "feel" also does not and should not matter. The only thing that does and should matter is which pronouns are accurate. If we are writing about a man, we use "he" and "him" no matter what the subject wants us to use or how that choice makes him feel. We do it because it is the correct pronoun. End of story. If we are writing about a woman, we use "she" and "her" no matter what the subject wants us to use or how that choice makes him feel. We do it because it is the correct pronoun. End of story. A woman is a woman is a woman. A transgender woman is a woman and a non-transgender woman is a woman. So both Jennifer Aniston (to the best of my knowledge) and Chelsea Manning are women. Their gender, like that of all people, has not changed over the course of their life, no matter what the public perception of their gender has been. They are and have always both been female, and so both get "she" and "her" for pronouns. If either asks us not to use "she" or "her" and adds that it makes them feel bad when we do, our answer to both should be: Too bad. This is what those words mean and we will continue to use them correctly. The only argument that could have any weight for not using "she" and "her" for Chelsea Manning for her life prior to the past month would be an argument that she was not female in the past. But to claim that is to call her a liar (when she says she has felt this way since childhood) and to falsely claim that either a person's gender can change or that being transgender is not possible. 99.192.75.230 (talk) 00:38, 21 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

It seems that the premise for your reasoning is that "A transgender woman is a woman" regardless of whether that person is physically a man and dresses like a man. I don't see that as a predominantly accepted premise in our society. You seem to have tried in other messages to present that opinion as a logical conclusion, but that reasoning again seems to be based on a premise that is not generally accepted in our society, i.e. that a person who is physically a man and dresses like a man can be actually a woman because of that person's belief of being a woman.

As you essentially mentioned at the beginning of your message, a person who is physically a man and dresses like a man has the right to believe they are a woman, but doesn't have the right to require Wikipedia to use feminine pronouns for that person. And because the premises for your reasoning aren't predominantly accepted, I don't think your reasoning has shown that a person who is physically a man and dresses like a man should be referred to as a woman on Wikipedia. However, that is not to say that there is no other reasoning that might show that the person should be referred to as a woman here, just that your above reasoning hasn't shown that because your reasoning is based on premises that aren't predominantly accepted in our society. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:20, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear that you are suggesting here that being transgender isn't real, or if it is it is a mere "belief" a person has, and not a correct one. Arguing for how pronouns should be used based on denying that transgender people exist and merely "believe" that they are the gender they are is a losing argument. You can keep trying to make it if you want. But don't be surprised if you don't get very far with it. 99.192.84.150 (talk) 13:40, 21 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

I'm not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is that your reasoning is fallacious, which so far you haven't addressed. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:50, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. You said that a person "has the right to believe they are a woman." Sure, and a person has the right to believe they are a potato, too. What does what having "the right" to believe something have to do with the discussion at all? No one is talking about what a person has "the right to believe". But when you say that Wikipedia can reject a person's belief that they are a woman then you are saying that Wikipedia can deny that transgender people exist. That is both offensive and an argument that won't get you very far. 99.192.84.150 (talk) 14:40, 21 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

For the sake of discussion, how would those ideas regarding gender apply to newborn babies? --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:22, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Well let me put it this way. In the abortion debate it is often said that one of the key points of dispute is whether or not a fetus is a "person". But actually, there are philosophers who will tell you that based on how we actually think of "personhood" that even a newly born infant is still not yet a person. Newborns, so the argument goes, do not have the kind of complex psychology required to actually be a person. If this is true, then it would make sense to say that a newborn does not have a gender yet either.

But most people (including most philosophers) believe that not only does a newborn have a complex enough psychology to be a person, so does a fetus in the late stages of pregnancy. It's pretty hard to know for sure about newborns, let alone fetuses, because we really only have limited ways of measuring what they might be thinking. But if a newborn is a person and if a fetus is a person, then there is no reason to think that this person does not have a gender. We might not know what that gender is due to our communication limitation, but it still might be there.

To my knowledge, the experts on gender identity and childhood development say that gender is not fixed in the first couple of years of life. If this is true, then a newborn might not have a gender. 99.192.83.245 (talk) 03:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Thanks. When children develop, and their physiology fits in the normal range for their sex, what would cause a physical male to develop a female gender identity? --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:58, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to reword your question before giving an unsatisfying answer: What causes any person to develop the gender identity that have? So far as I know, the experts have no idea. It's analogous to the question of sexual orientation. Why do people develop the sexual orientations they come to have? No one knows. 99.192.83.245 (talk) 04:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Thanks. That's a reasonable answer. --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:44, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

245, I understand everything you're talking about, and I don't disagree. Clearly, transgendered people prefer to be referred to using their pronouns of choice. To do otherwise would be against their wishes, might insult them, or make them sad. But still, my main question hasn't been addressed. BLP tells us to avoid harming the subject of biographical articles. Certainly, using the "wrong" pronoun doesn't harm a transgendered person, even if it might cause them some emotional distress. So, since we don't take the subject's feelings into account for other editorial decisions (see examples in my last comments above), why must we now? (Your answer is "because that's the way the rest of the world does it.")

I understand and am sympathetic to the phenomenon of transgenderism. However, I also know that when I look at a person, I can reliably determine their sex 999 times out of 1000. When I look at a picture of Bradley Manning, I am confident that his sex is male. Therefore, I expect male pronouns to be used in an encyclopedia article about him. If he has had notable gender identity issues, I expect to read about those as well. Perhaps this is just because this is the way my personal experience has been for my whole life. When I see something that looks like a girl, I refer to it as a girl. To do otherwise is jarring and confusing. Maybe it's just something I'll have to get used to. If I knew Manning personally, I'm sure I'd be sympathetic to his gender identity issues, and I'd refer to him using his pronoun of choice. But in an objective encyclopedia article, I would expect his objective sex to be used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scottywong (talk • contribs)

Scottywong, (1) "...might insult them, or make them sad." I don't want to speculate on your intent, but the final phrase here reads as insultingly dismissive. (2) "BLP tells us to avoid harming the subject of biographical articles." Actually, no. BLP requires that we take care to be accurate, and it is inaccurate to use "she" for a man or "he" for a woman, no matter haw many news articles do it. So when we have a reliable source about a person's gender (like a public declaration by the person) BLP says we must avoid the factual error of using the wrong pronoun. (3) "Certainly, using the 'wrong' pronoun doesn't harm a transgendered person, even if it might cause them some emotional distress." See point #1. To glibly state that emotional distress is not harm is extremely insulting to anyone who has been psychologically harmed. If you insist that "harm" only means physical harm, then you are ignoring reality. (4) "...the subject's feelings...." Wrong. I have not argued anywhere that the issue is one of taking the subject's feelings into consideration. In fact, I have argued the opposite. We should use the pronouns that are accurate, not the ones that are preferred. So if a transgender woman wanted us to use male pronouns we should not do it, just as if Tom Hanks announced "I am a man, but I want people to use female pronouns when talking about me". That is a request we should ignore because it is not accurate. (5) "Your answer is...." Wrong again. what I said was nothing at all about "feelings" but a simple fact about the meanings of words. Why does Wikipedia use the word "truck" to refer to trucks? Because that's what the word means. Why is that what it means? Because that is how the world uses the word. Why does Wikipedia use "she" and "her" for people whose gender is female? Because that is what the words mean. Why do they mean that? Because that is how the world uses the words. (6) Your whole second paragraph is an interesting discussion of how you see the world, but it is not how the world is. Sex and gender are almost always a "match", so a person's sex is almost always a clear indicator of their gender and thus of what pronoun to use. But in some cases sex and gender do not match and in those rare cases the error can be easily corrected. In that 1 in 1000 case where you mis-identify a person visually, they will typically be quick to point out the error. At that point, only an asshole refuses to accept that the person is the gender they say they are. That's all that is being said here. When a person says "I am a woman" then that's all the source we need. Since the meaning of "she" and "her" is fixed by gender, not by sex, the pronouns we must use is also fixed. 99.192.88.142 (talk) 14:51, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Not sure if my message here is needed, but I hope that this discussion doesn't spiral out of control. Invective can be very distracting and obscure any good points that are embedded in a message. --Bob K31416 (talk) 16:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I hope it is not needed, but it does not hurt to put the reminder in there. Cheers! 99.192.89.57 (talk) 16:38, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

"...the meaning of 'she' and 'her' is fixed by gender, not by sex...". Is that an established fact, or is this your opinion? Why is pronoun use defined by gender identity and not biological sex? Who decided this, and where is it written? You're making statements as if they're facts, but there doesn't seem to be anything to back it up besides "that's just the way it is, and you're an asshole if you disagree". "...only an asshole refuses to accept that the person is the gender they say they are..." In the case of mistaken identity, I agree that it would be unreasonable to not correct the pronouns that you're using. However, if I'm talking to Tom Hanks (or someone else whose biological sex is not ambiguous), and I refer to him as "he", and he corrects me and says "actually, I'm a woman", then realistically I'm probably going to look at him in a confused manner, and I might be more hesitant to change my pronoun use. ‑Scottywong| prattle _ 23:13, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

"Why is pronoun use defined by gender identity and not biological sex?" I don't know for sure, but my educated guess is because people take their mental identity to be who they "really" are and their physical identity to be more incidental. At the very least, when forced to choose which is more fundamental, people almost always say it is their mental identity. Again, see the body of literature on personal identity.

