Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 15

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Trademarks that receive little coverage in the mainstream media

Is it fair to say that trademarks that tend to mostly receive coverage in specialized press/blogs will frequently give us trouble here? I've said before that I'm pretty comfortable with "What do the AP and New York Times do" as a standard, even though it's not actually the standard articulated by the guideline or the standard that I actually apply in practice. My feeling is that thǍose are publications that tend to format trademarks the same way and they are viewed as arbiters of standard English. However, Wikipedia covers many more topics than those two outlets do, and I feel like trademarks that aren't written about much give us the most trouble. High-level sources tend to convince people to standardize in my experience. Still, I'm not sure if there is any need for a solution here, since they would be more hotly debated regardless of any changes we make here. Croctotheface (talk) 07:06, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

This is something we will never be able to solve if we don't figure out what WP:TRADEMARK is for.Lucia Black (talk) 08:41, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear what it's for? I understand that you disagree with the guideline, but it seems pretty comprehensible to me. Croctotheface (talk) 10:33, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Some interpret it differently. And that's why we've been debating over it. Regardless, the type of articles your referring to don't even sound like they have established notability.Lucia Black (talk) 15:33, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

How is the current guideline interpreted differently? My sense from your other comments here is that you interpret the guideline the same way I do, you just dislike the result and wish to change it for that reason. Croctotheface (talk) 02:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not speaking for myself when I say some interpret it differently. I'm saying people other than me and you see it differently.Lucia Black (talk) 04:26, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Could you be specific? What are these other interpretations? Croctotheface (talk) 06:39, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I see this as a guideline to help readers be able to read articles better, both verbally and mentally. But some see it as a "must follow the exact pronounciation of its intended pronunciation or else we change it regardless of commonly accepted."Lucia Black (talk) 07:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I think you left a word or two out in the middle there, but I think I get your meaning. I kind of see this guideline as saying, "We have a STRONG preference to standardize. Standardize unless it would be kinda ridiculous not to." I agree with you that the brief move to "Deadmaus" was a too-literal interpretation of one part of the guideline. It's really the only case I can think about where the AP/NYT regularly used a nonstandard style and we didn't. Other than that case, which was rectified, what cases exist out there where you think the current form of the guideline has led us astray? Croctotheface (talk) 07:13, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Its not that there's multiple articles that I can think of straight out the back. But I feel like we're taking it too technical. And there's definitely room for grey areas where our judgement is based off some form of system rather than a special case. If Deadmau5 is a special case, we should figure out why and allow cases like deadmau5. For example let's say there's a DJ named 0pening (a zero instead of an O) maybe we can establish that numbers are acceptable as long as their at the beginning or end of a title so that it doesn't affect readability of the rest of the title, if it does get mis-pronounced. Such as Zero-pening and Deadmau-five.

I just believe "standardization" is subjective.Lucia Black (talk) 07:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I actually think that "deadmau-five" is an extant and accepted pronunciation, which convinced at least some people. I think that the question I asked is important because we really need to make sure that we're not creating a solution in search of a problem. If the current guideline gets it right pretty much all the time, why change? Second, you say that what's standard is subjective to a degree, and that's true. We have discussion and consensus to help with judgment calls such as what's more standard. However, your judgment as to what the "number rule" should be is certainly subjective, it just moves the subjectivity to a different place. Besides, I don't agree with your "number rule" even though I agree that we should use Deadmau5. So if your goal is to somehow obviate discussion by creating a rule, I don't think it will work out the way you want.

More generally, there are plenty of good reasons to use Deadmau5. I think the most persuasive one has nothing to do with numbers or where they're positioned in a name, but rather the quality and number of sources that use Deadmau5 and the tiny fraction that use Deadmaus. In my view, that made it impossible to argue that it was not a standard English style. This may not be the reason you support using the Deadmau5 style, you may not even agree with my logic, you may dislike that there is subjectivity involved, but I hope you at least agree that it' a reasonable and understandable position. And it means there's no need to change the guideline. Other editors supported Deadmau5 for other reasons, and that's fine, too. There's no harm in having that discussion.

Finally, don't think that this somehow set a precedent that opens the door for all sorts of other crazy styles. This wasn't some Supreme Court victory that has set a precedent that reverberates all over the encyclopedia. There's no, "Yes! We did it! Deadmau5! At last, MOSTM will fall!" Clearly, that has not happened. Croctotheface (talk) 07:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree....considering the chain of conversation it was kept because there at least some source calling it "Deadmau5" and the discussion also spiraled toward pronouncable and accuracy. Ke$ha has significant ammount of sources with the $. You can look for yourself if you don't believe me. And unlike "fun." Ke$ha has the sources use that stylized name throughout the prose. So there's definitely room for debate.

I'm saying there's room to be passive and still be neat and clean. I believe numbers replacing letters can be used as long as its the first OR (not AND) last character. Because it doesn't affect readability because it doesn't split the title into two segments or more. For example: Black8lood or something like that. Its not "intrusive". I think being neat for neat's sake is rather annoying.

Why not be neat for a more general cause. If sources cover deadmau5, then why not ke$ha (and I'm not saying ke$ha should be the title, but its merely to show how there are holes in absolutes).Lucia Black (talk) 08:33, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Your "numbers rule" seems quite arbitrary to me. I don't understand why you think it's an improvement. There is still "subjectivity", just that you're replacing discussion and consensus (which would still happen anyway) with a rule you personally like. And I'm still not seeing where you think that this guideline is getting it wrong. Croctotheface (talk) 17:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

There are more exceptions and their more similar than you think. And its rule I think we all like. Just not "as a rule" but. "Our own interpretation". The number is there for Obvious reasons "Deadmau5" shouldn't be an edgecase because RS cover it universally "Because" the name isn't as intrusive as others. And the same with Ke$ha...but not really....why is deadmau5 over ke$ha if their nearly the same? For the subtle differences, this MOS refuses to recognize.Lucia Black (talk) 21:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me reiterate my statement from above. You seem to read the Deadmau5 result as, "We are comfortable with numbers used at this point or that point in a word." I don't see it that way. I see it more as, "We should use Deadmau5 because is used almost universally, including by high-level sources that we look to as arbiters of standard English. 'Deadmaus' is basically never used, so we shouldn't use it." Do you at least acknowledge that my interpretation of the discussion and outcome is a reasonable one, and that it's consistent with the guideline as it's currently written? Croctotheface (talk) 22:07, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

And I'm saying "it's not for universal known, its because of other factors that outweight universal approval by sources" Deadmaus has been used in general, regardless if it was such a small time, and the MOS makes it so that we choose the less known version regardless every time. Ke$ha does the exact same thing as deadmau5. In which Masem uses the idea of being pronunciation is a factor. So either you only read whats directed toward you, or you're not seeing other comments The system is in absolutes with no real rule or principle...which means more grey areas, and more grey areas we know aren't really that grey, but this guideline paints it as such. you're not comfortable allowing these names be considered standard english. I personally feel we should adapt. Sources is the trump card right? then what do you have to say about Ke$ha? keep in mind i don't really want "Ke$ha" to be the title of the article, but it just shows how theres lack of thought in absolutes.Lucia Black (talk) 01:20, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd be happy to respond to your points, but could you respond to mine first? Croctotheface (talk) 04:53, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't acknowledge and here's why: your idea of an exception will repeat and will reopen old discussions. Basing the exception "solely" on source is not the way to go.Lucia Black (talk) 06:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Respectfully, I don't think you understand my point. My point is that Deadmau5 is NOT an exception to this guideline. Its use is perfectly consistent with "use standard English" because its use is so overwhelming, including by publications such as AP/NYT/BBC that serve as arbiters of standard English. It would be kind of crazy to use a style that showed up mostly in no-name sources and say, "Yep, the bastions of standard English...somerandomblog.org, lowlevelmusicsite.tz, and the editors who made this move request!"

Now, you could say that using the numeral 5 might go against the "general rules" section...but that's why they're general rules! They're there to sketch out the sort of things we generally consider standard English. I'm not sure that we need to be clearer about that. Rewriting the guideline to try to carve out some rule about where the number shows up in the word strikes me as silly, and it completely misses the point of the Deadmau5 discussion. It would be like saying "the numeral 5 is acceptable, but only for stage names of Canadian electonic musicians with the middle name Joel." That wasn't the reason we use Deadmau5. If the sources came out exactly the same way, but the style was D3admau5, I'd feel the same way and I expect most editors would, too. Croctotheface (talk) 12:52, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Basically any exception out there isn't an exception because this is just too general? You just made a complete 180. The number was just an example. Even then, you can't deny the "exception" rule I want to implement isn't even a rule that changes anything. All it does is help editors make decisions faster. The only problem is that editors don't want to make believe that there is a common accepted exception already being done. And the numerical 5 comparison is waaay off...your using general preference over readability. Silly as you think, its not crazy enough to be compared like that. Also the "high level sources is our trump card" won't work. It will only open up old discussions about previous names, because some people saw MOSTM as absolute.Lucia Black (talk) 15:59, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm really trying hard here to have a discussion about what "standard English" means and how we apply it. You just won't engage on that for some reason, which confuses me. You also seem to have missed my point about "your general preference" because that's precisely what I think you're doing and my "numeral 5 for an electronic musician" example was designed to illustrate that. Croctotheface (talk) 20:08, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. We should not be changing the guideline to accommodate these exceptions. This is what they should remain - exceptions to the guideline, determined on a case by case basis by consensus. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:32, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

No you're not or rather I don't buy your confusion. You've dodge several times a strong flaw in your view. As much as this guideline claims to aim for standard english, and your claims that the exception can be decided by reliable sources determining , it still makes odd exceptions such as "Ke$ha" which is the exact situation as Deadmau5. I'm perfectly fine of it not being shown as "Ke$ha" but it doesn't align with your exceptions. It's not my "general" preference, its a group of exceptions I noticed seem to have a common goal. The only preference was the numbers. But the only difference with the rest is that this "exception" isn't official.

And the problem isn't that the new rule wouldn't work, its just trying to seem absolute and not consider any general exception.Lucia Black (talk) 23:41, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, deadmau5 fits with the MOS based on the last discussion. As long as it is truly the case that people say the name either as "dead mau five" or "dead mouse", that means the 5 is not an unpronouncable symbol or just there for decoration; thus using deadmau5 is a consistent scheme since the 5 is pronounsed as part of the name. On the other hand "Ke$ha" is never pronounced "ke dollar sign ha", making the $ a decorative mark that we should remove for naming, same with the period in "fun." and the extra marks for "Sunn0)))". --MASEM (t) 04:33, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

And here is the multiple interpretations comes in. We don't know if Kesha was ever said like that. Previous arguments you made points relating to support the trademark impaired and other regions. And the period in "fun." is silent, not that its there just for effect. Meaning we don't verbally say "period" when a sentence ends. And that's not the reason for fun. not being the name, the heart of it is that if used throughout the prose, it would confuse readers. That's why a hypothetical Fun~ or Fun* or even Fun! would be more appropriate. It has nothing to do with standard english, it has to do with affecting the prose. This MOS only claimms it to be relevant to standard english. It just looks like there's a system to the exceptions, and I believe without a doubt, we make the exception official it would do no harm whatsoever. So far I keep hearing "we just don't want to admit we have a system for exceptions in our MOS". And if I'm wrong, tell me what's wrong with the system.Lucia Black (talk) 04:51, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

There's no issues with this approach, and it has everything to do with standard english as defined by this MOS. The silent period in "fun." is just that, silent and decorative, as it would be in the other cases you present, so per our MOS, should be reduced to "Fun", which is a term used in sources. The "5" in deadmau is sometimes pronounced, so not silent or decorative. And I'm 99% certain that no one says "ke dollar sign ha" for "Ke$ha", just as no one says "fun period" or "sunn zero right parenthesis right parenthesis right parenthesis". If the symbol in the name is silent or decorative, we use a form that is used in sources that strips those away. There's no exceptions in this rule here, though again, I would still consider some IAR like in the case of Yahoo! --MASEM (t) 05:05, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

But the claims of "standard english" are becoming futile. Fun with a period, regardless of it considered decorative or not meets standard english, the only real issue is that it affects the prose and it does so for every other RS. Therefore, its not that they don't use it for english standards, its because they can't use it. That's why Yahoo! Or Strawberry Panic!! Or Durarara!! Or Where's my Dog? (Fake hypothetical title) keep their format solely for the fact that its less intrusive then the common and universally used "period". No one needs to say "fun period" to say "fun." And I've seen people at first glance call it "Sunn-Oh" and that's not a zero. This MOS works on a system with no reason, and when reason comes along, you say the system "works" but to the degree where no one complains about it. WP:IAR is good if there are rare exceptions, but if the exception is common? This is more about exception denial than affecting the MOS.Lucia Black (talk) 06:10, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Lucia, do you have evidence that the reason we use some of those styles is about "obtrusiveness"? From what I can tell, in the words of The Dude, "well, you know that's just like, uh, your opinion, man." Croctotheface (talk) 12:16, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, to reply to Lucia from above without trying to inject a reply out of chronological sequence--the difference between "Deadmau5" and "Ke$ha" is the quality and number of sources that use Deadmau5 instead of "Deadmaus" versus the quality and number of sources that use "Kesha" instead of "Ke$ha". I agree with Masem that pronunciation is also a consideration, but to me it's not the big one. I don't like using Google hits as a metric, but just because it's easy. On whatever settings are the default for me, Google News search results for "Deadmaus" are THREE. Yes, as in 10 minus 7 = THREE. Two of those results are not in English, and the English one is a site I would't feel great about citing in one of our articles. Results for "Deadmau5" are 4100, as in 4000 + 100 = 4100. Do you still think "Deadmaus" is STANDARD? With ONE SINGLE ENGLISH SOURCE using it over whatever horizon Google was searching? For Kesha and "Ke$ha," there are more hits with the dollar sign, but there are thousands of hits for both. High quality sources tend very strongly to use "Kesha," which is more standard. The cases are clearly different, irrespective about your "obtrusiveness" rule, which I'm ready to stop discussing at this point because I haven't seen anyone else sign onto it, so we're just sort of bickering at this point. Croctotheface (talk) 12:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

where are these high quality sources in the article? Yes "deadmaus" is standard "english" just not the "common name" but has been established as a name. In english we don't use numbers for letters. And the real reason why you don't want to discuss it is because I've been hammering in why you object. Which is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. At this point, you're trying to make every logical reason as a coincidence and ask for proof as to why we allow them. But back then, that was the very reason brought up when I used Durarara!! And Strawberry Panic! When I brought up "fun.". You guys are very sneaky at it. You don't want to standardize an exception, you have dodged several times how this would/wouldn't work, and you continue to say "your opinion" but don't bring up a solid counter-argument. Its practically strawman.Lucia Black (talk) 00:54, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Four thousand one hundred hits versus one English language hit. My argument is that the 4100 hits is probably standard English. The "general rules" describe what we generally consider standard English, but "Deadmau5" is clearly an exception to this general rule (but not to the "use standard English" principle), as using the numeral 5 is obviously standard. That's my argument. If the sources were more divided, if AP/NYT/BBC were not comfortable using the numeral 5, then my opinion would likely change. I understand you don't agree, but do you at least acknowledge that my argument is reasonable? Croctotheface (talk) 04:16, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Because you see this solely as a case by case and the current MOS as absolute and the illusion that the exception can be "anything". you don't see the pattern of the exceptions or rather could care less. their is a distinct pattern to the exception rule. I really could care less how often it occurs, As long as it's more than 2 or 3, and i'm sure their are more but because no exception is official, its difficult to find . Example: Durarara!!, Strawberry Panic!, Yahoo! are all the "exception" so titles with exclamation points, makes me wonder are there more with exclamation points? These are the oens only "I/m" aware of, but that doesn't rule out that there are others that probably have the same. question marks are pronouncable, or rather they change the tone of the title, as for exclamations don't when discussing the subject. however, exclamation points arent used in regular prose of wikipedia or rarely in any form of discussion and makes it less intrusive for both RS and wikipedia to use. my opinion? maybe...but this is the same argument provided when fun. was being argued. So it just seems like arguing is best suited when one wants there to be a reason. and if someone provides a reason against them, its considered "opinion".Lucia Black (talk) 17:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

There is something to be said when the title ends in punctuation and would normally be a title that is quoted or italicized as such to separate the punctuation from the regular text. Eg: we would always use Durarara!! or Strawberry Panic! in running prose, so that exclaimation point doesn't interfere with the text. The tailing point on Yahoo!, however, is a problem since we'd never denote Yahoo! differently from the running prose. --MASEM (t) 17:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

italicized or not, it still wouldn't be as affective. and i don't doubt that if another website, or any other trademarked title with question mark or exclamation point is used, we won't think twice to allow it as the exception.Lucia Black (talk) 17:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

but enough with the question dodging, this exception is commonly accepted...it's just not official. let me know exactly why adding a common exception would harm the current MOS?Lucia Black (talk) 19:29, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Because I don't believe that the change you propose actually articulates the reason we use "Deadmau5" instead of "Deadmaus." You believe the reason has something to do with where the numeral 5 is located within the word, but I do not. I believe we use "Deadmau5" because it's standard English, and I believe it's standard English because it's used pretty much universally, including by high-level sources. But here's the thing: I've repeated this position several times, and I've asked several times whether, despite not agreeing with me, you acknowledge that my position is reasonable. You have not answered. I'm not sure why I should continue to discuss this. You are the only person proposing this particular change to the guideline. You have not gathered a consensus for it, and you seem to believe that the burden is on everyone else to form that consensus for you, despite not agreeing with you, unless we can convince you that you're wrong. That's not how things work here. Croctotheface (talk) 08:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think Deadmau5 doesn't conflict because its not intended to be standard English because its more like a username. He could be the 5th "deadmau" for all I know, but still. At least consider the context of the irregular formatting. Ke$ha's use of a dollar sign is purely bling and unnecessary. ViperSnake151  Talk  18:31, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

You're basing "standard English" by high-level sources. And again, the exception is not based on the numerical 5 placement, that was just one possible example we could add and quite frankly, it's more about the five, its about decimal usage. in which this tag-team debate structure is when i ask a question, both of you contest for your own personal reasons but don't dare to cover all the points being presented. I've added very "generic" rules to the exception that has already been done in practice. if the title is A)almost universally excepted by high level sources (deadmau5) B)Doesn't affect readability (such as fun.-fun(band) issue)C)easy to pronounce even if its not the common accepted form C) Within the means of typing the title within a standard English keyboard. Lucia Black (talk) 18:45, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Request for clarification: Model numbers

So there's been a dispute involving whether the S in iPhone 5s should be capitalized or not. "5s" is not a word, but a model number, so theoretically it shouldn't matter. Yet, people are arguing that since "Using all caps is preferred if the letters are pronounced individually, even if they don't stand for anything" applies in this case in their opinion, it should be "5S" instead (I object to that because there's no "standard capitalization rules" for alphanumeric strings). Any particular opinions on this? ViperSnake151  Talk  18:50, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Seems like sources are pretty divided. I think either one fits pretty comfortably within standard English. Croctotheface (talk) 20:41, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

the fact that 5 and S are pronounced separately, makes it quite easy to say "iPhone 5S", and a large number of sources use "5S", it shouldn't even be "5s" unless another source begs to differ.Lucia Black (talk) 17:50, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

To me, "iPhone 5s" looks like the plural of "iPhone 5". bd2412 T 18:46, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

"Widespread"

I think that it's reasonable to say that our practice as it exists in the field has NEVER been to standardize all the time if even just one source standardizes. I don't even support that sort of standard. So it may make sense to modify the guideline. But the problem with using a word like "widespread" is that it misses the actual reason that we use some of these styles. The reason we have results that may seem contradictory is that all articles are different, language/style is fluid, and basically all of these are decided on a case-by-case basis by editors at the specific articles. It may be that I and a few other people who are fond of this guideline could've tried to set up the "MOSTM Police" and go around as a band of warriors to try to standardize stuff, and it's actually quite likely that we'd have succeeded in a lot of cases, and especially in a discussion like "Big.Little" that only had about ten people participate. There are certainly more "MOSTMers" than there are the six editors who opposed that move request. But I don't want to be an MOSTM warrior, no matter how much I think the guideline helps, and I suspect that people who agree with me about MOSTM also agree that being warriors for anything doesn't usually help Wikipedia very much.

Generally, when the guideline is put to the test, editors tend to support it. As the temporary move to "Deadmaus" showed, people were very willing to cite this guideline in what I think was a too-literal way. So I think it would be a mistake to weaken the recommendation we make to standardize. If we do want to change that part of the guideline so that it doesn't invite too-literal interpretations (like Deadmaus over Deadmau5), then we should make it clear that we think standard English is the way to go, we don't care very much about "official" styles, and we care about what high-level sources do.

For what it's worth, I think that if we were to go full-on descriptivist with this guideline, we'd get pretty close by saying, "Do what the AP and NYT do, if they do the same thing." There would still be exceptions. That would not mean that it's a good idea to throw in something about "so long as what AP/NYT does is in widespread on Twitter as well." Croctotheface (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I do believe once put to the test, it does usually pass, but not for the reasons of standard english but common name and disruption of the flow of the article. So its not like this MOS is the reason why we solve it. Its because sources (both low and high) manage to solve it for us. It would be great to put this MOS to he test of more contraversial titles but the only ones we have are the ones that aren't covered so much from any source such as Sunn O))).

