User talk:SMcCandlish

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Template-edit requests, etc.

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Updated as needed. Last updated: 01:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee proceedings

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Industrial agriculture	(t) (ev / t) (pd / t)	15 Nov 2023	01 Dec 2023

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Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
Clarification request: ECR edit warnings for non-XC users	none	none	30 November 2023
Amendment request: Ireland article names	Motion	(orig. case)	28 November 2023

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News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2023).

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Beeblebrox → Just Step Sideways

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• Following a talk page discussion, the Administrators' accountability policy has been updated to note that while it is considered best practice for administrators to have notifications (pings) enabled, this is not mandatory. Administrators who do not use notifications are now strongly encouraged to indicate this on their user page.

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• Special:PermanentLink/1184772491#Call for Checkusers and Oversighters
• Eligible users are invited to vote on candidates for the Arbitration Committee until 23:59 December 11, 2023 (UTC). Candidate statements can be seen here.

Miscellaneous

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Most recent poster here: SMcCandlish (talk)

Mini-toolbox:

• My Wikimedia Library (journal access, etc.; to get your own, see WP:LIBRARY)
• Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script (req. WP:AWB access and JWB installed or is just a normal redlink)
• Special:LintErrors
• Hunt down abuse of {{em}} for non-emphasis italics [1] — and <em> [2]
• Move and redirect articles with slashes in their titles when feasible (i.e. when not proper names that require them)
• NAC-at-ANRFC geekery to remember
• NAC-at-RM geekery to remember
• Ref consistency checker (use in preview or sandbox): {{ref info|Manx cat|style=float:right}}
• All WP:CUE project participants should watchlist this alerts page.
  

Articles for deletion

• 21 Nov 2023 – Dermot McGlinchey (talk · edit · hist) was AfDed by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c); see discussion (4 participants; relisted)
• 03 Nov 2023 – Phaitoon Phonbun (talk · edit · hist) was AfDed by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c); see discussion (3 participants; relisted)
• 21 Nov 2023 – Darren Clarke (snooker player) (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c) was closed as delete by Hey man im josh (t · c) on 28 Nov 2023; see discussion (5 participants)
• 21 Nov 2023 – David McDonnell (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by BennyOnTheLoose (t · c) was closed as delete by Explicit (t · c) on 28 Nov 2023; see discussion (3 participants)

Good article nominees

• 07 Aug 2023 – 2022 Northern Ireland Open (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Lee Vilenski (t · c); start discussion
• 07 Aug 2023 – 2005 UK Championship (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Lee Vilenski (t · c); start discussion
• 04 Aug 2023 – 2023 Masters (snooker) (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Lee Vilenski (t · c); start discussion
• 31 May 2023 – 2023 World Snooker Championship (talk · edit · hist) was GA nominated by Lee Vilenski (t · c); start discussion

Requested moves

• 03 Nov 2023 – 2015 World Ladies Snooker Championship (talk · edit · hist) is requested to be moved to 2015 World Women's Snooker Championship by SMcCandlish (t · c); see discussion

Other:

• MW Editing team e-meetings, /wikimedia.org/edit-tasktriage via Google Hangouts (Tuesdays, noon–12:30pm PDT = 20:00 UTC during DST, 19:00 otherwise, but often half an hour earlier).
• MW Tech Advice e-meetings, via IRC at #wikimedia-tech ^connect (Wednesdays, 1–2pm PDT = 16:00–17:00 UTC).
• meta:Talk:Spam blacklist – global blacklist requests

As of 2023-12-01 , SMcCandlish is Active. I'll reply to your message within 24 hours if possible. WikiStress level Wikimood [purge] [edit]

The Signpost The Signpost 2023-11-20 Volume 19, Issue 22 In the media: Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup News and notes: Update on Wikimedia's financial health Traffic report: If it bleeds, it leads Recent research: Canceling disputes as the real function of ArbCom Wikimania: Wikimania 2024 scholarships About · Subscribe · Newsroom Please stay in the top 3 segments of Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement.

Old stuff to resolve eventually

Cueless billiards

Unresolved

 – Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.

Extended content

Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC) Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection. She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon. PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC) I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC) Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC) If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC) Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC) It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC) Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC) PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC) Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC) Sad... How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Some more notes on Crystalate

Unresolved

 – New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.

Extended content

Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.[3]; info about making records:[4]; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:[5]; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991wGtDHsgbtltnpBg&ct=result&id=v0m-h4YgKVYC&dq=%2BCrystalate; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:No5 Balls.html. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC) Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC) I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC) Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:SAL

Unresolved

 – Not done yet, last I looked.

Extended content

No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC) I'll take a look at the page shortly. Thanks for the nudge. SilkTork ✔Tea time 23:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

You post at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright

Unresolved

 – Need to fix William A. Spinks, etc., with proper balkline stats, now that we know how to interpret them.

Extended content

That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC) Yeah, I did a bunch of archiving yesterday. This page was HUGE. It'll get there again. I'd forgotten MCQ existed. Can you please add it to the DAB hatnote at top of and "See also" at bottom of WP:COPYRIGHT? Its conspicuous absence is precisely why I ened up at Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright! Haven't seen your balkline response yet; will go look. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 21:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hee Haw

Unresolved

 – Still need to propose some standards on animal breed article naming and disambiguation. In the intervening years, we've settled on natural not parenthetic disambiguation, and that standardized breeds get capitalized, but that's about it.

Extended content

Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw(talk) 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC) Truce, certainly. I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers and editors. I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about. Landrace has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and breed not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources. Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense. What is happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed. WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week. Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether pig Latin is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-) The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue. Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys – and the naming form that took, i.e. Poitou donkey not Poitou (donkey), I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one. It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC) I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up. As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve landrace which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles). As for breed, that is were we disagree: At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?" Fixed traits, human-selected? At what degree, at which point? How many generations? I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is: seriously: [6] or breed or [7]. I think you and I agree that the Palomino horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the Arabian horse who claim the breed is pure from the dawn of time are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land? Montanabw(talk) 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC) I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around. But it's something that is going to have to be looked into. I agree that the Landrace article here is poor. For one thing, it needs to split Natural breed out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a traditional breed, though the concepts are related. Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC) Side comment: I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud... Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC) Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to landrace now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Aye, it's on my to-do list. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians). The good thing about breeds wrt Wikipedia is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Wikipedia to do so?--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC) I have been reluctant to use landrace much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?): Curtis, any idea where this did come from? It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between selective breeding and a "natural" breed -- of anything. And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like Kiger Mustang, which is kind of interesting. I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, Chiweenies? Montanabw(talk) 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC) The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of corn growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that MRSA is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Wikipedia.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through mostly natural selection, long after domestication. E.g. the St Johns water dog and Maine Coon cat are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC) I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question. Montanabw(talk) 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Yep. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ⊝כ⊙þ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Redundant sentence?

Unresolved

 – Work to integrate WP:NCFLORA and WP:NCFAUNA stuff into MOS:ORGANISMS not completed yet? Seems to be mostly done, other than fixing up the breeds section, after that capitalization RfC a while back.

Extended content

The sentence at MOS:LIFE "General names for groups or types of organisms are not capitalized except where they contain a proper name (oak, Bryde's whales, rove beetle, Van cat)" is a bit odd, since the capitalization would (now) be exactly the same if they were the names of individual species. Can it simply be removed? There is an issue, covered at Wikipedia:PLANTS#The use of botanical names as common names for plants, which may or may not be worth putting in the main MOS, namely cases where the same word is used as the scientific genus name and as the English name, when it should be de-capitalized. I think this is rare for animals, but more common for plants and fungi (although I have seen "tyrannosauruses" and similar uses of dinosaur names). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC) I would leave it a alone for now; let people get used to the changes. I think it's reasonable to include the "general names" thing, because it's a catch-all that includes several different kinds of examples, that various largely different groups of people are apt to capitalize. Various know-nothings want to capitalize things like "the Cats", the "Great Apes", etc., because they think "it's a Bigger Group and I like to Capitalize Big Important Stuff". There are millions more people who just like to capitalize nouns and stuff. "Orange's, $1 a Pound". Next we have people who insist on capitalizing general "types" and landraces of domestic animals ("Mountain Dogs", "Van Cat") because they're used to formal breed names being capitalized (whether to do that with breeds here is an open question, but it should not be done with types/classes of domestics, nor with landraces. Maybe the examples can be sculpted better: "the roses", "herpesviruses", "great apes", "Bryde's whale", "mountain dogs", "Van cat", "passerine birds". I'm not sure that "rove beetle" and "oak" are good examples of anything. Anyway, it's more that the species no-capitalization is a special case of the more general rule, not that the general rule is a redundant or vague version of the former. If they're merged, it should keep the general examples, and maybe specifically spell out and illustrate that it also means species and subspecies, landraces and domestic "types", as well as larger and more general groupings. I had noticed that point and was going to add it, along with some other points from both NCFLORA and NCFAUNA, soon to MOS:ORGANISMS, which I feel is nearing "go live" completion. Does that issue come up often enough to make it a MOS mainpage point? I wouldn't really object to it, and it could be had by adding an "(even if it coincides with a capitalized Genus name)" parenthetical to the "general names" bit. The pattern is just common enough in animals to have been problematic if it were liable to be problematic, as it were. I.e., I don't see a history of squabbling about it at Lynx or its talk page, and remember looking into this earlier with some other mammal, about two weeks ago, and not seeing evidence of confusion or editwarring. The WP:BIRDS people were actually studiously avoiding that problem; I remember seeing a talk page discussion at the project that agreed that such usage shouldn't be capitalized ever. PS: With Lynx, I had to go back to 2006, in the thick of the "Mad Capitalization Epidemic" to find capitalization there[8], and it wasn't even consistent, just in the lead.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:11, 3 May 2014 (UTC) Well, certainly "rove beetle" and "oak" are poor examples here, so I would support changing to some of the others you suggested above. I think the main problem we found with plants was it being unclear as to whether inexperienced editors meant the scientific name or the English name. So you would see a sentence with e.g. "Canna" in the middle and not know whether this should be corrected to "Canna" or to "canna". The plural is clear; "cannas" is always lower-case non-italicized. The singular is potentially ambiguous. Whether it's worth putting this point in the main MOS I just don't know since I don't much edit animal articles and never breed articles, which is why I asked you. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2014 (UTC) Will take a look at that later, if someone else doesn't beat me to it. Beats me. Doesn't seem too frequent an issue, but lot of MOS stuff isn't. Definitely should be in MOS:ORGANISMS, regardless.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:46, 4 May 2014 (UTC) Worked on both of those a bit at MOS. We'll see if it sticks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:18, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Note to self on WP:WikiProject English language

Unresolved

 – I think I did MOST of this already ...

Extended content
Finish patching up WP:WikiProject English language with the stuff from User:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language, and otherwise get the ball rolling.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:22, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Excellent mini-tutorial

Unresolved

Extended content

Somehow, I forget quite how, I came across this - that is an excellent summary of the distinctions. I often get confused over those, and your examples were very clear. Is something like that in the general MoS/citation documentation? Oh, and while I am here, what is the best way to format a citation to a page of a document where the pages are not numbered? All the guidance I have found says not to invent your own numbering by counting the pages (which makes sense), but I am wondering if I can use the 'numbering' used by the digitised form of the book. I'll point you to an example of what I mean: the 'book' in question is catalogued here (note that is volume 2) and the digitised version is accessed through a viewer, with an example of a 'page' being here, which the viewer calls page 116, but there are no numbers on the actual book pages (to confuse things further, if you switch between single-page and double-page view, funny things happen to the URLs, and if you create and click on a single-page URL the viewer seems to relocate you one page back for some reason). Carcharoth (talk) 19:10, 12 September 2016 (UTC) @Carcharoth: Thanks. I need to copy that into an essay page. As far as I know, the concepts are not clearly covered in any of those places, nor clearly enough even at Help:CS1 (which is dense and overlong as it is). The e-book matters bear some researching. I'm very curious whether particular formats (Nook, etc.) paginate consistently between viewers. For Web-accessible ones, I would think that the page numbering that appears in the Web app is good enough if it's consistent (e.g., between a PC and a smart phone) when the reader clicks the URL in the citation. I suppose one could also use |at= to provide details if the "page" has to be explained in some way. I try to rely on better-than-page-number locations when possible, e.g. specific entries in dictionaries and other works with multiple entries per page (numbered sections in manuals, etc.), but for some e-books this isn't possible – some are just continuous texts. One could probably use something like |at=in the paragraph beginning "The supersegemental chalcolithic metastasis is ..." about 40% into the document, in a pinch. I guess we do need to figure this stuff out since such sources are increasingly common.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:29, 13 September 2016 (UTC) Yes (about figuring out how to reference e-books), though I suspect existing (non-WP) citation styles have addressed this already (no need to re-invent the wheel). This is a slightly different case, though. It is a digitisation of an existing (physical) book that has no page numbers. If I had the book in front of me (actually, it was only published as a single copy, so it is not a 'publication' in that traditional sense of many copies being produced), the problem with page numbers would still exist. I wonder if the 'digital viewer' should be thought of as a 'via' thingy? In the same way that (technically) Google Books and archive.org digital copies of old books are just re-transmitting, and re-distributing the material (is wikisource also a 'via' sort of thing?). Carcharoth (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC) @Carcharoth: Ah, I see. I guess I would treat it as a |via=, and same with WikiSource, which in this respect is essentially like Google Books or Project Gutenberg. I think your conundrum has come up various times with arXiv papers, that have not been paginated visibly except in later publication (behind a journal paywall and not examined). Back to the broader matter: Some want to treat WikiSource and even Gutenberg as republishers, but I think that's giving them undue editorial credit and splitting too fine a hair. Was thinking on the general unpaginated and mis-paginated e-sources matter while on the train, and came to the conclusion that for a short, unpaginated work with no subsections, one might give something like |at=in paragraph 23, and for a much longer one use the |at=in the paragraph beginning "..." trick. A straight up |pages=82–83 would work for an e-book with hard-coded meta-data pagination that is consistent between apps/platforms and no visual pagination. On the other hand, use the visual pagination in an e-book that has it, even if it doesn't match the e-book format's digital pagination, since the pagination in the visual content would match that of a paper copy; one might include a note that the pagination is that visible in the content if it conflicts with what the e-book reader says (this comes up a lot with PDFs, for one thing - I have many that include cover scans, and the PDF viewers treat that as p. 1, then other front matter as p. 2, etc., with the content's p. 1 being something like PDF p. 7).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