"Who decided this, and where is it written?" Do you believe that meanings and usage of words are decided by some committee somewhere? What words mean and how to correctly use them are established by how they are used. So who decided this? The users of the English language. When? Over the last millenium. Where is it written down? Dictionaries will tell you that "she" refers to females and the personal identity literature will tell you that a woman is a person, like all others, based on mental identity.

"Is that an established fact, or is this your opinion?" It is established fact. Don't believe me? Here's an experiment you can run with any child to show that they all know which pronouns to use. Tell the child this story: Once upon a time a princess was born named Pat. When Pat was 3 years old, a magician came along and cast a spell. The result was Pat now had a boy's body. Pat wanted to have a girl's body, but no magician in the kingdom could break the spell, so Pat grew up with a boy's body. Everyone expected Pat to dress like a boy and act like a boy because everyone believed that Pat was a boy. But Pat wanted nothing more than to be accepted as a girl. Thirty years later, after Pat grew up and had been an adult for a very long time, a magician came to the kingdom and said "I can break the spell!" Pat finally had the chance to have a woman's body instead of a man's. Now you ask the child you are telling the story: What do you think Pat decided to do? Notice that in telling the story no gendered pronouns are used and the name for the person even is gender neutral. All the person hearing the story knows is that Pat has had a male body for the last 30 of the 33 years since being born. I bet that any child told that story will begin their answer to the question by saying "I think she...." The man's body does not matter. Having a man's body for 30 years does not matter. Pat is a woman and so is referred to as "she". If you doubt me, try it out. Surely you already know that even a child will correctly choose the female pronouns without any prompting. All you have to do is make it crystal clear how the person internally identifies, because that is what fixes pronouns. 99.192.77.182 (talk) 02:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Please see my comment of 10:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC) below. --Bob K31416 (talk) 11:31, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Having a wizard give someone a woman's body implies that the person has become biologically female, to match their female gender identity. So, I would agree that anyone would refer to Pat as "she". Here's an alternate experiment. Put a child in the same room as Bradley Manning, and let them have a conversation for a few minutes. Take the child out of the room and ask them a question about Manning to see if they use a male or female pronoun. ‑Scottywong| prattle _ 16:13, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

"Having a wizard give someone a woman's body...." That's not the story. In my story a 3 year old girl is given a male body and continues to have a male body for the next 30 years. Then, still with a male body, a magician says "I can break the spell." So when I said you should ask the child What do you think Pat decided to do? the situation is what Pat in a male body decided to do. You completely misread what I said. Try the experiment as I suggested. I guarantee you any child you tell the story to will say "she" even though Pat has a male body and has had a male body for 30 years. 99.192.75.230 (talk) 00:23, 21 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Actually, that was the story. Go back and read it: "Pat finally had the chance to have a woman's body instead of a man's." It wasn't, "Pat finally had the chance to feel like a woman and be socially accepted by others as a woman, despite having a male body." You didn't comment on my version of the experiment. How do you think that one would go? ‑Scottywong| soliloquize _ 03:42, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Bob K31416,

The only problem I see in the quoted portion of the MOS is that adjectives, including possessive adjectives, do not refer. The rest looks fine to me. Do you perceive another problem with it that should be brought to our attention?

-- Marie Paradox (talk) 03:29, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Marie Paradox, possessive adjective certainly do refer. "His" and "her" are possessive adjectives. They refer to the person who is the owner by their gender. As for other adjectives, the pair "blond" and "blonde" are both still used. 99.192.83.245 (talk) 03:44, 18 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

99.192.83.245, no, the adjectives "his" and "her" cannot refer to persons there will never be a "concrete object"[1] (see Definition 1) that either can represent. If you wanted to argue that your first sentence is true on the grounds that possessive adjectives refer to their antecedents, I would concede the point, but this sort of reference is always a relation between words[2] (see Definition 2) and never between a word and a person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marie Paradox (talk • contribs) 09:03, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Marie Paradox, I have the impression that the criterion of gender self-identification is being used in Wikipedia because it is the criterion recommended by advocates for transgender people. Seems like Wikipedia should use a criterion that presents the subject in a well written manner as clearly and as informatively as possible, as long as it doesn't cause harm to the person who is the subject of the article. I think ScottyWong made good points in this regard. In any case, it seems like a difficult situation regardless of which or how the personal pronouns are used. So for me it's not clear yet how the guideline should deal with this situation. --Bob K31416 (talk) 04:42, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Bob K31416, human beings are widely regarded as persons, and for this reason what is true of our brains tends to be more relevant than what is true of the rest of our bodies. Would you begrudge a woman who undergoes a hemicorporectomy for continuing to identify as a woman? What about a man? I believe the recommendations of transgender advocates are a good indication of which course of action we should take but certainly not the only one. -- Marie Paradox (talk) 09:03, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I was going to make a comment in the 99.192.77.182/ScottyWong discussion, but it seems that my comment applies to your message just as well, so I'll make it here.

For the purpose of how society views the gender of a person, it seems that it is determined by a consensus of the people in that society. So what do you think is the consensus regarding whether a person's gender is determined by their physical status at birth or whether it is determined by their present physical state, which may have been altered by surgery, or whether it is determined by what the person believes about their own gender identity? --Bob K31416 (talk) 10:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I really think you're asserting what you claim to be proving here - David Gerard (talk) 11:41, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Could you explain your comment? I didn't understand it. For example, what do you think I am asserting and what do you think I am claiming to prove? Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 11:47, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I would argue that, of those three options, the only one that editors on Wikipedia could follow would be the last one unless it was determined that gendered language should be almost entirely removed from the project. For the vast majority of people neither physical status at birth nor their present physical state (In the sense I believe you are talking about) are things that can be verified in reliable sources. If either of those were to be the determining factor for which gender and pronouns were used for a subject on Wikipedia then the articles on most subjects would need to be adjusted to be gender-neutral. Simple Sarah (talk) 16:20, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the point I was trying to make was in the first sentence of my message regarding consensus in society, "For the purpose of how society views the gender of a person, it seems that it is determined by a consensus of the people in that society." The rest of my message was inviting opinions about that consensus.

Re "For the vast majority of people neither physical status at birth nor their present physical state (In the sense I believe you are talking about) are things that can be verified in reliable sources." — Physical status at birth can in principle be verified by the reliable source that is the person's birth certificate. Surgical sex change is very rare, so I think that for the purposes of writing an article, if evidence for that hasn't appeared in a reliable source we can assume that there hasn't been a change in the sex of the person since birth.

Re "If either of those [i.e. physical status at birth or their present physical state] were to be the determining factor for which gender and pronouns were used for a subject on Wikipedia then the articles on most subjects would need to be adjusted to be gender-neutral." — I think it would be worse if we went by declared gender identity since the vast majority of people do not declare their gender identity and there isn't such a thing as a gender identity certificate (AFAIK), whereas they have a birth certificate. But the case we are considering is where a person has declared their gender identity and whether that should overrule their birth certificate (for example) or present physical state, for the purposes of writing a Wikipedia article. For articles on transgender people, I think it's a difficult choice for editors in any case and may depend on the particulars of a case. --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

At least in many places, birth certificates are not public record (You may recall some people making noise over wanting to see one for the current American President). And in many parts of the world such records are spotty or may not even exist (This is possible even in developed countries). Additionally, this would seem to be saying that, even if such records were public, Wikipedia editors would need to hunt down birth certificates for each subject before being allowed to use gendered language.