And I personally believe we should make a romanization manual of style for titles that are foreign. If we stick with the original spelling or we use the english phonetic way.Lucia Black (talk) 17:40, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with everything you say here. I'd probably just add that standard English tends to both be the common style and the least disruptive/distracting. And the guideline does get referenced and cited a lot. Sometimes editors think that other issues trump the recommendations here, and that's OK, too. It doesn't mean we need to throw out the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 23:50, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

i don't think we need to throw it away...but obviously, the purpose of standard english seems to be null and void in my opinion. but to me, i still think this MOS has room to recognize exceptions, so that this MOS isn't just "a recommednation" but "a guideline we should follow 99% of the time".Lucia Black (talk) 00:08, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

By definition, guidelines recognize exceptions. I think that the idea that standard English is "null and void" is kind of preposterous. You're pointing to a few cases where it's not wholly clear what style best fits standard English, or where it's not clear whether some weird "Ojjj" type characters are part of the name (in which case this guideline, which concerns only style, would not apply) or just part of how we should write the name. It's not clear for topics that don't receive a ton of coverage whether, say, "big.LITTLE" or "Big.Little" is standard. It's EXTREMELY uncommon for us to use a nonstandard-looking style when major publications standardize. It's much more common for us to use a nonstandard-looking style when the subject doesn't receive coverage in major publications. If you want to amend the guideline to say something along those lines, then I might be able to get on board. The problem with replacing the recommendation to standardize with something that directly invites editors to make exceptions is that it would basically make the guideline say, "Meh, just go and do what you were going to do anyway." In reality, by far the most common practice is to standardize weird trademarks. If we want to describe the practice as it exists in the field, the current guideline does a pretty good job. Croctotheface (talk) 01:05, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

i'm simply saying that there is a "known" exception. and if it's known, we should "recognize" it. if it's "unknown" then, the exception can be anything and we have no business looking for one. But since it is, I think we have the option to "recommend the exception". There's a bigger more valid reason why we seek standardization and because this MOS simply states "standardization for the sake of it" it doesn't leave room for us to have a valid exception even its the most reasonable one out there.Lucia Black (talk) 04:44, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

There are exceptions made to guidelines all the time. It says right at the top of the page, "This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Use common sense in applying it; it will have occasional exceptions." My point is that the animating principle behind the guideline is still a powerful force. Editors cite this guideline, and the vast, vast majority of articles are in compliance with it. Croctotheface (talk) 13:49, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem with the current text is that too many Editors cite it to argue against making any exceptions... especially in cases where an exception probably should be made. I think this is because the current MOS:TM text does not remind editors that there are exceptions, or explain when an exception should be made... I think it needs to. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

There are definitely wording changes that I could see helping make things clearer. That said, can you point to an example, aside from the temporary use of "Deadmaus," where there was a bad result or an unnecessary edit war because of the current wording? That some editors believe there should be fewer exceptions than you believe there should be does not really merit a change.  ;) Croctotheface (talk) 02:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I still believe we have to recognize what's accepted exception. though I don't think their exceptions, just additional rules that provide more coverage.Lucia Black (talk) 04:33, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

We shouldn't just ignore these things. we have to address them. its part of wikipedia. and ignoring every subject, is only going to cause it to return and return and return.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucia Black (talk • contribs) 05:28, 12 October 2013‎

Can I add something here? We are having an edit war at the Numb3rs page and a debate over at the Talk:Numbers (TV show) page. Citing MOS:TM, one editor on 10 June 2013 had renamed the article Numbers instead of using Numb3rs as it has been titled since the article's creation on 30 April 2005. Several others and I have mentioned that most reliable resources and the Library of Congress use Numb3rs as the name of the show, and we also mentioned that the change could violate several Wikipedia policies, namely WP:COMMONNAME,WP:PRECISION, and WP:CONCISE. (Looking at it now, I realize that one can also argue that the change could also violate WP:NATURALDIS and WP:DIFFCAPS and could eventually violate WP:POVNAME in the future.) In addition, an earlier post about the show did mention that the Numb3rs spelling was used in many reliable publications.

As the show does use nonstandard English in its title, we may need an exception to MOS:TM to prevent future edit wars. If there is no exception to the rule, we may need to prove that the show's creators deliberately spelled the show with a three to end the edit war. SciGal (talk) 22:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

This has been a point argued before (see archives for Deadmau5 vs Deadmaus), and there's no clear consensus. I personally believe that we use the form that a person , completely unfamiliar with the work, will have the least confusion over while reading the article and that is the form that ignores the silly number use (to make the title look cool) over the clearly under "Numbers", though certainly mention that it is named "Numb3rs" and redirect from "Numb3rs" would be completely appropriate. --MASEM (t) 22:19, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

To me, that defeats the purpose of a disambiguation page. IF someone typed in "Numbers" and went to the literal "Numbers" page and then asked to go to a disambiguation page, then they could find it there. Also, since there's apparently no other article about a TV series resembling the name "Numbers". Those at least familiar with Wikipedia's naming system wil try to type in Numbers (TV series).

So with all of that said, i dont see why not "Numbers (TV series)" be the actual redirect, and keeping Numb3rs as the main title. its more informative to the reader to keep it that way.Lucia Black (talk) 22:23, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

MASEM, suppose I was unfamiliar with Wikipedia's naming policy, and I wanted to look up the show on Wikipedia after reading an article that mentioned the show in Entertainment Weekly or even Popular Science. I would not use Numbers (TV series) in the search engine; I would use Numb3rs, Numbers, or "Numbers TV show". If I were redirected to Numbers (TV series) from Numb3rs or even to a search results page from "Numbers TV show", I would be totally confused as to why Wikipedia would get the name of the show wrong. (In the case of "Numbers TV show", I would even begin to think that Wikipedia did not have anything on Numb3rs and may attempt to write a duplicate article about the show.) Besides, as pointed out before, many reliable sources use Numb3rs as the spelling of the show, and that should fall under Wikipedia's article naming policy. (Also, may I point out that typing in Deadmaus still directs you to a page entitled deadmau5?)

Besides, there is only one editor who vigorously disagreed with the title being Numb3rs and who changed the title of the article. That editor did so without even proposing to move the article and all related episodic articles from Numb3rs to Numbers (TV series). That's why there is evidence for an edit war.SciGal (talk) 00:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Nonsense. If Numb3rs were at "Numbers (TV show)" and you got there searching on "Numb3rs" , there are two clear signs why you are there: under the title will say "Redirected from Numb3rs", and the first sentence of the lead should say "Numbers, stylized as Numb3rs, is a TV show...". There's no confusion there, no more than the other facets that our disamg system works for other pages. --MASEM (t) 00:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

there's no pointy in doing that for this particular series. similar to Deadmau5.Lucia Black (talk) 00:44, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The show is pronounced "Numbers" not "Numbthreers". We need to minimize confusion for people who are unaware of "fancy" spellings. --MASEM (t) 01:11, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, people aren't as stupid as you make them out to be. Even if the 3 replaces the E, its not as if it brings complete panic over it, and makes it incomprehensible. And you know that, but you're so dead-set into making readers dumber than the average reader.Lucia Black (talk) 02:36, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

We cannot assume everyone is a native English speaker that has experienced "l33t speak" that would otherwise immediately recognize the 3 as an e and blink past it. Also, these versions featuring unpronounable character break screen readers. We write our prose with the aim for the lowest common denominator for readership - we do assume English familiarity, but this is a non-standard English form that will trouble people inexperienced to it. --MASEM (t) 03:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Even if there are people who aren't "native english speakers" it doesn't mean that this makes it even more at a disadvantage for them. again, you have to have a pretty low opinion to these readers. English isn't the only language that does this type of naming. you continue to use the prose to clarify, so why can't the prose clarify in this instance? "pronounced as Numbers" isn't the most confusing thing in the world. you would have to assume mentally handicap, because they would have to constantly remind themselves that its pronounced the other way. i'm sorry, but you have a pretty low opinon on even non-native english readers to consider it such a fault. Lucia Black (talk) 03:49, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

So what about people who are blind or visually impared? They won't be able to understand the article, and we seek to serve them. You're making too many assumptions about the "commonality" of "l33t" spellings in the English across the globe. In the Western countries, sure, but there's plenty more English speakers than just that. --MASEM (t) 04:13, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Now you're just making up excuses. IF they're visually impaired then they will have difficulty reading in genereal, not understanding what the naming convention is. I dont need to know whats common, because its not like english is the only one that does that form of writing. and those unfamiliar with it in general can pick it up quite easily.Lucia Black (talk) 04:48, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Do you even understand what screen readers are? They are programs for blind and visually impared that read the text on a webpage off to them so they can understand it. They are people we want to serve as well, but by using non-phoentically correct spellings that are only for "coolness" factors will cause their readers to go crazy with the improper text. The larger portion of the readership is met by using standard spelling (and briefly addressing the way the show goes by with the "3" in place of the "e" in the lead.) --MASEM (t) 06:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

There are broader issues with Screen Reader that wikipedia simply can't handle.Lucia Black (talk) 07:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Nope, we aim to support blind/visually impared readers via screen readers all the time, as part of WP:ACCESS. Ignoring issues with screen readers is not something you can leave off the table. --MASEM (t) 15:09, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't forget that the show is called "Numbers", it just happens to be given a fancy styling on the screen for promotional purposes. It is not called "Numb-three-rs". --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

NO, you mean its read as "numbers" but when referring to the series, its written as "Numb3rs". Keep in mind the deadmau5 situation aswell. we have to be consistent with how exceptions work.Lucia Black (talk) 14:03, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

There's no justification for an exception here (and of course we shouldn't be consistent with exceptions - they are outside the rules). We use standard English, and the show is called "Numbers". We shouldn't be indulging pretty promotional styling. See "Se7en" for a more accurate comparison. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• It does not matter how an oddly spelled/stylized name is pronounced (pronunciation can be explained in a parenthetical)... what matters is how the name appears in reliable sources. Furthermore, it does not matter how the name appears in any one single source (such as on screen in the title sequence of the show itself), what matters is how it appears in the typical reliable English language source that discusses it. The key to these oddly spelled/stylized is the principle of Recognizability. If a significant majority of reliable sources use the variant: "Numb3rs" when discussing the show, then "Numb3rs" will be the most recognizable variant, and that is what Wikipedia should use. On the other hand, following the same principle of recognizability, if a significant majority of sources that discuss the show do so using the non-stylized variant: "Numbers"... then Wikipedia should do so as well. It is what the reader will expect, and is sometimes referred to as "the principle of least surprise". So... what does an analysis of the sources tell us? Is "Numb3rs" more commonly used, or is "Numbers" more commonly used? Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • If this was the logic that we used all the time, MOS:TM would be non-existent. Instead we have it and readily deviate from the most common printed form for sake of readability of English prose. This is even a case spelled out in MOS:TM (the use of unpronounced characters). Also consider the principle of least surprise, one must keep in mind that only a minority of our readership would be familiar with the show and thus expect "Numb3rs". To anyone who has no idea what that it is, it's a surprise. --MASEM (t) 15:09, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
  • If it's recognisability you're after, "Numb3rs" is not necessarily recognisable to a reader of standard English. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:13, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

That's not a bad thing. Masem, you're entire basis on your reasoning is getting something you don't expect, but that can easily be turned against you when you attempted to make it look like it was justified when its the other way around. if the lead does it all, you should give up using the same reasoning that makes it null and void in the first place.

Recognition is based on readers, not "standard english". there are hundred of terms out there not recognized by standard english, yet still are used. thats not what MOSTM is about.Lucia Black (talk) 15:15, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely wrong. Our targer readership is anyone that can read standard english, not the people that visit WP frequently (which is a much smaller subset). MOS:TM is about taking the "wacky" spellings that companies like to do to smooth them out so that a reader of standard English can follow along even if they've not heard the topic before. --MASEM (t) 15:21, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Your opinion. Wikipedia isn't the only place that uses such wording. And to think one has to be familiar with wikipedia in order to get used to such words baffles me. This is why sources always help. either way, your reasoning from before is flawed, so you have no room bolding that. and we don't go what "standard English" recognizes because the MOSTM although claims its about standard English, will only cover what it considers an issue. Yes standard english is a factor we primarily use when tackling names, but thats only when one can supposedly claim that it affects.Lucia Black (talk) 15:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, "choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner". --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Our goal (that is, the Foundation and thus us by extension) is to create a freely distributable encyclopedia that can be accessed and used by anyone in the world that can read standard english. This is a far different goal from nearly any other source that is going to be using the spelling "Numb3rs", most which are interested in covering entertainment news for those living in the US, Canada, and Western Europe (where they are going to sell their words). Our goal requires the use of standard English because our goal is unique to these other works. --MASEM (t) 15:35, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

So with that new reasoning, you're going to have to withdraw the reasoning of readers ever needing to be familiar with Wikipedia in order to know the naming system.

Rob sinden, i really feel like you're aimlessly bringing issues on the side, but not seeing the picture as a whole. universally Numb3rs tv series is recognized with the 3 in it. this isn't an issue of what the trademark owner wants it to be recognized. and even for new readers, we should advertise a lesser known name simply because first time readers wont know. thats what i consider a big issue.Lucia Black (talk) 15:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

You're ignoring the facility of redirects and/or disambiguation pages so that we can have both "Numbers" "Numbers (TV show)" and "Numb3rs" all get the reader to the TV show article, and then the first sentence of the lead will explain that "Numb3rs" is the stylized version of the name. So we are addressing both new and experience readers' expectations if they search for that name. --MASEM (t) 15:49, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

And here's your double-edged sword. this is the thing, that puts your entire reasoning against yourself. i suggest you give that particular reason up, because it doesn't help your case at all, it only further questions why the other way around can't be done. Whats so wrong with Numbers TV series redirecting to "Numb3rs" especially if theres no other series with the name "Numbers"Lucia Black (talk) 15:56, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Becasue "Numb3rs" isn't standard English and includes unpronounced characters. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

This was already answered, and that is "Numb3rs".its been a battle of trump reasons from that point on.Lucia Black (talk) 15:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Is this just going to be an endless battle?

Here's the thing for me: we've had debates at this guideline for the last, I dunno, 7 years or so that I've edited here. Is there a point at which we say that nothing has changed, and it's just a matter of certain editors re-raising the same issue and using the same arguments as every other time? Setting aside what this guideline says, it's pretty clear that there's not a consensus "in the field" to use weird styles, or at least the vast majority of them. This is not the place to debate individual cases, and I am loathe even to bring one up as an example, because then discussion of that particular case will dominate the discussion. The bottom line is that we seem to get to the consensus result most of the time with this guideline in place. It's usually people who don't like the consensus at individual articles who come here looking to change the guideline, not some sort of "MOSTM police force" going around and inflicting this guideline on the majority of editors who disagree with it. At what point do we say that nothing has materially changed, and that there just isn't a consensus to use weird styles more often than we do now? Croctotheface (talk) 23:14, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

What should be set in the RFC above - assuming as its going that MOS takes precedence, is that if articles are later challenges on the local talk pages "It should be at *this* name", either the discussion should be shut down immediately, or when an admin closes it, take account that this discussion set MOS as the higher standard. To make that work, there might need to be editing of TITLE and MOS:TM and other pages to point this result. There will still be WP:LAME-level battles on exact naming (yogurt vs yohgurt comes to mind), but at least the issue of styling of names should be stripped out of those and cut down the noise. But key is that the consensus above is held to the standard so that these battles don't get rehashed. It's the mis-mash of odd results of several recent move requests - some respecting MOS:TM, some ignoring it - that is why we are here. --MASEM (t) 23:19, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

See, the thing is, I actually vehemently disagree with this. Most of the time that an article is out of compliance with this guideline, there's at least some reason for it. Masem, I think that very few people would agree with your overall approach. You seem to want to "correct spelling" in a very prescriptivist way. I'd be against any sort of notion of what you're saying here, that there should be some sort of MOSTM police force and MOSTM supreme court to smack down anyone who even dares bring up what you'd consider a nonstandard style. If editors reach a conensus to use, say, "Numb3rs," then there's at least an argument supporting it. If it turns out that a broader consensus of editors don't support that usage, then it will change. Wikipedia tends to converge on the right outcome. What concerns me is the notion that a handful of editors want to change this guideline often because they dislike the result on a certain page they edit. The consensus underpinning this guideline hasn't changed in an appreciable way. I don't see why we have to relitigate it every few months. Croctotheface (talk) 23:39, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

The reason this keeps happening is that local editors for an article like this will likely have a vested interest to see the "vanity" title in use, while the global consensus by MOS will demand different. MOS is supposed to be a standard across all WP, and while you might call it a MOS police, its there for a reason, to maximize standardization and readability. I can agree there will always be IAR-type reasons to use one title over another, and if that decisions comes after a global consensus for that page, that discussion should be documented so it's not challenged again. But most of the decisions of late are local consensus generated by move requests. --MASEM (t) 23:56, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Also to add - I well aware what happens when "MOS police encforcement" (for lack of better term) happens, as having seen the whole date delinking/formatting issues that went to arbcom). But there, the case was when there are options that otherwise do not affect the reader's ability to learn and it was a matter of which was "better" that some were editing over. This, with TITLE vs MOS:TM, is directly an issue that will affect accessibility. It is something that we should be standardizing on. --MASEM (t) 00:22, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I guess I just vehemently disagree, then. I feel like, secretly, you would move 50 Cent to 50 Cents (rapper) if you could. You really seem to think this is about "correcting spelling," but it isn't. Even if it were, your sense of "correct" and "incorrect" goes beyond the consensus view, and it does not describe current consensus and current editing practices. You're just proposing the opposite side of the coin of what I criticized here: the notion that we should fight endless battles to get the MOS to say what we want it to say, then impose its will by force. My whole point is that it won't work, irrespective of whether it's a good idea or not. Croctotheface (talk) 01:14, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It's not so much about the "spelling", but about avoiding symbols and characters that do not properly contribute to how the term should be read. "50 Cent" is fine because that's how you say his name, even if one considers it managed English that you're still going to read that as it is pronounced. It's the things like "Numb3rs" or "Ke$ha" where those symbols are not pronounced but only mask the real characters that should be there. --MASEM (t) 01:26, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

My point is that it's not a moral issue. You treat it like one. It's hard to escape the notion that you're motivated by an impulse to "correct" these horrible and evil "vanity styles." You seem to care not at all when one of these so-called "vanity styles" is adopted universally by high-level sources ("Deadmau5"), although you eventually tried to save face by incorrectly asserting that everyone who was for using that style instead of "Deadmaus" did it because of pronunciation. That just isn't true; you're either deluding yourself or intentionally misstating the consensus when you say that. And it really does seem like the same thing I see from the editors I criticized in the first post of the section. It happens that I agree with you more often than with them, but it doesn't strike me as constructive. So I dunno, maybe at this point, what a lot of people want is an endless battle? You're out to defeat the forces of the evil "vanity styles"? Others are trying to strike a blow against prescriptivist blowhards? It seems silly to me. The overarching consensus seems pretty clear: we don't want our articles to read like press releases, but we recognize that sometimes, odd-looking styles are either part of the name (Oliver! would be a different name than Oliver for the musical) or are so widely adopted that they're standard English (eBay, Deadmau5). For difficult cases, we might have some results that could go either way get decided locally on a case-by-case basis, and that's fine. What I'm against is editors who dislike that the local decision came out in favor of standardizing coming here and trying to pick a fight, or editors doing what you propose and forming the MOSTM posse to round up outlaw "vanity styles." Croctotheface (talk) 01:42, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I would think our goal as a global reference sources for any English-speaking reader that we would want to maximize readability. It is a moral goal compared to other policy and guidelines, but it is a mission-related goal nevertheless. This is one of those things to remind editors that they might a great article that a person familiar with the topic will easily comprehend, but we're also targeting that reader on the opposite site of the world that may never have heard the topic but needs to read up on it. The MOS is not there to be a tool to police editors with (particularly in an over-authoritative manner) but to help conform the work to meet the mission goals in light of accessability and it's world-wide scope. --MASEM (t) 02:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Readability is relative. To be a meaningful barometer, it must be considered in light of the likely reader for a particular topic. I know this - I'm a lawyer, and I have written a lot of articles on arcane legal concepts (like Abstention doctrine) in language likely to be best understood by people with enough legal background to know the phrase in the first place. We have many articles on advanced math topics (try Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, for example), that are inaccessible to anyone without some serious math training, but apparently highly useful and informative for those who do have such training. In the same way, the readability of a title like Ke$ha or Numb3rs or Deadmau5 must be thought of in terms of the person who is actually likely to read the article. If our goal was to maximize the readability of Wikipedia for some mythic common denominator, there are quite a few things that are a lot less readable to a lot of people than substituting a number five or a dollar sign for an "s", an exclamation point for an "i", or a three for an "e". bd2412 T 02:34, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I point to what I said about - this is about content vs presentation. Yes, there are articles that are sufficiently technical in their field that we don't expect every reader to understand that. That's fine - that's a content issue, and we can't change that - it is impossible to discuss these concepts in 12th grade English. But even within those articles I'd expect the presentation of trade names and the like to follow MOS:TM, as a presentation issue. That is something we can control. (To wit, our accessibility guidelines are less about touching content and assuring clear presentation). --MASEM (t) 23:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I just think you have a highly prescriptive sense of what language should be, you want articles to be written that way, and you will try to find any possible way to justify it. The notion that you believe you are on a moral quest strikes me as kind of crazy and megalomaniacal. I mentioned the "not a moral issue" stuff as a rhetorical device to warn against being overly zealous; I thought it was a self-evident warning against being too extreme. I've never found your argument that readers on "the opposite side of the world" appreciate what you're doing remotely persuasive. Do you have any evidence to support this assertion, or evidence that non-US/non-UK readers are likely to be confused by nonstandard styles? Because I have plenty of evidence that you have disdain for nonstandard styles. It seems more likely that the disdain animates your position here. Incidentally, I really think you might be the only person who holds precisely your position. Croctotheface (talk) 02:39, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I personally have seen things like "Sunn O)))" out of context and think that someone typo'ed on the keyboard, until I realized that is what the local consensus feels that the article must be called. Same thing with the band "fun.", again, is that a typo or not? Yes, I'm a computer geek, so to me "Numb3rs" immediately translates right, but with out vanity issues I have problems. This is all of making the work as accessible as possible. --MASEM (t) 23:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Consider that that very few readers will arrive at an article with no knowledge of the subject. Most of the readers going to an article will have read the name in some other source, and have come here in order to find out more about it. I would think that readers on the "opposite side of the world" will find the non-vanity version actually more confusing than they would the vanity version. It is likely that the "vanity" version is the only way they have ever seen the name written, and so they would expect to see it written that way in Wikipedia. Blueboar (talk) 23:40, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

