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MSH and article titles

WP:MSH incorporates WP:MOS#Article titles by reference. #Article titles says this:

Titles should normally be nouns or noun phrases: Early life, not In early life.

This is being understood to mean that section headings should not use titles like ==In philosophy==, ==In animals==, ==In children==, etc. These section headings are relatively common, however, and IMO Headache#In children or Fever#During pregnancy more clearly communicate the subject than Headache#Children or Fever#Pregnancy, which might lead the reader to assume that children and pregnancy caused or were these medical conditions, rather than children and pregnancies requiring different medical care for medical conditions. WP:MEDMOS#Sections recommended the prepositional phrases for years, until this rule against prepositional phrases as article titles was applied.

Is this particular point of #Article titles supposed to be applied to section headings? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Those prepositional phrases can be converted to noun phrases by the addition of nouns: "Occurrence in children", "Occurrence during pregnancy". The resulting noun phrases are not too wordy.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

But what's the point? Just to make them conform to the literal wording of some guideline in a way that was (probably) never intended even by the people who wrote the guideline? Victor Yus (talk) 10:06, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

In the absence of contrary evidence, it seems to me to be reasonable to assume that the people who wrote the guideline did intend that section headings be in conformity with its literal wording.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:11, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

All right, it's just possible that they did - but the people who matter (the Wikipedia community) have not seen it that way, and have continued to make section titles in accordance with their needs; hence the literal meaning of the guideline has no consensus, and therefore no authority. We aren't a written-rule-driven society here. Victor Yus (talk) 17:04, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Wavelength, I'm more interested in knowing what you think would actually be best, not what you think would conform most closely to the written advice here. Consider an article like Thought experiment, which has a section heading ==In science== and another ==In philosophy==. Look at Infinite divisibility, which has five such sections, Subject–object problem, which has eight, and Holism, which has twelve. These are not perfect, polished articles, and they do not conform to this particular rule, but pretend for a moment that the MOS didn't exist, and that you had nothing more than your own good editorial judgment to guide you. What do you think would be good for these section headings? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

At this moment, I consider these to be the best options.

• The article "Thought experiment" (version of 12:29, 23 March 2013) can have headings "Uses in science" and "Use in philosophy".
• The article "Infinite divisibility" (version of 23:54, 29 January 2013) can have headings "Concept in philosophy" and "Concept in physics" and "Concept in economics" and "Concept in order theory" and "Concept in probability distributions".
• The article "Subject–object problem" (version of 15:42, 30 March 2013) can have headings "Concept in early philosophy" and "Concept in 18th- and 19th-century philosophy" and "Concept in 20th- and 21st-century philosophy" and "Concept in science" and "Concept in the Vedas", and subheadings "Concept in physics" and "Concept in mathematics" and "Concept in clinical trials" and "Concept in psychology".
• The article "Holism" (version of 11:15, 27 March 2013) can have a heading "Concept in science", and subheadings "Concept in anthropology" and "Concept in business" and "Concept in ecology" and "Concept in economics" and "Concept in philosophy" and "Concept in sociology" and "Concept in psychology of perception" and "Concept in teleological psychology" and "Concept in theological anthropology" and "Concept in theology" and "Concept in neurology".

—Wavelength (talk) 16:03, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't that strike you as simply being "article title in philosophy", except using a synonym to get around the "no article titles in section headings" rule?

I don't really think that's an improvement. It seems like needlessly repeating a synonym through the entire table of contents. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

"Occurrence" is elegant variation for the article title. Two issues: (1) This suggestion conflicts with the rule against repeating article titles in headings. (2) It also conflicts with the rule to use plain English. Plain English usually requires referring to the same thing by the same name; elegant variation is widely condemned. See, any book on plain English.

So where does that leave us? If you have to repeat the article title, you should't use a vague word like "occurrence." Refer to what you're talking about: headaches. But I do think that it's repetitive. So it's best to omit the noun completely. Start with the preposition. That's fine.

—Fluous (talk) 17:34, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree. It would be better to change MSH to specifically say that section heads don't need to be nouns, and stick with "In xxxx". Dicklyon (talk) 16:17, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree too. The proposals with "Concept" seem particularly awkward. Victor Yus (talk) 08:57, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

The word "occurrence" is not synonymous with the article titles in question. It is plain English, and it is not vague. Repetition is acceptable, and elegant variation is acceptable. Repetition of the noun "Concept" is no more or less a case of repetition than is repetition of the preposition "In".

One proposed heading, "Occurrence during pregnancy", means "Occurrence of fever during pregnancy", and differs from "Prevention of fever during pregnancy" and "Detection of fever during pregnancy" and "Treatment of fever during pregnancy".

The philosophical articles presented as puzzles are extreme cases because of the abstract subject matter, where the word "concept" seems to be the best option if not the only option in the choice of a noun. I expect that similar puzzles for the vast majority of articles are far easier to solve.

The template at the top of "Wikipedia:Manual of Style" (version of 11:56, 3 April 2013) says of the Manual: "Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions."

If editors wish to accept headings beginning with prepositions in exceptional cases, there is still good reason to avoid such headings in the vast majority of articles. As the name of a subtopic, a heading is the name of an entity, and entities are referred to by the use of nouns and noun phrases.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:01, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That seems somewhat circular reasoning. The heading doesn't have to be the name of an entity unless we choose to impose a rule that insists it be a name of an entity. (Such a rule doesn't apply in the real world, even for titles of complete works - we have On the Origin of Species and On Aggression, to pick some random examples.) If a section is specifically about occurrence (of the disease in question), then it may well be preferable to include that word in the section title; but if it's about occurrence and prevention and detection and treatment (during pregnancy), then the natural thing to do is to title the section "In pregnancy". I don't see what an arbitrary "must be a noun" rule is supposed to achieve, other than to be One More Rule. Victor Yus (talk) 06:30, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

To the extent that pediatrics and obstetrics is covered in Wikipedia articles at all (our demographic bias in favor of childless males results in that being overlooked), it seems pretty typical to include everything in that section. For example, Anemia#In pregnancy (a non-existent section) ought to say that mild anemia is very common and relatively unimportant in pregnancy, and that iron-containing prenatal vitamins are prescribed to prevent it and to treat it. You wouldn't want three separate sections, each of just one or two sentences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Section titles like “In children” do look weird to me (but less so for subsections, subsubsections, etc. than for top-level sections). What I'd personally do is lose the prohibition to repeat the article title in section titles, and use “Fever in children”. — A. di M.  12:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I also wouldn't want there to be such a prohibition - let people use their judgment case by case. But if the article title was something a lot longer than just "Fever", you probably wouldn't want to be repeating it in every heading (unless it had a snappy abbreviation). Victor Yus (talk) 13:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Massive giant cell tumor of pelviacetabulum, for example. Massive giant cell tumor of pelviacetabulum#Massive giant cell tumor of pelviacetabulum in pregnancy would be pretty awkward. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:53, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Not credit card–sized, but what?

An emdash en dash is used "instead of a hyphen, when applying a prefix (but not a suffix) to a compound that includes a space."

So what am I supposed to use? A hyphen? A space? It does not say. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 06:27, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a grammar expert, but I think it would be an example of use of a hyphenated compound adjective: "credit-card sized". LittleBen (talk) 14:27, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's an adjective in conventional grammar, since "sized" isn't a noun. I don't see any guidance in the MOS either, but since the hyphen binds more tightly than the en dash, I'd write "credit-card–sized". Of course, this is a good argument for writing "the size of a credit card".

(I said "conventional grammar" because modern linguists classify these things by criteria that I don't really understand.) —JerryFriedman (Talk) 13:31, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, "the size of a credit card" avoids the problem, and will better survive the perils of reformatting to other presentation formats, especially voice. That said, a pedant would still be left with the question of whether that is a measure of area, thickness, or volume (just how many Olympic-sized swimming pools is that?), but I don't really think that was the thrust of MQ's query. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. It very often is best to do a radical rewording when one or two tries at resolving a doubt won't settle it quickly. The mere fact that you had to struggle to decide suggests a serious doubt whether the reader will not have similar problems or worse. What is more, if you wish to be consistent, "sized" is itself part of the adjectival phrase; it is a past participle. You might like to consider "credit-card-sized" or "credit card sized". As for the Olympic pool, there are 270522.5 of them in a card, but only if you are very rich; otherwise it is 270522.5 (probably maxed-out) cards to cover a pool, or about 1067851914 to fill a (generously 3m-deep) standard pool. Bill Gates could afford it, more or less. Don't blame me if you run into a slightly over-sized pool; they often are. JonRichfield (talk) 18:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

It would not be an em dash, but perhaps an en dash in some styles. And Ben is right, he's no grammar expert, and his suggestion is lame. You either just use a hyphen, as in "credit card-sized", or use two hyphens, as in "credit-card-sized". In books, you find all these options, including space, and Ben's odd hyphenation in one, and em dash in another. Actually, though "sized" is not a suffix here, in my way of thinking; it's just a compounding like breadbox-sized; some styles say to use en dash in such cases (e.g. this guide and this one and this one), but the big dash rewrite of 2011 didn't really look at it that way. You could propose it. Dicklyon (talk) 05:03, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Meant en dash. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 08:35, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• The MS MOS 4th edition says: <Quote>Use an en dash instead of a hyphen in a compound adjective in which at least one of the elements is an open compound, e.g. "dialog box-type options", "Windows NT-based programs".<UnQuote> HTH (Hope That Helps).  LittleBen (talk) 16:35, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Exactly; which is why Marcus asked. Many styles guides do this. I'd be in favor of adding to our MOS, but so far it is not part of our description of en dash usage. Dicklyon (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• But you wouldn't propose it yourself? ;-) LittleBen (talk) 19:26, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd be strongly against anything like "credit card-sized or "credit card–sized"; those look like attempts to mislead the reader by connecting the words that are separate and separating those that are connected. How many people are going to read "a granodiorite–quartz monzonite phase" (from Dicklyon's third reference) as intended instead of as a phase that combines granodiorite-quartz with monzonite? If people agree with Dicklyon's second reference that "credit-card–sized" is too weird, then I'd say "credit-card-sized" is the option that helps the reader the most. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 02:27, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Credit-card-sized is, I agree, the best, given the current situation of our MOS. In styles where people are more accepting of and familiar with en dashes, they know that credit card–sized is connecting "sized" with something more than just "card", unlike what the hyphen suggests. But this is not a style that was accepted into our MOS, perhaps because it leaves too much ambiguity and is misapprehended by many. I don't propose it because it would be a big discussion about en dashes, which people tend to not like, and in the end probably wouldn't pass. Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposals to change the MOS tend to be discussed (or maybe filibustered is a better term) until the proposals are MOSballed. ;-) LittleBen (talk) 06:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Question about usage of present and past tense

One editor is saying that obsolete computers and obsolete software should be written about in the present tense rather than in the past tense—like "Windows 3.0 is an operating system", "OS/360 and VMX are operating systems", "the Apple II and PC/XT are computers", "the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud is", "Coal-fired steam engines are...", "The Beatles are..." and so on. I'd tend to use past tense for things that (virtually) no longer exist, e.g. they may be long obsolete—difficult or virtually impossible to buy, even on the second-hand market. Are there any guidelines on this? LittleBen (talk) 14:13, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether there is a guideline, but general usage seems to be that if something does exist, then present tense is used. Obsoletion does not meen that it doesn't exist. For example, a TV show that ran in the 1960s but is no longer in production still exists, so "The Prisoner is a TV series". However, The Beatles don't exist as an entity any more, so "The Beatles were..." (but Abbey Road is still an album). In the case of OS/360, this "is in the public domain and can be downloaded freely", so would suggest that this is a case for a present tense. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:39, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Saying "The Prisoner is a TV series" sounds odd to me. The implied assumption when using the present tense about a TV show is that the show is still in production. I would use past tense. Blueboar (talk) 15:55, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

So by that same logic, "Abbey Road was a record by The Beatles"? I don't think so. --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree. The logic that such things could be referred to in the present tense is arguable, and even when it can be justified, it is not in all connections helpful. Would you say "the great fire of London is one of the largest disasters to strike the city in the 17th century"? You could of course construct a situation justifying it, but...

Anyway, it doesn't need a rule, only some literacy on the part of the editor. JonRichfield (talk) 20:03, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Er, I don't think we need to insult editors' literacy … "Camelot is a musical" even if at this particular moment it isn't being staged anywhere (doubtful, but you get the point). And what about syndication? I can still turn on my TV at 7 a.m. and see I Love Lucy. Television may seem to complicate the usual conventions of writing about literature or a work of art in the historical present (though last time I looked the article wasn't very good on this point), but categorically a television series exists in the same way that a literary or theatrical work does, not as an historical event that took place at a single moment in time. A television series, like a book or painting, is in effect "present" each time an audience engages with it, and therefore has the constant potential to be present. We don't say "Macbeth was a tragedy by William Shakespeare" because that's still what Macbeth is; it didn't cease to exist as such. You would say "Euripides' Medea was first produced in 431 BC" (referring to an event that occurred at a point in time) but "Euripides' Medea is a Greek tragedy" (because that's what it still is); therefore, "I Love Lucy IS a television series that WAS produced from 1951 to 1957". Cynwolfe (talk) 21:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely right. Johnbod (talk) 21:48, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Err...? You "don't think we need to insult editors' literacy"? Well, that is a hard proposition to assail, isn't it? But forgive me, exactly what did I say to elicit your remark? I said: "it doesn't need a rule, only some literacy on the part of the editor", which is exactly what I meant, and mean, and what is more, to judge from your examples, you agree. How many of the cases you cite would you consider to be in conflict with it? Every one is an example of just where the literacy of the editor (in English, and certainly in some other languages as well) could and should be relied on to select the correct tense, and should not need any documented rule to keep him to the straight and narrow. As I have said, and probably shall repeat on my lawful occasions, the fewer imposed and documented regulations we can get by on, in fact, the thinner our rule book, the better for all concerned. And how would you go about formulating such a rule to cover this case anyway - especially for the benefit of an illiterate editor, which is the only kind to need such guidance in practice (slips and finger trouble always excepted)? JonRichfield (talk) 12:08, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. State verbs are always in simple present. Apart from that English Grammar In Use says "We use the simple present to talk about things in general. We are not thinking only about now. We use it to say that something happens all the time or repeatedly, or that something is true in general. It is not important whether the action is happening at the time of speaking."

"Is" in Windows is an operating system" is a state verb. "Windows was an operating system" implies "it no longer is an operating system" and raises the question "why?" The answer cannot be "because it is discontinued" because discontinuation does not turn an operating system into a video game, dish washer or anything else. The correct form is "Windows is a discontinued operating system".

There are certain exceptions in English language though: "Your dad is a good man" and "your dad was a good man" are both correct in context of a "dad" who is now deceased, subject to religious beliefs. However, out of context, "your dad was a good man" is ambiguous because it can also mean the "dad" is now a bad man. However, the same cannot be said for "Albert Einstein is the greatest of all scientists" and "Albert Einstein was the greatest of all scientists". The latter can only mean Albert Einstein is no longer the greatest and beckons the question of "why?" (Note that most scientists earn a lot of posthumous respect.) Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:29, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I see this as an interesting question for similar reasons. Is an operating system more like a work of fiction (which is discussed in the historical present), or once it's discontinued, is it more like an event that has unfolded in time, like a war that's been fought and lost? If it stops being what it was, what is it? Cynwolfe (talk) 21:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

"Your dad is a good man" when one's dad is dead would be forcing one's religious beliefs onto the listener. It sounds weird, and could easily give offence. Tony (talk) 00:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Someone who is easily offended by a misplaced "is" has serious social and psychological issues, so much so that he disregards the fact that respect is being paid to his good father. Normal people also account for the small talk nature of the comment, the fact that 99.99% of people in the world believe in one form of God and afterlife (including but not limited to Christians and Muslims) and that it may simply be a slip of the tongue. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 08:19, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

It sounds to me like the consensus is to use past tense for past events and for things that don't exist any more, including deceased people, and to use present tense for things that are merely old and obsolete, usually. Sometimes using past tense for old obsolete things will be OK, too, if they hardly exist in the wild (like Otis King's patent calculator was a helical slide rule). Use common tense. Dicklyon (talk) 05:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. The exception that you mentioned is far stricter than it seems, especially for state verbs. E.g. "T-Rex is a theropod dinosaur". I think T-Rex went completely extinct long before Otis King's patent calculator. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 08:19, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I would always say "was". Possibly the sentence in that article - "Tyrannosaurus is a genus..." - is OK, because the genus is a construct of the people who study these things (the genus can be thought of as still existing because the field of study that defines and refers to that genus is still existing). But when talking about the dinosaurs themselves, I would use the past tense. Victor Yus (talk) 08:31, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Did you notice that I intentionally mentioned "theropod" in my example? It meant to cover your "genus" treatment. Otherwise, yes, you are right that dinosaurs "ate", "weighted", "hunted", etc. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 08:47, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• The essential question that we are specifically trying to answer is: Should we use the present tense ("Windows 3.1 is an operating system") or the past tense when referring to obsolete (End-Of-Life=EOL) MS OS and MS Office software? Some previous discussion is at User talk:Codename Lisa#Microsoft Windows. We'd appreciate hearing your opinions about the tense to use for such EOL software on the Windows Talk page. LittleBen (talk) 15:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Use either one. Or both. It is an OS that still runs on at least thousands of computers doing real work, even though it's nearly extinct. Dicklyon (talk) 19:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Parenthesis coming always before punctuation?

This is my first time here in MoS. I would want to ask if overall text quality wouldn't benefit from a suggestion of every phrase of user-written prose (that is, the content we don't cite but redact) ending in punctuation. This would make consistency much clearer (and people not exposed to logical quotes, such as the overwhelming majority of U.S. Americans, would understand the rule to use it more readily). What I mean is to indicate to use "this (blablabla)." rather than "this. (blablabla.)". I didn't found an already existing name for this (neither in English nor in any other language), so I use terms such as "logical parentheses". I find it also much better aesthetically. Lguipontes (talk) 10:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Here are some examples.

• I saw the dog (a poodle).
• I saw the dog. (It was sleeping.)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:34, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Couldn't it be "I saw a dog (and it was sleeping)."? Most users don't really know the difference (including us from Romance-speaking countries that AFAIK only use the "this (blablabla)." formula.

Just to prove that changing the style guide would be helpful, here is the current revision of the article on French language, that I am editing: [[en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_language&oldid=548852203#Algeria here]. It says "Most urban Algerians have some working knowledge of French, and a high (though unknown) percentage speak it fluently.(about 80 percent) However, [..]". It is horrible and completely unnecessary. This is a common sight in the Wikipedia articles to which people edit the least, or are edited mostly by people from countries outside of the English-speaking world. I believe defining a clearer "end phrases in punctuation" would help a lot. Lguipontes (talk) 17:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

You probably intended to link here.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:01, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Parentheses are punctuation marks. They are discussed in the article "Bracket", which is categorized in Category:Punctuation.

Os parênteses são sinais de pontuação. São discutidos no artigo "pt:Parêntese", que é categorizado em pt:Categoria:Pontuação.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant so. That was a typo, thanks. I am here in en:wp for three years and by now 2000 edits, so I believe myself as generally knowledgeable in English (at least much more than the average student after 6 months of language course in my country). I am not illiterate and I know what brackets are, but the English usage (you won't see "this. (blablabla.)" in Portuguese or Spanish, never, much less on a formal setting) often leads to errors much like "American" quotes as it is used very confusingly and many editors won't know exactly how.

The rules for "this. (blablabla)." aren't covered by the English article, and the Portuguese for the most doesn't even cite the possibilities of use of punctuation in other languages (Portuguese Wikipedia has a lot of gaps, systemic bias that cover only Lusophone reality, and has poor-written text to a degree that one would feel its work to never end [even though neverending work is a reality in all Wikipedias, I would know better that it wouldn't be an enjoyable task there – it doesn't help that Portuguese prose is harder than, say, Japanese, according to bilingual children, and they are often stressed with the task of trusting new users that in average tend to act way more ignorant to policy than people here {so that IP edits in general, instead of just IP insertion of links, require captcha}, so it is a hell to not cite every piece of information, even common sense for people who understand the topic, and get it all deleted thereafter]).