WP:MEDMOS

Unresolved

 – Go fix the WP:FOO shortcuts to MOS:FOO ones, to match practice at other MoS pages. This only applies to the MoS section there; like WP:SAL, part of that page is also a content guideline that should not have MOS: shortcuts.

Extended content

You had previously asked that protection be lowered on WP:MEDMOS which was not done at that time. I have just unprotected the page and so if you have routine update edits to make you should now be able to do so. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 06:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC) Thanks. I don't remember what it was, but maybe it'll come back to me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC) Now I remember.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:53, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Ooh...potential WikiGnoming activity...

Unresolved

 – Do some of this when I'm bored?

Extended content

@SMcCandlish: I stumbled upon Category:Editnotices whose targets are redirects and there are ~100 pages whose pages have been moved, but the editnotices are still targeted to the redirect page. Seems like a great, and sort of fun, WikiGnoming activity for a template editor such as yourself. I'd do it, but I'm not a template editor. Not sure if that's really your thing, though. ;-) Cheers, --Doug Mehus T·C 22:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC) Argh. I would've hoped some bot fixed that kind of stuff. I'll consider it, but it's a lot of work for low benefit (the page names may be wrong, but the redirs still get there), and it's been my experience that a lot of editnotices (especially in mainspace) are PoV-pushing crap that needs to be deleted anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:20, 11 February 2020 (UTC) I'm going to pass for the nonce, Dmehus. Working on some other project (more fun than WP is sometimes). I'll let it sit here with {{Unresolved}} on it, in case I get inspired to work on it some, but it might be a long time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:46, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Note to self

Unresolved

 – Cquote stuff ...

Extended content
Don't forget to deal with: Template talk:Cquote#Template-protected edit request on 19 April 2020.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:48, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Now this

Unresolved

 – Breed disambiguation again ...

Extended content

Not sure the ping went through, so noting here. Just spotted where a now-blocked user moved a bunch of animal breed articles back to parenthetical disambiguation from natural disambiguation. As they did it in October and I'm only catching it now, I only moved back two just in case there was some kind of consensus change. The equine ones are definitely against project consensus, the rest are not my wheelhouse but I'm glad to comment. Talk:Campine_chicken#Here_we_go_again. Montanabw(talk) 20:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC) @Montanabw: Argh. Well, this is easy to fix with a request to mass-revert undiscussed moves, at the subsection for that at WP:RMTR. Some admin will just fix it all in one swoop. While I have the PageMover bit, and could do it myself as a technical possibility, I would run afoul of WP:INVOLVED in doing so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:30, 4 July 2020 (UTC) @Montanabw: Did this get fixed yet? If not, I can look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

PGP

Unresolved

 – Gotta put my geek hat on and fix this.

FYI, it looks like your key has expired. 1234qwer1234qwer4 21:57, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Aiee! Thanks, I'll have to generate a new one when I have time to mess around with it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:32, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

---

Current threads

Nooooooo!

The ungodly mess that was your sprawling talk page is no more! What endless tome will I have now to scroll through while checking my watchlist on my phone now? VanIsaac, GHTV ^cont_WpWS 05:54, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

That's what the archives are for. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:10, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Request for input about map

 Done

Hello SMcCandlish. If you have the time or desire it would be great if you provide your insights in the discussion, Talk:France#Removal of map. I am just seeking guidance, as the editor who removed the map was not clear and only one other editor has commented. Keeping or removing the map is fine. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 23:02, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Follow up

 Done

Hello SMcCandlish. The discussion has been practically replicated in Talk:Russia#Removal of maps. If you still are interested in the topic of maps in infoboxes, your input is appreciated. It may be headed to a project-wide RfC. Regards, --Thinker78 (talk) 03:00, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Disregard

 – Just don't care.

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Dash question

 Done

Could you please take a look at my comment at Talk:Gaya–Mughalsarai section#Requested move 16 July 2023? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:12, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. And the follow-up question? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:42, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Happy First Edit Day!

Indeed! Best regards, Thinker78 (talk) 04:08, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

Thankee. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:22, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

Disregard

 – Don't know enough about that source to comment meaningfully.

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August thanks

August songs

my story today

Thank you for improving articles in August! - Today, my focus is on Renata Scotto, after days of updating. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:44, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Today is Debussy's birthday. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:30, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

This too shall pass. - Ten years ago on 28 August, I heard a symphony, with a heavy heart because of the pending decision in WP:ARBINFOBOX, and not worried about my future here but Andy's. - It passed, and I could write the DYK about calling to dance, not battle, and Andy could write the DYK mentioning about peace and reconciliation, - look. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Glad the infobox squabbling has died down, that's for sure.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:56, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

It looked like died down in 2018, but check out Cosima Wagner for a renewal ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Feedback request: Economy, trade, and companies request for comment

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Puebloan?

Hello,

Very good info about Mirasol (and well documented on the article, in fact, I myself added most of the information there on Mirasol), but I think the purpose of the edit went completely over your head. The purpose was to disambiguate a member of the Pueblo Indigenous American community (a "Peubloan") from someone who simply resides in the city of Pueblo, Colorado (also called a "Puebloan"); sometimes people confuse us with them. I admit I could have made that clearer when I wrote that section, but I'll let someone else fix it.

Cheers, Kehkou (talk) 02:28, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The edits I was seeing kept trying to distinguish so. CO chiles from NM chiles (despite them being variants of the same cultivar), instead of distinguishing the CO chiles from Pueblo from the ancient chiles of the Puebloan people.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The question of the varieties is not under investigation here (that is explained quite well in the article in three separate sections); the latter is indeed the correct interpretation of the passage, but hope is given that it is not read as "these chiles should not be confused with ancient varieties grown by [residents of the city of Pueblo, CO]." It is an anchor; Pueblo chile redirects there, so lay readers will not see the previous information on the chile or even know what a "Pueblo" is. Therefore "Puebloan peoples" or "Pueblo communities (of New Mexico)" would be the preferred term so that my people and our chiles are not confused with residents and crops from CO. Kehkou (talk) 16:31, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it again, but "Pueblo communities of New Mexico" isn't right, since the Puebloan peoples were all over the southwest; the modern state borders don't mean anything in relation to them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:36, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The current text says: In Colorado, 'Numex Mirasol' chile peppers are grown near the city of Pueblo, where they are known as "Pueblo chile". These should not be confused with the ancient chile varieties grown by the Puebloan peoples. Is there some kind of problem with it?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:52, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The current text is correct and acceptable. Before, it just said "by Puebloans." It seems we just confused each other there.

The Pueblos were (are) all over the SW, but only those communities in NM still grow chile.

You may consider this matter cleared and closed. Happy editing!Kehkou (talk) 23:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Right arm. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:40, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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Thanks

Thank you for posting this. I don't get involved in MOS things that often, but as a reader that would have annoyed me greatly. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:52, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: YW. Any time an MoS (or other guideline) proposal would affect a large number of articles across a wide swath of topics, it seems like a good idea to post a VPPOL pointer to it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:57, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Cartoon portraits

Hi there. Yesterday I removed the image on the right from Lucette Taero, a BLP. I did some digging and found this discussion where you said that at this discussion there was "a clear consensus to not use such cartoons". I agree, and I'm going to delete some of these image. What do you think? Magnolia677 (talk) 11:25, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I jumped the gun. That was the only cartoon image I was able to find, and User:Drmies has reverted many of the edits already. Cheers. Magnolia677 (talk) 11:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I would carry on, and point people to Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard/Archive 49#Cartoon portraits as the consensus against addition of such pseudo-portraits.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:18, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

ECs

Sorry about lousing up the ECs. I was using the edit-conflict function in Visual Editor for the first time, and was really impressed with it! Until I saw your note, that is. I'm not going to bother figuring out what I did wrong. I'm just going to use the old manual, copy-and-paste method for dealing with ECs going forward. As for "en," that is true, and again I must humbly shift blame, this time to the template, but your point is well taken and I will manually take those out as well. Coretheapple (talk) 16:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@Coretheapple: I also find the newish edit-conflict tool confusing, so don't feel bad. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:26, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

The strange part is that I am positive I clicked off the right boxes so that your cleanup would remain intact. I may investigate this further with the Visual Editor people. It is the only real issue I've had with the Visual Editor, and I am quite a fan of it otherwise. Coretheapple (talk) 22:10, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@Coretheapple: Maybe try some test edits and screenshot them or something. You could be logged in as you in one browser and be an anon in another cross-editing the same user sandbox page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:12, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

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PARABR thanks

Hi SMcCandlish,

You are absolutely correct that MOS:PARABR is the correct shortcut for the shortcut I attempted to make. Thank you for fixing that for me, sincerely. I am fine with deletion of Wikipedia:PARABR (to reduce the using-up of easily parseable "WP:" shortcuts), but given that you did edit it I wanted to be absolutely sure you are fine if I tag it for WP:G7. Best, HouseBlaster^talk 19:19, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@HouseBlaster: No biggie. "PARABR" is probably obscure enough that a "WP:" usage of it isn't likely to be something someone wants to usurp for some other purpose. But you could also delete it if you like.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:54, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

If you both agree, I can G7 delete it if you wish. - jc37 20:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

jc37, G7ing it would be very much appreciated. Sincerely, HouseBlaster^talk 21:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jc37: Works for me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok done. - jc37 01:41, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Dashes for mergers

The RM at Talk:Famous Players–Lasky#Requested move 23 August 2023 has been closed. However, I asked a question in that discussion about the convention of using dashes to indicate mergers, and that was not yet answered. It was not a rhetorical question. If you have time, I would be interested in your response. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:06, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

@BarrelProof: I think you're referring to "Can you point to specific evidence supporting this theory of using an en dash to indicate a merger of two formerly independent entities (e.g. in MOS:DASH or in externally produced style guides)?" This has become less clear than it should be, because people have been slowly futzing around with the text at MOS:DASH over the years. But it's still here:

Use an en dash for the names of two or more entities in an attributive compound.