To stress the point, we're not talking the problem within the article that has a vanity spelling title (where there's time and space to dedicate to explaining the vanity spelling), we're talking about the rest of main space, where the term might be a tangent but appropriate link, eg talking about actors that appeared on Numbers. Those are the points where confusion would occur (if they are to occur). --MASEM (t) 00:20, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

In that case, why should it matter at all for the title of the article itself, since that title will appear right above that explanation, and "non-vanity" spellings to be used in other articles can pipe or redirect to it? bd2412 T 00:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone know when WP:TITLE became linked to MOS:TM, and what was the rationale behind it? That might a clue that can explain the seemingly endless battles that WP has been having for a while now. (By my count, this is the second or third time that a RfC has come up here in the last seven months.) SciGal (talk) 00:07, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

It appears that it was added in this edit. As to rationale I would ask the editor that inserted it, though since it was back in 2006 they may not remember. --Jnorton7558 (talk) 21:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

My question remains, though, that it seems like those who dislike the MOSTM guideline have wanted to change it for a long time, but they haven't succeeded, and there haven't really been new arguments raised. Is there a point at which this will stop happening? Or will it just be perpetual? Croctotheface (talk) 00:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

We have had no binding discussion to iron out the differences between MOS:TM and TITLE, hence why this keeps coming up. Assuming the above RFC is closed properly with an uninvolved admin determining the result, that result should considered binding. That means if its determined TITLE has more application than MOS:TM, I would hope those that back MOS:TM will know not to challenge TITLE-based names, and if such names are challenged, that the challenge is quickly defused by pointing to this RFC consensus. Vice verse if it goes the other way. What's happened is that we've had non-binding discussions that allow people to keep questioning names (from either side) and we should consider this RFC the absolute result, adjusting the wording and linking to this RFC to point this out in footnotes on both policy/guideline pages. --MASEM (t) 00:13, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that these contentious debates happen because there's a lack of results that are "considered binding" and enforced (perhaps by the MOS police force you have pined for). I think that contentious debates happen because people disagree with existing policies and guidelines and wish to change them, which is always their right in Wikipedia. Consensus can change. So I'm asking a question that's more directed at what sort of thing would inspire people who dislike this guideline in its current form to stop trying to relitigate the issue even if they don't manage to get their way. Somehow I don't think hearing you say "no, no, this is considered binding" is going to get them to change their views. Croctotheface (talk) 00:35, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

What I'm saying, and this is just observation, is that someone will initiate an move request per one of these two guidelines, and it will be moved and then some time later (months, years, whatever) a person favoring the other side will come off and say "no, it should be here due to X", and the page is moved again. Rinse and repeat. As long as have a set decision that says "this is what you should do, no matter how much you think it should be the other way" that will prevent these cycles. And yes, if we have a binding decision, then while people may try to initiate such moves, the admin should follow whatever this RFC says, and if that even means ignoring the local consensus of the move request for the global consensus of TITLE vs MOSTM, so be it (that's how it should work too.) --MASEM (t) 01:10, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

There would still be plenty of arguments available to people who wanted to move the article, not to mention IAR. I think you seem to mistake our guidelines for legalistic requirements. They're not. Croctotheface (talk) 19:05, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

There will always be that. The difference would be that we have, globally decided, that method X should apply at all times, and thus if the move request is against that, it should be closed and ignored quickly (barring any strong IAR arguments for it). We have otherwise been wishy-washy in closing these on local consensus instead of global. --MASEM (t) 19:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Could we agree that this only matters for difficult cases? And maybe possibly a solution?

Most of the time, it's obvious what the name is and what style to use to write that name. The debates come in when we have non-obvious cases, and those cases seem to center around creative works (maybe we should give more leeway because the style of the name is creative expression), subjects that do not receive a lot of coverage in English language media, and subjects that receive a lot of coverage in specialized media but little or no coverage in generalized media. My view has always been that this guideline makes a recommendation that should be applied and followed just about all the time, but that there are other reasons and other arguments that can be part of the conversation, too. I don't think that this guideline precludes those other issues from being raised. It seems to me that, in general, Wikipedia standardizes fewer odd looking names than most high-level publications. I think it might be fair to say that the actual process we follow isn't necessarily described by this guideline, but I don't think I've seen a change proposed that really describes it either.

Here's my solution, although it's not written in a way that's ready to go into the guideline. We say what I said above about the potential for difficult cases, particularly in those sorts of areas. We then say that there's a strong preference for standardization because it's easier to read, doesn't call attention to certain subjects more just because they use SHOUT STYLE, etc. Still, we say, it's important to recognize that there might be reasons to use an odd-looking style. It could be that what looks like a stylistic decision is actually a decision that changes the name itself. I'd say that the musical Oliver! would have a different name if it were just called "Oliver." Others might disagree, but that's fine. The point of this guideline is to help editors when discussing difficult cases, not to obviate the need to have that discussion. Another possibility is that an odd-looking style is actually standard English. For instance, iPod and eBay look odd at first, but there's really no other usage out there. I'd argue that Deadmau5 falls into this category as well. Perhaps "Numb3rs" does, too. But if editors involved in that discussion disagree, so be it, we're going to use "Numbers."

Broadly speaking, my feeling is that these difficult cases really could come out either way, and the important thing is that editors make decisions based on what's best for the readers, not the fact that own this phone or like that TV show or that they have disdain for "vanity styles." Croctotheface (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Nearly every discussion I've read on requested moves that pit TITLE vs MOSTM bring in "But this article is here, we should do the same" (works both ways). You can't just leave it for the "most difficult cases" when what that line is is not well defined (eg "Oliver!" is a good example that would fall on that line, compared to "Numb3rs".) This is the problem when the advice is vague is that these discussions keep happening over and over. --MASEM (t) 01:17, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Masem, what is the difference between Numb3rs and this title? It also has "unpronounced" characters because CBS had to change the title of the Twitter feed that inspired the show to prevent being fined by the FCC. Yet, I have not seen anyone protest that the title is a "vanity spelling" here at MOS:TM. SciGal (talk) 08:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that should be moved. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:33, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Interesting case... The "official" title is "$#*! My Dad Says"... and a very quick (incomplete) look at a few sources tells me that may also be the COMMONNAME for the show... however, even if that is the COMMONNAME, we can't use it as our title because the hash-tag symbol screws up the programming. So we are forced to use something else. One obvious option is the title Shit My Dad Says... but can't be used (it's taken by another article)... so that gets us into the need to disambiguate. And how to best disambiguate isn't a Style issue. Blueboar (talk) 13:34, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Oh I give up - we all know that "$#*!" is a stylised version of "Shit", and MOS takes preference on stylisation matters. The COMMONNAME is "Shit My Dad Says". When you're down the pub discussing the show with you mates, do you call it "Dollar-hash-asterisk-exclamation My Dad Says"? --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:42, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)So it should obviously be at Shit My Dad Says (TV series) per WP:NCTV. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:50, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Rob, I just want to clear up one bit of confusion you seem to have... the COMMONNAME isn't "what we call it down the pub". (that's the vernacular name). The COMMONNAME (when there is one) is whatever is used by a significant majority of reliable sources. The COMMONNAME and the Vernacular name are not necessarily the same. Blueboar (talk) 14:14, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and they all call it "Shit My Dad Says", it's just that some of them choose to style the title with a pictorial representation of "shit", made up of punctuation marks, and some of them choose not to. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:31, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I have to agree that in this case, we (editors) know the original blog was "Shit My Dad Said", and the TV version is "TV-censored". It would be appropriate as "Shit My Dad Said", because we know what those original characters were. (Consider how people verbally talked about the show as well). --MASEM (t) 14:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, according to the network, the title was to be pronounced "Bleep My Dad Says" - which, of course, doesn't match up with any reading of "$#*!". It is not enough to say that the original blog was titled "Shit My Dad Says", since the TV show is not a blog, and it is not at all unusual for adaptations to use a title different from the source material (for example, the film "Blade Runner", adapted from the story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"), so it is not correct to say that the name of the TV series is either "Shit My Dad Says", or the obviously non-matching "Bleep My Dad Says". bd2412 T 23:18, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

At the same time, many sources called it "Shit My...", ignoring what CBS "wanted". If that show has appeared without the twitter account behind it - eg an original title, using the punctuation soup in the "official" spelling of the title, that would probably be the case that we'd end up keeping that soup in the title since there was no obvious way to interpret it. But because the blog was its inspiration, a significant-enough portion of RSs called it by the blog's original name. And of course we're not beholden to any content censoring like CBS is; yes, the show avoided profanity within the dialog but it is also impossible to talk about the show without talking about the original blog so we're going to have to use profane terms to discussion the show. Arguably the blog's original name and/or the "Bleep" version would be better search terms than the punctuation soup that it was actually published with. --MASEM (t) 16:07, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

I thought that there were no difficult cases if we just followed your way? It seems like you're saying that sources and history a whole bunch of other things that you have said or implied are not important to the decision here factor into what style to choose? Again, the guideline just can't be written to obviate the need to ever discuss individual cases. The things you're saying about this case, and the way that they are not tied to language in the guideline, seems to demonstrate that as clearly as anything I could've dreamed up. Croctotheface (talk) 02:02, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "fall on the line" means. I don't think it's close as to whether we should use the exclamation point for Oliver! That seems obvious and easy to me. The point I am trying to make (and I might not be making it well) is that there will always be discussion with difficult cases. I don't think that there exists a consensus for always doing one thing or the other. It seems pretty clear to me that the consensus would favor standardizing more often than a "most common/majority" standard would, but much less often than Masem's sense of prescriptivism would. This guideline is not being applied as it is literally written. If we can make changes that avoid that issue without raising others, then we probably should. Croctotheface (talk) 19:03, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking that this is more MASH (film) and M*A*S*H (TV series). SciGal (talk) 20:58, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

So what would you suggest? Blueboar (talk) 22:49, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

See, if one takes the MOS:TM approach, there are no difficult cases - there is a mechanical approach to determine the right style to use. What it leaves is when editors don't want to accept this position, making the case "difficult". --MASEM (t) 23:00, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Masem, the literal MOSTM approach is not the consensus approach. Do you think we do different things and have these debates because you haven't been obnoxious enough in stating your position? or because your fantasy of the MOSTM police hasn't thrown enough people in MOSTM secret prisons? Seems more likely that the issue is that not all editors agree with you. Blueboar, I think that my post at the top of this section outlines the sort of approach I would take. Croctotheface (talk) 19:44, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Besides which, that's not even correct. Editors would still have these two arguments available to them if you win the day here: (1) "This element of the nonstandard style is essential to the title, so to change it would mean changing the actual name, not the style" and (2) "The wide use of this style among high-level generalist English sources shows that it is acceptable within standard English." What you're really saying is that if everyone just agreed with you on everything, there would be no difficult cases and no need for discussion. Croctotheface (talk) 19:50, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

What I am saying is that we would cut out nearly all of the endless back-and-forth move requests between vanity and normalized name by stating the MOSTM has precedence, because that is a straight forward mechanic normalization of a title that requires, with some exception, objective steps to achieve the title. If you leave it to sources and local consensus, you will have endless cycles where people will slice and dice the sources one way to get one name, and then sometime later a different group will do the same to push it back, and it will go back and forth indefinitely. That has happened, and it will continue to happen, unless we recognize that if you standardize vanity spellings, there's no reason to have those debates. Look to COMMONNAME (which we can't standardize) and various WP:LAME cases to show how this affects us. The whole point of a MOS is to standardize and avoid endless editing on presentation details over content. I'm also not swayed that any title that uses a vanity spelling is "essential" to break readability goals. The presentation of the title should be discussed (and, for example, in the case of "Numb3rs", explained that the show presents the title this way for the "l33t" nature, a documentable fact), since we're talking about the MOS that applies to all pages, not just the one. --MASEM (t) 20:06, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Yet, all of the reliable sources use the censored version of the title of the TV series because that is the way that CBS had titled it to avoid FCC fines. Under MOS:TM, it would be in violation; under WP:VERIFY and WP:RS, it is not. SciGal (talk) 14:23, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:RS is a guideline for identifying reliable sources, and WP:Verify articulates that information we post in Wikipedia should be verifiable in reliable sources. They don't really have anything to do with this discussion. Croctotheface (talk) 19:44, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Identifying the common name by WP:TITLE has to be based on using reliable sources to determine which one is more common (not just a quick google search). But also, if we're going to use reliable sources, even if titles has "interchangeable" letters, we can't consider both of them the "same thing". which is why people have issues with this guideline. But me, i think theres room for improvement.Lucia Black (talk) 19:55, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Massem writes above... "The whole point of a MOS is to standardize". The question is: who decides what is standard and what isn't? I firmly believe that sources should set what is considered standard. When a significant majority of highly reliable sources present a name in a given way, then that presentation is standard. I don't have any objection to standardizing... but we should standardize according to the preferences of reliable sources, not our own preferences. Blueboar (talk) 23:00, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

We standardize on our choice. It's to avoid what variances there may be in the sources. But that's for presentation matters, not content. --MASEM (t) 23:22, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

But that's just it... when a significant majority of highly reliable sources all present a name the same way, we can ignore the few sources that do vary... effectively, there is no variance in the source. Blueboar (talk) 03:47, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what sources do for presentation; we have created the MOS to make the presentation of our content in the most accessible way. Yes, for content, we better follow what sources say or that's creating original research, but presentation is something we're free to decide for ourselves. --MASEM (t) 15:59, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

The guideline does not really talk about accessibility. It says things that are related, but not quite the same. Blueboar's point is a good one: Masem, you went on record forever saying that "Deamau5" was not standard English. Now, you pretend that the reason it's OK to use "Deadmau5" is pronunciation, which is not anywhere in the guideline. It seems pretty clear that "Masem's sense of standard English" is not the consensus one. My entire point here is that "because Masem said so" does not obviate the need for discussion when difficult cases arise. Croctotheface (talk) 00:12, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Because until it was pointed out by Lucia that people actually say the name "dead mau five", I would have continued to argue against it. Now if it is truly the case that "dead mau five" is not a way people pronounce it, then yes, "deadmau5" is not appropriate. And yes, the guideline makes many mentions to pronunciation and the like, it's the core of some of the more unique cases (like all-caps initializations or the first-lower-case-letter names). It's simple standardization on a easy resolution vs continual fighting when consensus comes back into play. --MASEM (t) 00:24, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Given your false choice, I throw my hat 100% behind "continual fighting." But you continue to ignore my point. There will are still arguments available to those evil "vanity styling" editors even if you get your way here. I outlined them above, but you just ignored my point entirely and insisted that your way will avoid fighting. It just won't. You're just wrong. If anything, talking to you makes me a lot more comfortable with the idea of using a "most common in sources" standard, since your way seems so obviously wrong. Croctotheface (talk) 01:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

But actually, this is getting a little derailed. Blueboar's point is a very good one. I brought up "Deadmau5" because its use is so overwhelming, whereas use of "Deadmaus" is virtually nonexistent. I fail to understand how you can argue that basically every single publication that writes about Deadmau5 is not writing in standard English except for the two or three that spell it "Deadmaus." That just seems crazy to me. If basically every publication--including high-level publications--is using a style, then that style is at the very least acceptable within standard English, and more likely, that style is standard English and other variations are not. It really seems like your formulation is such that you get to decide. It seems like you have strong feelings about what is and is not standard English, and there is no set of facts that will convince you otherwise. Croctotheface (talk) 02:15, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

(ec) My point has been - you will never reduce this type of conflict on an open wiki. People will willing go against any policy or guideline, even after being aware of them, due to either willing vandalism or honestly believing their way is better. Adopting MOSTM will not eliminate these. But if the MOSTM is decided as the precedence for determining title, it should be a way to counter most initial arguments before they grow into a larger debate. There will remain IAR debates (MOSTM doesn't eliminate such cases) but the number is much smaller than present since there's little subjectivity in determining how to present a vanity spelling by processing it through MOSTM. On the other side, should TITLE (with its dependence on sources) be used, a savvy editor will be able to justify their position on the title through a careful selection of sources, and the debates will become very subjective (this has shown true in the past). And when one style is set in a given consensus, a second editor can then challenge it later based on their own subjective treatment of sources. This is where many of the naming arguments on LAME end up and that's just on the selection of the common name and not even on the actual spelling. The point I've tried to put forth is that by adopting a nearly objective standard for presenting names, you remove most of the pointless debates on naming. You'll still have IAR discussions (the $#!% My Father Says case is a good IAR that falls between the cracks) and its fine to have discussions over that, but all the other ones discussed so far clearly fall out with a simple objective answer, and thus should eliminate the endless fighting save for that that comes from we can't control due to being an open wiki. --MASEM (t) 02:43, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

And in terms of what is standard English, at least to me, I see this as a very objective determination, or at least if the present description is lacking, one that can be beefed up; if some believe that MOS:TM leaves holes in determining what is objective, then we can fix those holes now or when they come up in IAR discussions (eg the $#!% case is a good on). I'm also speaking of standard English around the world. Just because sources like the New York Times use a vanity term doesn't make it standard English. --MASEM (t) 02:43, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Again, we return to the question of who makes this "very objective determination." You seem to be saying that it's not the New York Times, it's not the 99.9% of sources that use "Deadmau5" or the overwhelming number of sources that use "Numb3rs," it's YOU. WP:MOSTM becomes WP:MASEM. Croctotheface (talk) 14:42, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Standard English is not defined by the New York Times or works like that. It comes from things like the Oxford Dictionary. And again, we're talking the MOS here - this is presentation and not content, so we're free to ignore what the sources say for purposes of standardization and accessibility. --MASEM (t) 14:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

First off, it's not just the NYT; in the case of Deadmau5, it's pretty much every single source, high- and lowbrow, that uses that style. The notion that it's not standard just seems ludicrous to me. Second, it's true that we get to do basically whatever we want. My point is that I think you are the only editor here who actually holds your position. Third, I find it curious that you are willing to follow a dictionary that doesn't write about Deadmau5 (or any of the other subjects that lead to difficult cases) and not follow high-level publications do that do write about them. What that means is that you are willing to look to sources, just so long as they are sources that require interpretation, and you can defiantly insist that you have the One True Interpretation. Again, your proposal is to turn WP:MOSTM into WP:MASEM. Croctotheface (talk) 16:40, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

If you have a look at #Survey above, you will see that Masem is not alone in this view. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:50, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

(ec) I'm talking about the English language in general. In standard English - what is going to be taught in English-language classes around the world and what we are aiming for - there are no words where a number is used to replace a character and there are no words where punctuation replaces a character. Maybe in the future, "l33t" type language will be part of Oxford, but it isn't now. So we want to have our articles presented in the version of English that is considered the standard world-wide - that defined by Oxford and other key dictionaries. Now, granted, MOSTM does not say this but every current rule matches with that, nor would I add any more rules to deal with that, but to me that's the best way to describe what the whole point of MOS:TM's normalization is supposed to do; it is to get our presentation of non-standard English to standard English for the purposes of maximum understanding, readability, and accessibility and avoid the systematic bias of Western culture on vanity names. --MASEM (t) 16:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Rob, would you count my entry in the survey as agreeing with Masem? Because I do not. Masem, how many stage names of electronic musicians have OED entries? Croctotheface (talk) 16:59, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

In the case of Shit My Dad Says, WP:COMMONNAME decides whether the article should be Shit My Dad Says or Bleep My Dad Says; the fact we don't use the symbols has already been decided by the MOS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:48, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, no... the 5 principles of Recognizability, Naturalness, Preciseness, Consiseness, and Consistency decide what the article title should be (and to a lesser extent how to refer to it in the text). What COMMONNAME decides is which of the various choices for a title (including, but not limited to: Shit My Dad Says (TV series), and Bleep My Dad Says (TV series) AND $h*! My Dad Says) is most Recognizable and Natural. Blueboar (talk) 17:28, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

What if MOS:TM read like this?

When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones). Editors should first see and use the style that is most commonly used by reliable sources as defined by Wikipedia. If two or more names are used equally by the sources, then editors should choose the style that most commonly resembles standard English.

