Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 40

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COMMONSTYLE proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Superseded by an RFC (below on this talkpage)

Noetica^Tea? 06:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Based on favorable reception of the suggestion above in the section #The_well-established_harmony_between_WP:TITLE_and_WP:MOS for a "COMMONSTYLE" section to clarify the styling of titles should be in common with styling of text, I proposed adding something like this:

==Title styling==  {{shortcut|COMMONSTYLE}}
Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines 
in the WP:Manual of Style, in terms of capitalization, punctuation, italics, and such.

Is that enough? Does any more need to be said? Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. I think this has already been around all the houses and found favour with all but Apteva and his cohorts. I would perhaps like to see diacritics mentioned, but I fear that will be opening up another can of worms. ;-) -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 05:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

The MOS doesn't say much beyond "The use of diacritics (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged," so mentioning it along with caps, etc., shouldn't be a problem. The point is the same. I don't see anything in TITLE that conflicts. Dicklyon (talk) 06:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I would prefer we be clear whether diacritics are covered, some wikijudging I've been forced into in the past has rested in part on the question of whether "stripping diacritics" can be considered a style. Because of that previous wikijudging, I'll abdicate stating a preference for whether it's explicit inclusion or exclusion, but I would prefer a clear determination. --j⚛e decker ^talk 03:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

A clear determination would be nice, but given how utterly divided the community is on their use, there is absolutely no way we can backdoor one preference or another into this proposal. The community has to decide a final position on diacritics before it can be expressed here. Otherwise, the only thing you will accomplish is to open up Ohconfucius' can of worms. Reso lute 03:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A determination that diacritic-stripping is a style would simply make clearer the weak status quo that there isn't a global consensus and there'd still be a lot of local consensi and debating. It would, however, rob the continuing argument that existing policy evidences a preexisting consensus to always include or always exclude diacritics, and pull some of the venom out of the most eager partisans on both sides of the issue. That's far short of the central diacritic debate.

A determination that diacritic stripping was not a style would be consistent with the neutrality already present within the MOS, and would lend additional weight to those who believe that existing policies on article titles are determinative with respect to diacritics, however, both sides have arguments of this form, so it wouldn't really set out an answer, either.

Either way, you haven't actually answered the question, but you have narrowed the breadth of the argument involved. more so in the former case. Baby steps.

Anyway, I'll stop pushing on this thread, but I did want to explain that the situation was a little more complicated than I might have first implied. Feel free to hat this as a digression if you wish. Cheers, --j⚛e decker ^talk 03:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Support, but the "and such" is a bit nebulous. —Neotarf (talk) 07:36, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Support, but maybe leave off all of the "in terms of ...", or we'll get wikilawyering over anything not explicitly mentioned. — kwami (talk) 07:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

ha! even simpler, and better! -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:49, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Image captions? —Neotarf (talk) 08:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

No need to bring that up at TITLE? Dicklyon (talk) 08:22, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I think "following guidelines in the MOS" would sound better (more grammatical) as "following the guidelines of the MOS", but that's quibbling. — kwami (talk) 09:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, then I think we all agree so far that this version would be OK, let's take it up from here:

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposed COMMONNAME subsection

I propose adding a new subsection to COMMONNAME. Certain policies and guidelines are perceived to conflict with COMMONNAME, and an explanation of these cases can help to avoid time-wasting RMs. I've drawn up a draft at User:BDD/COMMONNAME exceptions, which I invite you to visit and potentially edit. In particular, I only know of two such policies or guidelines, so additions are welcome. You may also indicate your support for, or opposition to, this initiative, either in this section or on the draft's talk page. --BDD (talk) 23:13, 28 November 2012 (UTC) Edit: I've had this page deleted, but its content is reproduced in the collapsible box farther down in this section. --BDD (talk) 20:34, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Note: BDD has moved the now-redlinked draft to a collapse-box in this thread, below. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:12, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think the examples you give ("Boise, Idaho vs Boise" and "Myocardial infarction vs Heart attack") are exceptions to WP:COMMONNAME... with both the city and the medical event, there are lots of sources that would support either potential title... enough that neither potential title is significantly more common than the other. We turn to the project convention because we don't have a clear COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 01:01, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, the question I'm asking is not whether they are the common name—just whether they could be perceived as such. Since Boise redirects to Boise, Idaho, it's reasonable to assume it could be moved to just Boise; since heart attack is a much more commonly used phrase, it reasonable to assume it should be the article title (cf. Talk:Myocardial infarction#Article move, from earlier this month). My intention is to head off RMs like that. But if you have better examples, by all means, add them. --BDD (talk) 16:01, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. All criteria are considered and weighed in title determinations. Consistency with other similar titles (a.k.a. following project-specific naming conventions) is just one of those criteria, and does not automatically trump others like recognizability, naturalness (i.e., common name) and conciseness. The two examples are terrible, because Boise, Idaho is an abomination (IMHO) and Myocardial infarction is about precision. If you want to head off RMs, support the following guidance.
With very few if any exceptions, all cases of [[A]] redirects to [[A (B)]] or [[C]] redirects to [[C, D]] should be non-controversial grounds for moving:

[[A (B)]] → [[A]]

[[C, D]] → [[C]]

--Born2cycle (talk) 16:53, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

My question is: why would we want to try to "head off" RMs? I see nothing wrong with suggesting that an article would be better if given a different title. This policy helps us to achieve consensus as to the best title amunst a choice of various potential titles, not to mandate what a given title "must" be. Blueboar (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Actual improvements is one thing. But I'm talking about heading off RMs in cases where either title is ultimately fine (neither is "better"). Some people advocate for simply not participating in such discussions, or always supporting the status quo. I favor supporting policy and guidelines that reduces the incidence of such cases, by making the rules less ambiguous. Fewer exceptions. Hence my above suggestion. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:49, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, from my perspective, there is only one firm rule here... 2) Titles are determined by consensus. All the rest is guidance to help us achieve consensus. Blueboar (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure, but even within that framework we can come up with guidance supported by consensus that increases or reduces ambiguity and the incidence of controversial cases. I mean, pure consensus with no guidance would be indistinguishable from a panoply of JLI/JDLI arguments. So the whole point of having guidance is to reduce controversy and pointless JLI/JDLI argumentation. This goal can be met to varying degrees depending on what policies and guidelines we choose and how ambiguous we make them. The less ambiguous and less conflicting we make the rules, the less controversy there will be. That's why I advocate for project-specific rules that minimize (ideally eliminate) conflict with our general criteria. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:40, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Any particular algorithm, such as the one above that's claimed as "should be non-controversial grounds for moving", is going to make lots of bad calls, compared to the considered judgement of editors who can trade off the various criteria that are there to be considered. The theory that "the whole point of having guidance is to reduce controversy" seems to me to be highly suspect, and B2C's efforts guided by this theory seem to stoke more controversy than they settle. Hard and fast rules that force editors into choosing the most concise and ambiguous title are what he has been pushing for 5 years now; how about we try backing off from that, and let titles be chosen by editors instead of by algorithms? Dicklyon (talk) 06:33, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Algorithms make title determinations deterministically. In contrast, when these decisions are left to "the considered judgement of editors", often if not usually apparently reasonable arguments (mostly rationalizations of JDLI positions) can be made for both sides, and true consensus is never reached. Coin tossing, using an unfair coin weighted to favor the status quo, would produce results similar to what we see from "the considered judgement of editors". --Born2cycle (talk) 21:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with that description of how it works, but even if it did work that way, I would be okay with it, since consistency is a legitimate, indeed very important, goal. NB: If someone's spouts off with the "hobgoblin" quote, I'm going to embarrass you, because that quote does not at all mean what you think it does, as I've demonstrated several times in previous discussions like this at AT/NC and MOS pages. Short version: Emerson is not only usually misquoted (he wrote of "a foolish consistency", not "consistency" generally); he was writing about avoidance of habitual patterns in life that limit one's human potential, and, as applied to writing, being free to change his mind over time, between publications; he was absolutely not writing in opposition to using consistent style and logic from one page to the next in the same publication! The same is true of virtually all similar quotations by other writers oft quoted by people who oppose (for whatever irrational reason) MOS being reasonably consistent from article to article. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Born2cycle, while I agree with some points you made below, on this you are coming across as giving excessive weight to conciseness (or concision, if you prefer) above all other considerations. I think you'll continue to find you don't have much support in that quest. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps I appreciate the elegance of simplicity more than most. Not that I'm opposed to exceptions. Exceptions, for good reason, are fine, of course. But they should be recognized as exceptions, and the good reasons to have each should be clear. But the default, if you will, should be to favor having only the concise name be the title, unless additional descriptive information is necessary for disambiguation. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Comment – I think the problem is that WP:COMMONNAME is often cited, instead of the WP:CRITERIA that it's supposed to support. It is not well written, as it seems to take control, with over-narrow wording like "it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used...", when it should be talking about recognizability and precision. If we rephrase it a bit, then City, State and Myocardial infarction will not be exceptions, just cases where the chosen name may not necessarily be the most common. It starts out OK with "The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural" – but it might be more clear to say something like "The title of an article is typically chosen from the most common names..." with the same reason. Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
- That's just advocating more rules loosening and less determinism, which creates more fodder for pointless disagreements. With few exceptions, when the most common name for a topic is available, it is the title for that article's topic. That's a fact that can be verified with any significant number of clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM, and it needs to remain clearly stated in policy. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Born, a lot of editors feel that less determinism and more acceptance of disagreement is a good thing. It's why WP:RM exists... so editors can discuss the (often subtle) nuances that exist between different titles and reach a consensus. Blueboar (talk) 15:52, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Exactly; many of us have supported looser rules and less determinism, so that edtors can actually weigh the various criteria. Much of the conflict that we see in naming is driven by the extremists, who believe that "excess precision" means anything beyond the most concise possible title, or that recognizability has no real value except to people already familiar with the topic, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 06:01, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I understand that some editors want looser rules, less determinism and (thus) less agreement and more arguing. But why? To what end? We're not talking about cases where one title is clearly better than another (there is little to argue about in those cases). We're talking only about cases where, frankly, either title is fine, in terms of serving our readers. What is the point in make such cases more controversial rather than less controversial? What good comes from that? To anyone? Besides those of us love debate for the sake of debate (I'm not going to deny that obvious inclination in myself, but I recognize that's no excuse for loosening the rules, less determinism and more ultimately pointless disagreement and debating). For me, it's not pointless, because the point is to reduce the incidence of that kind of nonsense. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:12, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Your inference that looser rules and less determinism would lead to more arguing seems highly suspect, especially since so much of the arguing is driven by you trying to tighten up the rules and implement algorithmic naming. We aren't going to go for that, you've probably noticed by now. Dicklyon (talk) 21:41, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I measure my achievements in the area of titles in terms of titles that were controversial in the past, and are now stable. Getting there sometimes means one RM discussion. In other cases it takes years. But in the end it's about title predictability, consistency and stability. It is for me. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we should have 'WP:NOT#BOOLEAN' as a part of WP:NOT.

"I understand that some editors want looser rules, less determinism and (thus) less agreement and more arguing. But why? To what end? We're not talking about cases where one title is clearly better than another (there is little to argue about in those cases)". Firstly, the above statement itself is a fallacy because it causally links the lower determinism with less agreement or more argumentation; it also implies that the level of determinism at present is free from arguments. Secondly, the "end" is to put an end to the delusion that there is only one of [subject] when they are in fact abundant number of them although an article has yet to be created for the others. The acceptance and adoption of the naming convention for US cities (ie [name, state]) is a reflection of the real world where there are several Plains or Redwoods, for example. That principle should be enlarged so that the user won't have to even have to hover over a link, let alone to click one, to know that the subject is or isn't what they were looking for. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:09, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Whether we like it or not, the underlying common theme of WP:COMMONNAME, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:DISAMBIGUATION and concision and recognizability is that distinguishing a given article's topic from other uses not covered in WP, and making a topic recognizable to readers unfamiliar with that topic from the title itself, are not purposes of WP article titles. Adding these purposes to WP article titles would indicate we should be using a different title for probably the majority of our titles. This can be quickly verified by making a few clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM which will immediately reveal any number of titles for which the topic is not recognizable to anyone not familiar with the topic (e.g., Beerzerveld, Live at Short's 2005, John H. Long, Osbald of Northumbria, Lex Manilia), or by recognizing that the existence of any dab page at name (disambiguation), like Redwood (disambiguation), indicates the existence of an article (or redirect to an article) at name (like Redwood) which is ambiguous with the other uses of name listed on the dab page, not to mention those that may not be covered on WP.

Repurposing titles like this leads to conflicts because now we have conflicting purposes for titles, and, thus, ostensibly reasonable arguments based on recognized purposes for different titles for the same article. Continuing to go down that path will necessarily lead to more conflict, disagreement and debate. To what end?

The examples of Plains or Redwoods are irrelevant because both are dab pages listing multiple uses on WP of those names on WP respectively. There is little debate about titles of articles like that. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

This is probably going nowhere. I'll leave my draft below for anyone who wants to run with it. --BDD (talk) 20:21, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Draft content

Exceptions

Some Wikipedia policies and guidelines posit stricter naming conventions; these conventions should be followed even when they would result in less common or concise titles. The following are examples of such titles and their relevant policy or guideline:

Boise, Idaho (not Boise, per WP:USPLACE)
Myocardial infarction (not Heart attack, per MOS:MED)

That said, add WP:NCROY to the list of policies and guidelines that can conflict with COMMONNAME. --BDD (talk) 00:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
- That was true in the past and the inconsistency has been largely rectified over the years. For those monarchs that "have a name by which they are clearly most commonly known ... and which identifies them unambiguously... this name is usually chosen as the article title". --Born2cycle (talk) 01:16, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Not necessary. Our two choices are always common use and official name, and it can certainly be argued that Boise, Idaho, is a form of official name, as is Myocardial infarction. Along with official, we include scientific name, as well as technical name. Apteva (talk) 10:12, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Two comments here... 1) I have a problem with saying that there is always a choice between the official name and the common usage... in many, if not most cases, the most common usage actually IS the official name (ie the official name is what the most number of sources use).

2) Something that we do not address in this Policy (yet) is the issue of source quality... and how quality interacts with commonness (or quantity). This is where the "Myocardial Infarction" vs. "Heart Attack" debate is instructive. Determining which of these two terms is the WP:COMMONNAME actually depends on the selection of sources. "Myocardial Infarction" is actually the more commonly used term of the two, if you limit the selection to scholarly medical sources. "Heart Attack" on the other hand is more commonly used if you include non-scholarly sources.

Now... there is (I think) a valid argument for saying that in a medicine related article, scholarly sources should be given much more weight than non-scholarly sources. Scholarly sources are considered relatively more reliable... and this should have an effect on determining commonality. In other words... WP:COMMONNAME needs to account for quality as well as quantity. Blueboar (talk) 14:01, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

But "scholarly" is mixing up the notions of quality and specialization. I wouldn't generally put specialized sources ahead of high-quality sources written for a general audience. I understand it came out as you say with Heart attack being a redirect to the more technical medical term, but that seems like an outlier from normal WP title style, doesn't it? Dicklyon (talk) 17:38, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Dick. I had assumed that Heart attack was a dab page listing all kinds of specific diseases referred to generally/commonly as a "heart attack". But with Heart attack redirecting to the article, that's definitely an outlier. Seem like a blatant violation of common name to me. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:06, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I also concur, strongly, with DickLyon and Born2cycle on this, and would further say we should explicitly put high-quality, general audience sources before academic ones when it comes to both article naming and (not relevant here, but at WP:RS) general article prose. Far too many medical and hard-science articles on WP are already essentially impenetrable to anyone but people who at least have undergraduate degrees in the field covered by the article; they're categorically unencylopedic. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 07:10, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Having the article named "Myocardial infarction" rather than "Heart attack" is a pretty clear violation of normal naming convention. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:37, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

I didn't mean to start a fight, and I don't agree that it's "blatant", but I think it's a good example of where the specialist camps have won out in getting a consensus that looks a bit odd compared to the usual consensus in other parts of WP. Not as odd as the capitalization in birds, dog breeds, Halley's Comet, and such, which derive from specialist-group recommendations and are at odd with the general advice of the MOS. I'm sure there are other examples of specialists' influence in choosing a COMMONNAME as well. Dicklyon (talk) 22:30, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah... I did not intend to start a fight either... my point was simply that in assessing commonness (a function of quantity), we should look at quality as well. If we have a choice between two names or terms... one commonly used by high-quality sources, and the other commonly used by low-quality sources, I think we should generally follow the high-quality sources... even if there are more low-quality sources when you actually count them up. This would still apply the concept of WP:COMMONNAME... but also takes the quality of each group of sources into account. Blueboar (talk) 00:21, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Good. I have no problem putting higher weight on higher-quality sources. Of course, when it comes down to arguments, people are going to see quality where they see it. So, more generally, I'd say we need to keep COMMONNAME in perspective, as just one strategy in support of one title criterion: recognizability. Too often editors act as if the title will automatically be chosen by what's most common (in the sources that they prefer). Dicklyon (talk) 00:29, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Oppose: Existing guidance on this is sufficient, and too many people are WP:COMMONNAME fetishists as it is, who cannot seem to recognize that it is moderated by WP:COMMONSENSE, as well as various issues raised by WP:MOS, etc. Codifing just two cases, and in such a way that suggests it has anything at all to do with wikiprojects and their project-level "guidelines", is hazardous, as any number of WP:ARBCOM decisions reining in wayward WP:OWNish projects, and the introduction of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to limit them further, both demonstrate. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 06:58, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Neither of the links goes to a wikiproject page. MOS:MED is clearly part of the MOS. WP:USPLACE is, like WP:AT, not part of the MOS but appears to be "above" it. So neither have anything to do with WP:OWN or WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. There are good reasons for taking especial care with the titles of articles that people may read for medical advice, just as there are for the content and sources, which is why WP:MEDRS exists. All that said, I don't think that the proposed addition is needed. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposed tweak to first sentence of WP:UE

WP:UE is often misunderstood as use the English language appearing form (and not to consult English language usage) despite what the first sentence says. I think if it's emphasized in the examples with an explanation in conjunction, they will have much better teaching effect. I propose the following change:

Current:

The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage, e.g., Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen, but Nuremberg, delicatessen, and Florence.

Proposed language:

The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage, e.g., the non-anglicized titles, Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen are used since they predominate in English language reliable sources, but the anglicized title forms Nuremberg, delicatessen, and Florence are used since they predominate in English language reliable sources.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 08:07, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

That is fine except for me italicizing usage makes the sentence harder to read, so I would recommend against that. Apteva (talk) 09:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd support this, and the emphasis on "usage" is fine (and your main point), though really it should be done with {{em|usage}}. :-) I'm a bit concerned about the repetitive wording, though; the second "in English language reliable sources" can safely be dropped, with the sentence ending at "predominate". To nit-pick, the comma before Besançon isn't needed, either. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 09:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

To further nit-pick, the absence of a serial comma after Søren Kierkegaard makes its use after delicatessen an inconsistency. --My76Strat (talk) 10:42, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I oppose this change. The problem is that defining what is or is not anglicized opens up a can of worms is "hotel" an anglicized word? Is Paris an anglicized word? What about Zurich is that anglicized or taken from French and it was they who stripped the umlaut of its dots? Rhone anglicized or taken from Latin. What about Emily Brontë is that foreign or an affectation? If we keep it simple with the current wording we do not have to go down that rabbit hole, because we don't care if it is "anglicized" or foreign as we only care about usage in reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 19:58, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Support - or something very much like it. This would bring WP:AT nearer to actual science (lexicography, linguistics) and nearer the realm of the normal editing behaviour of professional publishing. As it stands the wording fails to distinguish issue (1) the difference between exonyms and endonyms, and issue (2) the difference between high-MOS or low-MOS publishing sources. The existing wording also encourages editors to jump into a much bigger can of worms down a much deeper rabbit hole of counting sources to see whether something is mentioned in, for example, academic sources, or mass-market media. With the result that our articles lurch around depending on whether academic or mass-market mentions have the numerical majority. At the very least setting out the difference between (1) and (2) will make things less confused. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
The proposed wording (before and after the change) has nothing to do with what sources to use. -- PBS (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand your opposition because it is ostensibly directed at the change, but your basis is directed at what was already present. It already said (and has for years) "The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage, e.g.," and then had the list of examples, which were to illustrate that principle. The "change" only explained how the examples that followed the first sentence, and obviously were intended to be illustrative of that first sentence, did so. If you want to discuss changing the thrust here of what it already said, that would be another story. Your later criticism, that the explanatory language proposes the mechanics of looking at "reliable sources" to find English usage, that is true, but appears to be entirely separate from the first criticism. I can't understand why anyone would oppose that. Anyway, treating your criticism as to the import of the old language and the new language since there is no functional difference, I would ask that you explain better because nothing here asks anyone to try to figure out whether a usage is anglicized or not; this policy section doesn't care which it is. We care only about usage. Let's be concrete. One person says "I want to use Fubar as that appears to be English. The other person wants to use Foobhoàr because they say its the proper title in X language, or whatever. All this paragraph teaches is that while those are often opposing sides, it doesn't actually matter – use what English speakers use.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I have already given some examples above, but lets look at two specific ones. Is "Zurich" an anglicized German word or did English get it from French usage which had already stripped off the dots above the u? Is a military "bunker" and anglicized word or is it a foreign word? My point is that we do not have to list words that we think are foreign or anglicized as it does not make the guidance of selecting the appropriate name simpler. -- PBS (talk) 11:42, 8 January 2013 (UTC

That's not the point. You're opposing the examples under the auspices of the change ("I oppose this change"), when your opposition is directed at the long-preexisting examples. That's a different conversation to have.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:29, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

It is the point I oppose putting into the guideline what is or is not Anglicized, simply listing some examples without categorising them as one or the other is a better approach. The editor who does not know and really wants to know the difference can always read up on the issue, the guideline does not have to become a mini summary of what is or is not an Anglicized word where every example is categorized. A simple list of examples will suffice to get the point over. -- PBS (talk) 23:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Support this or very similar verbiage, with the addition of a serial comma. Killer Chihuahua 13:36, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what to say since we're going in circles. They were the examples for the exact same thing before as they are now.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I would take out the word "but" in the current text. Perhaps a better example to give is Côte d'Ivoire and Ivory Coast either version is acceptable and the decision was made on a survey of reliable sources (both ways). -- PBS (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Help requested (title of an article)

A recent article I've worked on has an open question that tangentially relates to the above discussion. The article, Half Blood Blues, wp:commonname is Half-Blood Blues by a preponderance of wp:rs. All comments regarding the best title for that article are needed at Talk:Half Blood Blues#Title, Thank you. --My76Strat (talk) 23:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

An interesting and instructive case, Strat. I will comment at the talkpage a little later. In fact it illustrates very nicely how TITLE provisions and the detail at MOS interact to settle the precise form of an article title, especially when different editions of the work use different styling. (Apart, that is, from the more common different styling in different parts of the same edition of the work.)

Noetica^Tea? 23:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, quite interesting. I would tend to make an MOS exception for titles and personal names, just as we would for spelling. It is interesting to see a title where the punctuation is indeterminate in book itself. — kwami (talk) 01:15, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

As I explained above, and in many previous iteration of this rambling pointless argument over already-settled matters: Unless you yourself were the one who typeset that book, you cannot prove you have the exact font file used to do so, ergo you cannot even prove that a hyphen was used vs. a dash, or vice versa, because in many fonts the glyphs are indistinguishable, especially "cheap-o" fonts that are knockoffs of expensive, original ones. Asserting that one knows that this character on a book cover is in fact a hyphen is blatant WP:OR. And WP wouldn't care anyway, per WP:OFFICIALNAME and WP:TRADEMARK – we do not honor purely stylistic weirdness in logos and titles and official names of things where they conflict with basic grammar and usage or where MOS has had to choose one of various possible styles and said "do it this way" for consistency and editwar-reduction reasons. We have an article about Kesha, not Ke$ha and a movie called Seven, not Se7en. This is no different at all. The tiny handful of ranting dash haters have had their say (again and again and again and..., forum shopped to hell and back for about a year straight. Enough is enough. (PS: The title in question above grammatically has to be Half-blood BLues; in English we do not capitalize after a hyphen, ever, unless the hyphen-following element is a proper name in its own right.) — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 16:17, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

SMcCandlish the link you provided with the phrase "conflict with basic grammar and usage" is to WP:ASTONISH, which in turn links to Wikimedia:Resolution:Controversial content. If there is a common usage among reliable sources, wouldn't it be less astonishing to follow the lead of that which is commonly used in reliable sources than to follow "basic grammar and usage" if those grammatical rules are not commonly used for that specific case? -- PBS (talk) 19:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

IMHO, if it's Wikipedia's opinion of what basic grammar is supposed to be, to be used in a title, it is WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH (as English does not have a language institute to mandate language, it will always be OR when you apply a style from some guide that has not been used in the wild for the topic at hand), if it isn't used in WP:RS, then it is WP:OR. Why take this stand? Because if sources don't back it up, it will end up as being a point of contention and continuous arguments as to what the proper grammar is supposed to be. WP:V; This still means that WP:OFFICIALNAME applies, and we just don't use the official styling if RSes don't use it (or choose to use one of the stylings found in RSes, which fall closest to our MOS, and is still relatively common). [This note only applies to things that appear in English in the wild (in sufficient amounts to determine usage), things that don't appear in English in the wild will take descriptive or adapted titles that conform to MOS] -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 10:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Naming

Mike Reid (American football) — should it have that name or a more specific name? I mean, he seems to be as known for his singing and songwriting, if not moreso. Should the article name give weight to both, or more to the singer-songwriter part? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 23:20, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Are there general principle of title policy in question here? Or should this just be discussed at the article's talk page as usual? Dicklyon (talk) 18:57, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Serial comma proofreading of WP:AT

Since the first serial occurrence on this page, "is short, natural, and recognizable", establishes positive use of the serial comma, it should be used throughout. Ironically, the very next occurrence, "Verifiability, No original research and Neutral point of view", fails that standard. I'm not the only wikipedian who respects the serial comma, and for us, I ask that this entire policy page be copy-edited for consistency. If wp:sofixit applies, say the word and I'm off to the races. Best, --My76Strat (talk) 11:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, the serial comma is actually required in that case, or the meaning can be construed as "No original research and no Neutral point of view". I would say this is definitely a WP:SOFIXIT. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 12:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually the use of the capital "N" in "Neutral" defines the way to parse the phrase and prevents the "no" applying. (SMcC: I sure you've had explained to you before the value of capitals in grouping words into phrases. :-) ) Peter coxhead (talk) 11:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

You mark a good observation. My primary motive is for consistency, and I always defer to the first occurrence, as the style election; if necessary considering the history back to its creation. Of the few areas where the article creator has an ability to influence a style preference, I like to see that respected. --My76Strat (talk) 13:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Nope, it's still an accessibility issue; screen readers do not distinguish lower- and upper-case letters, they just read aloud as naturally as they're able, using commas as natural pause indicators (like most of us do most of the time, when commas aren't being used for a more technical reason). If someone hates serial commas so much they would editwar over this V-NOR-NPOV example, the only solution would be to reword it in V-NPOV-NOR or NPOV-V-NOR order, and thus have the "No..." be at the end. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 21:20, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

WP: Article titles #Special characters

Please, point me to a discussion on which relies the paragraph

Characters not on a standard keyboard (use redirects)

It obviously contradicts to an established practice, since there is a lot of names which use uncommon Latin letters. BTW I hate when one calls this phenomenon "diacritics" (especially in an official guideline), because neither of "ı" or "þ" is a diacriticized letter. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:29, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

There may be a misunderstanding. A lot of names use uncommon Latin letters. That is fine. Any article that has a title that uses character not on a standard keyboard should have a {{R from title without diacritics}} redirect from a title that is type-able on a standard keyboard. These are what the guideline is saying need to exist. (What would be a better short term for the set of characters with diacritics as well as "ı" and "þ"?) -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:50, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the page doesn't call them diacritics. It refers to "diacritics (accent marks), dashes, or other letters and characters not found on most English-language keyboards."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:58, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

The better short term would be "uncommon letters", although natives possibly can invent something better (though they did not even when I asked). I think, that the "Characters not on a standard keyboard" is misplaced. The problem of accessibility is a separate problem, it is not limited to titles only, and it should not be covered by "WP: Article titles" in such details. It deserves a mention and a link from here, but not a paragraph. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:08, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

But we're okay not looking for the discussion about that paragraph? Or is there a different established practice that it contradicts? -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:11, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I realized that it is just misplaced, not contradictory. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 14:27, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Correct name for Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence

This article used be named simply. It had her name. It was moved recently to the current name. The gentleman whom she was married to is given similar article title treatment. I am unsure of the validity of the current name and would appreciate comment and consensus on the name by which the article should be known. Since the discussion is regarding both this article and also Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence I am unsure of the correct venue for the discussion. The consensus should be reached in an appropriate venue and then closed and noted on each of the two articles in question, please. Any renaming should be done as a result of a consensus based closure.