• the Seifert–van Kampen theorem;   the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow theory
• the Seeliger–Donker-Voet scheme (developed by Seeliger and Donker-Voet)
• Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)

A compay name produced through merger like that is a short form of a longer official name (the exact form of which varies widely by jursidiction: "Foo–Bar Corporation", "Foo–Bar Inc.", "Foo–Bar Ltd", "Foo–Bar GmbH", etc., etc.), so it is in fact an attributive in structure, and the "or just Hale–Bopp" example in the guideline text makes it clear that the dash it not converted into a hyphen if the name is shortened and no longer looks attributive. However, we should just clarify the guideline that it means to use dashes not hyphens between names that indicate or are the product of a merger of the names of two+ entities (unless the style doesn't call for a horizontal line at all, e.g. DaimlerChrysler, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, etc.; this is only about when a horizontal line is used). Twenty-odd years of RM results (the weird outlier of the recent "SAF-AFTRA" move notwithstanding) demonstrate that this is the intended interpretation, and so does the fact that the editors who mostly crafted that guideline – like me, Dicklyon, Tony1, probably also EEng – are all still around and as far as I know all consistently say this is the intended meaning. That the guideline wording has become confused over time is a reason to fix it to stop being confusing, not to let confusion reign and spread. The guideline never should have included wording about attributives in it in the first place. In short, there is absolutely no style difference between Hale–Bopp and SAG–AFTRA. The latter still needs to go to WP:MR, though I'm not sure I have the patience for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

IIRC I wasn't involved. I'm leaving this one to wiser heads. EEng 21:50, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. At this point, SAG-AFTRA has become the precedent for AFL-CIO, and enough time has passed by that it looks like there may not be an MR. As you note, the asserted equivalence between "Hale–Bopp" (which seems uncontroversial) and a merger that forms "Foo–Bar Inc." does not seem clear in the current MoS. And if Frederick Foo and Bernard Bar simply co-founded a company together (without a merger taking place), would that be "Foo-Bar Inc." or "Foo–Bar Inc."? If not clear in Wikipedia, is the approach described in any external style guides? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:56, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

If they used a horizontal line in the name, it would be Foo–Bar Inc.; it's precisely analogous to Dunning–Kruger effect, etc. (something named after two originators). [It's different from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which had nothing to do with either the Wilkes or the Barre namesakes, and which was not a merger between two former separate municipalities, either. It was just named "Wilkes-Barre" kind of out of nowhere. A bit like naming your cat "Socrates Bonaparte".] I no longer have a thick bookshelf of off-site style guides, so it would be difficult for me to re-research what they all say now; but our MoS is based heavily on the leading academic style guides (Chicago, New Hart's/Oxford, Fowler's, Garner's, Scientific Style and Format), and we did not get the idea out of nowhere. It's very unlikely that the other style guides have changed on a matter like this, but someone with current editions can check again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:22, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: History and geography request for comment

Disregard

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Ulster-Scots

We are in the middle of a discussion, it's not legitimate to go around making reversions of it. It's also not legitimate to accuse me of edit warring when I've made a reversion almost 24 hours regarding an issue I've been an active participant in the dispute resolution process. Alssa1 (talk) 20:46, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

When four editors are are against what you are doing, and you have zero support from any other editors, you are in fact editwarring in a WP:1AM manner. Your hand-waving dismissals of the arguments against your flag misuse have done absolutely nothing to address the concerns raised. You're just playing WP:ICANTHEARYOU games.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:00, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

4 editors? You resurrect a dead discussion that started in 2020 and treat it as if all the editors are in active agreement with your position. You talk about the edit being in breach of MOS:FLAGS, while being seemingly unaware that it applies only to icons (as Danbloch pointed out to you in the discussion). Alssa1 (talk) 21:14, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

There is no prescribed time-limit for such matters. And Danbloch is simply wrong. Just read the material. When it applies to icons in particular it very clearly says so. Most of it is entirely general material about flags and their often politicized interpetations, their relevance to the subject, etc. And MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE is also against what you are doing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:46, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia proposals request for comment

 Done

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templates in headings

What you say (at Asterisk) makes sense but there are thousands of these. The doc for {{anchor}} says In general, if the intended target of an anchor is a section title, then it should be placed at the end of the section header by substitution: (which is what I've been doing). Is that a problem too? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:31, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

@JMF: There are also thousands of unsourced statements, and thousands of non-neutral phrasings, but we still need to clean them up. :-) As for substitution, I'm not sure if the template substitutes cleanly; something to test in a sandbox, I guess. A heading with code like ==Heading name <span id="anchor name"></span>== doesn't break anything, and hopefully that's what would result from ==Heading name {{subst:Anchor|anchor name}}== But it's also okay to just put the anchor tag right above or right below the heading.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:54, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

"Just below" misses out the heading, thus confusing incoming links. "Just before" should be fine while it lasts but has a significant risk of disassociation. Appending a substed anchor to the heading text is the most reliable strategy and that is what the guideline says. But I just wondered if the authors of the guideline considered the access implications (if any? Screen readers must encounter span tags thousands of times a day so surely must be programmed to deal with them? Maybe this is a non-issue?) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:37, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it was considered (the recommendation to do that is based on the MOS:ACCESS testing for an alternative to putting templates in headings), and is a non-issue. Some editors don't prefer it, versus before/after template placement, because the span code "pollutes" the heading name when editing the section, but it's really a small price to pay and is probably something that can be fixed in Mediawiki's editor.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:54, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

New page patrol October 2023 Backlog drive

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Feedback request: Media, the arts, and architecture request for comment

 Done

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Respectful request for advice

Greetings. You recently undid one of my edits. Because I just saw that you're much, much more experienced on Wikipedia than I am, I wanted to make sure I understand the policies of the encyclopedia and what I did wrong. To language that included the following explanatory sentence:

Compare "I thank my friend, Smith and Wesson", in which the ambiguity is obvious to those who recognise Smith and Wesson as a business name.

I added this explanation:

Because that is implausible, it is relatively clear that the construction refers to two separate people

You commented that this was an inappropriate personal opinion to add and that Wikipedia is "not my blog". But I cannot see the error. Is my comment any more an opinion than "the ambiguity is obvious", which was already in the article and which I was endeavouring to explain?

I was honestly just trying to help. I would like to avoid errors in the future. Genuine apologies if this request is a waste of your time. I do not intend to sound peevish. Teacher1850 (talk) 02:10, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Teacher1850: I reverted your change because it was a subjective opinion, and not cited to reliable sources (see WP:V, WP:RS); and because Wikipedia doesn't serve a didactic purpose (WP:NOT#TEXTBOOK). Your assertion that a particular inference is "implausible" basically amounts to mass mind-reading, and does not account for things like uncertainty in interpretation by children and by second-language learners. What you asserted is an opinion you hold about the material in question, not a fact about it. If it were a fact, you should be able to find a reliable source making the same point. If you still think I'm wrong, feel free to open a discussion on the article's talk page, per WP:BRD, proposing your changes and the rationale for them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:29, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. But so I fully understand, is the rest of the paragraph to which I was adding not equally problematic in exactly the same way? It already claims that a similar ambiguity is "obvious".

I understand "everyone else is doing it" isn't a useful justification. Maybe what I should have done instead is to have removed the unsourced, subjective explanation that was already there? Much of the Comma page is already quite didactic in nature, without sources.

I think I may not yet have the feel for how to make incremental improvements to pages that have problems. Apologies again if I have wasted your time. Teacher1850 (talk) 02:38, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Teacher1850: There is probably other material there that needs to be removed. Many of our articles on English grammar, puncutation, and other usage are trainwrecks. Incremental improvements are mostly made to articles like this by finding reliable sources for what they say (when they say something without a source), correcting prescriptive or didactic wording to be descriptive, checking that what is said and attributed to particular sources actually matches the source material, and ultimately removing material that doesn't seem sourceable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:29, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks again for taking the time to reply! Teacher1850 (talk) 03:38, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

No problem. BTW, I put your language back in; since the entire passage is unsourced it doesn't seem to make a net difference in that regard, and to the extent it's explanatory, maybe someone will find it helpful. However, I think the entire passage could be removed, your tweaks included, because the entire block is unsourced.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:36, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh, thanks, maybe I can find a source and fix it. There may be an old source in the public domain that the article could directly quote. Teacher1850 (talk) 06:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

A source that old would probably not be useful, because the language changes over time. Much advice in pre-modern style guides is no longer valid. Something more like the current edition of Chicago Manual of Style, the current Penguin Guide, etc., would likely be of more value, but of course they're not free.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:12, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I see. That makes sense. Thank you again. Teacher1850 (talk) 20:22, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

British English, contractions and punctuation

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations § British English, contractions and punctuation

Regarding your revert, it remains my view that the current wording is incorrect, and doesn’t reflect British usage as reflected by both print and online reputable media, and standards for publishing. I checked with the Oxford guide to which you refer, and whilst you are correct that the general rule is tempered with some examples that may take punctuation, like Ph.D or PhD, Dr for doctor is specifically given as an example that doesn’t carry punctuation, along with other common ones like Mr and Mrs. Thus the example cited in the MoS currently is incorrect and therefore misleading for editors, since you won’t in British English find usage such as Mr. or Dr. Kind regards, MapReader (talk) 06:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

This is surely better addressed at the guideline's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 58

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 58, July – August 2023

• New partners - De Standaard and Duncker & Humblot
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Revealed

Loved your “holy mysteries” edit today! If I had a dollar for every “not everything is a revelation” edit summary I’ve written… drives me batty! --Dr.Margi ✉ 23:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

:-) I would do a lot more of that cleanup, but I don't edit pop-culture/media articles all that much.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I get that. I do a lot less than I used to. ----Dr.Margi ✉ 02:35, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:IPMag

 Done

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Feedback request: Politics, government, and law request for comment

Disregard

 – Already closed when I got there.

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September thanks

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Thank you for improving articles in September! -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:18, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Religion and philosophy request for comment

Disregard

 – I don't care about these year articles, as I don't see them as very encyclopedic.

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Your notifications at WP:VPP and WP:NPOVN