As I already said, it seems to not have a need (far from me being youknowwhat-centric, but the fact that major Average Standard European global languages can do it well without this indicate it is at least in part just accessory). My knowledge in English, though good for my needs, is often shallow (school English in Brazil is "verb to be" every single year and rarely gets deeper, I learned it from the internet for about 95%). I would like to know from a person knowledgeable in English grammar how much it is really necessary, so as to know how much one couldn't go for this detail like other European languages (I read French as of late 2011 and I also never saw they using it), the point you seem to raise. I would google it (I tried it once months ago), but it seems to be too much of a non-issue for native speakers to have easily findable information, so someone here would explain it way better. Lguipontes (talk) 19:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Lguipontes, you say that American quotes lead to errors, and I am guessing that you refer to the U.S. practice of putting periods and commas inside the quotation marks, "like this." A lot of people who don't like American punctuation argue that it causes errors, but none of them have ever given a real-world example. In all my years of writing and editing in U.S. English, I've never once seen someone make a mistake or misunderstand text because of American-style punctuation. Have you witnessed any such errors? What were they? I want to know if errors attributable to U.S. punctuation are Bigfoot (mythical) or the platypus (thought to be mythical but eventually proven to exist). Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Just noting here that internal punctuation isn't American punctuation. Publishers all over the world use it, and we ought to allow it as an alternative in the MoS, precisely because it avoids errors. I keep meaning to add it, but haven't been able to face the arguing that might ensue. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:43, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

1. Just because not everyone who uses it is American doesn't mean that the style itself isn't American. Some American venues spell their names "theatre," but that doesn't mean the spelling isn't British. 2. Even if you think the name is inaccurate, it's the name that all the major style guides use, so it's perfectly all right to call it American. 3. Yes. Yes we should allow it. However, if someone can prove that it causes non-imaginary, non-hypothetical problems on Wikipedia, then the ban might be justified, kind of like how people argue that we need straight quotes because curly quotes interfere with search functions in some browsers. So far, no one has offered any such proof. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

LguiP has answered my question here. This user hasn't seen any real mistakes or confusion and was only repeating rumors. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

It is a funny thing, but I once was rebuked by a professional editor for putting (as I remember) a fullstop inside (or was it outside?) a closing parenthesis. It is, I was sternly informed, a publishing convention. I immediately baulked, saying that I could just about care less about the convention, but could care a great deal about logic, in particular as embodied in context-dependent syntax. By that time I was a computer pro of long standing, and delimiting punctuation in computer languages is of necessity subject to strict rules, because if not, what you write means, if anything but an outright error, something different from the intention. Now, the same thing should apply in our rules, say I. If the thing within delimiters needs a closing stop, exclamation or the like, then it goes inside the brackets or quotes or whatever they are. If it belongs, not to the enclosed bit but to the whole sentence, paragraph, chapter or whatever might be the case, then it goes outside. If it makes no logical difference, then it doesn't matter, and suit yourself. Could anyone think of a functional exception? I can't! JonRichfield (talk) 19:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree entirely. Human languages are not like programming languages. Readers don't process what they see based on logic. A reader with an organic brain does not react to character order the same way a computer does. Anything that is poorly punctuated or "written to suit oneself" will be harder to read and look sloppier than something that is correctly punctuated, even to people who can't name every rule or explain why the sentence seems wrong. That's your functional exception, based on the way readers function. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I was afraid to have to ask, but... how exactly that works? You can link me something in another site. I see the term "sentence" to be used thoroughly in explanations or manuals of English grammar. We never ever hear of an equivalent in Portuguese. What is bigger than a phrase (that is used 'interchangeably with sentence here) is a paragraph and that's it. At least that is what we learn in school (and I am a good [often the best] student in languages and humanities). Thinking of those "sentences" wouldn't easily come naturally for me, I learned English for real in the past year, as a 17-year-old. I believe I did read English pieces with perfect grammar so it was used accordingly, but I couldn't notice any difference. *facepalm* Now I just don't know what imperfections I am supposed to remove, because using it the right, indifferent or wrong way looks the same to me. Luckily as soon as I started to correct texts favoring English pieces without a bias for American localisms (I believed this parentheses thingy to be, just as I knew the illogical quotes were, before I looked here in MoS and saw it is used even in places where obviously persons from everywhere in the world would have to agree over a common standard), this April, I decided to consult you guys. Lguipontes (talk) 19:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Just saying, I've read the article sentence before, and I still don't understand how it works, as it fits the knowledge I learned through Portuguese acquisition. Well, it is nice to know that I am not the only one confused. Lguipontes (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not really that complicated:

Phrase	in the summer
Clause	when I was a child
Sentence	When I was a child, I ate ice cream in the summer.

Whether or not it makes sense to you, there's a "right way" and a "wrong way" to handle parentheses in English, and we need to do it the right way. If you don't can't figure it out, then don't worry: someone who understands this particular rule of English punctuation will eventually fix it for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:11, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Lguipontes, I've read your post four times and I still can't tell what you're proposing. The things that you're saying seem to contradict the existing rules of standard English. The short version of the rule with parentheses is that the punctuation goes outside the parentheses if the parenthetical is contained within another sentence (even if it could be a full sentence or independent clause by itself) but inside the parentheses if it is not: "I saw a dog (a poodle)." "I saw a dog. (It was sleeping.)" "Why haven't children made milk their favorite snack drink? (Because milk is sold in gallon jugs.)"

As always, I agree with WhatamIdoing that this MoS should reflect correct English as it currently exists, not serve as a vehicle to improve English. Go ahead and try to improve the language if you want, but don't do it here. When you succeed, we can change the MoS to match the new rules. English is crazy and English is counterintuitive, but if we start making up our own rules, we'll just look stupid and it will be harder for the readers to understand the content. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

"English is crazy and English is counterintuitive"... I will add one more: English is often inconsistent. Something the MOS needs to account for a bit more often. Blueboar (talk) 03:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think that WP:MOS#Brackets and parentheses means to say that sentences containing bracketed content should be punctuated without regard to the bracketed content. Additionally, it seems to mean to say that a bracketed single (It doesn't say "single". However, it probably doesn't mean to include "multiple".) full (implied: declarative) phrase should not be terminated inside the brackets (but how about bracketed nondeclarative phrases?).

I disclaim that I am not a grammarian. Regardless, I opine that the first sentence of the rule in the MOS would be better to say something like, "Sentences containing bracketed content should be punctuated without regard to content enclosed by the brackets.", rather than (as now), "If a sentence contains a bracketed phrase, place the sentence punctuation outside the brackets (as shown here)."

Neither the current wording nor my suggested alternative cover standalone bracketed content which is not part of a containing sentence (e.g. as exampled in [1]). This is probably generally best avoided, I think, but should probably be punctuated inside the brackets if present.

Re questions from Lguipontes about what a sentence is or is not, see the Sentence (linguistics) article. The lead section there is outstanding, IMO. I really like the example. Ungrammatical. Good, though. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers.

I think I am remembering now... Clause and sentence, I studied this in school. But it was in the third grade (9-year-old Brazilians, 8-year-old me), only the trollest Vestibulares go deep into this subject (my admission to a federal technical school was harder than most vestibulares, and I proudly entered it without studying much, much less doing a course, as a 13-year-old, and neither of the Portuguese tests included it; since my Math result was just above the necessary needed, I think my dissertation was among the best out of the 800 that passed out of 18000, I was in the 370s...). Wait, I should have put it as "this. (blablabla.)" in the piece I just wrote, isn't it? Anyway goddamnit, I should have remembered what frigging clauses (orações, a term that for the vast majority of us means only orison i.e. prayer) are, if I'm not wrong I had to learn it when I was studying adverbs and adverbial locutions; it was the hardest Portuguese subject I took in all 12 grades, that came back to haunt me (this time in a foreign language).

Anyway we don't need it to a degree similar of yours for consistent and/or formal Portuguese orthography in any way, those terms, as I said, aren't present in colloquial Portuguese and most people don't even remember that they exist, much less what they are. As I also said, we call what is between a capital and the final punctuation, or the thingy of subject+predicate as phrases, and if someone tells your average Brazilian that "in the summer" is a phrase, you can be called illiterate. People don't also regard brackets as punctuation, we know it is sort of, but punctuation for us is just what looks like ". , ? !". Much less we know what would be a declarative (this time I am very certain I didn't study it). This is probably why I don't make sense.

Naturally, if we regard European Portuguese to be the lexifier of what the Brazilian language became after the Marquis of Pombal banned the Jesuits and their Tupi-based creoles so an enormous community of 1-2 million people speaking the same language was forced to shift to Portuguese, my native language turns out to be a post-post-creole called vernacular Brazilian Portuguese (compare African-American vernacular English) as I was raised by people of worker class and rural or first generation urban backgrounds (actually my mother was the 1st or 2nd nerdiest student as me, had austere Portuguese teachers, and she also became a teacher, so she speaks a high strata of colloquial, but I had little contact with her between 5 and 10 so vernacular is really dominant), and what we learn in school, media, etc. that is supposedly more "educated" are just different strata of colloquial Brazilian Portuguese, a post-post-post-creole that is still relatively grammatically simplified in relation to standard European Portuguese... But this question should be avoided altogether as Brazilian Portuguese is still Standard Average European, everyone gets confused learning English grammar including the natives, and Ibero-Americans in general seem to get troubled in this same problem. Lguipontes (talk) 09:17, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Getting to the point now, should I always use parentheses after the period if it got a subject+predicate? This is a relatively easy task, I thought it would be a lot harder, the sentence article doesn't really shout in my face "HEY YOUR LIFE IS A LIE, your phrases are sentences and you don't even have a term for the true phrases!", but usage in Wikipedia isn't this exact, it seems that not all sentences are this simple, and people do it many more times, including pieces that I believe to not be sentences but can't really be certain (why, English, why?).

Also, I'd find much easier in those cases to just don't use parentheses at all except if both commas and dashes can't really be used, what returns back to my initial question, if English would really get poorer without this, but then who would be me, a high school student, trying to re-build the world's lingua franca that isn't even my native language, learned amateurly (in Brazil we can magically make nouns become verbs and adverbs if we don't find an adequate one, actually at least 10% of Portuguese verbs were created this way AFAIK, LOL) in the internet in a meantime of 3 years, so my proposal is moot if it really violates English rules (I thought it didn't, that it was just a matter of style and customizable).

I didn't really get what Wtmitchell said, but it seems to me that he agrees that full sentences inside brackets should take a period as standard in English (I really got it), but it would be best avoided (what I proposed is that if it is choice we could put it orthographically in the former sentence before the period of that one, since it is entirely nonstandard in English and I won't question it, avoiding it to the highest possible level would also work – that is what I do, I use dashes when commas aren't sufficient). Lguipontes (talk) 09:17, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

“You don't even have a term for the true phrases” – well, actually you do. — A. di M.  10:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I meant my native, and my education languages (the popular, and the educated – not to be confused with the formal – variants of BP), of course there would be Portuguese-speakers studying this subject somewhere in the world if such knowledge is so pervasively necessary for understanding the grammar of global, closely-related, historically powerful, languages. Thanks a lot. The source is UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in the top 7 of our best Universities). Not exactly surprised that I never heard of such term in my whole life. I am a lot interested in Linguistics, but this grew once I already understood English and so could read generally better and more easily findable sources, and I focus a lot more on phonetics than on other elements. Lguipontes (talk) 18:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Good point – in Italian, for example, sintagma does exist but it's way, way less common than phrase in English: in non-technical contexts people would just say something like espressione; is there anything similar in Portuguese? — A. di M.  09:51, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

A common term for our sintagma, to which even Google Translate seems to go a bit WTF? I've never heard of anything like that. Neither did my mother nor some of my online friends when I told them about the information I discovered because of the answers to this section. Expressão translates as... well, look it by yourself http://translate.google.com.br/#pt/en/express%C3%A3o The closest to sintagma in those Portuguese re-translations I'm used to IMO is locução, but it sounds terribly like a bizarre term we Brazilians only ever have to deal with in our Portuguese classes. Particularly, I use expressão most often in the sense of vocábulo and never would thought a synonym of it in another language would translate as locução. Lguipontes (talk) 01:35, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Semicolon misused to bold a line

Thread retitled from "Do not use a semicolon (;) simply to bold a line without defining a value using a colon (:). This usage renders invalid HTML5.".

See Help talk:Wiki markup#semicolon issue?. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I am revising the heading of this section from Do not use a semicolon (;) simply to bold a line without defining a value using a colon (:). This usage renders invalid HTML5. to Semicolon misused to bold a line, in harmony with WP:TPOC, point 13 (Section headings). Please see Microcontent: Headlines and Subject Lines (Alertbox).

—Wavelength (talk) 14:25, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The line "Do not use a semicolon (;) simply to bold a line without defining a value using a colon (:). This usage renders invalid HTML5." had been inserted into the MOS, after a similar warning was added without discussion to the markup wikihelp at H:DL. If there's a bug in bad HTML generation, someone should work on figuring out what to do about that. And if it it preferred style to not use semicolons for minor bold headings, we should say that without reference to HTML bugs. Has there ever been any style advice about this widely used construct? Apparently, from the discussion, using a colon to indent a line has exactly the same issues, so we should work those out. Dicklyon (talk) 14:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I revised the wikicode of "Bone cell" at 15:10, 12 April 2013 (UTC).

—Wavelength (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Let's keep this centralized on the help talk page. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:25, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

There are separate issues here, and the help pages as they say are very thinly attended. Whatever we decide there, we don't need to mention HTML generation bugs in the MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 16:00, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The use of the colon for indent does render with definition list markup. The W3C validation tool does not give an error on this use, so perhaps the tool is in error. I have never understood why the indent markup renders in this manner.

And to clarify: The HTML5 spec added the must. The semicolom markup usage did not fail validation until we switched to HTML5 in Sptember 2012, but it was still semantically incorrect. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

On the subject of list definitions, is it okay to use list-definition formatting when followed by a bulleted list, like this:

Three parts of the finger

• Tip
• Middle
• Base

Is this invalid? It doesn't seem like it should be, but that doesn't always stop the standards committees. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Cadastral Map

Can i change google satellite image to GEO Tiff file by global mapper software and can i draw cadastral map to this GEO Tiff image by geomedia software. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.81.70.29 (talk) 17:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I suggest posting a specific question over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps. They've been helpful for me in the past. Good luck, SchreiberBike (talk) 17:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

May I have this in English again, please?

...the suggestions that appear as users insert text ignore straight double quotation marks.... I've re-read this section more than 5 times now, but I just can't get the meaning. Can anyone help? Does it maybe denote "user-inserted text" (inserted text by the user)? Enigmatic ... -andy 217.50.46.182 (talk) 12:00, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Let me parse it for you: as users insert text in the search box, suggestions appear, and these suggestions ignore straight double quotation marks. I agree that the sentence could be written more clearly.—Emil J. 12:15, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

And why is this an argument for using straight rather than curly quotation marks? If anything, it seems to speak the other way (or not to matter at all, given that there would be redirects from one format to the other). Victor Yus (talk) 14:06, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone answer this? If not, I suggest removing this point from the section. (And if the other points can be removed similarly, then we should switch to encouraging curly quotation marks, at least in titles and bolded bits, since they look much better than the straight ones.) Victor Yus (talk) 09:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The search box ignores straight quotation marks because this is a feature; you don't want the reader to be required to guess in advance if we use " or not around words (which can be unpredictable), in the same way we don't want to need them to know about capitalisation in advance. Switching to encouraging curly quotation marks remains a bad idea, but for different reasons :-) Andrew Gray (talk) 10:03, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

So are you agreeing that this point does not represent a good reason (and should therefore be removed)? Victor Yus (talk) 10:12, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

No, it's relevant (the implication is that if we use curly quotes, the search engine does strange things) but perhaps not clearly worded. However, we should remove this rambling section entirely and simply say "use straight quotation marks", rather than making a discussion out of it! Andrew Gray (talk) 11:36, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

What strange things does the search engine do if we use curly quotes? I'm getting the impression that this whole section is a rather vague attempt to justify a rule that really has no justification except "it's easier to type like this". But I may be wrong. Victor Yus (talk) 09:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

citation numbers in headings

The above section on headings and hidden comments reminded me of a question I have been meaning to ask for a long time... stylistically, what is the best way to indicate that an entire section is primarily based on one source?

My gut instinct (which could be wrong) would be to add a citation number to the header... For example, if I were writing an article about some notable person, and the information on the subject's childhood was taken from one particular source, I might format the header and citation as:

• Childhood^[2]

This would work in a dead tree, paper encyclopedia... However, I assume that adding references to a header line (by typing: "== Childhood <ref>citation</ref> ==") would cause problems with how Wikipedia's software works. Am I correct in this assumption? Blueboar (talk) 12:02, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

That's my understanding of it as well; including a reference in the section header creates issues with section links, even from the article's ToC. When I have seen them, added in good faith by those who don't know that, the ensuing section is usually some sort of chart or table. In such cases, I simply add a short introductory sentence and place the reference at the end of that, or just move it to the end like this: Source:^[1]. That's mimics the form often used in academic journal articles, and looks pretty good. But for sections of body text, there's nothing wrong with using named references to cite the source multiple times where especially relevant to the sentence, or even paragraph. oknazevad (talk) 13:02, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I'd just add an inline citation at the end (or perhaps both the start and end) of every paragraph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Comments and anchors in section headings

Someone tagged the MOS:SECTIONS instruction about placing hidden comments in section headings. I'm also confused by this. Personally, I find this:

== Section == <!-- Blank links here -->

to be far easier to understand than the recommended approach, which is:

== Section <!-- Blank links here --> ==

So why are we doing this? Doesn't this screw up edit summaries (i.e., making it harder for subsequent editors to check your work)? Who actually finds the recommended version so much easier that we need to prohibit all the other forms, rather than letting people do whatever seems best to them? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I prefer that hidden comments be placed immediately below the section headings.

== Section ==

<!-- Blank links here -->

—Wavelength (talk) 20:05, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Very brief experimentation in my sandbox appears to show that putting the comments before the final equal signs is better than putting them after. (If you put them after, then the section title doesn't come up in the edit summary.) Victor Yus (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes: the section header markup requires that the equals start and end the line. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:52, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Um, it doesn't seem to matter. Look at this. Two of those have something other than the == at the start or end, and the section headers display just fine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

They display all right, but one of them lacks the sectional "edit" button (this is in Internet Explorer, other browsers may differ), and when you edit a section, the section title doesn't come up automatically in the edit summary (also I suspect, if the page were longer, the browser wouldn't return to the section you've edited after the edit is saved). I'm a bit surprised that this is dealt with in the MoS rather than on some technical instruction page, but I think the advice is sound. Victor Yus (talk) 09:23, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Is there any good reason to use ==<span id="Title"/> Title== rather than =={{anchor|Title}} Title== ? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:24, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, pretty much the same reason as above - using the template on the heading line means that the autogenerated edit summary is messed up, and you don't get back to the same section after saving your edit. (Not a big deal, admittedly, but if we are going to the trouble of saying the thing about comments in the MOS, then we should also say - and do - the thing about anchors. Unless anyone knows a better fix - this is just what I use because I know it works.) Victor Yus (talk) 09:31, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

So why not put all of that on the next line, like Wavelength suggests (and which I think is a good solution)? Why does it need to be inside the section heading, where it will mess up edit summaries and confuse some inexperienced people? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

It won't mess up edit summaries if you do it right. I don't know whether it would be any less confusing to inexperienced people to put it on the next line (where it wouldn't be so clear that the anchor or comment relates specifically to the section heading). There may also be a danger that when a link to the anchor was followed, the browser might go to a point just underneath the section heading, thus leaving the heading off the screen, but I haven't checked that. Victor Yus (talk) 10:19, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

What does "if you do it right" mean? This is what happens to the default edit summary when the anchor is inside the section heading rather than on another line. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:08, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I mean if you use the "span" syntax instead of the "anchor" template (and put it within the equal signs). Victor Yus (talk) 08:34, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

From the latest revision of WP:MOS, "Do not place an invisible comment outside the "== ==" markup but on the same line as the heading" is ambiguous, because it can mean "Do not place an invisible comment outside the "== ==" markup and on the same line as the heading" or "Do not place an invisible comment outside the "== ==" markup, but instead place it on the same line as the heading".

—Wavelength (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Here are the rules:

• If you include a template inside the header markup, then the template markup is included in the edit summary.
• If you include comment markup after the header markup, then the section name is not included in the edit summary.
• If you include comment markup before the header markup, then the [edit] link does not show.
• If you include spaces after the header markup, then the spaces are not included in the edit summary.
• If you add any other text or markup before or after the header markup, then the header markup is not parsed.
• If you include markup other than a template in the header, then the markup is not included in the edit summary.