If this is not an appropriate venue, please migrate the discussion to the correct venue, leaving a trail back to this post if considered appropriate. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 17:50, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

It seems correct per WP:NCPEER. --Stfg (talk) 18:42, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I'd spent a long while in a fruitless search Fiddle Faddle (talk) 21:33, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

"shorter than five letters" rule / general capitalization rules discussion over at WT:MoS

People frequenting this talk page, please see this. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 08:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Interpretation of Recognizability, Concision, and PRIMARYTOPIC at issue

Over at Talk:National_Pension_Scheme#Requested_move_2 the following claims are being made:

"Someone familiar with [an article's topic] may not recognise this title as [necessarily] about that [topic]" (even though the title is the topic's name, because the name is ambiguous, though not even ambiguous with other uses on WP), and so the title does not meet the recognizability criterion. (Never mind that every article about a primary topic falls into this category too.)
"A concise title is both short and conveys useful information. In its current form [reflecting its name], the title conveys very little." (i.e., conveying the topic's name is conveying "very little" (never mind that's exactly all that the vast majority of our titles convey).
"Ambiguous" applies not only with respect to other uses on WP, but also with uses out of WP, because [though] "[the other uses] don't have Wikipedia articles at the moment but they clearly could, and someone clicking on this search phrase could easily be looking for one of [those]".

Agree or disagree... a lot going on there... --Born2cycle (talk) 01:10, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Plural sets

There has been what I think is a controversial change to (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name):

"Plural sets like the Carolinas"

I think it would be helpful if more people where to discuss this conversational change as it seems to me to be against policy. We do use the definite article at the start of some names such as The Bahamas and The Hague because most sources capitalise "The" but those seem to me to be the exception to the rule and come under proper names. I suggest that rather then discussing it here it is discussed at: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)/Archives/ 1#Plural names -- PBS (talk) 12:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

The change was made after requesting clarification and being told this was a normal exception. It then sat for weeks without objection before further action. (Our guidelines describe what we do, and this is one of the things we do: these titles have been stable for years.) — kwami (talk) 12:23, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

There is no point discussing this in multiple places I suggest that we keep the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name)/Archives/ 1#Plural names -- PBS (talk) 13:15, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

More editors contributing to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name) would help us reach a consensus. -- PBS (talk) 14:21, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation of "AT-LARGE" when not the first word of an article title

Please see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Capitalisation_of_.22AT-LARGE.22_when_not_the_first_word_of_an_article_title. Thanks! -sche (talk) 16:48, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME - too many examples?

The list of examples has grown over time... do we really need so many? If not, we should probably shorten the list. To do so, we need to agree on which examples should be kept and which should be cut. Please share your thoughts. Blueboar (talk) 13:17, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Definitely too many examples. I would suggest something more along these lines:

Bill Clinton (not: William Jefferson Clinton)
Caffeine (not: 1,3,7-Trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione)
Confucius (not: Kong Qiu, Kong Fuzi, or K'ung Fu-tzu)
The Hague (not: 's-Gravenhage)
Mother Teresa (not: Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu)
Nazi Party (not: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
Romeo and Juliet (not: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet)
United Kingdom (not: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

That gives a few high-profile examples of certain common naming disputes. Many that I removed were essentially repeating the same theme, especially the biographical names. I think any more than ten examples would be excessive.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:55, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Basically what we are trying to illustrate is, instead of using the full, exact name, we use the common name, if that is the name most often used. To get that point across really only needs two or three examples. When the list grows to 20 it makes it look more like these are the only exceptions. Normally we prefer to not use a living person as an example, so Bill Clinton, even though it is an excellent example, could be replaced, and Nazi Party is probably not the best example due to the emotional charging involved, so I would be open to those changes, and it does not make much sense to include examples that could have multiple names such as Mother Theresa and Confucius. If we want a counter example, Lord Kelvin is a case where that is by far the most common name but the article is at the full name. The third example that was proposed before, along with Bill Clinton and Caffeine, was Seven Samurai (not: Shichinin no Samurai). Apteva (talk) 02:23, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The ten limit is acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 03:12, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I can't really understand why 'Bill Clinton' is such a good example, or indeed what it's trying to illustrate. I would argue "Prince Harry (not 'Henry Charles Albert David Windsor')", "Lady Gaga (not 'Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta')", "Buzz Aldrin (not 'Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.')" or "Chick Corea (not "'Armando Anthony Corea)" would be better, if my understanding of the point of the example is correct. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:52, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
- (Bill vs. William) Bill Clinton is well known and not the former president's full name. Buzz Aldrin and Chick Corea are equally good but not as well known. Björk complicates the issue because of the accent marks involved. I was going to point out Pelé, but that is also a living person, and also involves an accent (I believe that more people are alive today than ever lived and are not now living). For the English encyclopedia well known English examples are preferable, such as Caffeine and Guinea Pig. Nosocomial infection was recently moved to Hospital-acquired infection, but that is not a very well known topic. There are probably thousands of anatomy names that have common names and scientific names. Apteva (talk) 04:15, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  - I agree that a medical example would be very helpful. How about "Down syndrome (not: Trisomy 23)"? Somehow I remember that example being on this page or elsewhere years ago. szyslak (t) 00:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
- Actually I agree with you on Bjork, which is why I then changed it to Lady Gaga. It's a good idea to use 'contemporaneously valid' examples, and as such Confucius is rather épuisé. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 04:27, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I recall that the list began expanding a few months ago when someone decided the list was "too Western", and added examples like Gulzar and Shas, while removing several others. The removed examples were then re-added one by one. Should we try to make this list "less Western"? I would argue that it's more important that we use examples that are easily recognizable to a majority of our users, Western or otherwise. szyslak (t) 00:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I definitely don't think we should have any more than ten, and preferably fewer. Do we need The Hague and the UK? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

United Kingdom is probably a better example than The Hague, though I would prefer both. I do think examples of a similar type should be limited, which is why I am not fond of listing three separate examples of scientific names. As it stands, if we removed one of the scientific names from the list below we would have two examples for each type of name. Two names for people, two for scientific subjects, two place names, and two artistic works.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 18:36, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I like that for balance, but I can't think of which of the three scientific items I'd leave out. If I had to choose one I'd take out Down Syndrome, I guess, but I wouldn't be happy about it. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Draft proposal

Edit

Bill Clinton (not: William Jefferson Clinton)
Caffeine (not: 1,3,7-Trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione)
Down syndrome (not: Trisomy 21)
Guinea pig (not: Cavia porcellus)
The Hague (not: 's-Gravenhage)
Lady Gaga (not: Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta)
Romeo and Juliet (not: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet)
Seven Samurai (not: Shichinin no Samurai)
United Kingdom (not: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

Since there hasn't been any recent discussion on this topic, I've copied the 9-item list above into the main page. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Restore the example "Comet Hale–Bopp"

The Devil's Advocate writes above, concerning a proposed list: "That gives a few high-profile examples of certain common naming disputes." Quite rightly. We want the examples to illustrate principles, but also to show how contested cases have been well and truly settled. Earlier this was removed (and admin SarekofVulcan – no friend of MOS! – intervened with threats to see that it stayed removed):

Comet Hale–Bopp (not: C/1995 O1)

Well, time to revisit this. If the examples are to be truly representative and not redundant, Comet Hale–Bopp is a superb choice. Nothing else in the current proposals even looks like it. The case was controversial, but is long settled. It is in WP:MOS, where the guideline that includes it was developed in consultation with sixty editors under ArbCom supervision, and with ArbCom acceptance. Hard to find a more instructive and useful example, since it illustrates the accord between MOS and TITLE, and is a point of commonality between them.

If some people don't like it, that is not a reason to omit it. Their dislike is something for them to take ownership of, and to suppress for the common good. There are compelling reasons to include this example.

Noetica^Tea? 23:03, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Please don't use WP:AT to continue the hyphen/dash disputes[3]. Months ago, Kwami moved dozen of comet names and then slipped Hale–Bopp into MOS. And it was not discussed in the Arbom discussion, despite you repeating again and again that it was. That circumstance was later used to quash complaints about the moves, and outside people supported the moves only because they saw the example in the MOS. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:14, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Disputes? There are no disputes over Comet Hale–Bopp, Enric. Except that some (like you) refuse to accept the consensual settlement that ended those disputes. Move on?

"Comet Hale–Bopp" was included in the draft presented to ArbCom as capturing the consensus of sixty editors, after a marathon consultation. Go to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 123; find the subsection "The completed draft", and see this line in that draft:

Comet Hale–Bopp or just Hale–Bopp (discovered by Hale and Bopp)

Nowhere else in that archive is any comet mentioned, let alone disputed.

Please retract your accusation that I misrepresented what happened. It is a gross insult, when I and others worked so hard at distilling consensus to settle a dispute, with active resistance from you. Stop that resistance now please, and let's all move on.

Noetica^Tea? 00:29, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It was never mentioned in the draft discussion or its meta-discussion. Only one comment mentioned comets, and it was against applying the rule to comet names [4]. Hale-Bopp was not in the proposed list of examples. It was added to the complete draft without any discussion about how it contradicted IAU naming rules, Merriam Webster's dictionary, Britannica, NASA, websites of astronomical observatories, etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

You are still misrepresenting what happened, Enric. Leave it! The matter was settled in consensual discussion. When the business of the dedicated pages was finished, on 13 July 2011 a draft was prepared and presented for discussion at WT:MOS. See it in Archive 124: Dashes: a new draft. Comet Hale–Bopp is among the examples there, adopting a useful suggestion that Kwami had made at the talkpage on 18 March 2011 (see in Archive 121). The draft was extensively discussed by many editors over 10 days. The long multi-part section runs to more than 30,000 words (more than sixty A4 pages). Not once was Hale–Bopp questioned in that discussion. On 23 July 2011 a final draft was submitted for ArbCom approval (in Archive 123, as linked above). Again there was discussion and endorsement, but Hale–Bopp was not questioned in that discussion either. After considering the draft and accepting it as consensual, arbitrator Casliber himself inserted the new dash section into WP:MOS (the diff).

During the 10 days of discussion of the draft, you were continually active on Wikipedia, and made over 60 edits. You had your chance; but you did not object to Comet Hale–Bopp, with an en dash, in WP:MOS. Since then you have been vociferously opposing it. But it is not you who make consensus; it is a large number of editors in long, open, well-advertised discussion.

Noetica^Tea? 00:48, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Kwami "forgot" to mention that he had just moved hundreds of comet names without any discussion to conform to his example[5]. He first changed FA article Shoemaker-Levy 9 saying "punct. (not a hyphenated name)", then he made an edit that make clear that he knows that comet names are spelled with hyphens "rather than dashes" [6], then he moved hundreds of names "per comet FA and MOS". Then Kwami proposed his example. Hale-Bopp, also a featured article, had already been changed 3 months ago by another MOS regular, also without any discussion [7]. So, two FA articles were changed from the name they had for years without any discussion, then Kwami used them as an example to change hundreds of comet names. Then he proposed Hale-Bopp as an example, without mentioning all his undiscussed busy work. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

It is not unusual for article style to come under scrutiny at the FA stage, and for decisions there to be propagated to related articles. I don't think that at that time anyone had suggested letting the IAU styling override WP's MOS styling, so there was no reason to think of any of these changes as controversial, and as far as I can recall, there was no pushback until much later, perhaps when Apteva showed up with his anti-en-dash nonsense; the results of those disruptive RMs and MRVs left the matter settled as before. Dicklyon (talk) 01:03, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Nice rationalization, but Comet Hale-Bopp became a FA in Feb 2005, and Kwami didn't make his undiscussed change until Feb 2011, 6 years later. Shoemaker-Levy 9 passed in 2005 and was reviewed in 2008. These two articles passed the "FA stage" as hyphenated names, and stayed there for 6 years. They were changed without any discussion, the FA status of Hale-Bopp was used to justify the moving of Shoemaker-Levy 9, which was a FA with a hyphenated name, and the both FA were used to justify the move of all the other hyphenated comet names.

In March 18 Kwami proposes Hale-Bopp as an example of a certain type of dashed name[8], but every other comet name is hyphenated. in May 14 he moves every other hyphenated comet name to fit his example. First he slipped an isolated undiscussed change in the MOS, then he used it as a lever to change all other related names.

The "pushback" started back in August 2011, as soon as I realized what had happened, months before Apteva got interested in MOS. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Hell no. The only reason to re-insert it at this is to make a DISRUPTIVE POINT about MOSDASH. We're trying to trim the list down, not grow it again. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 00:46, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Sarek, please keep your tendentious assertions out of it. You've done enough to subdue calm collegial process, with your passionate language and admin threats in support of your edit on the page. By all means diminish the list! But Comet Hale–Bopp is a far worthier inclusion than others, as I have argued in detail. Noetica^Tea? 01:00, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I have never, ever, heard Hale–Bopp referred to as anything but Hale-Bopp, Comet Hale–Bopp, etc. ("comment, 'Hail Bob!'"?) Pretending that it's at all likely that someone would want to move it to "C/1995 O1" just confuses the issue. You want it in to show that it's Comet Hale–Bopp, not Comet Hale-Bopp. The Caffeine example makes it clear that we don't use obscure scientific names -- we don't need another one whose only purpose is to demonstrate the use of dashes instead of hyphens.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:42, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not uncommon at all in titles of scholarly article to have one of these main and the other parenthetical, as in "Carbonyl Sulfide in Comets C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) and C/1995 O1 (Hale–Bopp): Evidence for an Extended Source in Hale–Bopp" (whether with en dash like this one, or hyphen). So the fact you've never, ever, heard of it only says that you haven't looked at how this comet is named in the astronomy literature. Dicklyon (talk) 02:53, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll say it again. We've had one don't-use-correct-but-obscure-scientific-names example or another since 2005 -- we don't need another one whose only purpose is to win a different argument.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 03:06, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Good to see your commitment, Sarek; and for the record, your involvement in all of this up to the eyeballs. Look, the purpose is not to win an argument. "The argument" was settled in 2011 under ArbCom supervision, by 60 editors who actually did some work on the matter, Sarek. Think about it. I suggest you now drop the stick and accept the good faith of those who want the results of a famous consensus discussion to be put in here as a highly relevant example of resolved titling policy. ♥ Noetica^Tea? 04:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

highly relevant example of resolved titling policy -- wrong. It's an example of MANUAL OF STYLE GUIDELINES. You're attempting to force it to become titling policy. And re: involvement up to the eyeballs -- I find it absolutely hilarious that you're implying that I'm not able to have an opinion on this because I'm involved, but you're completely neutral on the subject...--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 05:00, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, resolved titling policy: as confirmed by all the moves that ArbCom made on the issue in 2011. It was assumed, and confirmed, that the policy page WP:TITLE is not what determines styling, such as the en dash in Mexican–American War or Comet Hale–Bopp. It was confirmed that this is the province of guidelines at WP:MOS. Any more captious quibbles to offer? I did say think, Sarek: not lash out with a defensive reflex. Of course, unlike you, I do not claim to be uninvolved. I am deeply committed to developing MOS, and I am among those who have worked solidly at it. Your casual disrespect for editors and established Wikipedia provisions and process – that is most remarkable, and would itself be hilarious if it were not so damaging. You are on the side of disorder and disharmony between MOS and TITLE? Then fall back into the ranks of the disaffected, and never again come to this page pretending to act as an impartial admin. Noetica^Tea? 05:40, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

let's make AT truly useful for the reader.
Whilst it's probably true that not many examples are needed to get the point in the narrowest interpretation that is being advanced, it seems to me that certain editors are using the list-pruning exercise to get rid of truly useful examples that do not seem to conform to their narrow interpretation of this rule. Hell, half the above examples could disappear without anyone batting an eyelid – because once you get the gist of two or three examples, you'll know how the game is played – but I believe Hale–Bopp is a genuinely illustrative example that goes beyond the WIlliam Jefferson Clinton, and dovetails with elements of style that are widely embraced in this encyclopaedia. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:53, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Remember the purpose here... we are giving examples so that inexperienced editors will quickly and easily understand the basic idea of WP:COMMONNAME. The determination of the best title for the Hale-Bopp article was/is very complex (and still somewhat controversial). It involved/involves multiple COMMONNAME questions (should we use the comet's name or its catalog number?... should it be styled with a dash vs. a hyphen?... should we include the word "Comet" or not include the word "Comet"?). In other words, I think it is too complex to make a good example... it will not help inexperienced editors to quickly and easily understand what COMMONNAME is saying. Blueboar (talk) 14:37, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Support – yes, Comet Hale–Bopp is doubly appropriate, as it illustrates both the application and limitations of COMMONNAME. As the majority of respondents affirmed in the RFC about the COMMONSTYLE proposal, the choice of title per commonname does not imply taking the most common styling from sources. This would be the only example that illustrates that, by using the WP house styling recommended in the MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 01:18, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

So if there is another RM which changes it to some other name would you still think it appropriate to include it as an example, or are you choosing the example because it supports your own personal preference? -- PBS (talk) 01:31, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

As I said, I like it because it illustrates the limitation of COMMONNAME to naming, not styling. I don't understand the basis of your question. We could illustrate that with a different example, perhaps, but this is one that has been recently discussed. Dicklyon (talk) 05:36, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

question: Do you think that an inexperienced editor would be able to understand the "limitation of COMMANNAME to naming and not styling"... simply by looking at this example? Or would the limitation require further explanation to understand?

What I am getting at is this: You and I, as experienced editors who have been discussing and debating the nature of this limitation for several months now, might see it as a good example of what we have been discussing... but I am not sure that an inexperienced editor (one who has not been as deeply involved in our discussions) would make the same connection. If an example requires explanation to understand why it was chosen to be an example... is it really a good example? Blueboar (talk) 18:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't expect an inexperienced editor would notice. But if someone was under the mistaken impression that commonname means to take the most common styling from sources (a confusion that we've seen here from a few editors recently), then we could point to that example (as we do already in the MOS) to show that the MOS does apply to titles. Currently we don't have a good illustration of that in the commonname examples. Dicklyon (talk) 18:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

A different approach?

As I said in the section above, the purpose of the examples is to quickly and easily illustrate the concept of COMMONNAME to inexperienced editors. First, I think we want to avoid "high profile" cases... as these tend to be complex. We should choose examples that are fairly obvious. Also, it might be helpful to give some counter examples, and some (brief) explanation of how COMMONNAME determined the result. NOTE - I am not proposing this as a complete list. I have picked three to simply demonstrate my idea. I envision something like:

Some examples

Bill Clinton (not: William Jefferson Clinton) - however, Abraham Lincoln (not: Abe Lincoln)

while some sources refer to President Clinton using his full name, an overwhelming number of reliable sources routinely refer to him as "Bill". However, while some sources refer to President Lincoln as "Abe", an overwhelming number use "Abraham".

Guinea pig (not: Cavia porcellus) - however, Conyza canadensis (not: Canadian Horseweed, Canadian Fleabane, Coltstail, or Butterweed).

While scientific sources will refer to the animal using its formal latin name, an overwhelming number of sources use its common English name. However, there are multiple English names for the plant, and usage in sources is mixed. Many sources, however, will also list the latin name, and so that is actually more common.

The Hague (not: 's-Gravenhage) - however Mumbai (not: Bombay)

English language sources routinely use "The Hague" when referring to the city in the Netherlands. While many older sources referred to the city in India as "Bombay", more recent sources overwhelmingly use "Mumbai".

Again, I chose these simply to illustrate my idea. I am thinking conceptually here, and not proposing specific examples or specific language. I am presenting an idea for consideration... not a final product. Thoughts and comments? Blueboar (talk) 15:54, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The Hague is chosen because of the "The" at the start not because there is some foreign option -- for that Munich would be a better example. -- PBS (talk) 19:32, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Sigh... Did I not just say that I was not proposing specific examples or language? PBS... Do you like the basic idea of my "different approach"? Blueboar (talk) 20:27, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

This is horribly difficult to read, and I would strongly recommend simply using a short list of examples, and no counter examples. Obviously examples simply illustrate policy and do not establish policy, and any of the examples could be moved to another title, and if they were, would need to be replaced, if they no longer illustrated the principle involved. Apteva (talk) 23:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks... that's more the type of comment I was hoping to get. Could you expand on why you dislike the counter examples? Blueboar (talk) 02:49, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Counter examples are counter productive. We are trying to show something and the easiest way is to show it. To show what it is not does two things, it confuses, and begs the question, why not? Both of which are not helpful. I would be happy with as few as three examples. I have no feedback positive or negative on the question above about including both The Hague and United Kingdom. I think someone said above that it does not take much to get the gist of what we are trying to show. Feel free to hit edit and make any changes, and I would suggest if no one makes any changes in a week it can be used. Apteva (talk) 03:11, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

"if no one makes any changes in a week it can be used" is an approach that has already been rejected, as has this particular approach to examples. If an idea is essentially unsupported, don't keep pretending it can go into policy. Dicklyon (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Make changes to what? I am not proposing any changes, I am simply presenting an idea (mostly relating to format) for discussion. It would be very premature for anyone to make changes on the actual policy page based on my basic idea. It would need a lot of further discussion and consensus before we got to that stage. Blueboar (talk) 18:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Dicklyon, hi, mind if I ask why has this particular approach of Blueboar's to examples already been rejected? "Bill Clinton (not: William Jefferson Clinton) - however, Abraham Lincoln (not: Abe Lincoln)" is balanced, and therefore a big improvement on what is there. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:53, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I like Blueboar's approach, giving brief examples of rules plus an explanation of exceptions to the rules. LittleBen (talk) 16:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Researching COMMONNAME

The COMMONNAME section says <quote>A search engine may help to collect this data; when using a search engine, restrict the results to pages written in English, and exclude the word "Wikipedia".<unquote> and also <quote>Search engine results are subject to certain biases and technical limitations; for detailed advice on the use of search engines and the interpretation of their results, see Wikipedia:Search engine test.<unquote> I think it would be useful to add a link to Template:Google RS, which I think is useful for researching the COMMONNAME in reliable English sources. LittleBen (talk) 17:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Proposed example

RS-232 instead of TIA-232-F

TIA-232-F is the number and revision level of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standard that describes the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the serial ports formerly found on a great many computers, modems, printers, etc. RS-232 (or the most commonly cited revision, RS-232C) is a historical name. Due to very widespread usage and (I imagine) unwillingness to introduce an unfamiliar term to a customer base that has expanded to include much of the general population, equipment makers have continued to use "RS-232" to refer to these ports even though that term is over two decades old.

I feel this is a useful example for technical fields, showing that a name established by a widely recognized standard is nevertheless not necessarily the best name for a WP article on the subject. Comments? Jeh (talk) 20:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The point of giving examples is to quickly help new users understand the basic concept of COMMONNAME, not to cover every possible permutation and variation on the theme that might exist. I think your suggested addition will be overly technical for the average reader (Unless the reader is into the technical aspects of computers, he/she will simply see a bunch of meaningless numbers and letters, and not know what they refer to... which means the example will not help them to grasp the basic idea) We want to give a few examples... concentrating on ones that will be understood by anyone and everyone who come to this page. We should resist making it into a laundry list of subject specific examples from every field. Blueboar (talk) 01:54, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Encyclopedia

"Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia" is an encyclopedia, right? 74.119.212.192 (talk) 05:52, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

And your point is? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:02, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Peter, I fully understand your response, but at the risk of putting words into the mouth of the OP, I would phrase the question as "Does Wikipedia aspire to be taken seriously as a serious encyclopedia?" My strong feeling is that the many editors who seem to wave WP:UE and WP:UCN as their bloody flag in their determination to dumb down WP rather than providing more formally "appropriate" information in article titles, do the trustworthiness of the encyclopedia no favors. There's rarely any reason not to redirect a colloquially used title to a more formal and accurate one, such as using appropriate diacritics in people's names, for instance, or titling an article by its "official" name in its native language in most cases. Of course there are always exceptions; but lack of some degree of "encyclopedic" formality reflects poorly on our seriousness. And I think the concept of consistency among titling of similar articles is regularly deprecated and ignored, which tends to make us look like we don't know what we're doing. Perhaps some of this may be what the OP was trying to get at. Milkunderwood (talk) 13:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I am in total agreement with your points. (But then I'm a member of WP:PLANTS which by default uses scientific names as titles, so you'd expect me to agree.) Peter coxhead (talk) 15:18, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's the general impression I had from seeing your posts at various discussions. It's entirely possible that OP may have just been spam. Milkunderwood (talk) 15:55, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

It's amazing the subtexts that people will read into a question. I would have assumed the question related to the issue of whether to call it an "encyclopedia" or an "encyclopaedia". (I will simply point to WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ENGVAR if that is the question). Of course that has nothing to do with WP:AT... since the article title that would meet most of the provisions of this policy would be... "Wikipedia." Blueboar (talk) 18:41, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion involving wp:common name

There is a discussion which in part involves interpretation and application of wp:commonname here. It may interest some followers of this page.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:03, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

RfC on COMMONSTYLE proposal

Proposal to add a short section to WP:TITLE after WP:COMMONNAME, to recognize how article titles are styled in practice and to cut down on arguments about the relationship between TITLE policy and the guidelines at WP:MOS.

The proposed addition:

Shortcut
WP:COMMONSTYLE

Title styling

Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style.

Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Need help? Read this:

There are two subsections below to help newcomers understand why this proposal has been made:

Answering concerns

A sample objection to the proposal, and a detailed response to clarify what it all means. This is taken from the long section headed Survey, where you can contribute your thoughts and your vote.

Q&A on the original proposal

After reading that sample exchange, you can scan the followup questions and answers. Or ask your own question. A supporter of the proposal will answer you soon.

Housekeeping notes (click "show" to see them)

I have just inserted the above subsection header and RfC tags, per the discussion started above and proposal elsewhere to make an RfC of it. We are discussing this proposed addition to the WP:TITLE policy page (other than Kwami's, the support votes above have already been repeated below). Dicklyon (talk) 20:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I have now modified the header so that the RFC shows up correctly on both lists, and with just the proper text of the proposal; and I refactored to make provision for these procedural remarks. Noetica^Tea? 22:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I have today added this rfc to WP:CENT. If anyone is dissatisfied with the neutrality or other wording I put, I am open to making the necessary adjustments. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:55, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Tidied formatting at the head of the RFC. Use of navboxes for all comments on contributions, etc. Continuing maintenance for clarity and fairness, to help all editors have their say and be heard. Noetica^Tea? 05:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Considering the eventual size of the RFC, I divided it into the usual subsections – with notes suggesting procedures to keep it all readable and navigable. Noetica^Tea? 08:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Many more refactorings and new subsections. I added a note about two provisions for help, just below the proposal. Noetica^Tea? 06:47, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Survey

[One contribution from each editor here, please; and less than 350 words. Confine comments on contributions to a collapsed navbox, in the style established. See also separate subsection for discussion, below.–Noetica^Tea? 08:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)]

Endorse. The proposal attempts to clarify and recognise that titles/names are composed as much content as style that can be dissociated, and suggest that we do dissociate it when appropriate. Yes, it's true that we should also take account of what goes on in the "real-world". But other parts of the real world live under respective constraints and limitations. It would often reflect scientists' ignorance about style matters, or organisations aggrandising their "Chief Operating Officer" with caps. In WP, we have "Kesha", not "Ke$ha"; we have "A Night at the Opera" and not "A Night At The Opera" (as it appears on the album cover and plenty of times elsewhere); we have "Mexican–American War", which (as has been discussed umpteen times already here within these talk pages) would have a totally different meaning to "Mexican-American War". But the most basic limitation we have to live with every day is the standard keyboard which uses a limited set of keys. Although the keyboard cannot be compared with the full palette available to publishing houses, modern technology is bringing us closer. I believe what we must strive to narrow that gap to create a professional publication. Wikipedia operates at many levels – although editor A does not have the wherewithal to do a certain keyboard manipulation, there are others who can and are happy to some behind with a broom. This proposal does not detract from recognisability. It is an enabler.

-- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 07:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC) supplemented at 02:33, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

As a policy this proposal would change article title naming more than a guideline would. It would mean that even if 99% of reliable sources use a certain style that they could be ignored when deciding on an article title. If this proposal is an attempt to clarify the issue of dashes and hyphens on Wikipedia I think it would make more sense to propose a guideline for that specific issue. --GrandDrake (talk) 03:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Except that if 99% of reliable sources use a certain style, the Manual of Style should already be following that style (or at least be silent on the issue). Things like dashes are already routine in article titles. What's the alternative? Suppose every word of article text is styled to match a majority of reliable sources (thus matching the corresponding title if any), and the entire Manual of Style becomes irrelevant. Sounds like fun, until one realizes one is expected to do source research for every word that doesn't have a title. Art LaPella (talk) 04:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Should is not the same as does. I think it would be a mistake to throw recognizability out the window with a very broad style policy. If a particular issue needs clarification why not just propose a guideline specifically for it similar to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)? --GrandDrake (talk) 04:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Which is more out of control, the Manual of Style or naming disputes? I don't know.
If recognizability is the issue for choosing a style, it should be in the Manual of Style, to make the article text match the titles.
Rebels against the Manual of Style often argue that a guideline doesn't count, because the text it applies to could also be a title, and in that case it should be styled according to a Google search, not the more general styling principles used elsewhere. That argument could be made against almost any Manual of Style guideline.
A particular issue? We could say that Hale–Bopp should follow the Manual of Style, and Mexican–American War should follow the Manual of Style, and perhaps diacritics. But all article title styling should follow the Manual of Style; otherwise, it doesn't match the text in its own article. If that makes the title wrong, then the Manual of Style needs correction anyway to fix the text. Art LaPella (talk) 05:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

As written this proposal would make the MOS a policy for article titles. MOS covers much but it doesn't cover everything and one example would be the style of new names/terms that are not widely found in dictionaries. If the proposal is in regards to an issue involving when dashes and hyphens should be used in an article title than I think it would be better to make a guideline specific to that issue. --GrandDrake (talk) 00:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

As written it calls the MOS a guideline, but if that is the objection, I have suggested adding something like "This does not make the MOS a policy."
MOS excludes some styles, but it doesn't tell us how to weigh the merits of one arguable style against another, like COMMONNAME does. So the edit can't possibly be interpreted to mean that MOS will choose the one and only style for a title. The edit means that we will continue to choose titles as we do now (whether MOS says anything about it or not), with one of the considerations being that it should be a MOS-compliant style (or at least stay out of the way when it's later corrected to a MOS-compliant style).
The dash and hyphens guidelines are at WP:DASH and WP:HYPHEN. But no possible guideline we can write on that issue, or anything else in the MOS, matters as long as people can say it's overridden by COMMONNAME. Art LaPella (talk) 04:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

This is transparently a loophole to ignore usage in reliable sources.... It enables editors to ignore any outside styling or naming authority, in favor of in-house style. Even in areas where the outside authorities are the only authoritative source and every source follows them. It enables MOS editors to "fix" real-world practices they personally disagree with. Because they are convinced that the naming authorities know less about English language than them and wikipedia can fix their erroneous names (literally, in a message posted today). They can use wikipedia as a soapbox to change how the common name is spelled in the real world. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:29, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Not a loophole to bypass, nor assumption of errors in sources. Simply accepting that there are differences of style. In the same way that we ignore vanity capitalisations like "Chief Executive Officer", and dollar signs used in lieu of an 's', like for "Kesha". -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 13:54, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

That comes off as an confused response, Enric Naval. Facts about a topic that reliable sources provide do not mystically turn into laws of nature about punctuation or italics. You are confusing data and metadata, very badly. See separation of style and content; this is not a new or difficult concept. See also the essay WP:SSF for the logic behind the abject failure of style-equals-substance fallacies on Wikipedia. All serious, large-scale, multi-author/multi-editor publications, online or offline, have in-house style guides, and like ours they all examine issues of style for which there are multiple possible solutions, pick the one that works best for that publication and its audience, and stick to it. That is what manuals of style are for, no more and no less. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Endorse. See, for example, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and other entities who/which use unusual symbols or "punctuation" in their name. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)
That is covered by COMMONNAME, reliable sources did not use his glif instead they referred to him as the artist formally known as Prince If they had commonly called him something else so should Wikipedia. -- PBS (talk) 18:48, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Opposed - I would agree that article titles should usually be styled in accordance with the MOS... but... there can be, and indeed are occasional exceptions. Article titles are determined by consensus... that consensus is formed by applying several basic principles (Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency). To help us to apply these basic principles we look to a few sub-concepts... for example: WP:COMMONNAME is a sub-concept of Recognizability. I would say the MOS (as it applies to titles) is essentially a sub-concept of Consistency. Ideally we apply all of these principles and sub-concepts at the same time... but ... As the policy states: It may be necessary to favor one or more of these goals over the others. This is done by consensus. In other words, if there is a consensus to favor Recognizability over Consistency, (ie WP:COMMONNAME over the MOS), this is absolutely OK (And of course the reverse may occur... if there is a consensus to favor the MOS over WP:COMMONNAME, that is also absolutely OK.) Which, if any, are given preference depends on the specific title in question, and can only be determined through consensus in a case by case, article level examination (it can not be mandated at a policy/guideline level). If there is disagreement and a consensus can not be reached, we widen the pool of opinion through an RFC, or take the dispute to RM. But consensus rules... and the consensus may well be (in a specific case) to ignore the MOS.

If we are to mention the MOS in this policy, we need to take all of this into account. The underlying theme of this policy is one of flexibility through consensus building... we need to fit any mention of the MOS into that underlying theme. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

If we're in agreement on usually, maybe we can get consensus around what sort of exceptions there could be. Do you have some in mind, for example where styling according to the MOS would be in conflict with recognizability? Dicklyon (talk) 16:49, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I would say that the most likely exceptions would be cases were WP:COMMONNAME indicates the use of a specific title ... a title that might not be in line with the MOS. But I could also see a case where Naturalness was the issue (ie following the MOS would lead to something that was not natural). No, I don't have any specific examples in mind... it's just that the key to this policy is that Titles work on consensus, are thus we must be flexible in applying and weighing which of the different provisions discussed in the policy should be favored. Each article title has different issues to deal with and consider, and the factors that led us to favor one principle over another in one article, will not be relevant when we are determining the title of a different article. Blueboar (talk) 18:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:IAR exists for a reason and is policy. WP:POLICY makes it clear that for all guidelines and policies (other than external, legal ones imposed by WP:OFFICE, like WP:COPYRIGHT, many aspects of WP:BLP, etc.) there are always exceptions. We do not need to reiterate in WP:AT that there are exceptions, since that's off-topic there and we already have pages about that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support as what WP does already anyway. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Support, with or without the "in terms of . . .", and without prejudice to (possibly later) adding something to take care of occasional exceptions, as mentioned by Blueboar. It seems obvious that the MoS should also apply to the title. Any special considerations regarding titles can be detailled in the MoS.--Boson (talk) 17:11, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose I agree with Blueboar. As far as I can tell this has come up because a style issue discussion on the MOS talk page of which that multiple reliable sources explicitly say - continuing is the most recent section on the subject. I am not at all conformable with this statement "Reliable sources on astronomy are not reliable sources on English language usage" in that section by SMcCandlish, it seems to me to be a nanny knows best argument. As I said in the section #The well-established harmony between WP:TITLE and WP:MOS:-- What concerns me is the dismissal by some of the argument recently put forward on the MOS talk page of always ignoring an outside style in favour of an in-house style. The example given is that some professional bodies may mandate a style for the area where they are the world authority on the formation of the names to be used including the use of hyphens or dashes. If that style is followed by the majority of (non expert) reliable sources, then I think Wikipedia should be guided by the usage in reliable sources, and in that case Wikipedia guidance should be to follow the usage in reliable sources. -- If a external style is commonly used in non expert reliable sources, then it ticks at least two of the bullet points, Recognizability and Naturalness in which case Consistency (which in my opinion should only ever be applied when it does not contradict the other points) should give way. -- PBS (talk) 18:36, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Blueboar has declined to provide any example of a case where style consistency would work against recognizability or naturalness. Do you have one in mind? E. g. one where the consensus on how to style text in the article might not make a great title? Dicklyon (talk) 20:11, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know of an example, because this wording has not been in this policy so it probably has not come up. As I do not follow all of the requested moves at RM it is quite possible that this has been a problem in this area and I do not know about it. See my comment above on the "Mexican American war". Should we correct then use of the word Anglo as in Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 when replacing a hyphen with a ndash because clearly Anglo is incorrect it should be "British" (or in that case "Indian"), or do we follow the usage in sources? If it is not a problem then we do not need the additional wording unless it is word is such a way as Blueboar has suggested above. That this change is being proposed now is a sign that some editors at least think that the fuss that has been generated over on the MOS talk page, has some legitimacy and I see this as a move to try to ignore the usage in reliable sources in favour of an arbitrary rule. -- PBS (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

PBS, what does this have to do with the proposal? If we decide to use hyphens in comet names, wouldn't we do it in running text also? Why would we put hyphens in the title but use dashes in running text? The only point here is that we should use the same punctuation/capitalization in the title that we do in running text. Why is this a problem? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:58, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

"Why would we put hyphens in the title but use dashes in running text?" Yes why would we? If the authority that is responsible for naming uses a hyphen, and other reliable sources follow that lead why ought we not follow the usage in those sources? Note I am not talking about a random style issue here, but WP:Verifiability of what is defined as the correct name and and the usage (or lack of usage) in reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

PBS, I answer such concerns in my reply to KillerChihuahua, below. These are basic conceptual muddles. No one wants to set aside reliable sources. MOS itself has the greatest respect for them, but of necessity in a systematic and distinctive way. Not everyone grasps how this works intuitively; hence the need to get explicit and clear, and hence this RFC. Noetica^Tea? 23:04, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Right, PBS, so what does that discussion—hyphens vs. dashes in comet names and other "WP:V/authority" vs. "consistent style" issues—have to do with this RFC? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 08:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Your argument, PBS, is the one that actually ends up being the "nanny knows best" case, in which astronomy journals are the nanny, and you would do blindly, reflexively just obey nanny, even when consensus on Wikipedia clearly indicates that nanny is being worse than unhelpful in our context. Wikipedia is not a specialist journal; Wikipedia is the encyclopedia with the most general purpose and most general audience in history. See my own !vote for details on why we cannot do what specialist sources do stylistically (note that this has nothing to do with underlying facts about the topic, versus how they are presented), when they conflict with standard usage or with each other, or simply want to do things that don't make sense on Wikipedia. MOS bends over backwards to recommend what specialist sources want – even when complying is sometimes unfamiliar and excessively geeky for many editors – when such conflicts do not arise. Specialists do not get to have their way 100% of the time. Too bad, so sad. "In every life, a little rain must fall." WP:GETOVERIT and WP:MOVEON, please. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. It would simply be ridiculous for us to style an article title differently from a mention of the same thing in the body of an article. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:05, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Obviously, the body of the text would be updated to follow the new title. It should go without saying. Everyone agrees on this. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Um, no, they don't. More often than not, titles are changed to follow the text, and changes that force the opposite are frequently reversed. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Wait a second here. Are you saying that we should abolish the MOS, at least w/r/t the article title, which I thought everyone agreed governed things like hyphens vs dashes in article text (as opposed to title), in favor of applying COMMONNAME to the article text as well? That seems like the implication of "updating the body of the text to follow the new title" if the styling of the title is for some reason not subject to MOS. AgnosticAphid talk 02:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

We do it in articles on cities and towns all the time (entitling the article with the modern name, but using any historical names in the body of the text when discussing the city or town in an historical context). Blueboar (talk) 19:26, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

But he said "style". Using "New Amsterdam" in the New York City article isn't a change of "capitalization, punctuation, italics, and such", so it isn't style. And if there's a historical name that differs only in punctuation, an unwritten historical exception applies just as well to the MoS as to WP:TITLE. All the reasons to use hyphens in "Hale–Bopp", "Mexican–American War" etc. are also reasons to change the MoS. Art LaPella (talk) 19:51, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

OK... consider the following hypothetical... suppose we are writing an article on a rap musician who's real name is Joe Blow. During his carrier Joe has made several stylistic changes to his stage name ... starting as "J Blow", then using "JBLOW" (in all caps), then "J-BLOW" (with a dash or hyphen)... etc. We have several choices for the Article title (We might determine that the article title should be his real name "Joe Blow"... or we might decide to to go with his most recent stage name "J-BLOW" - despite the potential for a conflict with MOS over the hypen/dash issue. Or we might follow COMMONNAME and figure out which of his various stage names is most commonly used in the sources.) Whatever we chose for the title, we would use each variation in the text, as historically appropriate. Blueboar (talk) 21:33, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

You're right, sort of. Of course that is an unusual case, but we would want the title styled differently than part of the article. The more significant question is, should we style the title differently just because it's the title? MOS:TM would require "J-Blow" (or in the article, perhaps "J-Blow, stylized as J-BLOW") instead of J-BLOW, but I would think we would prefer "J-Blow" to "J-BLOW" in the title for the same reason. Art LaPella (talk) 23:57, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Is it really that unusual? Arthur Rubin already cited that most notorious one of 'the artist formerly known as Prince'. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:31, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

If it's usual, Prince (musician) isn't an example. Both the title and the article consistently call him "Prince". It calls him "Prince Rogers Nelson" once, it mentions the "Love Symbol" and shows it, and it mentions "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" and "The Artist", but uses "Prince" when simply referring to him. If styling is "capitalization, punctuation, italics, and such", it never calls him pRINCE, Prince!, or Prince. Same rule for the title as the article. Art LaPella (talk) 07:37, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

An example that does come up is the usage of MacLean or Maclean, different people choose to case the L differently. Another example is Kim Dotcom if he chose to style himself Kim DotCom and it became the common usage in reliable sources, then should we not follow that lead? I see this as exactly the same issue name changes such as Muhammad Ali (it remains Cassius Clay until such time as the majority of reliable sources use the new name and then Wikipedia should follow that lead), and the transliteration of Chiang Kai-shek (we use the most common transliteration -- not necessarily that used for other transliterations from that script (Bejing -- which again is based on common usage) -- so we do not need style consistency between articles if in using that style we are deliberately ignoring usage in reliable sources. If we were to do that we would have to choose whether to change Chiang Kai-shek or Bejing so that the transliteration is consistent across articles. -- PBS (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

MacLean (two inconsistently capitalized words in ten articles) and the hypothetical Kim DotCom would be examples of what I said was unusual, but neither is a criticism of the proposed edit. No MoS guideline provides a preference between MacLean and Maclean, or any of the other examples in the previous post. Art LaPella (talk) 20:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

MacLean vs. Maclean is not a style issue, it's an underlying factuality issue (and there're easily findable reliable sources on why some prefer one and not the other, with entire families of thousands and thousands of people consistently using one spelling or the other of certainly Gaelic names like this – short version is one camp always capitalized after the patronymic, the other only does so if the base part of the anglicized name begins with the same letter in the original language. This is nothing at all like "J-Blow" vs. "J-BLOW" or "Kesha" vs. "Ke$ha", which are 100% marketing style matters, subject to MOS:TM, and WP:OFFICIALNAME which derives its style advice from MOS and MOS:TM. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

"MacLean vs. Maclean is not a style issue, it's an underlying factuality issue (and there're easily findable reliable sources on why some prefer one and not the other". So if there are easily findable reliable sources on why some some prefer "Hale-Bopp", or Hale–Bopp or "Bopp Hale" would not be an underlying factuality issue? Another example mentioned below (See GrandDrake (talk) 07:49, 28 January 2013) was the "High Efficiency Video Coding" to "High-efficiency video coding" and that was opposed because the majority of reliable sources don't use that style (including the organizations that are making that standard) -- is that not also underlying factuality issue. If not why not? -- PBS (talk) 19:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Support - Seems to be existing practice, and in theory should help avoid debates getting side tracked on the technicalities of policy vs guideline rehashing. If there are cases where consensus doesn't match the MOS, since like that would be the place to fix it as they probably should apply to section headers and the like as well. PaleAqua (talk) 19:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. It should go without saying, but this should prevent more endless bickering. —Neotarf (talk) 21:56, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Just for the record, you said support already before I changed the text of the proposal, so I'll take this as a confirmation that you like the change, not another vote. I agree that it will be nice to no longer have to hear the "guideline versus policy" theories, or how commonname is supposed to mean follow the style of sources. Dicklyon (talk) 00:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Right, "let's take it up from here" I took to mean a new round of comment was invited on the amended language. But it has now been more clearly formatted. —Neotarf (talk) 22:50, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Support – A clear and concise description of current practice. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 01:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Support an explicit clarification of the dovetailing roles of WP:MOS (with subpages) and WP:TITLE (with auxiliaries). These work harmoniously to settle choices in the content and styling of article titles. Quite rightly, very little in the development of WP:TITLE has addressed styling ("political" intrusions aside). Style on Wikipedia has always been the province of MOS. Because Wikipedia is developed collaboratively and consensually by volunteers, confusion is bound to arise from time to time. So yes, let's set out the complementary roles here, to match the statement at WP:MOS. Long overdue. Noetica^Tea? 01:50, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Support - Omit needless complexity. (More clearly: our current consensus on the balance between style and naming issues, reflected here, sets a clear and effective line to good effect. Let us reap the benefits of that choice by clearly communicating that consensus, and avoiding drift into more drama-generating complexity than is necessary, useful or even desirable.) --j⚛e decker ^talk 03:28, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Support - particularly logic of Joe Decker about avoiding drift to more drama-generating complexity. And I would think I am less frequent here than many if not all, per Blueboar outside buy-in would be beneficial, but I suspect non WP:AT/MOS regulars are more not less likely to support? Is there something less protracted than an RfC tag on the top of this section like a "come give quick input in 3-4 days" type tag? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. I was not planning on commenting, but even though my views are well known it is pointless to say that without it being recorded. As I do a lot of work with titles I would not want to have to read through 142 pages (71 Title and 71 MOS) to decide the proper title, so I would ask that if there are any important styling issues that need to be followed in deciding a title, to create a page here as a naming convention instead – not an unreasonable suggestion, and of course it needs to agree with whatever the MOS says, as it is impossible to have two pages that are supposed to be consensus but disagree. And no I am not voting because of wanting anything any particular way. I just want to Keep It Seriously Simple. Plus it seems odd to have a policy defer to a guideline instead of the other way around – guidelines are expected to have far more exceptions than policies, so adding this would not accomplish the desired result. I am willing to strike this if anyone objects to me posting this, but I would not want to see this proposal included with even a couple of editors objecting. Nor would I like to see this be an XX vs. YY battle, in which case all but one of each votes are thrown out and we have a 1:1 stalemate. We are all here for the same purpose – to create a world class encyclopedia that we can all be proud of, and there is nothing urgent in deciding this issue – like everything else it is better to get it right than to rush to get it done (If you do not have time to do it right, what makes you think you have time to do it over?). Apteva (talk) 10:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

I thought this user was topic banned. —Neotarf (talk) 23:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Luckily for the user, he was banned from discussing the use of dashes, hyphens, or similar types of punctuation, broadly construed. So as long as there is no mention of punctuation whatsoever, he gets a free pass. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 01:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The ban proposal that the community consensus was in favor of also restricted it from pushing its "theory that the MOS does not apply to article titles" (the "policy defer to a guideline" idea). But the closer didn't write that into the ban notice, so yes, it gets a free pass. It is good to have its position represented here, and I trust it'll leave it at that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

This is definitely, unmistakably a violation of his topic ban. I predicted, did I not, that it would be ineffective. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:01, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Comment on content, not contributors: Per wp:FOC, discuss the issues here, and address user actions at a user-talk page or wp:ANI, not in this venue please. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't see anything here that violates the topic ban. Of course, I think the argument is seriously flawed, but there's no topic ban violation. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:18, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I take it back, that was careless of me. "similar types of punctuation, broadly construed"—this very much seems like a violation. Anyway it is being discussed in more appropriate venues already. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose; per Blueboar and because the MoS is not policy and should not be policy. By adding this in without any modifier at all, you would effectively be promoting all of MoS to policy. We don't block people for not following the MoS, for good reason. Suggest it to them, as is befitting a guideline, but do not conflate it with the 'musts' which exist in this policy. Killer Chihuahua 13:44, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

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It seems there are conceptual misunderstandings to clear up. No one is proposing here that MOS be made policy; only that its established role as the central resource for style on Wikipedia be pointed out explicitly. Exactly, in fact, to counter uncertainty among those unfamiliar with the distinction between content and styling of content. Article titles are content, and as such are the core business of WP:TITLE. But like all content, they must be styled; and that is the core business of MOS, for all parts of every article on Wikipedia. This is how it works in all publishing, and it can hardly be otherwise. Everyone rightly insists that an article must have internal consistency, and that must include accord between the title and the remainder of the article. The reach of WP:TITLE cannot extend beyond the title. So it is neat, efficient, and optimal that MOS remain the style resource for titles, once WP:TITLE has determined their content. ArbCom has effectively ruled that way, in settling the biggest titling dispute the Project has seen. This RFC is for confirmation of that accepted arrangement. If any aspect of styling is systemically failing in any way (as matching, for example, no reliable sources), the place to address that genuine concern would be at WT:MOS (or at a MOS subpage). Simple, orderly, natural. Noetica^Tea? 22:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

How on earth are you coming up with the theory that this would amount to "promoting all of MoS to be policy"? There's a formal process for making policies here and this isn't it. This proposal does not actually change anything at all, it simply observes and describes actual practice: WP:AT derives, and always has derived, it's style advice from MOS. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The edit says: "Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style." It even says "guidelines". But if people somehow think that really makes the MoS a policy, we could reword it to please the Wikilawyers: "The COMMONNAME process is not intended to apply to a title's style, which would conflict with the WP:Manual of Style guidelines." Art LaPella (talk) 02:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

If you transclude, buy software or by naming, a guideline into a policy page, instructing editors that following the guideline is required, then you have effectively upgraded the guideline into the policy. If I tell you that "Following the rules here and at Page A are this policy" then page A is effectively policy whether page A is labeled a policy or not. Killer Chihuahua 18:56, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Neutral - What's the big deal about dashes & hyphens in article titles? They're basically the same, except one's longer then the other. GoodDay (talk) 20:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Not a big deal. The attempt here is partly to prevent such arguments coming up all the time, so people like you who don't care won't be bothered by them, and people who do care can find something better to do than argue about alleged conflict between different policy and guideline pages. Dicklyon (talk) 20:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Whatever's decided, it's a win-win situation for me :) GoodDay (talk) 20:18, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Right; this is not about dashes, it's about stopping WP:LAME festivals of bickering and whining by people who refuse to recognize that WP:AT derives it's style advice from WP:MOS, and always has (otherwise tens or hundreds of thousands of articles would have titles that contradicted their lead sections). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. Titles should be determined primarily by usage in reliable sources. Only when that fails to indicate an obvious choice should we even consider looking at the MOS. Article content style questions should also follow usage in reliable sources whenever possible first, and looking at MOS only if that fails, but that's out of scope for this discussion (and talk page). --Born2cycle (talk) 23:20, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Sorry B2C. You are among those who miss the basic categorial distinctions that we're dealing with. Titles are content that is styled. Sure, they are to be determined by reliable sources. But the way that is achieved for their style (by definition of the very term style!) differs from how it is achieved for content. Reliable sources are first of all reliable for content. All of the provisions concerning reliable sources on Wikipedia address content, in articles. But MOS too respects reliable sources. Of course! Its guidelines are not idiosyncratic, but a carefully and consensually developed distillation of style choices in the real world out there – with particular attention to how other major style sources do that distillation, for quality publishing in the English language. We have to get over this conceptual hurdle; and that's hard work. Let's focus better, hmmm? Noetica^Tea? 00:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Right. B2C, you really, really need to absorb the logica at Separation of presentation and content and the essay WP:Specialist stle fallacy. A reliable source on underlying facts about a topic is not mystically transmogrified into a reliable source on how to write and style English in a general-purpose encyclopedia, and more than WP's MOS can dictate how to do research in an academic journal. They're utterly different, severable, unrelated concerns. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not talking about looking at any one source to decide what style to use. I'm saying that if the majority of sources uses a particular style when referring to an article topic, we should use that style in the article's title. Only when no such guidance is clear from usage in sources should we look at MOS for guidance. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

You turn things on their head, B2C. You still have not grasped the way style and content are related, in any kind of print or online publishing. If the majority of respected sources use a certain style, that fact feeds into development of style guides (and dictionaries, etc.). And of course it feeds into the consensual development work at WT:MOS, and its subpages. It is simply unworkable to appeal to raw sources in making style decisions, bypassing the established processes. That applies in all publishing (where it is fundamental, and generally understood); and it applies on Wikipedia – where, however, the volunteers are likely to misunderstand. It is especially common for computer professionals to misunderstand! Sometimes their thinking may be dominated by algorithms and invented solutions, taking little account of the social context, and actual human needs. Editing professionals, on the other hand, are typically aware of the essential role of collegial development in style (and in serving actual readers' needs), informed by hard-won principles rather than masses of diverse particular usages. Concerning that interactive social dimension, I have asked this question: Where are the "reliable sources" for the untested algorithms endorsed in WP:TITLE and WP:DAB (a guideline page to which WP:TITLE explicitly defers)? Where is the evidence that they enhance the experience of readers? MOS is far more sourced, far more tested, and far more collegially developed. Let's use it as intended. Noetica^Tea? 23:34, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. There will always be disagreements. This way we only have them once.—Curtis Clark (talk) 00:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. I agree that this is not merely a question of styling. Titles should always be determined by reliable sources; usability and commonsense are also important. "One size fits all" does not work in the real world. The RfC on "List of Presidents"... (below) is one example of how trying to force people to slavishly follow rules can make a lot of people angry and increase edit warring rather than reduce it. Real-world usage tends to be based on what reliable sources do, and also based on commonsense and pragmatism. Real-world usage does not follow MOS. To quote what I said earlier: <Quote>

I'd think that sometimes it's wise to be flexible and pragmatic and let COMMONSENSE trump MOS for the same reason: (1) if it doesn't matter: i.e. if the article(s) in question are very minor articles—they get few pageviews, so they don't affect the perceived quality of Wikipedia—then it doesn't make a lot of sense for people to be endlessly warring over them, (2) if following MOS rules (grammatical rules) would result in an article that looks messy and inconsistent to many people—a word being capitalized in some places and not in others—or disrespectful, and so would result in endless edit warring, then a little flexibility can eliminate a lot of grief, as per the List of President(s) vs. president(s) RfCs:

I am working on templates that extend the Template:Google family and make it trivial to research real-world usage in up to 32 of the most reliable sources at a time.
It seems to me that Britannica prefers plain ASCII URLs but non-ASCII article titles. This is probably for usability considerations: a meaningful simple-ASCII URL is easy to type. An encoded non-ASCII URL is often a meaningless jumble of characters. In Wikipedia's case the URL is the same as the article title for plain ASCII, otherwise it is an encoded mess.