As for using gender identity being more troublesome, I fail to see how that follows. For the vast majority of people, their gender identity, gender, sex, gender presentation, common pronouns, etc. all match and it is entirely reasonable for Wikipedia to go by what is known of these when determining the gender to refer to a person as, assuming there isn't a good reason to think their gender identity doesn't match for one reason or another. It is far more likely that this information will be available in reliable sources than the contents of the subject's birth certificate. Simple Sarah (talk) 18:48, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:39, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

@Scottywong: Gendered pronouns reflect gender, they do not make a factual statement about biological sex. Kaldari (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

That seems to depend on whether one thinks that gender comes from biological sex or whether it comes from elsewhere, such as gender self-identification. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:45, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I looked up gender in two popular online dictionaries not apparently connected with any special interest group, and they seem to say that gender, in the way it is being used here, comes from sex.[3][4] --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Bob K31416, you have not read your sources carefully. Check the "usage note" on the first and the second offers "psychological traits" as a way to define gender. But also, all that dictionaries can help estblish is which words we should use to discuss the ideas we are discussing. The ideas don't change. For a person, there are two "THINGS". One is a "THING" about their body and one is a "THING" about their psychology. We can talk of the "physical person" vs the "mental person" or we can talk about the "sex" vs the "gender", but you score no points by looking up dictionary definitions. At best you force us to use different words to discuss the same ideas. But as I noted, even the dictionaries understand how gender=mental identity and sex=physical identity. 99.192.88.23 (talk) 23:15, 19 September 2013 (UTC) (=99.192....)

Re "Check the 'usage note'..." — There are "usage note"s in the first one but they don't seem to support your point, so I'm not sure if I'm looking at the part you're referring to. Could you copy the parts over here that you are referring to so that it is clear what we are discussing and we have it handy for reference? --Bob K31416 (talk) 23:48, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I might as well copy over to here both of the usage notes for your convenience.[5]

Usage Note : Traditionally, gender has been used primarily to refer to the grammatical categories of "masculine," "feminine," and "neuter," but in recent years the word has become well established in its use to refer to sex-based categories, as in phrases such as gender gap and the politics of gender. This usage is supported by the practice of many anthropologists, who reserve sex for reference to biological categories, while using gender to refer to social or cultural categories. According to this rule, one would say The effectiveness of the medication appears to depend on the sex (not gender) of the patient, but In peasant societies, gender (not sex) roles are likely to be more clearly defined. This distinction is useful in principle, but it is by no means widely observed, and considerable variation in usage occurs at all levels.

usage.: The use of gender in the sense “sex” (The author's gender should be irrelevant.) is over 600 years old. Although some people feel that gender should be reserved for grammatical category only, the “sex” sense of gender is now extremely common; sex itself is becoming increasingly rare except when referring to copulation.

It appears that gender according to the above usage notes is "well established in its use to refer to sex-based categories".

And regarding gender as meaning psychological traits that you mentioned being discussed in the second ref, here's the excerpt that I think you mean, "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex".[6] It too is sex-based.

If you were looking at something else in these two refs, feel free to copy it over here too. --Bob K31416 (talk) 08:38, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

On second thought, regarding the part of the quote from the second ref, "psychological traits typically associated with one sex", this does seem to be a definition of gender that is consistent with yours, although a person's statement of gender self-identification is not necessarily the same as having the psychological traits. One would be depending on the person's self evaluation as being accurate. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:39, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Gender is a social construction - 100 years+ of feminism have made that quite clear - and comprises roles, styles of dress, how your body is shaped and sculpted and trimmed, what job you have, and so on. Of course, self identity also comes into it, but you cannot separate self-identity from the social construction of this role, because you are identifying *with* that construction. As such, whether you self-identify with a gender or not, whether you are part of gender X is mediated by social acceptance of same, and we aren't well equipped to deal with people at the edges of this binary. There aren't any hard truths here, and in other cultures, gender can be defined quite differently, and there are alternate gender roles and words for those roles that we may have a hard time understanding. Thus, there is no physical law of gender that is invariant across time and space, this is a socially negotiated construct that is constantly being debated. We see for example one stream of feminism which rejects the claims of transwomen to womanhood; we also see some trans* ppl - post transition - who dispute the identity of pre-transition trans-women. there are numerous points of view! And of course, we see debates like the above, where people say "man" effectively means "has a penis" or "has XY chromosomes" - all of these are attempts to impose a binary that in reality doesn't exist, and the edges of the category "man" and "woman" and "transgender" and "genderqueer" and all the other terms are constantly being renegotiated.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:35, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

That's true if by "gender" you mean "gender roles," and even those are best described as society's reaction to biological realities rather than the creation of anything new. If gender were entirely social, then that poor boy that John Money wrote about would have had no problem with being raised female. When it comes to biological gender and gender identity, there are plenty of laws that hold true across our species. As I've been saying since the start of this topic, it's best to toss out a "gender role," "gender identity" and "biological gender" if your goal is to be understood rather than to push a preferred meaning of the word.

Many of those 100+ years of feminism took place when we knew a lot less about biology than we know today, and not all of that information has filtered into the social sciences. Many scholars still cling to obsolete beliefs. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:22, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Break2 GSI

There is also this to consider in articles that mention subjects but aren't their biography Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Changed names. --DHeyward (talk) 19:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Brief thoughts based on some of the above discussion: although I largely agree with the policy as it stands, I think it does create some real risks, and they should be mitigated by careful editorial practice. It is clear that some readers will infer incorrect statements about a person's body from the use of pronouns, in light of their incomplete understanding of gender and limited experience. Still more readers will assume, based on usage of a particular pronoun in the subject's life history, that the subject identified as and publicly presented as that gender at that time in their life, because there are no consistent conventions in public discourse for these situations. These risks can be mitigated by introducing brief language, as early as possible in the article, which details the subject's gender assigned at birth, at what points they transitioned, what gender they currently identify as, and an explicit statement describing what pronouns the article will use throughout. Here's an example:

At birth, Manning was named Bradley Manning and assigned a male gender. On August 22, 2013, Manning announced that she identifies as female and has adopted the name Chelsea. Throughout this article, female pronouns will be used.

If necessary, an editorial note could be adding to the life history section, saying something like this:

Note: female pronouns are used in this section, but Manning did not present as female until adulthood.

Brief notes like this help to alleviate the confusion experienced by readers with misconceptions about gender, while also permitting us to accurately and consistently represent the subject's chosen gender. They are also brief enough to avoid being distracting in articles which are primarily focused on other things. Dcoetzee 20:04, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

GLAM-Wiki Section in Manual of Style?

I would like to start a discussion, stemming from the conversation at Wikipedia talk:GLAM#GLAM-Wiki Section in Manual of Style on the addition of a GLAM-specific section in the MOS or potentially on GLAMspace . OR drohowa (talk) 15:46, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I think this would be appropriate because there are resources in the MOS that are already GLAM specific, but creating a GLAM section would help editors writing on behalf of GLAM (of which the number is only growing) standardize procedures for editing institution pages, standardizing names, exhibition pages, articles on GLAM collections etc. so that we don't have to "recreate the wheel each time," as User:KosbootBob said on another page.