SciGal (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Going by sources simply doesn't work, it creates the endless cycles that have happened to date already. All it takes are savvy editors that can slice and dice the available sources to present the version they prefer as having the most appearances in sources, even for the most apparently obvious cases. And then once decided, it will be likely challenged again in time. This is the core of the endless cycle of naming arguments is the so-called reliance on sources. --MASEM (t) 00:16, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Masem, Going by sources may not work perfectly... but it works well. It certainly works well in every other topic area (so I fail to understand why these pop culture topics would be any different). My observation is that most of the RM cycles occur in cases where the sources are mixed... where there isn't actually a single COMMONNAME for the subject (ie no one variant is used by a significant majority of reliable sources). I think that SciGal's proposed language addresses that situation very well (when an examination of source usage shows that there isn't a single COMMONNAME that is the obvious choice, settle the dispute by going with the variant that comes closest to standard English).

To see how it would work, we can apply this concept to the Kesha vs Ke$ha debate... An examination of the sources shows mixed usage (some sources use the stylized KeSha, others use the non-stylized Kesha... with a slight majority at the higher end favoring Kesha). So, rather than a tit for tat cycle... we can settle the debate by saying "because sources are mixed... default to the one that is closest to standard English... keep at Kesha."

Now, contrast this with the Deadmou5 situation... an overwhelming majority of sources use the stylized name. It was an obvious choice. Indeed the only reason there was any debate about it... the only reason we had a flip-floping cycle of RMs over that title... was that MOS:TM currently disallows that obvious choice. Had MOS:TM said what SciGal proposes, there never would have been an argument. Blueboar (talk) 13:37, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

The objection I have with SciGal's version is that it encourages "vote counting" and does not differentiate between sources that are reliable for factual matters but not bastions of copy editing rigor and high-level sources. I think that something closer to what Blueboar proposes would be acceptable to me, with the standard set at "overwhelming" or something close to it. I think that "mixed" is too loose and "equally" is too strict, since usage will by definition always be mixed (or else we're inventing our own style) and never be equal (because there are so many of sources out there). My preference remains to articulate something like what I said at the beginning of this section: that there are numerous factors that can influence decisions on difficult cases, and we should allow editors to hash out a consensus that makes sense for them. I still don't think anyone has really responded to my argument that "standard English" should be interpreted in a descriptivist sort of way, where the overwhelming usage of a style like "Deadmau5" means that it effectively becomes standard English. Masem has said, essentially, "just no" and implied that every single high-level English source does not follow standard English, only Masem does. But that doesn't seem like much of an argument to me. Croctotheface (talk) 15:49, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Croctotheface, I think that what you are trying to say is "Use common sense in cases where an unconventional usage appears overwhelmingly in the sources. An unconventional spelling is the actual name of the subject, so use it".

My only problem with that is that you have editors who want to focus on the unconventional spelling used overwhelmingly in the sources defined by WP (i.e., scholarly journals, mainstream newspapers, mainstream magazines) and are willing to violate common sense and various WP policies and guidelines to change the spelling to suit their preference. For example, the PBS series NOVA is Nova (TV series) according to MOS:TM, even though it's NOVA in virtually all of the sources. SciGal (talk) 13:14, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

And we're back to the sensible rationale in the lead of this guideline as to why we don't use vanity stylings: This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others. See also WP:ALLCAPS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:28, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Come on now; MOS:TM in its current form is not sensible. If it were, we would not have the MESSENGER spacecraft, the the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, and ω-automaton flagged for violation of MOS:TM. SciGal (talk) 13:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

None of those are relevant to MOS:TM. (well, The Harry S. Truman one kind-of is, but it's not relevant to the point in hand - it's more of an WP:OFFICIAL problem) --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:10, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Rob, it's interesting that you quote that, since I think I wrote that particular wording a few years ago. That's much closer to what I think the idea behind the guideline is than the recommendation to standardize if even a single source does. The only reason that I am not very strongly in favor of changing that recommendation is that I think we basically get to a good place despite it, and I worry that we'd get to a bad place if we loosened that language. SciGal, I think that the "actual name" argument is something that should be available to people who want to use a nonstandard style. There are cases (like Oliver!) where something that would seem to run afoul of MOSTM is undoubtedly a part of the name itself. My concern with the language you seem to favor is that it tips the scales much too far in favor of not standardizing, to the point where we'd likely be the most prominent publication that doesn't standardize a lot of styles. Croctotheface (talk) 19:24, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Rob, all of those have been cited for violation of MOS:TM when they should not have been. (Even the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site should not have been cited as the site is the name of a place and not a trademark.)

Croctotheface, the "actual name" argument is not always available under MOS:TM due to the editors who insist on standardization no matter what. My concern with the proposal you seem to favor is that it will continue these types of arguments where a nonconventional usage is prevalent in all of the sources to the point where it is standard usage for that subject but editors who dislike it will use MOS:TM to change it. SciGal (talk) 14:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

And the above discussions point out that any dependency on sources will create a solution that will not eliminate circular debates; there's always going to be editor's personal opinions about how a topic's title should be named that may be contrary to he currently prevailing name, will be able to present a finely-tuned set of sources to support their case, and the debate will continue anew. And this regardless of either approach to sources that have been presented already; or to restate, using sources is not creating a reasonably objective (within IAR terms) means to determining how to present a name on WP, so it remains the source for debate. Using a set of rules like MOS:TM where we present names as they would be otherwise given in standard written English is almost purely objective, with some room for IAR, and, if it was established that MOS:TM had precedence over TITLE, the only arguments that would result would be those that refute that MOSTM has precedence, which is much easier argument to shut down, ending such debates easily, and ultimately removing the circular arguments on how a name should be read. And to me, that's been the whole point of this debate - to figure out a means to stop the circular problems with naming of articles when vanity spelling comes into play. --MASEM (t) 15:02, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I really think that both of you guys are misguided in thinking that we can avoid "these debates." It's clear that there isn't unanimous agreement on how to handle difficult cases. My hope, and my proposal here, is to write our rules in a way that gives guidance to editors discussing these difficult cases. The thing that bothers me about both of your positions is that your desired outcome seems to be that people who disagree with you are barred from even making their case. My feeling is that if one side is so obviously right, then it should be easy for that side to convince a consensus of editors involved in the discussion. The solution shouldn't be using this guideline to silence them for having the temerity to disagree. Croctotheface (talk) 05:55, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

The whole point of a MOS (not just MOSTM) is to avoid constant conflict over the more trivial matters of presentation with editors trying to force a personal (nonstandard) style onto an article (and I've seen this happen in other areas of the MOS where something is not well defined and editors get into long-term wars about it). But, for this to be the case, it needs to be established by consensus that the issues of vanity spelling is a matter of presentation and not content; if consensus believes that, for example, using "Numbers" vs "Numb3rs" has a significant effect on the content of the article, then yes, it is a content issue and it doesn't make sense for MOS to be the first authority on how to present vanity names. Mind you, I really don't see how an article's content is changed to any degree by using the vanity spelling over the standard English spelling (weighed against the significant improvement in readability) but that's just me. --MASEM (t) 06:13, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, until June 10, 2013, consensus did exist that using Numbers instead of Numb3rs has a significant effect on the article. (Actually, it still exists among those who have worked on the articles.) Most people will not recognize an "e" as representing the natural logarithmic base as most of the American population have not taken advanced math classes past algebra I. The general population, however, are quick to connect the substitution of a "3" for an "e" with computers and other math-related topics. Yet, the editor who changed the title and editors here have been using MOS:TM to silence the editors who have worked on the Numb3rs article for disagreeing with the use of MOS:TM in this case. In fact, the first comment after I brought the debate here stated, "I personally believe that we use the form that a person , completely unfamiliar with the work, will have the least confusion over while reading the article and that is the form that ignores the silly number use (to make the title look cool) ..." (emphasis mine) SciGal (talk) 13:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I cautiously suggest that as all your edits are related to the television show Numbers/Numb3rs, that maybe you are a little too invested in the show to be objective, and are trying to mould the guidelines in order to accommodate the styling of the title of your favourite TV programme. This is not about Numbers any more, and a recent move request for that article was closed without consensus to move. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Rob, you are just as invested in that debate; you are the one who made the change over at the Numb3rs page. When editors tried to revert your changes and to convince you that Numb3rs should be used instead of Numbers, you changed it back and cited MOS:TM in your arguments. Here, I have been trying to keep the subject on the problems with MOS:TM usage in general, but others keep bringing it back up.SciGal (talk) 13:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, if you read the note, Gaijin42 stated that the survey was tied and that there were strong arguments for both following RS and for following MOS. That is why he brought the debate here. SciGal (talk) 14:08, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but the debate is about a potential conflict between NC/MOS. You're just making it all about Numbers. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:13, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Croctotheface, I understand that you are concerned that the lack of standard spelling might get out of hand. I, however, am concerned that people will take your proposal, ignore the part about the usage being allowed if it is used overwhelmingly in high-level sources, and insist on standardized spelling no matter what. That is what has happened here. People have ignore the infobox at the top of the page (the one that states that there will be exceptions) and insist on standardization of everything, regardless of the prevalence in high-level sources. That has caused all these debates. SciGal (talk) 13:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

(Reading what I wrote now, I should have stated, "Editors should first see which style is prevalent and use the style that is most commonly used by reliable sources as defined by Wikipedia." in that second sentence. There was something missing in that sentence. And, maybe I shouldn't have included the third sentence; I was thinking of the Seven/Se7en debate with that one.)SciGal (talk) 13:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

That's a terrible idea - it would cause more problems than it solves. Who decides what is "prevalent" or "most commonly"? We have an MOS (like all quality publications do) so we don't need to source the style and have these needless arguments. Whilst I'm not against changes to the MOS if it can be proved that said proposed changes are common practice among quality style guides, using sources to determine style on a case-by-case basis leads to inconsistency and anarchy. Not to mention your example of Nova above. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:13, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Does it not bother you at all that MOSTM, as it's currently written, does not accurately reflect the practice "in the field" and almost certainly is not supported by consensus across the project? Croctotheface (talk) 15:21, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

The whole point of the RFC is to resolve that issue, because there are plenty of places where MOSTM prevails, and plenty where TITLE prevails, creating the inconsistency that the RFC is set to resolve. --MASEM (t) 15:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

If we need to change our MOS in line with other MOSs in order to reflect the practice in the field, then that's fair enough, but what we shouldn't be doing is changing our MOS to say "look at the sources". --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:04, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

With respect to stage names and titles of creative works (which is where most of our disputes seem to arise), we should not be treating them as trademarks at all. They may incidentally be the subject of trademark registrations, but they are not boxes of cereal on a shelf, or gadgets in a display case. If the creator of a film decides to name it "Numb3rs" or "S1m0ne" or "dot the i", that is its name, and it's not our place to say otherwise unless there is a substantial rejection of that usage in reliable sources. bd2412 T 16:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Ha, I was thinking about the Dot the I travesty earlier on. That's a WP:CT issue, which is inequivocal, but this is a logical extension of that process. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:20, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

By "travesty" you mean using the actual name of the work, instead of misleading readers into using an incorrect name in order to satisfy a desire to rewrite the work of the authors to suit orthographic convention? Perhaps next you would like to fix Quentin Tarantino's misspellings in the title Inglourious Basterds? Add the missing hyphen to U Turn? bd2412 T 16:34, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Spelling is different from style. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:37, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

As a carefully considered element of the title of a creative work, that is a trivial distinction. bd2412 T 16:42, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

But as a marketing ploy designed to draw attention to itself..? --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:45, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

That is a value judgment, not an editorial judgment. It is not our place to try to read the minds of authors and guess why they chose an unconventional spelling or styling for their titles, any more than it is our place to take a cubist Picasso and paint a still life over it in the name of artistic conformity. bd2412 T 16:52, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Exactly why we should stick to our MoS. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:58, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Not if we care about accurately and correctly reporting the titles of works. If the MoS leads us into providing false information and deceiving our readers, then it is imposing a PoV that harms the encyclopedia. bd2412 T 17:06, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

However, some/many of these creative names are also trademarked eg: Here's the trademark for "Numb3rs". The line between a trade/brand mark and a creative tile is incredibly thin and to the point that if consensus agrees it should be done for one, it makes no sense not to do it for the other types of marks. --MASEM (t) 16:24, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Then we end up with the inconsistency wherein the rule governing what title to use for a work hinges not on the title established by its author, nor on use in sources, but entirely on whether it is the subject of a trademark registration. Our process of writing an encyclopedia becomes dependent on legal trivialities that may have no impact at all on the public perception of the subject. bd2412 T 16:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I think that the spirit of the guideline is that we prefer to avoid weird-looking styles. The use of the word "trademark" is incidental. One of the first examples listed was Thirtysomething/thirtysomething, which is the title of a creative work. That said, I agree that the potential for conveying meaning with a stylistic choice should be a factor that is involved, especially when looking at the titles of creative works. Croctotheface (talk) 22:39, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• Comment. To try to move this on a bit, seeing as we're going round in circles, does anyone know whether the various style manuals have a guideline for this sort of thing? --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:26, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I generally think that we should look to follow, rather than lead, in terms of stylistic matters. So if we modify the guideline to take guidance from major style guides (which seem to favor Deadmau5, for instance, based on its near-universal adoption by sources) then that's something I'd be in favor of. I think that would also capture what I see as the project-wide consensus-in-practice, where we standardize more often than a "most common style among sources" standard would have use to, but considerably less often than, say, Masem's interpretation of the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 22:39, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Based on what SciGal was about to find before, none of them seem to address the issue of vanity spelling, save for unusual capitalization. But, that's from what's easily seen without paying for the MOS guides. That said, just because a work that happens to also publish a style guide uses a specific manner of spelling does not necessary mean that style guide reflects that, as most of these vanity spelling issues are rather recent relative to the publication of the guides. The editors may be using the vanity spelling for lack of answer advice. I'd also put in that nearly all these guides are aided at the assumption of a primarily Western (NA or UK) audience, and choices they have made based on that readship can possibly create a systematic bias against what we have to consider for a wider global audience. --MASEM (t) 22:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Its just an over exageration to believe that this has any form of systemic bias, its more like natural bias. But even so, its not like wikipedia can physically do something about it because it wont meet all the way. SO why try to do something half-way? Either way, i am in agreement with Croctotheface on this one.Lucia Black (talk) 06:01, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

The issue of systematic bias at WP is documented, and we are adviced to avoid creating further bias. Hence the push that MOSTM suggests to present proper names in the most natural form that exists in the standard way English is said and printed. There's nothing half-way with that approach per MOSTM. --MASEM (t) 06:30, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

yeah, i know it ecist, doesn't change my opinion anymore than before. Its still an exagerration because there are other things Wikipedia can't help at all and people are still going to look at it as "systemic bias". Systemic bias is something that happens when someone favors one over the other indiscriminately, and i agree that MOSTM is meant to help "when it can" but we shouldn't let it overpower everything else.Lucia Black (talk) 06:46, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I did access most of the style guides for free. Bluebook seems more concerned about formatting cases, and the Elements of Typographic Style seems more concerned about typesetting. (If I am wrong about those two, please correct me!) I couldn't access the NYT Manual and ISO690:2010. Of the ones I could access, here's what I found:

• Concerning Trademarks

CMOS 16th edition (8.152), the APA 6th edition (4.16) and their blog, and Turabian 8th edition (22.1.3, p. 310) advocate only capitalizing the trademarks. The 1997 ACS Style Guide and the 2013 AP Stylebook (pp. 36, 273) suggests that you should use generic terms unless you have to use the trademark. According to CMOS, you must defer to the preference of the owner, and you must keep the original spelling of the trademark (8.152). eBay and iPod can be used at the start of a sentence since the second letter is a capital letter (8.153).

• Concerning Titles

CMOS 16th ed., the latest MLA Handbook (3.6, pp.86-92), MHRA 12th edition, Turbian 8th ed. (22.3; pp. 312-316), and the 2007 AMA MOS (3.9, page 46) all state that you must write the title exactly as it appears in the work. The APA has a policy of "Cite what you see; cite what you use", extends to British English spellings and the use of Greek letters in the work (4.21 in the book). The ASA uses CMOS as their source. CMOS goes even further and states that you must keep even the non-Latin characters in the title regardless of the rest of the text (8.163).

If you need to make a change to the title, most of the style manuals listed above mention that you only can capitalize, use a colon or a comma, italicize, or use quotation marks in a title (CMOS 8.163; MLA Handbook 3.6; Turbian pages 169-172; AMA MOS 2.1.6). The Elements of Style, 4th edition, also mentions just the use of a colon (p. 8) or italics (p. 38). The 2013 AP Stylebook says nothing about changing the title of a work (although the way the AP Stylebook reads, a guideline of not changing the spelling of a title is implied). With music, however, the title must be in the language that it is sung in (pp. 63-64, 264-265). As for the latest MLA Style Manual, it is essentially the MLA Handbook with an expanded coverage of foreign sources (MLA Handbook, page 263).

In the case of the APA 6th ed., the title cited in the text must match the title you use in the references (paragraph above 6.11).

The Elements of Style, 4th ed., mentions that spelling tends to be about differences such as "tho" and "though" (pp. 74-75). The latest MLA Handbook states that you must maintain consistency in spelling throughout the document (3.1.1, p. 65).

• Concerning Names of Bands and Artists

I did not see anything about changing the spelling (i.e, the actual characters) of a name of a band or an artist in any of the MOSs I have mentioned. I'm pretty sure that they all imply that you do not change the spelling of the bands and artists.

SciGal (talk) 19:47, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

The Bluebook has very little to say on the topic. It says (19th ed., p. 220) to "cite trademarks as <TRADEMARK NAME>, Registration No. <registration number>" (which specifically yields, e.g. DEADMAU5, Registration No. 3836647; NUMB3RS, Registration No. 3055208; $#*! MY DAD SAYS, Registration No. 4142745; KE$HA, U.S. Trademark Application No. 85780117; but also K.D. LANG, Registration No. 2268716). Obviously, we are not about to start using ALL CAPS for anything. It also says (19th ed., p. 174) to cite film and television broadcasts "by title [and] episode name", giving as an example, AIRPLANE! (Paramount Pictures 1980), including the ! in the title. Overall, the practices supported by existing style manuals (to the extent that they comment on the subject at all) support the view that titles should be presented accurately, and not in an unconventional effort to impose the orthographic point of view of Wikipedia editors who would like to "correct" the ability of authors of creative works to use titles that the editors just don't like. bd2412 T 22:10, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

We're trying to write for maximum accessibility and readability, and giving any type of favoritism to a single creator who fully chooses a vanity spelling of a name that has a clear and obvious non-vanity spelling over the understanding for all English readers is a systematic bias that favors the western world and (in nearly all cases with notable works), commercial interests. Again, our target audience is much wider than any of these other style guides are designed for. --MASEM (t) 00:18, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

You have mistaken us for the Simple English Wikipedia. That would be the place to impose your "readability" concerns, although it is quite frankly nonsense to assume that Numb3rs and Ke$he and P!nk are any less readable than Poughkeepsie. bd2412 T 02:46, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

No, readability affects en.wiki. You're speaking to comprehension which requires using a very limited vocabulary and sentence structure to achieve "simple" English, and to that end, there is some content that will be on en.wiki that cannot be duplicated on Simple English since it is impossible to describe the complexity of the topics in that simple subset of the language. I'm talking about accessibility and readability which is not about understanding the content but simply making sure our presentation does not get in the way of understanding the content. Our MOSes standard our presentation towards this end. --MASEM (t) 02:53, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

You have yet to present a single shred of evidence to support the supposition that any reader's comprehension will be at all inhibited by our accurate presentation of the handful of titles that substitute a number or punctuation mark for letters. Furthermore, we can not allow ourselves to use that as an excuse to present inaccurate information merely because some editors don't like the accurate presentation. There is no TV series named "Numbers", such a thing does not exist; there is one named "Numb3rs", which is often presented incorrectly by the same kind of people who would "correct" the spelling of "Inglourious Basterds" if they could, or add the missing hyphen to the 1997 film "U Turn". There is obviously no TV named "Shit My Dad Says", as this would be illegal; there is one named "$#*! My Dad Says". The more the question is examined, the clearer it becomes that this is merely an effort by orthographic purists to impose inaccurate information on the reader (who is falsely derided as unable to figure out the words in front of their face) in the name of pressing a point of view. bd2412 T 03:42, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

The reasoning is straight forward. Take any name that has a vanity spelling with a clear non-vanity version, like "Numb3rs"/"Numbers".

• If one already knows of "Numb3rs", there is no confusion if we opt to use "Numbers" or "Numb3rs". In other words, everyone from this group will understand what we intent whichever way we go.
• If one has no idea what "Numb3rs" some of them will have no idea what that word is (not necessarily all but certainly not necessary none). On the other hand, if they don't know of the work, but we use the work "Numbers", they will at least understand what that term is meant to be read in context.

Thus, if we use "Numb3rs" over "Numbers", we are complicating how those others will read WP articles that use the vanity term, while avoid that confusion by using the non-vanity form. The non-vanity form opens the work for all English speakers, while the vanity form will bias against those that aren't part of the (Western) culture that uses vanity spelling. As long as this latter group is a non-zero set, there is a bias. We want to avoid that bias and thus we prefer the former.