LittleBen (talk) 01:55, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)
This has nothing to do with URLs. The rest of your points have already been addressed in the comments on others' !votes. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. When possible the style of the article title should be based on what is used by the majority of reliable sources since that is the style that is most recognizable to the average reader. The proposal could allow people to promote opinion over recognizability. A style that is less common for a name could be argued for based on the opinion that it is the "best" style based on their reading of MOS even if it goes against the style that is used in the majority of reliable sources. Debates over dictionaries, including ones that are obscure and/or old, could be an issue if reliable sources are ignored when it comes to deciding on the style of an article title. This proposal shouldn't be a policy and even Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) is a guideline. Also why is the shortcut called COMMONSTYLE when it says nothing about using the most common style that follows the MOS? --GrandDrake (talk) 02:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

This is not a proper "oppose" !vote, since you misunderstand the proposal. MOS already bends over backwards, even when it is very inconvenient for editors, to recommend that we do what specialist reliable sources prefer stylistically in a certain field, "when possible" (i.e. when it does not irresolvably conflict with standard English or with different styles demanded by other specializations that would want their pet style used in the same article). This proposal would not change that even slightly. It would simply prevent WP:LAME attempts to force use of one particular fields's specialty style when it is not workable. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:15, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I have seen a few people on Wikipedia state that reliable sources shouldn't be a factor when it comes to deciding on the style of an article title. As written this proposal could be used as an argument that only the MOS is used when deciding on the style of an article title. Simply stating on the article title page that the style is based on the MOS will make the MOS into a policy for article titles. --GrandDrake (talk) 01:38, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Support I think that this would help make clear that there is a difference between the substance of the article title, which i think everyone agrees is governed by commonname, and the styling of the article title, which really should be governed by the MOS. Otherwise to be consistent we would have to say that the MOS does not apply to article titles in article text. But I doubt that there is consensus for such a dramatic change; it raises a lot of questions that nobody has attempted to address, for instance:

are we going to get rid of a significant portion of the en dash examples, presumably including hale~bopp, in the MOS?
Suppose another astronomy article discusses hale~bopp, and lets assume the common "name" of hale~bopp uses a hyphen. Is that article also supposed to use the "COMMONNAME" for the styling of hale-bopp in the article text? If not, why not, and doesn't that defeat the purpose (consistency, I think) of the MOS? If so, isn't it kind of unworkable to have to create a list of MOS exceptions for terms that have a Wikipedia article whose COMMONNAME uses a styling different than the MOS? moreover, I'm not sure how easy it really is to figure out what the common style even is, because the choice is often not deliberate. And also, are we going to update said list, and all of the corresponding articles, every time the common styling of the article title changes?

I think that perhaps those opposed to this proposal have not fully thought through the implications of its rejection

AgnosticAphid talk 02:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support—much saner than what we have at the moment. Tony (talk) 03:06, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose - I don't see this as "much saner than what we have", but instead; as insane, in a different way. Firstly, this isn't fixing anything, and before the fix, it is customary to identify the broken areas. I am actually seeing argument for support that suggest stifling debate, before it might be heard. There seems to be an underling theme that minority dissent is disruptive. That would be a ridiculous premise, IMO. --My76Strat (talk) 05:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Weak oppose - Now that I have a fair understanding of this proposal, I find that I can support the spirit of this letter; but I can not support the letter in its current state of ambiguity. When the letter reasonably encompasses the spirit as described below, I will be able to support the initiative. --My76Strat (talk) 02:07, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Isn't fixing anything? Well, you just have to be aware of how chaotic and uncertain RM discussions have been over the last few years (when people have pet objections to consensual MOS recommendations), or how ArbCom has had to deal with confusion concerning style and content, or acrimony at WT:MOS and other MOS talkpages, or acrimony here at WT:TITLE, or militant efforts like those of sockpuppeteer PMAnderson. Then you'd see how this clarification is immensely useful. No one wants to stifle debate! The relevant talkpages teem with debate to improve policy and guidelines. But also, most of us are sick of ruinous partisan campaigns that waste time and energy, forcing us reluctantly to take action such as RFC/U just so that real work can be done. Noetica^Tea? 05:50, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I submit that "this isn't fixing anything" only because it reflects what already occurs. And what is the alternative, exactly? Ambiguity, and more unnecessary fighting? Or do you support adding a sentence to the MOS that says, "the MOS doesn't apply to article titles, or article text that includes article titles"? If so, why, and how is that an improvement? AgnosticAphid talk 08:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

If it reflects what already occurs, how can you possibly oppose it? I don't think this can even be counted as opposition, it's just sarcasm. It's standard operating procedure for our consensus-created policies and guidelines to clearly state actual practice of good, conscientious editors, not try to legislate a "better" practice. This is quite explicit at WP:POLICY. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I become more concerned about motives when a leading proponent of a proposal I oppose skips reason; dismissing me straightaway with ad hominem. What can you learn today? --My76Strat (talk) 20:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Strat, it isn't clear from the sequence and indentation what you are objecting to as ad hominem. Care to clarify, so the concern can be addressed? Perhaps note that you led with accusations ("stifling debate"; "that minority dissent is disruptive"), which address process (effectively ad hominems), rather than the substance (simply, to clarify what the proponents say is already a fact). Setting aside a couple of editors under sanction or discussed for their disruption, there is a sustained effort to get the widest possible participation in this debate, as an example. Noetica^Tea? 22:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I objected to "I don't think this can even be counted as opposition, it's just sarcasm." I see that my own comment may have invited the measure, Though I didn't see it as accusatory until you pointed it out to me. I'll work on my shortcomings. --My76Strat (talk) 23:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Support: It is very helpful to make a clear distinction between title content and title style and using the MOS to guide title styling is a very beneficial simplification. Joja lozzo 05:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. It would be helpful to spell out what we already do. However, given the amount of opposition, if the closer takes this as a vote, it looks like we will continue to style titles per the MOS anyway, and then argue incessantly about them. (Which still beats arguing over which source to style them after, and then arguing over whether the text should match the title or the MOS.) — kwami (talk) 07:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. It gets very irritating trying to deal with move requests in which editors argue that articles need to be moved to titles such as The Beginning Of The End (made-up example) "because it's the official title printed on the album". Deor (talk) 08:24, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)
Well, if the MOS said to title these kinds of works using the capitalization of the publisher, then this RFC would endorse such an argument. ErikHaugen (talk \| contribs) 08:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support—Much of the opposition here appears to be opposition to something else: if we decide, for example, to use hyphens in comet names because the IAU says to, then we should do it in titles and in article text. If we decide to use dashes because we use dashes when it means and (see WP:NDASH), then we ought to do it in titles and in article text. I can't fathom any reason why we'd want to deliberately do it one way in titles and another way in running text. My only reason for opposing this would be that it all feels to obvious to even mention it in the policy. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 08:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. The MOS shouldn't be a policy for titles and just a guideline for article text. If there are parts of the MOS that should be elevated into Official Policies, then do so, and then make those parts policies that apply to the title and the body of the article. Guy Harris (talk) 08:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Nothing here makes MOS into "policy"; it just sets out explicitly what has always been the case (as others say above). There is no law of nature that everything to do with article titles is policy. The status of this page as policy is just something the community decided, rather narrowly I think, a while back. TITLE and MOS are in harmony. Noetica^Tea? 09:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article titles says, at the top, "This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Wikipedia:Manual of Style says "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions." Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Role seems to indicate that "policies", such as what's specified in Wikipedia:Article titles, are stronger than "guidelines", such as what's specified in Wikipedia:Manual of Style . Guy Harris (talk) 18:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

And your point would be...? WP:AT has always deferred to WP:MOS on style matters. That doesn't somehow make MOS a policy, and neither would this; it would just stop incredibly WP:LAME, confused, POV-pushing, tendentious, perennial squabble about punctuation and other style trivia, that have been and continue to be genuinely disruptive noise. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

As long as it doesn't also empower people to force MOS-inspired title changes, even though the pre-change title might be one of the "exceptions" to the MOS, on the grounds that "this is POLICY, not just a mere guideline". Why does "Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings.", without mentioning the MOS, not suffice? If an article's text and headings don't follow the MOS, presumably that's either a bug and somebody should go in and fix the article, or it's a feature and the article and its title should be left alone. (And why does Wikipedia draw distinctions between "policies" and "guidelines" anyway, if "the difference between policies, guidelines, and essays on Wikipedia is obscure"? If "all policies need to be applied with common sense", how is "Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." not also true of policies?) Guy Harris (talk) 20:02, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose WP:POLICY WP:AT is a policy, the MOSes are guidelines. This would turn all the guidelines into defacto policies, making a hash of WP:POLICY. This change is much greater than it appears since it effectively promotes every MOS article title guideline to policy status, and clearly there's been too much controversy on the issue to promote them en-masse. You need to go through every single MOS guideline individually for promotion to policy status.-- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 08:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support, as a piece of obvious common sense. This idea that there is some magic distinction that needs to be preserved between "guidelines" and "policies" is stupid. They all just contain things that our collective mind has decided constitute good advice. They can all be ignored when there's an overriding reason to do something differently, otherwise they can be followed so as to avoid inconsistencies and unnecessary arguments over nothing. Victor Yus (talk) 09:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. MOS presently explicitly defers to the "Article title" policy, and presumably was written with this deference in mind. If the editors of the MOS knew it was going to be in control of the style of Wikipedia article titles, they might have written it differently. Also, the distinction between content and styling is not clear-cut and it is inadvisable to put them in different guidelines or policies. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)
Of course the distinction between content and styling is clear-cut. Very. Always has been. Things like MOS:TM could not exist otherwise. And nothing said at WP:Manual of Style#Article titles conflicts with this proposal. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The wording is far too vague for what appears to be the single use case, namely that we're the only place on the entire bleeding Internet that has any interest in the distinction between hyphens and en-dashes. That should be addressed specifically, rather than in a generic statement that could be (mis)applied to entirely different discussions. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

But no, it is certainly not just about hyphens and en dashes. That was settled in 2011, under ArbCom supervision. It applies to capitalisation and all sorts of styling in article titles. Hence the simple, inclusive wording. TW, don't you recognise the consensus achieved in 2011 for dashes? If you don't like it, can't you nevertheless accept that it is a consensus among your peers on Wikipedia? Antipathy to one or other particular consensual guideline is no reason to dismiss MOS. We all live with things on Wikipedia that we consider less than perfect, in the interest of the encyclopedia and its readers. Noetica^Tea? 10:39, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I do more than my fair share of dash-enforcement, and have come to believe that consistent typography is of benefit to the project. That does not prevent me from expressing the fairly commonly-held sentiment that we're the only people on the planet who care about dashes on Web pages. If there is a broader use case here (outside of specific, cherry-picked examples like Ke$ha that don't really need specifically discussed in the MoS) then that should be made clearer. I disagree with wording which is, without context, meaningless. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Specialist style fallacy for various other cases, themselves just the tip of the irrational "my style way or the highway" iceberg. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 19:28, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose this wording: I'm neutral on the topic, but the words "in common with" fudge it; it would be clearer if they were "in the same way as". --Stfg (talk) 10:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: judging from many of the comments here, the proposal appears designed to put some discussions to rest, and it has clear meaning to those involved in the discussions. I haven't been involved in them, and it communicates nothing to me about how I should style a title or about anything else. Guidelines need to be transparent, not just to those in the know. --Stfg (talk) 17:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

We can all quibble over wording. I could do the same, in this present case. But the meaning is in fact accurately given. "In common with" is more inclusive than "in the same way as". For one thing, it adds something about the strength of the application, not just its manner. Noetica^Tea? 10:39, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

It would possibly be more relevant and civil not to dimiss a constructive comment as quibbling. Clear wording reduces opportunities for wikilawyering. I think "X styled in common with Y" merely says that both are styled, and nothing about the relationship between styles. Still opposing. --Stfg (talk) 11:41, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Forgive me, Stfg: I cannot think that a subtle criticism of that sort is constructive, if you use it to warrant an "oppose" (despite being neutral on the content). You might instead have brought it up for discussion, in the subsection below. Now, let's look at what you seem to propose as an alternative:

Article titles are styled in the same way as article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style.

That can be misread by wikilawyers in a way that the present wording cannot be misread. There are some differences in the "way" styling of titles and other parts of an article is managed. Titles have a capital letter at the start, for example; and are big and bold. You think that's an invented quibble, perhaps? But all sorts of misreadings have arisen that we have no way of predicting. Just look at how people habitually misunderstand and therefore misapply some of the provisions in WP:TITLE, too. In the end, I agree: the drafting is important; but not all-important, when we are discussing the intent and it is actually very clear. Noetica^Tea? 12:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Noetica. Of course, a proposal doesn't have to be a support to be constructive. No, I didn't think your point was an "invented quibble" at all; it nicely dispenses with my suugested rewording. I now think I see why some editors are saying it solves an issue that concerns them, while others are calling it meaningless. As a result, I have changed my vote as indicated. --Stfg (talk) 17:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose, in the current context: It seems obvious that it's right that when the words used for the title of the article are repeated in the text with the same meaning then they should be styled in the same way. However, I can't support the proposal at present for two reasons.

There's no precise explanation of what is meant by "style". It's very difficult to word this precisely (e.g. the word "glyph" which some people have used in connection with styles is used at Glyph in a way which means that "å" is two glyphs, whereas other sources would call this one glyph). Do all of the following differ only in style? "Chloe", "chloe", "Chloë", "Chloe", "Chloe" (I would say that they do, except for the case when the italics are used for emphasis. However, in a language which uses diacritics as part of its spelling system, the difference between "e" and "ë" isn't just a style choice.) Is the choice of straight or curved forms of the single quote mark only a style choice? (I would say that it is.) Is the choice of single or double quote mark a style choice? (I would say not.) Is the choice between hyphen and en-dash only a style choice? (I would have said that it is, but since the MOS attaches significant semantic import to the difference, I'm now not sure that within Wikipedia it is only a style choice.) Without a precise definition, all the old debates will continue but with a new twist, e.g. with one side saying that diacritics or hyphens vs. en-dashes are just a style issue and the other saying that they are not.
~~The reason for this RfC taking place now~~ The timing of this RfC makes it seem to be aimed at gaining leverage for the current MOS position on hyphens vs. en-dashes. If it were, or can be made into, a neutral attempt to clarify guidance to ensure consistency in appearance between the title of an article and the other parts of the article, then I (and I'm sure others) would be happier to support it.

Peter coxhead (talk) 12:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

There is a lot that deserves comment there Peter. Let me just address the second point. I am astonished when intelligent people assume that other equally intelligent people are obsessed with hyphens and en dashes, simply because they seek to protect the consensually derived guidelines about them. I assure you: I, at least, am mortally weary of the whole topic. But there is a consensus, and I would like to see it observed. Till it changes, if it ever does. This RFC is long overdue for broader reasons. There are numerous points of misunderstanding revealed in RMs especially. As I have said above, because Wikipedia is built by volunteers, it is inevitable that misunderstandings about style and the role of style manuals will arise. Many editors have never seen one before, or heard of the genre. Why an RFC now? It's the season! People have time to address longstanding issues, as we have seen at WT:MOS also right now. (Time? How I wish I had time, actually.) Noetica^Tea? 12:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for my careless wording above, which I have now amended. I certainly did not wish to impugn your motives.

I do continue to think my point 1 is vital. Maximum precision in wording in the MOS is crucial (total precision is impossible in natural language, as we both know well). It will never prevent differences of opinion surfacing, but can help to sharpen the debate and hence build consensus. Lack of clarity in the MOS wording re hyphens and en-dashes, which we have discussed elsewhere, and lack of clarity as to what "style" means in the context of the MOS, create ill-focussed debates and hence limit our ability to achieve consensus. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

And perpetuating the confusion and patently false assumption of some editors that WP:AT derives its style advice exclusively from external sources instead of from MOS (which balances what external reliable and often specialist sources prefer with what MOS needs, deferring to specialist sources in virtually all cases where it is practical to do so) helps in what way?

In no way at all, of course. But as is shown by arguments over a range of topics, not just hyphens, part of the problem is deciding what exactly is "styling" and what is "content"; what should be sourced from style guides and the MOS and what from other reliable sources. Consider the discussions between those who think an album title's odd capitalization should be kept and those who think that it can be altered. The separation between content and style is not clear cut; it lies at the heart of many arguments. I believe that clarifying what the MOS considers "mere style" is a prerequisite. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose - we should also take into consideration how the best sources for a particular article use the title - if all or most of the reliable sources are using one usage, well, then we don't need to buck the trend. Why should an article title be an exception to our general rule to use what reliable sources use? Ealdgyth - Talk 13:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)
See my !vote immediately below for why, in detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:30, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support: This is a clear case of proper policy/guideline instruction, since it reflects actual practice rather than trying to legislate it. If it were not already actual practice, tens if not hundreds of thousands of articles would have titles that did not agree with their reliably sourced lead sections, but we do not have that sort of chaos; QED. The idea that WP:AT does not derive its style advice from WP:MOS is absurd and sorely confused. (See WP:SSF for the source of that confusion; the short version is that reliable sources on underlying facts about an article topic, such as what its name is and how that is spelled, are not magically also reliable sources on how to style prose in a general purpose encyclopedia, as a matter of basic logic, but some editors refuse to accept this simple fact). Insistence on bucking MOS on the basis of a pet specialist style fallacy is one of the leading causes of WP:LAME disputes across Wikipedia. WP:AT needs to be clarified, in this proposed way, which does not actually change WP standard operating procedure, but observe and describe it, to stave off more of this sort of perennial and usually mind-numbingly tendentious and disruptive nonsense.
Many "oppose" commentators here are confusing relying on a reliable source for facts about the name of a topic, with blindly aping some aspect of the style in which such a source chooses to present those facts. An astronomy journal, history text book or model railroad enthusiast magazine is emphatically not a reliable source on how to format text for the most general-purpose publication in human history. We have our own in-house style guide, for several valid reasons. Three others are that offline style rules are not always ideal for online media; specialist sources often use their own in-house style quirks familiar only to specialists and which directly conflict with normal English usage, so using them here distracts, confuses, even upsets our readers for no defensible reason; and specialist sources in different special[i]ties frequently contradict each other, guaranteeing that devotees of one non-standard style quirk vs. the other, that no one else could possibly care about, will editwar about it until the cows come home.
PS: MOS already takes into account what reliable sources prefer stylistically, and advises following them when this is practical. Most of the "oppose" !votes here [including those that follow my own comment 23:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)] are entirely based on the straw man and red herring argument that this is not the case; those that didn't raise some other objection are basically logically invalid opposes. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 18:20, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Support This reflects standard practice, and encourages people to discuss style issues at MOS rather than here. Tdslk (talk) 18:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose Given the immense intellectual scope of Wikipedia, there is no common level of "general purpose" applicable for all articles. It is more important that a given Wikipedia article be consistent with the more detailed literature that supports it (into which the article should help guide them), than that we enforce an artificial and invented consistency across Wikipedia's breadth. This proposal, by elevating the MOS to policy by reference, favors the latter over the former, and I cannot agree with it. Choess (talk) 04:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

That is a measured assessment Choess, but I think you miss some important points that have already been touched on. I resume some of them here, and add more:

There are certainly common standards in place that apply to all articles, as we would expect in any encyclopedia or systematic work of reference. WP:TITLE itself is one obvious set of standards. The fact that this completely new and unique Wikipedia is collaboratively written and edited, by volunteers, does not cancel the need to set standards. The special conditions here make the task quite new in its details, but at least as urgent.
No one denies the importance of keeping an article consistent within itself, in all sorts of ways. That is enshrined at the top of WP:MOS, and always should be. But too often we see that imperative used against broader kinds of consistency, in frankly fallacious arguments. The reader's experience is enhanced by uniform choices within an article, sure. But most readers read beyond a single article, and if haphazard styling choices intrude (with lapses from the best practice that MOS adopts and adapts from major sources), so much the worse. No one has shown why haphazard choices in the styling of article titles should be exempt! MOS is very attentive to how the principles it consensually adopts apply to them, too. Just as with any other publisher (to use that term broadly but aptly, for this context). MOS in no way ignores reliable sources. Of necessity though, the respect it shows them for style is not exactly like the immediate and simple respect for content, which is what WP:RS restricts itself to. Of necessity, it considers them in a more filtered and condensed way – like all guides to style, and after discussion of what they have to say.
The proposal does not elevate guidelines to policy, not even "by reference". See others' remarks about the distinction being unhelpful in any case; and then see how TITLE makes heavy reference to guidelines at WP:DAB – especially to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Even as I write, there are efforts to change that guideline without wide consultation (see WT:DAB); but the page remains guideline, not policy. So with WP:MOS. And believe me: there is far more scrutiny and input there (expert and general-community input) than at either WT:TITLE or WT:DAB.
There is nothing "artificial and invented" about the standards at MOS. Look at some of the standard sources to which it appeals, in this page linked at the top of WT:MOS. Is there any similar reference to common, best-practice standards for development of WP:TITLE? Or of WP:DAB? I'd like to see that.
So finally, I put it to you that MOS is in no way the weakest link among the pages that together, and harmoniously, settle the precise form of article titles. To acknowledge its role is not to elevate anything! It is simply to dispel uncertainty in this community of volunteers, on an issue that not everyone can immediately understand. Most volunteers on the Project have little exposure to the manual-of-style idea; so clarification is sorely needed.

Choess, I appeal to you. Reconsider your approach to the question in this RFC. Please let me know if there is any concern I have not addressed adequately.

Noetica^Tea? 00:57, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose as implicit elevation of MOS guidelines to policy level to override common-name: As noted by several editors above, the wp:TITLE policy text should not empower a guideline to outweigh, or override, the simple concept to use the wp:COMMONNAME in the preponderance of wp:RS reliable sources (regardless of shifting fashions in style guidelines). While intensely studying these issues for the past month, I quickly found evidence that common-names are difficult to "stylize" to also match the world's whims of common naming. In particular, I was surprised to learn that replacement of hyphens with en dashes, in some professional journals, is very rare, and is not always a journal's "in-house style" but rather the choice of some authors who might even mix, hyphen-for-dash usage, in the same article (over 94% of Google Scholar 1,000 matching documents do not put dash in the 1887 "Michelson-Morley experiment"). Also, hyphens are a matter of precise "spelling" (not merely style), and the phrase "spelled with hyphens" (search Google Books) can be found in sources spanning over 100 years; hence, some titles are expressly spelled with hyphens not dashes (as evidenced by term "hyphenated Americans"). Also, various styles in common-name titles have changed over the centuries, and so where a topic was commonly named 100 years ago, then that title might be very different than the contemporary fashion of trendy styles in the recent decade, while most sources still use the old-named title. For example, some hyphen usage has been changed recently, in just the past 100 years, as dropped in words such as "co-operation" (now "cooperation") or "teen-age" (now "teenage"). Also, diaresis has been reduced, as in "zoölogy" (now "zoology") or "naïve" (to "naive"), but "coöperative" has led to "co-op" and so each title should be analyzed as simply the common name used in the preponderance of sources, with no prejudgment of styles to override the spelling. Hence, any suggestion to defer title spelling to style trends is likely to generate unusual titles which will reduce wp:Accessibility for many users, who would expect to see the common-name title, not an unusually re-styled name. Also, there is the danger of "hypercorrection" to force peculiar names, such as "co-op" hypercorrected as style "co—op". Clearly, oppose attempt to have styles which override common spelling. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Articles like Michelson–Morley experiment are punctuated the same way in the title as in the article. We should all be able to agree with that, whether we like the dash or not. Same with all the other issues, like "teen-age" and "co-op"; the title matches the text, and that's all there is to it. Therefore, the title is styled the same way as the text, which is covered by the Manual of Style. And now we need to make that explicit to stop all the Wikilawyering. Art LaPella (talk) 07:36, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikid77; do you agree with what Art says here? Do you think that the title's style ought to match the text's style? If so, can you explain again why you are opposing this? What else, other than that they should match, do you think this proposal says? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:18, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I am still a bit confused and my comment below may not have been clear. When you say the text is supposed to match the title, is it ok or not to refer to the subject as "Clinton" in an article titled Bill Clinton? As I noted, in that article the entire lead calls him Clinton, which does not exactly match the title. I just don't want to create more wikilawyering in an effort to reduce it. --My76Strat (talk) 17:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is ok to refer to the subject as "Clinton" in an article titled Bill Clinton. Those are not different styles as it is meant here, those are different wordings; see Neotarf's comment "Some observations about the above comments" below—the point of this is about punctuation/capitalization/etc. Perhaps one of the rewordings way down below makes this more clear. This proposal would suggest that in running text you ought to refer to the subject as "grey wolf" in an article entitled Grey wolf. Or "Hale-Bopp" in an article entitled Comet Hale-Bopp, and "Hale–Bopp" in an article entitled Comet Hale–Bopp. Which is all of course what anyone would normally do; this proposal is so obvious it almost seems unnecessary. HaugenErik (talk) 19:44, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you HaugenErik. Your answer is clear and I appreciate that. Do you think the proposed wording is clear enough that it won't be misunderstood? I agree with you, and others who say this seems so much like how things are done, that it would continue happening without any prose modification at all. I guess my largest wonder is "Why is it important to change prose that doesn't change the way we do business? and What broken thing is fixed by its codification?" --My76Strat (talk) 20:35, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. There's no reason not to be consistent. The concern about "elevating a guideline" strikes me as silly, both because the MOS is explicitly identified as a guideline (and what else should we use for guidance) and because we really should be following the MOS nearly all the time anyway. As far as the notion that we would somehow be "imposing" upon these poor bedraggled trademark owners, or "ignoring reliable sources," the vast, vast majority of professional journalistic publications standardize weird styles to a much greater degree than Wikipedia does. If we just adopted "do what the New York Times does" as our touchstone for formatting nonstandard names, you'd see more standardization, not less. Croctotheface (talk) 09:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. Choess has hit the nail on the head. Kanguole 13:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. The title is always styled the same way as in the article, no matter how much or how little it resembles the sources. We aren't changing the title to match the Manual of Style; the title always matches the text, so it already matches the Manual of Style as much as the text does. Nobody is arguing that the text shouldn't look the same as the title. So the same MoS rules are applying to both the text and title, whether we make that explicit or not. So you don't have to like the Manual of Style to like this edit. All it does is prevent people from claiming that the text covered by the guideline could be used as a title, and therefore the COMMONNAME policy overrules most any guideline they don't like. The COMMONNAME policy isn't used for style, so we shouldn't say it is. The elevation to a policy argument is baloney, but if you really believe that, adding the words "This doesn't make the MoS a policy" would prevent that problem. So the only real issue is: do we make our present practice explicit in the rules? Or would you prefer us to waste our time with Wikilawyers, who use COMMONNAME as an excuse to overrule any MoS guideline they don't like? Art LaPella (talk) 16:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. The proposed addition needs copy-editing. The background and rationale for predicted effect "to cut down on arguments about the relationship between TITLE policy and the guidelines at WP:MOS." is insufficiently presented. Incremental editing by committee is not the wiki way. RfCs should be reserved for better defined questions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:07, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
But Support if done tentatively, subject to immediate copy editing, not written in stone. If someone thinks it may lead to world peace, let's give it a go. If not, fix it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:12, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose especially as names are not excluded in the phrasing, which will lead to all sorts of trouble. Johnbod (talk) 03:34, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

What trouble? Are there articles whose titles are styled differently than in the article? Even names as titles, such as Chick-fil-A, are styled the same way in the title as in the article, and exceptions (one in that article, apparently a mistake) aren't because the title is any less subject to the Manual of Style than the article is. There is no intent to change how we style titles. The intent is to explain it. Art LaPella (talk) 02:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't understand the issue, either. Why can't styling of names and titles stay where it is in the MOS and apply to both text and article titles? Dicklyon (talk) 03:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Come on, this is a very frequent problem. When dealing with names, reliable sources are ignored in favor of arbitrary MOS rules. Even when the naming authorities dictate a specific styling, as in bird names, comet names and minor planet names. WP:COMMONNAME is regularly rejected as irrelevant to any style issue. If 5% of RS use a styling that agrees with our MOS, the remaining 95% is ignored. I'm tired of encountering this attitude all the time. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:20, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