Though the MOS is generally used by experienced editors, a GLAM MOS could be referred to in learning resources for GLAMs getting involved. In my experience as a WiR that does a lot of training events, librarians and archivists, perhaps because of the nature of their work, consistently ask for the style guidelines of Wikipedia and article writing and really enjoy templates and the kind of structured reference that the MOS provides. I think this resource would also be good for the general community of Wikipedia editors that participates in article writing and editing related to GLAMs and perhaps comes into contact with a lot of GLAM editors on the pages they work on. OR drohowa (talk) 17:23, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

OR drohowa linked to a page which seems to indicate the project to help galleries, etc. share their resources through collaborative editing. It would seem to me the articles to be edited would be about topics that the GLAM crowd might hold relevant sources for. For example, the Hayden Planetarium might have sources useful in an astronomy. So it isn't the least bit obvious why there should be a GLAM MOS; it would seem that if any specialized MOS applies, it would be one related to the article. Furthermore, the MOS primarily addresses only the body of articles, and to a lesser degree, tables and infoboxes. It appears the proposed GLAM MOS would mostly address citing sources. But per WP:CITE Wikipedia has no house citation style, any consistent style may be used for any particular article. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Relationship of MOS:TIES to music written specifically for films

In many instances a film from one country has a composer or song writer from another country. In regards to MOS:TIES and WP:STRONGNAT, which variation should be used to obtain the stronger ties? There seems to be a mix out there. The film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film) is a American owned film property, which has a British cast and one of the producers is British, but the consensus is that the article use DMY dates and British spelling. The composer of the film, John Williams is American, but Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (soundtrack) uses DMY dates the same as the parent article. Two Disney films, Tarzan (1999 film) and The Lion King use MDY dates and American spelling, but songs written for those films have British song writers and those articles are using DMY dates, which is different from the parent article, You'll Be in My Heart and Can You Feel the Love Tonight. I would have simply made the changes on the last two films but I wanted to get an MOS perspective on what should happen in those cases. Does the song writer and or performer make the stronger tie for the article or is it the film itself? One could simply just site WP:RETAIN, but I think that there needs to be a commonality among these articles so that one national variation doesn't triumph over another. And of course this goes both ways. British-American to American-British.JOJ ^Hutton 17:42, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

The soundtrack is a part of the film, the soundtrack album is a by-product of the film. I'd therefore follow the example of the film's article, though there may be exceptional cases (e.g. if a soundtrack or song becomes much, much better-known than the movie that originated it). Barnabypage (talk) 14:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Look, the MOS can't prescribe rules for every situation. It already tries to do too much of that, which is what makes it so hard to navigate and understand now. Let the editors figure it out. --Trovatore (talk) 19:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Well I guess there is no help here. Ir seems that more people are interested in sexual identity than national identity. For shame.--JOJ ^Hutton 13:40, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

When to space an endash

At MOS:DASH#En dashes: other uses (1), when dealing with date ranges, it says: "The en dash in a range is always unspaced, except when at least one endpoint of the range includes at least one space.", meaning:

• 1966–1978
• June 1966 – 1978
• 1966 – July 1978
• June 1966 – July 1978

Section (2), however, regarding "compounds when the connection might otherwise be expressed with to, versus, and, or between", there is no mention of what to do when the place names themselves have spaces. All the place name examples, except for one, are single words, and all are non-spaced:

• Paris–Montpellier route
• a New York–Los Angeles flight

First, is this correct? If the place names are less obvious and well-known, and there's some confusion because of a capitalization difference, it can be, well, confusing.

Now that I'm writing this, it's starting to sound familiar . In that discussion, I gave the examples:

• "I took the Alpe d'Huez–Angoulême flight"
• "I took the Belle Île–Alpe d'Huez flight"
• "The Villefranche-de-Rouergue–Les Sables-d'Olonne–La Montagne Noire segments were completely full" (Quick – how many segments is that?!)

At the time, I also did a Google search of "New York – Los Angeles" and found:

• 90 were "New York - Los Angeles"
• 22 were "New York-Los Angeles"
• 3 were other combinations/typos

This came up again when I noticed the lede at Macau–United States relations starts with "Macau – United States relations" because it was moved from that name in 2011 but not edited to make the lede consistent with the title.

...and there's still no language in section 2 that explains that the rule is different from section 1 (or why). In fact, I see only two examples in the section where it would even apply (New York–Los Angeles and Siefert–van Kampen), making it look like it might just be an oversight.

I contend the rule is broken, per the above. Alternatively, if we really have to do it this way, we need a sentence in section 2 to emphasize the difference from section 1, and a couple of the examples changed to include names with spaces. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 22:46, 27 September 2013 (UTC), edited —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:14, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I suspect we're all too weary of the "dash wars" of recent times to enter into this one, but for what it's worth, I think you're right that there's an issue. When a name-with-spaces-or-hyphens is very well known, then parsing is easy, e.g. "London–New York", and it doesn't really matter whether the en-dash is spaced or not. But in something like your "Villefranche-de-Rouergue–Les Sables-d'Olonne" example, it's clearly better to write "Villefranche-de-Rouergue – Les Sables-d'Olonne". Whether we need yet more text in the MoS to cover this is another question. Ideally it would be left to commonsense – but that is a truly radical idea. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:51, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Headings

Hi

I am concerned, after spending several years copyediting articles, that there may an issue with headings.

Can someone point me to where the discussion was that led to the Accessibility MoS instructing people on rigorous section lvls for headgins.

Currently (or at least there were) hundreds of articles that I have edited/read/copy-edited that have sections headings like this:

• Lead
• TOS
• Lvl2
• Lvl4
• Lvl 2
• Lvl 4
• Refs etc.

According to your MoS we are being instructed, by this MoS only, to follow a strict protocol - I have found a bot applying this to an article which does not fall under "Accessibility" Chaosdruid (talk) 20:35, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:PrankvsPrank/Edit Warring

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:PrankvsPrank/Archive 1#Edit Warring. Ross Hill Talk to me!  23:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Gender-neutral language - use of "comedienne"

User:DonJay and I have been having a (very civil) disagreement about whether using "comedienne" to refer to a female comedian (in this case Kate Carney) is consistent with Manual_of_Style#Gender-neutral_language. DonJay takes the view that it is permitted by the exception for "wording about one-gender contexts, such as an all-female school". I, in contrast, think that the intention of this exception is to allow for gender-specific pronouns and references "women" or "men" rather than the less precise "people". I note that DonJay's interpretation would mean that terms such as "comedienne" and "poetess" would always be allowed, since they are by definition used in "one-gender contexts". I do not think that can have been intended. Comments on this issue would be appreciated. Neljack (talk) 05:43, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe User:Tony1 was largely responsible for writing this part of the MOS, so perhaps he can shed some light? Neljack (talk) 05:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd be against using "comedienne" (and certainly against "poetess"). They sound disparaging. (Though "actress" maybe doesn't.) The cited sentence in the guideline is obviously intended to refer to something quite different, as can be deduced from the example that follows it. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:25, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Being a comedian or poet is not a "one-gender context", in my opinion. The only way it would be one context is if someone was saying being a women comedian or a man comedian were different jobs. We don't need the term truck-driveress. And while I recognize the widespread use, I also know that not all women actors are actresses. The idea that these represent neutral and non-judgmental gender suffixes is belied by what happened to "master" and "mistress" and "adventurer" and "adventuress". In most cases, whatever the intent, it will come across as a demarcation of job-value based on gender. Better to avoid. __Elaqueate (talk) 10:09, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

More specifically, in the MOS example of the all-girl school, it says that the pronoun "she" can be used for a theoretical student of that particular school. It doesn't suggest calling them studentesses. It calls them students. The term coed has an interesting history. It was sometimes used exclusively for women students, because they were entering all-male colleges and people resisted calling them just students, even though coed would describe every gender studying there. __Elaqueate (talk) 10:31, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Over the course of Carney's career, and certainly in her later years as a performer, there were a fair number of other women who worked as comedians, performing essentially the same kind of job as the men who worked as comedians, so this does not involve a one-gender context. The language we use in writing the encyclopedia should reflect our modern-day standards; accordingly, under the MOS guideline, "comedienne" is not necessary and should be avoided when describing Carney's work in Wikipedia's voice. Mentioning in the article that she "became known as the Coster Comedienne" is fine. Dezastru (talk) 19:50, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

• Gut response? I agree that comedienne should be avoided, but not actress. --erachima talk 20:05, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
• Yet another reason to have a WP:COMMON USE guideline (similar to WP:COMMONNAME in scope, but focused on the presentation of names and terms used within articles, as opposed to presentation in article titles). The idea... If a significant majority of sources use the term "comedienne" when talking about a specific female comic, so should we... if the sources use "comedian", so should we. This is truly the most neutral way to deal with the issue. Deferring to sources removes the possibility that we are inserting our own biases into the discussion (political correctness is not necessarily neutral). Blueboar (talk) 20:33, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem with such an approach can leave things to the mercy of which publications someone gets written about more in. We've had this with women who act - should whether they are described as an "actor" or an "actress" really be determined by whether they've been cast in shows that generate more column inches in the Guardian or in the Sun? Timrollpickering (talk) 21:12, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

There doesn't have to be a one-right-answer to that. Let editors work it out case by case. --Trovatore (talk) 21:18, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