And the "accuracy" argument is not really one to start. Ignoring the vanity spelling issue, we already opt to go against how the trademark owner/creator would use if they opt to use something that makes it difficult to read (eg we don't use all-caps in names unless they are initialisms). Even with that, on the pages about those topics, the first sentence nearly always will include the less-reading-appropriate but possibly more common way the name is presented so the reader learns this at the same time. Otherwise our entire MOSTM would have been declare broken long ago for these other rules where we don't follow exactly how the term is presented by its owner. But, as pointed out above, other Style Guides advice to this as well for some cases, so we're free to do that to help our presentation.

The argument that there is no show "Numbers" is pretty much bogus, because if you present that - as text, not verbally - to the average person that knows of the show, they will know exactly what you are talking about, and that's the crux of the argument, that removing vanity spelling is doing no harm whatsoever to anyone's use of the work. Arguably, and I have no idea of this situation yet, where we might have one show named "Numbers" and a completely separate show named "Numb3rs" that we might have to discuss how distinguish between these, but this is the IAR/exceptional cases that aren't immediately obvious how to deal with. --MASEM (t) 04:25, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

There is no doubt that if you present a great many closely misspelled words to people, the average person will know what you are getting at. Under that theory, we should rename Inglourious Basterds, Lordz of Brooklyn, I Wanna Rock, Luv U Better, Cater 2 U, and OU812 to titles that use dictionary spelling instead of the actual spelling, since some readers may have no idea what the misspelled words are. This is not "straight forward" reasoning, this is "I don't like it" heaped with a POV justification of a reality-blinding level. Whether people know what we're talking about or not, you can not seriously dispute that Numb3rs is a more accurate representation of the actual title created by the authors, and I would hope that you would prefer to work on an accurate encyclopedia. If prescriptivism overrules accuracy for you, you are always free to go create a fork on Wikia where you can fix all these mistakes that authors have made, abide only by dictionary spellings, and present a repainted Guernica without all the unorthodox cubism. bd2412 T 05:50, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

This is not a POV, this a fact about global and maximum accessibility to the resource of Wikipedia, which is a part of the mission of the Foundation ("to disseminate [free content] effectively and globally"). And no, none of those examples you give would need to be changed because they are pronounced exactly as they are spelled, even with the z for an s, the U for "you" or the "2" for "to" (though we would likely have redirects for the more normal ways these words are spelled and a restatement of how the terms should be read at the start of the article); that's how our MOSTM is build is to address when there are characters that do not contribute in the expected way to the pronunciation of the term under the normal rules of English. (and if we need to rewrite the MOSTM to carve out how those representative cases are okay, then that's a step we should do); the whole point of this is the case of vanity spellings where regular alphabetic characters are replaced with numbers or symbols that are not phonetically equivalent or do not add to the phonetic spelling of the term and are merely decorative. And no, its not an accuracy issue. "Numbers" and "Numb3rs" are the same term for the same show, since the meaning is exactly the same. And again, even ignoring the immediate issue of vanity spelling, our MOS and other style guides will ignore this so-called "accuracy" for readability in dealing with capitalization of terms, so this accuracy claim doesn't work. --MASEM (t) 06:40, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Re: "maximum accessibility"... Let me ask: Who do you think is trying to access the article? Are we writing for those who have already seen the name in print somewhere (perhaps in a magazine) and want to know more about the topic? Or are we writing for those who have heard the name spoken, but have never seen the name in print?

I think the first is far more likely than the second. In which case, the most accessible name will be the the version of the name that our audience is likely to have seen (ie the one most commonly found in sources). I think Masem has it backwards... by presenting a transcribed name (without the symbols), we are actually making the article less accessible to our audience; and by presenting it with the commonly used symbols, we make our article more accessible to our audience. Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I have repeatedly asked Masem for evidence in support of his claims, and he has only responded by repeating his own unevidenced certainty that the world works the way he thinks that it should. Since he is unwilling to do this work, I have researched the question, and discovered that reliably sourced expert analysis comes to exactly the opposite conclusion of what Masem claims is the truth. See Lane Crothers, Globalization and American Popular Culture (2007), stating that "by 1998 trade in movies, music, and television programming had become the United States' leading export", and further notes that most of the people in the world will never visit America or even see an American, and therefore, "what people are likely to see of America and what they are likely to know about America will be filtered through the lens of American popular culture". See also Наташа Гущина, The Influence of American Popular Culture in Other Countries (2013), stating "Countries all around the world, now more than ever, are becoming familiar with American popular culture and finding it appealing". I hope Masem is willing to appropriately revise his views in accordance with the reliably sourced evidence that debunks those views. bd2412 T 17:27, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

That's not evidence that 100% of those that can read English will be familiar with American culture, and more specifically the idea of vanity spelling, just that the percentage is likely very high. It is common sense from the concepts of accessibility that there will be people confused why a "3" appears in the middle of a word when the word does not include the "3" in the pronunciation (and I can provide my own evidence that when I first saw a name like "Sunn O)))" tossed around that someone made a massive typo, so this does happen even with native, Western English speakers). That fact that there will be confusion should be blatantly obvious if you consider the global community. Mind you, the percent affected might be 5% of the readers, 2%, 1% or even smaller but in terms of being accessible, any number less than 100% is undesirable. And given that there is no harm or benefit to the larger readership by not using vanity spelling (they will know what we mean when we say "Numbers" instead of "Numb3rs" in the same context), we should be using the solution that maximizes accessibility, like we aim with all other MOS pieces. Accessibility is not something to scoff at in favor of what may be the most recognizable. Yes we have no legal requirement to be accessible, but this is a mission goal and should be high on the list of priorities that are kept. --MASEM (t) 17:56, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Please, Masem, don't let reliably sourced facts stand in the way of your POV prescriptivism. You might have tried to garner some evidence to support your view; perhaps you did, and found that such support doesn't exist, and so you carry on as before. The reliably sourced evidence presented debunks your view and disgraces efforts to continue pushing it without presenting a shred of counter-evidence. What this reliably sourced evidence means is that the proportion of people who are most familiar with American culture (and therefore likely to be familiar with author's actual spellings, and confused by deviations from those actual spellings) exceeds any proportion who are most familiar with your orthographic preferences. If you refuse to accept the evidence once it has been presented, you plant yourself firmly in flat Earth territory, and establish that no amount of actual fact will dissuade you from wanting things to be not as they are, but as you wish them to be. bd2412 T 18:08, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I have zero doubt that the number of people that are confused by vanity spelling is far in the minority compared to those that aren't. But it is a non-zero number, and that's the key point for accessibility - if there is even some that are harmed by an approach that we take that we can work around or avoid using and without harming the work for others, we are doing a disservice that that portion of the readership. This is what happened during the early browser wars (trying to promote new features while leaving those still on older but supported browsers behind) and why we should be even more aware of it today when it comes to information on a global scale. --MASEM (t) 18:37, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Since the primary proponent of the view that a POV should be imposed on article titles has made it clear that he will not be swayed by evidence, I would suggest that anyone else considering this issue should look at the reliably sourced evidence that has been presented both by me and by SciGal in favor of using article titles that accurately reflect the names of works as established by their authors. Contrast that against the failure of the proponents of this position to present any actual evidence whatsoever, beyond naked assertions that they have convinced themselves of the rightness of their belief, no matter what the evidence says. That by itself should be enough to clearly demonstrate the irrationality of a compulsion to "correct" the titles of works to something that is factually inaccurate, but more comfortable to orthographic purists. bd2412 T 19:05, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

You haven't presented evidence either that 100% of all English readers are aware of these trends in Western culture. That Western culture is swaying the rest of the world, sure, but not to counter the point of accessibility to 100% of the readership. It's not a POV position. --MASEM (t) 14:58, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

The evidence I have presented is that readers are more likely to be familiar with Western pop culture than with your orthographic rules. You haven't provided any evidence, either, that 100% of all English readers will understand "Numbers" to refer to what they may only know as "Numb3rs", or "Kesha" to refer to what they may only know as "Ke$ha". If you are looking to establish rules based on absolutes, you are bound by the same standard. Indeed, can you point me to the policy that supports this "100% must understand it the way you prefer it" rule that you seem to have pulled out of thin air? bd2412 T 04:41, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Since one of the primary bones of contention in favor of imposing prescriptive orthography on certain titles is the claim that in other parts of the world, people would be confused by unconventional usages, I decided to test that theory directly. In order to do so, I have searched other language wikis to see what their local editors have used with respect to some of the more contentious examples under discussion. Here is the usage for seven of these titles across all wikis that have articles on them:

Language	Deadmau5	S1m0ne	Numb3rs	$h*! My Dad Says	M*A*S*H	Sunn O)))	Dot the i
العربية	ديد ماوس	سيم ون	نمبرز (مسلسل أمريكي)
беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎	Deadmau5				Военнополева болница (сериал)
bosanski			Numb3rs
català	Deadmau5
čeština	Deadmau5				M*A*S*H
dansk	Deadmau5		Numb3rs		M*A*S*H (tv-serie)
Deutsch	Deadmau5	S1m0ne	Numbers – Die Logik des Verbrechens	$h*! My Dad Says	M*A*S*H (Fernsehserie)	Sunn O)))	Ein gefährlicher Kuss
English	Deadmau5	Simone (2002 film)	Numbers (TV series)	$h*! My Dad Says	M*A*S*H (TV series)	Sunn O)))	Dot the i
español	Deadmau5	S1m0ne	Numb3rs	$h*! My Dad Says	MASH (serie de televisión)	Sunn O)))	Dot the i
eesti	Deadmau5
فارسی	ددماو۵
suomi	Deadmau5	Simone (elokuva)	Num3rot			Sunn O)))
føroyskt	Deadmau5
français	Deadmau5	Simone (film, 2002)	Numbers (série télévisée)	$h*! My Dad Says	MASH (série télévisée)	Sunn O)))
ગુજરાતી	ડેડમાઉસ
עברית	Deadmau5	סימון (סרט)	מספ7ים		מ.א.ש
hrvatski		S1m0ne (2002.)				Sunn O)))
magyar	Deadmau5		Gyilkos számok
íslenska			Numb3rs
italiano	Deadmau5	S1m0ne	Numb3rs	$h*! My Dad Says	M*A*S*H (serie televisiva)	Sunn O)))	Dot the I - Passione fatale
日本語	Deadmau5	シモーヌ (映画)	NUMBERS 天才数学者の事件ファイル		マッシュ (テレビドラマ)	Sunn O)))	Dot the i ドット・ジ・アイ
한국어	데드마우스	시몬 (2002년 영화)	넘버스 (드라마)		매시 (드라마)
Latina	Deadmau5
latviešu			Skaitļi (seriāls)
lietuvių	Deadmau5
Nederlands	Deadmau5	S1m0ne	Numb3rs	$h*! My Dad Says	M*A*S*H (televisieserie)	Sunn O)))
norsk bokmål	Deadmau5		Numb3rs		M*A*S*H (TV-serie)	Sunn O)))
polski	Deadmau5		Wzór (serial telewizyjny)	Jak ojciec coś palnie, to...	M*A*S*H	Sunn O)))	Kropka nad i (film 2003)
português	Deadmau5	S1m0ne	Numb3rs	$h*! My Dad Says	M*A*S*H (série de televisão)	Sunn O)))	Dot the i
română	Deadmau5		Numerele		M*A*S*H (serial)
русский	Deadmau5	Симона (фильм)	4исла	Перлы моего отца	МЭШ (телесериал)	Sunn O)))	Точки над i (фильм)
srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски		S1m0ne			M*A*S*H (TV serija)
Simple English	Deadmau5	S1m0ne			M*A*S*H (TV series)
slovenčina	Deadmau5	S1m0ne			M*A*S*H
српски / srpski	Дедмаус	Симона
svenska	Deadmau5		Numb3rs		M*A*S*H (TV-serie)	Sunn O)))
తెలుగు			నంబర్స్
ไทย			NUMB3RS
Türkçe		S1m0ne	Numb3rs
Tiếng Việt	Deadmau5
中文	鼠來寶 (DJ)		数字追凶		風流軍醫俏護士 (電視劇)

I note that I also checked P!nk, Ke$ha, and Se7en and found that only a handful of languages use the unorthodox characters (perhaps reflecting the fact that these subjects have at times been presented even by the people who created them with more conventional orthography), while virtually every language uses Encyclopædia Britannica. However, articles on all of these topics appear in so many languages that it would be prohibitively time consuming to make a chart covering all of them.

The thing that I find the most interesting about this is the use of Numb3rs in certain other languages, particularly in Finnish (Suomi) where it is titled Num3rot, using a translation of the word but retaining the substitution of the letter; in Hebrew, where it is titled מספ7ים, using a different alphabet entirely but substituting a number 7 for a letter in that alphabet; and in Russian, where it is titled 4исла, also using a different alphabet entirely, but substituting a number 4 for a letter in that alphabet. I suspect that these titles are also products of the original authors of the work. This demonstrates fairly remarkably that unorthodox substitutions are readily understood in other languages. bd2412 T 21:35, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

bd2412, I hate to bring this up, but, out of curiosity, what was your seventh example in the above table? SciGal (talk) 13:16, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Oops, it was supposed to be dot the i. bd2412 T 13:46, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Given that en.wiki generally sets what the other language wikis start with in terms of both content and presentation as well as being the largest, this is likely closer to navel gazing since it reflects past practice on en.wiki. Plus there's no requirement all language wikis have to be equivalent in how titles are handles. But the natural extension of this argument is what other foreign sources do and only a few spot checks (given my failing french skills) do show that the seem to use the vanity version more, adding more to the weight that this is what sources strongly prefer even if they don't print in English, which is something I can't deny. I will still say that we, as en.wiki, are free to go against sources in terms of our presentation to maximize readability, but that depends on what consensus wants, and the harm to readers in doing so is near zero while the benefit is significant. --MASEM (t) 14:58, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Putting aside issues of capitalization, it seems that when it comes to this question of potentially using an author or artist's substitution of a number or punctuation mark for a letter, we are actually talking about a very tiny portion of Wikipedia's 4.4 million+ articles. The vast majority of articles on the vast majority of topics will not ever raise this sort of problem (even with topics like σ-finite measure). In fact, the entire set of titles raising this issue appears to be what is on this page, plus a small handful of others; in sum:

1. Deadmau5
2. Headshots: SE7EN
3. Ke$ha
4. Numb3rs
5. P!nk
6. Se7en
7. $h*! My Dad Says
8. S1m0ne
9. Th1rteen R3asons Why
10. Th1rt3en (Robert Miles album)
11. TH1RT3EN (Megadeth album)

I note that we also have a number of articles with titles starting with "@", such as @stake, @home (store), and @Large Films, but that has not been raised as a problem to this point. In other words, the entirety of the discussion above is concerned with these eleven titles. I doubt that the use of these sorts of things as article titles was in anyone's mind when this policy was put in place (since it seems to be most concerned with usage in running text). bd2412 T 15:40, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech 9ine Tech N9ne also springs to mind. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:45, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

So, twelve articles, out of over four million? I would not be surprised if there are a few others, but not enough to sweat over. bd2412 T 16:17, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Presently. As vanity-type spellings may continue to increase, we will likely see more articles (case in point, at one point, the 3rd sequel of the video game "Thief" which just came out was going to be called "Th4ef" though that was ditched). And from the concept of accessibility, calling any portion of content "not something to worry about" in terms of accessibility is the start of a slippery slope that works against it. Again, if there was a clear wider benefit that outweighed the small amount of harm that might come minority of accessibility problems, there would be no problem considering that, but the benefit here is yet to be shown. --MASEM (t) 16:32, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Now you are compounding you POV-pushing by peering into the crystal ball to justify it. You do understand, don't you, that the slippery slope is called that because it is identified as a logical fallacy? bd2412 T 04:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Accessibility is not a POV issue. It is an issue that routinely can and has been ignored in the past (not necessarily on WP but in other areas) until it gets to a point that a major revamp of attitudes has to be done to realign the issue - the whole situation with web browsers around around the time of IE3-6, for example. And of course the problem is the people most affected by lack of accessibility are the last ones that will likely comment on this issue in talk pages like this, so someone has to speak for them. And the logical fallacy here is stating "it's only a small percentage of articles this affects"; it's only a small number now. It may remain that way in the future, but it also may grow, and in that latter case it can become more significant a problem. I don't know if it will grow, but this is a accessibility problem that can be nipped in the bud before it becomes out of hand, should consensus agree we should do that now. --MASEM (t) 04:54, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

There is no accessibility issue; in light of the evidence that has been produced thus far, the possibility of someone finding "Numb3rs" inaccessible is probably less than the possibility of someone finding "Numbers" inaccessible when they are searching for, and expecting to find, "Numb3rs". This is even more so for titles like "Deadmau5" and "$h*! My Dad Says". Pushing to make these subjects inaccessible to those who are familiar with their actual presentation (which, the evidence shows, is likely the majority) is the harmful POV here. bd2412 T 05:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Someone who knows about "Numb3rs" (including that specific spelling) is not going to be confused if we used the word "Numbers" in the exact same context. That's probably the only fair argument about using "$h#! My Dad Says" over "Shit My Dad Says" to refer to the show because if the person only knows the show name and not the blog is not going to recognize the show if we used the blog name (that's a fair case I would give). But every other case listed above is completely reasonable that if the user knows the vanity form, the non-vanity form is also well established. You can't expect it the other way though. --MASEM (t) 05:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I have to ask this: in every example that has been mentioned on this page (starting from the top of the page), which usage is more verifiable? If using an unconventional usage is verifiable through the reliable sources, then ignoring MOS:TM is required to improve the encyclopedia. In that case, the unconventional usage should not be considered unencyclopedic. SciGal (talk) 13:50, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

@Masem, I reject the assertion, made without evidence, that someone who specifically knows "Numb3rs" is "not going to be confused". There are many instances where unrelated TV shows or other media are known by very similar names, which might lead a reader familiar with the actual title, "Numb3rs", to think that there might be a different TV show called "Numbers". By your own standard proposed above, you must provide evidence that 100% of people will not be confused by using "Numbers" for a show that is actually named "Numb3rs". If this is such a "completely reasonable" expectation, then it should be easy to provide some evidence of it, rather than merely repeating your own echoes of internal self-assurance on that point. By the way, this confusion scenario is exactly the case with S1m0ne, for which the natural disambiguation is currently ignored in favor of the clunky and potentially confusing Simone (2002 film) to distinguish from a different film that is actually named "Simone". A reader who knows the title, S1m0ne, should not be required to know what year the film was made to figure out if they are at the right title, and should be able to find their movie without going through multiple screens of searching. bd2412 T 14:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

They wouldn't need to know the year. S1m0ne redirects to Simone (2002 film), and the target article shows the alternate rendering. It's actually more difficult to remember the weird renderings - Could it be "S1mone" or "Sim0ne"? Look what happened when I misassumed the rendering of Tech 9ine/Tech N9ne above. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:04, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

They would, however, need to know the year if they came across an article referencing the film with the current incorrect spelling imposed on it - something that is not an issue for ten different non-English Wikipedia sites. Even hovering over the link would only give them the target title, which has the incorrect spelling followed by the film year. bd2412 T 14:11, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the issue there is - click on the link and you'll get there. Also, to call "Simone" "incorrect" is a stretch. And what happens on other language Wikis is completely irrelevant here - they most likely have different rules to us, especially when it comes to foreign language titles. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:16, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Calling "Simone" incorrect is no more of a stretch than calling "Inglorious Bastards" or "Jeffrey Rush" or "B1ll Cl1nt0n" incorrect. They may be perceived or pronounced much the same, but are not the actual name of the subject. The name, "S1m0ne" is the name that appears right on the poster, and the name used by IMDB, among many other reliable sources. The "redirect" argument also cuts both ways - if you prefer the inaccurate "Simone (2002 film)" (even though no film came out in 2002 called "Simone") then redirect that to the accurate title. As for "click on the link and you'll get there", that is no help to someone who wants to know what they are clicking on before they go there. Having the article titled "S1m0ne" would make that clear. bd2412 T 14:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Spelling errors are obviously incorrect, re-rendering of promotional styling is debatable. To call "S1m0ne" "wrong", is merely your opinion. There are plenty of "high level sources" that use "Simone" over "S1m0ne". And the point here is to use standard English for article titles, and avoid promotional/vanity stylings so we shouldn't redirect the other way round. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:44, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, the argument for "someone who wants to know what they are clicking on before they go there" is false. We do not show the disambiguation part of a title in running text, etc., so this situation frequently occurs on Wikipedia. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:34, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Bd2412 makes better sense (as he usually does). There was no movie called Simone. It was called S1m0ne. That character sequence is a spelling, not a stylisation. Italics, and font choices are mere stylisation. Spelling is an authors moral right that should be somewhat respected. However, I guess I don't fully understand. Who is Jeffrey Rush, and what is wrong with him? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

"Jeffrey Rush" is an occasionally found misspelling of Geoffrey Rush, the actor who played (among other things) Captain Barbosa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. bd2412 T 15:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Poor Rachel Roberts, she only appears in controversially titled things! --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:08, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