I did not test all markup. I have not seen any instance where the [edit] link was suppressed, except where the header markup was not parsed. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I found the edit link to be suppressed (in IE) when a comment was placed in front of the header markup. Victor Yus (talk) 13:02, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

And in Firefox. Updated. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:11, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

All of this suggests to me that the rule ought to be "please don't put anything else on the same line as the section heading" rather than "always put anchors and stuff inside the header markup". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe, but are you sure the browser will always pick up the anchor at the right place (i.e. not leave the section heading off the page when following a link to the anchor)? Also I'm not sure that people would necessarily notice a comment placed under the section heading as being applicable to the section heading. It's not something I feel particularly strongly about, but if you follow the recommended syntax (and don't use templates, except perhaps by subst'ing them), then you can put anchors and comments on the same line as the heading without causing any of the problems identified. Victor Yus (talk) 06:49, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

The MoS and blocks

Can one be blocked for not taking the MoS into account? I've recently been dealing with an editor who does not care about the way dashes should be used on Wikipedia, and I'm getting tired of correcting his errors. Best, Toccata quarta (talk) 18:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

In general one usually won't be blocked for ignoring in the MOS when adding content, though one might get blocked for repeatedly converting existing MOS-compliant text into some other style. In general, we'd prefer that everyone followed the manual of style every time they edited, but some people find that too hard, and as long as they are adding new useful content, it is usually okay to assume that someone else will eventually clean up any formatting quirks. However, trying to insist upon a personal style that is in contradiction with the MOS, for example by reverting edits that are meant to apply MOS style conventions, is generally not okay. Dragons flight (talk)

So don't correct his errors. Somebody else will. —Gendralman (talk) 01:13, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not even limited to personal styles. Insisting on correct English where the MoS requires incorrect English can get you brought up on AN/I.

As for this editor, just tell him or her about the MoS rules. In all likelihood, it's someone who just doesn't care one way or the other about dashes. Follow this editor around and gnome the work if you feel like it. Otherwise, leave it alone. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:51, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

• FYI, dashes.js is a good tool for the job. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:00, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

WP:HYPHEN exception

In addition to -ly adverbs, the guideline should point out that hyphens should rarely follow the compound modifiers: most, more, least and less. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 00:39, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes that's a pretty important hyphen. Compare he sold the most used cars with he sold the most-used cars. Can't we leave this one to common sense? Do you have an example where not specifying this in the MoS has led to a bad result? --Trovatore (talk) 00:42, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Concur with Trovatore. We should only add more rules to the MoS if there are problems out in the article space that could be solved by so doing. Were there any fights over this issue? Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:46, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

None that I am aware of. My reason for suggesting this is that I moved a few "List of most..." articles before I learned this was a common exception. I think it should be noted that there are many exceptions and to tread carefully before someone else gets in the same trap. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 02:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Wikipedia:Manual of Style, sub-subsection 3, point 2 (version of 21:48, 23 April 2013) says the following.

• A hyphen can help to disambiguate (little-celebrated paintings is not a reference to little paintings; a government-monitoring program is a program that monitors the government, whereas a government monitoring program is a government program that monitors something else).

The example with "little" can apply to "less", "least", "much", "more", and "most".

—Wavelength (talk) 02:56, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

"known mononymously"

Someone has developed a hobby of introducing the obscure word "mononymously" into every lead it can possibly fit into. It's bad style for an encyclopedia; it has the feel of a teenager trying to sound smart. Can we agree that this is silly, and that the word should only be used where it's really needed? —Gendralman (talk) 01:07, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I can agree. JIMp _talk·cont 01:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

• Agree that we should never use big words where simple ones will do. In this case, the word "mononymously" is close to being redundant; at a push, one could say "simply". -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
• "Simply" sounds like a value judgment to me. I don't mind the use of the standard term for this (none of us would likely object to "known pseudonymously as..." or "published under the pseudonym..."), but "known by the single name" would be acceptable here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The word to describe this is sesquipedalian. --  Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:01, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Although I do not wish to encourage pompous sesquipedalianism, I consider the word "mononymously" to be sufficiently useful and sufficiently understandable from its roots to be acceptable for use in Wikipedia, just as the word "disambiguation" is acceptable.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's an MOS point as such, but it's undoubtedly aesthetically horrible English and pretentious, as well as being both redundant and rarely seen elsewhere, especially in comparison to the extent to which it seems to have been deployed on various WP pages. What does it actually add? And what next, "William Jefferson Clinton, known duonymously as Bill Clinton"? N-HH talk/edits 16:38, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Somewhere in the body, I could imagine "adopted the mononym..." but in the lead simplicity is even more important. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:52, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's definitely not that hard to figure out and may be useful at times. If we do need it, we should use it, but I've just checked the first five dozen examples linked to and could not find a single instance where the word did seem useful. In each of these sixty sentences (I only got through three pages) the word added nothing but the feeling that someone was trying to be smart. JIMp _talk·cont 16:53, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Quite right; every dictionary is full of words that no one encounters elsewhere, and that no one but a schoolkid or a mental mediocrity would show off with. And it definitely reflects badly on all of us if we don't get rid of such puerility. JonRichfield (talk) 19:51, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that mononym could fit into the article body much better than mononymously does in the lead. —Gendralman (talk) 22:11, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

• This would never be a good word to use in the lead of an encyclopaedia article, except perhaps the article on the phenomenon itself. --John (talk) 20:01, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

• I've added it to the section on "Technical language" (WP:JARGON) as an example of "Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader, when more common alternatives will do." Gendralman (talk) 23:57, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with that addition. It's in the "wrong" section, in that we are not talking about technical articles per se, and it misdefines the problem, in that we are not talking about using an obscure word where a simpler one would do, but using an obscure word where no description is really needed at all. Also, even though it might be useful as an example, I'm wary of adding such specific advice based on the latest highlighted problem; the MOS needs to take a broader view. Isn't perhaps the "contested vocabulary" section where we are – with its existing advice to avoid "straining for formality"? Judging from the near-unanimity above I don't think it's going to be controversial to simply remove the word from most places where it's been added and to point to the MOS as it already was, standard English practice and the above discussion to whichever editor[s] is/are so fond of it if they complain? If anything, if we simply add it now, they can argue, however spuriously, that the goalposts have been moved and retrospective legislation imposed. More generally, I can't imagine this specific word is one that's going to keep cropping up. N-HH talk/edits 08:29, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it's the right section. I wouldn't describe "mononymous" as formal, just jargon; I see the word's existence as a novel bit of trivia, and editors are adding in order to draw attention to it, hence the link. It's like a mini-coatrack where people disingenuously try to use the popularity of some articles to get people to notice their trivial hobbyhorse.

The problem is the word will keep cropping up: if it's in 80% of the mononymous artist's articles, people will inevitably rush to add it to any article it's missing from, as though they've made a contribution to some grand cause. We see this all the time on Wikipedia: someone creates some kind of novel warning or term or template message, and nerds rush in to spread it into every article it can possibly fit into, like it's a video game they rack up points for. Taking it out of a few articles won't suffice to get rid of it. —Gendralman (talk) 21:41, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Apologies btw if my comment came across as critical at all (that wasn't the intention of course). Anyway, I think between us we have now taken the word out from pretty much every page it had been added. Let's see if it starts creeping back in and then maybe rethink the best way to deal with it if necessary. N-HH talk/edits 08:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I believe there may be some left; some of the links are the result of someone adding 'mononymous person' to the 'See also' section. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 10:00, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Could I put in a plea for plain English? Let's use the fact (or is it my home-grown theory?) that English is unique in the extent to which elegance and plainness are close partners. Tony (talk) 08:41, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Indian English example gone again

Yes it's still mentioned above the box as example crore, but in the box Taj Mahal has gone:

Great Fire of London (British English)

American Civil War (American English)

Institutions of the European Union (British or Irish English)

Australian Defence Force (Australian English)

Vancouver, B.C. (Canadian English)

Usain Bolt (Jamaican Standard English)

Taj Mahal (Indian English)

Why? In ictu oculi (talk) 07:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that it was removed because the existence of a definable "Indian English" is a somewhat debated issue. Out of curiosity... we have published style guides we can point to for other varieties of the English Language... are their any published style guides that would help us to define Indian English? Blueboar (talk) 22:47, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

We have an article on Indian English, and it ought to contain such sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Although much of that page is focused on slang, dialect and pronunciation in spoken Indian English. We should not confuse that with formal standards of written English. As discussed on previous occasions, what we need is a reliable analysis of standard differences between formal written Indian English and other varieties, if they exist; as we have in US v British English for spelling (eg color v colour) and words (eg sidewalk v pavement). It's worth noting that the "Indian English" argument has been used, erroneously in my view, to try to trump WP:COMMONNAME in naming disputes for Indian cities and states. N-HH talk/edits 08:48, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

"Guidelines that aren't guidelines"

A discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Guidelines that aren't guidelines (version of 19:54, 30 April 2013) involves Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Philosophy.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:02, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Removing an "explanatory" section

As noted above, in the Quotation marks section, there's a subsection entitled "Reasons to prefer straight quotation marks and apostrophes (and double quotation marks)". I've read this over a couple of times and can't quite see the point for including it.

The section almost entirely discusses and defends the "no curly quotes" rule, which has been stated explicitly a couple of lines earlier. There's no ambiguity needing explained here; we have a very simple recommended vs. non-recommended position, and no room for saying "in some cases, do X".

As far as I can see on a quick skim, very few other sections of the MoS have this sort of justification/explanation added to them, and from a practical standpoint, it's another several paragraphs and 275 words in an already very long MoS page!

Would anyone object if I simply removed it? I can't really see that the annotation is adding much value to the section. Andrew Gray (talk) 08:47, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I think if we're going to have the rule, we need to justify it, since it runs rather dramatically counter to what seems to be the general MoS philosophy (which places professional appearance above ease of typing). However, unless someone can give a real and precise usage scenario where the use of curly quotes is going to do significant harm, I think the rule should be changed. In running text it hardly matters, since (if my browser and screen are typical) you don't see any difference, but in article titles and the bolded bit at the start of articles, we should be using proper quotation marks. And curly apostrophes as well, I would suggest, though that's going to affect a lot more articles than the quotation marks would. Victor Yus (talk) 09:31, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

We discussed this recently, as I recall, and there was nothing like a consensus to change the rule. Do we have to have the debate again? Andrew Gray (talk) 10:51, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean the thread titled "The reasons currently provided for using straight quotation marks are dubious at best" in archive 138? It doesn't seem to have gone into the matter in much depth; the only real "reason" given (apart from vague unsupported claims about searchability and portability) is ease of typing. That's easily answered - let people type how they want (they do that anyway with hyphens and dashes), and then let other people tidy after them. The effect of the "rule" is that if someone does go to the effort of installing proper quote marks, then someone else is going to make the counterproductive effort of replacing them with typewriter quotes so as to "conform with the MoS", which is pretty absurd. Victor Yus (talk) 11:00, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

From my technically-naïve standpoint, I’d expect proper quotation marks and apostrophes to be easier for software to deal with, because they can’t be mistaken for coding delimeters, mark-up shortcuts, or the like; unlike the straight quotes, they shouldn’t ever need to be ‘escaped’. Although I haven’t reviewed the previous discussions, I agree entirely with the latter part of the above as well as Victor’s previous post. Personally, I have to make a special effort not to use them in article-space here (and in ASCII-only environments), but I can also understand others’ reluctance to revisit a debate—over what many consider minutiae—that has the potential to go the way of the ‘dash wars’.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 03:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Victor, installing curly quotes and en-dashes is messing things up, not tidying them up. There's no meaningful difference to people, and the difficulties that they cause for users is constant. For example I can easily search for "isn't" when editing: put a curly quote in there, and I have no idea how to type it. I'd have to go to another tool, search through the "insert symbol" menu, grab a curly quote, come back here and paste it into my search bar. There's probably some way to type one by knowing a fancy alt sequence or memorizing its UNICODE ordinal value, but that would be an utter waste of time. There's no reason to make people go to extra effort to satisfy typography fetishists.—Kww(talk) 03:51, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I thought the whole purpose of MoS was to encourage people to go to extra effort to satisfy typography fetishists (or as they are otherwise known, people who know what professionally edited texts look like and would prefer Wikipedia to look like that too). The problem you have with "isn't" (which you can solve practically by searching for just "isn", although I suppose that in other cases there might not be such a good solution) applies just as much to en dashes, and anyway, wouldn't be a significant problem if we restricted the change to titles and bolded introductions, which is all I'm suggesting. Victor Yus (talk) 10:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Exactly why I would also forbid the use of en-dashes and minus signs. Your suggestion of restricting it to partial use only creates the problem of mixed representations of the same text string.—Kww(talk) 14:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Couldn’t the software be tweaked to treat the corresponding “printers’ ” and “typescript” punctuation characters (to avoid loaded terminology) as fungible equivalents in a search field? It already does something similar with accented characters: if I type “Québec” in the box above this edit window, the popup suggestions all start with “Quebec”.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 01:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia software certainly could be. When editing, though, the search functions are handled by the browser, not by Wikimedia software. This kind of thing also makes every bot writer's job more complicated, as all of our pattern matching has to compensate for multiple flavors of punctuation. It's not that it can't be done, it's just that because it's useless, there's no reason to undertake the effort of an indefinitely long and mistake-prone task.—Kww(talk) 01:28, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Straight quotation marks are "proper".

Can we please not rehash this debate? —David Levy 03:50, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

What debate? Has there been some sort of compromise agreed here - the Fetishists get their way over the dashes, the Philistines get their way over the quote marks? Victor Yus (talk) 10:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Sooner or later, the Philistines will prevail on the dash issue as well. The Fetishists are making editing Wikipedia more difficult, and satisfying their fetish adds no value.—Kww(talk) 14:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I prefer straight quotation marks because when trying to edit articles with quotations that confusing and sometimes not properly marked, I can search for a straight double quote character to make sure I'm not missing something. I can't search for curly quotes without looking up how to do the keyboard gymnastics. I do think an explanation in the MoS is in order because the reasons for the rule are not obvious. Personally I'd prefer to get rid of all our variations on the dash too, but that's another story. SchreiberBike (talk) 19:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Back to the question: the section on reasons

Back to the original question, then; I think we should firstly separate the reasons for preferring double quotes to single, from those for preferring straight to curly. The only valid reason I can see for preferring straight to curly is the last of the three given (basically the point made above about searches for items like "isn't"), in combination with the "easier to type" point. I would remove the other two more dubious "reasons". All the reasoning might be relegated to footnotes. Victor Yus (talk) 13:46, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

This is more or less what I've now done (though with only limited use of footnotes). Hope it meets with approval. Victor Yus (talk) 11:15, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

All right; it wasn't (but I don't know why people feel the need to revert a whole lot of changes over one minor objection). What is the "important point about within-Wikipedia searches"? Victor Yus (talk) 11:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with your statement on "reasons", as well as your edits changing the guideline. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? What additional reasons do you think should be included (assuming that's the thing that you disagree with)? Victor Yus (talk) 20:21, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Tony, Arthur, anyone? What do you think was wrong with my changes? Victor Yus (talk) 07:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

If no-one wants to discuss this further, then I'm assuming there won't be any objection if I redo my changes? Victor Yus (talk) 06:52, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Victor, there most certainly are objections. Could I refer you to the entirety of Archive 126? Notable is this subsection. Please review all of the reasoning there, rather than calling again for further iterations of the same discussions. Tony (talk) 08:37, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what exactly you're referring me to. There seem to be various arguments presented there, and not much sign of consensus, and more to the point, no attempt to justify any of those "reasons" which we seem to have now concluded are not in fact valid (but are still in the MoS). Whatever one's personal views on the subject, surely we should all agree that if something is presented in the MoS as a reason for something, then it should make sense and actually be a reason? Otherwise the whole thing loses any credibility.

My changes removed the various pseudo-reasons, and placed the remaining "real" reasons in the appropriate places so we can see what refers to what (i.e. the reasons for using double rather than single quotes next to the guidance that tells people to do that, and the reasons for using straight rather than curly quotes/apostrophes next to the guidance that tells people to do that). I also made another independent change in the bit about not bolding quotation marks in the bold bit at the start of articles (an exception for cases like "A" is for Alibi where the quotation marks are in fact a part of the title, which I wouldn't have expected to be in any way controversial). Now, what parts of this do people in fact object to? Victor Yus (talk) 11:44, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Victor, I haven't looked into either your edits or the history, but I have a suggestion. If your whole bunch of changes were reverted due to one minor objection, then you might want to try one minor edit at a time. See how it is accepted before going to the next. Even better, propose changes individually and specifically here on the talk page first, and see if you get some support for them. The MOS is a delicated negotiate set of compromises and consensuses, so changes shouldn't move quickly. Dicklyon (talk) 15:04, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I spent half my elementary schooldays in England and half in New England. Although I know British printers, editors and designers tend to prefer single quotation marks, this is one area where I've always preferred the American convention (unlike the one that sticks every punctuation mark within quotes, willy-nilly).
My reason for preferring double quotation marks (double inverted commas) is that an apostrophe is far more likely to occur within a direct quotation than in the much-rarer enclosed or inner quotation (requiring an alternation between single and double quotes). Seeing
John said 'Mary's hair's on fire!' or 'Oh, you shouldn't have!', protested Susan.
can make the reader pause half a beat, as opposed to
John said "Mary's hair's on fire!" or "Oh, you shouldn't have!", protested Susan.
In my normal writing, I have to ad-lib when the apostrophe falls within an enclosed quotation, sometimes beginning the outer quotation with single quotation marks (British-style) in order to double those around the enclosed quotation, e.g.
'Did you not', asked the prosecutor, 'scream, "Mary's hair's on fire!" ?'
as vs
"Did you not", asked the prosecutor, "scream, 'Mary's hair's on fire!' ?"
or, rather (using curly quotation marks in my normal writing outside Wikipedia and e-mail),
‘Did you not’, asked the prosecutor, ‘scream “Mary’s hair’s on fire!” ?’
to avoid
“Did you not”, asked the prosecutor, “scream ‘Mary’s hair’s on fire!’ ?”.
¶ The "curly" alt- (or ASCII) codes I used here were Alt+145 for ‘ (open single quote), Alt+146 for ’ (apostrophe or close single quote), Alt+147 for “ (open double quote), and Alt+148 for ” (close double quotes) [plus Alt+182 for ¶ ]. —— Shakescene (talk) 09:21, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I've tried British style with the idea that punctuation shouldn't be overly visible, and American style does sometimes seem garish, but in this case I agree British just ends up being confusing. Here on WP there are also many words and names with a final apostrophe transcribing a glottal stop, so in some articles it's even worse than in your examples. And yes, it's often convenient to generally use American but to switch to British as in your last examples, but that's not going to fly in formal writing. — kwami (talk) 09:34, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Victor, could I reiterate Dicklyon's suggestion above: "propose changes individually and specifically here on the talk page first, and see if you get some support for them". Referring to your edit to MOS earlier today:

1. It was fine when when every example had non-bold ""; but the difference between bold and non-bold "" is elusive, especially in some fonts, sizes, and resolutions. Now each example would need a gloss: "Quotation marks are [bold/not bold]."
2. As we've seen again and again, the matter of proper names is distracting and problematic. This whole construction could be taken as a single proper name: William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton.

So then, "" would need to be bold. Compare Bill_Hickok_(American_football), which currently does not conform to the rule you propose. Should it, though? A mess! I'd be inclined to forget the proper names. No one understands them.

This would be the accurate rule to reflect what you seem to want; and the intent of the examples is clear from the immediate context:

• An article title may include quotation marks, and these should be in bold just like the rest of the title when it appears at the start of the lead (from "A" Is for Alibi: "A" Is for Alibi is the first novel ...).
• When a title is shown altered in the lead, any added quotation marks should not be in bold (from Jabberwocky: "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll ...; from Bill Clinton: William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton ... is an American politician.).

Please don't treat MOS as your sandbox. Tony (talk) 12:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Like any Wikipedia page, it's all our sandbox - that's how it works. Your version is a clear improvement on mine, so go ahead and change it (or I will, if you prefer). Victor Yus (talk) 14:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Gender-neutral language

Any thoughts on what to do with statements in chess articles like:

White moved his king to e4.

According to User:Frungi, "his" is not a gender-generic term here because it refers to the metaphorical person White, who represents the white side of a chess game and is by definition male. (The term would have been gender-generic if the term had referred to the person playing chess because the actual person can be of either gender.)