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles § NPOV usage of "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet"  – It is pointless to keep repeating the same argument in two places.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hi SMcCandlish, thanks for posting the notifications at VPP and NPOVN. I just saw those now; I was planning to notify there once an RfC was underway, but I guess this might be a bigger issue than I thought it would be, so it's just as well to draw in more editors now. However, I believe your linking of guidelines there to be somewhat unfortunate: MOS:DOCTCAPS does not seem to fit, WP:NPOV is superfluous given the title of the discussion, and WP:CHERRYPICKING seems to be both an aspersion and poisoning the well to an extent that clearly fails WP:APPNOTE. Would you please remove at least the link to WP:CHERRYPICKING? It might also be good to know that the most relevant redirects for the policy section under discussion are MOS:MUHAMMAD and MOS:ISLAMHON. I think these would be a better fit than MOS:DOCTCAPS and WP:NPOV. Thanks for taking this into consideration, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:28, 24 September 2023 (UTC) It's just a discussion notice, not an article, so the text in it does not need to be nit-picked. DOCTCAPS is entirely relevant, since much of the discussion is about "prophet" vs. "Prophet". I didn't mentioned MUHMMAD and ISLAMHON because they are obscure and overly specific, and much of the problem under discussion at that thread is a desire of some parties to engage in "special exceptionalism" for Islam and Muhammad, against broader guidelines that apply across all topics evenly, and this is forming a WP:CONLEVEL problem. If it gets much more serious, there may be grounds for an RfC to remove the {{Guideline}} tag from that page, and move it to something like "WP:WikiProject Islam/Style recommendations" with a {{WikiProject style advice}} essay tag on it instead. But feel free to add your own notes below mine that mention the MUHAMMAD and ISLAMHON shortcuts. As for CHERRYPICKING, the discussion is utterly overrun with the argument that because various sources can be found that are referring to Muhammad as "the Prophet" that Wikipedia must do so also, but this does not in any way represent the total source usage, but is selective favouring of particular sources to try to argue for changing our guidelines to conflict with our neutrality policy. If you think this is "aspersion casting", go ahead and open a WP:ANI thread about it. I am quite confident I am able to demonstrate that my concerns about that discussion and various arguments made in it are valid. Nor does "fails WP:APPNOTE" apply, because I did not in any way suggest in my pointers which side might be cherrypicking. Raising the concern that cherrypicking is happening, at all, in the abstract, is no different in any way from posting the thread at NPOVN in the first place, which is by definition a claim that NPOV issues are happening, at all, in the abstract. If someone individually chooses to identify with the term CHERRYPICKING and be offended by mention of that rule, that probably says much more about what they've been writing than about what I wrote. So, maybe spend less time trying to word- and thought-police what other editors post, and more time constructing arguments that make better sense, or – better yet – seriously considering when the argument you are pursuing is meeting a lot of resistance and why, and that it might be time to WP:DROPTHESTICK. Wikipedia is not a platform for "language-usage warrior" behavior, and we are in absolutely no way beholden to write in ways that are apt to come across as biased to many readers, especially not on the basis that various other writers, who are less cautious about this sort of thing than we are, sometimes do it with impunity. We have a serious responsibiliy to write better, and we have our own MoS for a reason, which is not dictated to by external publishers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC) Well you've accused me of cherry-picking here, and by linking to WP:CHERRYPICKING in the notification you're clearly implying that something untoward is going on. In this very reply, you say that what I'm doing is "selective favouring of particular sources to try to argue for changing our guidelines to conflict with our neutrality policy". This is an accusation, and if unproven, an aspersion. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind it that much, and there are several places where we can discuss this in peace. But implying there's cherry-picking going on in a discussion in the very notification about that discussion? Yes, that fails WP:APPNOTE pretty badly, as I'm sure other editors would agree. Now I've tried to address the cherry-picking concern in the evidence section,[9] but you've not answered there. What else can I say than that I've tried not to cherry-pick, and that this time around I have tried to avoid even the appearance of it by just looking at the books by major historians of Islam that I happen to own? If you'll look at these historians' wiki-pages (in the green bar), you'll find that they are from very different schools of thought, from ultra-revisionist to traditionalist, but what they all share is that they are top scholars in their field. Meanwhile, my challenge to cite a reliable source on Islamic topics that does not use "the prophet" or "the prophet Muhammad" to refer to Muhammad stands. If, as you say, it is not the "norm in offsite, non-Muslim writing" to use these expressions, surely it should be easy enough to cite a few examples of your own? By the way, did you read my last reply to you in the discussion? My feeling is that you're expecting worse from me than I am intending. I really do feel that the discussion has been progressing, and there has been some limited support that I feel could grow with the issues becoming clearer and the evidence, well, more looked at. In my experience, if the RS are on your side, Wikipedians will tend to come to your side eventually, even if you start with something of a one-against-all situation. I've been there before, where I started with a small minority opinion but one firmly based in RS, against a large majority opinion that runs entirely contrary to RS, and where eventually consensus decided in my favor. However, I am totally aware of the fact that this almost necessarily involves dominating a discussion to the point of bludgeoning, and that this is not a healthy thing, neither for me nor for the community. I'm trying to look out for warning signs about that, and your point about dropping the stick is well taken. In any case, I absolutely respect the point of view that Wikipedia can determine its own way of handling potentially biased terminology, regardless of what RS are doing. When I said "you're simply dead wrong about this", I meant your position about the RS themselves: the norm there is different from what you think it is. I meant that respectfully, as in 'hey, I appreciate your opinion, but on this particular matter you just don't have the facts straight, as I'm sure you'll see when you look into them'. Obviously, this being a text-only medium, that didn't come over quite as I meant. I'm sorry about that. But wouldn't we look foolish on ANI? Please just remove the link to WP:CHERRYPICKING in the notification, it would really make me feel better. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 02:49, 24 September 2023 (UTC) "I've tried not to cherry-pick": well good on you, but you are not the only person making "do it because sources I like do it" arguments, and I never said anything about the cherry-picking concerns having anything to do with you in particular. I will not be brow-beaten (with either "make me feel better" pleading or "you're casting aspertions" menacing) for simply raising a completely genericized and non-personally-identifiable concern that cherry-picking could be a factor in the discussion (I didn't even suggest on which side of the discussion it was happening; a read through the entire mess might even show instances on both sides – and I decline your above invitation to engage in it myself, since there is utterly no point to creating a link-farm of examples of sources just writing "Muhammad" as untold thousands of them do millions of times in total, and vastly in the majority [10]). On "you're expecting worse from me than I am intending": I'm not, really, but above you are assuming worse from me than is in evidence; raising a vague concern about cherry-picking across a discussion isn't some kind of laser-focused "aspersion" about you in particular. I've not raised any concerns about things like "you're simply dead wrong about this"; I argue pretty forcefully myself, and I have a thick skin. "regardless of what RS are doing": Not accurate. WP cares about what RS are doing when they're near-uniform in consistently doing it; some minority, even a large one, of sources doing something is completley irrelevant, and even if a super-majority of them did something, we can still reasonably come to an internal consensus to not do it here anyway, e.g. if it would have core policy or encyclopedic-purpose implications. For the umpteenth time: WP's style is not dictated by any off-site publishers, ever. The idea that external writers "force" Wikipedia to write a particular way is simply fallacious (though your attempts to reinterpret that page to mean things not intended means it needs some clarity revision). You're consistently making an argument that amounts to "WP:CONSENSUS is an invalid policly and process" when taken to its logical conclusion, and that's not going to work. As for "I am totally aware of the fact that this almost necessarily involves dominating a discussion to the point of bludgeoning, and that this is not a healthy thing, neither for me nor for the community." Simple solution: just stop.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:18, 24 September 2023 (UTC) My claim is that RS on Islam are near-uniform in consistently using "the prophet" or "the prophet Muhammad" as a reference to Muhammad. Now how can that claim be proven? It's not possible to cite and quote all RS in existence, right? I tried to quote from a sample that I've made as representative as I could (have you looked at the green collapsed bar in the evidence section yet?), but obviously that sample too is far from perfect. However, the claim could perhaps rather more easily be disproven, by citing a sample of sources equally (not-really-)representative as mine that does not use the expressions "the prophet" or "the prophet Muhammad" to refer to Muhammad. Just one high-quality source would suffice for starters, you may even cherry-pick it if you want, I would still be interested to see such a source. You see, I've read dozens of scholarly papers and monographs about Islam, and do not remember ever having encountered such a source, so I would find it interesting to see one, just for that sake of it. But then again, perhaps if after all this time you still think I cherry-picked Michael Cook, Patricia Crone and Bernard Lewis together because they are so favorable to Islamic religious agendas, if you still believe I'm proposing to allow the use of the word "Holy" (please read the current text: it starts with Honorifics for Muhammad should generally not be used in articles [...] the most common ones being: and then immediately lists The Prophet or (The) Holy Prophet, which in my proposal becomes Holy Prophet – the guideline text starts out with what it disallows), maybe the more reasonable conclusion would be that assuming good faith is just not an option for you at this point, and that it would be better for all of us if you left the discussion. I promise, things won't turn ugly in your absence, I will do my best to behave, and other editors will check me if needed. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 06:30, 24 September 2023 (UTC) It's clear that some of the guideline text does not reflect actual consensus and may even be contradictory of wider guidelines; the consensus discussion will fix that. I don't think your claim can be proven, because it's demonstrably not true. The ngrams prove that just "Muhammad" massively dominates over "the [p|P]rophet Muhammad" in search results for phrases that would pertain to "the" Muhammad. I don't think you've cherry-picked writers "favorable to Islamic religious agendas", but it looks like you're selecting sources that agree with your position on writing "the Prophet Muhammad" instead of just "Muhammad", rather than looking at any aggregate data. In short, I don't think you understand what "cherry-picking" even means. One thing that it doesn't mean is selectively preferring particular sources that support your position. and not your opposition, and doing so with an sinister ulterior motive. It just means selectively preferring particular sources that support your position, at all, period. "I can find hundreds even thousands of examples of sources using 'the Prophet Muhammad'" is completely meaningless when there are somewhere between tens of thousands and millions of sources. Another strong indication you are not looking at the aggregate data and are just favoring the sources that support you is that if we search for "Muhammad" at Google Scholar (exclusing authors by that name) [11] and wade through page after page of results, ignoring the ones that are obviously false hits, you see over and over again the historical figure being referred to as simply "Muhammad", while "the [p|P]rophet Muhammad" is quite rare, sometimes clearly non-neutral writing by actual Muslims, e.g. "... the career of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) ...". If you spent all day it, you could again amass maybe hundreds of examples that "go your way", but they would be dwarfed by an order or two of magnitude more examples of source usage that isn't the way you like it. I'm sure you'd like me to leave the discussion to you, so you can continue to try to dominate it despite already conceding that pursuing your angle "almost necessarily involves dominating a discussion to the point of bludgeoning, and that this is not a healthy thing, neither for me nor for the community". There is no bad-faith assumption of any kind in quoting you back to yourself and opposing what you are doing and the faulty rationalization you are using to justify it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:25, 24 September 2023 (UTC) I do know what cherry-picking is, I just don't believe it's as easy to avoid as you think. As I've explained in the discussion, the Ngrams evidence and other aggregate data is absolutely useless in this case. This will have to be done in the dirty way, by trying to limit selection bias and by having as much independent editors looking at the evidence as possible. A good place to start are the sources used in FA-Class Islam-related articles. Or as I suggested before, perhaps simply refrain; what you're doing now is not helping. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 08:40, 24 September 2023 (UTC) You didn't "explain" anything; you made an argument that would be true of a bare search on "Muhammad" but which is clearly not true of searches on phrases highly likely to be specific to "the" Muhammad in reliable sources. And I've already been over that with you at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Islam-related articles#NPOV usage of "the prophet Muhammad" or "the prophet". It's getting very tiresome to deal with this [{WP:BLUDGEON]] approach on two fronts at once. Please keep the discussion at the MoS thread. Cf. WP:TALKFORK. Also, just using the tiny handful of sources we've already selected at one article would tell us nothing useful at all. I don't think you understand what aggregate data and statistics of usage really mean. Either that, or you are pretending not to, so you can keep arguing and arguing and arguing to see if I will just give up and go away (argumentum ad nauseam). When someone asks you, on the basis of your own unmistakable admission that what you are doing is "unhealthy" (AKA disruptive), to drop the stick and back away, coming back with "perhaps simply refrain" is childish tit-for-tat WP:ICANTHEARYOU bullshit.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:39, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

 Done

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Hiberno-English

The IP was already blocked for two weeks. The Banner talk 20:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@The Banner: Well, they keep changing to a "nearby" IP, so hopefully a range block.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

template:crossref

I removed the template because it seems imprecise yet extraneous to include the comment. What was the philosophy behind writing that comment? Iterresise (talk) 20:51, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Cross-references like "See [somewhere else]" should be marked up with that template; they are a form of permissible Wikipedia self-reference and instruction to the reader, like hatnotes. However, I agree that the "(see above)", regardless of its formatting, isn't something we need to use there at all, so I agree with the removal.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:35, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Doing a ctrl+f of "{{crossref}}" in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Self-references_to_avoid#Types_of_self-reference, I see that it is mentioned there. I'm not convinced that this is a best practice let alone good writing. Maybe I should bring it up on the talk page? Iterresise (talk) 06:19, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean: "Neutral cross-references, e.g. (See also Cymric cat.), are permissible (and best done with the {{crossreference}} template), but are often best reworded (The Cymric cat is a recent breed developed from the Manx.)."? They are often best reworded. I'm not convinced that {{crossref}} is a best practice let alone good writing. Iterresise (talk) 06:22, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

And I'm not sure what you're on about. Just because something isn't an idea that initially occurred to you, or isn't how you would do something on your own blog, doesn't mean it's broken and needs you to charge in to "fix" it. If we changed MoS to agree with every random editor's opinion, then there would be and could be no MoS at all, because every single line item in it is disagreed with by someone, somewhere, and that would always the case no matter what it was changed to say.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

{{See above}}, {{See below}}, and {{Crossreference}} were all created by you. Iterresise (talk) 00:13, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Every template (and everything else) on WP was created by someone, so observing that someone created something here is not making any actual point. PS: The first two of those templates are basically obsolete and should just be replaced with simple wrappers for {{crossreference}}. They were unnecessarily complex.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:38, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You also changed that page to allow usage of these templates and when I checked the archives, I couldn't find any discussion for that addition. Iterresise (talk) 01:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Every change is made by someone. What part of this are you not understanding? There is no rule that every change must be pre-discussed. We make WP:BOLD edits all the time, and those that do not meet with consensus don't survive.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:33, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

PS: See WP:Fallacy of the revelation of policy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:33, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Two more celebs you kinda look like...

Colin Farrell and The Edge (like 20 years ago). Jweiss11 (talk) 05:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

It's a conspiracy!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:11, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Biographies request for comment

 Done

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CfD nomination at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Category:WikiProject X members

 Done

 – This has been a long time coming.

A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 October 1 § Category:WikiProject X members on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Qwerfjkltalk 09:32, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Commentary on MOS:TV edit

Experienced WP editors know that you are a widely respected editor with a wealth of experience, particularly on matters of style and formatting, and that your sensible good judgement frequently intervenes to resolve disagreements on such matters.

Which is why I am disappointed at the commentary accompanying your recent edit[12].

Your revert was of course entirely reasonably, per BRD. But per the same policy, so was my original edit. According to your own count, I have made over sixty recent edits to MOSTV, of which only two issues have given rise to any challenge, with the remainder (so far) being accepted without challenge as improvements to the original text. This is surely the spirit of BRD, exemplified? On the two challenged matters - applying MOSNUM to a couple of examples within MOSTV, and replacing “summarize” with “describe”, I have of course accepted the “R” within BRD without argument.