• There's no reason to maintain the default as male and create a special sign when a woman does the same thing. Also, we don't copy the house style of our sources. Poet/poetess is a style issue, not a content one. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:53, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It's not our place to reform language. If comedienne were really the normal term, then we should use it. But I tend to agree with the general sense of this discussion that it is not. On the other hand, actress probably is the normal term, and I would oppose any attempt to eradicate it (though I have no objection to referring to individual female "actors" in particular articles). --Trovatore (talk) 21:01, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree with SlimVirgin. This is a style issue, and Wikipedia sets its own style. We are bound by our sources on content, not on style. If you want to require editors to have to follow sources when deciding on whether or not to use gender-neutral language, then you need to get consensus to change our Manual of Style to specify that. Until then, the Manual of Style says, "Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision," and makes no mention of deferring to sources on whether to use a gendered or gender-neutral term. Dezastru (talk) 23:39, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I repeat, it's not our place to reform language. That principle trumps anything in the MoS. --Trovatore (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Whoops... what about the whole gender identity issue?... we don't want to cause harm to someone who identifies as a comedienne by calling her a comedian. Blueboar (talk) 23:53, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

In my experience, a comedian is a comedian regardless of gender. Georgia guy (talk) 00:01, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Not if she self-identifies as a comedienne... that would be insensitive. Blueboar (talk) 00:12, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Are you supporting that all actors that don't self-identify as "actresses" shouldn't have to have that term assigned to them? __Elaqueate (talk) 07:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree (with GG -- edit conflict) — "comedienne" does not seem to be the normal word; it sounds a bit affected. So I'm not in favor of using it (though I'm also not in favor of any crusade to hunt it down and kill it). But that's the right principle to apply, not one based on whether the language "should" have a marked form for female practitioners. --Trovatore (talk) 00:13, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Um... the word "comedienne" is standard English, and has been for a long time. So it's not a question of whether the language "should" have a marked form for female practitioners... it already does have one. The question is whether we should use it or not.

Does anyone else find it ironic that (on one hand) feminists are encouraging us abandon gender specific words, while (on the other hand) the trans community is insisting that gender identity matters, and get upset if we don't use gender specific words. Blueboar (talk) 01:37, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

It's still standard English, but it's not really in active use as far as I know. As I say, it sounds "affected". It's not a precise test, but at least it's one based on the language as it stands, not on what a particular political view would like it to be. --Trovatore (talk) 02:49, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

incredibly ironic, I was about to say the same thing. People would be very offended if we called a trans* woman an actor (instead of actress). At the end of the day, we can't play a political correctness game here, and we should eventually use some version of COMMONNAME if there is some dispute around a particular gendered noun. I don't think pilotrix is likely to take off anytime soon, but actress is pretty firmly lodged. so it's case by case. For comedienne, see what the bulk of RS call her. It's not that hard.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the irony is in your own heads. Calling a trans woman, who acts, an actor is not offensive at all if that's also what you're calling other women. The only way it would be offensive is if you were simultaneously insisting that women must be called actresses and that the trans woman shouldn't. There's no offense if gender-neutral terms are used across the board. Many trans women support more gender neutral language, other are happy with the status quo applied equally. If everyone is called a Flight Attendant then it's not offensive to call a trans woman that; if women are called "Stewardesses" don't call a trans woman a "Steward". It's not that hard and there's no irony. __Elaqueate (talk) 07:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

• I sort of feel that people have been talking past each other a bit here. The way I see it is that for gendered language that seems mostly noncontroversial, at least outside of controversy over gendered terms in general (Which I think comedian/comedienne largely fits), that common use in a general sense is probably the best and cleanest guide. In other words, don't focus on what reliable sources use for individuals in determining the term to use for them, but instead look at reliable sources talking about all subjects and go with whichever seems to be most common (Assuming that can be determined). I believe this would result in better consistency across articles and would avoid most issues of trying to figure out which is most commonly used for any one individual.

All that being said, there may be cause for making exceptions for certain subjects (Perhaps for some reason they became widely linked to a gendered term?) and obviously something needs to be done in cases where common usage is split fairly evenly. The former I think will just have be to handled on a case by case basis per subject, whereas in the case of the latter I think a discussion needs to be held here or elsewhere just to, if possible settle on one term.

As for term in question here, I haven't done the research needed to determine which kind of usage is most common, so I limit myself to my above meta-discussion for now. Simple Sarah (talk) 14:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Strange that no one has mentioned WP:GENDER which specifically discourages use of uncommon gender-marked terms such as conductress, aviatrix, etc. Wikipedia's style is to use modern common English which is accessible to the widest possible audience (See also WP:MODLANG). DonJay's interpretation of Manual of Style#Gender-neutral language is incorrect and seems to be stretching the meaning of "one-gender contexts" beyond any reasonable interpretation. Kaldari (talk) 07:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• As SlimVirgin said, this is a style issue, not a content issue. Even if 95% of sources referred to this comic as a comedienne, Wikipedia would still use "comedian" because our house style calls for mostly avoiding gender-specific terms. If people think that we should change the guidance to say, "if the use of a gender-specific adjective is in question but a gender-neutral term will do, defer to the choice used by reliable sources discussing that person" then we can have a discussion about whether to do that, but as Dezastru said, "Until then, the Manual of Style says, 'Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision,' and makes no mention of deferring to sources on whether to use a gendered or gender-neutral term." Personally, I think that generally stylistic consistency is best because it's usually impossible to tell whether or not outside sources make their stylistic choices deliberately. So if we are going to pick reliable sources on this, we should pick amongst reliable style guides addressing gender-specific language; we shouldn't pick case-by-case based on RSs specific to each article topic. You can read a more detailed, if a bit strident, essay that an editor who came before us wrote about why reliable content sources aren't necessarily reliable style sources here. AgnosticAphid talk 18:02, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

In many ways agree with you, but I think this is requires reading in overly deep to what is actually said in the current guidance. All the examples under Manual_of_Style#Gender-neutral_language except for the The Ascent of Man one are specifically on pronouns. Additionally, it links to the MoS entry for Military history#Pronouns and the Register link only talks about a discussion on the use of the singular "they". When taken along with the other example of an exception involving one-gender context, this seems to indicate to me that the main focus of this, as currently written, is in regards to using gendered language when talking in the abstract, rather than when referring to a specific person or persons. In other words, I see it as saying to use "humankind" (or the like) instead of "mankind", "firefighter" instead of "fireman", avoid he or she for generic persons, etc. It does not seem to be saying that Kathy Bates should be called an actor instead of an actress and, in fact, actress seems to be used almost universally for actors that are women on the English Wikipedia.

That all being said, I do feel that unless gendered terms are clearly more common than the related gender-neutral term(s) for something, such as with "actress" for actors that are women, it makes the most sense to favour the gender-neutral option and I would support changing the language in the section both to state this and to add clear examples. I also still support allow potential exceptions for people inextricably linked to a specific gendered term for some reason.

As for the use of "comedian" vs. "comedienne", I finally had the sense to just check how that has played out on Wikipedia and it seems clear to me now that "comedian" is used almost exclusively when referring to both men and women, so on those grounds I feel comfortable saying "comedienne" should be avoided. Simple Sarah (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

You make a number of good points. But it is true that WP:GENDER, which is linked at the top of the MOS section in question, does specifically advocate police officer over policeman, for instance. There are also a bunch of discussions on the talk page of WP:GENDER about these kinds of issues, although to be honest I didn't wade through them all. That being said, I'm not really an expert on how those essays are created, and it's equally true that there's no examples of gendered nouns or adjectives in the MOS at the moment.