However, I still have a huge concern that people will think that it refers to the actual person playing chess, who can be of either gender, in which case it would be a gender-generic pronoun. Any thoughts on what to do?? (For details on the discussion, see sections 26-28 of Wikipedia talk:Gender-neutral language. Georgia guy (talk) 19:05, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I just want to note that this is my understanding of how chess is written about, and I could very well be wrong. It would be great to get some other opinions and knowledge. —Frungi (talk) 19:10, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

"How chess is written about" is of little concern (unless you're directly quoting source, of course). If a source has idiosyncratic style, so what? You can cite the source without copying her style. If I was citing (say) the Westboro Baptist Church (which is a reliable source for their own beliefs) I would certainly, if paraphrasing and not quoting, say "The Church believes that gay people should be executed" and not "The Church believes that faggots should be executed". That's an extreme example but the principle applies generally. We should follow our own manual of style, not that of the International Chess Federation or whomever. Herostratus (talk) 02:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

"White moves his king" is a textbook example of generic male sexist language. It needs to be changed, possibly by removing the deixis altogether ("White moves king to e4"). Tony (talk) 02:23, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

That’s ungrammatical, worse IMO than being gender-biased. “White moves the king to e4” could pass, but I’d prefer “The White king moves to e4.” (I’d write “K4” myself, but I suppose that just shows how long it’s been since I read anything about chess.)—Odysseus1479 (talk) 02:38, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Anything but "his". Tony (talk) 03:04, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Before everyone gets carried away, please read this, especially if you're an ombud. -- Ypnypn (talk) 03:18, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I’ve expressed my own views of the whole concept of GNL at WT:GNL, but since it’s relevant, I’ll repeat and elaborate here: It doesn’t matter. Unless dealing with a subject for which sexism is a real and present problem, it doesn’t matter. Historically and in many languages, pronouns with a male sense also have a neutral sense. It’s clear from context that “he” does not refer to a specific individual; and in that context, “he” is a gender-neutral pronoun. Extreme political correctness (see Ypnypn’s link for an example) benefits no one. —Frungi (talk) 04:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

•  Question: - What do the Oxford and Chicago Manuals of Style say on the matter? I think those would be a good starting point, and I would certainly give what they say more weight than any random opinion I or anyone else would have. - SudoGhost 04:41, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

  Manual of Style/Archive 139 on Twitter, this morning: “Tip: Section 5.225 of CMOS has a list of nine tips for using gender-neutral language in writing.—#CMOS16” —Frungi (talk) 04:57, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

¶ Maybe I'm just being hopelessly naïve and ignorant, but wouldn't it be useful to distinguish real games played between real human beings at some real time from the more-problematic generalized examples and abstract chess problems? In a match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, use "he", "him" and "his" for both Black and White; in a match between two of the Polgar sisters, use "she", "her" and (if necessary) "hers" for both Black and White; in a match between Judit Polgár and her father László Polgár, use female pronouns for the former and male ones for the latter. Contract bridge is another game played by both sexes where abstractions (North, East, South and West) replace the players' own names; is there a generally-recognized gender convention for either Wikipedia's articles on Bridge or the game's own extensive popular, technical and reportorial literature? (If North is a woman, do Wikipedia or bridge-columnists write "North played his remaining trump" or "North followed his partner's lead"?) —— Shakescene (talk) 07:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I guess if one is talking about an actual player, one says "she" or "he" as appropriate. But when talking about an abstract or theoretical situation, I don't think there's any good alternative to paraphrasing. Singular they seems not to work here, "he or she" is over the top, "he" reinforces stereotypes, and "she" is distractingly pointed. In most cases we can paraphrase somehow (e.g. "White's king moves to e4"; "The ace draws North's remaining trump"), but for those cases where we can't, how about randomly making one player a "she" and the other a "he" (or two each at bridge)? Victor Yus (talk) 08:08, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't often see myself agreeing with Victor Yus. But that is a mighty fine explanation. Tony (talk) 13:12, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I may be conflating memories, but I dimly recall the Washington Post's bridge column as specifically having gendered cardinal directions--so N or S were women, E or W were male, or some variation; I'm not sure if that's based in the traditions or not. Obviously if there's some sort of standard in place (like feminine pronouns for ships, etc.) I think we should defer to practice, but if there isn't Victor's suggestion seems sensible. Split the difference. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 14:01, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

After sleeping on this, I've realized that it wouldn't be so strange (where the gender of the player is either unknown or hypothetical) to use neuter pronouns, as in "Black takes the opportunity to strengthen its kingside" or "White moves its king to e4"; in fact I dimly (but perhaps wrongly) recall seeing chess commentary in such form. An analogy would be in military or strategic writing, where sometimes an antagonist is referred to as "he", sometimes as "they", sometimes as "it", and sometimes, when considered as a nation, as "she" ("Germany resumed its V-1 attacks."; "Spain strengthened her defences."; "The enemy knows he cannot prevail without air support."; "The other side depended on their cavalry".) How are sports teams referred to, when their title isn't plural? (¿"Chelsea hired its first Jamaican manager."?) —— Shakescene (talk) 00:42, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, "its" in the Chelsea case (or "their", at least in British English). But I'm not sure that works in a game like chess or bridge, where "Black" or "South" is understood to be a person, not a team or a country. Possibly one could get used to it; more readily in chess than bridge, it seems to me. Victor Yus (talk) 10:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

• Caution... we already have a section that suggests using gender neutral pronouns in the MOS, I think more than that would be overkill. While I agree that using gender neutral wording (when we can) is a nice thing to do, but Wikipedia policy pages are not the place to "right great wrongs". I am concerned that further mandating the use of gender neutral language will will simply lead to unnecessary arguments and disruption. Also, there really isn't a need to put more in the guideline... If you come across an article that you think inappropriately uses gender specific language, just edit the article. You don't need a policy or guideline to give you permission. Blueboar (talk) 12:39, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
  • In case anyone thinks that people don't watch behind en.WP's back when it comes to sexism, see this and this and this – links someone has just sent me. Tony (talk) 14:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes. Funny how sexist it is, even though everybody opposes it, isn't it? Toccata quarta (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
• I don't know that tying ourselves into knots with over-detailed instructions that no one reads will be a good idea. The problem lies in the language, doesn't she? I am all on favour of gender neutrality, and if someone were to reverse the current male bias in English (let alone worse bias in many other languages) I wouldn't complain. Nor am I inclined to trouble specially to change anyone else's picky writing in this respect in case they refuse to let the male embrace the female. The foregoing analyses of the situation were pretty reasonable, I thought. I would have no objection to anyone referring to any piece whomsoever as "it", nor to referring to kings as "he" and queens as "she" (though if ever you catch me referring to queens as "he" or kings as "she", you know I am being sarcastic or am very sleepy). When referring to the unidentified player taking north, or black or the like, it seldom would be difficult to word it so as to avoid gender altogether. ("Black sacrificed a pawn to protect the knight" or "KB then moved to XY to protect Black's queen.") To anyone bitching about this, simply say: "You no like, you change it yourself; this is WP after all." Anyway, I get the impression that the typical modern feminist is tired of being characterised as petty and humourless, and no longer so inclined to fuss over the little things. More strength to her elbow, say I. JonRichfield (talk) 14:07, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

¶ Not surprisingly, this hasn't entirely escaped the attention of Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/FAQ/Format#Pronouns, should we use male, female or neutral? —— Shakescene (talk) 09:22, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

"(Christian) clergy titles in article names"

Editors may wish to see User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 132#(Christian) clergy titles in article names (version of 02:35, 5 May 2013).
—Wavelength (talk) 03:02, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Commas in geographical names

There does not appear to be a clear WP policy on the use of commas in geographical references dividing subordinate divisions, such as city and state (e.g., Portland, Oregon), province and nation (e.g., British Columbia, Canada) or a mix (e.g., Miami, Florida, USA). In particular, there is some debate over whether the final element should be followed by a comma when it is not at the end of a sentence or followed by other punctuation. (This arose in response to edits that I made on the article D. B. Cooper, as discussed on my talk page.)

My view is that they should be followed by a comma as the final element is effectively treated as parenthetical, that is, the commas are used in place of brackets. For example:

• Portland, Oregon means Portland (Oregon)
• British Columbia, Canada means British Columbia (Canada)

This is consistent with the comma used after the year in dates expressed in m-d-y format, per WP:DATEFORMAT:

Wikipedia does not insert a comma between month and year, nor does it insert a full stop after the day (10 June 1921); however, when using the mdy format, a comma is required between day and year. When a date in mdy format appears in the middle of text, include a comma after the year (The weather on September 11, 2001, was clear and warm).

It is also consistent with style manuals, as stated in the article Comma#In geographical names (citations omitted):

Additionally, most style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook, recommend that the second element be treated as a parenthetical, requiring a second comma after: "The plane landed in Kampala, Uganda, that evening."

I see that this also sparked a debate over whether the title of a rather more prominent article should be September 11, 2001, attacks or September 11, 2001 attacks, which was discussed at length before the article was renamed September 11 attacks, skirting the issue.

As DoctorJoeE has pointed out though, this does lead to cases where it can become comma overload, where leaving them out (whilst not following the above style) arguably seems neater:

• ...hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971...
• ...hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the airspace between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington on November 24, 1971...

This possibly goes against the general statement (at MOS:COMMA) that:

Modern practice is against excessive use of commas; there are usually ways to simplify a sentence so that fewer are needed.

I'm not convinced that this general principle trumps style; rather it seems to suggest re-wording sentences to avoid commas in particular cases where it becomes unwieldy.

It would be good to have a clear WP policy on the matter, as trivial as it may seem. Thoughts? —sroc (talk) 22:43, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I’m all in favour of both commas, for places and dates alike. If the result is a sentence that limps along like the hijacking example, then recast: the benefit in “neatness” from eliminating a single comma is marginal IMO. The 9-11 title is an example of a ‘false scent‘ created by the omitted comma, as a careless reader (who‘s lived in a cave for the last twelve years—OK, this particular case is admittedly a bit of a stretch … but it’s the principle of the thing) could come away with the impression that 2,001 attacks occurred one September 11.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 07:19, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Here's a comment from an editor who does not live in the US (left on my talk page for some reason): "My problem is that I don't know the names of American states, so "Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington," sounds like four different places with a misplaced "and", no matter how many commas you use." Which is sort of my point -- if a comma isn't necessary, it isn't necessary (and might be confusing), no matter what some style manual might say. If we want to get really technical, I'm aware that non-restrictive appositives -- single nouns included -- are normally set off with commas; and I might actually agree with that if I had any idea what it really meant. Again, it's not a big deal, and obviously I'll abide by consensus; but at the end of the day, as stated at MOS:COMMA, the general trend is toward less commas, not more. DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 14:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

See Semicolon#Usage (version of 19:10, 21 April 2013).

• Several fast food restaurants can be found within the cities: London, England; Paris, France; Dublin, Ireland; and Madrid, Spain.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:10, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi, DoctorJoeE. Where is that comment? I couldn't see it on your talk page.

I'm not from the US either, by the way, although I do recognise the names of the states; but more significantly, I know how punctuation is used in English, so I would understand that was meant even if they were unfamiliar. Though I can understand how people could be confused as this seems to be an oft-neglected rule going the way of their/there/they're confusion. —sroc (talk) 17:16, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I would add that if a sentence is ambiguous or confusing, then it should be re-written rather than adopting bad style. For example:

• ...hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the airspace during a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971...

This would make it abundantly clear there there are two places — a departure point and a destination.

If the correct style were applied consistently, then this would also help to avoid confusion, which is all the more reason to have a clear policy. —sroc (talk) 17:27, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

This was discussed on January 9, 2013 (UTC), in a discussion now archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 135#Parenthetical comma usage with place names.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:07, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Wavelength. So it is policy after all, just in a rather out-of-the-way place at Wikipedia:COPYEDIT#Parenthetical_comma. Is there any reason this isn't included at MOS:COMMA, which is the more obvious place to look? The above section also mentions the policy regarding dates which is already set out at WP:DATEFORMAT, so there's no harm in doubling-up if it helps people find it. I propose inserting the following before the second bullet point under MOS:COMMA:

• Geographical references that include multiple levels of subordinate divisions (e.g., city, state/province, country), each element is separated by a comma and the last element is also followed by a comma (unless it is followed by other punctuation, such as at the end of a sentence). Dates in month–day–year format also require a comma after the day and another comma after the year (unless followed by other punctuation). In both cases, the last element is treated as parenthetic.

Incorrect:	On November 24, 1971 Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft that had taken off from Portland, Oregon and was destined for Seattle, Washington.
Correct:	On November 24, 1971, Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft that had taken off from Portland, Oregon, and was destined for Seattle, Washington.

—sroc (talk) 05:21, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I am currently opposed to this change or amendment, whatever you want to call it. I can't see anywhere that the state you're mentioning must have a comma after it, least not if Oregon is followed with the word and in the example above. I'd have to consult the collegiate manual of styles here to be certain. If a parenthetical geographical point is followed by and then this doesn't need a comma. You mention "policy"...the MOS is not policy...it is a guideline. While I am generally a fairly strict adherent to MOS, more discussion needs to go into this.--MONGO 07:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Reading over Serial comma, the section style guides opposing mandatory use do not suggest putting a comma before the conjunction such as and or.--MONGO 07:34, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

This is not a serial comma. Please see above reference from the Comma#In geographical names article which clearly states that the comma is required by "most style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook." Unfortunately, the online versions are only available to subscribers.

Apologies for mistaking the MOS for policy. —sroc (talk) 10:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

From The Chicago Manual of Style:

Q. When a city and a state are mentioned in a sentence, am I correct in placing commas after the state name as well as before the state name? “Mary traveled to Seattle, Washington, before going on to California.” And when “Jr.” follows a name in a sentence, is it necessary to add a comma before it? How about after it?

A. Yes. No. Only if you put one before it. (That is, the commas around “Jr.” are optional.)

…

Q. In the sentence “Researchers at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Southern California determined . . . ,” should there be a comma after “San Diego”?

A. (Is this a trick question?) There should be a comma after Riverside.[2]

And other sources from the top web results:

"Use a comma to separate the city from the state and after the state in a document."[3]

"When writing the name of a city followed by its state, most writers know to include the comma between the two, but often overlook the comma that’s required after the state name."[4]

"Place a comma between the city and the state name, and another comma after the state name, unless ending a sentence." [5]

"If there is no street address —just a city and a state — put a comma between the city and the state. If the sentence continues after the state name, place a comma after the state."[6]

"Use a comma to separate between two place names in sequence, e.g. city and county/state/country. Add another comma after the place name if more words follow." [7]

—sroc (talk) 10:30, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I understand, but there is great ambiguity as far as whether we need a comma preceding a coordinating conjunction. In the case of subordinating conjunctions, (words such as after, before, how, once and while) preceding commas are usually used. But there doesn't seem to be an absolute rule for a preceding comma before a coordinating conjunction. The example you show above has the word before, has a preceding comma since it is a subordinating conjunction. I do, however recognize your suggestion is about geographical data such a state or country and I am still finding some ambiguity depending on which MOS one might be following.--MONGO 17:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

You're missing the point! Regardless of whether style includes a comma before a conjunction (which is a matter of style preference), that is not why the comma is needed here. A comma is required after a city–state combination as the state is treated as a parenthetical remark, just like the year in a month–day–year format. See all of the above style guides and references (and the examples given on the respective pages) which universally endorse this rule. Although the rule is often forgotten, that is the rule for plain English usage. See also that Wikipedia already states this rule at Wikipedia:COPYEDIT#Parenthetical comma:

Punctuation

• Location constructions such as Vilnius, Lithuania require a comma after the second element, e.g., He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, after the country had gained independence.
• The month day, year, style of writing dates requires a comma after the year, e.g., On September 15, 1947, she began her first year at Harvard.

It should therefore be added to MOS:COMMA as well to avoid any further confusion amongst editors.

I would add that leaving out a comma where it is required has capacity to cause confusion amongst all English speakers who are familiar with the rule. If following the rule has the potential to cause confusion in particular cases, the solution is to re-cast the sentence to avoid the confusion, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and omit the rule from MOS altogether! —sroc (talk) 23:33, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

To look at your comment another way, consider this example:

Apples grow on trees.

You could argue that common nouns do not require a capital letter and that apple is not a proper noun, so a capital is not required.

apples grow on trees.

But that's missing this point that a sentence always starts with a capital letter. One rule trumps the other. In this case, we have two rules. One rule requires a comma after the state. Another rule may indicate a comma before a conjunction depending on style, and our style is not to have it — and if that conjunction were elsewhere in a sentence, that rule would apply — but this is overridden by the rule that requires a comma after the state, regardless of what word follows, unless it is at the end of a sentence. —sroc (talk) 23:44, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I linked earlier to style guides which do not demand that a comma go after a Parenthetical word...the guides I have seen do not demand this if the date or geographical point are followed by a coordinating conjunction.--MONGO 16:30, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

• I'm with sroc. This is not a serial comma or coordination conjunction issue. I think it's the same as the year of a date – it's a parenthetical, as though you're saying "Seattle, which is in Washington" – so a comma afterward is obligatory. I think if it's already at WP:COPYEDIT that it should also be at MOS:COMMA, too. AgnosticAphid talk 23:13, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Agnosticaphid.

Sorry if my earlier explanations were unclear, but I think MONGO was confusing two different uses of the comma:

• A serial comma "is a comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and, or, or nor) in a series of three or more terms." Whether or not to use a serial comma is a matter of style (the Wikipedia preference being some prefer not to use it), but either is acceptable in English language usage provided that the meaning is clear.

The flag is red, white, and blue.

The flag is red, white and blue. (This is the preferred style of Wikipedia.)

• A parenthetical comma is "used to enclose parenthetical words and phrases within a sentence (i.e., information that is not essential to the meaning of the sentence). Such phrases are both preceded and followed by a comma, unless that would result in a doubling of punctuation marks, or the parenthetical is at the start or end of the sentence."

My father, chewing with unbridled fury, ate the muffin.

My father, chewing with unbridled fury ate the muffin.

The source MONGO refers to relates to serial commas. What I am discussing here is parenthetical commas.

As shown in the various references in my comments above, state names (when following city names) and years (in a m–d–y format date) are treated as parenthetical and require a comma afterwards. They are not items in a list and therefore the style rule adopted for serial commas is irrelevant in this context.

The weather on September 11, 2001, was clear and warm.

The weather on September 11, 2001 was clear and warm.

The aircraft took off from Portland, Oregon, and was then hijacked mid-air.

The aircraft took off from Portland, Oregon and was then hijacked mid-air.

Note that parenthetic remarks can be set off by other punctuation, but always in pairs.

She spoke to her father, who happened to be the President, and was pardoned.

She spoke to her father, who happened to be the President and was pardoned.

She spoke to her father (who happened to be the President) and was pardoned.

She spoke to her father (who happened to be the President and was pardoned.

She spoke to her father—who happened to be the President—and was pardoned.

She spoke to her father—who happened to be the President and was pardoned.

Q.E.D. —sroc (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I've done some research and conclude you are correct. What I found was that newspapers and similar print does not demand a comma after a parenthetical if it is followed by a coordinating conjunction...not a universal thing, and many say this is just to save space to ease printing columns. For our purposes on Wikipedia, I concur now that you are correct and I endorse your proposed changes to the guideline.--MONGO 13:32, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, MONGO. As there now seems to consensus, I hope it's safe to include the relevant section in MOS:COMMA? —sroc (talk) 14:21, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

RfC at Talk:Wikipedia

There is an Rfc at Talk:Wikipedia#RfC: Wikipedia in italics? that may interest you. Please come and read the summary, then include your !vote if you would like to do so. Thank you in advance for your consideration. – PAINE ELLSWORTH ^CLIMAX! 18:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

ref tags and intervening space

In section "Punctuation and footnotes" it says: "... ref tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, ..., with no intervening space." What is the idea behind the no intervening space - is it for editing purposes, to avoid delinking of the ref with its text while moving and editing text? Or is it for the text on the web page to look good when rendered in the browser?

We are having a discussion regarding my style where there is no intervening space, but a line break. It looks neat while editing, as well as when it appears on the page. Hence, I wanted to check if my style was going against the spirit of the no intervening space rule. Jay (talk) 05:46, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

For one thing, this mirrors how footnotes are used in other publications generally and by the lion's share of style guides, I suspect. On a more practical level, in Wikipedia, leaving a space before a footnote creates the prospect that the footnote will wrap over onto the next line, separated from the text it's associated with. For example:

… This is just an example
^[1] of how footnotes might
appear at the beginning of
a line when the text wraps.
^[2]

Not very elegant. —sroc (talk) 06:46, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Both reasons make sense. So line break is not an option. We can update the manual thus: "The ref tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, including any punctuation (see exceptions below), with no intervening space or line break. This mirrors how footnotes are used in other publications generally, and will also ensure that the footnote sticks to the text it's associated with, when the text wraps over onto the next line." Jay (talk) 15:41, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I did a few mockups in the sandbox. Not all of them relevant to Jay's question. However, the upshot is that the least that a line break does is to put a space between the ref and the reffed item, which is against the substance as well as the spirit of the rule. It does not strike me as a matter of life and death either way in terms of neatness, but as long as it matters very little, it seems best to stick to the rule. My little list of options follows:

EDIT BELOW THIS LINE, you will love it.