Replacing “summarize” with its US English spelling with “describe”, which accords with MOS:COMMONALITY, was in my view a reasonable change, but after reversion is not something that I would seek to contest. MapReader (talk) 16:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

On the tone, fair enough; sorry if that came across as forceful or insensitive. But swapping in words with different meanings is a substantive change, and there was a big thread open for some times about not making any more substantive changes without discussion first. The words are not synonymous. A "description" of a plot (as tedious or fast-paced, well-crafted or amateurish, simple or convoluted, etc.) would be primarily a matter of opinion, and something more appropriate for a review. A summary – a term we use frequently, e.g. at WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, WP:COPYRIGHT, etc. – means an abstract or precis, a reduction of original material to a very compact form in written in our own words; not a description. PS: "summarise" would also be fine; whatever better agrees with the rest of the document.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:00, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with User:MapReader here. You should definitely change your tone. I find it shocking someone as respected as you speaks the way you do. Iterresise (talk) 19:40, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

You already have an entire section in which you are making similar vague and no-diff complaints. A) If you have an issue with another editor, you need to be much clearer about what it is is, with particulars and evidence. Otherwise you are just casting vague aspersions. B) You need to stay off my talk page unless you have something constructive to say that actually relates to building an encyclopedia. I'll repeat for the third time: WP is not a social media site for picking fights with strangers on the Internet for entertainment value. And I'll say again for something like the fifth time in one form or another: meeting with disagreement when you propose vague and questionably thought-out changes to policy pages does not mean you are being personally attacked, it just means people disagree with your idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:48, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

Disregard

 – I've already been embedded in that discussion for some time now.

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Latinx

Saw your pings when I got up this morning and went to lay down some protection. Luckily Johnuniq had already picked up my slack. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:19, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles

 Done

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles. I saw that you participated in a discussion on a similar topic. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:11, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Systemic bias

Template:Systemic bias has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Mach61 (talk) 03:18, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced BLP claim on user page

Note that BLP applies to user pages as well, you appear to be making an unsourced BLP claim in the context of work you did with Aerosmith. I would like to give you the chance to remove it (I know that BLP requires me to remove it immediately but I am IAR because I think that asking you to remove it is better for the project civility wise) or source it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:57, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Stating who I've worked with, including a business entity named Aerosmith which like all business entities is made up of some living people (at least until the AIs completely take over), has no BLP implications at all. But you do whatever you want. I don't really care much about jokey content on my user page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:01, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you will understand better after it is removed, not that bit. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:12, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

You could try just writing plainly instead of trying to be mystically mysterious.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:17, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't really see the point in removing a pseudonym, but I don't particularly object either. The writer probably does actually need to not be a redlink, but the Aerosmith episode isn't likely to rate as content in their article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:19, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia style and naming request for comment

 Done

 – A lesson in "be careful what you wish for". Think twice about opening a redundant RfC after ignoring the discussion prior to it, in hopes that you'll just somehow magically WP:WIN.

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Greetings

Hello there. I hope it's okay for me to leave a message on your talk page. I just wanted to mention that phrases like "random WP editors" or recommendations to peruse unrelated links might be considered offensive. I hope you understand my perspective. Take care in the meantime. Infinity Knight (talk) 09:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I actually have no idea what you're referring to. I edit hundreds of pages per day.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Is that so? Would you like me to provide specific examples (diffs) to help jog your memory? It would be appreciated if you could acknowledge the veracity of this information. Infinity Knight (talk) 11:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Despite my clear request to the contrary, you persist in offering links that do not contribute to the discussion. What is the reason for this? Furthermore, you are now engaging in baseless speculations about my motives. Would it be necessary for me to furnish you with links to relevant policies on this matter? Infinity Knight (talk) 13:57, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course diffs of the posts in question would be helpful, and your dancing around pretending it's some kind of imposition for you to provide any comes off as unnecessarily hostile game-playing. Just get to the point, please. I have no idea what discussion or links or speculations you're referring to. No, I don't need links to policies; I've been writting them for 17 years.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Digging around on my own, I realized this has something to do with the "Contentious labels" discussion at WT:MOSWTW. I have no idea what links you are referring to that you think are unrelated, but there is no policy against posting links that someone doesn't find relevant. There is no issue with the phrase "random WP editors". You are a random WP editor, and so am I; neither of us are in positions of special authority or influence, like ArbCom members. We're just random editors. Your continual erection of "might be considered offensive" language, here and at that other page, is a bad sign; if you want to quote and read policies, start with WP:NOT#SOAPBOX and WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND, and re-read your apparent favorite, WP:CIVIL. If you think that implying that every random editor who disagrees with you about something is being "offensive", you are being anything but civil. And using borderline obsequious language, like you are doing here, while trying to pick a fight for no reason is WP:FALSECIV and not going to fool anyone. Finally, I'm not engaging in any "baseless speculations about [your] motives"; I'm analyzing the text of the propositions and rationales you are posting, for what effects they are likely to produce if adopted as guideline changes, and making it easier to label people/groups/events as "terrorist[s]" or "racist[s]" is the very probable outcome.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I also want people to stop using drugs and alcohol . I want help them so that they can move forward with their lives 😊 41.116.50.68 (talk) 18:32, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Don't we all? But that doesn't seem to relate to this discussion at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:08, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

🤣 I reckon this chat needs to simmer down a bit. I can kinda see the sense in what you're saying. Infinity Knight (talk) 20:07, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but it wasn't really simmering from my point of view. Just because you are meeting with disagreement doesn't mean the other party is angry. If I got actually angry every time I disagreed with someone, editing WP would become rapidly impossible for me. Being met with disagreement and opposition doesn't mean you are being attacked, it just means people disagree with and resist what you proposed. Need to compartementalize. "I am not an idea I came up with, and an idea I came up with is not me."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:53, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

October thanks

October songs

my story today

Thank you for improving articles in October! - Today, it's a place that inspired me, musings if you have time. My corner for memory and music has today a juxtaposition of what our local church choirs offer. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:50, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Input requested

Resolved

 – Don't think any further input from me is needed. This just needs additional source research, a new RfC, and an agreement between two parties to not antagonize each other unnecessarily.

Hello SMcCandlish. Given that you are a template editor, I would appreciate your input in the discussion User talk:Thinker78#Request dated 20 October 2023. Specifically, my request is more geared to your opinion about the use of the {{adminhelp}} template, as I don't know where the admin based their advise on and I think they may not reply. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:51, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78: I tend not to wade into disputes like this without looking at all the background material, so I'll end up addressing more than you asked about. :-) I would bet that where Bbb23 was coming from is that the template is documented for a situation "which requires an administrator to perform a task" (like fix a broken full-protected template or something like that). Raising a concern about another user's behavior is more of a judgment and input question than a task to perform, and ANI is the general venue for that if the behavior doesn't seem to be a momentary flare-up. (And this to me doesn't look like a good ANI report.) At WT:RFC, WhatamIdoing's response to both of you has good advice. For my part, I think M.Bitton was overreacting when it came to their comment being moved (especially in an RfC that does have separate sections for discussion and !votes), but it's not a hill to die on. Their venting seems a bit emotive but doesn't really rise to personal-attack levels. I reviewed the user-talk thread here, and M.Bitton, like WhatamIdoing, is correct that people involved in RfCs shouldn't be closing them (see WP:CLOSE: "Most discussions don't need closure at all, but when they do, any uninvolved editor may close most of them". A common exception is when you've proposed something and no one's buying it, it's fairly customary to WP:SNOWBALL-close your own proposal as having failed to gain consensus.) I have no idea what the "throwing irrelevant jargon at me" stuff was about, so can't really comment on that. Your suggestion "the way to go is making a request at Wikipedia:Closure requests" was the right one, though I'm not certain what it's in response to (e.g. an attempt by another involved party to close the RfC?). But, see below; I think this RfC right now would not close very usefully and needs more imput. Things like "please check WP:DISRUPTSIGNS and try to not ..." tend to be irritating to experienced users, who've already read the material and are apt to feel insulted at being called disruptive. (At the risk of ignorning my own advice, I would suggest a look at WP:FALSECIV; couching what amount to insults in wording that bends over backwards to sound surface-polite can simply come across as infuritating and insincere.)

Looking over the RfC itself at Talk:North Africa, it was phrased neutrally, so that seems fine. M.Bitton's entry into the discussion was rather stand-offish, but he had an underlying point about lack of sourcing defining the region in terms of the Sahara. But then you provided sources. M.Bitton then got kind of obstructionist in my view, suggesting the sources somehow weren't enough. A more reasonable response might have been that sometimes sources include the Sahara within the definition and sometimes they don't or are silent on the matter. Doing this: "Implemented Senorangel proposal" was a mistake, and amounted to closing the RfC in a way you favored. "Undone Please wait for the RfC closer to decide what to do next" was a reasonable response to that. After that, the discussion basically turned into a two-editor pissing match, and there doesn't seem to be further substantive input, which is still needed.

If I were to independently close that discussion right now, I would conclude that "It should be: North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa), is a region ..." has a rough consensus, but that no consenus was reached on the larger question of what comes after the "...". And that's obviously not a good outcome, since the entire point of the RfC was to answer that question. What you might try is neutrally and concisely advertising the discussion to WT:AFRICA, WT:GEOGRAPHY, maybe even WT:MOSLEAD, as needing further input on how best to write the lead. And keep in mind that leads are meant to summarize the material in the body of the article, so the main part of the article itself needs to cover how various RS (including the additional ones you dug up) define the region, and a summary should naturally emerge from that, even if it ends up as sometimes including and sometimes excluding all or most of the Sahara. I think what I would do (in this order) is work on the body material about sources' definitions, avoiding further conflict with M.Bitton if possible; advertise the discussion to those other venues; then go ask for closure at WP:ANRFC after renewed discussion tapers off. Hope this helps.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:36, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the time you took for the detailed feedback and advice.

• I think {{adminhelp}} should be used as well for conduct disputes, a level higher than regular editor third opinion (WP:DEALWITHINCIVIL step 7) and a lever lower than an ANI report. Thoughts?
• I included my detailed rationale of implementing the proposal in the Talk:North Africa#RfC about the lead sentence thread, which also may address your inquiry about suggesting Closure Request, "Implemented Senorangel proposal" was a mistake", and "Undone Please wait for the RfC closer to decide what to do next" (which also I think they thought someone would close it without requesting closing).
• "tend to be irritating to experienced users". Tbh, I posted in their talk page because they had me irritated with their apparent unreasonable attitude ("stand-offish", "obstructionist").
• "concisely advertising", will do!

Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 06:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

On the template, that's not what it's documented for, so you'd probably need to post on the template talk page about expanding the documented scope of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:41, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I was going to follow your advice about disengaging the editor but they are overly hostile. But I appreciate the feedback you provided. It soothes the mind a bit hearing from a fellow editor. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 19:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Hello SmcCandlish, I was pinged recently and followed the discussions here. The first sentence should inform nonspecialist readers without being overloaded. In this case, a single, clear definition may not exist. Would saying that North Africa has no such definition satisfy being informative in this unusual situation? Senorangel (talk) 02:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Senorangel: It could well end up that way. Something like "... is a region with varying definitions, all of which include the northern coast of Africa, but vary in how far south the region encompasses, sometimes but not always including most to all of the Sahara desert." Kind of along those lines. As I suggested elsewhere, doing a bunch of sourcing (in the article body) on how various reliable sources define the region should kind of naturally provide sufficient material and "shape" to summarize into a sentence or two for the lead, but I'm skeptical that the RfC or a followup to it will arrive at something very satisfactory without that work being done, because people keep angling to use their own preferred interpretation rather than distill a précis of what the sources agree on and how they differ.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Should this change to the guideline be reverted?

Resolved

 – Commented both there at the related WT:MOSTM discussion; there is some tangential followup below.

Hi SMcCandlish. I notice you replied to RoyLeban on the talk page, but did you notice their edit to the guideline? Should that not have been discussed before being made? I feel it reads more awkwardly now—especially as the edit introduced the short sentence "Trademarks that begin with a lowercase prefix" that doesn't appear to have a point—but I thought I'd leave it to you to revert as I consider you a guideline expert. Ss112 02:31, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ss112: Some of that edit was good, other aspects of it not so much. I've tried a blended version [13].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Although I think there are larger concerns with what they've said that I've separately asked an administrator to address, do you see any benefit to weighing in at Talk:I/O (album)? The same user whom you're talking to on the trademarks guideline talk page refuses to accept anything other than Peter Gabriel's word that the title is i/o in lower-case, despite the user acknowledging that secondary news sources that use I/O in capitals exist. (However, he says those are incorrect, despite the title being an acronym.) Either way, it would be very helpful to have other people weigh in when my patience has been exhausted there. Ss112 15:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Glad you brought that to my intention, since it clarifies what the real purpose behind the changes to the guideline page were: making it easier to force Wikipedia to use lower-cased stylizations preferred by trademark holders.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:36, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Ss112: I just happened to notice this and thought I would respond for clarification.

First, as I've explained elsewhere (and below), my changes on the guideline were unrelated to the i/o album, I just happened to notice the issues when I was editing that page (and I did not attempt to hide this fact). My edits on the i/o page were not the "real purpose". If you think it through, you'll understand that's a ridiculous conjecture because none of the changes I made would apply to the i/o page. What my GF edit was intended to do was to make the guideline clearer and make it match what is actually happening on Wikipedia. Please be more careful when accusing editors of having hidden agendas.