I tried to look more at what the AP style guide has to say about comedian versus comedienne. I couldn't really find the AP style guide itself because it's behind a pay wall, but this short post by the public editor of a midwestern newspaper says that the AP style rejects "comedienne," which doesn't surprise me. "Comedienne" seems particularly inappropriate because "comic" is not at all gendered and could be used if "comedian" is thought to imply a man. In my experience, "comedienne" just isn't used very frequently, either. Some of these other questions, like actor versus actress (or female actor?), are a bit more complicated, and, in fact, I think that the 2005 AP style guide may reject the use of "actor" for women. (But other style guides, like the Guardian's style guide, feel differently.) It seems like the rules are all over the map, to be honest, and I think that the best long-term solution might be to expand WP:GENDER, or perhaps even the MOS itself if WP:GENDER isn't "authoritative," to have a table or something that says, for instance, "'Actress? OK! Comedienne? No! Chairperson? No!'" or whatever we decide the best rules are for each term based on prevailing style guidance. I still don't think that it should really matter what the reliable sources about any individual person have to say. AgnosticAphid talk 21:40, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I think Kaldari asked above why no one had mentioned WP:GENDER. One reason may be that WP:GENDER isn't a policy or a guideline and, as a result, in disputes is liable to being dismissed as being non-authoritative.// Yes, there is a larger societal shift underway within the English-speaking community in views on how best to minimize gender-bias in language. Some changes in word preferences for occupations have become fairly well established. In the United States, at least, "flight attendant" has largely replaced "stewardess". I haven't heard "the lady doctor" (from someone older than 3) in years now. On the other hand, there are occupations or roles for which gender-neutral terms have not yet been as widely adopted. Male members of the US House of Representatives are very often referred to with the title "Congressman", a word which, at only three syllables, rolls off the tongue more readily than "Congressional Representative". So now we have "Congresswoman" as a parallel title for female representatives. In the US, most people routinely refer to female actors as actresses; and for many, it sounds somewhat odd for a female actor to be called an "actor". (I completely understand this because it used to sound quite odd to me too. My aunt was an actor and teacher of acting in NYC. For years, whenever we would discuss acting, it always sounded weird to me when she would refer to females in her profession as "actors".) Yet some style guides have already begun stating preferences for use of "actor" for both males and females and discourage the use of "actress" (see, for example, The Guardian). Then there are other terms for which virtually nobody insists, at least at the moment, on using non-gendered words (King, Queen, Prince, Princess, Duke, Duchess, etc). So it's entirely understandable that in certain cases there will be a fair amount of confusion about which terms best comply with the gender-neutral language guidance of the Manual of Style. Dezastru (talk) 23:31, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

What makes an edit to the Manual of Style controversial?

Is creating new sections controversial? Is changing the order of sections controversial? Is consensus prerequisite for most changes? Where is the documentation regarding this? Also, what right does anybody have to be, should I dare say, bossy? -- Lindberg 01:41, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm also interested in this topic RE: my post here Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#GLAM-Wiki Section in Manual of Style?. I want to have support and debate to consider the addition of a GLAM-Wiki specific Manual of Style but I don't know the best place to have this conversation. It was going on on the Wikipedia talk:GLAM page, but I was told that this talk page is the better venue. However, no one has responded to my page. Perhaps there should be a category for 'proposals to change or add to the Manual of Style' thoughts? OR drohowa (talk) 20:42, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

One reason edits to the MOS tend to be controversial is that one purpose of the MOS is to make arbitrary choices among valid possibilities as to what Wikipedia's style will be. For example, the decimal point is a period, not a comma. Another reason for controversy is deciding what to include and what to leave out; a complete style manual would be hundreds of pages for each national variety of English.

A reason changes to the arrangement of material is that the same mistakes tend to be made in articles over and over, so shortcuts have been provided so editors can quickly reference a reason for reverting an edit. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:21, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposals

Cardinal directions as adjectives

A section for or containing the following:

Output

The nouns north, south, east and west, which can be used as adjectives, have adjectival forms, respectively northern, southern, eastern and western. As lowercase words, unless there is an idiomatic basis or a basis in traditional usage whereby the direction itself is used as an adjective to describe a particular thing, then use of the adjectival forms is more appropriate. As capitalized words (North, Northern, South, Southern, etc.), the stipulations found in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters (namely regarding proper pronouns) apply as usual to them.

Code

The nouns north, south, east and west, which can be used as adjectives, have adjectival forms, respectively northern, southern, eastern and western. As lowercase words, unless there is an idiomatic basis or a basis in traditional usage whereby the direction itself is used as an adjective to describe a particular thing, then use of the adjectival forms is more appropriate.<ref>Source: {{Cite web|url=http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/27584/when-is-the-use-of-north-more-appropriate-than-northern-and-vice-versa|title=When is the use of 'north' more appropriate than 'northern' and vice versa?|last1=phenry|last2=Teper|first2=Michael|first3=Eric|website=English Language & Usage Stack Exchange|publisher=Stack Exchange}}</ref> As capitalized words (North, Northern, South, Southern, etc.), the stipulations found in [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters]] (namely regarding proper pronouns) apply as usual to them.

-- Lindberg 01:41, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Comment I tend to prefer adjectives over nouns as adjectives. But there are many times where we use noun forms as adjectives here: East Germany for example. At first impression we tend to use noun forms when we are describing distinct clearly-defined areas, and adjectival forms when we are describing more loosely-defined areas which may blend into one another. Ananiujitha (talk) 01:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. But East Germany is a name (and an informal at that), and the name was chosen as is for underspecified reasons save for the fact that it refers to somewhere in the eastern part (or east side) of Germany. -- Lindberg 03:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• Nope. Even the non-reliable source used as reference doesn't even claim the level of restriction you put forth, and the claim is of questionable accuracy. My results for Googling to find out what side of a tree moss grows on had me going through a couple dozen sources noting or denying that it grows specifically on the north side before finding one addressing the northern side. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. Good point. I seem to have completely forgotten about sides of things, as have the people in the forum sourced. (I see why the matter warrants collaboration or consensus.) Perhaps the sides usage could be incorporated into the proposed guideline. But what about references to locations themselves and not the sides thereof? As for the source, no source is entirely relevant, since the question is thus far rarely asked but at least seems important since the distinction between north and northern (or south and southern, etc.) presumably exists for a reason, and in such detail as Wiktionary may not or cannot afford. I see this question might be transforming into a request for comment. -- Lindberg 03:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Comment: It's not the relevance of the question that I question so much as the reliability of the answers. What you're using as a source are the opinions of a technical writer name "phenry" and a "Eric", self-described as a "Frenchman struggling to speak english tolerably"... and perhaps the two anonymous souls who upvoted phenry's answer. I'm not sure what the standards for reference are here in the MOS (I'm more used to working in article space, where a user-edited site like that would not be acceptable as a source), but that's not exactly an established manual of style or a famed grammarian. I'm not sure we need a style preference here, much less convinced that the style being proposed is the correct one. --Nat Gertler (talk) 03:57, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• I don't see why we need a section on this. It seems like instruction creep. The appropriate usage here is highly dependent upon the context - I (and I suspect, from what I have seen used in this context, most others) would usually refer to the "east bank", rather than the "eastern bank", of a river, for instance. We should go with whatever is idiomatic in the particular context. Neljack (talk) 09:39, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: This makes it seem like proper names and established geographic names are a subset of a preferred style. If there is a guideline, it should be crystal clear it's not talking about usage in those cases from the start. Otherwise it introduces a debate where none is needed and makes it look like you're taking a side on whether Northwest Territories is more correct than Northern Territory. __Elaqueate (talk) 09:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose First, this is just unnecessary instruction creep. Second, what is idiomatic depends on context: "Southern Europe" is more usual than "South Europe", whereas "South India" is now more usual than "Southern India" (see here and here). Third, there seems to be a trend to prefer the shorter forms; it's hard to get good evidence for adjectives from Google Ngrams, because it depends on the noun phrase following, but all the cases I've tried with common nouns following (bank, face, side, etc.) look a bit like this one "north bank of the river" vs. "northern bank of the river" – both forms are found, but the shorter is generally more common in recent works. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:42, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Agree that it's unnecessary instruction creep. We don't need a recommended style for everything. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:00, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per Necro. North is a noun and an adjective. Tony (talk) 14:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

References

if you acknowledge that gender and physical sex are not necessarily the same, why is it impossible to say that a man gave birth?

if you acknowledge that gender and physical sex are not necessarily the same, why is it impossible to say "he gave birth"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.82.58 (talk) 01:58, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

What about pronoun with regard to fictional characters who are suppose to have literally changed gender (not just sex)?

What about pronoun with regard to fictional characters who are suppose to have literally changed gender (not just sex)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.82.58 (talk) 02:17, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

can you give us an example? Blueboar (talk) 14:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

This can't arise terribly often. The easiest way round any problem would be to not use a pronoun and simply refer to them by their proper name. Barnabypage (talk) 14:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Rex Nebular comes to mind. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:32, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Changing a section heading

In MOS:HEAD, this article advises, "Before changing a section heading, consider whether you might be breaking existing links to that section". It would be helpful for this article to say how to determine if there are existing links to that section, or to say that this is simply a judgment call, if that's the case.

E.g., we can use the "What links here" tool to find pages that link to the article containing the section heading that we're changing, but unless there are only a few such pages, we need more help finding links to that one section or even just determining if there are any such links. If there is a tool or method to do that, it would be very helpful for someone to add that info to MOS:HEAD.

