Wikipedia talk:Why Manual of Style discussions are so awful

Suggest this be userfied

I think this essay should be moved to user space and retitled something like "Why I find MoS discussions so awful". It is clearly personal reflection and currently a bit rambling and unfocused (too long). Wikipedia-space essays are useful if they have a clear simple point to make, and then other editors can, if they wish, collaborate to polishing the argument around that point. The convention of course is that editors with an entirely different viewpoint can go write their own essay. Here is really more of a dumping ground for the author's own observations, which presumably could grow over time. The "nutshell" is really just an admission of the vague scope of the essay, rather than a pithy summary of the point being made. There's no core focus around which other editors could usefully contribute, other than for people to try to add or maybe remove things they do or don't find "awful". Which possibly would lead to disputes over whether other contributors should go write their own essay. I think it needs to be clearly personal in both title and location. -- Colin°^Talk 10:50, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Other points

Two other points. I think the argument about "cherry picking" is inherently bad faith. In discussions on Wikipedia we are not required or even encouraged to present the case for or against something in a neutral way. Indeed our !votes would be extremely tedious if we cited various competing sources and rambled on about their pros and cons. I expect someone contributing to a discussion to have an opinion and to express that opinion clearly and offer if they wish sources to back that up. Not every opinion needs a source. It may happen that a contributor may wish to address aspects of competing opinions if they wish to show they considered them or wish to attack some aspect of them, but there's no requirement anyone does that in a discussion. It really is the job of people having other opinions to go express the arguments for those other opinions and to cite sources backing up their opinions. While clearly we'd all wish folk went off and read a wide variety of sources before coming to their conclusions, there's nothing wrong with summarising one's conclusion with sources that back up that conclusion. The accusation of "cherry picking" inherently claims the author is deliberately and dishonestly avoiding citing sources that disagree, as though that is a bad thing to do. Far more likely is the writer didn't find those sources or that they did read them and dismissed their arugments. Why would one cite Wingnut X or DailyMail writer Y and their rants when I could cite professional body Z? So, I'd say accusations of cherry picking are themselves "awful". If you have found a competing source of opinion, cite it. Don't go around bad faith accusing others of not citing it.

The other point is the 'Wikipedia never "leads the way"' claim. This is both not true and unsupported by any policy or guideline. We can't "lead the way" on facts, but the words and punctuation and formatting we write with are entirely our own. That our words can be and often should be entirely our own choice is in fact supported by core policy. There is no fundamental reason Wikipedians cannot chose words or adopt style of entirely their own preference if they so wish. Indeed, many of our styles are quite Wikipedia-specific related to our clunky page titling, article linking and basic editor functionality. That many Wikipedians prefer Wikipedia take a cautious and conservative approach to language change, for example, is simply a viewpoint. I think one mistake is to confuse the need for MoS to only require or encourage in a tiny minority of situations that have clear consensus with the idea that the consensus is that writers on Wikipedia can only ever write according to conservative language choices. So I wish those involved in MoS discussions avoided gaslighting us with the idea that their conservatism (and the necessary conservatism of a guideline page to say as little as necessary) is somehow "Wikipedia". The honest approach is to say clearly what one's opinion is about whether a style or wording choice has merit. There's no need for dishonest claims that core policy has your back. -- Colin°^Talk 10:50, 23 February 2024 (UTC)