But that isn't a problem with the proposed WP:TITLE edit. If "WP:COMMONNAME is regularly rejected ..." "... all the time" then it wouldn't change anything to document that regular, all the time practice in the policy. To accommodate you, we would need to make an opposite edit to WP:TITLE, and eliminate everything in the Manual of Style that could apply to a title, to tell people to defer to COMMONNAME instead. For instance, "52,435 kms" (not "km") could conceivably be in a title, so Enric Naval's rule would be to search books for that phrase, rather than automatically say "km" not "kms" to make it consistent with 52,434 km and 52,436 km. But that isn't the proposal here. Art LaPella (talk) 21:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Support; article titles are subject to the manual of style just like anything else. I greatly apologize if I'm missing some nuance here, but there's too much text for me to read everyone's objections and responses. Powers ^T 22:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose -- while it seems to be common sense, and I agree that in most (all?) cases it should work this way, I share the concern mentioned above that this effectively promotes the MOS to a policy. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:52, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. WP:TITLE is policy and the MoS is a guideline, so the MoS should make sure it's consistent with TITLE, not the other way round. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Care to expand on your statement? I find it doesn't make sense. Are you saying that the MOS's rules of style should be based on the same rules as TITLE, like COMMONNAME? That isn't currently the case and rewriting the MOS to say, "styling and punctuation is determined by the most common style in reliable sources for each individual article" would be a dramatic change that destroyed stylistic consistency; that's also not a question posed by this RFC. I would note that the MOS already provides, "MoS applies to all parts of an article, including the title.... (The policy page Wikipedia:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)" Are you saying that the MOS should not preempt COMMONNAME and the other parts of TITLE that determine the substance – as opposed to the styling – of the article and its title? I wholeheartedly agree and making it clear that the MOS should only be used to determine the styling of the title, not its substance, is the whole point of this proposed addition. AgnosticAphid talk 01:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, I thought I'd add that you might understand the proposal better if you read proposed alternative wording six, below. AgnosticAphid talk 01:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Support as nominator. I notice I had not previously put my own statement here. Some of the amendments also look good, like number 6 by My76Strat, makes the essential point and adds a clarifying footnote which should help gain support from those who complained that the brief statement was a bit cryptic, with a back story that many readers would not be familiar with. Some of the other amendments, e.g. with "Providing the other criteria as laid out in this policy and its naming conventions are met", seem more designed to both hide the back story and perpetuate the confusion as to whether commonname means to take styling from the most common in sources, which is clearly contrary to what the majority will go for. So, since we have majority support already, and a direction that will increase the support and get us to consensus (with a few holdouts who don't like MOS perhaps), perhaps we need to call for specific !vote on that amendment? Dicklyon (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

I don't see the problem with declaring the proposal as a guideline if it is intended as a guideline. If the proposal is not intended to be a policy why not declare it as a guideline? Why does it have to be in the middle of a page that is a policy? Also I would oppose any proposal that would remove recognizability as a factor when deciding on the style of an article title. The most common style that follows MOS guidelines would be more objective. --GrandDrake (talk) 01:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Definitely it's guideline. So is most of the contents of WP:TITLE, though it's included on a policy page. I'd be in favor of sorting it out; it would be great if we could decide what parts of this rambling page should be considered policy. As for recognizability, I totally agree. It has been reduced to near meaninglessness by the inclusion of "to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic". Dicklyon (talk) 04:34, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

If it is definitely a guideline than why not declare it as a guideline? Though there are guidelines mentioned on the policy page the articles for those guidelines state that they are guidelines. As for recognizability it can be an objective factor for decision making. Why not use the most common style that follows MOS guidelines? --GrandDrake (talk) 06:18, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

The proposal specifically mentions styling per the MOS as guideline. I see what you're getting at now, though, which is the odd idea that styling like sources is going to help recognizability. Yet nobody has been able to provide an example of where styling per the MOS would be less recognizable than copying a most-common style from sources. I have asked several people who made such suggestions; if an example was provided, I've missed it, so please point it out if there is one. Dicklyon (talk) 06:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

The MOS guidelines don't always give a single possible style and using the most common style that follows MOS guidelines would be an objective way to make that decision. A few months ago someone moved "High Efficiency Video Coding" to "High-efficiency video coding" and that was opposed because the majority of reliable sources don't use that style (including the organizations that are making that standard). I don't think that the MOS guidelines alone could be used to determine the style for every article title. That asking people to determine what is the "best" style based only on the MOS guidelines would lead to subjective decisions. --GrandDrake (talk) 07:49, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. I think Phil Bridger said it best. We should not refer to the same thing in two different ways, one in the text of an article and one in its title. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

I think everyone agrees that the text should be consistent with the title. The issue is that in problem cases the title, including some of its styling, is chosen based on balancing the principles at WP:AT, and not simply on advice in the MOS. If this were made clear in the proposal there would be no problem. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:29, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Did you read the postings under Phil Bridger statement? There is no reason why the MOS should not follow the lead of the title, after all it does state in the lead "Style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole.". Text in articles usually does for names with or without accent marks eg Melee and spelling is usually consistent in that article, but it does not mean that other articles can not use mêlée throughout. Another example we have articles with titles such as Charles I of England that does not mean that numeral and country have to be tacked onto every usage of [King] Charles within the article or in other artilces. -- PBS (talk) 19:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose Commonstyle should exist, but it should be the same as commonname. We should use the style presented in the majority of reliable sources. Ryan Vesey 05:05, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)
I fail to see how getting rid of the MOS in favor of a rule that says, "use the most common punctuation in all circumstances" would improve Wikipedia. It would just make everything haphazard, unprofessional, and unencyclopedic. AgnosticAphid talk 16:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. We've seen illustrated with stark clarity how destructive the rote overapplication of the MOS to article titles is. It doesn't need to be encouraged. —chaos5023 (talk) 05:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Would you be referring to this debate over the debate over the title of the article of Star Trek Into Darkness? -- PBS (talk) 20:15, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I would. Well inferred. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 21:37, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

You're upset about people misusing the MOS when coming up with the capitalization of "into" in a particular article, so you oppose this proposal, which merely clarifies existing text and ensures that the titles of articles have the same punctuation as the article text? What is your proposed alternative? Get rid of the MOS? Have article titles use the most common punctuation but article text follow the MOS? How are either of those alternatives helpful? How would they improve Wikipedia? What is the other alternative? Do you misunderstand the proposal? Or are you just throwing out the baby with the bath water in a fit of spite? AgnosticAphid talk 16:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose - The proposal makes sense in some ways, but if it would be used to imply that Star Trek Into Darkness sshould be given the incorrect title Star Trek into Darkness then it can't be an appropriate approach. Rlendog (talk) 22:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I do also share the concern that this effectively would elevate the MOS guideline to a policy. Rlendog (talk) 22:33, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Further comments and discussion

[This is the subsection for general discussion, queries about procedure, and so on. Editors, please work to keep the format orderly and readable, thinking especially of the needs of newcomers.–Noetica^Tea? 08:09, 9 January 2013 (UTC)]

Comment - I note that the majority of those who have opined (so far) are all active "regular" editors at WP:MOS (in fact, I may be the only one who isn't). Please note that there is nothing wrong with MOS regulars being involved on this page or in this discussion (indeed, a proposal like this should have a lot of input from MOS regulars)... but... I think we also need to hear from more editors who are not MOS regulars. As things stand right now, an analysis of who has responded could be subject to accusations of vote-stacking. I don't think that is actually the case, but I could easily see someone looking at who is participating and drawing that conclusion. If we bring in more people - people who are not MOS regulars - we can avoid that. Blueboar (talk) 03:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

It's a false dichotomy. It's not that there really is a species called MOS editors, and another called TITLE editors. A divisive prejudgement, perhaps. Me? I declare my interest in both areas, at the top of my talkpage. Many editing professionals might make such a declaration; and they are the most acutely aware of the interleaved separateness of content and style. They typically work with both, of necessity. This is the talkpage for WP:TITLE, so we can expect that those watchlisting the page will turn up and express an opinion. Why would they not support the proposal to clarify what is in fact inevitable? Anyway, Enric Naval is a voluminous commentator at WT:MOS, and opposes here (predictably!). Can't see the problem. No rush. The more participation, the better. As always. Noetica^Tea? 04:47, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I've advised Blueboar to go ahead and add an RfC tag in response to his call for participation at VPP. I agree more eyes on the topic will be good, though one also needs to keep in mind that the community at VPP expressed a lot of apathy and impatience for these topics, so we may not get a bunch. Myself, I'm both an MOS and TITLE regular, with not so much as a 2X difference in edits in spite of an earlier start at MOS. I soon realized how they work together, and how attempts to keep them in conflict were used as a sort of workaround for MOS disagreements. I think we're on the verge of putting that era behind us. Dicklyon (talk) 05:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I, for one, am certainly not a "MOS regular". Phil Bridger (talk) 08:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I find the question being so simple versus the opinions being so strong to suggest there is more to this than the RfC question reveals. It makes me wonder " what is really being asked?". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
- That may be because there are some editors who believe in the absolute sanctity of reliable sources or want the opportunity to argue through cherry-picking of their pet reliable source to get the result they want. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 08:38, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

"Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style." Lots of stuff gets added all over the MOS with little scrutiny that could affect article titles. This policy page like the content policy pages has the huge advantage that may edtors see and discuss any proposed changes. If this proposed wording is placed on this page without the sort of qualifications such as Blueboar suggested then at future RMs we could have the situation where someone says it does not matter what the reliable sources call the thing this is a matter of style and the MOS says XYZ on this issue and AT policy states we should follow the MOS. If this statement was to be qualified for example

Providing the other criteria as laid out in this policy and its naming conventions are met, article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style

Then it would be acceptable to me.-- PBS (talk) 09:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

PBS, such a re-writing just confuses the core issue here. It assumes conflict, when there is none. On a rational reading of TITLE and MOS, the provisions of both are to be met as well as possible; and the two kinds of provision are different. TITLE is about content; MOS is about style. It really is simple! As I have explained before, if there is a problem with MOS seeming to be way of tune with "reliable sources" (other major style guides, dictionaries, best-practice publishing in areas of concern), then that is certainly never intended. It is serious, and must be addressed – as a styling problem, at WT:MOS or a subpage.
You write: "Lots of stuff gets added all over the MOS with little scrutiny that could affect article titles." But that is very far from the truth, at least at the regulating page for all of MOS, which is WP:MOS. It has 1506 watchers to see to that (WP:TITLE has only 608); and it had 11782 pageviews in the last 90 days (WP:TITLE had only 2304: almost all accounted for by a spike of interest since Christmas!). Now, what exactly are the "reliable sources" applied in developing this policy page, WP:TITLE? I'm yet to see one. Here, though, is my partial list of immediate reliable sources for MOS development. (Count them! That resource is linked at the top of WT:MOS, and used.) Have you checked the level of scrutiny at WT:MOS recently, applied to every jot and tittle that goes in? I personally, and many others who haunt that page, revert and call for detailed discussion if anything is added with "little scrutiny". Don't believe the myths. Compare, once again, some of the untested and unsourced algorithms we find here at WP:TITLE. Reliable sources for those, please? Evidence that they work, to help readers? Nonetheless, we all accept the role of this page. And most of us, apart from a few who struggle with the very notion of style, accept the natural and perfectly straightforward role of MOS. And it has been endorsed by ArbCom, as settling style for article titles.
Noetica^Tea? 09:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

If there is no conflict then the additional wording can not hurt, and it addresses some of the concerns raised by several editors. If it helps to build a consensus why do you object to such compromise wording? -- PBS (talk) 12:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I object because it is founded on the assumption that there can be clashes between TITLE and MOS, which is directly counter to the proposal as currently worded. The proposal arose out of a discussion of the harmony of the two, which is due to their serving different purposes and having quite different relations with "reliable sources". All explained above. Your wording perpetuates a confusion. No doubt it will therefore attract some interest from those who have not entirely freed themselves of that confusion. ☺ Noetica^Tea? 12:59, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I think some people treat the MOS way too seriously. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:46, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Do you indeed? Thanks for sharing. I should reciprocate: I'd like an hour on the holodeck with Seven of Nine. Find us a bigger, more systematic, more detailed, more closely examined and nuanced manual of style for web use; and then, please report it here for us to marvel at. Noetica^Tea? 09:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

It's the centralised control, and the complexity, and the arbitrariness of the details of the MOS suite that bothers me, and I don't think it should be elevated to pseudo policy. I think it should be no more than guidance, and to some extent, the encyclopaedia should be allowed to develop more freely than a policy MOS allows. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I can understand, in general terms. The complexity and the arbitrariness of the details at WP:TITLE give me the creeps. But we have to live with those, and we do. I have shown above that WP:MOS is far more considered and examined. In fact it is not arbitrary in any way (though I admit that some less-examined subpages need attention). Complex? So is the world that Wikipedia's four million articles grapple with; and so is English. MOS is not the problem; it is a pretty good attempt at a solution, and one with a great deal of consensus behind it. (I am still waiting for you to point us to a better manual of style, for the web or for collaborative editing.) MOS is more sourced and consensual than WP:TITLE, as I argue in detail above. You might like to address that argument, yes? And like it or not, in its traditional role as a manual of style, MOS must cover all parts of an article. When that role is respected, the results are just fine. Compare the misapplication of WP:TITLE to yield such monstrosities as the title "Big". (That article is about a film. Who knew?) ☺ Noetica^Tea? 12:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Noetica you wrote "But that is very far from the truth, at least at the regulating page for all of MOS, which is WP:MOS." The MOS is not just WP:MOS it is all the sub-pages as well (if it is not then amend you preferred the proposal to say that it only applies to the central MOS page). For an example of conflict in wording look at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Proper names it took an awfully big effort to get a change to that page to include "Main page: MOS:FOREIGN" and the top of the "Diacritics" section, and there are still editors who object to harmonising the wording of that section with the wording of MOS:FOREIGN. -- PBS (talk) 13:02, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

So let's improve those subpages of MOS. Always desirable. And yes, it's hard work to develop MOS. (Tell me about it!) That is no argument against recognising the natural roles of TITLE and MOS. As things stand now, there are lapses from perfection everywhere; but the demarcation is already in place. Progress can be more efficient when everyone has a clearer view of this demarcation of style and content.

Speaking of problems in the development of auxiliary pages, please address the one Smokey and I discuss below, with TITLE deferring to a poorly expressed guideline (developed with no wide community discussion, and with reference to no "reliable sources"). It continues to result in absurd content decisions for titles in RM discussions.

Good to get the inevitable problems into a priority list, for action.

Noetica^Tea? 21:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

"Big" is a poor title. I think the problem is with the looseness of the guideline WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which is neither part of WP:TITLE nor WP:MOS. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

"Big" is indeed a worse-than-useless title, Smokey. And the confusing provision called WP:PRIMARYTOPIC has no reliable sources in its development and enormous power over the minds of RM commenters, and RM closers. Yes, it is part of a guideline: a guideline deferred to by WP:TITLE, twice. Once under Precision, and once under Disambiguation (see WP:AT#Precision and disambiguation).

See the inconsistency in your own position about policies and guidelines, now? I note that you do not respond to my detailed points above, concerning the relative care taken in developing TITLE and MOS (and their care with "reliable sources"). But please, do answer my claim that you have been inconsistent here. Specifically, you endorse style domination by a policy page that systematically defers to a guideline that you admit is flawed and causing problems. ☺

Noetica^Tea? 21:12, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Noetica. I don't see how the proposed change will fix the problem of "Big". I suggest this instead.

What I hear being clearly described is a problem with multiple factors. I tend to agree with your perspective, but am not persuaded that specific solutions are the way to go. Instead, multiple things need fixing. I see parts of WP:TITLE that have dubious merit at the level of {{policy}}. WP:AT#Precision and disambiguation, for example, should be at the level of guideline, not policy.

Where you see inconsistency, I see myself struggling to keep my head above water. My comment of 08:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC) stands, and User:Ohconfucius's answer I find less than helpful. You've posted multiple advertisement for this discussion, and so I've visited, but I'm afraid that the bckground is not well introduced. It's no wonder that someone says that most commenters are MOS regulars. This RfC is too difficult to penetrate for outsiders. Is it about dashes and diacritics, or puctuation and capitalisation, or relative policy supremacy of certain pages, or service to the non-policy-wonk editor, or what? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:18, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Smokey:

You have missed my point. It was this: policy at WP:TITLE defers to a guideline at WP:DAB, with dreadful results from RMs, such as Big. For a problem in relations between policy and guidelines, look no further! But there is no comparable problem in relations between WP:TITLE and WP:MOS, except that some people are confused about their harmonious co-existence. O, and a small minority stir up discontent and disharmony as a means of furthering their campaign against certain consensual style choices that have been settled in open discussion at WT:MOS.
Please do not make undiscussed changes at WP:DAB. Use the talkpage.
The wording of the proposal is transparent and simple. There is no hidden agenda. Really, what could it be? Yes, MOS regulars come here to post; and if I may speak for them, we always want as much community participation as can be achieved at RFCs.
The particular concerns you mention are just that: a few particular concerns. But the RFC is general, and on the face of it hard to fault – for anyone clear about the difference between style and content, and how different Wikipedia pages address those different dimensions. Details can be dealt with later, once the overall system, and mechanisms and forums for dealing with them, are clear to all. Though the simple addition proposed in this RFC.

Noetica^Tea? 00:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

If you think I missed your point, I think you’ve missed mine. I think many of your points are correct, but are not solved by your preferred actions. There is an abundance of problems with page titles and WP:RM, even ignoring dashes, diacritics, punctuation and capitalisation. There are problems in the details at the bottom, such as with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. These problems should be fixed directly, not by word smithing the higher level policy summaries of low level guidance and definition.
Please do not tell me or anyone else to not edit a page. Please see Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus". You are showing signs of tendency to page ownership.
The proposed wording elevates the MOS guidelines (collectively?) to equal standing with WP:TITLE. The possible implications of that are huge. The apparently simplicity of the change is therefore misleading. Without understanding every nuance of MOS pages, I cannot support anything stronger than PBS’s text. No, it is not acceptable to deal with the details later.
I think you are attempting to solve many problems from a top-down approach. To do this, you either need complete wisdom or complete authority. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Bringing up old arguments like "primary topic" has nothing to do with the discussion at hand and is not helpful. —Neotarf (talk) 00:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

It is, if inadequacy of of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is given as a supporting reason for this policy change. The logical response is then if the policy change decision is dependant on changes elsewhere, then the policy change should be held off subject to changes elsewhere. For elsewhere, see Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#The_.22Primary_Topic.22. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

No, "primary topic" is about the substance of the title, about choosing the wording or content, not the "style", which is basically format, or "conventions with respect to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and typographic arrangement and display followed in writing or printing". The subject of primary topic is about "content"; bringing it up here can only muddy the waters and re-open old wars. Please drop this line and go back to discussing the "format" issues of WP:TITLE. —Neotarf (talk) 01:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Smokey:

You keep missing that the points about PRIMARYTOPIC only show how the present policy page defers to a guideline, and with disruptive consequences. Yet where there is no such difficulty, and no deference under consideration, you resist a simple measure to make that complementarity and harmony clear to all. That is, like it or not, a top-level recognition of a top-level truth. Details come later.
I will tell you not to edit a crucial guideline page that is deferred in policy. I will ask you, as ArbCom has asked people in a case relevant to this policy page, to discuss toward consensus first.
This is false: "The proposed wording elevates the MOS guidelines (collectively?) to equal standing with WP:TITLE." The proposed wording does no such thing. It recognises, for all to see, a plain and inevitable fact of life about content and style. And about the traditional roles of WT:TITLE and WP:MOS.
This is partially true: "I think you are attempting to solve many problems from a top-down approach." Sure! It's a high-level confusion that several people here are attempting to address. This is false: "To do this, you either need complete wisdom or complete authority." No, we collectively need respectful dialogue and sustained attention to all relevant arguments. That's how Wikipedia works. Let's see how it will manage on this occasion. ♥

For your answer to Neotarf, note: No. No one is doing that. Noetica^Tea? 01:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Noetica,

(1) So are you saying that having WP:TITLE defering to a guideline is bad? But “Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style.” explicitly defers styling to MOS as a matter of policy. This can be read as say that styling MUST (policy level MUST) be done per MOS, exceeding the emphasis beyond the guideline tag.

(2) The edit was an improvement, and there was no similar editing in the recent history, nor related discussion on the talk page. There is no ArbCom notice at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation, and even if there were, ArbCom have no right to impose blanket authorisation of soft protection to policy pages, and if they did we must reject it. ArbCom do not make policy. I made a bold edit. You reverted. I’m discussing. I hold that if you do not engage substantively at Wikipedia_talk:Disambiguation#The_.22Primary_Topic.22 then you have no right to revert again.

(3) “Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style”. The unqualified word “are” effectively states with the force of policy how article titles are styled. It means, unambiguously, that styling not following the MOS is in violation of policy. Policy needs to be written more carefully than that. Policy should very rarely dare to assert statements of fact about reality.

(4) Good luck. I’d prefer to work from the bottom (eg. PRIMARYTOPIC wording) up.

Thank you for reformating my posts for clarity. Unfortunately, I don't like the hidden discussions occurring in the voting section. I think the !voting is premature, and that the RfC should be closed in favour of a proposal reflecting the ongoing discussion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Support PBS's version and oppose the version posed by the RfC. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:41, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
By this policy, why would I be wrong for changing every occurrence of Clinton, to Bill Clinton, where this encourages common adherence in Title and text. (I don't think the "title" is used as the "text" form at all within the entire lead!) Don't assume a semblance of common-sense either; or there would be less notion to move the wp:mos function into a policy, in the first place. MOS:TITLE states "Use common sense in applying it", whereas WP:TITLE does not (that's not a mistake). It's much harder to change a policy, to effect positive change, than a well organized discussion. BTW, I am pleased that this discussion seems sincere on both sides, and well structured. --My76Strat (talk) 13:13, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Why would anyone put a comma after either one, what page of WP:MOS calls for it; this doesn't make any sense. Do people think a style guide is about formatting commas into the ends of titles. —Neotarf (talk) 15:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The title Bill Clinton is chosen for recognizability and other criteria. The MOS says to capitalize both words of it. It would be wrong to have Bill Clinton in the article and Bill clinton as the title. That's all we're saying. Similarly, since Michelson–Morley experiment is styled with en dash per MOS:DASH, we use the en dash in the title Michelson–Morley experiment; this is not new, of course, as it has long been recognized as appropriate in titles, at WP:TITLE#Special characters. The fact that most sources do not use a style like ours has not generally been seen as an issue on such things, except by small minority; the big dash powwow confirmed a very strong consensus on this, adopting the styling suggested by a variety of good style guides, yet some want to keep arguing. This particular case, Michelson–Morley experiment, is not even one that Apteva carried on his campaign against, since he focused on a theory of a difference based on "proper names". But a few editors, motivated apparently mostly by not liking en dashes, want to continue to push the radical position that TITLE and MOS are in conflict, and that the COMMONNAME strategy for achieving the recognizability criterion somehow implies that consistent styling of titles makes them less recognizable (though they have failed to answer my requests for an example of any article where that would be an issue). Dicklyon (talk) 19:37, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

If the wording could be made to express clearly and generally what you illustrate so well at the beginning of the above ("The title Bill Clinton is chosen ... we use the en dash in the title Michelson–Morley experiment"), then I would have an easy support. Isn't there a better way to capture that intent? --Stfg (talk) 21:48, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. I'm glad PBS proposed what he thinks would help (though it's not quite a version I can support), and I'd like to see others make proposal along the lines you've suggested, though address some of the objections and move us toward a consensus version. Would you like to draft one? Dicklyon (talk) 22:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I've been struggling with it. Noetica's refutation of my first attempt was valid, but in it he points out that there are aspects of title style that do differ from MOS, and I'm currently not seeing how to capture that in a general way without weaselling the whole idea away. Do you see what I mean? Can anyone help with that? --Stfg (talk) 22:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Stfg, I don't mean to be mean, but you miss my meaning. This is wildly incorrect: "he points out that there are aspects of title style that do differ from MOS". No! MOS devotes a whole section to styling of article titles. There are no internal inconsistencies in MOS about titles as opposed to any other parts of articles; nor external inconsistencies with WP:TITLE. Please take more care! We who do a lot of MOS development are meticulous in these matters. Noetica^Tea? 23:44, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Noetica, I don't in the least imagine you mean to be mean. If you'd try to avoid personalizing it with comments about quibbles and "try to be more careful" (which is an oblique ad hominem actually, but don't worry about it right now), then all our lives would be easier. You're referring to WP:MoS#Article titles, yes? But that just refers back here, pretty much (but see below). When I alleged that you were pointing out that "there are aspects of title style that do differ from MOS", I should perhaps have quoted you more fully -- your words were, "There are some differences in the "way" styling of titles and other parts of an article is managed. Titles have a capital letter at the start, for example; and are big and bold." (my italics). So what we have is WP:MoS#Article titles pointing this policy, and this policy proposed to point back to other parts of MOS -- which are not specifically identified in the proposal, although you advising that this does not encompass all aspects of MOS. Do you see my problem now?

However, WP:MoS#Article titles finshes with "MoS applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Wikipedia:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)" (I have just converted what is a local link there into a full link here, with no other change.) Does this not say exactly what you are trying to say, or am I still missing something? If it does, why not just use the above text? I find it a lot clearer than either the RfC or PBS's version above. Regards, --Stfg (talk) 00:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Uh, instead of saying "just use the above text", I should have relocalized it for the present page. I suggest: "The Manual of Style applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially its punctuation section. (This policy page on Article titles does not determine punctuation.)" Or suchlike. --Stfg (talk) 00:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Stfg, I did not want to personalise anything; but you confuse the situation and incidentally affront me when you misrepresent what I have very carefully laid out, through your own imprecision. Avoid imprecision (once again!). That is what makes life simpler and easier in dialogue, as in policy and guidelines. The cross-referencing of provisions in TITLE and MOS? Yes, there it is. Evidence that the two are in perfect accord. For convenience in guiding editors, material is replicated. No problem.

Now this: "Does this not say exactly what you are trying to say, or am I still missing something?" No trying about it! I am saying that, and it is an established fact: TITLE and MOS have always had different roles. What you are missing is that it needs to be mirrored at this page. Obviously – because some editors seem not to have understood.

Noetica^Tea? 01:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately some of this does come across as personalizing; in particular, over-use of the pronoun "you" can sound particularly accusatory; also, care must be taken in the use of the imperative (which also contains an unspoken "you") in order not to appear uncollegial. Rewording someone's statement does seem to me a particularly valuable way of confirming that it has been understood, and encouraging further dialogue and clarification. —Neotarf (talk) 02:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

If the proposal is passed, does this mean an article's content must be exactly the same as its title? GoodDay (talk) 20:57, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what must means here; it's about guidelines. There will be many things in the text that don't match the title, like alternative names and descriptions, some of which might have been acceptable alternate titles; these too are normally styled according to guidelines in the MOS. In some articles, the title does not even appear in the article (e.g. some of the "List of ..." articles). The point is really that there is not a separate, independent, or conflicting set of style conventions to use in titles from the ones we use in text; and I included headers because they embody the capitalization rules the same as for titles. Do you have exceptions or potential conflicts in mind? If conflicts arise, e.g. between MOS and guidelines or conventions of wikiprojects or other guideline or policy pages, we should seek to find and fix them; we could add something to that effect. What we're trying to avoid is the confused claim by some that style needs to come in from sources via COMMONNAME, which has actually never been the case, but a few people keep trying to make it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:08, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I can't elaborate any further per restrictions, sorry. GoodDay (talk) 22:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose - The MOS is only a guideline -- one that sometimes contradicts our standard policy. If the two are in conflict the policy should prevail.DreamGuy (talk) 01:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
- They don't conflict. But if people believe they do, they should remove the conflicting guidelines, not leave them in place to mislead copyeditors. Art LaPella (talk) 04:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

"Conflict" is, perhaps, too strong. But, as has been explained several times in this discussion, AT requires a balance between its five principles, determined by discussion and consensus in problematic cases. This balance may lead to a decision outside the normal advice of the MOS (e.g. k.d. lang). If two possible styling choices are equally consistent with the five principles, then clearly the MOS is the decider. But the MOS is subordinate to AT. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:08, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

It has been explained several times that AT requires a balance between its five principles. It has also been explained several times that in practice, that balance procedure doesn't include style. The style is chosen consistent with the MOS, and the MOS would become pretty much meaningless if an implied "except for style" isn't read into COMMONNAME. Hence the proposed clarification. k.d. lang, for instance, doesn't follow the WP:NAMECAPS guideline, but it is a reasonable candidate for an exception to that guideline because a case like k.d. lang isn't mentioned. So from a standpoint that all guidelines (and policies) have exceptions, k.d. lang follows the MOS, unlike the proposed hyphen in Hale-Bopp. That would require a clause of WP:ENDASH to be ignored completely, not just in an exceptional case.