If other high quality sources call "S1m0ne" as "Simone", then the vanity spelling is clearly not an integral part of the name and thus part of its presentation. This would be true for all the other cases listed above, save for perhaps "$h!*..." (differentiate it from the blog specifically). --MASEM (t) 15:20, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Parroting errors of others where it happens to coincide with your prescriptivist POV is really not a particularly good basis for naming things in an encyclopedia, which should strive for accuracy. The formula in that case should be S1m0ne (sometimes rendered as Simone)..." and so on. I note also that there are hundreds of incoming links to S1m0ne, Numb3rs, Ke$ha, and P!nk, and hundreds more references in articles to these names using this presentation. I don't see anyone clamoring to "fix" these occurrences. bd2412 T 16:04, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Just as there are hundreds of incoming links to the non-vanity spelling names, and no one is rushing to fix those either. It's because there's this conflicting advice between MOSTM and TITLE that doesn't make it clear which has precedence and why we're having this. I would expect that if the vanity spelling idea is determined to have consensus then we'd update the non-vanity links to fix that (via bot most likely). And in terms of accuracy, should we adopt the MOSTM approach, we're not going to ignore that there is a vanity spelling but instead mention it in the lead of the article (in the first sentence even) and wherever else it makes sense (for example, noting that the show developers for "Numb3rs" though of putting the 3 there to emphasize the mathematical connection to the show, in a section about the show's development). --MASEM (t) 16:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

That also raises the disconnect between MOS:TM and WP:AT. The former, by its own descriptions, applies to usage in running text. I don't see it having any application to article titles, or even to the usage of names of artists or works in contexts other than running text (i.e. in tables or bulleted lists, such as a table or list of works in which a particular actor has appeared). bd2412 T 16:38, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

And I agree with that - part of why we're on that above RFC is to say which of MOSTM/TITLE has precedence and then revamp the language in both so that we have consistency between title and running text (it makes no sense that, if TITLE takes presence over MOSTM, to present "Numb3rs" and then use "Numbers" across the rest of WP's running prose, and vice versa) There is probably only a few places where, due to the nature of how WP stores article names, that there might have to be a disconnect between title and how its presented in running prose, though with the DISPLAYTITLE magic word, that conflict can be minimized. I completely agree that we need normalization between article titles and prose, using whichever way that this RFC falls out of. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

This is the wrong place for that discussion. If we are seeking to change TITLE, a consensus needs to be reached at Wikipedia talk:Article titles, because the language of that page will need to be changed. bd2412 T 17:18, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Er, no. This is a centralized discussion to resolve the conflict between the relevant policies and guidelines. Step one is to figure out what is considered the prevailing advice that WP should follow first. Once that is decided then we discuss what changes have to be made where, but it will be in light of this consensus decision. But it is silly right now to talk about the specifics of those changes until we establish the underlying issue. --MASEM (t) 19:00, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

The question raised in this discussion seems to be between MOS and RS, not between MOS and TITLE. Even putting aside the RS question, TITLE trumps any guideline unless and until TITLE itself is changed. There has been no proposal to do that. bd2412 T 19:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Read the discussion of the RS above - we're clearly talking about the conflict between MOS and TITLE (which itself relies on RS). And for the purposes of this RFC, it is good faith to not assume that either has prevailing guidance over the other, we are attempting to evaluate which one truly is considered by consensus to be prevailing. If this causes the language in that guideline or policy to be incorrect, then we have to change it. (And to point out that TITLE has been notified of this RFC here, so this is not going on in isolation.) --MASEM (t) 19:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Not much of a notice - nor a very clear proposal, frankly, for what would be changed. Perhaps that is why the "survey" seems to have a jangle of opinions going a dozen different ways? In any case, there seem to be no more than a handful of us still discussing the issue at this point, and we are talking in circles. Is it time to close this discussion? bd2412 T 19:39, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Because again, we have no idea what needs to be changed. That's putting the cart before the horse. Step 2 would be to say "how do we now work MOSTM/TITLE to reflect this now-established consensus", knowing that that consensus now has to be properly reflected in the respective guides. --MASEM (t) 20:17, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

There is the catch-22 in all of this. How do we establish consensus when it's not clear what we are trying to establish consensus for? That's one of the reasons I have raised the question below, since this discussion seems to be operating under inconsistent understandings of what constitutes the "style" of a name at all. I for one would be quick to agree that use of capitalization, italics, or spinning a letter around are matters of style. I don't think the same of substituting characters other than letters where one might expect a letter. bd2412 T 20:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

What you started below is a completely fair question that fell out of the original style - is spelling content or style? That wasn't established as a core factor until after the RFC started so getting more input on it makes sense. But it would not had made sense to ask "Should we update MOSTM to show that TITLE has precedence?" since that itself was a core factor of the dispute and can only be answered after finding the core of the dispute. So there's no catch-22 as implied. --MASEM (t) 21:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

What if this entire discussion comes down to no consensus for any proposed change? Granted, we will have isolated some specific issues, but then what? Do we not have to basically start over with more refined proposals that are likely to gain a consensus in light of all of this discussion? bd2412 T 22:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

All i'm going to say is that the sooner we stop seeing these as "vanity spelling" and actual confirmed spelling, regardless if admitted to have "style" the sooner you can realize why this is a big issue. I highly suggest we allow leeway as long as high-end sources prove that one specific naming is the more popular one.Lucia Black (talk) 10:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

If this closes as no consensus for either direction, then we're basically back into the boat of continual REquested Moves between two options until a better proposal comes along; thus I'd hope the closing admin would recognize that some type of decision is really needed heee. The only other option that I think would be effective at the immediate time is to make a straw poll - minimizing discussion and in a wider-known place - as to actually determine the "votes" (not !votes) and let that decide, but this is only in the case that we agree that a straight-up discussion is providing good arguments on both sides and consensus will continually be split. A third option is based on the idea above, calling out the current dozen-some cases as... not necessary "exceptions" but specific cases that represent consensus and override however MOSTM and TITLE interact and should not be edit warred over; this leaves the seemingly disparity between the two in place but that otherwise work without question when you take out those dozen-some cases. --MASEM (t) 15:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Where does "style" end and "spelling" begin?

The issues discussed in previous sections with names like S1m0ne and P!nk seem to revolve, in part, over a difference of opinion of whether "spelling" or "style" is involved. This, to my mind, raises another set of questions with respect to titles like Motörhead, Boys II Men, and CHiPs. Are these titles just stylizations of Motorhead, Boys To Men, and Chips, or are they different spellings? Is Boys II Men substantively identical to Boys 2 Men? bd2412 T 20:09, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

CHIPs is an acronym ("California Highway Patrol), Roman numerals are numbers too, and does that ö affect pronunciation? P!ink is stylization. ViperSnake151  Talk  17:24, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The TV series is not, strictly speaking, an acronym (although this usage is consistent with other shows named for acronyms, such as CSI, NCIS, and SWAT). The use of "II" will not automatically be obvious to every reader as a Roman numeral (in many fonts, it looks the same as 11 or ll), although the band is virtually never reported under any variation not including the "II". As for Motörhead, they are pioneers of the metal umlaut, which (according to our article on the subject) "is not generally intended to affect the pronunciation of the band's name". There are a few dozen bands using the umlaut, including Blue Öyster Cult, Hüsker Dü, Mötley Crüe, and Queensrÿche, along with the video game Brütal Legend. Whether it is pronounced differs on a case by case basis. bd2412 T 18:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Proposed change

The second paragraph of the lede currently states:

• When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others. Listed below are more specific recommendations for frequently occurring nonstandard formats.

I have put the text that I have an issue with in bold... It would like to replace it with:

• When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones) and choose the style that is most commonly used by reliable English language sources that discuss the topic, regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others. Listed below are more specific recommendations for frequently occurring nonstandard formats.

This change would, I think, move us away from the endless "I like it/I don't like it" arguments over stylization ... It is a consensus principle on Wikipedia that we should defer to source usage when determining which of several names to use when referring to a topic. I see no reason to do otherwise when it comes to trademarked names. The preference of the trademark owner equates to the "Official" name - which we can use (if a significant majority of other sources use it)... but which we do not necessarily use (we wouldn't if other sources use something else instead). Blueboar (talk) 15:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. We should not be sourcing style, that's why we have a Manual of Style. Use of a trademark styling draws undue attention to the trademark. Your proposed change also contradicts the second sentence regarding "consistency in language" and "undue attention". --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

It also contradicts a lot of the rest of the guideline regarding unpronounced characters, etc., etc. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:01, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: We should not be sourcing style... when it comes to names, yes, we should. Names (including how they are stylized) are facts, and deferring to sources when it comes to facts is a core principle in Wikipeida. As for my proposed change contradicting the rest of the guideline... no problem, just edit the rest of the guideline to get rid of the contradiction. Blueboar (talk) 16:18, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

This entire guideline is based around the principle that we should not follow the "official" styling of a trademark. The whole purpose of an MoS is to implement our own house style, and not follow the house style of the sources. Thus, we do not source style. The use of numbers or other characters as letters or words, or WP:ALLCAPS, or anything else described on this page is a style conceit, not part of the name of the entity. With what you propose, we may as well throw away this guideline (and possibly the rest of the MOS). --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:22, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Exactly - this change nullifies the entire purpose of MOS:TM, which is designed to make commercial gimmicky names readable within WP prose. That is a purposeful house style that we have picked to improve accessibility. --MASEM (t) 16:24, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

But it allows subjectivity. not objectivity.Lucia Black (talk) 16:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The current MOS:TM is very objective, much more than "going by the sources" where one can debate what are appropriate or inappropriate sources to consider. --MASEM (t) 16:31, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

"Yes, but subjectivity is objective." --Woody Allen --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: This entire guideline is based around the principle that we should not follow the "official" styling of a trademark. You misunderstand the proposal... My proposed change does not say that we should follow the "official styling" ... it says that we should follow source usage... there is a BIG difference there. Following sources is verifiable... following sources ensures a NPOV... following sources is gives DUE WEIGHT to different opinions... following sources prevents Origninal research... Following sources ensures Recognizability. In short... following sources is a core concept of Wikipedia. It is a concept that underpins almost every policy and guideline we have. At the moment, this MOS stands out as contradicting that underpinning concept. My proposal is an attempt to end the conflict and bring this MOS into sync with all those other core policies and guidelines. Blueboar (talk) 17:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

And again, I'll point to past discussions on naming issues where people wanted to slice and dice the available sources to name the article the way they wanted it, while slicing/dicing the sources another way favors a different approach. ("Oh, these aren't reliable sources, they should be discounted"). Using exacting rules is much more objective than trying to determine the most common usage from sources. We already routinely veer away from the exacting use of sources for other parts of the MOS (not just naming, but like when quoting or the like, or reference format, etc.) so there's no difference here. --MASEM (t) 18:34, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, you know that people attempt to "slice and dice" sources to support their POV in every POV dispute ... that is human nature. Yet, somehow wiser and calmer heads always seem to prevail in the end. The reliability of the various sources gets discussed... the sources get weighed, and DUEWEIGHT gets assigned. Examining sources may be a messy process, but it is how Wikipedia works. Choosing between a stylized name and a non-stylized name ("Numb3rs" vs "Numbers") is no different than choosing between a formal and informal name ("William Clinton" vs "Bill Clinton"). Blueboar (talk) 19:20, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

And what I'm saying that across all of our MOSs (not just MOS:TM) we routine discard what sources do in favor of a consistent house style aimed for readability and usefulness. Sources are important for things like in-article facts, and for things like Common Name when there are conflicts, but that's not the case here. --MASEM (t) 19:25, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose With that change, we might as well toss MOS:TM away. We adapted MOS:TM to make WP readable to all English readers and to smooth out the "tricks" that commercial entities like to apply to their tradenames to make them stand out. While a majority of sources may use this fancy style, it would harm the readability of the text, though certainly we should acknowledge this style in the first sentence of the lead so that readers will understand that if they see the "fancy" approach in sources, they'll understand it in external sources. Further, the argument that going by the sources removes the "like it/don't like it" arguments is false - in past discussions, the question of which sources should be accepted as to achieve one's desired "majority" has been played around. The way the MOS is currently written, it is the most objective way of dealing with the naming issues. --MASEM (t) 16:00, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
• Compromise because then that would mean that the MOSTM overrides everything that has Wikipedia working for. if an entire series is properly sourced with third party sources, why should Wikipedia be the one to defy it if the entire article is supposed to be based on such article? As much as one claim its "objective" the editors still intend to look for a way to make an exception to every case, and once there is one that fits the bills for others (deadmau5) it will never end. So i believe this should be acceptable only if the sources are largely in agreement of what the name is. we shouldn't determine what is a "fancy" name. thats one thing that the contributors to this MOS need to know. we go by sources, and we shouldn't use our own personal opinion on what is fancy affect what title we should use.Lucia Black (talk) 16:05, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Just because an exception was made for deadmau5, we should not incorporate this into the MoS. It should remain exactlty that - an exception. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

BUt, an exception without reason might aswell be no exception at all and should be reverted. Numb3rs falls identical to deadmau5's situation. why it should be any different has to be specified. Its like you choose what you want to reason with.Lucia Black (talk) 16:17, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

This is about a change to the guideline, not a specific case. We shouldn't be manipulating the guideline to fit a specific case - that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (But "Numb3rs" is not "identical" to "Deadmau5" (it's more akin to "Se7en"), they are individual cases and exactly why each exception should be considered on its own merit) --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:27, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Uhm...no its not. And simply saying it is, isn't helping your point. Se7en has less sources and more sources providing that it is indeed called "seven" in fact it says that its "sometimes stylized as se7en" so obviously...not a good way to work with it. This change could help us figure things out without trying to classify something among ourselves.Lucia Black (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The reason "Deadmau5" is exceptional is that, as you argued then, there are people that pronounce that name "deadmau-five", making the "5" a pronounced character, and thus falling in line with our current MOS:TM. The "7" i "Se7en" and the "3" in "Numb3rs" are unproduced, universally, and thus MOS:TM applies there too. --MASEM (t) 16:50, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Wasn't acceptable to you then, so why use it as a reason for countering this particular situation?Lucia Black (talk) 16:54, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I later argued for that approach in that past discussion, once it was pointed out that that pronunciation does reliably exist, thus making it a proper exception from MOS:TM. --MASEM (t) 17:01, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

• Strong agree/Compromise In case you have not noticed, Rob Sinden and MASEM, this is not the first time that this type of argument has taken place, and it certainly will not be the last. If the concern is over trendiness, editors need to realize that not all creators or even trademark owners will explain why they went with one spelling and not the other (as in the case of thirtysomething). In those cases, there has to be a way to prevent confusion, especially if disambiguation and redirects are not enough, and edit wars based on personal preferences. There needs to be a consistent guideline for the handling of all trademarks, not just the ones that conform to standard English.

(Honestly, the current guideline is confusing when you read it and seems to allow people to arbitrarily make changes to articles just based on standardization or the lack thereof. The policy also may become a slippery slope which editors can use as justification to change the trademark's spelling even in the article itself.)

In my opinion, trademarks with nonstandard English names should be allowed if it meets the following conditions:

If the name is the most frequently used name in reliable English-language sources. In the case of sources such as newspapers, journals, magazines, and professional organization web sites, the name has to be predominantly used for the trademark when searching the web sites, not just in a few articles,

If the trademark's spelling is recognizable to readers,

If adding a disambiguation to the trademark makes it less concise,

If the trademark has a minor detail which makes it distinct enough to naturally disambiguate it from other articles with similar names,

If the trademark has primary usage and long-term significance in regards to any other topic associated with that specific term as to necessitate the trademark's spelling as a precise title, and

If searching for the trademark on Wikipedia would direct the reader to an entirely different article that has little bearing on the topic in question. (In this case, editors should attempt to find various expected guesses on Wikipedia before naming the article or changing the article's name.) SciGal (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

However, the point made on "If the trademark's spelling is recognizable to readers" is that while a certain fraction of our readers will understand things like "Numb3rs" or "Se7en", not all of en.wiki's target readers will. We aim to be as accessible as possible and using fancy spellings that make it difficult to read is not what we should be doing. --MASEM (t) 19:25, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar, Lucia Black, and I are looking at this from the point of view of a reader who is unfamiliar with the trademark comes across it on a web site or in a newspaper, magazine, or journal article from a reliable English-language source. If the reader uses Wikipedia to learn more about the trademark, the reader will most likely use the spelling that the source has used, not a Wikipedia naming convention.

Also, as you can see on the Talk:Numbers (TV series) page, having the proper spelling on the disambiguation page and the redirect to a different title does not stop an edit war; it might create one. In Numb3rs' case, it started with one editor changing the name based on MOS:TM, especially citing the section of MOS:TM that this proposed change addresses. Idealistically, this may have been prevented if someone included one or more sources in which the series' creators or the network had specifically stated the reason for the series' spelling. In reality, there may not be any evidence either for a deliberate spelling on the part of the show's creators or for the network's decision to stylize the name from a more standard English spelling. To prevent future edit wars over the same topic, we need some guidance.

I know that arguments similar to this will occur in the future, and that is why I support Blueboar's proposal. SciGal (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, the redirects allow for a search on "Numb3rs" to lead to "Numbers (TV show)", and the first lead sentence should explain the stylized name, so that confusion is not an issue. Yet keeping to "Numb3rs" makes it difficult to read for people unfamiliar with the term, particularly if they are coming from incoming links on other pages. And while I completely appreciate that the argument for "Numb3rs" via sources is strong if not near universal, this is the exception as to went sources agree; "Se7en" and "Ke$ha" are good examples where the sources are split and you can argue left or right as to which version is "right" depending on which subset of sources you use. That's why staying with what we have is the most objective, taking any future debate on the matter out the question save for limited cases. --MASEM (t) 20:42, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

The debate over the use of MOS:TM is why I have stated that we need guidance over at the Numb3rs page as the change from Numb3rs to Numbers (TV series) (complete with the redirect) caused an edit war. The sources are generally in agreement with each other as to the spelling of the show's name, but some editors are still insisting on the use of standard English in the article's title.

Getting back to the proposal, Blueboar's proposal most likely will allow for exceptions to the current policy, especially when sources using a nonstandard English spelling actually agree with each other concerning a specific spelling of the trademark. Hopefully, there will be fewer edit wars based on MOS:TM if the change is made. SciGal (talk) 21:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar's propose works without exception when the sources agree as being argued for Numb3rs (eg people are saying there's near 100% agreement on that so under the proposal that would follow). The problem is when you get to the Se7en and Ke$ha cases , where the sources are split not quite 50-50 (Ke$ha last I checked was 70/30 on using the $), that people will endlessly argue over that - as they have already before. The discussion at the Numb3rs page is because people seemed to flat out ignore MOS:TM as it stood, and if it was enforced properly, there would have been no argument. The current form of MOS:TM is extremely objective but would allow for the exceptions like deadmau5. --MASEM (t) 23:22, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Not 100% for Numbers vs. Numb3rs - here are links to The Hollywood Reporter, TV Guide, Deadline, Chicago Tribune and The New York Times referring to the show as "Numbers". --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:13, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Here's possibly the reason why the proposal is worded the way that it is (and Blueboar, please correct me if I am wrong). There are editors out there who believe that MOS:TM trumps all other in-house Wikipedia policies (especially WP:COMMONNAME, WP:RECOGNIZABLE, WP:PRECISE, WP:CONCISE, WP:DIFFCAPS, and WP:POVNAME) and that there should be very few exceptions to the rule--even when you have 100% of the reliable English-language sources agreeing with each other on a nonstandard English spelling of a trademark. Under the current policy, to prevent an edit war, those who want the exceptions must have a separate section in the article that provides evidence from reliable sources that the trademark's creators and/or owners both had a specific spelling for the trademark in mind and had a reason (or multiple reasons) for the spelling.

Frequently, though, editors resort to using the spelling that they find in reliable English-language sources, especially when the intentions of the trademark's creators or owners are not stated or unknown. This proposal would (or should) allow for a new reader who has come across the trademark in a reliable English-language source to find information about the trademark on Wikipedia without accidently stumbling into an edit war among the editors which started because one or more editors favor a spelling that the sources do not frequently or near universally use. SciGal (talk) 00:46, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

To me the issue of Common Name is completely separate from the issues of MOS:TM, with the common name to be selected ignorant of the spelling stabilization. Kesha is a prime example. Her common name is one of Kesha or Ke$ha, but certainly not Kesha Rose Sebert (even though that's her given) name; that's what falls out of discussion over Common Name, ignoring the stylized spelling at the present time. With that then decided, MOS:TM says that we should then use the most english-like spelling, thus favoring "Kesha" over "Ke$ha". deadmau5 follows the same logic (deadmau5/deamaus over Joel Thomas Zimmerman), with the change that once at MOS:TM, as hinted before, the 5 is not always silent in the name and MOS:TM would thus allow for "deadmau5" over "deadmaus". The problem is that editors want to apply the MOS:TM rules at the WP:CN level but that's the wrong order of steps. You are still going to have issues over the common name, but if you take out the issue of how exactly it should be spelled while deciding on Common Name, the results should be easier to get to. The MOS considerations are the last step to make the work easily read, not to decide on when two significantly different names are out there. --MASEM (t) 00:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

That's just it; editors are applying MOS:TM at the WP:CN level, especially in cases where all or universally all of the reliable sources agree on the spelling of a common nonstandard English name. In some cases, the editors who have cited MOS:TM as the reason for changing the article at the WP:CN level have started edit wars over Common Names. This proposal is designed to prevent that as it gives additional guidance in situations where generally all reliable sources agree on a nonstandard English spelling. SciGal (talk) 01:19, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Name and style are separate things. Once the name is decided per WP:COMMONNAME and relevant guidelines, then we apply style. The style does not form part of the name. There is no policy for WP:COMMONSTYLE, that's where our MoS comes into play. To take the Numb3rs example, it isn't a non-standard spelling: the name is "Numbers", but the "e" has been styled as a "3". --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:08, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Not quite... Names and style are sometimes separate things... but they are not always separate things. Sometimes a stylization is an integral part of a name. Our job as WP editors is to determine which is which. We do that by looking at sources. To give an example: the stylization "BEA_TLES" that appears on Ringo's drums (and some of the earlier Beatles albums) can be considered separate from the band's name... because sources do not use that sylization when discussing the band. However, the stylization of "deadmau5" is used by the majority of reliable sources that discuss that artist... therefor we must conclude that the stylization is not considered separate from the name... it is considered part of the name.