EDIT BELOW THIS LINE and you will rue it.

EDIT BELOW THIS LINE, you will loathe it.

EDIT BELOW THIS LINE you will hose it.

EDIT BELOW THIS LINE,

 you will lose it.

EDIT BELOW THIS LINE, you will lure it.

• The operative part of that instruction as far as your article is concerned is the first part, "... ref tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies". You should pin your citation as close as possible to the part to which it relates. Usually that would mean directly after a comma or full stop, and not only after a space. To me it means not after a line feed either. ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you want to talk to User:Gadget850 about this. If memory serves, even putting the ref tag immediately after normal punctuation doesn't guarantee that the little blue number will stick with the previous sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Correct. See Help:Reference display customization. (This notification thing works pretty well) --  Gadget850 ^talk 21:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

It's a magic spell to summon useful people! (I linked your name in the hope that it would work. I think I'll be using that more in the future.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Italicization of the names of websites

There is a discussion taking place here regarding the italicization of website names. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 01:39, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Capitalization of movements

See here.   — C M B J   07:33, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Variations of English

Frequently discussions assume there are only two variations of English - US English and British English - and that their use is restricted to the countries of USA and UK respectively. In some cases, it is assumed that any non-US word must be British English and vice versa. In fact, there are many other significant variations of English - Australian, Canadian, Indian, New Zealand and so on. In addition, the vast bulk of the language is "international" i.e. used by most, if not all, English-speaking world, a category acknowledged by leading international dictionaries like the Oxford Dictionary of English compiled by editors from all over the English-speaking world. I'd like to suggest that:

1. we give more prominence to the different variations early on in the article, in order to raise awareness that there are more than just two
2. we amend the existing sentence at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style #Opportunities for commonality which currently says "Wikipedia tries to find words that are common to all varieties of English." to "Wikipedia tries to use international English (as recognised by authoritative sources), i.e. words common to most, if not all, varieties of English. The main exception is regional articles, where the use of the appropriate regional variety of English is acceptable provided it is clear."

Views? Bermicourt (talk) 19:43, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Again I refer to User:Angr/Unified English Spelling, an essay about a practice worthy of consideration.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

It's a great idea, but for now we'll have to go with authoritative sources. The ODE is clearly one very well-researched source, but there may be others. Bermicourt (talk) 22:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Count me in favor of User:Angr/Unified English Spelling, but I won't hold my breath while waiting for that kind of sensibility to come to the fore. Cancel that, let's all learn Esperanto or some better created language and we'll really be rational. SchreiberBike (talk) 03:54, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Can you give me examples that would be affected by point 2, please? Resolute 22:18, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I think point 2 only works if it is clarified that, for a word or usage to be "international", it has to include the US. The US has more than 60% of native English speakers. If this proposal is a stalking-horse to prefer Commonwealth English over American English in non-US-specific articles, then absolutely not. --Trovatore (talk) 23:29, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Some editors seems to believe that Commonwealth English is the International English. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:10, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

...but not nearly as many as believe that American English is the Only English, whether through ignorance or chauvinism. Johnbod (talk) 04:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Chauvinism? What does that have to do with the importance of any given variety of English? Toccata quarta (talk) 04:19, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Johnbod didn't say anything about importance. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:48, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Then replace "importance" with "value" or whatever is unlikely to lead to pointless nitpicking. Toccata quarta (talk) 06:57, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Re User:Angr/Unified English Spelling, I think we may actually be moving towards a convergence. (In my own case, I mix Brit/US spellings even though I am English educated.) However 'international English' is not well documented compared to the British and US kinds. Perhaps we need to re-visit this in about 15 years time? --Kleinzach 00:23, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Kleinzach is right. This is not about our own POVs, stalking horses or agendas. It is about looking objectively at what authoritative sources say. The Oxford Dictionary of English, which despite its name is international, and "views the language from the perspective that English is a world language", is one clear example. However, there may be others. The ODE recognises many variants of English, but unless a word is tagged e.g. "Canadian" it is assessed by their international team of over 70 editors as being "international". That is not the same as "universal", although most of the words are. As soon as you start saying "international must include me" (whatever your native version), you are back to POV - that is not what the sources say AFAIK. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:56, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Beg to doubt the neutrality of the ODE. When I look it up I keep seeing a blog on "International English from a British perspective", which frankly I think would be the more honest way to describe your proposal. Most references to "International English" seem to me to be an attempt to inflate the prominence of Commonwealth English by counting by countries rather than speakers.

Let's take a specific example. As far as I know American English is the only variety that predominantly uses the spelling "color". You seem to be saying that we should use "colour" in all articles except US-specific ones, did I get that right? Because that is not going to fly. No way. --Trovatore (talk) 08:35, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree: it's not gonna fly. We have a good system already, don't we? Tony (talk) 09:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I think so. It isn't perfect but it's kept a tolerable peace for years and years, and improved the quality of our articles by not making English-speaking editors pick and choose which WP to work on. Compare Norwegian, which for a small language that's mostly mutually comprehensible with Swedish, couldn't manage to avoid having two different Wikipedias. --Trovatore (talk) 09:32, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

@Trovatore. A blog (which I couldn't find by typing in your phrase BTW) is not an authoritative source. The ODE clearly is authoritative, but if there are other equally well-researched and international dictionaries out there - bring them on. What is not a valid line of argument is that international English = US English (or = any other variety of English for that matter). The system we have isn't bad - I'm simply trying to improve it by addressing a) the issues above and b) recognising the reality of the English-speaking world which is rich and varied, but with much in common. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:05, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

But like these other editors said, your proposal seems to be aimed more at enforcing whichever variety of English is more widely dispersed on a geographical basis, but that's not a fair means of determining which variety to use when a single country (the US) has a majority of native speakers. I can't see what's wrong with the system we've been using; it's not perfect (see, for instance, the yogurt/yoghurt debacle), and there are some unresolved questions (see the talk page of english garden, for example) but it does avoid most hard feelings in my experience. AgnosticAphid talk 18:14, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

My proposal is not about enforcing anything. It's simply aimed at extending the existing guideline to use "spelling common to all" by reflecting authoritative sources which seem to be moving towards what they (not I) call international English i.e. spelling common to most regions of the English-speaking world. And BTW the US does not have the majority of English speakers (even India outnumbers the US), although numbers are not the criterion here - sources are. Bermicourt (talk) 19:13, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

The organization of the United Nations uses six official languages, including English, and its website (http://www.un.org) does likewise. There are 193 member states of the United Nations (version of 11:10, 5 May 2013), representing many varieties of English, but apparently the organization and the website use only one version of each official language (Arabic, English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Chinese). (I mentioned them alphabetically, by their ISO 639-1 language codes, which are, respectively, ar, en, es, fr, ru, and zh.)

I have not found, in the United Nations Editorial Manual Online or in Resouces for Using English at the United Nations [sic], any indication of accommodation for two or more varieties of English. (Of course I recognize that the UN, comprising imperfect nations, is itself imperfect.)

—Wavelength (talk) 15:38, 14 May 2013 (UTC) and 16:02, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Wavelength, so the UN uses The Concise Oxford English Dictionary as its authority, which also appears to be designed for international use, but I don't have a copy to hand to verify that. I wonder what the EU uses? Bermicourt (talk) 16:27, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I missed seeing that. Where did you find evidence that the UN uses The Concise Oxford English Dictionary as its authority?

—Wavelength (talk) 16:51, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

The EU has http://ec.europa.eu/translation/english/guidelines/documents/styleguide_english_dgt_en.pdf.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:00, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Here is the UN reference to the use of COED as its authority. If that's a genuine international dictionary, then we have 2 credible sources including a UN-endorsed one. The EU, on the other hand, recommends the use of British English (used by UK and Ireland) so it would seem only appropriate to prefer that for articles linked to the EU region. Bermicourt (talk) 18:55, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Bernicourt, this is not a case of seeing what others have done and doing likewise. This (that is, the existing system, WP:ENGVAR) is a negotiated, "political" choice, a way that we have found to enable fruitful cooperation between editors who use American English and those who use Commonwealth English. It works, more or less. Your proposal, which frankly I find to be disingenuously presented, amounts to preferring Commonwealth English except in articles specific to the US, meaning a large shift in the carefully negotiated balance. American editors are not going to stand still for that. --Trovatore (talk) 19:19, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Have your say, but please don't resort to personal attack - I have submitted the proposal in good faith and base it entirely on external sources. You are equally free to cite sources that support your line, but please do not turn this into a simplistic and emotive US v. the rest debate when it is not. Wikipedia's current policy is effectively that whoever creates the article chooses the spelling, presumably in order to minimise the sort of tribal argument you are seeking to provoke. However I would hope that Wikipedia has now reached the point where it can adopt a more mature, non-partisan approach based, as it is supposed to be, on authoritative sources, not editors' POVs. Bermicourt (talk) 20:37, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the proposal is a bit disingenuous. If you want to prefer Commonwealth English in all articles that aren't about the US because you think that the world is moving toward adoption of it, then why not just say so instead of presenting your proposal in a sort of fake "let's try to make everyone happy – if they don't live in the US" that can only be discerned by carefully considering what you meant by "words common to most, if not all, varieties of English". AgnosticAphid talk 20:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I am not proposing the adoption of Commonwealth English, whatever that is; I am proposing we follow an existing Wikipedia policy, i.e. to use authoritative sources. Do you disagree? The ODE's methodology is both comprehensive and international, but I have not carried out any word count to see if what they have corporately assessed as "international" favo(u)rs US English or not. It may for all I know, but who am I to argue with leading world authorities? They certainly do not talk about Commonwealth English. As for the United Nations, I haven't researched the source they use as their authority, but would be willing to accept it as an important source, whatever it says. So I am hardly pushing a partisan line. You, however, seem to be and have cited not one reliable source to back your argument up. Bermicourt (talk) 21:28, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

There are no "sources" for the question "how should Wikipedia deal with linguistic variation within English". That's a normative question that we ourselves have to resolve. --Trovatore (talk) 21:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Can we spell out what the proposal is, exactly? Are we discussing whether everything in Wikipedia should be spelled according to the Oxford Dictionary of English? That seems a little unworkable unless there is an easy way to verify what the ODE says about each particular word. Are we discussing whether to change Wikipedia's preference for words "common to all varieties of English" to words merely "common to most, if not all, varieties of English"? If that's the case, then how is it different from simply mandating a British spelling of everything given that only the US (and Canadians, on occasion) use American spellings? I would point out here that if you go to oxforddictionaries.com the default selection is the category "British and World English". Obviously the British spelling is going to be common in places like Ireland, India, and Australia. If it's a country count and not a native speaker count then British spellings will win for sure. But we already decided on wikipedia to to use ENGVAR to decide on spelling, not a country count and not a native speaker count. There's no discussion of why ENGVAR isn't a good policy or how it's becoming unworkable or the ways it's causing disagreements. Nor is there any discussion of how the conciliatory goals of ENGVAR would be suited by this proposal. AgnosticAphid talk 22:13, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Thomas Beatie

Check out the Thomas Beatie article. Any discussion on how the article can follow WP:MOS when it comes to transgender people and the rule "Avoid using phrases that seem impossible per pronoun usage"?? Georgia guy (talk) 19:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Try "their children" and "the pregnancy" or "Beatie's pregnancy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Separate an apostrophe from a quotation mark

"If you seek to separate an apostrophe from a quotation mark in a citation template ..."

Module talk:Citation/CS1/Feature requests is now open. --  Gadget850 ^talk 00:06, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

"Wikipedia has an article on..."

In March 2012, Nick Levinson inserted advice inconsistent with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid. I just read the talk page discussion cited, wherein I see no evidence of consensus (but also no mention of the WP:SELFREF contradiction).
Apparently, this problem was overlooked until today, when PinkAmpersand edited the example. So for more than a year, we've been advising editors to use the language "Wikipedia has an article on..." in the encyclopedia. Is there any reliable means of identifying and correcting the articles affected? (For some reason, Google and Bing are providing false positives for the quoted string.)
As a courtesy, I've left a note on Nick Levinson's talk page. —David Levy 19:26, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Putting "Wikipedia has an article on" (with the double quotes) in the Wikipedia search box throws up some articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:45, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Either form meets the intended purpose. If anyone wants to make changes to articles, there's also the plural, "'Wikipedia has articles on'" (with double quotation marks only). Nick Levinson (talk) 16:51, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Either form meets the intended purpose.

Have you read Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid? —David Levy 02:30, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you're being contentious. Either form meets the intended purpose. The intended purpose was to link where what is to be linked is within a quotation and therefore cannot be linked from in the usual way. I think the now-deleted form was clearer (keeping in mind that copies of pages need not be of the entire encyclopedia) but the new form also meets the intended purpose. I probably missed WP:SELFREF when I made my proposal, it was already cited above, and I saw it then, so I don't know why you chose the tone proffered. I'm happy with the guideline change. I've yesterday updated my offline drafts in progress and I thank you for the notification. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you're being contentious.

I'm not trying to be contentious. I don't know what tone you perceived, but I wasn't being sarcastic.

From your first reply, I sincerely didn't know whether you read WP:SELFREF and understood the relevant concern. It was clear only that you regarded both wordings as satisfactory and didn't object to others' edits. (It wasn't clear that you intended to modify your future contributions.)

The intended purpose was to link where what is to be linked is within a quotation and therefore cannot be linked from in the usual way. I think the now-deleted form was clearer (keeping in mind that copies of pages need not be of the entire encyclopedia) but the new form also meets the intended purpose.

When you note that "copies of pages need not be of the entire encyclopedia", are you citing a distinction between these links and those presented "in the usual way"? (Please note that this is another sincere question; I'm not trying to be rude or confrontational.)

Another concern, which I noted above, is that there doesn't appear to have been consensus for the general format (irrespective of the wording used) when you proposed it. That's why I haven't begun editing the affected articles yet; I'm not sure that either form should be included.

In the thirteen months since you inserted the advice, the practice doesn't appear to have been widely adopted. I see a handful of applications, most of which were added by you. (I found four added by others, along with a few false positives caused by similar wording coincidentally used in other contexts.) —David Levy 16:33, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I had the problem, found no solution, invented my own, and applied it to articles but an editor took it out of one, I think as unauthorized. At any rate, I found the instructions clear but contrary to the general preference to support cross-Wikipedia navigation with links, I proposed a solution, discussion ensued, the solution survived, I edited the guideline, no one reverted it, someone recently improved it, and I improved that. Consensus existed on the principle that "consensus is a normal and usually implicit and invisible process across Wikipedia. Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus" (decapitalized and internal link omitted). Where consensus may be most fragile is on whether linking from within quotations should be barred but even that remains as consensus by other editors' decision prior to my edit of the guideline.

If I'm the most frequent user of this kind of linking (assuming other similar wordings are not in use), that may be because I know of it and other editors didn't notice the provision but either didn't want to link quoted strings or should've known the guideline. We don't usually publicize new provisions and it didn't seem to warrant writing a shortcut redirect. Maybe the problem is uncommon but one editor said that lots of linking occurs within quotations.

If this kind of linking looks bad, a new consensus can be developed; feel free to proceed. A major alternative that perhaps wasn't considered when I made the proposal is not to link anywhere from a string found only within a quotation, but that seems contrary to Wikimedia's intent.

Usually, when an editor tells another to read something, including in the Wikipedia namespace, most other editors likely assume they did so either then or earlier or know the content well enough and are responsible accordingly. That's why I didn't provide notice of having read them or of updating my drafts; it's not normal to do so. That's what made repeating the advice to read stand out, but it's not a problem now.

In response to "[w]hen you note that 'copies of pages need not be of the entire encyclopedia', are you citing a distinction between these links and those presented 'in the usual way'?": You're right (if this is what you're saying) that ordinary links found on incomplete copies of Wikipedia, especially single-article copies, also could point into nowhere and therefore that there's no distinction. Nonetheless, there's a problem with the new formulation that I forgot about in thinking the new one is just as good. It's not a problem with something like <ref>See also [[math]].</ref>. But <ref>''History'', p. 6. (See also [[math]].</ref> could confuse readers into thinking that the History source has somethng on math (presumably findable in the table of contents or the index if the source is a book), when what is meant instead is that Wikipedia has an article on math. A bundling format within a single ref element, using a <br /> element, would, I think, still be too subtle and confusing. Maybe a solution is to require that this kind of link be within its own ref element. What do you think?

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:20, 26 April 2013 (UTC) (Clarified a phrase and corrected syntax: 16:31, 26 April 2013 (UTC))

At any rate, I found the instructions clear but contrary to the general preference to support cross-Wikipedia navigation with links, I proposed a solution, discussion ensued, the solution survived, I edited the guideline, no one reverted it, someone recently improved it, and I improved that.

What do you mean by "the solution survived"? As I noted, I don't believe that the discussion established consensus for the change.

Perhaps you disagree (which is fine), so you went ahead and edited the guideline. Your addition remained for thirteen months because it went largely unnoticed. Otherwise, someone would have caught the WP:SELFREF contradiction sooner and editors (other than you) would have applied the advice to more than four articles.

Maybe the problem is uncommon but one editor said that lots of linking occurs within quotations.

The problem certainly isn't uncommon. Your solution is.

This doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad idea. We appear to agree that very few editors have seen it suggested. I'm not citing its rarity as evidence that the community has actively rejected the practice. My point is that if its use were widespread, that would constitute evidence of acceptance.

If this kind of linking looks bad, a new consensus can be developed; feel free to proceed.

The setup seems illogical and unintuitive. Readers have no reason to expect such links to appear among the article's references (an unrelated context) and won't seek them there.

In the normal course of viewing the reference list, they'll encounter links to Wikipedia articles, the presence of which is confusing and potentially misleading (as it appears to suggest that Wikipedia has been cited as an additional source), irrespective of what wording is used.

Usually, when an editor tells another to read something, including in the Wikipedia namespace, most other editors likely assume they did so either then or earlier or know the content well enough and are responsible accordingly. That's why I didn't provide notice of having read them or of updating my drafts; it's not normal to do so.

I don't mean that I expected a statement along the lines of "I've now read WP:SELFREF." I mean that I expected some acknowledgement of the relevant concern (if not an outright apology and commitment to assist in tracking down and editing the articles affected). Your initial response seemed to convey the opinion that there was nothing wrong with either wording.

Maybe a solution is to require that this kind of link be within its own ref element. What do you think?

I'm baffled as to why we would want to place these links among the article's references. If we're to include them at all (and there isn't even consensus that we should), why not group them in the "See also" section (or a subsection thereof), where internal links are supposed to be listed? —David Levy 17:36, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Consensus was established; see my quotation of Wikipedia:Consensus in my last post above; thus my proposal survived. There's nothing wrong with a solution beng unusual in either design or execution, as long as it meets our requirements and, generally, preferences, such as by maintaining or increasing Wikipedia's accuracy. I think we're discussing whether it meets those requirements.

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#See also section, you're right that the links could be added to a See Also section, although there they should be annotated, since otherwise some of the links would be unclear as to why they're even in that section and they'd be deleted. They'd be away from their context (the quotation) and I'm not enthusiastic about that distance but maybe that's as good an option as what I put into the guideline. Annotating in the See Also section for any reason is unusual but is supported. I don't recall having seen that Layout provision before.

Apart from that, I agree that endnotes are not ideal locations but in-body locations did not seem consistently to work. Sometimes, a text in an alternate location can be linked from instead; for example, "Jones said that 'many buses go on Broadway.' [[Broadway (New York City)|Broadway]] is an old street." Perhaps we should offer that option explicitly in the guideline, if it's not there now, although editors sometimes object to using guidelines to offer options rather than to guide people into a preferred method, although what I wrote in the guideline included options and that was implicitly accepted. But in many texts added unquoted text would be cumbersome and what is perceived as extraneous text would be deleted with the link.

What would be intuitive would probably be to link from within a quotation and a scholar's approach to that would be to annotate the quotation as that linking was added, just as quotations in various publications are annotated as that emphasis was added or was in the original. But adding linking inside a quotation right now is against consensus, so that would have to change.

I don't apologize for applying the guideline even if the guideline was written by me, since it was discussed and consensus was and is implicitly present. Nor do I apologize for having previously applied a solution similar to what the guideline eventually said, since there was a problem and my solution was reasonable. You're free to disagree; I don't object to that, but our disagreeing does not require an apology from either of us.