Second, the people arguing for I/O instead of i/o are saying, essentially, that if any sources use I/O, then the title on the page cannot be i/o. That's not what the guideline says, and it's not how Wikipedia works. The argument is three-fold. (a) i/o is not a stylization — it is always used. Claiming it is a stylization is disingenuous. If I/O is shown, it is a deliberate choice by Wikipedia to not use the name given to the work. Wikipedia has a right to make that choice, but we should not lie to people in saying why we are doing it. (b) I believe that a name is a fact, and Wikipedia allows primary sources for facts. If nobody believes the statement to be a fact, that would be a different story, but that's not the case here. (c) The vast majority of secondary sources use i/o, not I/O. Yes, there are exceptions, but there are also people who refer to Bell Hooks and even Iphone. Wikipedia wants a preponderance of sources, not every single source. As you can see on the talk page, I have suggested that we wait until the full album is released in less than a month. Although there is also an i/o song, there are more articles (and will be more articles) on the whole album. I fully expect continued use of i/o by Peter Gabriel and his label and additional secondary sources which will use it as well. RoyLeban (talk) 06:26, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

We've already been over this in excrucitiating detail, and you are playing WP:IDHT games, for which I have no patience. "i/o is not a stylization — it is always used": It absolutely is a stylization within the meaning of MOS:TM and the rest of MoS. No amount of philosophical equivocation about what "stylization" could/might mean in some other context and how such a meaning might relate to or conflict with your personal idea of what a "name" is (which agrees with neither linguistic nor philosophical definitions of proper name, about which only the first to MoS care anyway) is going to change that. And it is not not "always used". You may have a case that it is almost always used, in which case an argument to not render it as "i/o" is weak, but that has nothing to do with the guideline being broken somehow, and making unsupportable arguments like "always used" and "is not a stylization" is never going to convince anyone you are right. No one cares that "[you] believe that a name is a fact", by which you mean that a name stylized a partiicular way is an objective instead of subjective matter; Wikipedia does not, by 20+ years of consensus, approach names in this manner. What this comes down to is that you are inisistent on mimicking the stylization prefer by creators/publishers of things, and Wikipedia is not, and this is never going to change.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:19, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

I was commenting here for the benefit of @Ss112 who had accused me of having a hidden agenda. I was restating my argument for clarity. My "always used" comment was w.r.t. usage by the creator of i/o, Peter Gabriel. I could have been clearer there. Sorry.

You are confusing my statements about how the world at large works and how Wikipedia works. Yes, Wikipedia can make rules about how names are shown, but that doesn't change the world outside of Wikipedia. To the world, names are facts. People don't think that other people get to decide what their names are, how they are spelled, or how they are capitalized. I've never seen anyone outside of Wikipedia claim so many things are stylizations. Wikipedia's guidelines and policies don't change that. When you say "stylization," a more accurate phrasing is "what Wikipedia calls a stylization". I also think you are mischaracterizing what I'm saying when I point out real world facts in cases where I think Wikipedia should do better. How can individual decisions be made if discussion isn't allowed? That is not the same as insisting that Wikipedia mirror the real world, though I wish it would. I will endeavor to be clearer w.r.t. comments about the real world vs. Wikipedia.

You're also misunderstanding what I wrote about the guideline not being followed. My point was that there are editors saying that if any sources use uppercase I/O, it means that Wikipedia can't shouldn't use lowercase i/o. As you've explained, that's not what the guideline says.

Finally, for the record, i/o is not some old discussion I'm trying to revisit; the album hasn't even been released yet!

Look, I don't want to argue with you. That wasn't my intent in providing background information to Ss112. RoyLeban (talk) 11:52, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

There is no need at all for WP to say something like "what Wikipedia calls a stylization". It is automatically apparent to everyone (except apparently you) that when WP uses a term in its own internal documentation and rulemaking that the term means what WP means by it, not what some external third party might mean by it in a way that doesn't make any sense within the context of the WP rule. We don't go around writing "what Wikipedia calls a secondary source" or "what Wikipedia calls original research" or "what Wikipedia calls notability", etc., despite such terms provably having divergent meanings in other contexts. And nothing is broken. Our users understand. Here, you're arguing for a distinction between "what Wikipedia calls a stylization" and your personal idiolect interpretation of what "stylization" means which isn't even attested in any real-world RS material that we could conceivably have some reason to care about and account for. In short, if it works for "secondary source", "original research", and "notable", it works prefectly fine for "stylization". If there were a large mass of editors perpetually confused about what "stylization" meant in that material, you might have a point, but they simply do not exist. This makes the point you are pursuing simply pedantic. Cf. WP:LAWYER, WP:BUREAUCRACY, WP:CREEP, etc.; we have no need for this stuff. Our internal material needs to be kept simple, not turned into a long-winded morass of blathering about distinctions no one should be trying to draw in the first place to comply with the rule in question. It is completely clear that MOS:TM intends no such distinctions and is intentionally erasing them, so the fact that you can imagine some is just irrelevant. The material has already been tweaked a couple of times to try to satisfy your claims that it is somehow vague or confusing, so it is even clearer now than it was several weeks ago, yet you're still going on about this. It's just a waste of time at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:22, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

The word "stylization" the way it is used on Wikipedia rarely appears in the real world. "Secondary source" and "original research" have basically the same definitions on WP as in the real world. "Notable" is borderline, but news sources, encyclopedias, and other reference works have always had their own detailed definitions of what makes someone or something notable. When discussing if a particular name on WP should reflect the name given by the creator or owner or if it should follow Wikipedia's naming conventions, it is absolutely necessary to talk about how the name is presented in the real world. I happen to think it's a little pedantic to insist that statements must explicitly say "real world" when it's pretty clear what the reference is. But I'll try to be explicit even when I don't think it's necessary.

BTW, you said that 95% of sources should use a particular "stylization" in order for Wikipedia to respect it. Where is that? I could not find it.

There's a term I have promoted in UX design called "signing for natives." The idea is that the main roads in a city don't need signs. Everybody knows what they are. The signing for natives philosophy is: Who needs a sign on Main Street?! Well, non-natives do. Go into most towns in Massachusetts and you'll find they have a Mass Ave (and, frequently a Com, or Commonwealth Ave). What you mostly won't find is street signs that tell you that it's Mass Ave. Everybody knows it, supposedly. Thank goodness that GPS navigators don't follow the same principal, but it wreaked havoc before everybody had one on our phone. I got totally lost one day because I came across an unsigned street and assumed it was Mass Ave. It turned out to be Com Ave instead. Signing for natives is bad.

What you are basically saying is WP doesn't need to explain things that all editors know (supposedly). It's signing for natives, and it's flawed.

All that said, I do appreciate your help in clarifying the guideline. RoyLeban (talk) 11:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

These assertions are easy to disprove in moments. Google for stylization of text [14]. Read various of the top results; they are about applying italics, boldfacing, all-caps, font coloring, special typefaces, and other effects to text material, and this is exactly what MOS:TM means by it (along with other MoS sections that deal with such matters beyond the TM context). Next, Google definitions of "secondary source" OR "secondary sources" -wikipedia. Note that the definitons are all over the map, from "one that was created later by someone that did not experience firsthand or participate in the events in which the author is writing about" to "works that analyze, interpret, or merely describe historical or scientific events", "one that was created later by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you’re researching", "based on firsthand accounts or records of a thing being researched or studied but that is not itself a firsthand account", "analyze a scholarly question and often use primary sources as evidence", "created by scholars who interpret the past through the examination of primary sources and the research of others .... typically the commentary about your topic", and so on. If you get into law material, you find that there is no such thing as a tertiary source in that field (in the US, anyway), and that what we define as tertiary sources are considered secondary ones in the legal field (and this is true in several others as well). These definitions do not agree with each other, so cannot agree with our own. They are often confined to a specific field, and they are all missing one or more aspects of what secondary source means on Wikipedia. It's why we define it carefully in our own terms (along with primary source and tertiary source). We have long had problems with new editors from specific disciplines trying to apply their discipline's definitions to our material. On notable, the fact that some other publications have the concept (under that name or otherwise) but it doesn't match our definition was precisely my point to begin with.

There is no wikilawyering lever to press here. We don't specify it as a number, but as "overwhelming majority of reliable sources", "a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources", "consitently used in reliable sources", and various other phrasing in various MoS pages. The practical, de facto application of this in thousands of WP:RM and other discussions over many years is an expectation of well over 90% usage in current, independent, reliable sources. If the usage is more mixed than that, people will continue to push for avoiding the stylization because it's not what is consistently found in sources independent of the subject; when source usage is more than trivially mixed, we have no compelling reason not to follow the defaults of our own style guide, especially when an unusual stylization is apt to have an WP:UNDUE attention-getting effect toward one party or their product/service.

When our article title and in-wikivoice article text are not using a stylization, but the work creator or trademark holder does use one, the first thing we already do is this: "Foo (stylized ƒ00) is ....". So, your "a particular name on WP should reflect the name given by the creator or owner ... talk about how the name is presented in the real world" issue is already accounted for. If you haven't already noticed this, then I think the amount of time you are devoting to trying to convince me to change my mind or the community to change its guidelines is very poorly spent (for all of us).

On "signposting for the natives" (a clearer phrasing, since "signing" often means "using sign language", or "writing one's signature"), I don't know what specific lines in MoS or elsewhere you're referring to. Your street signs story doesn't appear to be analogous to anything in this too-long discussion.

If you're not sure when to use principle versus principal you are probably not in a good position to fulminate about line-items in style guides. The WP:CIR principle is required in triplicate in this area: you need to be editorially competent in this collaborative environment as usual, but you also have to have a lot of experience in policywriting, and considerable English-language usage expertise across multiple registers of English writing. Taken all together, these have to translate into an ability to digest real-world usage data (ngrams, etc.) and recommentations of diverse external style guides, distill out anything not ideal for encyclopedic writing in particular, then synthesize these with Wikipedia-specific concerns and requirements, and produce WP:P&G-type wording that very succinctly encapsulates community best practice (which is based on years of experience and observation of actual practices here and the consensuses behind them, not based on a desire to legislate a change in that behavior), while also not conflicting with any other policy, guideline, or other operating principle, or having any other unintended negative consequences, all while fending off PoV-motivated attempts to engineer conflicting results to favor one special interest/viewpoint or another. It's extraordinarily difficult, and a only tiny sliver of our editorial pool are actually capable of it. They generally watchlist and respond at MoS talk pages, and if you can't convince the editors at the appropriate one that the change you want to make is a good idea, no amount of arguing with an individual in user-talk is going to make any difference.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:33, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes you seem very reasonable, sometimes you don't. If you look up my background, you'll find that I know more about text stylization than almost everybody, having been the primary functional designer of the FullWrite word processor (the first 100% WYSIWYG word processor) a few decades ago. I don't need a lecture on stylization of text. Stylization of names, to use Wikipedia's phrasing, is a different topic which happens to use the same word. (Yes, some "stylized" names might use text stylization, but an uppercase letter after an Mc or Mac, or the uppercase letter in FullWrite or RoyLeban, or lowercase i/o, is simply not text stylization.) Yes, how names should be shown ("stylization of names") is discussed in style guides (like, say, the AP style guide) but it is a term not used by most people. I'm not going to nitpick the rest.

Attacking me for a typo I made on a late night edit just isn't nice. (Check the two typos you made in "... you are inisistent on mimicking the stylization prefer by ..." that I noticed but didn't mention; they have no bearing on your competence.)

Thanks for suggesting a change to a phrase I've been using for decades (and instant apologies for my sarcasm). It's "signing for natives" not "signposting for natives" because "signpost(ing)" has a specific meaning in UX, which is not the same as this usage. My point was that Wikipedia guidelines frequently use signing for natives (not signposting for natives) because it is assumed that everybody knows the same things, but they don't. The 90% number is an example. Additional detail which helps non-natives shouldn't be summarily dismissed as merely fighting off jerks.

And that's a segue to agreeing that you're right that editing policies/guidelines/rules/etc is difficult. That's why your thoughts & advice have been useful. I still appreciate it. We don't have to continue this here. As I said, I commented here because of the false accusation. And I still think MOS:TM and MOS:NAMES could be clearer. I'll let it rest for now and look back in a while when I have fresh eyes. RoyLeban (talk) 11:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough; sorry. It didn't seem like a typo but like a deliberate word choice, and we do get people showing up at MoS on a pretty regular basis who don't understand spelling, word usage, grammar, punctuation, etc., yet trying to make changes at MoS to conform to something their middle-school teacher said 30 years ago, or something their colleagues do at work, or some idiolect idea they've come up with on their own, so perhaps I have an ingrained reaction pattern. I don't look into editors' backgrounds here unless there's a real reason to do so (e.g. strong evidence of CoI editing). I just address the arguments or behavior in front of me, and tend to forget the user name after a week anyway.