I would argue that when a significant majority of reliable English Language sources consistently present a name with a specific stylization... that stylization becomes the "standard English spelling" for that specific name. Blueboar (talk) 15:41, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

"Deadmau5" was given an exception because it was in use pretty much universally. That's why we allow common sense exceptions. Your proposal seeks to weaken the guideline further, seemingly on the strength of this exception, affecting articles where it is not so clear-cut, and thus would cause far more problems that it seeks to solve. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Naming and style can be explicitly separated so that any potential conjoining (and thus debates) between COMMONNAME and MOS:TM are negated. As I read it "Kesha" and "Ke$ha" , and "deadmau5" and "deadmaus" are equivalent names under COMMONNAME, with different styling applied. I cannot think of a case where the style that a name is presented is created a new "name option" for COMMONNAME debate. --MASEM (t) 15:54, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. As I read it "Ke$ha" is a distinct (unique) spelling variation of the name "Kesha"... "Numb3rs" is a distinct (unique) spelling of the the name "Numbers" (a more common equivalent would be the distinct spelling variation between Paine (surname) and Payne (surname)... These are actually the same name, with the exact same derivation and pronunciation... but the spelling changes depending on the specific person you are talking about). Blueboar (talk) 16:29, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

That's nonsense. Those are two unique and acceptable spellings of a name in standard English. By introducing a character that is not a letter, it cannot be a spelling, and can only be a (vanity-)styling. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Take it a step further... how do you know that both "Paine" and "Payne" are acceptable spellings of the name in standard English? Blueboar (talk) 18:00, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The different between "Paine" and "Payne" is a COMMON NAME issue, not a MOS:TM one. --MASEM (t) 22:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

That does not answer my question... I asked: how do we know that both Paine and Payne are acceptable spellings? I think the answer is that both variations are used in reliable sources. And we know which to use for a particular person because those sources tell us which to use... because they use one or the other when referring to a particular person, so do we.

One could choose to render "Paine" as "Pa1ne". That does not change the spelling, just depicts an "i" as a "1". A style issue, not a naming issue. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

But you make the same argument about rendering "Paine" as "Payne" or vice versa... that choosing "i" or "y" does not change the spelling, just how the name is depicted. In fact, that is exactly what happened... back in the 1600s. Paine and Payne were considered identical and interchangeable... some people chose to render (spell) the name with an "i" while others chose to render it with a "y". (indeed, some people used both... switching back and forth at different times). In other words... Paine and Paine are all the same name... rendered (spelled) differently depending on the choice of the person. The same would be true if someone chose to render the name as "Pa1ne"... same name... just spelled uniquely. Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

"i" and "y" are letters and can be used to spell words. if you were spelling "Paine" with a digit "1", it would be pronounced "PA-one-NE". --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:05, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Rob Sinden and MASEM, we keep having this argument every time a large group of sources cite a nonstandard English spelling. Under various versions of MOS:TM, the following would be disallowed on one aspect:

eBay, iPhone, iTunes, and deviantArt (initial lower case letter and capitalized upper case letter)

Yahoo! (use of exclamation point, and that is in the article's title)

Jeopardy! (use of exclamation point)

M*A*S*H (use of asterisks to naturally disambiguate the TV series from the movie)

WALL-E, IKEA, and GNOME (the desktop environment) (use of capital letters for the word)

xkcd, vi, and k.d. lang (all lower case letters)

Creative ZEN (use of capital letters in the second word)

HarperCollins (lack of a space between words)

WESCO International, Inc. and CLIF Bar(use of capital letters in the first word)

deadmau5 (initial lower case letter and unpronounced/mispronounced number)

Each time, there was a debate over the name, and each time, an exception had to be made under MOS:TM. (You should read the number of times that someone had argued that iPhone should not be allowed under MOS:TM.)

Blueboar's proposal would automatically allow exceptions to the rule while maintaining some aspects of MOS:TM. Time would still be used instead of TIME, and Spam (food) would be used instead of SPAM. Toys R Us would be standard English, as well as Alien 3. Heart or love would be used instead of ♥, as the standard English keyboard never supported that symbol. There also would be no debate over how to spell eBay, iPhone, or deadmau5. It would be strong enough for standard English readers yet flexible enough to prevent edit wars. SciGal (talk) 22:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Excluding Yahoo!, Jeoparody!, M*A*S*H, and deviantArt (and deadmau5) all those follow MOS:TM exactly. MOS:TM is not able converting all trademarks to standard English and outright ignore casing, but converting them to readable prose. Things like IKEA follow MOS:TM rules for initialisms, and using something like HarperCollins is fine as camel casing for combined names. All these are still readable in standard English. "Numb3rs" is not unless you know aprior that "3" should be treated as an "e". --MASEM (t) 22:28, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

This also points to the larger problem, that people don't address their issues with naming problems here at MOS:TM and instead fight on individual cases and thus making a mess of the house style we have adopted. If people don't like that our house style demands "Numb3rs" should be at "Numbers (TV series)", that's an argument to get this page changed, than at the individual pages. Creating too many exceptions causes inconsisent practice in policy. --MASEM (t) 22:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

If we find that we are making "too many" exceptions... it is time to change the policy to account for all these exceptions. I think my proposal does this. Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Your proposal negates the whole guideline, and suggests that we source style. Sourcing style goes against our entire MOS, and thus is completely unacceptable. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:05, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I have been going through the archives for MOS:TM, and I have noticed a general trend. A couple of editors would take offense over the spelling or language usage of the trademark in the article and decide to change it based on MOS:TM. After finding the change, other editors would protest over the change. The protesting editors would bring their concerns to MOS:TM as a last resort. During the debate on MOS:TM, editors opposed to the nonstandard English spelling or language usage would cite the necessity of preserving MOS:TM while those who wanted exceptions to be made for common usage of the nonstandard English would cite various Wikipedia in-house policies as justification for the exception. MOS:TM was finally changed to allow the exception. This cycle keeps happening time and time again in all of the cases that I have cited and most likely in others I have not.

Numb3rs is no different. One editor changed the title of the article on 10 June 2013, and the first mention of the article's change on the talk page was on 29 July 2013--a little over one and one-half months after the change had taken place. When discussing the issue over the title, only one editor insisted on the use of MOS:TM as rationale for the change in spite of counterexamples from Wikipedia's other in-house policies. Bringing the issue to MOS:TM was a last resort, especially when the possibility of a continuous edit war seemed inevitable. The editors there are having the same type of argument that had occurred with eBay, iPhone, Yahoo!, M*A*S*H, and every other example I have cited. I want to say that, in this case, Numb3rs possibly could have created the tipping point that has lead to a discussion about revising MOS:TM's second paragraph in general.

If MOS:TM's second paragraph is not changed to more readily allow exceptions, this issue will recur over and over again in the future, especially with products featuring trademarks with nonstandard English spellings that are most frequently used in reliable English-language sources. Edit wars will erupt. Editors wanting an exception to the rule in near universal usage would be forced to come here for guidance, and they would find only confusion as exceptions could be made but the second paragraph dictates that only standard English spellings would be allowed under MOS:TM. On the talk page, editors wanting a strict interpretation of MOS:TM will cite the necessity of maintaining MOS:TM's integrity even when the common spelling does not violate Wikipedia's other in-house policies. Blueboar's proposal is designed to lessen the frequency of the edit wars. SciGal (talk) 23:12, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The point is not to be making exceptions and to bring the text on WP into standard written English for maximizing accessability and readability. People that want to change the trademarks away from MOS:TM to what is in sources are going against this. We have a duty to avoid the common pitfalls of mass media (which do have well-known readerships, and can assume that "Numb3rs" will be understood as "Numbers") and be as general as possible with MOS:TM, even going to the extent of ignoring the majority of sources to use a version that causes no confusion to the new reader. That is the point of MOS:TM. Those that demand changes away from it are doing this improperly, unless we otherwise decide to completely nix MOS:TM in favor of COMMON NAME. But as long as there's agreement that MOS:TM has to exist, we have to ignore the sources if they get in the way of proper english. --MASEM (t) 23:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose – Style issues are not decided by sources – reputable, widespread, or otherwise. They are decided by, tadah, a WP:MOS. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support. "Closely resembles standard English" is a pseudo defined phrase. There is no "standard English". Better to refer to sources. "Sources that discuss the topic" (noting that the best sources are independent and reputable) are more likely to have considered the desirability of use of "standard" English than our editors are likely to be productive debating standard English to highly specific questions. Of course, this is within reason. We should have boundaries. Flashing or colourful text or images are undesirable, as are things that disrupt the flow of lines across the page, but "Sources that discuss the topic" surely have already beaten that path. In a project that welcomes untrained editors, adhering to the principle of being led by sources is essential. This MOS is a false god. The MOS must defer to any clear lead provided by sources. The MOS is a fallback where sources are lacking or unclear. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

You cannot support the proposal as it stands as the second sentence contradicts the first (and the first contradicts the rest of the guideline). --Rob Sinden (talk) 12:47, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see what you mean. Can you explain? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Sure, if we source style, it doesn't "ensure consistency in language" or "avoid drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others". If we source style, then there's no need for the rest of this article (or indeed the rest of the MOS), as we would no longer be following the instructions on how to render trademarks given by this guideline. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Rob Sinden. "This practice helps ensure consistency in language". This is just a rationale, and I don't see contradiction. Consistency with with reliable sources means consistency with language, doesn't it? "Avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others" I'm note sure what you are thinking. I think you are thinking that there are styles that attract attention, unfairly, or to the setriment of the presentation of the article. If by this, you mean images, colours, flashing, animation, large small or varying font, then I agree, this should be maintained, and any change shouldn't weaken this. Probably ascii art, and boldface belong as well, but there could always be an unexpected special case. If you mean funny spelling, funny punctuation, use of numbers or common typeface characters, I think you worry too much. The rest of the guideline is not contradicted, but may need to be balanced against usage of standard English as evidenced in reputable publications, on a case-by-case basis. Do you note that the proposal does not refer to the primary source use?

If Numb3rs or M*A*S*H are used as standard English in reliable independent sources, if these independent reputable sources that usually use standard English accept these spellings with numbers or characters, then this is to be weighed against normal tendency to reject numbers and symbols in reproducing trademarks. To my reading, the effect of the change would be to encourage discussion of the prevalence of use in sources instead of discussion on what standard English is. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:17, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

OK... I want to see where those who don't like the proposal draw the line... does MOS:TM apply to Psmith? While the subject is fictional (trademarked), it is clear that the "P" is purely a vanity styling/spelling. If MOS:TM does not apply... why not? Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

There's a massive difference between a vanity spelling and a vanity styling. Spelling is not discussed on or covered by this guideline. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:54, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Psmith requires WP:WAF, not MOS:TM. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:08, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, arguably, even in fiction, I would expect MOS:TM to apply to names that otherwise would "break" spelling and casing, eg we use WALL-E properly as an initialism and thus all-caps is allowed, as well as something like R2D2 or C3P0 (those numerals are pronounced). (I can't think , however of an immediate counterexample where we would have to adjust the name due to MOS:TM, off hand). "Psmith" is fine because that's 1) normal casing for English even if not an English work and 2) how we would know the character by COMMONNAME. --MASEM (t) 15:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

So what is objected to is not unique "vanity" renderings of a name per-say... but a specific form of vanity rendering (using numbers and other characters in the place of letters of the alphabet)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blueboar (talk • contribs)

The objection that MOS:TM presently addresses is where the trademark is a vanity spelling/casing/presentation when there is a clear, obvious, non-vanity spelling/casing/presentation that matches how the term is otherwise said in spoken English and would make it match the normal style of English that we use throughout the rest of WP. The issue is not any "specific" form of vanity spelling, but any type of vanity spelling, which, by definition, implies there's a non-vanity, "saner" way of presenting the same term. This minimizes the possible difficulty that an English reader completely unfamiliar with the term will have when they read WP and encounter it. --MASEM (t) 16:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: "...otherwise said in spoken English"... ah... NOW I think I understand why we disagree ... you are focused on spoken English... while I am focused on written English. What my proposal is attempting to do is account for situations where there is a clear, obvious, (vanity) spelling/casing/presentation that matches how the term/name is presented in written English (as determined by a significant majority of reliable sources). To reach a compromise, we need to account for both... but I think more weight should be given to written English (as this is primarily a written medium) Blueboar (talk) 16:57, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Even with written English, the purpose of the MOS is to maximize readability and accessibility. Thus for one, we have to consider what screen readers will do with such vanity spellings and if they vary from how the names are otherwise normally pronounced, that will cause confusion. Additionally, we cannot assume that the average en.wiki is going to understand the vanity spelling. If we were only worried about how US and European readers would take it, sure, I'd have almost no objection to "Numb3rs". But we've got a much more global reach and with people unaware of these pop culture concepts. Vanity spellings will be confusing and difficult to read as written. ( "Numb3rs" might be one of the more benign cases, but the idea of the problems this creates extend past that).

To add another point, the vanity spelling issue might seem trivial when working in the microcasm of a single article space, but we already have to remember that we have intra-wiki links. Using MOS:TM to standardize vanity names makes it easy for someone working on an article to link and discuss a term that may have a vanity spelling by simply using the non-vanity spelling, assuring consistency across WP for how that term is presented. If you go by "use the sources", that means that if I wanted to link to the show "Numb3rs" and talk about it in a different article, I'd have to see how the article's consensus on the name is, and that's a lot of extra work.

Again, I'm not saying following the sources is bad - this is what should be done to justify the common name. But when it comes to how it is presented in our running prose, we should use the most readable, benign version of the name, and that means the non-vanity version, as the rest of of MOS:TM dictates. That shows no preferences to any specific company or organization by having that simple set of rules. --MASEM (t) 17:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, Numb3rs has been and/or is viewed in the United Kingdom, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, Israel, Bulgaria, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Brunei, China, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and New Zealand. In all of the countries, the show is named Numb3rs. SciGal (talk) 20:50, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

And yet, that's only a fraction of the people we expect to be potential readers of WP. --MASEM (t) 21:29, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Two points: first, I completely support the compromise proposed by Lucia Black, and the points raised by SciGal. In particular, I think it makes far more sense to use Numb3rs, which naturally disambiguates itself from Numbers, rather than change the spelling of the title and add a parenthetical to disambiguate, creating the inaccurate and cumbersome Numbers (TV series). Second, it is important to distinguish between trademarks as commercial elements, and stage names or titles of works as creative elements. k. d. lang is at an unconventional title, but it clearly does not fall within the governance of this policy because that title is addressed as a stage name, and not at all as a trademark. That is an equally reasonable distinction to make with respect to deadmau5. We don't change Lordz of Brooklyn to "Lords of", or Inglourious Basterds to "Inglorious Bastards" just because their respective performers or authors choose to use an incorrect spelling, because these represent their artistic choices. Why should it make a difference that the perceived error is use of a number, rather than use of a wrong letter? bd2412 T 17:52, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

If only it were so. If you look at the US PTO site, you'll find that k. d. lang is a registered trademark for goods and services (including musical performances), and it owned by Katherine Dawn Lang (I didn't check the spelling just now, but something like that). That's why not all of us agreed with you on title styling decisions for Deadmaus and Ms. Lang. Dicklyon (talk) 21:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

That is really quite irrelevant. There are millions of words and phrases that are registered trademarks, but which have uses distinct from their use as trademarks. For a clear example, Nothing Compares 2 U is not the subject of a trademark registration, but uses non-conventional orthography. We would not change our treatment of this title if, in addition to being a song title, it was also registered as a trademark by the artist. Furthermore, Lordz of Brooklyn does have a trademark registration, but I see no one suggesting that it should be moved to a correctly spelled "Lords of Brooklyn". We should therefore be consistent in treating stage names and titles of works as creative titles first, and not apply WP:TM to titles unless the title is only a trademark, and the name of a product is purely commercial. bd2412 T 21:37, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Not quite irrelevant. In this case, we could have chosen to name the article for the person Kathryn Dawn Lang, or by the trademark she uses in her professional appearances, k.d. lang. We chose the latter, because it's more common, but chose not to abide by MOS:TM. Why? This seems to only happen where a lot of fans get involved. For less popular topics, it's usually not a problem for follow the guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 01:49, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it is because, with enough people, common sense gets involved. Treating a term that is primarily a stage name or the title of a work as if it were the commercial trademark slapped on the side of a cereal box is failing to consider the real world with appropriate nuance. bd2412 T 02:15, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't see what common sense makes one want to adopt the weird vanity stylings of sufficiently popular brands. Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose and reject the premise that "It is a consensus principle on Wikipedia that we should defer to source usage when determining which of several names to use when referring to a topic." The WP:COMMONNAME principle is a strategy in support of the recognizability, one of five titleing criteria, not a principle that overrides all criteria and styling guidelines; we do consider source usage, and put a lot of weight on it even, but we don't defer to it. Similarly, style guidelines for trademarks serve a good purpose, which this proposal defenestrates. Dicklyon (talk) 21:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, and pretty strongly at that. We get to decide our own style; we shouldn't outsource it to a "vote counting" among sources, which runs into issues with how to aggregate all the data, how often to run such aggregations, and if/how to weigh the different "value" that a source like the AP should have versus a source that might pass the "reliable" threshold, but that's less reliable than the AP. Not to mention how reliable it is in matters of style. Yeah, I definitely say it's better to use our own style guide. Now, that's not to say that we shouldn't look to our sources to figure out what styles are standard English. And we do that already! Croctotheface (talk) 12:08, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

There might be two problematic phrases within the second paragraph of MOS:TM. Blueboar mentioned the first--"conforms to standard English". (By the way, besides WP's own MOS, what other style manuals state that a writer or a group or writers can change the written appearance, including spelling and capitalization, of a registered trademark so that the trademark's spelling and appearance conforms to standard English?)

The second is "regardless of the trademark owner's preference". That second phrase could cause Wikipedia to violate trademark and copyright law. Apple, Microsoft, book publishers, television and film studios, and other corporations could sue Wikipedia (all of us) if the company feels that an editor's or a group of editors' insistence on the use of standard English for trademarked names either misrepresents the trademark, misrepresentation of facts surrounding the trademark, or violates fair use of the trademark That can be found in the following sections of the United States Patent Office's Trademark Law (Pages are for the above link.):

37 C.F.R. Part 6--Classification of Goods and Services under the Trademark Act (pages 107-109)

Title X, § 45 (15 U.S.C. §1127) of the Trademark Act of 1946 (pages 224-225)

§ 34 (15 U.S.C. §1116) (pages 210-213)

§ 43 (15 U.S.C. §1125) (pages 217-221)

A trademark owner might take action as the owner can lose their rights to a trademark if the public predominately associates the trademark with many products, not just one.

In addition, case law also dictates that trademarked material includes a band's name, a product's design, literary characters, the editing of television series from other broadcasters, and domain names. Titles of a series are included because of the achievement of a secondary meaning--that is, recognizability. Distinctiveness is determined by the trademark's usage in periodicals.