Similarly, MOS doesn't specify how to spell "melee". MOS:FOREIGN says "The use of diacritics (such as accent marks) for foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources in English and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipedia guidelines." Diacritics gets more complicated with proper names, but I believe the intent is to be consistent with the title.

So as far as I know, clarifying that the title is chosen in accordance with MOS wouldn't change any specific article I know of. What would change is being able to copyedit without needing to guess which faction will prevail this week. There shouldn't be explicit guidelines like "Comet Hale–Bopp" unless we can agree that is the rule, and that those who disagree should change the rule first. If this kind of interference with copyediting becomes routine, there will be few if any copyeditors. Without copyeditors, the drama-mongers wouldn't have an audience. Art LaPella (talk) 22:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what practice you're referring to, but in titling discussions all over Wikipedia, such stylistic questions as whether a word is capitalized, or whether something should be written as one word or two, or hyphenated, are routinely addressed using that balancing procedure, and not simply deferred to MOS. Kanguole 01:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

You may well have experience I don't have, but I can't get anyone to give me a real example of a title that clearly violates MOS, with full knowledge of those who chose the title. I don't mean an exceptional circumstance that argues for an exception to a MOS guideline; I mean a decision based on logic that would make a MOS guideline invalid in any title. Art LaPella (talk) 01:37, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

That's asking for something different, I think. Peter didn't say that a MOS guideline was invalid, just that other factors are also considered in titling discussions, which include some aspects of style. Kanguole 10:38, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Precisely (and note the words "also" and "some"). Peter coxhead (talk) 18:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Even if that distinction made sense (as previously explained, it doesn't; it's like saying my cat's opinion isn't invalid, it was one of the factors you took into consideration, and nobody can prove it wasn't), then we should be able to find examples of it. If someone took the MOS into consideration but made a different choice, then there should be examples of titles knowingly violating MOS, as described above.

Sarek of Vulcan had a better answer below, even though Star Trek Into Darkness and danah boyd don't clearly violate MOS (both are exceptional circumstances, and no MOS partisan would apply the capitalization guideline like scripture). The reasoning at Talk:Star Trek Into Darkness wasn't to recognize an exception. It was to overrule the MOS guideline altogether, without bothering to change it, although an attempt to change it did follow. And that attitude is spreading, despite all painstaking attempts to explain why guidelines can't work if we can't determine if they really mean what they say. MOS editors can take some blame too, because if the answer to everything is more rules then rebellion is predictable, but rebels should be removing rules, not just ignoring them and leaving them in place to mislead others. I think those who understand what it takes to achieve the goals of Wikipedia are getting as frustrated as scientists confronting Wikipedia:Randy from Boise. And I didn't sleep very well last night.

So I need at least a wikibreak. Somebody email me if they ever decide if MOS rules are real rules or not. To copyedit using MOS rules, only to be told afterwards that the rules of the game change after every play, arguably does more harm than good by enabling the behavior here. Art LaPella (talk) 18:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Further comments and discussion (continued)

Some history – TITLE used to be more explicitly aligned with MOS, back in 2008, when Special characters said "For the use of hyphens and dashes in page names, see Manual of Style (dashes)" and quite a few other explicit deferrals to the MOS. But there was a great upheaval in 2009, with some aspects of this being lost. In this case, it was PBS who demoted it with the same complaint he has now, expressed in his edit summary as "Changed wording about dashes so that this Policy is not dictated to by the MOS)". Pmanderson tried to further marginalize the MOS for dashes in particular here (it was later restored, for a while). Then in this edit by Rannpháirtí anaithnid the mention of MOS was hidden (piped), but still linked. It lasted, hidden, for about 15 months, and then Pmanderson nuked it in Jan. 2011 with his admonition to follow the styling in sources. When Noetica tried to fix it, Pmanderson reverted as "undiscussed change of policy"!. That "follow the sources" nonsense was partly fixed, but the link to the MOS as the relevant guideline does not seem to have survived the turmoil. Pmanderson eventually earned a permanent ban for his disruptive socking to evade his topic ban over such disruptive behavior, but much of the damage he did is yet to be repaired. This theory that the MOS is OK for styling text, but that we don't want it to affect styling in TITLES has reappeared at numerous RMs since; it seldom holds sway but often generates a lot of noise. Dicklyon (talk) 22:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there any real difference between "policy" and "guideline" when it comes to titles? For instance, does it matter to bot operators, or to editing gnomes who have to know what formatting can be automatically corrected because there is already a consensus for the correction? I think there has been a lot of confusion over this in the past, with some people not realizing they can just start editing, without knowing anything about MOS at all, since someone will come along later and clean up the technical details. There seems to be an argument being made (and by people who should know better!) that someone can be blocked for using a comma the wrong way. —Neotarf (talk) 23:41, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Is there a difference? To my mind, yes... but it's subtle and hard to explain. I think the confusion that sometimes occurs stems from the fact that Policy pages can and do contain guidance (and Guideline pages can repeat points of Policy and explain them in a focused way). To take this page as an example: there are essentially only three Policy points here:

All pages must have a unique title (for technical reasons)
Titles are ultimately determined by consensus.
Consensus on Titles is formed by applying five basic principles: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency.

To my mind that's the real extent of the policy. The rest of this page is guidance, designed to help editors understand and apply the five basic principles - to help them weigh and balance them appropriately in a given situation. Blueboar (talk) 02:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Totally agree. This idea that things like WP:COMMONNAME should be given a lot of weight and extreme interpretation because it's part of a policy page is crazy. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

It is no more crazy than insisting that the content of article should be verifiable. When Wikipedia was first set up a numbered index system (such as is used at the ODNB) could have been chosen with redirects to the number article. I don't know why it was not -- probably because it seemed complicated and no one appreciated back then how contentious an article title can be. What ever the reason since the very early days of the project it was agreed that names should be under their common names and not under formal names. Since then with the development of WP:V the refinement has been to restrict "common name" to frequency of use in reliable sources and not to look at usage in unreliable sources that was often done prior to 2008. So "common name" is no more crazy than insisting that the text in articles is verifiable and a WP:RM is the AT the equivalent of WP:PROVEIT. -- PBS (talk) 09:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Some observations about the above comments The Manual of Style seems to be unique in its broad participation of individuals who have no prior knowledge of the subject. Can you imagine someone going to a section of WP dealing with internal combustion engines, demanding to have the concept of "carburetor" explained, and complaining bitterly that the presence and comments of engineers and car mechanics prevented ordinary people from participating in the discussion? And can you imagine those engineers and mechanics carefully and patiently explaining everything, and encouraging the participation of non-specialists? That is exactly what is happening in this MOS discussion, and I suspect that MOS, which is often opaque even to those who do know what a style guide is, will emerge from the fray even stronger and more unique in the field than it was before.

Here are three observations about the discussion so far.

The non-specialists do not understand the proposal. In particular, they don't understand that "style" in this context means format, not content. In plain English, style can mean "a distinctive manner of expression (as in writing or speech)" (the second meaning here), but in the context of a style manual, it means "a convention with respect to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and typographic arrangement and display followed in writing or printing" (the sixth meaning). If this was worded so as to be more clear to the non-specialist, I suspect 90% of the opposition would evaporate. Example: The title "Bill Clinton" as opposed to "William Jefferson Clinton" is an example of a title's content, chosen on the basis of reliable sources and common usage. It would not be effected by this proposal. The capitalization of Bill Clinton, as opposed to bill clinton, is a matter of style, or format, and would be determined based on MOS guidelines already in place. This is how it is done already, the language just makes it clear, for those who would argue punctuation.
There are a few names here of those who won't accept the recent dash and hyphen consensus, and some others who never showed any interest in MOS before the recent disruptions at ANI, AN, RM, RFC/U, and at various articles over naming conventions for comets, airports, and wars. One has to wonder if their opposition to this proposal is a proxy for opposition to the hyphen and dash consensus.
Some, mostly those who oppose the hyphen consensus, have said that punctuation of titles should be determined by "reliable sources'. In one recent example, an editor telephoned an airport, asked the unfortunate individual who answered the phone if their airport was spelled with a hyphen or an n-dash, and then changed the article title accordingly. Can you imagine this happening at thousands of airports all over the world as various Wikipedians conducted their own independent research for each airport? Alternatively, some have searched for outside authorities to submit to in deciding questions of punctuation, capitalization, and display for WP. But Wikipedia should not choose its style in the manner of lemmings rushing to the sea. WP style guide is based on best practices elsewhere, yes, and also on the needs of its readers, but because it is uniquely electronic, it is certainly unique enough, and prestigious enough, to develop its own style guide. Wikipedia does not choose what leader to follow. Wikipedia is a leader.

—Neotarf (talk) 04:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant commentary, Neotarf! I commend it to all participants. If people really do come here with an open mind, they can truly gain insight from that. And if not? Well ... they could always confine themselves to content, and leave style matters alone. It's a broad church! ☺ Noetica^Tea? 05:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yup, it's well put. Thanks, Neotarf. Tony (talk) 05:42, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, both of you. The style engineers understand me well. The real challenge will be to hammer out language for the proposal that communicates this to everyone. —Neotarf (talk) 05:58, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Having read Neotarf's commentary, I think a more verbose explanation of "style" is needed in the question (and in WP:TITLE). I think that the definition of "style" in this context is completely different to the usage at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction aka WP:WAF. I am much more familiar with WAF over any other MOS page, and the useage style of style there is very different. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:01, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

That is a good, unaddressed point. However, nothing in that article conflicts with WP:TITLE. The only mention of a title I found was at WP:WAF#Conclusions, which shouldn't be controversial because it simply reminds us of WP:UNDUE. So nothing would change by making it explicit that WP:TITLE doesn't overrule that page. Art LaPella (talk) 07:03, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

You don't have to like the Manual of Style to like this edit. All it does is prevent people from claiming that the text covered by the guideline could be used as a title, and therefore the COMMONNAME policy overrules most any guideline they don't like. There is agreement that the title should be styled the same way as in the article, so the same MoS rules are applying, whether we make that explicit or not. We just need to make it explicit to stop the Wikilawyering. Art LaPella (talk) 07:03, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

So that is the motivation? Sounds reasonable. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I would state it in the reverse... if COMMONNAME indicates that the title should be given a specific style, then any repetitions of the title that appear in the main text of the article should be styled to match the title. In other words, if title (chosen based on the provisions in this policy) does not conform to our MOS guideline... then that name/term/phrase/etc. should be treated as an exception to the MOS. It does not negate the MOS... it is merely a "one off" exception to it. Blueboar (talk) 02:12, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, although given that by "COMMONNAME" you mean WP:COMMONNAME, I would say it is a wider issue than that. How precisely to write the topic/title of the article is determined by (1) the whole of WP:AT, based on a careful balancing of the five principles whenever the answer is not obvious; (2) applying the style guidance in the MOS provided that this does not conflict (e.g. provided it doesn't make the title less recognizable or natural). Then, of course, the running text uses the same format as the title (less the opening capital in some cases). Peter coxhead (talk) 10:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, superb analysis, and "The real challenge will be to hammer out language for the proposal that communicates this to everyone." Exactly! --Stfg (talk) 13:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Comment "Wikipedia does not choose what leader to follow. Wikipedia is a leader.", When it comes to content Wikipia is a follower. The statement also contradicts Noetic's statement higher up "I can understand ... The complexity and the arbitrariness of the details at WP:TITLE give me the creeps". -- PBS (talk) 09:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposed amendments

I thank PBS for proposing an amendment that he thought might be a good alternative. I'd like see more of those, as it looks like there's a chance to find a way to address some of the opposition. Let's collect numbered amendments or alternatives here, so we can discuss them. My apologies if I overlooked some; just add them. Dicklyon (talk) 03:36, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

1. proposed by PBS

Providing the other criteria as laid out in this policy and its naming conventions are met, article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style

2. proposed by Stfg

The WP:Manual of Style applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially its punctuation section. (This policy page on Article titles does not determine punctuation.)

3. proposed by Art LaPella

"The COMMONNAME process is not intended to apply to a title's style, which would conflict with the WP:Manual of Style guidelines."

4. proposed by Apteva

Delete the section in the WP:Manual of Style which summarizes title selection criteria and replace it with "Article titles are determined by the Wikipedia:Article titles policy."

5. proposed by GrandDrake and would be declared as a guideline

Providing the other criteria as laid out in this policy and its naming conventions are met then article titles are styled with the most common style, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, that follows the guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style

6. proposed by My76Strat

Title styling

Shortcuts
WP:COMMONSTYLE
WP:CST

This policy section should be read in conjunction with the MOS guidelines.

Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings,^{[n 1]} following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style.

Footnotes

^ "Styled in common with" is symmetrical and cooperative. The title and the rest of an article (text, headings, captions) are subject equally to the same styling principles (with adaptation, of course: headings and titles get a capital added). For example, the content of a title is settled as "mexican~american~war" under principles at WP:TITLE, rejecting the candidates "mexican~war" and "american~mexican~war", then styling kicks in immediately. Obviously, two capital letters at least, and a space: "Mexican~American war". Then from WP:MOSCAPS, a third capital: "Mexican~American War". And finally, following an ArbCom supervised consensus achieved for WP:DASH at WP:MOS, an en dash and not a hyphen, yielding the present title and the form used in the text: Mexican–American War. Some sources call it something else, some style it differently. But content and styling on Wikipedia are settled in this orderly manner.

The footnote can be made better, perhaps; and should be, so long as a defining clarity of scope and purpose is ensured. --My76Strat (talk) 12:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

What is "The COMMONNAME process"? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:44, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I meant the process of choosing a title according to WP:COMMONNAME. Of course we can change the words; my goal was only to bypass the argument that the edit changes the Manual of Style into a policy. Art LaPella (talk) 07:07, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

If it still isn't plain enough, we could just explicitly add (not replace) the sentence "This does not make the Manual of Style a policy." Art LaPella (talk) 07:20, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Four was proposed to keep title decisions in one place instead of having to refer to both WP:Title and WP:MOS to decide titles. It is not necessary to say that one guideline defers to another, or try to elevate MOS to policy, as if Wikipedia would grind to a halt if someone wanted to use, or did use "dot the i" for a movie title, or necessary to say that MOS has any bearing on choice of article titles. We do have MOS listed as See also at the bottom of the page, and that is sufficient. WP is hugely eclectic, and impossible to have one size fits all choices for titles. WP has 71 pages of title selection criteria, and to attempt to summarize them at MOS in a section is inappropriate. They can, however be summarized here, though, as was done for MOS, in creating a simple MOS. Title also has 71 pages and could just as easily have a simple title page. As to using a different title in the body, that is not an issue. For example, in Bill Clinton, the subject is referred to as Clinton throughout the article, not Bill Clinton. Apteva (talk) 19:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Good idea, to clearly separate and designate wp:MOS as secondary to wp:TITLE, both for simplicity and to keep from cross-posting rules about titles. Beyond the example of Bill Clinton, I would note for "Lyndon Johnson" that the name "LBJ" could be used in the article as a 2nd common-use name which did not match the title, which would violate the original proposed wording in this RfC. Also, there is no need to complicate the style of the common-name title, and example TV series title "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (with explicit dots) shows the impact of using older styles, where the acronym "U.N.C.L.E." is emphasized by dots in the title and that is what sources report as the common-name form. Perhaps a modern spoof might be titled "The Human from UNCLE" (without dots), but back in the day, the dots were used to style the acronym, and dots have remained in the common-name title although no longer current style. Each title would use its own common-name spelling, with no need to force dots into a newer video which had "UNCLE" as the acronym spelling. -Wikid77 (talk) 02:09, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Of the four... I could live with PBS's proposal (perhaps with tweaks) ... the others I do not like... as they do not really give us the flexibility needed to weigh Consistency (per MOS) against the other four core Principles by which we determine article titles. What ever the intent of the proposer, they can be understood (or misunderstood) as: "Titles must conform to the MOS... even when one of the other principles would indicate a non-conforming title would be better." Blueboar (talk) 20:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the proposal. It is not about content, or changing the principles; it is about style (punctuation, capitalization, typographic arrangement, and display).—Neotarf (talk) 01:50, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

~~Proposal 6 addresses my issue with the original wording. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:58, 25 January 2013 (UTC)~~ Struck out per discussion around Star Trek Into Darkness. For that matter, per danah boyd as well. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I like proposal six very much. The footnote could use a copy edit, but I find the body text to be on-target and brief and the footnote to be helpful to explain the nuance. AgnosticAphid talk 01:52, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

7. proposed by Blueboar

"The principle of Consistency includes consistency of styling. Editors should review Wikipedia:Manual of Style (MOS) when determining an appropriate title for an article."

This places the mention of the MOS in a proper context, and relates it to the 5 basic principles we use when determining titles. Blueboar (talk) 15:55, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I can support this one -- although (as you will know from previous discussions) I think consistency needs to be given less emphasis when making article title decision. -- PBS (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

(Discussion of preceding contribution)

Sometimes it should, sometimes it should not. This is true for all of the five principles... the weight we give each will shift from article to article, and is determined by consensus. Blueboar (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Consistency is often used to give weight to previous decisions and tends to reinforce an old consensus which may or may not be relevant given more recent guidance reflection the current consensus (and as such tends to negate consensus can change). There was no RM process when Zurich was moved to Zürich and it took many years to move it back because no consensus could be reached to do so, but that did not stop people using Zürich to justify names like the airport and the battles using Zürich, despite usage in reliable sources overwhelmingly being for Zurich, because they thought consistency was more important than usage in reliable sources. Of course as soon as Zürich was move back to Zurich, presumably the same people would have supported the change in the name of the airport disregarding usage in reliable sources, for consistency with the article Zurich -- but somehow most never do :-o Also when the article was at Zürich, it was used elsewhere to justify using accent marks in an article title by presenting the argument that because Zurich was spelt with a "ü", while most reliable English sources did not, this set a precedent for their particular favoured article title using accent marks even if the usage in English language sources woverwhelmingly did not. Don't see the argument presented the other way around very much -- "because the article Zurich follows English language usage we should use that as a precedent for ...". It is this sort of use of consistency over usage in reliable sources that is damaging to the project and why I think it need demoting to a second division. -- PBS (talk) 14:30, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Further comments and discussion (continued 2)

Dicklyon you wrote "Good idea. I'm glad PBS proposed what he thinks would help (though it's not quite a version I can support)", why not? -- PBS (talk) 15:07, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Noetica in response to me pointing out an inconsistency between the main MOS page and one of its sub pages you wrote "So let's improve those subpages of MOS. Always desirable." which seems to be agreement that sub-pages of the MOS may not reflect the usage on the main MOS page. Just as you say "it's hard work to develop MOS" it was hard work getting people to acknowledge that this was a policy page and that the naming convention guidelines must not contradict it. (A bit of history--some of the naming conventions such as WP:NCROY developed as a work around over the problem of common name including unreliable sources, and articles ending up at names such as "Bloody Mary" because it was the most popular name. Once the policy was clarified to survey only reliable sources, the need for WP:NCROY to contradict policy dissapeared, and now there is a sensible compromise that allows allows for William IV of the United Kingdom but Queen Victoria, There is a rule set that keeps to a house standard unless there is clear reason under common name to ignore the rule). It seems to me that this proposal is a retrograde step back to the old WP:NCROY ways where the rule should be followed even when reliable sources pointed to a different solution.

If the proposed current wording were to go without the qualification do you not see that this policy page's criteria would be hostage to being overruled by not only the main MOS page but any MOS sub page and whatever was on them? Something AT's own naming conventions (guidelines) do not do. AFAICT you seem to think this proposed change would only pull in the main MOS page. I do not. Would you be willing to include an amendment to make that explicit? -- PBS (talk) 15:07, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Since the MOS is somewhat stalled in the middle of process to spin most of its contents into subpages, I would not want to add something that provides an incentive to go the other way, to put things into the main page as if that gives them more force. They're all guidelines. The fear that referring to guideilnes from a policy page elevates them to policy seems bizarre to me, but we should go ahead and clarify that that's not the attempt (I thought my mention of "guideline" in the orignal proposal would make the status clear, but some disagree). And there is nothing special in MOS or TITLE about the need to work on avoiding inconsistency in guidelines; I don't see much actual problem of that sort that you mention once existed at WP:NCROY. The fear expressed by Wikid77, that someone will start putting en dash into the adjective form of Mexican American, rather than the correct hyphen in "Mexican-American person", or that they will start putting em dash into "co—op" should be easily dismissed by referring to what the MOS actually says about such things (he doesn't seem to have looked).

People do sometimes make mistakes on such things, and we fix them, removing inappropriate en dashes when they crop up. See the open RM at Talk:First Anglo–Maratha War, fixing a mass move of pages to en dash against the advice of the MOS; see my recent "technical" fix at Asboe-Hansen sign, where someone had used an en dash where a hyphen was correct. Yes, shit happens; we deal with it. If someone were to sneak a provision into the MOS that co—op should be styled with a dash, do you think that would "overrule" more sane and carefully negotiated guidelines? Or would it just get fixed when noticed? Dicklyon (talk) 17:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Oops, I failed to answer the "why not?". The reason I do not support PBS's version is that it invites a continuation of the ill-founded argument that COMMONNAME means to take style from sources. I could support a modified version if it was reworded to clarify that that's not the intent. In my original proposal (above this RFC), I tried to include more specifics of the intent, that we're talking about things like capitalization, punctuation, and italics; I think it's a good idea to not put such things into TITLE, since they're already covered in MOS; we just need to make it clear that we have house style that applies to titles, rather than letting usage and outside specialist styles drive our title styling decisions. Dicklyon (talk) 17:55, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

And that is the heart of the issue... this policy has a long history of favoring the preferences of sources (even when it comes to things like capitalization, punctuation and italics) over our own preferences. The proposal is seen as an attempt to overturn that history. Hence the resistance to it.

In reality, its a question of do we favor Recognizability (via COMMONNAME) or Consistency (via MOS). And the answer to that is: It DEPENDS. We have to look at the specifics ... We have to examine why a COMMONNAME is so common? Who uses it and why do they use it. Why did the sources use a style that is different from our MOS? Only after we have examined all these issues can we reach a proper consensus and decide whether we should favor Recognizability (COMMONNAME) or consistency (MOS). And the consensus choice we make will be different in each article we examine, because the specifics of each case are different. Blueboar (talk) 23:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

This edit removed several paragraphs of previous discussion; was that intentional? Either the format or pace of this discussion seems to have caused more than one editor to accidentally remove a bunch of it while adding their comments. -sche (talk) 17:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, that needs to be repaired. Feel free, or bug Art. Dicklyon (talk) 17:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I considered myself bugged as a proxy of Art. Repaired now.

Noetica^Tea? 22:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

What are the documents/policies/guidelines/(essays?) that effect article titles and what are their roles? —Neotarf (talk) 01:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:Manual of Style/Titles (MOS) (case, italics, articles, special considerations for titles not applicable to text of the article)

WP:TITLE (TITLE) (names, formats, preferred wording, changing titles, ...covers both content and form)

WP:PUNCT (MOS) (apostrophes, quotation marks, colons, other symbols that apply to all of article space)

I propose a guideline, which would be declared as a guideline, based on the proposal made by PBS. The changes were to make it specific to the article title and to include the issue of what is the most common style that follows the MOS:

Providing the other criteria as laid out in this policy and its naming conventions are met then article titles are styled with the most common style, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, that follows the guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style

This proposal would address my concerns. --GrandDrake (talk) 03:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

That's very confusing; not totally a bad idea, as we do usually combine considerations from TITLE, MOS, and sources in our title and styling decisions. But I don't think it will clarify anything or reduce the confusion that the original proposal was meant to address; it seems rather to increase confusion, especially in calling for assessing prevalence in sources as a primary styling consideration, which would override anything in the MOS that is not stated as a requirement (and pretty much nothing is). You had said in a comment above that "I have seen a few people on Wikipedia state that reliable sources shouldn't be a factor when it comes to deciding on the style of an article title." I don't believe that. "Shouldn't be a factor" would be an extreme position indeed. Can you find any examples of what you're referring to? Personally, I never make a styling move that I don't find support for in reliable sources. The flip side of this problem is what I'm trying to address, where editors cite COMMONNAME as meaning that we should adopt the style most common in sources, completely ignoring the MOS, essentially as your proposal suggests; as an example, you invoke this where we recently interacted, at Talk:Ultra high definition television#Requested move 3, which I expect is why you're here opposing this, yes? Dicklyon (talk) 04:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I think GrandDrake's version works. I don't understand "override anything in the MOS that is not stated as a requirement (and pretty much nothing is)". Pretty much everything is, except in the sense that guidelines have exceptions. And in case of an exception, that exception should apply to the title just as if it appeared in the text. I also don't understand "editors cite COMMONNAME as meaning that we should adopt the style most common in sources, completely ignoring the MOS, essentially as your proposal suggests". GrandDrake's proposal says the title "follows the guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style", so where did "completely ignoring the MOS" come from? I don't see any difference between version 1 and 5, except that 5 clarifies how to choose among MOS-compliant styles for a title, which is not among the issues that motivated starting this RfC. And as for the "Ultra high def" discussion, GrandDrake said things like "I have never seen a Wikipedia policy that states ..."; he was disagreeing about MOS, not simply ignoring it. Art LaPella (talk) 04:36, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

To understand what I meant by "completely ignoring the MOS", see GrandDrake's arguments in the RM I linked. He argued for several different alternative hyphenations, where usage in sources was very mixed, mostly based on a few "authorities" whose styling he liked. The MOS bit that he ignored is in WP:HYPHEN, which does not have anything like requirements, but provides the guidance "Hyphens can help with ease of reading (face-to-face discussion, hard-boiled egg); where non-experts are part of the readership, a hyphen is particularly useful in long noun phrases, such as those in Wikipedia's scientific articles: gas-phase reaction dynamics." He wants to ignore the guidance to use hyphens to clarify the structure for the readers, in favor of following his favoriate sources (not even majority sources, in this case, though). And inviting styling based on an assessment of the most common styling in sources is the way to chaos; we have an MOS for styling. Dicklyon (talk) 05:55, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

How did two become several? The term I proposed changed because the evidence changed due to the decision by the CEA which is a trade organization that represents over 2,000 consumer electronics companies. WP:HYPHEN says that hyphens can be used but that is a lot different than saying that they should be used. Hyphenation varies depending on the specific term, which is why most style guides suggest consulting a dictionary, and it even varies over time. For example the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary removed hyphenation from 16,000 entries in the 6th edition. What I disagree with is an opinion on hyphenation. --GrandDrake (talk) 07:54, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

The several styles you advocated included the ITU's Ultra-high definition television, then switched to Ultra high-definition television based on the CEA's "Ultra High-Definition Television" advertising mark. Then you accepted "Ultra high definition television" as better than the more reader-helpful hyphenated "Ultra-high-definition television". I never had the impression that commonness in sources was central to your arguments; you wanted to follow outside "authorities", and which authority you wanted to follow is what changed. That's not even what this is about. Dicklyon (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Several means more than two. Also I accepted the decision made by the closer but I also said that I thought that there would be more evidence for the CEA term in the future. Since than many articles and press releases have used the CEA term. And while you have always advocated for "Ultra-high-definition television" your original edit summary said that it was due to "hyphenation per recent books" and it was after the CEA term was announced that you said that a generic version of the term should be used. For anyone that wants to know the whole story there are pages of discussion about this issue at Talk:Ultra high definition television. Also it would be nice if we could discuss my proposal. For instance how would adding an objective way to determine the style of an article title cause more confusion? --GrandDrake (talk) 09:47, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

If the intent of the proposal is not to make the MOS into a policy for article titles why not declare it as a guideline? If COMMONSTYLE is for clarification why not use the most common style that follows the MOS? It would add an objective way to determine the style of an article title if there are several acceptable styles that could be used for an article title. You said that "I never make a styling move that I don't find support for in reliable sources" which may be true but you suggested less than a month ago in Talk:Ultra high definition television#Requested move 3 that the most common style used by reliable sources shouldn't necessarily be used. That instead a generic version of the term should be used instead. I consider that a subjective way to decide the style of an article title. --GrandDrake (talk) 07:54, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

??? The MOS is already a guideline. Why not follow it? And if you look at the evidence, you'll see that the title I favored was in fact more common in books and articles than the lower-case version of the CEA's mark that you argued for. See Talk:Ultra high definition television#Data; it doesn't mean I advocate styling by most common in sources, but it does show that you don't either. Dicklyon (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

The MOS is a guideline and it was not written as a policy. You said earlier that you aren't attempting to elevate the MOS into a policy in regards to article titles but why than are you against the proposal being declared a guideline? If it is intended as a guideline why not declare that it is a guideline? And are you against the idea of using the most common style that follows the MOS? If so could you explain the reason? Also I responded to your post on Talk:Ultra high definition television. --GrandDrake (talk) 09:21, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Answering concerns about the original proposal: an appeal, and an invitation

I have been working to keep things readable in the very long survey section, and I have had to delay making a general statement to address concerns about the original proposal. Now, I have answered the excellent contribution by Choess in some detail; and I take the unusual step of replicating it here. It illustrates the sorts of useful exchanges to be found above (necessarily boxed away, so that people can navigate at all). Noetica^Tea? 01:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Choess wrote, in his oppose vote:

Given the immense intellectual scope of Wikipedia, there is no common level of "general purpose" applicable for all articles. It is more important that a given Wikipedia article be consistent with the more detailed literature that supports it (into which the article should help guide them), than that we enforce an artificial and invented consistency across Wikipedia's breadth. This proposal, by elevating the MOS to policy by reference, favors the latter over the former, and I cannot agree with it.