There are articles I edited in my early involvement with Wikipedia years ago that I would not edit the same way now, but I don't think I should go back to them and rewrite them whenever a policy or guideline is changed or whenever I discover one. Sometimes I do, but not most of the time. Unless an error is substantial, such as a copyright violation (one might have thought a source was in the public domain and later found out otherwise and I don't think I ever had an error on that scale), most editors are not expected to edit retroactively simply because they're the ones who edited the article in the past and they can track them down. Instead, we sometimes edit articles as we come across them, sometimes with the assistance of bots, regardless of who previous editors were. If previous editors were required to spend their time updating, that would soon overtake adding new content and new content would suffer because editors would leave or be squeezed for time. My watchlist is over a thousand articles now, although some are rarely edited by anyone in any way. I mostly apply policies and guidelines going forward.

Right now, both guidelines are in effect and both have consensus. I recognize a problem with part of what is present but I don't feel driven to change either guideline now as I don't think the problem is as large as some I have addressed (priorities will vary). If you believe any provison should be deleted or changed, I leave that initiative to you, that being the normal procedure.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:53, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Consensus was established; see my quotation of Wikipedia:Consensus in my last post above; thus my proposal survived.

You referred to a chronology in which "the solution survived" after your proposal was discussed and before you edited the guideline.

There's nothing wrong with a solution beng unusual in either design or execution, as long as it meets our requirements and, generally, preferences, such as by maintaining or increasing Wikipedia's accuracy. I think we're discussing whether it meets those requirements.

Agreed. And I'm explaining why it doesn't. Internal links don't belong in a list of references. This is problematic not because it's unusual, but because it's unhelpful and potentially harmful (for the reasons noted above).

Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#See also section, you're right that the links could be added to a See Also section, although there they should be annotated, since otherwise some of the links would be unclear as to why they're even in that section and they'd be deleted.

Yes, that's what I mean. They could be annotated in a similar manner (perhaps with Latin letters or Roman numerals instead of Arabic numerals, thereby making the distinction clearer).

They'd be away from their context (the quotation) and I'm not enthusiastic about that distance

The links appearing alongside the references already are away from the quotations. They also are away from the sections in which readers expect to find internal links.

but maybe that's as good an option as what I put into the guideline. Annotating in the See Also section for any reason is unusual but is supported. I don't recall having seen that Layout provision before.

It would be a significant change. The idea shouldn't be implemented without clear consensus, preferably established via an RfC. When attempting to introduce a brand new practice to the article namespace, a discussion along the lines of this is nowhere near sufficient. (And in that instance, there wasn't even strong agreement among the four editors who expressed opinions.)

I don't apologize for applying the guideline even if the guideline was written by me,

You've misunderstood. I wasn't referring to your creation or application of the linking practice. I was referring to your introduction of wording incompatible with our longstanding self-references guideline.

But I didn't expect an apology, let alone request or demand one. As noted above, I merely expected an acknowledgement that the original wording was inconsistent with WP:SELFREF.

since it was discussed and consensus was and is implicitly present.

It wasn't and isn't. A tiny discussion among four or five editors (depending on whether we count the one who requested an example but never expressed an opinion), with exactly one editor other than the proposer halfheartedly supporting the idea as an interim alternative to a better solution that he intends to use instead, does not establish consensus to fundamentally alter both our internal linking practices and our reference lists' scope.

Likewise, the text's mere existence for thirteen months doesn't mean that the community accepted it. As we've discussed, it simply went largely unnoticed. Almost no one followed the advice, and the flagrant WP:SELFREF contradiction "survived" as well (because it, like the rest of the addition, was overlooked).

Nor do I apologize for having previously applied a solution similar to what the guideline eventually said, since there was a problem and my solution was reasonable.

I disagree that it was reasonable to unilaterally introduce a new internal linking format and a new/disparate purpose for our articles' reference lists.

But again, I seek no apology.

There are articles I edited in my early involvement with Wikipedia years ago that I would not edit the same way now, but I don't think I should go back to them and rewrite them whenever a policy or guideline is changed or whenever I discover one.

You accidentally inserted text contravening a longstanding rule and modified a guideline to encourage others to do so. (Fortunately, almost no one did.) I'm not saying that someone learning that he/she committed such an error is required to assist in the consequential cleanup, but it's helpful and ethically responsible.

Right now, both guidelines are in effect and both have consensus.

As discussed above, I see absolutely no evidence of that.

I recognize a problem with part of what is present but I don't feel driven to change either guideline now as I don't think the problem is as large as some I have addressed (priorities will vary).

Your point about the "see also" wording's relative ambiguity is valid (though I believe that the format is inherently likely to cause such confusion). And unlike your wording, it would be virtually impossible to track down.

If you believe any provison should be deleted or changed, I leave that initiative to you, that being the normal procedure.

Perhaps you didn't notice this edit. —David Levy 22:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

No, I had not noticed that edit; thank you for your courtesy in pointing it out. Please note that, however, while consensus existed for the previous state of the provision, the new attempt at consensus is between only two of us. If the two of us disagree on whether so to edit, that is not consensus.

The previous solution survived the discussion and then I edited the guideline. The chronology and the relevance of surviving were correct. I'm not sure about calling my solution a "unilateral" introduction unless most edits to articles, guidelines, and template docs are considered to be unilateral, in which case unilaterality is normally acceptable; I discussed my proposal and Wikipedia:Consensus described implicit consensus, which was achieved. An RfC was not appropriate although anyone could have invoked one; the discussion never got to a stage, in my opinion or evidently in any discussant's opinion, justifying it. "[I]t always helps to first discuss the matter with the other parties on the related talk page. If that does not resolve the problem," an RfC is an option. When my proposal was discussed, in the end it was not unresolved. The discussion had gone off on a tangent of opposition to the bar to linking from within quotations but the discussion came back to the original proposal and there was no disagreement in the end with my proposal and when I edited the guideline and it was not reverted consensus was implicitly achieved. Your disagreement with whether consensus was implicitly arrived at appears to be a disagreement with the concept of implicit consensus in Wikipedia:Consensus, a policy, which you can edit or which you can discuss editing at that policy's talk page. Comparing the caution on the editing form for the policy page where it says "[you are editing a page that documents an English Wikipedia policy. While you may be bold in making minor changes to this page, consider discussing any substantive changes first on the page's talk page"] (presumably typical for policies) to the absence of any such caution on the editing form for a guideline (presumably typical for guidelines), besides considering the meaning of the comparison, indicates that discussion without an on-point dispute remaining among discussants does not normally require an RfC for either a policy or a guideline.

I acknowledged what I sought to acknowledge; e.g., I accepted the validity of the change to a see-also wording in a ref element when not next to a source. To posit that any change to one guideline is wrong if the change contradicts another guideline (such as WP:SELFREF) prevents evolution of the whole body of guidelines; while the contradiction should be pointed out, a case can be made for stasis or change, which might result in the other guideline being changed, such as by adding another option.

People tend not to read endnotes and are often intimidated by the presence of any at all, so I agree that links in endnotes are less likely to be seen or accessed. The best place is in the main text; navigation boxes help because of their concentration of links related to each other and a box title; a See Also section is also distant from where something is discussed but may be better than in endnotes. I would annotate narratively. I'm not sure why one would number them instead, unless perhaps to group links (e.g., group I for general links, group II for quotation support, etc.), but that numbering seems to be extraneous, since narrative labeling would be needed anyway.

On the newly-deleted second alternative, you haven't discussed it in this topic/section. What is your objection to it?

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:10, 28 April 2013 (UTC) (Clarified a wording, corrected syntax, and corrected a bracket format: 16:20, 28 April 2013 (UTC))

Please note that, however, while consensus existed for the previous state of the provision,

No, it didn't. That change was barely discussed and almost entirely unnoticed.

the new attempt at consensus is between only two of us. If the two of us disagree on whether so to edit, that is not consensus.

There must be consensus to include the advice, which has never been established.

The previous solution survived the discussion and then I edited the guideline.

What do you mean by "survived"? That no one came along and stamped it "rejected"?

One person supported the idea as an interim alternative to a better solution that he intended to use instead. You regarded this as evidence of community consensus?

I'm not sure about calling my solution a "unilateral" introduction unless most edits to articles, guidelines, and template docs are considered to be unilateral, in which case unilaterality is normally acceptable;

To be clear, I was addressing your pre-proposal application of similar formatting.

Yes, most article edits are unilateral. And most unilateral article edits are acceptable. Those that fall outside Wikipedia's basic framework are not. This includes the introduction of a new internal linking format and the use of references sections for an additional purpose unrelated to references.

I discussed my proposal and Wikipedia:Consensus described implicit consensus, which was achieved.

Four or five people discussed your idea, with a single editor halfheartedly supporting it. The absence of opposition doesn't imply community-wide support. Almost no one even considered the proposal.

An RfC was not appropriate although anyone could have invoked one; the discussion never got to a stage, in my opinion or evidently in any discussant's opinion, justifying it.

As explained at WP:PROPOSAL, establishing local consensus among early participants is the step that precedes an RfC.

"[I]t always helps to first discuss the matter with the other parties on the related talk page. If that does not resolve the problem," an RfC is an option.

As clearly indicated in the text that follows, the advice pertains to an article content dispute (the ramifications of which generally relate to that article in particular), not a guideline proposal.

When my proposal was discussed, in the end it was not unresolved.

Because three people (not counting you) commented on the idea, with one of them halfheartedly supporting it and neither of the other two directly opposing it?

and when I edited the guideline and it was not reverted consensus was implicitly achieved.

As we've discussed, there's no evidence that the text was widely seen. You've explained its virtually nonexistent adoption via the theory that editors "didn't notice the provision" (and I agree), but you simultaneously seek to cite the span in which no one reverted as proof that it's backed by consensus. How can anyone object to a change that they haven't noticed?

Now that it has been noticed, it's been reverted.

Your disagreement with whether consensus was implicitly arrived at appears to be a disagreement with the concept of implicit consensus in Wikipedia:Consensus, a policy, which you can edit or which you can discuss editing at that policy's talk page.

You're misinterpreting the advice. As explained at WP:BOLD, editors are encouraged to perform routine edits without first requesting permission. Until someone reverts or otherwise objects, it can be assumed that the changes reflect consensus. (They might not, but we don't know that yet.)

Substantial changes to a policy or guideline aren't routine edits. They stand to immediately influence editors' behavior, thereby affecting the encyclopedia as a whole. Unlike revisions to an article (which can simply be undone), we can't afford to assume that they reflect consensus until we learn otherwise (by which point significant damage may have been done). As explained at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines (also a policy), such proposals require wide exposure and broad community support.

I would annotate narratively. I'm not sure why one would number them instead, unless perhaps to group links (e.g., group I for general links, group II for quotation support, etc.), but that numbering seems to be extraneous, since narrative labeling would be needed anyway.

Please provide an example of what you have in mind (including the formatting of the links that would follow the quotations).

On the newly-deleted second alternative, you haven't discussed it in this topic/section. What is your objection to it?

It seems cumbersome, but my main objection is that precisely three people — its proposer, someone who expressed confusion, and you — have discussed it. (See above.) —David Levy 20:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

When we disagree on what an authority says, a solution is to cite or quote the specific portion that governs the fact situation. If the citation or quotation is unsatisfactory to the other of us, a solution is to cite or quote a contrary provision either in that authority or in a superior one. I have already quoted the Wikipedia:Consensus policy on point. You cited WP:BOLD; but it's a guideline and, even if it purports to contradict Wikipedia:Consensus, the latter, being a policy, is superior to WP:BOLD. WP:PROPOSAL is about new policies and new guidelines, but I didn't post a new policy or a new guideline; instead, what I posted into the guideline is well within the scope of the existing guideline, because merely being very important (if it was that important) is not the same as posting a whole new guideline. The result is that you have not cited or quoted a controlling provision contrary to what I quoted from Wikipedia:Consensus. Please do. Until then, it appears that you are, not in wording but in substance, simply repeating your view that this particular edit of a bunch of months ago was out of bounds. I understand your view. We disagree.

WP:BOLD's Wikipedia Namespace subsection does not require going outside the talk page even for bold edits. What is said on before starting the RfC process after what I quoted is not limited to articles. It lists "some other forums for resolution" and all three listed are about articles but it does not attempt to be exhaustive for articles or for any other namespace. However, I see why you might have thought the section's opening paragraph was limited to articles and perhaps that should be clarified, if someone wants to.

Reviewing the consensus on this matter, Kevin McE and SMcCandlish disliked my proposal (criticizing refraining from some intraquotational linking as an unjustified "restriction" and calling my proposal "grotesque", respectively) but their alternative was to ignore the existing guidelines and so they had nothing to suggest either within the policies and guidelines or by amending any of them. As, at the time, they were not proposing that intraquotational linking be allowed by the guideline, their proposal was to violate a guideline. Since policies and guidelines are presumptively as meaningful as their faces specify, no permissible consensus can be to violate an authorized policy or guideline. Therefore, those two editors' views on that point, that editors should violate a guideline, are not part of the consensus. Their views are informative on other things, such as whether intraquotational linking should be added to a guideline, but on the then-pending proposal to amend the guideline their view to allow intraquotational linking did not contribute to consensus. Even so, among all the discussants, only one expressed a view on what the guideline should or should not say pursuant to my proposal: SMcCandlish said, "[i]n the interim is [sic] seems like a good solution". No particular format for rejection is required; the content of what is said is what we go by. No one objected except by suggesting violating the existing guideline, and that view cannot be part of a consensus. Insofar as voting applies, that makes a vote of two in favor (one for the "interim" and one who's me) and none against. This does not waive or override consensus having been arrived at in the way I've already described and with which you disagree. You're right that objecting to a guideline provision already in place is harder when not noticed, but I put the provision in a logical place for easy finding and did not phrase it in some obscure way so it would be missed or misunderstood. It's unlikely it was so completely unnoticed in between our edits; the guideline was viewed over 100,000 times in the last 90 days and we're talking about roughly four times that time period. And it's unlikely you were the first nondiscussant to have noticed the change. The guideline has been edited 659 times by over 100 editors between my addition and your deletion, although the section itself was edited only a few times, all within the scope of our discussion. It's unlikely that the addition was reverted by the first nondiscussant to have read it.

You observe that I had previously edited inconsistently with a guideline. There was a problem and I solved it. When it turned out that this was inconsistent with a guideline, I joined in solving that, too. I gather we disagree on whether those were satisfactory solutions. Your premise seems to be that your intensity of repetitive critique is justified by my not having followed the guideline when I was unaware of it. (Apparently, that is worse, in your judgment, than editors announcing that they will not follow a guideline even when they know of it, as in the discussion leading to my edit of this guideline; if you critiqued them, I missed it, but, at any rate, you're entitled to your opinion about which is worse.) But the alternative to not having followed the guideline because of unawareness of it is that every editor must be familiar with every policy and every guideline before editing at all. We don't require that, and for good reason. I'm still learning them; apparently you are, too; and apparently many or most editors also are. And no guideline is always binding.

I have a suggestion. Let's simply treat this as a matter of disagreement about the past and as a matter of determining what the guideline should say. That means we should concentrate on what the guideline should say and its rationale. Please try to focus on what the guideline should say n the future, if anything. If you want an RfC, consider invoking one; but don't blame me for doing what already is authorized (insofar as we disagree I acknowledge that we do) but feel free to exercise your right if you wish. If a good linking method for strings within quotations is found or created without adding or re-adding to the guideline, that's fine with me. If it needs adding or re-adding, then either of us can do that, preferably but not necessarily with prior consensus or wide community support and definitely with contemporary consensus that complies with Wikipedia:Consensus and Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines, e.g., as done previously; as you may disagree with Wikipedia:Consensus, I've already suggested that you can pursue a change to that policy, and that may change what counts as consensus.

The second alternative: How would you make it less cumbersome? Let us know how you would change it or edit the deleted wording and post it yourself into the guideline. Its posting was implicitly approved by consensus so if that were your only ground for deleting it that would be against Wikipedia:Consensus, but if you wish to suggest a rewording and you prefer not to add it yourself then I'll probably be glad to. And consensus can change.

A references section can be titled, say, References and Notes; it's not necessary to have separate sections for bibliographic and discursive endnotes. I realized that some articles I've been working on had the shorter title for the section and that the longer title was a more accurate description, so I re-edited accordingly. The more descriptive title encompasses links being in endnotes apart from source citations, if they're acceptable in endnotes anywhere.

A See Also section might say this, if I were drafting it:

== See also ==

* [[Math]]

* [[Astrology]]

* [[Bermuda]], for the Jones quotation

* [[Yellow River]], for the Chinese history quotation

I didn't number any of it, as I don't think that would be useful. I think numbering is what you were suggesting, but maybe that's not what you meant.

I'm editing a couple of articles one or both of which have the "Wikipedia has ..." formulation; I'll probably get to them within a few days.

Since you characterize one view, apparently SMcCandlish's favoring linking from inside quotations, as "a better solution", perhaps you wish to propose that. I think it's not a good idea because it reduces accuracy of quotations, but we have a few other conventions that also reduce accuracy, but relative consistency of their application and the availability of guidelines stating some of those conventions (such as for hyphens and dashes) make that less of a problem. However, intraquotational linking would offer convenience for editors and readers. It's generally not allowed now but if you'd like to generally allow it I recommend that you edit a guideline accordingly or propose doing so.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC) (Corrected nowiki markup and an incomplete sentence: 15:27, 29 April 2013 (UTC))

When we disagree on what an authority says, a solution is to cite or quote the specific portion that governs the fact situation.

A big part of the problem is your mistaken belief that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are "authorities" that "govern" our actions.

I have already quoted the Wikipedia:Consensus policy on point. You cited WP:BOLD; but it's a guideline and, even if it purports to contradict Wikipedia:Consensus, the latter, being a policy, is superior to WP:BOLD.

No such contradiction exists. I cited WP:BOLD in the hope that you would read it and better understand how bold editing is supposed to occur.

WP:PROPOSAL is about new policies and new guidelines, but I didn't post a new policy or a new guideline; instead, what I posted into the guideline is well within the scope of the existing guideline, because merely being very important (if it was that important) is not the same as posting a whole new guideline. The result is that you have not cited or quoted a controlling provision contrary to what I quoted from Wikipedia:Consensus.

Unlike you, I'm not attempting to cite statutes that "govern" our actions through their wording. I'm linking to policies and guidelines for the purpose of relaying the valuable information contained therein.

In this instance, I linked to WP:PROPOSAL because it explains that an RfC is useful when proposing significant changes to practice (not merely when attempting to resolve a conflict among a discussion's current participants, as you apparently believed).

You introduced brand new practices. You seem to think that because you edited an existing page (instead of creating a new one), you exploited a legal loophole, thereby bypassing the step of achieving wide exposure and broad community support. That isn't how Wikipedia works. "Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies."

There should be no need for us to obsess on whether something is written down somewhere. It's obvious that the discussion didn't gauge (let alone establish) community consensus. Unfortunately, you seem more interested in citing rules and perceived technicalities than in applying common sense. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. (Please try to understand that I'm linking to that policy for explanatory purposes, not because it's a law that "governs" us.)

What is said on before starting the RfC process after what I quoted is not limited to articles.

It doesn't make sense in the context described at WP:PROPOSAL (setting aside the question of whether WP:PROPOSAL is relevant to the matter at hand). It applies to a situation in which the RfC's purpose is dispute resolution. I'm trying to explain to you that this isn't the only valid type of RfC.

Reviewing the consensus on this matter, Kevin McE and SMcCandlish disliked my proposal (criticizing refraining from some intraquotational linking as an unjustified "restriction" and calling my proposal "grotesque", respectively) but their alternative was to ignore the existing guidelines and so they had nothing to suggest either within the policies and guidelines or by amending any of them. As, at the time, they were not proposing that intraquotational linking be allowed by the guideline, their proposal was to violate a guideline.

They made no formal proposals, but they clearly expressed a belief that such linking should be allowed (in which case the guideline shouldn't state otherwise).

You seem to be under the impression that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines dictate behavior. This is incorrect. Our policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive.

We don't do things because policies and guidelines tell us to. Policies and guidelines describe how we do things, with varying degrees of precision.

When you added advice to the guideline, that didn't enact it as an official convention. As noted at WP:NOT (and again, please understand that I'm linking to that policy for explanatory purposes, not because it's a law that "governs" us), "written rules do not themselves set accepted practice. Rather, they document already existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected." At no point has the community accepted (or actively rejected) your idea.

I'm attempting to explain why your actions, while undoubtedly taken in good faith, were unhelpful. You seek to counter this assertion by quoting rules and claiming that their wording technically was followed. "The rules say so" (or "the rules don't say so") is one of the worst arguments that can be made at Wikipedia. Our ultimate goal is to build an encyclopedia, not a rulebook.