I'm mystified that you can be presented with a category of personal names like "McCandlish" and "van den Hoedt" on the one hand and stylized trademarks like "SONY" and "SE7EN", which are clearly divisible into two conceptually different categories but are all proper names, and then when given the album title "I/O" or "i/o", decide that it belongs in the first of these categories. Even if there is no way to convince you otherwise (and after this exhausting discussion that appears to be the case), it ultimately doesn't matter because our style guidelines really, really clearly put this in the second category and treat everything in it as a class subject to the same rules. It's just something to live with. WP might end up going with i/o anyway, but it will only be on the basis that nearly every independent source goes along with that style, not on the basis of whether it's a name (of course it's a name), or what the trademark holder considers "official", or whether you can come up with an alternative meaning for the word stylization which is not the meaning employed by MoS.

I think what might be hanging you up is the assumption (which might be correct, though I'm unaware of any evidence of it so far) that Gabriel himself would write "i/o" in running text (unlike, say, Sony which writes "Sony" in regular print despite their logo reading "SONY"). But there are many other cases of this, like Firebrand Labs who insist on writing "firebrand labs"; if they get an article here, it will be at "Firebrand Labs" and will begin "Firebrand Labs (stylized firebrand labs) is ....". USA Today consistently refers to itself as "USA TODAY" but only the first part of that is an acronym, and our article is thus at USA Today, opening with "USA Today (often stylized in all caps) ...." After 20+ years of applying the same ruleset (which is actually even consistent with AP Stylebook for once, along with all the more academic-leaning style guides) we're not going to change this because one person has a wild hare about a particular album. I've said many times that there is no line-item in MoS that various editors do not want to change, and there is no editor who doesn't want to change at least one MoS line-item. (That even goes for us MoS regulars; I would change at least 100 things in it if I could. At least in theory. Really, even if I had consensus to do so, doing it this late in the game would provoke considerable chaos and community ill-will because these matters are ultimately rather arbitrary and of value in being stable, while changing them may affect thousands even potentially millions of articles for twiddles most people don't care about.).

"Signposting" in the UX sense seems compatible with your "for natives" criticism. One wouldn't leave off the "Enter your payment information:" signposting above a credit card form on the assumption that "natives" (people already using your website on a regular basis) already know what the form is for, or that users in general would be able to figure it out. Lots of stuff gets left out of MoS and other policies and guidelines and left to pretty vague terminology, by design. As much as is practical is left to editorial judgment and consensus, and we know from experience that putting in something like "at least 90% of sources" will just lead to disruptive wikilawyering and system-gaming behavior, like attempts to fudge search and ngram results to hit the target. We don't impose numbers lite this on any internal processes like RfCs or XfDs. Not even RfA; it used to have a strict numeric cut-off, but this was changed by broad community consensus to a pretty wide "discretionary range" band of 65–75% support which then results in a "'crat chat", a secondary and constrained consensus discussion that is a bit like an electoral college. This intentionally nebulous sense of consensus formation is not the most efficient means of doing things, but it's the one we have.

Sometimes it produces undesirable outlier results, too. It is very probable that k.d. lang should move to K. D. Lang, because an examination of independent source usage shows neither an overwhelmingly consistent application of lowercase (especially outside the entertainment press), nor "k.d." or "K.D." initials formatting in particular, with "K. D." and "KD" showing up frequently, meaning there is no reason to not simply apply WP's default style. Sometimes cases like this linger for a while simply because no one has the stomach for an RM that is certain to arouse the ire of a bunch of heavy fans of the subject. Gabriel is apt to be similar; there's a whole camp of editors obsessed with "author/artist/studio intent" who like to mimic album and song and movie title stylizations. They occasionally get their way (e.g. Spider-Man: Far From Home which obviously should be at Spider-Man: Far from Home), when virtually all of the "independent" source material is entertainment journalism, a genre which bends over backwards to "obey" stylization of work titles, because they are kept afloat entirely by advertising money from studios, networks, and record labels, and so they are not in fact independent of the subject but fiscally beholden. Eventually the Spider-Man movie article will be renamed, after there is enough coverage in other media (film journals, etc.) to demonstrate that sources in the aggregate are not near-consistently using From, and that it's simply entertainment press doing it to "obey" Paramount's marketing preferences. But all of these pop-culture cases I've mentioned have been subject to knock-down-drag-out fights about their article titles (sometimes more than once) because of their connection pop culture and fandom, and few of us have an appetite to fire up that noise and stress all over again, so they are generally left alone for a long time.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:54, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

We agree that the difference between names like McCandlish and SONY and SE7EN is context and usage. We disagree on details. I daresay you never use Mccandlish or MCCandlish, whereas Sony does use both Sony and SONY, and the producers/creators of SE7EN used Seven, SEVEN, and SE7EN (clearly the last is therefore a stylization). In contrast, if somebody else uses Mccandlish, that doesn't change the correct way it should appear, no matter how often they do so. I ran across somebody recently who had a name like OHare (I can't recall the actual name). Like O’Hare, but no apostrophe. I would say that person has a slightly different last name that someone with the name O’Hare. I have a friend with a hyphenated first name, like One-Two. The hyphen is left out a LOT, perhaps more often then it's left in. That doesn't change his name. In these cases, Wikipedia should use OHare and One-Two, not O’Hare and One Two. (And, FWIW, when I was in school, my name would sometimes get written as LeBan. Obviously it must have been French; it's not. It happens very rarely now, not sure why it changed.)

I can't comment on Firebrand/firebrand simply because I'm not familiar with them. I'd have to research USA TODAY/Today to have an opinion. Personally, I don't discount entertainment press.

"Signposting for natives" is a subset of "signing for natives." Your examples are therefore both. A lot of Wikipedia and a lot of MoS is written for people who basically already know the subject. Jump into many an article on physics and you can't understand it unless you already understand it. That's all "signing for natives" and has nothing to do with signposting.

Your comment on hard %'s being gameable is certainly a good point. I'll bear that in mind. RoyLeban (talk) 07:32, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

"if somebody else uses Mccandlish, that doesn't change the correct way it should appear, no matter how often they do so." There probably is someone who uses that spelling, and I know for a fact there are some that use "MacCandlish". See https://Cuindlis.org/variants/ – there are many, many versions of this name, and there are two important facts to consider: Until very modern times, various pretty-close spellings were simply interchangeable, even in reference to the same person, and often even in the same person's own writing; they might use "MacCandlish" (or "Mac Candlish") in their youth, then "M'Candlish" or "McCandlish" or "Mc Candlish" or "MaCandlish" (or "Macandlish" or "MacAndlish" ...), or "M^cCandlish" later on, or even switch to "Candlish". I've even seen cases of switches to much more different spellings, e.g. from McCanles to McCandless. Secondly, the idea any of these particular renditions is the one and only possible/correct way to spell the name for a particular individual is an ultra-modern idea (maybe the last 3 generations, tops) and one that is not universally accepted. This is particularly true when multiple languages are at play; e.g. plenty of the Irish and the Gaelic-speaking Scots have an English name spelling and an Irish or Scottish Gaelic one, and they significantly differ, and can even be rendered multiple ways in Irish or Scottish Gaelic depending on whether you choose the modern orthography or the traditional/old-fashioned one. I know lots of Hispanics in New Mexico and California whose names "properly" have one or more diacritics, but who don't use them except when writing in Spanish. (For my own part, I go by "Stanton" as my first name, my entire adult life, but I have family members who insist on calling me "Stan", even though they know I don't use it. So, my name actually is "Stan" for a particular subset of people, no matter what I say to the contrary. And quite a few of them will likely outlive me. Lost cause. A bit like Cristoforo Colombo is always going to be known as Christopher Columbus to millions of people, whether he would have preferred that or not, and no matter how many Italians or whatnot say that isn't the proper way to spell his name.

It's really not something for WP editors to get hung up on, and especially not to engage in OR about what "must" be "the" "correct" way to spell someone's name. I've frequently seen people try to do this with living subjects (especially with diacritics) and seen them be wrong (in both directions). When it comes to more outright stylization like "k.d. lang" we're in even more subjective territory, where a personal name and trademark are blending into each other. Many style guides would simply not accept "CCH Pounder" and insist on "C. C. H. Pounder" or "C.C.H. Pounder" depending on their house style for rendering initials. WP has gone the step (which not everyone agrees with) of making exceptions like "CCH Pounder" when, but only when, both the nameholder and the vast majority of independent sources agree on that rendition. That's where stuff like "SONY" and "SE7EN" fail, and where "i/o" or "I/O" are going to eventually result in some debate. And it won't have more that a smidgin to do with the trademarkholder's preference; we usually already know what that is. It all comes down to independent source usage and whether it's just overwhelmingly in favor of the stylized version. As for your friend One-Two, I don't think anyone wants to write it "One Two" or "OneTwo", or we'd keep having circular arguments at places like Talk:JoBeth Williams, but we don't; our habit is to treat personal names as they are treated by the proponderance of the sources, and to give a bit of WP:ABOUTSELF deference to living individuals, but not to dead ones and not to corporations or other non-individual entites or their products.

On the "many an article on physics" matter, you should probably check out the lengthy debate happening at WT:Make technical articles understandable and a split-off of that now at WT:MOSLEAD. Both discussions could probably use additional input from new eyes and brains instead of just being the same dozen editors arguing in circles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:37, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

@RoyLeban:, I just happened to notice this too. First of all, with all due respect, I am not reading your paragraphs on a topic I tapped out of last month. I have no interest in this debate you are still having nearly a month later. I greatly thank SMcCandlish for still having the patience to respond because I certainly don't. Leaving the topic aside, I implore you to reread my two preceding messages at the top of this thread. Nowhere did I talk about or imply what your motives were. I didn't even mention the word "agenda" let alone imply you had one. It was SMcCandlish who stated what your supposed "real purpose" for editing the guideline was and not me ("Glad you brought that to my intention, since it clarifies what the real purpose behind the changes to the guideline page were: making it easier to force Wikipedia to use lower-cased stylizations preferred by trademark holders"). I asked SMcCandlish if your change to the guideline should be reverted as it had not been discussed then asked him to weigh in at the talk page of I/O, that's literally it. You tell me to be more careful about something I didn't even do, then you state twice (from what I skimmed) that I was the one who said you had a "hidden agenda". I think you need to read more carefully and not tell me to be careful in regards to something I never did. Finally, there was and is no point in pinging me; I turned all pings off years ago. I am not continuing this beyond this message either. I am clarifying that I never said nor implied you had any agenda whatsoever. Thank you. Ss112 14:09, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

"Agenda" is probably too loaded a word. It's become clear in this discussion that RoyLeban has a view toward "obeying" or 'respecting" or whatever you want to call it the style of trademarked names more than the consensus behind MOS:TM is willing to tolerate. This sort of thing isn't uncommon (every line item in MoS, and in every policy and guidleine for that matter, has its detractors). I think we've talked this out about as much as it can be talked out, and a user-talk discussion of this sort isn't going to have any effect on the guidelines anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:58, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

A few things. Thanks for saying "agenda" is too loaded. I certainly don't have a secret agenda. The thing that bothers me the most is the false statement that Wikipedia rules are reality outside of Wikipedia and that's why "stylized as" bothers me so much. It frequently states something that isn't true and borders on OR (i.e., it's easy to find many sources for a supposedly stylized name but I have yet see a citation for a source that says it's a stylization). In many cases, the reality is that Wikipedia is stylizing the name according to its rules, not vice versa. We've discussed this already and I don't know a way to fix it. This statement on MOS:TM is an example: "Adidas, on the other hand, uses "adidas" rather than "Adidas" in running text when referring to the company, and the stylism is therefore mentioned." adidas has used that name, with that casing, for 74 years(!), yet Wikipedia pretends the name of the company is Adidas. It's not (see, for example: https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/addyy, though yes, there are other places that refuse to respect the company's chosen name). It is Wikipedia that is stylizing it with an uppercase A and pretending it's the other way around, so it is stating something that is untrue, and this happens in many cases. If you have any suggestions on how to fix this, I'd appreciate your thoughts.

A minor point, SONY and SE7EN are not at all similar to i/o. i/o is like adidas, though it hasn't been 74 years.

Also, we're sort of agreeing with respect to what you wrote about name spellings (though, FYI, how long single spellings have been standardized varies with language and location). There are some on Wikipedia who would argue that names like McCandlish should be shown the same way every time — Wikipedia has it's rules! So Joe Mccandlish and Mary MacCandlish would have their names spelled as if they were other people. I don't think that the spelling (or pronunciation) of people's names is ever up for debate. It seems we agree there, and Wikipedia does seem to respect that. We disagree on casing and non-personal names. So we can just agree to disagree and I'm going to continue to argue about the point I made above, when it is an issue. Wikipedia's rules shouldn't allow it to be inaccurate or state things that aren't true.