Thanks, --Rich Janis (talk) 02:36, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Rich Janis. What might be useful is to, rather than checking for existing links, realize that the important thing is not to take the chance of link breakage, either for Wikipedia links or for external Internet links back to an article/section. That is what the {{Anchor}} and {{Anchor comment}} templates are for. Use them whenever an established section header is altered. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 14:39, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Figure numbering and equation

I find it outrageous that on wikipedia, figures and equations are not numbered which is stanndard in all writing. How else can the writer refer to them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.48.181.163 (talk) 07:16, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

This is unclear. What are you objecting to? I'm now trying to think of anything that is "standard in all writing". __Elaqueate (talk) 09:34, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Consider figures. The standard in many (but of course not "all") texts is to number them, "Fig. 1", "Fig. 2", etc. Then the writer can refer to them in the text. We don't normally do this in Wikipedia, for a very good reason: an article which can be edited by anyone can at any time have extra figures added or existing figures removed. The numbering then becomes inconsistent. The same applies to equations.

Use automatically updating figure and equation numbers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.48.181.163 (talk) 10:58, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

This is sometimes awkward for the writer; you have to say things like "As shown in the figure above, ..." when "As shown in Fig. 12, ..." would be clearer.

It is possible to put an anchor immediately above a figure or equation via e.g. {{anchor|Foo}} and then in the text have "As shown in [[#Foo|the figure]], ...". But no-one seems to do this. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:01, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Romanization

I noticed that, in the "Spelling and romanization" section, Romanization has not been capitalized. Is this correct? Primergrey (talk) 20:27, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, according to wikt:romanization and "Romanization".

—Wavelength (talk) 20:39, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems a bit weird, compared to Anglicisation. But weird doesn't always mean improper. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:03, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Though Merriam-Webster doesn't capitalize that, either. Maybe our article is wrong. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:05, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the article about anglicizing is off. It's helpful to consider "italics" and "italicization" which we don't capitalize, even though the root is "Italy". (For fun, people can read italic type.) __Elaqueate (talk) 19:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

USA

I've just seen USA changed to United States, citing WP:NOTUSA. What's the justification for that? "USA" is shorter (the example I refer to was in an infobox) and is used widely, not least by official USA bodies. It's also more precise than "US". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:10, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Quite a few style guides recommend against it as being a bit old-fashioned (USA Today in the 70s, etc). Chicago Manual of Style prefers the US or the United States, I'm pretty sure. BtW, it should not normally be linked. Tony (talk) 14:41, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, as ever the MOS here is probably over-focused on detail and over-prescriptive. But that said, I agree with the broad observation that "US (or "U.S." if you prefer) is much more common in the real world these days. "USA" just sounds a bit overdone and formal for most contexts. As for linking, that all depends on relevance and context and which article it is linked from – there is of course no guideline or policy that says the term "should not normally be linked". N-HH talk/edits 17:04, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:OVERLINK says major geographic locations shouldn't. I say bah to it, but bah doesn't carry much weight. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:47, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

The full "instruction" in the overlink guideline actually of course has quite a significant and explicit qualification before that point, ie that such things should not be linked "unless particularly relevant". So, if "relevant", however one might define that in practice, linking such terms is fine. Delinking every reference is certainly not mandated or required, let alone by any specific WP policy, although some editors pop up with alarming regularity to make such a claim .. N-HH talk/edits 22:09, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I personally use US. The general MoS says "writing should be clear and concise". Can't get any shorter, and the imprecision still leaves it clear. Not a whole lot else named "US". I don't care enough to change someone else's "USA", but I'll sometimes change "U.S." (there's a fine line between three characters and four) InedibleHulk (talk) 21:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I wondered about this too, so I went searching the archives of this page for discussions from when it was added.

• April 14, 2012, this edit added the MOS:NOTUSA and WP:NOTUSA anchors. I found no discussion of that addition at that time. That explains why a search of the archives for "NOTUSA" doesn't turn up anything useful.
• November 24, 2007, this edit added "except in quoted materials. USA and U.S.A. are not used unless quoted or part of a proper name (Team USA)." I didn't find any discussion of that addition in the archives from that time period.

Based on the lack of discussion in the past, I'd be open to removing this part of the MoS as too prescriptive. Based on this Google Ngram chart, US is certainly more common, but I don't see anything wrong with USA. Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 21:55, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I think usage was heavily influenced by the USPS, USCG, the U.S. Government, U.S. Armed Forces not being the USAPS, USACG, the U.S.A. Government, and the U.S.A. Armed Forces. And specific postal codes and Coast Guard abbreviations. But most of the time "the United States" is what is being talked about and abbreviated, so US is the most often accurate. __Elaqueate (talk) 22:38, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Yet another bias. USA are us only inside of the USA. Everywhere else, they are them. Should we use T.H.E.M. or Them or them or tHEM or ThEm or what else? May be the simple and neutral USA? Pldx1 (talk) 07:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

USA = US Army. Official abbreviation. Tony (talk) 09:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

USA proposal

I propose the removal of the sentence "Do not use U.S.A. or USA, except in a quotation or as part of a proper name (Team USA)." Per the discussion above. SchreiberBike talk 04:44, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Seeing no objection. Sentence and links removed. SchreiberBike talk 17:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Reverted. Any further comment? SchreiberBike talk 18:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion on US vs USA, but I do think that we should adopt a standard approach and be using one, not both.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the referenced sentence in the MoS was clear and consistent, and that removing it will encourage a random mix of "US" and "USA". I strongly prefer "US" as more concise and the dominant usage presently (and probably becoming even more prevalent). "USA" comes across as old-fashioned and flowery, like another old-fashioned term, the "Union of South Africa". At any rate, peremptory removal of a long-standing guideline from the MoS after only 2 days for discussion is very premature. Reify-tech (talk) 03:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

It makes no sense to remove it. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed; it's a long-standing provision, and draws on prominent US and other English-language authorities. Tony (talk) 06:39, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it depends on whether US/USA is being used stand-alone or in apposition. As a stand-alone name for the country, either works about as well as the other, and probably neither is really the right tone for an encyclopedia — we should prefer he was born in the United States to he was born in the US[A].

If others agree that United States is a preferable standalone name to either initialism, then we're left with the appositive case ("a majority of US[A] citizens finish high school"), and in this case I think the preference for US is overwhelming. Expressions like USA citizen are almost exclusively associated, in my mind, with USA Today, and come across as a strange affectation of that particular publication (not at all "old-fashioned and flowery", with good peace to Reify-tech, but just plain weird). --Trovatore (talk) 06:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that as general guidance saying "use 'United States' instead of 'USA'" is fine... but like all guidance, it needs to be phrased so editors understand that it is guidance... it's a somewhat flexible statement of preference, and not an inflexible "rule". We should make it clear that editors should not blindly change every instance of "USA" to "United States"... first they need to look at usage in terms of article context (context is always important), and ask whether the USA usage makes sense, given the article context. For example, if we are talking about a list article that routinely uses abbreviations for nations, it would be silly to not abbreviate the United States. Let's allow some common sense here. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

The specific question under discussion here is whether or not to remove the sentence quoted above from the MoS. I say leave it in. On the other hand, I don't think that there's any support for a different and new global rule to substitute "United States" instead of "USA" wherever it appears. Reify-tech (talk) 14:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Keep. If it's removed, then, this not being the "American-language Wikipedia" it could encourage proliferation of AU, UK, NZ, etc., within those country-related articles, who also have to follow the MoS. By the way, US = disambiguation page, USA = United States article, AU = disambiguation, NZ = New Zealand article, and UK = United Kingdom article. 5Q5 (talk) 14:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Where is the section and shortcut on "clear, concise and plain English"?