Since policies and guidelines are presumptively as meaningful as their faces specify, no permissible consensus can be to violate an authorized policy or guideline.

You note later in your message that "no guideline is always binding" (and therefore seem to be familiar with WP:IAR, at least in principle), so I assume that you mean that there can't be consensus to routinely violate a policy or guideline. I agree, in the respect that such consensus should result in the policy or guideline being changed or eliminated.

Therefore, those two editors' views on that point, that editors should violate a guideline, are not part of the consensus.

I disagree (as noted above, Kevin McE and SMcCandlish clearly expressed the opinion that the restriction shouldn't be in the guideline), but okay. Have it your way. This leaves two editors (A. di M. and you) whose discussion of the proposal we're left to consider. And it leaves no one supporting your idea.

Even so, among all the discussants, only one expressed a view on what the guideline should or should not say pursuant to my proposal: SMcCandlish said, "[i]n the interim is [sic] seems like a good solution".

Indeed, as I've noted several times, SMcCandlish halfheartedly supported the idea as an interim alternative to a different solution that he preferred and intended to use instead.

But we just excluded him from the consensus, so that doesn't matter.

No particular format for rejection is required; the content of what is said is what we go by.

And almost nothing was said.

No one objected except by suggesting violating the existing guideline, and that view cannot be part of a consensus. Insofar as voting applies, that makes a vote of two in favor (one for the "interim" and one who's me) and none against.

And this, evidently, is your definition of "consensus" to fundamentally alter our internal linking practices and references sections' purpose.

You're right that objecting to a guideline provision already in place is harder when not noticed, but I put the provision in a logical place for easy finding and did not phrase it in some obscure way so it would be missed or misunderstood.

In case it wasn't clear, I'm not accusing you of intentionally obscuring the text (or, for that matter, of doing anything in bad faith).

It's unlikely it was so completely unnoticed in between our edits; the guideline was viewed over 100,000 times in the last 90 days and we're talking about roughly four times that time period.

And yet, your formatting was applied to four articles not edited by you. Four. In thirteen months.

How do you explain this? By theorizing that "other editors didn't notice the provision". And yet, you also assert that they noticed it and implicitly supported its inclusion by not removing it.

And it's unlikely you were the first nondiscussant to have noticed the change.

Certainly, PinkAmpersand noticed it earlier that day. (The resultant edit brought it to my attention.) And it's highly likely that others saw the text during the preceding thirteen-month span, but there's no evidence that anyone recognized its significance or investigated how it ended up on the page. No one even caught the flagrant WP:SELFREF contradiction until PinkAmpersand happened along.

But if you prefer to assume that hundreds or thousands of editors read the advice and actively declined to apply it, so be it.

You observe that I had previously edited inconsistently with a guideline. There was a problem and I solved it.

I've explained why I regard your format as unhelpful and potentially harmful. Neither discussion nor actual practice has demonstrated otherwise.

Your premise seems to be that your intensity of repetitive critique is justified by my not having followed the guideline when I was unaware of it.

No, not at all. Everyone makes mistakes.

(Apparently, that is worse, in your judgment, than editors announcing that they will not follow a guideline even when they know of it, as in the discussion leading to my edit of this guideline;

I don't know what led you to believe that I was even comparing the two things, let alone passing such judgement.

if you critiqued them, I missed it,

I didn't. My objective isn't to "judge" people; it's to address the current situation and determine how best to proceed.

But the alternative to not having followed the guideline because of unawareness of it is that every editor must be familiar with every policy and every guideline before editing at all. We don't require that, and for good reason.

Of course. I'm not attacking you for missing a guideline (or for any other reason).

I have a suggestion. Let's simply treat this as a matter of disagreement about the past and as a matter of determining what the guideline should say. That means we should concentrate on what the guideline should say and its rationale. Please try to focus on what the guideline should say n the future, if anything.

That's precisely my intention. Note that I haven't rushed to remove your formatting from articles (though I would feel justified in doing so). I'm discussing it, along with possible alternatives (in the hope of building toward an RfC).

I've addressed the past primarily in response to your assertions that the text in question reflects "consensus" (and the possibility of reinstating it on that basis).

If you want an RfC, consider invoking one; but don't blame me for doing what already is authorized (insofar as we disagree I acknowledge that we do) but feel free to exercise your right if you wish.

What do you mean by "doing what already is authorized"? That you intend to continue inserting the formatting into articles?

as you may disagree with Wikipedia:Consensus, I've already suggested that you can pursue a change to that policy, and that may change what counts as consensus.

I don't disagree with Wikipedia:Consensus. I disagree with wikilawyering.

But if we must play that game, "any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus." Well, the edit has been disputed and reverted, so it no longer can be assumed to have consensus. That's what the policy says, after all.

The second alternative: How would you make it less cumbersome?

Probably by not using it.

Its posting was implicitly approved by consensus

Here we go again.

A references section can be titled, say, References and Notes; it's not necessary to have separate sections for bibliographic and discursive endnotes.

As discussed above, readers don't expect to find internal links in such a section. I see no reason not to place them in the section that exists for that very purpose (perhaps under a subheading that communicates the distinction from those not connected to specific quotations).

I didn't number any of it, as I don't think that would be useful. I think numbering is what you were suggesting, but maybe that's not what you meant.

I requested an example "including the formatting of the links that would follow the quotations". In other words, on what sort of link would a reader click to be taken from the quotation to the relevant Wikipedia article link? If not via lettering or numbering, how would such a setup be organized? What would the link appearing alongside the quotation comprise?

Since you characterize one view, apparently SMcCandlish's favoring linking from inside quotations, as "a better solution", perhaps you wish to propose that.

That isn't my characterization. I meant that SMcCandlish regarded such an approach as better.

On the matter of whether such linking should be used, I'm undecided. I believe that both its proponents and opponents have valid points. —David Levy 21:36, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

You say my "belief that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are 'authorities' that 'govern' our actions" is "mistaken"; it's not mistaken. The website belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation and somewhere underneath its top corporate decisions are Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. While violation does not cause us to be taken out back and shot, nonetheless they are binding on us to a degree, and would be even if they were merely community norms. "Policies explain and describe standards that all users should normally follow, while guidelines are meant to outline best practices for following those standards in specific contexts." If we should "normally follow" them, that's good enough for my purposes and should be for most editors'. If you see them as only descriptive, you are confusing them with such things as user surveys and log analyses. They are partly descriptive through their prescriptiveness in the same way that the enactment of anti-murder statutes in most societies describes our rejection of murder and coincides with a tendency of people to not murder except often enough that moral rejection is deemed to be not enough to prevent all murders. But policies and guidelines are partly prescriptive, as shown by the outcomes of various dispute resolutions, including at the Arbitration Committee and by office action. You seem to be arguing that I should do what Wikipedia wants when it is what you see it as what Wikipedia wants but not when you disagree with what Wikipedia wants. Things don't work like that. If what Wikipedia wants is not what you want, your main choices are to conform to it or reform it. If you feel it appropriate to ignore any policies and guidelines and you do so, then you should take responsibility for doing so; don't expect other editors to conform to someone else's decision to ignore them. That seems to be a major part of your argument; please don't take more of my time with that (after the initial statement), because that looks like an effort to have me do the ignoring that you choose to do in order that you not be solely responsible for it. I don't want to do that and I've already stated that we disagree on some relevant points.

What Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, which is a policy and largely binding on all of us even if some editors wish otherwise, says includes "Wikipedia ... is not governed by statute" and "[w]ritten rules do not themselves set accepted practice. Rather, they document already existing community consensus...." The former statement is, of course, wrong; statutes enacted by U.S. legislatures do govern Wikipedia, but what probably is meant is that Wikipedia does not enact its own "statutes" called by that terminology, which is silly but technically true, and probably what is meant is that some exceptions are allowed, which, of course, is also true of many Federal and State statutes (I don't know about tribes or about other nations). The second statement reinforces that consensus was achieved. What I introduced was consistent with the principles, since I was preserving the accuracy of quotations. "Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures", as it says, and that is precisely what is happening; some long time after I edited the guideline, you disagreed and we are now developing a new consensus and we are not "tightly sticking to" them contrary to what they say; I already accepted that my work can use See Also sections for the purpose even before your deletion of the guideline provision we're discussing toward a new consensus. I don't see any provision we're discussing as a loophole unless everything is a loophole. I rely on policies and guidelines. If most other editors did not find the provisions I added useful, that is not a fault of the provisions or of me for adding them. It would have been if the provisions or my editing of the guideline had been to remove an option; instead, I added options. One could argue that adding an option misleads people away from what they should do but that's important only in some cases (e.g., if you have cancer curable only with surgery and I advise you to drink orange juice (that's hypothetical) and I say that both options are equally good, that's a problem, but I didn't quite do that here); the closest argument on that score regarding the MOS provision is that I offered "[t]wo alternatives" when we should have offered three once anyone here effectively mentioned the See Also sections.

What I introduced was new. That's probably true of many or most edits to policies and guidelines except those for minor reasons (such as correcting meaningless syntax or misleading disorganization), for going back to something old, or for conformance to external law (such as on copyright).

Probably not approximately 100,000+ editors times 4 read the specific provision when they viewed the page, since perhaps most visit for specific purposes elsewhere on the page, as I often do, but probably a significant number did. I don't think either one of us is responsible for whether they discuss the provision or not.

You've again brought up what you say was a lack of consensus. The reference to wikilawyering, as in Wikipedia:Wikilawyering, doesn't change the fundamental nature of our disagreement; it applies if I went against Wikipedia's principles or acted inapporopriately; your view on point is that I did and mine is that I did not. As to the remedy I suggested if you reject Wikipedia:Consensus, you say you don't reject that policy and presumably therefore you don't want to use the remedy. I don't think there's more I can explain on that point that would be significantly new to our discussion. I could probably find yet another provision for you to read, but the basic point has already been made. I've made reasonable efforts (before counting the approximately two hours I spent today just on this reply) but apparently I can't help you. Until there's a change in those views of one of us, please find some other forum for that.

Valuable information is, of course, something I appreciate. Thank you. I'm happy that you were explaining the RfC, presumably for the future, but you appeared to be faulting me for not having used it in the past, but that was not a fault (a disagreement essentially already acknowledged between us). As to the future, I intend to do what policies and guidelines, and, selectively, some essays and some other good ideas, call for. I am not here primarily as a parliamentarian (and parliamentarians generally have strong usefulness). We are building an encyclopedia but we are not building everything that could possibly be built on the Web or in the universe and merely calling it an encyclopedia. For example, I'd be delighted to receive an invitation to ignore all consensus and delete or bury everything I think should be deleted or buried, sinvce lots of articles have content I would not rely on for research or for guiding my life or the lives of others. I think we can all be confident that such an invitation will never appear. Since as an encyclopedia it is only a part of the Web and is not a microcosm of the whole Web but is a specialized part of it and its owners evidently intend to continue it as a specialized part of the Web, they employ means to that end, including policies and guidelines. When that is unsatifactory, sometimes I go off the Web, sometimes I go elsewhere on the Web, and sometimes I work within Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. I continue to reserve those options.

The second alternative is not made less cumbersome by nonuse. What we do may be made less cumbersome by nonuse of an alternative but the alternative itself isn't. How is it too cumbersome?

I didn't suggest another way of linking or otherwise pointing from the quotation to the link in a See Also section. It seems you are. If so, would you please describe or illustrate (with or without numbering in any style) a method you might recommend, if any? One problem is that the method should be intuitive to readers.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2013 (UTC) (Corrected a clause: 16:32, 30 April 2013 (UTC)) (Corrected the same: 16:39, 30 April 2013 (UTC))

You say my "belief that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are 'authorities' that 'govern' our actions" is "mistaken"; it's not mistaken.

Yes, it is. I'm sorry that you still don't understand that.

The website belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation and somewhere underneath its top corporate decisions are Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

Are you under the impression that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are handed down by the Wikimedia Foundation? On the contrary, "office actions are extremely rare."

While violation does not cause us to be taken out back and shot, nonetheless they are binding on us to a degree, and would be even if they were merely community norms.

I'm not arguing that we aren't required to abide by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (barring good reasons not to).

I'm explaining that you have the causation backwards. We don't follow these rules because they're written down; they're written down because we decided to follow them.

At no point has the community arrived at such a decision regarding your linking format (or A. di M.'s).

But policies and guidelines are partly prescriptive, as shown by the outcomes of various dispute resolutions, including at the Arbitration Committee

Editors are expected to act in accordance with the principles on which our policies and guidelines are based. This doesn't necessarily entail adhering to the letter of policy, and someone who does might nonetheless fail to honor the spirit (e.g. when disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point).

and by office action.

Oh, you're familiar with that concept. This makes your earlier comment difficult to understand.

You seem to be arguing that I should do what Wikipedia wants when it is what you see it as what Wikipedia wants but not when you disagree with what Wikipedia wants.

I'm baffled as to what you're referencing.

Things don't work like that. If what Wikipedia wants is not what you want, your main choices are to conform to it or reform it. If you feel it appropriate to ignore any policies and guidelines and you do so, then you should take responsibility for doing so; don't expect other editors to conform to someone else's decision to ignore them.

I'm baffled as to what you're referencing.

That seems to be a major part of your argument; please don't take more of my time with that (after the initial statement), because that looks like an effort to have me do the ignoring that you choose to do in order that you not be solely responsible for it.

I'm baffled as to what you're referencing.

What Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, which is a policy and largely binding on all of us even if some editors wish otherwise, says includes "Wikipedia ... is not governed by statute" and "[w]ritten rules do not themselves set accepted practice. Rather, they document already existing community consensus...." The former statement is, of course, wrong;

Okay, so you're following the above comments about the importance of respecting Wikipedia's policies (and apparent revulsion stemming from some notion that I'm brazenly ignoring them and asking you to act in kind) with a comment in which you deem one of our policies "wrong". Wow.

statutes enacted by U.S. legislatures do govern Wikipedia,

That isn't what we're discussing. (At least, it isn't what I'm discussing.)

but what probably is meant is that Wikipedia does not enact its own "statutes" called by that terminology, which is silly but technically true, and probably what is meant is that some exceptions are allowed, which, of course, is also true of many Federal and State statutes (I don't know about tribes or about other nations).

It isn't the terminology that's relevant. What's meant is exactly what's written.

Written rules do not themselves set accepted practice. Rather, they document already existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected. While Wikipedia's written policies and guidelines should be taken seriously, they can be misused. Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies.

The second statement reinforces that consensus was achieved.

In other words, because your text was included on a guideline page, this proves that it documented already existing community consensus. Is that what you mean?

What I introduced was consistent with the principles, since I was preserving the accuracy of quotations.

No one asserts that your linking method is inconsistent with that principle. It's inconsistent with Wikipedia's established formatting.

I don't see any provision we're discussing as a loophole unless everything is a loophole. I rely on policies and guidelines.

You rely on "the letter of policy without consideration for the principles of policies." You introduced brand new practices, and because you did so via an existing page (instead of creating a new one), you think that this somehow negated the importance of achieving wide exposure and broad community support. You base this belief not upon any material distinction, but on a legalistic interpretation of the words that have been written.

You treat consensus not as a literal concept (i.e. a state of general agreement), but as the abstract product of rigid adherence to written instructions.

If most other editors did not find the provisions I added useful, that is not a fault of the provisions or of me for adding them.

This is a perfect example. You're literally arguing that whether the community actually agrees with your suggestion doesn't matter. As long as you followed the written steps (as you understand them), there's "consensus".

It would have been if the provisions or my editing of the guideline had been to remove an option; instead, I added options.

You added styles for which the community's support is not in evidence.

One could argue that adding an option misleads people away from what they should do but that's important only in some cases (e.g., if you have cancer curable only with surgery and I advise you to drink orange juice (that's hypothetical) and I say that both options are equally good, that's a problem, but I didn't quite do that here);

What?

What I introduced was new. That's probably true of many or most edits to policies and guidelines except those for minor reasons (such as correcting meaningless syntax or misleading disorganization), for going back to something old, or for conformance to external law (such as on copyright).

As discussed above, our policies and guidelines are intended to "document already existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected." One needn't necessarily confer with others before inserting new text describing a longstanding practice or one to which the community has agreed. In such an instance, the effect is to document Wikipedia as it already exists.

That isn't what you did. You introduced text describing new practices that were neither widely adopted nor widely discussed (let alone agreed upon by the community).

Probably not approximately 100,000+ editors times 4 read the specific provision when they viewed the page, since perhaps most visit for specific purposes elsewhere on the page, as I often do, but probably a significant number did.

If this is so, it means that the community actively rejected your linking format. In thirteen months, it appeared in four articles not edited by you (unless, of course, it was removed from other articles, which would be even more indicative of a lack of consensus for its use).

I could probably find yet another provision for you to read, but the basic point has already been made.

And on you go. You evidently aren't interested in discussing the situation's practicalities. You just keep seeking and citing written "provisions". Pragmatism takes a backseat to bureaucracy.

I've made reasonable efforts (before counting the approximately two hours I spent today just on this reply) but apparently I can't help you.

Never has a feeling been more mutual.

I'm happy that you were explaining the RfC, presumably for the future, but you appeared to be faulting me for not having used it in the past, but that was not a fault (a disagreement essentially already acknowledged between us).

My goal isn't to lay blame. It's to explain why the course of action taken was far from ideal and didn't result in "consensus".

Undoubtedly, you didn't realize that an RfC would have been beneficial. Setting aside what you knew at the time, you just asserted that "an RfC was not appropriate" and seem to still believe this. Why? Because you don't see it officially mandated. You aren't stopping to think about whether such feedback would actually be helpful. You're checking to see whether such a requirement is written somewhere.

The second alternative is not made less cumbersome by nonuse. What we do may be made less cumbersome by nonuse of an alternative but the alternative itself isn't.

My point, exactly.

How is it too cumbersome?

It relies upon the inline insertion of additional words (the provenance of which is unclear), thereby disturbing the quotations' flow.

I didn't suggest another way of linking or otherwise pointing from the quotation to the link in a See Also section. It seems you are. If so, would you please describe or illustrate (with or without numbering in any style) a method you might recommend, if any? One problem is that the method should be intuitive to readers.

I envision a format similar to that used for inline references (the difference being the absence of Arabic numerals). A small link (in the form of a Latin letter or Roman numeral) would appear to the right of the quotation. Clicking on said link would transport the reader to the "See also" section (or a subsection thereof), where the relevant article link would appear (highlighted and labeled with the same Latin letter or Roman numeral). —David Levy 07:48, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

On the procedural issue, most of your latest post I've already answered. I'll address what I may not have answered.

You asked, "[a]re you under the impression that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are handed down by the Wikimedia Foundation?" No, at least not in the sense that the governing board or paid employees write or sign them, but it doesn't much matter who issues them; they're still largely authorized by the Foundation and are promulgated as part of the recommendations and requirements for our behavior and edits. Some provisions to like effect and appearing elsewhere a user agrees to as a condition of using the website, and it may be a crime under U.S. law to violate those, so that violating some provisions in policies and/or guidelines may be criminal. All of the policies and guidelines may apply to whether someone can continue to edit and/or whether an edit can stay in Wikipedia.

You said, {{Nowrap|"[w]e don't follow these rules because they're written down; they're written down because we decided to follow them." Actually, we do follow them in part because we know about them and we know about them because they're written. The causation of their existence is partly reflected in your statement that "they're written down because we decided to follow them" but the causation of what we do as editors is that we follow them because they're written and published.

No, I did not say the whole policy is wrong. The statement is, but not, as far as I know, in a way that affects how I behave or edit and not sufficiently importantly that I plan to take the time to edit the statement or to question it on the talk page there. It may be that people are defining statute differently; I may be defining it more abstractly. We have executive, adjudicatory, and legislative functions without necessarily calling them that; and, in essence, the policies and guidelines are part of Wikipedia's legislation. But probably quite a few editors see compliance with them as voluntary on an edit-by-edit basis and may not see them as anything like legislation. It's not worth debating.

You wrote, "[y]ou're literally arguing that whether the community actually agrees with your suggestion doesn't matter." That's not my argument.

Ignoring, if visitors did, is not necessarily rejecting; if any opinion describes a visitor, it is at least as likely that ignoring was accepting. I read lots of policies and guidelines and I generally accept almost everything in them and probably most editors do, too. I may even read some provisions and get the gist of others without reading them word-for-word and, in the course of seeing them, accept them.

The existence of optional procedures does not always make invoking them wise or helpful. The less-useful invocations burden people who encounter them. One should choose whether and which to invoke and when. A good response may turn up from anywhere anytime but that possibility is not ground for asking everywhere and frequently. We're expected to apply good judgment. For example, on another matter, someone once suggested I escalate and I told that editor that it would be premature.