One thing I've learned here is to be more precise to avoid the confusion where people think I'm talking about Wikipedia rules when I'm talking about reality. Thanks for that. RoyLeban (talk) 12:20, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@RoyLeban: While I am still done with this discussion, I must point out, Roy, you are the one who first mentioned the word "agenda" in this entire thread (CTRL + F agenda: "Please be more careful when accusing editors of having hidden agendas"), now you're thanking SMcCandlish for saying it's too loaded a term when you used it to characterize what you thought I said but was actually what SMcCandlish had said?????? Even with me saying I wasn't intending to reply, I thought you at least would have acknowledged you attributed speculation about motives to the wrong person here. Ss112 13:32, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

@Ss112: I did feel that your comments implied that I had a hidden agenda, though you didn't use the word explicitly. That felt unfair to me, especially since I am always open and honest. To be clear, my comment was about what you wrote, not what SMcCandlish wrote. That said, I understand you think I am accusing you unfairly. I'll accept that you weren't intentionally trying to be unfair to me if you'll accept that I wasn't intentionally trying to be unfair to you. I know my goal is always to improve Wikipedia, and I'll assume that's true for you too. Reasonable people / reasonable editors can disagree without having hidden agendas. Let's move on.

If you have any suggestions on the issue I raised above (how to avoid the statement "stylized as..." which is frequently untrue and basically OR, because the real world reality is the opposite is true), I would be interested in your thoughts. Even if your suggestion is merely a good place to have a discussion. Thanks. RoyLeban (talk) 07:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

That's actually a very different spin on the whole debate. Maybe it's just that you don't like the word "stylized", and if we changed it to something else, like "rendered", "presented", "represented", the entire issue would just evaporate.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:04, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I'll admit that it has taken me time to articulate well that part of the issue, but I've been talking about the fundamental difference between the real world and Wikipedia's version of it from the beginning. Confusion about that hasn't helped the discussion here or elsewhere (when I've said things are facts and others disagree because Wikipedia rules say otherwise on Wikipedia). This is far from the only place or way that Wikipedia asserts that it's rules/guidelines represent reality when it doesn't, but we needn't get into that here.

I will think about this, but I don't think any word replacing "stylized" fixes the problem. In the adidas case, the company was using that name 52 years before Wikipedia was founded, yet the assertion (with any word) is that the name is Adidas and the company is merely stylizing it (or rendering it, or presenting it, ...) as "adidas". This simply isn't a true statement. A true statement is that Wikipedia's style guidelines say adidas should be stylized as Adidas on Wikipedia, so the correct word is something like "actually," resulting in the somewhat awkward:

Adidas AG (actually adidas AG since 1949 and usually given as simply adidas, and shown as Adidas per Wikipedia's style guide), is a German ...

or perhaps:

Adidas AG (actually adidas AG since 1949 and usually given as simply adidas [see MOS:TM]), is a German ...

If you don't like "actually", I'm open to suggestion. My guess is that the best place to bring this up will be MOS:TM.

BTW, what happened with your suggestion here: MOS:TM#Minor consolidation merge — I notice you did not make a change. I completely agree that cross references should be used. My larger concern is that a bunch of Trademarks applies to Names (all of which is buried in Biography, which is hardly intuitive) and there is therefore overlap with not just the section you mentioned but much of the entire MOS:Biography#Names section. If Biography was renamed People and Biography was a section in People (People#Biography), that would help, but I doubt that change could happen (though note that MOS:People does redirect to MOS:Biography, so perhaps it could happen).

Thanks.

RoyLeban (talk) 07:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

You'd never get consensus for "actually", since it is a value judgment and is basically saying that Wikipedia and everyone else in the world who write it as "Adidas" (which is the vast majority of independent sources) are wrong. I.e., we're right back to your confusion of proper names and how they are treated in English by independent writers, versus how they are styled by trademark holders for marketing purposes. I think at this point we just have to accept that you have an unusual and unwavering, immovable view about this, and this view is not compatible with how WP titles and writes articles. And that's okay. Lots of editors have a difference of opinion regarding some WP norm, but the project goes on just fine anyway, and such people are even constructive editors as long as they accept that they're not going to get their way on their pet peeve and don't pursue it disruptively. On the "Minor consolidation merge", I tend not to act on those for weeks or longer, to be certain there aren't principled objections. The material's been unhelpfully arranged for a very long time, and a little longer isn't going to break anything. I doubt there'd be any appetite for moving MoS's biography page to a "people" title, since biographies are about people, and writing about people is writing bigraphies, so it would be changing for the sake of changing, without a clear benefit. MOS:TM and MOS:NAMES don't overlap as much as you think they do; the vast majority of what is at NAMES is specific to human names and does not apply to organizational trademarks and their analogues. The bits that do overlap will be covered (after my tweaking as proposed in that thread) at TM, with cross-references from NAMES. The only benefit I can think of to renaming MOS:BIO to a "people" title would be consistency with WP:NCP, but that's just a guideline and we'd lose consistency with WP:BLP which is a policy; if total consistency were desired, WP:NCP should move to WP:Naming conventions (biography).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:06, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Your statement "since it is a value judgment and is basically saying that Wikipedia and everyone else in the world ... are wrong" is interesting. The status quo on Wikipedia is that "stylized as" is a value judgment and is basically saying that the company itself is wrong about its own name. That just isn't reality outside of Wikipedia. In the real world, people and companies get to choose their own names. As a super obvious example, we don't refer to people by dead names (though, yeah, there are some bad people who insist on dead naming people, but Wikipedia is doing the right thing). We don't insist that Meta Platforms is really named Facebook. We do, apparently, insist that adidas is Adidas.

I know you think it's a pet peeve. For me, it's about accuracy.

Side note: Interestingly, I just looked up Twitter and (a) the page is Twitter, not X, and (b) it said*, inaccurately, that X is stylized as 𝕏, which just isn't true. Their logo is 𝕏, they do not stylize their name that way (see, for example, https://twitter.com/en/tos and https://business.twitter.com/en/basics/intro-twitter-for-business.html). The statement is equivalent to saying that Apple stylizes their name as . They do not. [*I wrote "said" because I just fixed it, and also added a Talk page section.]

When I write this up for general discussion, do you mind if I quote your statement? I think it, especially combined with my contrasting statement, represents the issue really well.

On your merge, if/when you do it, I am happy to help figure out the best way to do it.

On Biography vs. People, people's names are used in far more places than anything you might call a biography. I don't know the number, but I'd guess between 25% and 50% of all articles cite a person's name. Of course, the vast majority of those names are unremarkable, but those pages represent an order of magnitude or two more than the number of biographical articles. I suspect the name Biography persists mostly because "it's always been that way."

RoyLeban (talk) 05:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Re: "The status quo on Wikipedia is that 'stylized as' is a value judgment and is basically saying that the company itself is wrong about its own name." No, and we've been over this before. You know by now, after weeks of circular discussion, that Wikipedia does not mean by "name" or by "stylization" what you like them to mean in your own speech and writing, so substituting your own definition of what "stylization" of a "name" means into a summary of what Wikipedia is saying in its own voice in its guideline is a fallacy of equivocation and a straw man, simultaneously. This is not in any way related to deadnaming, and in fact WP routinely includes deadnames of subjects who have been deceased for more than a short amount of time. Even the notion of banning deadnames from the articles of the recently deceased is a hot topic at WT:BIO right now (including an ongoing revert war), and the closest it has gotten to consensus is that such an elision is not required if the name in question has been reported in multiple RS that have in-depth coverage of the subject. "We don't insist that Meta Platforms is really named Facebook" has nothing to do with this either; they are different names (in the sense that WP means names) and are not related to different stylations (as Wikipedia means that word) of the same name, e.g. "Facebook" versus the "facebook" of their wordmark. As long as you keep trying to redefine "stylizations" as Wikipedia uses that term to mean "different names" as you personally define that term, not as Wikipedia defines it, then you're never going to budge from your notion that our guidelines are broken, and this sort of disucussion with you is going to always be circular.

"I know you think it's a pet peeve. For me, it's about accuracy." Kind of the same issue. This is not in any way an accuracy issue (as long as the stylization, as WP defines that term, is in the lead so that readers know they're at the right article) as far as WP is concerned; it's simply a writing style matter. Otherwise it would not be in a style guideline but in a content guideline or in article title policy. It really would not be possible for MOS:TM or WP:OFFICIALNAME to exist if your view were accepted here. This has not changed at all in WP's entire history. You are nowhere near the first editor to make arguments that it would be more "accure" or "true" or "respectful" or etc. to use the stylized names (WP's definition) preferred by the subject, what you like to think of as their true/correct names. Consensus on the matter has never budged. We use what WP calls a stylized name only if it overwhelmingly dominates in independent sources. The guideline strongly discourages such stylization (as WP defines it) by default, because obviously the natural "monkey see, monkey do" inclination of editors who are fans of Topic A is to include such name stylization (despite few indepedent sources doing it) for their pet topic if they see it done for Topic B (which happens to be stylized that way because it's near-universal in the source material). The average editor can't see the difference (because it requires source research to demonstrated it) unless it is explained clearly to them, so we explain it clearly to them.

Some of our pages change names in response to real-world news slowly if at all. Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:OFFICIALNAME, WP is under no obligation to use as our article title the different name (under either definition) that is preferred by the trademark holder. Most of the world still calls it "Twitter" and until that changes (probably some time next year) WP will, too. Kanye West is another example. Even most entertainment news (the mostly like to a "respect" a celeb rebrand) still refers to him by that name then makes some mention that he semi-recently changed to just Ye. If next year or so, sources mostly take to calling him Ye, then WP will also. But only if the sources do so; going back much further, very few RS have taken to calling Cat Stevens by his later chosen name Yusuf Islam or even later simple Yusuf, so WP doesn't either, and likely never will. As for Twitter's lead, you already fixed [15] someone's overzealous attempt to mimic a logo. But even the material you tweaked should arguably be pared down to remove any discussion of the Unicode character in the lead, since it is not leadworthy material (it is not part of the summary of the most important material about the company and service, giving WP:DUE weight to what is mentioned). I just removed it from the lead and merged your source into the sectional material about the logo, so we'll see if that sticks.

"do you mind if I quote your statement?" I'm not sure which one you mean, but in general what people say on here is open to be fairly and accurately quoted in some other discussion.

On WP:Manual of Style/Biography: If you're sure the page should be renamed, I'm sure you know how WP:RM works, but I would not expect such an RM to be successful, because the gain is subjective and not without cost.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

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Real name

I just want to say that I appreciate that you, like me, use your real name on Wikipedia. I think anonymity leads to a lot of bad behavior — people are, in fact, jerks. The fact that you use your real name makes me trust you more. I think (hope) we want the same thing on the Trademarks guideline. As I said, it wasn't directly related to the i/o issue, just noticed when I was looking at the guideline. I routinely reread guidelines when people refer to them because I can't memorize them all. And, it clearly doesn't reflect what actually happens, which is a problem. Fixing that and possibly changing the policy slightly with respect to how to respect names chosen by owners and creators are two independent issues. Let's keep the heat down on both discussions. RoyLeban (talk) 01:56, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@RoyLeban:Keeping the heat down is good. So please try to interpret all this as constructive not as argumentation for its own sake. I think you are misreading the situation, processually speaking. The guideline wording is guideline wording, not an iron-clad policy. From WP:P&G: "guidelines are generally meant to be best practices for following [policy] standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense. ... Guidelines are sets of best practices supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." Because exceptions can and thus sometimes will apply, it is not possible for guideline wording to obviate all exceptions, yet you seem to be looking to do that (either to prevent exceptions from happening or to change the guideline wording to account for every kind of exception that's ever happened). The fact is that, because there can be exceptiosn to guidelines, it does not matter at all that you can find some exceptions is practice to this guideline. Such exceptions are expected and natural. So, there is no pressure or rush to change the guideline text to account for exceptions. We sometime do it anyway, when the exception type is frequent and the exception applies as a class. But "all trademarks that start with a string of one or more lower-case letters in their 'official' renderings" is the class, and it is not a class to which a blanket exception applies at all. Such trademarks are handled case-by-case, and in most cases the result is to write it witout the stylization. Instances like eBay, tvOS, iPhone are rare, not a norm here.

"[C]hanging the policy slightly with respect to how to respect names chosen by owners and creators" is, as you say, a separate matter, and a highly contentious one on which I predict you will gain no traction at all (starting with your use of the word "how" instead of "whether"), because it would obviously throw open the floodgate of demands for Wikipedia to bend over backwards to "obey" trademark holders and other entities (government agencies, etc.) on "official" stylizations of all sorts. (And the policy standards, to use P&G's wording, that are at issue with that are primarily WP:NPOV and WP:COI and