And I replied:

That is a measured assessment Choess, but I think you miss some important points that have already been touched on. I resume some of them here, and add more:

There are certainly common standards in place that apply to all articles, as we would expect in any encyclopedia or systematic work of reference. WP:TITLE itself is one obvious set of standards. The fact that this completely new and unique Wikipedia is collaboratively written and edited, by volunteers, does not cancel the need to set standards. The special conditions here make the task quite new in its details, but at least as urgent.
No one denies the importance of keeping an article consistent within itself, in all sorts of ways. That is enshrined at the top of WP:MOS, and always should be. But too often we see that imperative used against broader kinds of consistency, in frankly fallacious arguments. The reader's experience is enhanced by uniform choices within an article, sure. But most readers read beyond a single article, and if haphazard styling choices intrude (with lapses from the best practice that MOS adopts and adapts from major sources), so much the worse. No one has shown why haphazard choices in the styling of article titles should be exempt! MOS is very attentive to how the principles it consensually adopts apply to them, too. Just as with any other publisher (to use that term broadly but aptly, for this context). MOS in no way ignores reliable sources. Of necessity though, the respect it shows them for style is not exactly like the immediate and simple respect for content, which is what WP:RS restricts itself to. Of necessity, it considers them in a more filtered and condensed way – like all guides to style, and after discussion of what they have to say.
The proposal does not elevate guidelines to policy, not even "by reference". See others' remarks about the distinction being unhelpful in any case; and then see how TITLE makes heavy reference to guidelines at WP:DAB – especially to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Even as I write, there are efforts to change that guideline without wide consultation (see WT:DAB); but the page remains guideline, not policy. So with WP:MOS. And believe me: there is far more scrutiny and input there (expert and general-community input) than at either WT:TITLE or WT:DAB.
There is nothing "artificial and invented" about the standards at MOS. Look at some of the standard sources to which it appeals, in this page linked at the top of WT:MOS. Is there any similar reference to common, best-practice standards for development of WP:TITLE? Or of WP:DAB? I'd like to see that.
So finally, I put it to you that MOS is in no way the weakest link among the pages that together, and harmoniously, settle the precise form of article titles. To acknowledge its role is not to elevate anything! It is simply to dispel uncertainty in this community of volunteers, on an issue that not everyone can immediately understand. Most volunteers on the Project have little exposure to the manual-of-style idea; so clarification is sorely needed.

Choess, I appeal to you. Reconsider your approach to the question in this RFC. Please let me know if there is any concern I have not addressed adequately.

And my invitation to everyone:

Now I make that same appeal, and that same invitation, to everyone. Please, right here and now, once and for all: if you have a concern or an uncertainty about the original proposal, and it has not been answered to your satisfaction: Raise your concern here, in a brief statement or question. I, or another proponent of the simple addition to WP:TITLE, will supply a brief answer. A great deal in the survey is repeated, of course. Let's centralise what we can here. And then, editors might reconsider or even reverse their positions, once things have been cleared up. It is a dialogue after all; and reasoning can change opinions.

Noetica^Tea? 03:26, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

[Continue in the subsection provided below please, not here.]

Q&A on the original proposal (see above)

[No discussion right here, please; short concerns and questions in one paragraph, and proponents' succinct answers.]

Q: Regarding artificial consistency: The phrase "artificial and invented" was taken out of context, as though the rules were artificial, but re-read the original context to note the objection was to force WP-wide artificial consistency, as "enforce an artificial and invented consistency across Wikipedia's breadth". There is no need to choose an article's title with system-wide style, but rather wp:COMMONNAME usage and merely limited to MediaWiki restrictions in title words, such as no hash-mark (in "C#"), until special characters are better supported. -Wikid77 (talk) 02:34, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
A: Thanks Wikid. Note that the excerpt is shown in its context (see Choess's paragraph at the top), and I cite it from there. I now address every keyword in your quote. Enforce? MOS is a guideline, not a policy. It will stay that way. Artificial ...? No more than WP:TITLE, etc.; and as I have explained, far less arbitrary and artificial. Twice I have linked a list of dozens of sources for the MOS kind of consistency. There are none at all for WT:TITLE. ... Invented consistency? No, simply applying principles of consistent styling, adapted from sources, in vigorous and careful debate toward consensus (endorsed by ArbCom, for dashes and hyphens). Consistency of a delimited, negotiated, and flexible kind (compared with WP:TITLE's rulings, for example.) Across Wikipedia's breadth? As things stand, yes. Of course. That's built into the idea of consistency. But it is style consistency that is tempered by local variations, of course, moderated by WP:MOS. Compare most other arrangements on Wikipedia. Finally, your concern over kinds and levels of style, and their detailed demarcation: There might be some work to do there; but it really is a separate question. Style is pretty well defined as things stand, with only small adjustments needed. No new problem arises from the simple proposal we make. Noetica^Tea? 03:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Q: Is it correct to say "Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings" when it seems intuitive that "Article text and headings are styled in common with the article's title"? Perhaps this is better stated as "The article's title style determines the style used for headers and text". --My76Strat (talk) 04:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
A. Thanks, Strat. A well-focused question, if slightly confusing in its detail. My answer: Yes, it is better stated the original way – and ordered like that, because the topic at WP:TITLE is article titles! I addressed that wording in the survey section, and it's good to do it here too. "Styled in common with" is symmetrical, cooperative, and an accurate wording. This way the title and the rest of an article (text, headings, captions) are subject equally to the same styling principles (with adaptation, of course: headings and titles get a capital added). To give a famous example very schematically, the content of a title is settled as "mexican~american~war" under principles at WP:TITLE, rejecting the candidates "mexican~war" and "american~mexican~war", then styling kicks in immediately. Obviously, two capital letters at least, and a space: "Mexican~American war". Then from WP:MOSCAPS, a third capital: "Mexican~American War". And finally, following an ArbCom-supervised consensus achieved for WP:DASH at WP:MOS, an en dash and not a hyphen, yielding the present title and the form used in the text: Mexican–American War. Some sources call it something else, some style it differently. But the content and styling on Wikipedia are settled in an orderly way. The present proposal confirms this way of doing things. Noetica^Tea? 05:41, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Q: What is the intended effect of the change? Who is the intended audience? What will start or stop happening as a result of the change? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:31, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
A: Thanks for prompting some straight and simple clarifications, Smokey. Intended effect: To reduce uncertainty about the relation between style and content in Wikipedia's 6,914,757 articles, and especially their titles. That uncertainty is inevitable in a huge project developed by volunteers. There are arrangements in place, but the size and complexity of Wikipedia has made it hard to see the underlying simplicity of those arrangements. Intended audience: Beginning editors (for whom it can all be quite daunting; and there are big efforts now to retain them); editors confident enough to make new articles or move established ones to new titles; experienced editors, who may be left uncertain by competing claims for the absolute supremacy of one Wikipedia page over another, when in fact they can (and do, and must) work in harmony. What will start or stop happening as a result of the change? Ah, it's no real change! It's just a recognition of how things actually work. See votes in support, from admins very experienced with requested moves (RMs), like JHunterJ and ErikHaugen. Confusion and uncertainty in RMs that involve style will be greatly diminished, so RM discussions will be fewer and shorter, and decisions made more reliably – and more acceptably to all parties. Fewer titles will be badly styled from the start, reducing the workload for admins and editors concerned with titles. Continuing improvement of WP:MOS and its subpages will be smoother; so will continuing improvement of WP:TITLE and its adjuncts, because everyone will know what is to be discussed where. (None of this will stop determined disruption by a minority opposed to consistent application of consensual styles; but it will lessen that disruption.)
And did I mention world peace? Noetica^Tea? 07:14, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Q: Is this section proposed as a level II of wp:title or a level III of wp:commonname? --My76Strat (talk) 08:20, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
A: Yes, a full section headed in source like this: == Title styling ==, inserted between == Common names == and == Neutrality in article titles ==. A short provision, but important enough for a top-level section of WP:TITLE. Anyway, the substance is what we need to agree on. Detailed improvements can always be negotiated later. We need to be definite now, to move forward at all. Noetica^Tea? 09:21, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Q: What is the reason for proffering such a broad measure with such absolute concision that its greatest peril is ambiguity? It is rare to find a section of policy that consists of only one sentence. I don't think this proposal is a one sentence provision either. --My76Strat (talk) 02:28, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
A: Another useful question. The reason? It was best to present a clear, simple proposal that builds on concepts already used in policy and guidelines. Most editors do make a distinction between style and content, and do understand the role of WP:MOS for style. Some who are not so clear about the distinction might benefit from "tutorial" material in the proposal. And sure: that might be added later. Why not? But if we make such add-on details as part of the proposal, it will not get support. People will reject it for some unimportant detail or other. Already there are several alternative proposals, including some very wordy ones. They are valuable to consider: but first things first. Vote first on the simple substance of the proposal, not on the exact formulation (which will always be contested). Noetica^Tea? 03:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Q:

Discussion of Q&A points

[Here only, please.]

I can see a real problem with using Manual of Style to style the body of the article but reliable sources to style the title. Take for instance, the article Aluminium. The article is written in British English and uses British spelling throughout, yet, according to reliable sources, the most common spelling is "aluminum", and the title would have to be changed to American spelling. It just doesn't make any sense to apply these standards only to the body of the article and force editors to do a huge amount of research to justify every comma and apostrophe and capitalization for every single title, and prove that it actually predominates in some reliable source. Add to that, new sources are coming up all the time, so an article that is right on Tuesday might be wrong on Thursday. That's what a reference like a style manual is for, so you can just look up the usual standard format, apply it, and go on to something else. —Neotarf (talk) 05:04, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

In such cases, a consensus is reached to use the recommendations of the naming authority in the field, regardless of the variety of English used in the article, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry). Once a title has been determined by WP:AT or a naming convention, the MOS shouldn't be forcing a different spelling in the body of the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Having the MOS say, "styling is determined by the most common style in reliable sources" would be a dramatic change, and it is not a question posed by this RFC. This RFC is solely about the style of article titles. If the consensus of this RFC is that the title should be determined by the most common style, the result would be that the title has a different style than the body of the article. For instance, and sorry to use the dash example again, the result could be an article titled "Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport," but the article text would, per the MOS, remain "Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport." But nobody has even attempted to explain how such a change would be an improvement. AgnosticAphid talk 14:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The MOS does not have to say that, an important premise in the MOS is consistency within articles (see the MOS lead and MOS:CONSISTENCY and MOS:FOREIGN) where this is emphasised. One of the important points where this is seen is in the use of foreign names, both the naming convention WP:ENGLISH and the MOS:FOREIGN guidance emphasise using the names cited in the article unless "[something else is] demonstrably more common" or "those spellings are idiosyncratic or obsolete. The reason for the wording in WP:ENGLISH was to make sure that the title fitted in with the content of the article with regards to the sources used to determine the title.The proviso in both is to stop silliness, either because the sources writhing an article are obsolete (eg Victorian PD sources for place names), or particularly in underdeveloped articles, where editors in bad faith pack an article with references that support his or her preferred spelling to game the system. The MOS lead say "Style and formatting choices should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole." So the MOS implies at several points within the main MOS page that the title usage within an article ought to be consistent, which means there is no reason to assume that after the first use of a title that the same wording has to be spelt differently or be presented in a different style within the article, because the title does not meet the specific style requirements of the MOS. -- PBS (talk) 17:42, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

If the new MoS rule is "find out if a phrase is used as a title, either in the same article or (perhaps) in any other article, and if it is, then disregard the rest of the Manual of Style", then I would think that rule should be stated more explicitly. Especially if it means explicit MoS examples like Mexican–American War should be ignored completely. Art LaPella (talk) 22:11, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this comment perfectly illustrates the silliness of the opposition to this RFC, which is just about making what is already the policy (the article titles policy, including COMMONNAME, controls the substance of an article title; the MOS controls the formatting of the title and the article) more explicit. If you wish to start a separate RFC about whether we should ditch the MOS in lieu of a rule that says, "Wikipedia has no in-house style; instead, defer to the most common style in reliable sources", then go right ahead! It would probably be illuminating. But until that happens, it remains the case that if there were a consensus that the just the title follows reliable sources and not the MOS for punctuation, then the body of the article would have a different styling for the article subject than the title, which really makes no sense at all. AgnosticAphid talk 09:55, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I find your inference perplexing, as no one has suggested that we ignore the MOS all that has been said is that titles should follow usage in sources (including style if that is an issue -- normally it is not as most reliable sources are silent on the issue of style other than spelling) and that there should be consistency within articles, both those things are already in the AT and the MOS. Let me give you an example. Melee/mêlée follows usage in the article. In another article it could be spelt either way, (redirects are cheap), but what we do not encourage is using both Melee and mêlée within an article such as the Battle of Bouvines and the Battle of Agincourt. I see no difference between spelling and other style issues, and it seems to me that is what the current guidance in both AT and the MOS recommends, through consistency within articles. -- PBS (talk) 14:21, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

First of all, this RFC is only about style. Nobody is saying that the actual substance of the title should be determined by anything other than wp:at, including commonname. Making this distinction clear is the whole point of adding the proposed text to WP:AT. Second, please explain how we could achieve consistency with the body and the title of the article if the style of the title were to be determined by "usage in sources" and not the MOS, while the style of the body would continue to be to be determined by the MOS and not usage in sources?
Third, please recall that as you are aware the "current guidance" in the MOS is, and will remain, "MoS applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Wikipedia:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)" AgnosticAphid talk 14:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
"no one has suggested that we ignore the MOS all that has been said is that titles should follow usage in sources (including style ..." Doesn't that mean "title style follows sources, regardless of the MOS; the rest of the article follows the title, also regardless of the MOS; but perish the thought that we're ignoring the MOS"?
"most reliable sources are silent on the issue of style other than spelling" Almost any phrase with a MOS issue is either a title, or something that might be a title until you look it up. Reliable sources would have to say it one way or the other way, so how could they be silent?
The underlying problem is: If a copyeditor applies a rule from MOS or anywhere else, he doesn't expect to be reverted on the grounds that some other rule overrides it. You'll lose a lot of copyeditors mistreating them that way, and no speeches on this page can bring them back. If a rule doesn't count, don't just ignore it, remove it. Art LaPella (talk) 07:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Noetica for that very nice answer to my question number two. I finally understand the sentiments being conveyed. I think it would be good to add a footnote to the proposed wording so you can clarify the gist, and reduce ambiguity. --My76Strat (talk) 06:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Art LaPella you write above "If a copyeditor applies a rule from MOS or anywhere else, he doesn't expect to be reverted on the grounds that some other rule overrides it". This is "anywhere else" and it is policy. So a copy editor ought to be aware of the guidance given in this policy. Besides there are lots of other contradictions in both the MOS and other guidance. For example the MOS says (MOS:REFPUNC) "The ref tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, including any punctuation (see exceptions below)" yet at the top of that section the MOS says "main CITE" which explicitly says If the article you are editing is already using a particular citation style, you should follow it; if you believe it is inappropriate for the needs of the article, seek consensus for a change on the talk page. (WP:CITEVAR). -- PBS (talk) 14:02, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

If a copyeditor reads the infamous "Comet Hale–Bopp" guideline, he won't consult the title policy before acting, for the same reason he won't consult the music guideline before acting. It isn't music and it isn't a title. "Comet Hale–Bopp" means "Comet Hale–Bopp", not "Disregard these words and almost everything else on the page, and consult reliable sources or a comparable title instead."

I take MOS contradictions seriously. I nagged them for years until this list was fixed. Your CITEVAR sentence can't be taken literally, because it doesn't justify the style a child might use, for instance. Contradictions that might be clarified at the expense of further bloating to an already unreadable document, should be distinguished from guidelines you want us to ignore completely, left in the document for no purpose other than to mislead copyeditors. You wouldn't put up with it if the roles were reversed. Art LaPella (talk) 21:08, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Obviously you have not see the blood drawn over the use of <ref>{{harvnb|smith|1066|p=1}}.</ref> or {{sfn|smith|1066|p=1}} although those two produce identical output some will edit war to keep one of the other justifying it with that sentence in CITEVAR. It has also has more real world applications if someone has styled things the nature journal way (footnotes to the left of punctuation), and that usage completely negates the advise in the MOS. -- PBS (talk) 16:48, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

If you're explaining why we need CITEVAR, no contest. You are correct to say I haven't studied the details of citations, or had first-hand experience with resulting edit wars. I shouldn't have to, in order to mechanically delete the space in front of a footnote according to WP:REFPUNC. I don't understand how that affects the larger question. Can I copyedit using the MOS? Or do you expect more and more copyedits to be subject to a drama to determine whether to use an explicit MOS guideline, or to survey reliable sources instead? If you do, good luck finding copyeditors willing to volunteer to be part of such frustrating inaction. Art LaPella (talk) 20:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Statement: I am not satisfied with the original wording because I consider the expression "styled in common with" to be too vague, and this objection has not been answered to my satisfaction. But the discussions above have made the intention clear enough, and I am willing to support the use of that wording in the policy provided that it is combined with the clarifying footnote, as shown by proposal 6 above by User:My76Strat. It would be interesting to know if any other opposers of the original wording could also live with that compromise.
(I have no question and am not prepared to make a statement in the Q&A section on its terms, where any response can be made and there is no right of threaded reply to it.) --Stfg (talk) 12:59, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Those are perfectly understandable concerns, Stfg. On the last one: This is threaded discussion, and nearly all parts of this RFC are threaded discussion. Including, in a way, the survey. You may not like the structure imposed at the start for this RFC. Actually, nor do I! I have a different idea about how to frame an RFC. Now look, the Q&A section is for the proponents to answer straight questions directly. People need those explanations. If that strikes you as unbalanced, for example, by all means start a similar Q&A for definite opponents to respond at. For the rest, I invite you to look in particular at Q5 and its answer. Do you really disagree with the core of the proposal, or just its wording? It is simple, really. Something here had better be simple! If there is an essential problem with that straightforward inclusion in WP:TITLE, by all means pursue alternatives and they can be tested in debate. But if this huge RFC grows too unwieldy and too unreadable, no resolution is possible. We must work together to make progress. Noetica^Tea? 03:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

(Thank you. In fact, I quite like the way the survey is structured, as it helps one to see the overall picture. But when I have made contributions here and received replies accusing me of quibbling, carelessness, and even misrepresentation, it is natural that I feel I am being shouted down and treated as incompetent or a troll, when I am neither. And natural, too, that I won't set myself up for a risk of more of the same under a condition that I can only reply in another subsection lower down.)

Now for the substance. I am in favour of the intent, now that it has been clearly explained by editors like Dicklyon and Neotarf, and in the "mexican~american~war" example. But words added to policies must not depend on understanding gained from reading of very long (or any) threads on talk pages; they must be clear in themselves. This is not a quibble, because the purpose of policies is to tell editors what they are asked to do, and they should not be expected to refer to talk pages (much less to archives, where all this will end up quite soon). I think the RfC wording is far too vague to satisfy this criterion, and to my mind this is clear grounds to oppose. I have read Q5 its answer, and it actually strengthens my opposition. As Einstein said (in some words or other): make things as simple as possible -- but no simpler. Also, I oppose the suggestion of inserting the RfC words first and then adding the tutorial later (with no guarantee that this will even get support). Now I have a couple of questions for you:

I understand from the answer to Q5 that you don't like adding the footnote, but is P6 a compromise you could live with in the interest of making progress?
A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the MOS contains the words "MoS applies to all parts of an article, including the title. See especially punctuation, below. (The policy page Wikipedia:Article titles does not determine punctuation.)", and I proposed that this could be included here with the adjustments that now form P2. Your reply included this: "What you are missing is that it needs to be mirrored at this page." Do you now see that my suggestion was precisely to mirror it on this page? What is your present view of P2?

(For the record, I prefer P6 over P2, but I'd still like to know your view.) --Stfg (talk) 13:36, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Stfg:

On civility, tone, and process: I can see that you are a thoughtful contributor to the discussion, and I must ask you to be patient if my own responses to you fall short of perfection. Answering you in the survey, I wrote: "We can all quibble over wording. I could do the same, in this present case." I do not intend the word "quibble" pejoratively, but neutrally. Not all quibbles are mere quibbles. I am accused of quibbling all the time at WT:MOS, where bitter experience shows that great precision is necessary. Please note my explanation in the survey, including this: "Forgive me, Stfg: I cannot think that a subtle criticism of that sort is constructive, if you use it to warrant an 'oppose' (despite being neutral on the content)." RFCs are hard work. Ever put forward a major one yourself? ☺?

On substance: I agree with you: the implications of the simple proposal are hard to know, for those not intimately connected already with the history. We might all learn from an RFC like this. We all tend simply to assume common ground: that others know what we know. A deep and pervasive problem. I did not write the proposal; but for me and some others (see support votes) it works well, because I share with the proposer Dicklyon a common experience of the difficulties it addresses. I think we might all do better next time, if another RFC comes up on the same question. Extremely valuable to go through this one first!

It is possible to set out a proposal to show intent clearly, without commitment to a final wording. This was not done, and maybe it should be. That will need careful thought.

Your particular questions:

Yes. Proposal 6 from My76Strat is very clear, very helpful. I love it. I am opposed to notes like that on general grounds. ("Footnotes" is a misleading term; it is contrasted with "endnotes", but that difference applies only in books with pages, not on Wikipedia pages.) I would certainly vote to support it, if it were a main proposal. Detailed implementation could be negotiated later.
I also love your Proposal 2! I would vote for it, too. Tutorials could be linked at a suitable small page, or wherever. Thank you for explaining about the mirroring. Till now I did not understand this: "Does this [that is, the wording at WP:MOS] not say exactly what you are trying to say, or am I still missing something? If it does, why not just use the above text?" I thought that by "just use [it]" you meant "just have it at WP:MOS"! Your followup about "relocalising" did not fix things for me. I thought you were clarifying how to read your preceding comment, not that this wording should actually be replicated at WP:TITLE. I now see what you meant. No one's fault alone, I think; but I take my share of it. I had not tracked how the proposed amendments fitted with people's comments elsewhere. Inevitable, in a huge complex RFC. None of us sees all parts of the elephant. All fixed now?

Thanks! This has helped a lot. It can all feed into a more streamlined process later.

Noetica^Tea? 00:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the way I shoehorned this RFC into an ongoing proposal discussion was awkward at best. I appreciate the way you are organizing feedback to better understand what the objections are, which way we can go to rephrase the proposal to address them. I agree with some of the objections that the proposal seems too vague and broad, as if it is hiding its underlying motivation and expected efffect; and that maybe "COMMONSTYLE" was an impolitic shortcut in the way it contrasts with "COMMONNAME". These were of course not hidden, and were obvious to those of us already involved in the discussion, but they can be issues for those who came here in response to the RFC. So finding a wording that converts some of the objecters to supporters will be needed to make an overwhelming majority of support, or better, to reach consensus. If we get down to where only the few avowed dash-averse and MOS-averse editors (Apteva, Born2cycle, Wikid77) object, we'll probably be done. Dicklyon (talk) 00:52, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you both. Noetica, that clears the air splendidly. I think we're on the same page now. Dicklyon, thank you for all the time you've spent clarifying the issues and helping everyone's ideas to be noticed and understood. Good luck. --Stfg (talk) 08:52, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad that at least some wikipedians are not at each others' throats. The disruption of last few months, however exhausting, is not over, however. It continues at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case. —Neotarf (talk) 14:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Distinguishing between Descriptive Titles and Name Titles

One thing that has not been raised yet... this policy draws a distinction between "Descriptive Titles" and "Name Titles". To my way of thinking, Descriptive Titles (which we, the editors of Wikipedia, create or invent) should conform to the MOS guidance. Can everyone agree on this? If so, then we can narrow the debate ... we are really only talking about situations where a Name might not conform to our MOS. Blueboar (talk) 14:43, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

That might be the case. But it's complicated by the fact that people will call things "names" when it's not so clear. Airports provide a good example of this. Many airport article titles are not really the names of the airports, but are common things that they are called. What, for an example of one with an open RM, is the name of Rome's Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport? Or Málaga Airport or the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge for examples that got a lot of argument. And is Ultra high definition television a name? See the many RMs there. Apteva had been repeatedly pushing this theory that if it's a proper name, it can't be styled (differently from what?). He said that if we wanted to keep the en dash in Mexican–American War we'd have to agree to lowercase "war". He tried that for bridges and comets, too. His ideas got essentially zero traction (until Wikid77 came along). We have pretty clear guidelines on composition titles; those are sometimes called into question, as at Star Trek into Darkness, which is really a complicated case as it turns out. And trademarks; see The Lego Group and K. D. Lang RMs (the latter closed ~~against the advice of the MOS~~ with statement "resolution of inconsistencies in various capitalization guidelines is unproductive on an RM by RM basis", suggesting that it should be worked out centrally, like at the MOS). Dicklyon (talk) 01:29, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Once the current RfC closes, I have been thinking that an RfC on why we are having so many issues with article titles might be productive. If we were able to figure out why we are having problems, then maybe we could propose a solution that addresses those problems. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a huge part of it right here; if we could get this simple description of what we already do made obvious at TITLE, it would solve a lot. A second element, not as common, is whether we follow local or international use. Both have straightforward answers, but also people who don't like those answers and continually try to get them changed through local RfMs. — kwami (talk) 02:12, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, bring it up now and it might bear on the present proposals. Dicklyon (talk) 02:20, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

But TITLE already has a simple description of what we already do ... we attempt to reach a consensus by balancing five basic principles. Blueboar (talk) 02:31, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it does. And we should follow that. Too often editors act like the disambig/primaryname guidelines, or commonname, or outside authorities, trump the consideration of the basic principles. And even when we agree on a title, there are still styling questions that people argue over, some preferring to style per the MOS, and some otherwise. Dicklyon (talk) 03:21, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Correct... disambig/primaryname guidelines, commonname, outside authorities, the MOS, etc. do not trump the consideration of the basic principles... because they are part of that consideration. They are all things we examine in order to reach a consensus as to how to balance the basic principles (ie how much weight each of the basic principles should be given in a specific case). Blueboar (talk) 04:12, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. I was trying to answer Vegaswikian about "why we are having so many issues with article titles"; I think it's that reaching consensus in these considerations is sometimes made difficult by strong adherence to things that miss the point. Yes, arguments about styling per MOS versus other considerations is sometimes part of that. Hence my proposal above to clarify what the consensus process is, separating titling decisions from styling decisions. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that you can not always separate titling and styling. Let's take a hypothetical... Let us suppose that we are writing an article on a poem entitled: "The years he attempted it included: 1941 and 1943". It makes sense for us to use the poem's title as the title of Wikipedia's article on it. Whoops... Note that this title contains a colon, and WP:MOS guidance on the use of colons states:

Correct: He attempted it in two years: 1941 and 1943.
Incorrect: The years he attempted it included: 1941 and 1943.