As you can see on the lead section, second paragraph that MoS should be clear and concise. The point isn't missing but i have trouble finding meaningful shortcut that makes clear and concise that I want to be clear and concise, that's because there are too much special cases here. Found similar demand elsewhere, I think there should be a section with shortcut(s) on this. --14.198.220.253 (talk) 23:08, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

There is an essay that may serve your purpose if you just want to communicate that you're trying to be straightforward or someone else should, but since it's an essay it's not authoritative. I am kind of inclined to agree that the MOS could use a specific section other than the lead that says "use plain english, not jargon", especially since it has way more detailed and less fundamental rules (like if you should use US or USA), but anyway. AgnosticAphid talk 00:33, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree. I think fundamental rules are more straightforward and viable at times. Also, fundamental rules serve as justification on why some specific rules make sense. For example, we have WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:NPOV..etc. They are very useful and powerful, how could anyone deny that? A shortcut to this line "Writing should be clear and concise. Plain English works best; avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording." in detailed form is very important. --14.198.220.253 (talk) 01:08, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

It appears that the section you want was deleted along with other sections, and the text was merged into the lead of this page. The shortcuts to the old sections were then anchored to the lead paragraphs. I believe the shortcut you may be looking for is WP:CLARITY, and there is also a wp:clarity to the same paragraph. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 23:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

That's fishy. --14.198.220.253 (talk) 05:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Fishy? that's odd... I just finished checking all the redirects to this page for correct categorization, and when I came across those several that anchored to the "new" lead paragraphs I smelled something funny, as well. The subjects not long ago were in their own subsections just below the TOC. I can understand them being mentioned in the lead, but I don't see why they couldn't have been described in detail in their own subsections as they once were. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 07:37, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

If this is true, then the rules for lead have been violated. There should not be anything in the lead which has not been described in more detail in the body. Fix it. -- Brangifer (talk) 17:13, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

In the meantine, Paragraph Two works as a shortcut, doesn't it? Maybe Par. 2 in a rush (or strictly for conciseness). InedibleHulk (talk) 18:57, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

• I'd love to "fix it"; however, if I were to fix it I would simply return the deleted material to the deleted sections and provide as much detail as I know how. I have to perceive your proposal as controversial, which effectively reverts a previous edit that may have been brought about by consensus. You see, that is the problem with my not being an "involved editor" with this page. I've made several gnome edits, but I have not been very involved with actual text changes with regard to style. I choose to leave that to the involved editors, who will hopefully see that you are correct and return the material and shortcuts to their rightful places. Thank you for pointing out that the previous edits, which sacrificed "clarity" in the body for expansion of the lead, were ill-conceived. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 04:56, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree. I'm not involved either, so it would be up to them. Fixing wouldn't involve a simple revert, but some type of restoration of content to the body. If it's not worth having in the body, it shouldn't be mentioned in the lead. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:23, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Paine Ellsworth, according to your observation, if the content in the body was not only deleted but also emerged to the lead, then the previous editors weren't caring about WP:LEAD, and they were emphasizing its importance, since these were put and expanded on the lead.

It depends on how strict we follow WP:LEAD, we add section(s) to follow the rules, but we don't "fix" by removing the lead because it is against the previous edits brought out by consensus. --14.198.220.253 (talk) 19:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I would have to agree that the lead is fine as it is, with the exception of the non-standard existence of anchors in the lead, and shortcut redirects to the lead, which take contributing editors to paragraphs in the lead rather than to more detailed sections/subsections below the lead. What it is going to take to make it better is to get editors who are equably involved with the MoS to expound in detail on the subjects of clarity and stability down in the body of this MoS, then retarget the shortcuts to those section headers, and then finally remove the anchors from the lead. There are many who watch this MoS page who are better-qualified than I am to do all that in correct fashion. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 02:37, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Oxford spelling on topics related to Britain and Ireland

MOS:TIES says that an article on a topic with strong ties to a country should use the English of that country. As you may know, both –ise (realise) and –ize (realize) are acceptable in British English and Hiberno-English, where it's known as Oxford spelling. However, –ise is more common.

MOS:RETAIN says that the existing spelling variety should be retained, but if the topic has strong ties to a country it should use the English of that country.

So, if an article with ties to Britain or Ireland has used Oxford spelling since the beginning, should it ever be switched to non-Oxford spelling? If so, under what circumstances? ~Asarlaí 19:50, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Since both Oxford and non-Oxford spelling are acceptable in British English, the answer is "no". If British English is appropriate and Oxford spelling has been used from the beginning, it should never be changed under MOS:RETAIN. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I have to say that this is not the practice we have usually used up until now. It's been entirely common and usual practice to alter British English articles to the non-Oxford spelling, as this is now far, far more common in Britain. I don't think it's written into any policy or guideline, but it's certainly been standard practice. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I would dispute both assertions as to what is common or usual. I write a lot of articles in Oxford English and only very rarely have to revert people changing them, which I do when necessary. Johnbod (talk) 13:57, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

And FWIW, I've seen people complain about it (about the fact that they'd written articles using Oxford spellings, and tagged them as such, and people had tried to change the articles to use non-Oxford spellings). -sche (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

If the initial choice was for Oxford spelling, I don't think it should ever be changed unless the subject has strong ties with a locale that uses non-Oxford spelling. Especially if the article has been tagged with {{Use British (Oxford) English}}. Oxford spelling is a legitimate choice supported by a major style guide, and altering the initial choice is just the kind of unnecessary picking of squabbles that the MOS so frequently tries to rule out of order. It's a pity that MOS:TIES and MOS:RETAIN specifically say strong national ties (even though MOS:TIES mentions Tolkien). Is there any appetite for a slight rewording to replace national with something like local? --Stfg (talk) 09:16, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

There are approximately 274 articles currently tagged with {{Use British (Oxford) English}}, and Because -ise and -ize are both British, but may vary depending on the participating editors, I think it's pretty meaningless and we would get our knickers in a severe twist if we were to attempt a rewording of the guideline to read "local" instead of "national" without any meaningful being achieved to preserve the Oxford "-ize". -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 09:33, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Oxford spelling is not specifically used locally in and around the city of Oxford - it is a form used within the UK by people who tend, perhaps, to be (WP:OR) older and/or more academically-minded. Without expressing a view for or against its use, my point is simply that it is not a "local" style. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:43, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

As I'm one of those who regularly tags articles I create as using Oxford British English, I would object most strongly to any attempt to change the guideline. As noted above, "local" doesn't make any sense; this is a national British variant.

I have to plead guilty to age and being a (retired) academic, but also I prefer this ENGVAR in Wikipedia over "standard" British spelling because it offers a bit more commonality, which is surely a good thing.

There's a discrepancy between articles in Category:Use British (Oxford) English and those in Category:Wikipedia articles that use Oxford spelling (where there are only 155). Some articles are in both categories but others appear to be in one but not the other.

I wish article creators would regularly use an ENGVAR tag, at least on the talk page. It helps to create consistency and avoids disputes. There are several articles I work on that have inconsistent spelling and grammar but no clear national ties and such a tangled history that it's impossible to tell what ENGVAR they are supposed to be using. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:58, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, I don't need any more convincing: "local" was a bad idea. I was only trying to express that jumping wilfully between the two national variants is also a bad idea. Looking again, MOS:RETAIN does seem to cover this. MOS:TIES speaks of "the English of that nation" as if each nation only had one, but perhaps that's liveable with. --Stfg (talk) 11:21, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

• We must reconcile the tagging as best we can. Problem is that we have non-Brits who work British articles, so it's often very difficult to know that an article has -ize words because the editor who placed was a Brit who used it deliberately or because he/she was American or Canadian. And my script defaults to -ise words because it's definitely the most prevalent form in British English. We also need to ensure that the articles you deliberately write in Oxford have {{Use British (Oxford) English}}. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 13:07, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

The use of the two methods of tagging needs perhaps to be clarified. Normally I just put an ENGVAR tag on the talk page (like {{American English}} at Talk:Cactus or {{British English Oxford spelling}} at Talk:Roscoea). Only if there's an issue with editors changing spellings do I consider an editnotice on the page itself (which was necessary at Cactus where there were persistent attempts to change US spellings). Maybe this is the wrong approach? Why are the two separate tagging methods necessary? Peter coxhead (talk) 13:48, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

• I agree that British English articles should be able to use either form and that Oxford spelling shouldn't be changed. The ratio of -ise to -ize in the British National Corpus is only 3:2 (I thought there would be a greater difference). However, according to our article,[7] the ise form strongly prevails in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand (I can attest to that last one, as a native speaker of New Zealand English). So the -ise form should probably be used in articles written in those forms of English or related to those countries, and it might well be appropriate to change -ize forms if they have been used. Neljack (talk) 07:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I also agree that it shouldn't be changed and that those articles in the sphere of OE should have "-ize" changed to "-ise". "-ise" is the predominant way of spelling it in the UK. Mabuska ^(talk) 16:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)