On the substantive issue, I think I can come up with something somewhat like what you suggest, although I'm not sure. Wikipedia allows multiple sets of notes in an article. I'll work with the concept. It'll probably take me at least a few days to get to it.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:37, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

You asked, "[a]re you under the impression that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are handed down by the Wikimedia Foundation?" No, at least not in the sense that the governing board or paid employees write or sign them, but it doesn't much matter who issues them; they're still largely authorized by the Foundation and are promulgated as part of the recommendations and requirements for our behavior and edits.

I don't understand what point you're attempting to make.

A few of our policies have been mandated by the Wikimedia Foundation (generally for legal reasons), but most of our policies and guidelines originated at the community level. Yes, the Wikimedia Foundation sanctions this, but what bearing does that have on the discussion? Has someone claimed otherwise?

Some provisions to like effect and appearing elsewhere a user agrees to as a condition of using the website,

The Terms of Use are Foundation-level rules. That document isn't a Wikipedia policy or guideline.

and it may be a crime under U.S. law to violate those, so that violating some provisions in policies and/or guidelines may be criminal.

Irrelevant to my point.

All of the policies and guidelines may apply to whether someone can continue to edit and/or whether an edit can stay in Wikipedia.

Irrelevant to my point.

You said, "[w]e don't follow these rules because they're written down; they're written down because we decided to follow them." Actually, we do follow them in part because we know about them and we know about them because they're written.

Yes, reading a rule assists us in learning what behaviors are expected. That's how we know what to do. It isn't why we do it.

Writing something on a page tagged "policy" or "guideline" doesn't make it a policy or guideline (or a segment thereof).

The causation of their existence is partly reflected in your statement that "they're written down because we decided to follow them" but the causation of what we do as editors is that we follow them because they're written and published.

We might know about a rule because it's written. That isn't why we follow it. (At least, it isn't supposed to be.)

No, I did not say the whole policy is wrong.

I didn't write "whole".

The statement is,

Only when you ignore its contextual meaning.

but not, as far as I know, in a way that affects how I behave or edit

Your failure to grasp the actual point appears to affect how you behave and edit.

We have executive, adjudicatory, and legislative functions without necessarily calling them that;

Please elaborate.

and, in essence, the policies and guidelines are part of Wikipedia's legislation.

I've done my best to dispel this notion. It's beginning to seem futile.

You wrote, "[y]ou're literally arguing that whether the community actually agrees with your suggestion doesn't matter." That's not my argument.

You wrote: "If most other editors did not find the provisions I added useful, that is not a fault of the provisions or of me for adding them." You seem to honestly believe that as long as you followed a procedural checklist (as you understand it), whether the community "find[s] the provisions [you] added useful" is irrelevant.

You refuse to view the situation from a practical standpoint. "See? I did 1, 2 and 3, as stipulated on pages x, y and z. That means that there's consensus. If you want, I probably can find more pages to cite." (not an actual quotation)

Ignoring, if visitors did, is not necessarily rejecting;

Agreed. It's likely that very few editors even saw your text (let alone evaluated it).

if any opinion describes a visitor, it is at least as likely that ignoring was accepting.

Pardon?

I read lots of policies and guidelines and I generally accept almost everything in them and probably most editors do, too. I may even read some provisions and get the gist of others without reading them word-for-word and, in the course of seeing them, accept them.

And then you attempt to follow them, yes? We've established that the underlying issue is widespread, so if many editors read and accepted your idea, they surely had ample opportunity to implement it throughout much of the encyclopedia. They used it in four articles over the course of thirteen months. Four articles.

The community is unaware of your suggestion or has actively rejected it. Either indicates a lack of consensus in its favor.

The existence of optional procedures does not always make invoking them wise or helpful.

Setting aside the fact that establishing broad community support isn't optional when seeking to implement a major, site-wide change, please explain how soliciting additional feedback (instead of relying on a single editor's halfhearted support) wouldn't have been wise or helpful. —David Levy 08:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I edited two articles as trials, African-American heritage of United States presidents and Andrea Dworkin. These should meet the MOS guideline. I'll wait a week for any response before considering doing some other articles. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:22, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Why are you introducing another largely undiscussed format to articles? As noted above, I suggested it in preparation for an RfC. Why do you insist on bypassing that step, even after I explicitly stated my intention to proceed with it? —David Levy 08:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

What I did is consistent with guidelines and policies. I haven't stopped you from proceeding anywhere. I'm sorry I missed your reply; however, today I did another article, After the Development of Agriculture, but I'll wait before continuing with more. I may resume at any time. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

What I did is consistent with guidelines and policies.

Please elaborate.

I haven't stopped you from proceeding anywhere.

You don't seem to understand. I'm trying to cooperate with you to outline possibilities in preparation for a community discussion (and I advised you of this). I held off on the RfC to give you an opportunity to provide input on the underlying problem and potential solutions, thereby helping to shape the RfC.

I also refrained from removing your formatting from articles (despite my belief that this would be appropriate), purely as a courtesy and goodwill gesture. I wanted it to be clear that I'm working with you, not against you.

You responded by immediately introducing my suggested format (merely a rough idea, intended to maybe be fleshed out later) to the encyclopedia without substantial discussion or anyone's support. Why? —David Levy 22:32, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I forgot where I got the idea; if it was yours, thank you. The MOS guideline on the See Also section silently permits it (thus it's not "without ... anyone's support") and linking from within quotations is already not to be done, per a consensus (present the last time I checked) that remains until it is changed and I'm against changing it, although some editors would, and if you want it changed you may find support for that view rather easy to gather. I don't think I knew about {{Efn}} or {{Notelist}} until someone pointed at least the first one out, so maybe someone mentioned Efn in one of the discussions related to this issue, which you can trace, if you wish.

I don't have a storehouse of ideas for crafting another approach. If you'd like to propose something, please do. If you want to just go ahead and propose it without me, go ahead. Perhaps you've seen the articles I edited to add Efn templates and you have a view on whether you like that method; I don't know what you think of it. Rapidly skimming the above thread, I see I presented another method with the example "* [[Bermuda]], for the Jones quotation"; right now, I think that risks too much error from subsequent editing, as a second Jones quotation might be added, the pre-existing Jones quotation might be edited or paraphrased, and the content might be deleted, and it's likely only a comprehensive editor would also edit the list item; an Efn template might also be missed or misunderstood as unfamiliar and seemingly irrelevant but at least it's near the quotation and less likely to be missed.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:07, 15 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected quote: 15:13, 15 May 2013 (UTC))

I forgot where I got the idea; if it was yours, thank you.

Are you serious? I suggested it in this discussion.

The MOS guideline on the See Also section silently permits it (thus it's not "without ... anyone's support")

By that logic, the guideline "silently permits" ʇxǝʇ ǝbuɐɹo 'uʍop-ǝpısdn. (After all, it doesn't expressly forbid its use.)

That isn't how Wikipedia works. We aren't entitled to format articles however we please, inventing new linking methods and subsection types and unilaterally inserting them. We've agreed upon specific article formatting, which is documented in the Manual of Style. I suggested a possible addition (and explicitly stated that I intended to initiate an RfC), and you introduced the format without discussion.

It's become obvious that you're more interested in attempting to exploit imaginary loopholes and technicalities (which you'll cite to justify any action on your part) than you are in seeking actual consensus. As you evidently have decided to disregard the above exchange (despite prematurely implementing an idea suggested therein), my patience has run out. —David Levy 19:52, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

I didn't remember, said so, and gave credit to you if you did it; there's no lack of seriousness. Orange upside-down text is almost incomprehensible and I don't think I would need to go far into MOS to find it rejectable. I saw your edits and you saved me about half the work. I suggest that you make the proposal you wish to make. You've said essentially that policies and guidelines are not binding (because merely documenting what people do without them) and now you essentially say they are binding without acknowledging that you are changing your view; this kind of inconsistency suggests that you are on a personal attack agenda (imaginary loopholes don't exist and so I didn't exploit any, I didn't invent a linking method since the {{Efn}} template already existed, only one kind of subsection type exists even in articles as I edited them, and not every subsection name has to be cleared with someone else first, the one we're talking about being clear to readers, and we've already discussed how consensus is arrived at and I acknowledge that you disagree so no repetition of your view is needed). Try to focus on whatever guideline development you wish to pursue, because the present state of the articles reduces readers' ability to find related information by following links, which should, of course, be rectified soon. Please go ahead with your proposal. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:04, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I propose to restore links in much the format recently employed, except that, instead of the subsection heading to which you objected, a hatnote will say much the same thing, so it won't appear in the table of contents, but still make clear why the links are present. The basis of the format is the MOS guideline that says, "items within quotations should not generally be linked; instead, consider placing the relevant links in the surrounding text or in the 'See also' section of the article." I was pointed to the guideline passage by asking at the help desk, and that may have been the provision on which I had based my subsection-adding edits. If you think the help desk gave a wrong answer, please post there (if you start a new topic/section there, please let me know). If you still want to request comments with an RfC, I imagine that will take under an hour to request including drafting time, but your needs may vary. If there is a reason to wait before editing articles, please let me know. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:35, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I didn't remember, said so,

It was this discussion.

and gave credit to you if you did it

I don't seek credit. I seek cooperation.

Orange upside-down text is almost incomprehensible and I don't think I would need to go far into MOS to find it rejectable.

That's how you respond to the analogy (by noting that you probably could find a guideline prohibiting it). Wow.

I saw your edits

Of course you did. You've edited almost all of the pages, so they probably are on your watchlist.

I suggest that you make the proposal you wish to make.

You're the one who advocates a change, and I've been trying to assist you in going about it the right way (instead of unilaterally implementing it). How do you respond? My taking my idea and unilaterally implementing it.

You've said essentially that policies and guidelines are not binding (because merely documenting what people do without them) and now you essentially say they are binding without acknowledging that you are changing your view;

It's one thing to not remember the current discussion, but now you're actually making false claims about it.

You stated that "while violation [of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines] does not cause us to be taken out back and shot, nonetheless they are binding on us to a degree, and would be even if they were merely community norms." I responded by explaining that "I'm not arguing that we aren't required to abide by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (barring good reasons not to). I'm explaining that you have the causation backwards. We don't follow these rules because they're written down; they're written down because we decided to follow them."

this kind of inconsistency suggests that you are on a personal attack agenda

Believe what you want to believe. As I said, my patience has been exhausted.

imaginary loopholes don't exist

That's why I described them as "imaginary".

and so I didn't exploit any,

Whenever I try to discuss the situation's practicalities, you respond by citing a policy or guideline that you believe technically permits you to do something a certain way (usually because it doesn't explicitly forbid it). You stated that it doesn't matter if "if most other editors did not find the provisions [you] added useful". You believe that rigid adherence to what was written (as you understood it) resulted in "consensus".

And when I tried to assist you by providing a viable path forward, you responded by using my idea to do the same thing again.

I didn't invent a linking method since the {{Efn}} template already existed,

You used it for an undiscussed purpose. There's no consensus to link to internal articles in that manner.

and we've already discussed how consensus is arrived at and I acknowledge that you disagree

Yes, I disagree with your assertion that consensus is arrived at bureaucratically, with no actual human agreement required.

Try to focus on whatever guideline development you wish to pursue

Again, this is something that you wish to pursue. I'm simply trying to help you along. If you refuse to cooperate, I'm not doing it on my own.

Please go ahead with your proposal.

I'm not prepared to formally propose anything. I was discussing possibilities in the hope of reaching that point. (Then you took a rough idea and unilaterally introduced it to articles). If I were to initiate an RfC at this juncture, it would focus on the general issue of whether to include such links at all.

I propose to restore links in much the format recently employed, except that, instead of the subsection heading to which you objected, a hatnote will say much the same thing, so it won't appear in the table of contents, but still make clear why the links are present.

That idea is worth pursuing. But I didn't object to the subsection heading in particular. (In fact, I suggested that too.) I objected to your unilateral introduction of a new format without consensus.

In terms of problems, I noticed that the link's inclusion threw off the numbering of all subsequent inline citations' URLs (which no longer matched the list).

The basis of the format is the MOS guideline that says, "items within quotations should not generally be linked; instead, consider placing the relevant links in the surrounding text or in the 'See also' section of the article."

Does that guideline advise us to link to the "See also" section via an inline template?

If there is a reason to wait before editing articles, please let me know.

There is: a lack of consensus. I've been trying to explain this to you since the discussion began. —David Levy 10:27, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll stay with the chase since the rest has already been answered or are your recharacterizations and you're entitled to your opinions. I wrote nothing false and I'm not required to research what you already know or, when it results from your question, can research yourself. Editors are generally not other people's secretaries on Wikipedia. I'd rather focus on what we need. Let's both try to do that, please.

I don't have a need to be the inventor. I'm happy that you're suggesting anything in that direction. Please continue with any inspirations you have toward solving the problem. When you do, you're entitled to the credit and if you prefer not to have credit that's up to you.

What is your objection to linking at all? Is that (nonlinking) a change either of us should pursue?

I guess you object to using the {{Efn}} template for that purpose; what do you suggest instead? Wording in the body (such as "links are in the 'See also' section below")? Nothing except in the See Also section an explanation that links are for quotations, either with or without saying which quotations, the explanation displayed or as a comment? Nothing at all besides the links? Something else?

How or where does the method last used interrupt (I guess that's what you mean by throwing off) the numbering? I just looked at one case wherein the note lettered "a" comes between notes 79 and 80 (note 62 doesn't count since it's due to a named ref element that appears in fuller form earlier in the article) and notes 83 and 84 show a correlation between the body and the notes'content. Maybe the method didn't affect all articles the same way, but do you remember which one was adversely affected in note numbering? Or is it due to which browser one uses (I notice that when I copy text whether note numbers are selected and copied depends on the browser)?

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:01, 20 May 2013 (UTC) (Added a paragraph and clarified a sentence: 16:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC))

I wrote nothing false

You claimed that I "said essentially that policies and guidelines are not binding". When you previously raised the issue, I explicitly stated that "I'm not arguing that we aren't required to abide by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines (barring good reasons not to)."

and I'm not required to research what you already know or, when it results from your question, can research yourself. Editors are generally not other people's secretaries on Wikipedia.

I'm baffled as to what you're addressing.

I don't have a need to be the inventor. I'm happy that you're suggesting anything in that direction. Please continue with any inspirations you have toward solving the problem. When you do, you're entitled to the credit and if you prefer not to have credit that's up to you.

I don't care whether I receive credit.

What is your objection to linking at all?

I don't object to it (in principle). I only object to implementing a format without consensus.

I guess you object to using the {{Efn}} template for that purpose; what do you suggest instead?

Apart the current lack of consensus, my only objection is the technical issue described below (which presumably could be rectified by using a slightly modified version of the template).

How or where does the method last used interrupt (I guess that's what you mean by throwing off) the numbering?

I'm referring to the URLs. In your example, the "a" link leads to a URL ending in "cite_note-79". As a result, citation 79's URL ends in cite_note-80, citation 80's URL ends in cite_note-81, and so on. This is potentially confusing. —David Levy 16:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Geeks like me read long URLs past the top-level domain and first-level destination but most nongeeks don't. You're right about confusing people, albeit only a few. Until recently, many or all the URLs were short by one (e.g., "23" in the URL displayed as "24") probably because of an IT tradition that might still help speed. Wikipedia or MediaWiki recently changed how URLs identify notes so maybe nongeek humans complained and inspired the change, though I wonder what happens if someone who stored an old URL pastes it into a browser address bar today.

If the URL issue is a dealbreaker for this, URL formation can be taken up at the village pump (technical), Bugzilla (perhaps), or {{Efn}} template talk, the first two for reprogramming or the last for deprecating or recoding the template. I don't plan to, since we all work with the software as it is and I'm unclear how anyone would do a wrong thing because they read the URL and were confused; do you perhaps have a hypothetical or real example?

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:29, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia or MediaWiki recently changed how URLs identify notes so maybe nongeek humans complained and inspired the change, though I wonder what happens if someone who stored an old URL pastes it into a browser address bar today.

The URLs never were reliably consistent over time; the addition and removal of references (a common occurrence) changes the numerical sequence.

If the URL issue is a dealbreaker for this,

I don't consider it a deal-breaker. It's a relatively minor flaw, but it seems worth fixing.

I imagine that the best solution is to create a parallel setup (with a different URL format) for the new links — one that functions in essentially the same manner, but via a separate sequence (perhaps "link_note-a, link_note-b...") that doesn't affect the existing templates' numbering.

If we're in agreement on this approach, the aforementioned Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) seems like a suitable forum in which to request coding assistance.

Incidentally, if we are to use Latin letters, we should address the issue of how to handle more than 26 such links in a single article. Possible formats for a second sequence include "aa, ab, ac..." and "a2, b2, c2...".

I'm unclear how anyone would do a wrong thing because they read the URL and were confused; do you perhaps have a hypothetical or real example?

Many users will notice that the citations' numbering matches their internal URLs. If the two were to suddenly stop matching (particularly mid-article), I would suspect a bug and wonder whether I'm viewing the corresponding references. —David Levy 16:21, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

That's true about the URLs often changing.

The URL part we're discussing is a fragment identifier pointing to an anchor. It is not meant to be read by non-IT humans, although we're all free to read it. If it were read by even one one-hundredth of visitors and they were getting confused or alarmed, we'd likely have been seeing prominent explanations (I haven't searched for one but I don't recall seeing one) or it would have been fixed by now. So I agree the issue has validity but not much, and I think it's trivial. And it would probably require reprogramming the page-generation code that creates anchors to which the URLs point, and, while I don't know, I guess that that's not just a one-minute job even for a very skilled coder and probably has to be done or supervised by Wikimedia staff at Foundation expense. So it would, I think, require nontrivial work to redress. I don't know how to justify that and don't plan to ask for that redress. If someone can access the relevant code for generating pages and URLs, perhaps someone can write patches. If that's you, that may be convenient. Would you like to do it or request it?

If the coding should be changed to distinguish between lower-case letters and numerals, probably it should also distinguish from capitals and romanettes.

Recoding perhaps can be done partly by changing "cite_note-" to "cite_note_efn-" or some such (maybe "efn" in that context is not clear enough partly because the Efn template is not the only generator of these link labels), and if that's not a good solution it's likely another solution is workable.

When lower-case letters are used and more than 26 {{Efn}} templates generate referents for a {{Notelist}} template, the 27th referent is identified as "aa". I tested this in my sandbox, presently temporarily viewable.

The village pump might be the appropriate place but I suspect not, because I'm not clear why the coding would be different for different Wikimedia Foundation projects (other than the URL's domain) or why it would be specific to Foundation-run projects at all, which would suggest that what would be patched is the MediaWiki software, which then has to be propagated to support the English Wikipedia at least, and, if I'm right then that will take time and risks a possibility that en-WP won't want to upgrade its MediaWiki installation until a more important change is included and justifies the costs in human resources of upgrading. It may be better to live with the existing software and edit without awaiting software changes and then enjoy the (minor) benefit of the patching whenever it happens.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:59, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I must apologize for overlooking an important fact. Like you, I was unfamiliar with {{efn}} (which appears to be used in about 2,500 articles) before this discussion began. Had I examined it, I'd have observed that it uses Latin lettering by default, resulting in the issue that I described. Having not paid close attention to the code, I was under the mistaken impression that you'd manually specified such formatting. (That's why I raised the question of how to handle more than 26 instances, which is moot.) Please forgive this unintentional digression, which led you to expend unnecessary effort.

This greatly simplifies the matter at hand.

Firstly, there's no need to even consider pursuing a special technical fix. I don't know how difficult or time-consuming such a modification would be (or even whether it would require work on the MediaWiki level, perhaps related to this extension), but regardless, this is a pre-existing issue. Given that fact, I agree that the appropriate course of action is to utilize the resources currently available and enjoy the benefit of an enhancement if/when it occurs.

Secondly, having now seen {{efn}} in use, I've realized that you and I have been needlessly attempting to reinvent the wheel; we can simply include the internal links via the exact formatting already employed. The basic idea (providing explanatory footnotes to aid in readers' understanding) is the same. Some instances (such as this one) include internal links, and I even encountered one (perhaps of many) used to provide an internal link to a subject mentioned in a quotation.

In other words, a suitable infrastructure exists. There's no need for us to create a new setup or draft an RfC. We can simply use the {{efn}} template exactly as it's used currently. Example: Andrea Dworkin —David Levy 09:05, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I should get to the articles that were recently edited for this issue, although it may take me a week or so to start. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:44, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Likewise, thank you. We hit a few bumps along the way, but I think that we've reached an excellent outcome. —David Levy 16:44, 23 May 2013 (UTC)