Thus, according to our MOS, the poet made a style error. However, it is not our job to correct the poet's style error. The title of our article should NOT follow the MOS, but should instead entitle our article using the poet's (incorrect) colon placement. Blueboar (talk) 17:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Has anything like that come up? It seems like a bit of a stretch hypothetical. We do adjust caps and punctuation sometimes in titles, but like MOS:TM, only by choosing among the styles used in sources; that is, we don't have sources voting, but we also don't invent new stylings. Dicklyon (talk) 17:34, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea whether something like that has come up, yet... but it certainly could. The point is that before we apply the MOS to a Wikipedia title, we should first determine whether the non-MOS-conformed styling should be treated as being part of a proper name by a significant majority of our sources. If so so, it would be wrong for us to "correct" the name by "correcting the styling error... we should leave it be and not apply the MOS. Blueboar (talk) 19:35, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I might be in favor of extending the idea in MOS:TM to apply to proper names more generally: that is, we choose from among styles in sources the one that is closest to normal Englisih styling as adopted in WP. That's why we choose the en dash in Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (which many consider to be a proper name). It's not a "correction", but a styling. In some cases this may lead to unsatifactory and inconsistent results, like when a small city A and county B own an airport that they call "A-B County Airport", which is so seldom mentioned in sources that we don't find it anywhere as "A–B County Airport" with en dash, which is the obviously correct way to do in the context of style that uses en dashes as we do, and in which the styling with hyphen suggests that the county name is A-B. Which way would you suggest styling the title on that one? Would you consider the hyphen to have been an intentional part of the formal proper name "A-B County Airport"? Or leave it free to change to a house style as many publishers would feel free to do if it ever got mentioned in their publications? Apteva made himself famous by claiming that airport names and proper names use hyphens in general, which is crazy and got no traction; but what's your thought on this? Dicklyon (talk) 20:08, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I would agree that "Seattle-Tacoma International Airport" (or "Seattle–Tacoma International Airport") is a proper name. And the horizontal line in that name is a part of that name. Thus (to my mind) the choice of whether to use a dash or hyphen is not ours to make. That choice belonged to whoever officially named the Airport. We may think they made the wrong choice, but it was theirs to make. This is a case where I actually would look to the "Official name" for guidance. I would ask: what appears on the official letter head of the Airport's administration? That dash or hyphen is the "official" styling of the name. Now, if a significant majority of sources use something different, we can follow the sources instead of the "official" name... and we have guidance to tell us how to do that: WP:COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 00:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I have searched for evidence in support of Apteva's idea that naming authorities of airports or anything else have made explicit punctuation or styling decisions about those names. The evidence however contradicts that theory. Official documents and signs of most airport authorities show the same random style variations that other reliable sources show, often mixing things like space, hyphen, spaced hyphen, en dash, dot, and slash within a web site and even within an official document declaring the naming. Many such docs have been linked and discussed at relevant RM discussions (see Talk:Baltimore–Washington International Airport#Requested move, for example though that's not its official full name). There is just no evidence that the name styling is part of their official decision, in almost all cases. And where it might be, we have no evidence that it is. So, if Frommer's and Fodor's guides can use en dashes in airport names, can't we? Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

My take on that debate is as follows: Both you and Apteva seem to be making the same mistake, but in opposite directions... you are both trying to make a general uniform rule out of something that should be determined on a case by case basis. You are both trying to force uniformity on something that isn't uniform. We can not say "airports should be styled with a dash", nor can we say "airports should be styled with a hyphen". This is because airport X might use a dash in its name, while airport Y might use a hyphen. Since the airports themselves are inconsistent, we can't force consistency on them. Its like trying to set a firm "rule" about the spelling of Geoffry/Jeffrey or Elizabeth/Elisabeth... It would be improper for us to make that decision. Blueboar (talk) 14:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I have to strongly disagree, Blueboar. To continue with the damned tired hyphen/dash examples, the width of the horizontal line is entirely and nothing but a matter of style. Pushing the opposite view will actually violate several policies! Unless you personally designed the airport's official logo, you cannot even prove whether it uses a dash or a hyphen, because you do not have the exact font file used by the designer, and anyone who knows jack about typography knows that fonts are wildly inconsistent on hyphens, dashes and minuses, often using the exact same glyph. Asserting that the One True Name of some airport uses (or doesn't use) a hyphen based on something other than the corporate logo, such as text in a press release a) has the same problem (a serious WP:NOR issue), unless you personally wrote that press release yourself, and b) has the further basic logic problem that we know that secretaries who type up stuff like that will use a hyphen 99 times out of 100 even if they actually know when to use a dash, simply for expedience (keyboards have hyphen keys, not dash keys and no one gives a damn other than grammar conscious writers to whom the distinction is meaningful, and a few irrational "death to dashes" cranks who hate such writers. The latter is a WP:V/WP:RS problem in disguise: Misc. paperwork by some corporate entity, produced by who knows within that organization, under what deadline and other pressures, are not reliable sources for the minutiae of typography. (There are other problems with this whole line of reasoning, too, such as the common case that different takes on logos over time use different typography, and plain-text not following the same typography as the logo, e.g. "eBay" (plain text) and "ebaY" (logo, until mid-2012). WP does not care about any of this crap anyway, per MOS:TRADEMARK and WP:OFFICIALNAMES. We write Macy's, not "Macy^ਭs". This is not different in any way at all. Learn this; know it: Wikipedia does not honor grammatically or stylistically non-standard typographic quirks of logos or official names. MOS, by it's very nature, like all other style guides on the planet, observes the various ways to approach any given style issue, picks one, and sticks to it. It is not comparable to "Elizabeth" vs. "Elisabeth"; that's a factuality matter, not a style matter. The length of the horizontal line spacer is style, not spelling. You are sorely confusing the difference between Seattle–Tacoma Airport and Seattle-Tacoma Airport with the radically different and very serious factuality-of-the-name difference between Seattle–Tacoma Airport and Seeatuhl–Tikomuh Ayrporrt. Changing style is not comparable to changing spelling. We absolutely, positively can say "Airports [that fit the grammatical pattern that calls for an en dash] should always be styled with an en dash", because this is a style matter, solely, WP has a long-standing consensus that we use en dashes where they are grammatically appropriate, ARBCOM recognized this consensus as valid, and we further have consensuses against "official" name and trademark typographical shenanigans. Just WP:DROPIT and WP:GETOVERIT. Anyone who continues to rail against longstanding consensus about typographic trivia like this, and longstanding practice that WP:AT necessarily derives its style guidance from WP:MOS, needs to read WP:NOTHERE and meditate upon just what it is they are prioritizing their WP time around and why. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 15:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Sigh... OK, we are beginning to let tempers get in the way of a productive discussion. Probably because we are discussing an example that has been hashed and rehashed at WT:MOS.

So let me shift the hypothetical away from previous (heatedly discussed) examples, and make my concern as simple as possible. Suppose we are writing articles on two people, one styles his name: John Smith-Jones... The other styles his name: Fred Smith–Jones. According to our MOS, one of these people is styling his name "incorrectly". My question is... Does Wikipedia have the right to "correct" one of these names and conform it to our MOS? I don't think we do. Names don't fit into nice "always" patterns. They can be idiosyncratic... and very personal. That's my concern in a nutshell. Blueboar (talk) 16:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, that would be an interesting case. But nothing like it has ever come up, or ever will, since nobody styles their name with an en dash. What's your point? And where does the MOS say anything about correcting? Dicklyon (talk) 17:19, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

And if you've followed the discussions about airports at all, you'll know that my position is not to always style them with en dashes; and that there's nothing special about airports in my styling considerations. I've made lots of airport moves, involving spaces, hyphens, dashes, name choices, etc. on a case-by-case basis. You're right that Apteva did assert "airports are always spelled with hyphen", which was nonsense. When he pointed our that many airport articles had spaced en dashes, spaces hyphens, slashes, etc., I worked on finding out what styling would be most appropriate, since most of these were mistakes of editors and bots (not mistakes of outside naming authorities). The fact that DashBOT had incorrectly converted large numbers of spaced hyphens to spaced en dashes had left quite a mess to work on, and added fuel to the anti-en-dashers. Dicklyon (talk) 17:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

But what if it did come up... how would you answer the question? (Just because something hasn't happens yet, we can not assume it never will.)

Understand that my concern is broader than dashes and hyphens. People are given (or adopt) idiosyncratic names for all sorts of personal reasons. If it isn't a dash/hyphen, it could be some other style idiosyncrasy. And this policy is, in many ways, all about accounting for idiosyncrasy to balance the 5 basic principles. Blueboar (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I believe the general guidelines of the MOS are to NOT respect the idiosyncratic stylings that sometimes come up to get one's name or trademark to stand out more. See MOS:TM. For names, we don't do all caps for those performers who style themselves so, but we do sometimes do all-lowercase, which is less obnoxious looking (k. d. lang being an example in the MOS). How other odd styling cases might be decided would depend; but the MOS would be a good place to decide. Dicklyon (talk) 06:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Dicklyon maybe it is because you have not been watching this page for as long as some have, so that you have not had to deal with the contradictions that have driven the evolution of the policy. Over the years it has been simplified to make it more source driven because in the long run complicated rules such as WP:NCROY had caused people to make decisions that met the rules but did not conform with what reliable sources do.

Your solution to a problem that Blueboar brings up is instead of simplifying the proposed rule (as my suggested alteration would do), is to add yet more complexity to the MOS to deal with an specific potential naming problem ("I might be in favor of extending the idea in MOS:TM to apply to proper names more generally: ..."), which is automatically dealt with by following usage in reliable sources as is part of the flexible algorithm described in the AT policy.

I do not think that more complexity is ~~not~~ the way to go, and it is contrary to how over the last few years the naming conventions have gone.

To give another example this policy states "Avoid definite and indefinite articles" which is (or was last time I bothered to look -- which was years ago) what the MOS says, But it has a specific get of jail free "... unless they are part of a proper name". There is no reason to include that in the MOS so why is it there? If your proposed wording was to be implicated we end up with a circular linkage: Wikipedia:MOS#Article titles --> main Wikipedia:Article titles --> "Article titles are styled in common with article text and headings, following guidelines in the WP:Manual of Style". I guess your solution would be to remove the "main Wikipedia:Article titles" from the MOS. My solution is not to include your proposed wording in this policy unless it contains a restriction along the lines I have suggested to make it clear the it is the policy page that the player is sitting upon when the music stops.-- PBS (talk) 19:09, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Names and MOS - arbitrary break

The point that Blueboar made at the start of this section is a non issue, because there is no reason not to to follow the MOS style guide for descriptive names (as we do for NPOV). For a very high proportion of non descriptive names there is no reason not to follow the MOS guidelines, and they are already without this additional wording, But for those cases where there is a contradiction in style between the usage in reliable sources and that of the MOS, the titles should be based on the format used in reliable sources (a policy choice based on another policy WP:V). -- PBS (talk) 19:09, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

PBS, I have no problem with how commonname helped avoid the NCROY problem, but you're again mixing up titling decisions with styling decisions. And I'm not advocating for more complexity, just noting that a narrow concept in one styling guideline might be made more general if that meets the needs better. The alternative of following sources for styling has never been a part of TITLE or MOS, in spite of your attempts to de-link MOS guidance from TITLE a few years ago. If you disagree, show me where... and if you have any example of where styling a title per the MOS is not satisfactory, or "contradicts" reliable sources, let's see them; so far nobody has provided examples, just wild hypotheticals. Dicklyon (talk) 19:44, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Dicklyon, the reason why TITLE never bothered to spell out the alternative of following sources for styling is that it spells out that alternative for determining the entire article title (which would include the styling). Blueboar (talk) 21:42, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

If that were the case, you'd point out examples, would you not, of where usage in sources has prevailed over the recommendations of the MOS? Dicklyon (talk) 22:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Essentially you are asking me to "prove a negative"... to come up with examples of title discussions that were settled based on COMMONNAME, and where the MOS wasn't discussed (but could have been). In these situations, it wasn't a question of usage in sources "prevailing" over the MOS... because the MOS was never even raised in the discussion. There was an assumption that any styling in the sources should be carried over into the title. Blueboar (talk) 14:51, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I meant example where the title consensus came out contrary to the guidelines of the MOS, whether it was involved in the discussion or not; or examples where a title is styled per the MOS but there appears to be consensus that there's a better style we should adopt from sources instead. I'm still trying to understand where there are cases where my suggested proposal does not describe current practice, or does not correspond to a desirable outcome. Then we could look and see whether the MOS and TITLE are in conflict in some way that can be fixed. Fixing by saying to style titles per the most common styling in sources would be a harsh and chaotic way to fix it, since it would either result in titles being inconsistent with text styling, or the MOS being completely irrelevant, neither of which is a direction that the community is going to support. Dicklyon (talk) 16:48, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Such an example wouldn't mean the MOS is completely irrelevant... it would just mean that an exception to the MOS guidance was made in that one particular case. There would be no need to change the MOS, just an acceptance that. in that particular case, an exception to the MOS should be made. Blueboar (talk) 17:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. We all know that guidelines have occasional exceptions. I'm still wondering what examples might be; perhaps Star Trek into Darkness would capitalize Into, as most sources do? Maybe we can modify the proposal to explicitly mention occasional exceptions being possible, as with any guideline? Dicklyon (talk) 18:55, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Is that not what my proposed addition "Providing the other criteria as laid out in this policy and its naming conventions are met..." would do? -- PBS (talk) 08:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The thing is, there is no need for the proposal in the first place. As far as article titles go, conforming to the MOS is covered under the principle of Consistency. Consistency is already one of the basic principles we consider when choosing a title. However, there are four other principles we also have to consider. Ideally, none of them are favored over the others. However, in reality there are often topic specific concerns that we have to take into consideration, discuss and weigh against each other. Yes, sometimes Consistency will outweigh the others, but at other times Recognizability will outweigh the others, and so on). We can't say "always follow the MOS" because doing so favors Consistency over the others... and sometimes an issue will crop up that tells us to put Consistency on the back burner and favor one of the other principles instead. Blueboar (talk) 22:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Does that mean Comet Hale-Bopp (hyphen) in the title because Consistency doesn't always win, and Comet Hale–Bopp (dash) in the article because it's an explicit guideline example? Does it ever end? Art LaPella (talk) 23:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Move discussions that came to a different conclusion than was argued for on the basis of MOS include Nanking Incident, Wild Turkey, Oregon Coast and First Dynasty of Egypt. There are also cases where a MOS-motivated move failed to gain consensus because of other factors. These would presumably also be decided differently from current practice if the proposed change were adopted. Kanguole 23:48, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the MOS guideline in each of the 4 named cases was MOS:CAPS, specifically "Proper names of specific places, persons, terms, etc. are capitalized in accordance with standard usage". In other words, the WP:TITLE common name. But they disagreed on what the common name was. So why would those discussions come to a different conclusion? In each of those articles, the title was capitalized inconsistently in the article (where MOS and not WP:TITLE applies), but the capitalization chosen for the title was used at least half the time. Art LaPella (talk) 00:54, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

All four aren't quite the same: Wild Turkey is an example of the common names of birds being capitalized, contrary to the general advice on the common names of organisms in the MOS. But I agree that there's no reason why the current proposal would influence the arguments over these capitalizations either way.

What the example does illustrate is the lack of precision in some areas of the MOS. Arguments over capitalizing the common names of organisms have picked away at what "proper names" means, and the "etc." isn't helpful either. I remain concerned that the precise delineation of "style" is crucial to the current discussion, but hasn't been sufficiently addressed. Peter coxhead (talk) 03:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Good examples. In each case, the title styling was settled by discussion of the provisions of the MOS, in light of sources. This is how it is supposed to go. Though I disagree with some of the decisions, I didn't disrupt by further questioning the decision that the RM arrived at by discussing what the MOS says about caps. So I think these examples support the view of the majority here that titles are styled per the guidelines of the MOS. MOS:CAPS actually has considerable latitude for determining what names are treated as proper and capitalized, by looking at sources; not by majority usages, but by principles stated there. Dicklyon (talk) 03:57, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Wild Turkey is explicitly styled against the principles of the MOS according to a local consensus, as I'm sure SMcCandlish would be happy to explain to you at length, as he has already in many places. Peter coxhead (talk) 04:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I understand it's against the principles, but the exception is documented in MOS:CAPS. To the extent that we have other styling exceptions accepted by the community, it would be good to have them documented in the MOS. In any case, Wild Turkey is not styled according to majority usage is sources. If the birders would let us change it, we could make it more consistent with the principles of the MOS and sources in this case. Dicklyon (talk) 04:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

NOTE... Wild Turkey may not be a good example to use... at least some of those ngram results may be hits that reference the liquor brand, as opposed to the bird (although I would expect the liquor brand would usually be capitalized.) Suggest you double check by running an ngram on a few, more obscure, bird names. Blueboar (talk) 17:27, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "the community". Wikipedia does not have a single coherent "community". There are "communities" in which the common names of organisms are consistently capitalized; however this is clearly not acceptable to the "MOS community" (which doesn't even allow the facts about such capitalization to be mentioned in the MOS). Peter coxhead (talk) 06:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't heard about any community promoting organism name capitalization in general. I wouldn't think that would be mentioned in the MOS without getting some kind of consensus first, like the birds. Dicklyon (talk) 07:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

There's a "consensus" on birds? I don't think so. Both sides are dug into their trenches, unable to advance. Others who believe in capitalizing in their areas just get on with creating content, rather than spend time here. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, maybe it's an awkward truce more than a consensus. The "local consensus" among the ornithologists is recognized as such in the MOS at least. Still, the MOS is the only logical place to negotiate and document such practices. And as far as I know it doesn't extend much beyond the birders; yes, also butterflies, dog breeds, and comets perhaps, too. Dicklyon (talk) 00:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually it does extend beyond birds and several kinds of insect; e.g. to plants with strong national connections to countries in which capitalization is the norm (according to the content editors), including FA-rated articles. "MOS editors" have consistently refused to allow the factual situation to be reported. The result is to hide the number of content editors who capitalize common names and the larger(?) number (including me) who believe in tolerating both styles, creating the false impression that only a small and extremist minority of birders accept the capitalization of common names. Peter coxhead (talk) 03:17, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Under this proposal, capitalization (as a style matter) would be decided according to the MOS alone. MOSCAPS currently says "words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia" (though an amendment has been proposed, under which sources need only be consulted if MOS rules prove insufficient). People have different ideas about how close usage must be to 100% to be called "consistent". But that is not the way those discussions were settled. MOSCAPS criteria were discussed, but so were other criteria such as COMMONNAME, which also uses sources but not in the same way. Kanguole 10:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The decision at the Nanking Incident was largely due to things like Ajax Smack's "I support Incident for purely aesthetic reasons"; only one other person mentioned COMMONNAME, and his arguments too were mostly with respect to interpreting MOS:CAPS. The caps there may also be supported by WP:MILTERMS ("Accepted full names of wars, battles, revolts, revolutions, rebellions, mutinies, skirmishes, risings, campaigns, fronts, raids, actions, operations and so forth are capitalized", which is another one sort of like the birds exception, I think) but it doesn't look like anyone invoked that approach. And at Oregon Coast it's very clear that if commonname was interpreted as controlling style that it should have moved to lowercase, in agreement with the MOS. So, yes, there are disagreements even within interpreting the MOS, but not so much agreement with COMMONNAME either, when people try to invoke it for styling. These point out how difficult it is to try to make sense of style via "usage in reliable sources" through things like Google search, where it often really comes down to what people like, due to local or proprietary interests or whatever. Dicklyon (talk) 00:25, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

But this goes to my point... when we are deciding on the best article title, we try to find a balance between 5 basic principles. NONE of these are more important or out weigh the others... our goal is to have a title that achieves all of them at once. Of course, this is not always possible, and sometimes we end up favoring one principle over the others... However, there is no firm rule as to which will be favored. THAT depends on a host of factors... factors that will unique to that specific title discussion.

It is important to remember that sometimes we decide to not follow COMMONNAME (ie we don't favor Recognizability)... because someone raises an issue that is unique to that specific topic and that specific title discussion; some factor that causes us to set COMMONNAME to one side. This decision has no impact on any other title discussion, because the issue is unique to a specific title. The same is true with the MOS.

It is absolutely appropriate to say that editors should take the MOS into consideration when choosing between potential article titles. The MOS is an application of the principle of Consistency, after all... and, as such, it should at least be consulted and discussed. However... it also appropriate to say that there will be times when a better title will result if we set the MOS to one side. They will be unique situations... they don't negate the MOS, but are exceptions to it. However they do exist... andin such cases is perfectly OK for us to set the MOS to one side and not follow it. Blueboar (talk) 18:17, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd agree with Blueboar's comment above that:

<quote> I would agree that "Seattle-Tacoma International Airport" (or "Seattle–Tacoma International Airport") is a proper name. And the horizontal line in that name is a part of that name. Thus (to my mind) the choice of whether to use a dash or hyphen is not ours to make. That choice belonged to whoever officially named the Airport. We may think they made the wrong choice, but it was theirs to make. This is a case where I actually would look to the "Official name" for guidance. I would ask: what appears on the official letter head of the Airport's administration? That dash or hyphen is the "official" styling of the name. Now, if a significant majority of sources use something different, we can follow the sources instead of the "official" name... and we have guidance to tell us how to do that: WP:COMMONNAME. <unquote>

because if they were to write it with a space rather than a hyphen or dash, then "correcting" their legal name to use a hyphen or dash "because MOS says that's how it's done" would surely be wrong. Example: Marseille Provence Airport. LittleBen (talk) 01:17, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

What is style in this context?

Neotarf's contribution above (04:49, 10 January 2013) to the effect that non-specialists do not understand the proposal because they don't understand what "style" means in this context is manifestly true, looking through the debate so far. However, I'm not convinced, as I said in my first response to this RfC, that it is clear what "style" means in relation to the proposal.

Neotarf quoted the definition: "a convention with respect to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and typographic arrangement and display followed in writing or printing".

The MOS clearly contains advice on style in a much broader sense than this definition (consider MOS:IMAGES for example), so the word "style" in the title "Manual of Style" is not restricted to this definition, which is one obvious cause of confusion. So here I'll use "t-style" (typographic style) for style in the sense of the definition.

Is t-style clearly differentiated from content, as the proposal requires? If it carries meaning then it is not. Real examples of t-style appear to me to form a spectrum.

Some t-style is purely aesthetic. Compare "H.G. Wells" to "H. G. Wells". As far as I can see, no possible shade of meaning is carried by the presence or absence of a space between "H." and "G." The choice is arbitrary and entirely the province of the MOS. Another example is the choice of citation style (provided that these include the same information); e.g. I prefer commas between items rather than full stops; others don't. It's purely a matter of aesthetics.
Some t-style carries meaning, although the meaning can be deduced from the text without it. Compare "I read the Guardian every day" and "I read The Guardian every day". The italic styling here carries meaning: it denotes that the title of a publication is meant and also precisely what that title is. However this is usually readily deducible without the italics. Similarly the use of capitals in the common names of organisms (such as "The Short-billed Dowitcher has been seen in England" rather than "The short-billed dowitcher has been seen in England") marks the boundaries of the name, although with careful writing this information is deducible without the capitals.
Some t-style carries meaning which cannot be deduced from the text without it. The careful distinction made in the MOS between "red-green" (a colour mixing or otherwise intermediate between the two) and "red–green" (an effect or phenomenon involving the two separate colours) is not always apparent without the contrast between the hyphen and the en-dash. The same is true of the difference between "Hale–Bopp", a comet discovered by two different people, Hale and Bopp, and "McGraw-Hill", a single company albeit originally formed by a merger. If I were writing in a publication other than Wikipedia, in Fe'i banana I would have distinguished between Rumphius calling something a species when it isn't by the use of single scare quotes, reserving double quotes for quotations from his writing. Where this differentiation between single and double quote marks is allowed, it can carry meaning which otherwise has to be spelled out in words.

Context is all: the same style differences fall into different positions along the spectrum depending on the context. Thus, as noted above, the MOS generally forbids using single and double quote marks to make a distinction of meaning; the choice normally simply reflects the depth of nesting within quotations. However, in line with the ICNCP, only single quotes are used around the names of cultivars. Thus in an article about a cultivated plant, 'Joan Williams' would be a cultivar name whereas "Joan Williams" would not.

My contention is that where t-style carries meaning which cannot otherwise be deduced, or would be difficult to deduce (and this is particularly true of titles which stand alone out of context) then Wikipedia's principles require the meaning carried by the style to be derived from reliable sources, since the meaning is part of content. Thus examples of type (1) can be decided purely by consulting the MOS. Examples of type (3) cannot; the meaning carried by the style choice must be sourced, which usually means that the style choice itself must be sourced outside of the MOS. Examples of type (2) are debatable, since there are arguments both ways. I see no need for an artificial consistency across topic areas and articles if there are genuine differences of view, but I accept that others disagree.

In conclusion: if a careful and restricted definition of "style" is made, then there is every reason to agree that titles should be "styled" in conformity with the MOS. Without this careful and restricted definition, the proposal is harmful. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:53, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I think I largely agree with you, but I'm not sure. Certainly whenever I use caps or italics or hyphens or dashes to style text or titles, the motivation is based on the sourced meaning that I'm trying to convey. In many cases, though the meaning is sourced, the meaning-based distinction is not represented in the styling in a majority of other sources. Most sources, for example, don't bother with the en dash distinction, but we do, because it helps to convey the intended meaning. Many sources don't restrict caps to where they are "necessary", but we do, so that their interpretation is more clear and meaningful. Many sources omit hyphens in compound modifiers that are sufficiently familiar in their fields, but we tend to include them to convey meaning more clearly to those less familiar with complicated terms. Etc. It's not clear to me where we might disagree, or what you would suggest as wording to clarify our agreement on these things. Dicklyon (talk) 23:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Question: when the source doesn't use the dashes/hyphens the way we do... how does the source convey meaning? And is it possible that we could mistakenly assume that the source means one thing (and thus ascribe it a particular style) when it actually some other meaning is intended by the source (a meaning that should be given a different styling)? Blueboar (talk) 03:13, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

These are very good points. I think the answer is that in the small minority of complex cases (which are of course those that cause all the problems) there's no solution except discussion at the article's talk page. What the MOS should do is to provide sound principles to be take into account (as WP:AT does), and not rules based on some imagined rigid distinction between style and content/meaning.

Consider the "Hale~Bopp" example. It's easily sourced that the name is intended to commemorate two people, regardless of whether the source shows this by using an en-dash or a hyphen. So choosing to use an en-dash in Wikipedia is clearly acceptable on meaning/content grounds. Those who object to the en-dash need to use different arguments (as indeed they do).

Consider de-capitalization of organism common names which appear in the source in title case. There are a small minority of examples where you need to have some further sourced information. E.g. if a plant is called "Brewer's Pine" in the main source which always capitalizes common names, and you want to drop the capital in "Pine" in Wikipedia, you need a source to tell you whether "Brewer's" refers to a specific person called "Brewer" or to a use of the pine by brewers. In this case if you find that other reliable sources that always de-capitalize common names use "Brewer's pine" not "brewer's pine", this would be evidence. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

[tsmos-1] "Styled in common with" is symmetrical and cooperative. The title and the rest of an article (text, headings, captions) are subject equally to the same styling principles (with adaptation, of course: headings and titles get a capital added). For example, the content of a title is settled as "mexican~american~war" under principles at WP:TITLE, rejecting the candidates "mexican~war" and "american~mexican~war", then styling kicks in immediately. Obviously, two capital letters at least, and a space: "Mexican~American war". Then from WP:MOSCAPS, a third capital: "Mexican~American War". And finally, following an ArbCom supervised consensus achieved for WP:DASH at WP:MOS, an en dash and not a hyphen, yielding the present title and the form used in the text: Mexican–American War. Some sources call it something else, some style it differently. But content and styling on Wikipedia are settled in this orderly manner.

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