Also, case law indicates that trademarks can be arbitrary or fanciful (that is, having no resemblance to the product in question), suggestive (creating a mental association with a product's characteristics), or descriptive when it receives a secondary meaning (recognizability from the descriptiveness of the name). That might influence the spelling of the trademark. SciGal (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

If anyone wants to check to see if any of the names we have mentioned are trademarked, go to the United States Patent Office's web site, and search for the names under trademarks. That should tell you whether the names are trademarked and how.SciGal (talk) 21:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Using "Numbers" instead of "Numb3rs" (assuming that last is trademark) in of itself is not misrepresentation of the trademark. That would be using the trademark (proper spelling or not) in a derogatory way or anti-commercial way. Consider the case of Macy's which last I checked included the star mark. I don't have the ready ability to reproduce that star in plain text but that's not at all misrepresenting Macy's trademark. So the legal issue is non-existent here. --MASEM (t) 21:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I checked myself; Numb3rs is the official registered trademark, and based on other examples of trademark policies, CBS and Paramount Studios would want us to use Numb3rs, not Numbers. The trademark policies I have been reading (including Wikimedia's own policy) states that the trademark has to be used exactly to prevent a lawsuit.SciGal (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

@SciGal, I have been a trademark lawyer for the better part of the last decade, and I can assure you that Wikipedia is under no legal obligation to use a trademark owner's preferred orthography, so long as we do not do so in an effort to sell our own competing product, or otherwise misrepresent the actual qualities of their product. With respect to titles of creative works, however, we might indeed run afoul of the moral rights of the artist, which is a matter of integrity. bd2412 T 22:01, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Further to that point, the WMF has lawyers to worry about such things; it is not up to us editors, lawyers or otherwise, to invent legal problems or solutions. The WMF attorneys will let us know if we try to do something that worries them legally. Dicklyon (talk) 22:05, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

An example where trademark law is relevant is Encyclopædia Britannica, which is an uncommon orthography for a work that is commonly cited as a rival to Wikipedia. We would face no legal hazard if we used the common and more conventional "Encyclopedia", but we would get in some trouble if we spelled the latter portion "Britannikuh" in an effort to make them look foolish, and thereby draw away their readers. bd2412 T 22:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree on the violation of moral rights, but what would happen if a company sues Wikipedia on the grounds that the editor's insistence on the use of standard English dilutes the product's distinctive as dictated by the nonstandard wording, spelling, etc.? For example, suppose in 2350, SkySk8Park5 wants to sue Wikipedia because editors have been using "Sky Skate Parks" in their article. What would happen then, assuming that US trademark law is the same then as it is now? SciGal (talk) 23:45, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

This isn't going to happen, unless we are grossly mis-representing SkySk8Park5. Usign a clean English version of their name while discussing them in entirely encyclopedic, biased manner has no legal standing because there's virtually no monetary damage done that can be sued against. The legal aspect of this argument is a non-starter. --MASEM (t) 00:35, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

bd2412 T, I re-read what you had said earlier about the nonconventional spelling, and I definitely agree with you about the treatment of titles as creative elements. (That's how this entire debate started; an editor applied MOS:TM to a title because of unconventional spelling, and others noticed when the title of the article changed.) My comments about trademark law is because I checked out a name on the US PTO's web site and have been thinking that we could find ourselves in legal trouble for trademark infringement. That said, I still believe that MOS:TM's second paragraph, as it stands now, does not allow for many exceptions and that the change to "is most commonly used by reliable English language sources that discuss the topic" will allow for many cases of unconventional spelling. SciGal (talk) 00:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose – I think I can understand where the other side is coming from, but my own perspective on this is pretty much what User:Dicklyon has expressed in his "oppose" comment. This kind of change goes against what this guideline is trying to achieve (recognizing of course that there will be occasional exceptions). Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 20:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has answered the question some of us may have been asking (and I know I have): Which style manuals, other than Wikipedia's own, authorizes individual writers or a group of writers to change spelling or wording of the title of someone else's book, magazine, journal, television show, film, radio program, web site, webzine, forum, etc., so that the title conforms to standard English? SciGal (talk) 21:06, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I can't check for sure, but lookng at the archives here (such as [1]) it suggests that at least the AP, NYTimes, and Wall Street Journal's MoS all support altering casing and spelling to keep to standard english. But I can't check those MOS directly (they're paid-for sources) --MASEM (t) 21:54, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

The Australian and many, possibly all, of its Australian News Ltd stablemates do not use any diacritics, accents, cedillas; I'm sure they do so without any legal hazard. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:38, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

• Agree with Dicklyon, that "It is a consensus principle on Wikipedia that we should defer to source usage when determining which of several names to use when referring to a topic." is too strong. We shouldn't defer. We should "weigh" and "balance". I think this is generally agreeable? However, I think the following should be true: "Wikipedia should not use a title that is not used in any reliable source, if there are reliable sources using a reasonable style". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Michael Bednarek, the lack of diacritics, accents, and cedillas are actually not as problematic as regular spelling.

SmokeyJoe, weighing and balancing have been problematic. There have been several instances in the archives where the nonstandard English spelling (such as Sunn O))), TechN9ne, and "Thnks fr th Mmrs") as been the most common usage in the majority of reliable resources, but an editor or a group of editors have been using a few instances of the more standard English spelling as justification for MOS:TM. That is why we keep having this argument. (There are 15 pages of it since the page's creation in 2006, and this will make page 16.) SciGal (talk) 20:29, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Becuase MOS:TM was designed to be the global metric, and what happens is that editors with a high interest in a topic that see it named "wrong" (but correct per MOS:TM) complain and try to fight it, and since these discussions normally take place on the isolated individual pages, the people that know how MOS:TM works aren't usually aware of these issues. This is clearly, looking at the archives, a long term people with how MOS:TM is taken. --MASEM (t) 22:18, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

So, if MOS:TM's second paragraph was designed to be static, why do we have at least 28 exceptions made to MOS:TM over the course of 15 pages of archives?

Also, these discussions most likely have started on the individual pages, but the editors who insisted on applying MOS:TM to a case that could easily be an exception forced the editors who have used a common but "nonstandard English" name for a topic to come here for guidance. The editors who needed the exception found confusion as to why their pages easily could be exceptions to MOS:TM but that the second paragraph of MOS:TM would not allow it. In the case of pages containing names of artists and titles of works, MOS:TM's second paragraph appears to override the traditional rules of standard English, which allows those names and titles to be treated a bit differently than basic grammar would otherwise dictate. That is when the arguments begin here between the editors insisting on the strict adherence to MOS:TM's second paragraph and the editors who found a more common, but considered "nonstandard English", name for a topic. SciGal (talk) 00:08, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

What 28 exceptions? If you're talking that list that you included above, nearly all of those follow MOS:TM's guidance with specific cavaets (like single letter lowercase terms like iPod). The point of the MOS is commonality across all pages, not just the one page of interest of a single page, and that's why there's constant arguments when one's favorite band or show or the like has MOS:TM applied (fairly) and they think that's wrong. --MASEM (t) 00:39, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Those, (plus the three that I named earlier and Sk8r Boi, 4ever, Oliver!, DearS, U + UrHand, CNET, and NARAL). They all were included in MOS:TM after the debate took place. SciGal (talk) 01:12, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, those all follow the MOS:TM for the most part (eg, those using all caps are all initialisms, which is appropriate and one the rules spelled out). There was a comment above that when it comes to creative works (not trademarks) that there is something about sticking to the artist's intent for something like "Sk8r Boi" which MOS:TM does not apply to. --MASEM (t) 02:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem... I am not sure I understand your reasoning here... suppose we have a rock band with the vanity spelled/styled name: "H8" ... and their first song/album is eponymously entitled "H8". Are you saying that "H8" is acceptable in an article about the song/album (since that is not a trademark, and thus not governed by WP:TM), but "H8" would not be acceptable in the bio article on the band (since it is a trademark in that context, and thus not allowed under MOS:TM)? Would we have to say: "In 2014, "Hate" released their epomymously titled first album H8"? Blueboar (talk) 17:59, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I personally am not 100% convinced that we shouldn't "correct" English titles of non-trademark titles as we would with trademarks (also, how many bands actually register trademarks on their name? 'H8" is a bad example in the case that they assumed people were call them, verbally "hate", the 8 is a pronounced character, so "H8" would be reasonable, just as it is in "Sk8er Boi". A better contrast would be, say, a band called "1337" (meant to be "Leet" (the short form of "elite") and pronounced that way) and a song in the same fashion. We'd already change the name of the band per MOS:TM , I'd see no reason to not also change the song name. --MASEM (t) 00:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Let's apply your thinking to a band name like INXS? If you have never heard of this band before, you would not know how to pronounce the name just by looking at it... You might wonder whether it is pronounced as one word ("Inks") or whether each letter should be pronounced separately ("Eye En Ex Ess"). Thankfully the article actually tells us how it is pronounced... the very first sentence of the lede states:

• INXS (pronounced "in excess", In-XS)...

To my mind, that is spot on... That is how we should explain the pronunciation of all vanity styled/spelled names. I would have no problem with an article entitled "1337"... as long as you explain the pronunciation in the opening sentence:

• 1337 (pronounced: "Leet")...

If you include a parenthetical in the first sentence, all confusion as to pronunciation goes away. From then on, the reader knows how to pronounce the stylization. Blueboar (talk) 14:23, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

And this is where sources get applied, but after deciding on the common name. INXS is a good example - it is not an initialism but its also not a real word. When you look at sources, there is no alternate way INXS is present at all (majority of sources or not), it's not a real word and making it normal case ("Inxs") is just as confusing as leaving it alone. As such, this would be a exception to everything else and it seems best to leave it as INXS. (Constrast with KISS , which is widely pronounced as "kiss"), is not an initialism, and so using "Kiss" is quite appropriate. And a thing to remember in this is that we're not just talking about the use of the name on the page about the topic representing that name, but across all WP. For example, we're talking about how to present "Numb3rs"/"Numbers" on a page like Judd Hirsch (one of the show's actors). There, the reader is not going to have the advantage of the clarification statement in the first lead sentence. That's why doing the best to remove vanity spellings all across WP is important. --MASEM (t) 15:58, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Kiss (band) is a bad contrast, because there we actually do follow reliable sources and don't use the "trademarked" all-caps "offical" styling of the name. A quick look at several high end sources (ex: [http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/kiss/biography Rolling Stone magazine) show that the band's name is not routinely written in all-caps case. So, while the all-cap version may be the trademarked "Official name" preference of the band, the COMMONNAME presentation preferred by Wikipedia is: "Kiss".

As for pronunciation... let us suppose the band's name was pronounced "Kizz" (its not, but plese assume for the sake of argument)... I think we would still follow the sources as to how to write the name. We would still write the band's name as "Kiss" ... and explain the odd pronounciation in a parenthetical in the first sentence. We would deal with pronunciation by writing: Kiss (pronounced "Kizz") is a rock band... etc. Blueboar (talk) 16:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, INXS isn't a word, but it's suppose to be pronounced as if it was. "In excess". Numb3rs is the same thing. Its also heavily sourced by using "Numb3rs" consistently, another reason why 1337 (Leet) doesn't work is that its poorly sourced, and there is large amount of variants of the spelling. But considering that the spelling is a form of language, meaning the english way of spelling it would still be "Leet" unlike other names.Lucia Black (talk) 01:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

"Numb3rs" is not pronounced "Numb-three-rs"; the three is a vaniety character. INXS has no vanity characters and there's no sourcable substitute (outside of saying it is a play on the phrase "in excess"), so we're "stuck" with the only existing spelling "INXS". --MASEM (t) 02:03, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Again, you have to separate COMMONNAME from MOS:TM. There is only one debatable name for KISS the band under CN - that's "KISS" irregardless of casing. At this point MOS:TM takes over and says because that is simply a full cap version "Kiss", and not an initialism, then irregardless of sources, we lowercase it. If the band used the name "KIZZ" but prounced it "kiss", which is completely non-proper English nor a dictionary word, then we'd have to see what other alternate ways of presenting that name exist in sources. If there are some that use "Kizz" and some that use "KIZZ", we should prefer the former for sake of readibility. If on the other hand the only apparent use of KIZZ was "KIZZ" by sources (the INXS case) we'd stick with that. --MASEM (t) 02:03, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I strongly disagree... I don't think we should separate MOS:TM from COMMONNAME ... indeed, in many cases we simply can't separate the two. There are situations where a stylized spelling is considered an integral part of a name, a name routinely used by reliable sources. When this occurs, MOS:TM needs to account for that COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 15:30, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

CN and MOS:TM were designed separately and every case that has come to the table can be separated. CN deals with issues like using a nickname verse full name, or one English spelling over another, or using a foreign term over its English translation, or the like, and for all purposes, technically is limited to what the article is named and titled. Once that is decided, everything else is about how the title is stylized in prose, which applies to all of WP. There is a very defined line between where CN stops and MOS:TM takes over. --MASEM (t) 15:35, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Sigh... no, there isn't a fine line... there is a blurry line with an area of overlap. WP:CN and WP:MOS overlap (in a contradictory way) when a significant majority of reliable sources routinely use a name with stylistic spelling when referring to the subject. But you obviously don't want to hear that. Blueboar (talk) 15:06, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I'm strongly standing by that if you separate the concerns of casing, vanity spells, and extraneous characters, from the actual text that forms the name, any naming debate can be separated into a CN part and into a MOS:TM part. Every naming debate that I've seen can be broken down this way, and once you do that, the application of MOS:TM is straight forward, particularly as that applies across all articles, whereas CN is only in naming of articles. --MASEM (t) 15:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

MOS:TM still only applies, by its own terms, to trademarks. It is inapplicable to titles that use nonstandard orthography, but are not trademarks, which leads to an arbitrary division based on things that have nothing to do with what title the reader will recognize or whether a title can be pronounced. bd2412 T 16:51, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose: Proposal fundamentally misunderstands what MOS is and does and why, and the nature of how why reliable sources are only useful for facts about topics, including what their names are, but not how to style them for an encyclopedic context. And other reasons that have already been well-covered above.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  13:08, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed change - arbitrary break

I believe as MOS:TM stands right now, could be more harmful to wikipedia as it plays the exceptional role for most of the way naming works (both outside wikipedia and in).Lucia Black (talk) 15:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

And that's by design to help normalize the prose for the majority of readers. --MASEM (t) 15:35, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, and anyone else who is interested, I was surfing online, and I found a copy of the AP Stylebook online--for free. It's through the Illinois Math and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, and it looks as though the entire book is online. SciGal (talk) 23:56, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

A check of that shows that they tell you to capitalize trademark, brand, and service names irregardless of casing. However, judging by the table of contents I can see for the Chicago guide, I don't think this is the full guide for the AP, but more a quick handbook. --MASEM (t) 00:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I see what you mean about the capitalization of services marks, trademarks, and brand names. I also have noticed that the AP Stylebook mentions that the only things that you can do to titles of books, operas, plays, poems, songs, movies, computer games, television shows, and works of art are to place them in quotation marks, translate foreign titles, and to capitalize the titles. If a show is named after the star, there are three ways to write the name. (By the way, I checked the publishing date on the book and saw that the stylebook was published in 2000. That may explain the short nature of the stylebook.)

Also, I was able to check out a copy of the latest version of CMOS for free. CMOS recommend that you do not change the spelling of a title of a work, television show, radio program, or movie. If a work has non-Latin characters or numerals in it, you are to keep them in the title as is. In addition, CMOS recommends that you use the preferred spelling of trademarks, artists, and spellings within a discipline. The only time that spelling can be changed is if you need to change the spelling of non-American English to maintain consistency. According to CMOS, eBay and iPad can be used at the start of a sentence instead of EBay and IPad. SciGal (talk) 22:08, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Without seeing the other style guides, this at least shows there's not strong consistency on handling trademarks with unique casing, meaning that MOS:TM which allows us to modify them is not going against every other style guide out there (a reason to not change casing otherwise if we're doing something that unique). I will point out that most of those guides are aimed at readership in the United States, while we're aimed at worldwide readership, a reason to be different from something like Chicago's. --MASEM (t) 22:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

There's that confusion of spelling again. You cannot spell "Numbers" with a "3" or "Kesha" with a dollar sign because they are unpronounced. By re-rendering the stylised characters as normal characters, you are not changing the spelling. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:12, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

And there's that confusion between spelling and pronunciation again... spelling and pronunciation are two distinct things. We can deal with pronunciation by including a parenthetical remark when needed... along the line of: In 2005 Foo became the lead kazoo player for the band Tw33t (pronounced: "Tweet"). Blueboar (talk) 15:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Rob Sinden, from what I have been seeing so far, all of the style guides that I have been reading do not tell writers to change the spelling of the title of a book, computer program, web site, blog, television show, movie, radio program, podcast, poem, play, or opera. You have to leave the spelling as is, even if people hate the spelling. This is the only place where one sentence of one paragraph gives editors the right to change the spelling. SciGal (talk) 17:00, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The thing is, I have yet to see these style guides address the issue of vanity spelling (from the limited details I can see), which is a relatively "new" thing. And again, I point that those guides are written not necessarily that the readership is as wide as we write towards. --MASEM (t) 17:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I had to look up the term "vanity spelling" as I have never heard of the term before this argument. I would be inclined to agree with you--if the artists and/or authors paid for the entire production process themselves. Since most literary works, computer programs, and media presentation (e.g., movies and TV shows) are not paid for by the people involved in the production process, we should use the names that we have been given by the companies involved in the process. SciGal (talk) 17:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, vanity spelling, as I use it here, is using replacement non-alphabetic characters for otherwise standard English ones ("Numb3rs" for "Numbers", or "Ke$ha" for "Kesha"). It's akin to "l33t" spelling. --MASEM (t) 17:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The thing is... While such spellings may have been originally created due to vanity... once a significant majority of reliable sources (especially highly reliable sources) accept it - and routinely use it when discussing the subject - the spelling can no longer be dismissed as mere vanity. Blueboar (talk) 13:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Question... what if someone legally changes the spelling of their first name from "Peter" to "P3t3r"? Would you allow the vanity spelling in that case? Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

You could not legally change your name to something containing numbers or symbols. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Why not? Are there statutes that ban it? Blueboar (talk) 14:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Probably for the same reason that we shouldn't be entertaining it here. But yeah, certainly not legal in UK, US, NZ. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:27, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Minnesota's Supreme Court once ruled that a man who wanted to change his name to the number "1069" could not legally do so, but suggested that "Ten Sixty-Nine" might be acceptable. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:29, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. thanks. Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I will go a step farther than that and say that before WP:TM is applied, it must be determined that the title at issue is primarily considered to be a trademark, as opposed to the title of a work. Nothing Compares 2 U is not a trademark at all, and so WP:TM is not applicable to it. Deadmau5 and Numb3rs may have trademark registrations, but do people look at those and say, oh, a trademark? Or do they first and foremost think of them as the name of an artist and the title of a work. Compare a theoretical breakfast cereal called "Gr8 Nuts", which is clearly merely a trademark. bd2412 T 16:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm... interesting point. Let me see if I understand what you are saying: WP:TM only applies to trademarks... so, if a name isn't trademarked, then WP:TM's restrictions on "vanity styling" would not apply. (is that correct?) Blueboar (talk) 17:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

This begins to raise the issue between the various conflicts between MOS:TM, WP:UE (which talks about when to use special characters like diacritics in proper names), and WP:CN. I'll note that UE does suggest we don't have to be exact with special characters but says to look to sources as well. What I think this pointing to is specific advice on vanity spellings, where non-alphabetic characters are purposely replacing alphabetic ones and are not part of the name's normal pronunciation, irregardless if a trademark or not. (eg Numb3rs, Ke$ha, etc.) . Other cases of non-trademark, proper names which may not be "proper" english but doesn't require guessing which alphabetic characters are meant to be there (eg "Thnks Fr Th Nmrs") would be okay. Mind you, I'm thinking off the top of my head, but this suggests a larger discussion specifically defining what vanity spellings are and are not, and how to handle them (trademarked, proper name, or otherwise). --MASEM (t) 17:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, I am glad you are finally understanding that there actually are conflicts between MOS:TM and WP:CN... that's a step in the right direction. Blueboar (talk) 15:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I still there is a way to separate the "naming" and the "styling" between guidelines, it's a lot easier than made out, but where the advice to follow (as there's differences between considering article titles and what to use in running prose) is not well-spelled out. --MASEM (t) 15:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

On that we agree (what I think we disagree about are the definitions of what constitutes a "name" vs what constitutes a "style". In order to clarify which policy/guideline applies, I think we need to reach a community consensus on that disagreement). Blueboar (talk) 16:52, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

According to MOS:TM (or even WP:UE), what should the book Easy as π: An Introduction to Higher Mathematics be titled? SciGal (talk) 21:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Well... if we accept BD's argument... MOS:TM doesn't say anything about it. The symbol π isn't trademarked and therefore does not fall within the scope of MOS:TM. Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with you and BD there. It seems to me that MOS:TM has been applied to both definitions of the word "trademark", not just the first definition which we have at the top of the page. SciGal (talk) 20:48, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

That's a pronounced character, and thus a WP:UE issue. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:20, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

@Blueboar, it is not just a question of whether the tile is the subject of a trademark registration ("trademarked" is not a legal term; use "registered as a trademark"), but of whether that is the primary significance of the term. There is no doubt that "Numb3rs" is the subject of a trademark registration, but people probably think of it as the title of a work before they think of it as a trademark. bd2412 T 21:24, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if this could be a solution to our situation involving nonstandard English trademarks and titles? SciGal (talk) 00:49, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

It already is. Numbers, stylised as NUMB3RS, etc. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:56, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Exactly, this is already what is supposed to be done when there is a clear alternate name(s) for a topic to help the reader instantly identify they've arrived at the right page if they entered one of those other terms. --MASEM (t) 16:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Not quite... the question is this: which version is the primary and which version is the alternative? Certainly, if the stylized version isn't the COMMONNAME (ie is not routinely used by a significant majority of reliable sources) then we should present the stylized version as an alternative... HOWEVER, when the stylized version is the COMMONNAME (routinely used by a significant number of reliable sources) then we should do the exact opposite... presenting the stylized version as the primary name and the non-stylized name as the alternative... as in: "NUMB3ERS (alternatively: Numbers)". Blueboar (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

My point was not so much which is the right name or not, just that we have existing advice that for such cases where there is a common alternate version of the name (whether we consider the vanity spelling the alternate or the primary, that doesn't matter), then the first sentence of the lead should clearly identify that known alternate in bold text, so the reader immediately knows that the topic could be named one of two (or more) different ways. So the confusion the reader about what the title is is cleared up immediately if they aren't aware of it beforehand. --MASEM (t) 16:34, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar, you're trying to apply WP:COMMONNAME principles to style again. There is no WP:COMMONSTYLE guideline. We don't follow sources for style. The non-stylized version is primary per this and other guidlines. There is no consensus to change this. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

No... I am applying WP:COMMONAME to names (and we do follow sources when it comes to names)... it just happens that the names I am applying COMMONNAME to contain stylization.

This is why I draw a distinction between the stylization in the BEA_TLES logo (where the stylization relates to font more than spelling), and the stylization in deadmou5 (where the stylization relates to spelling)... I fully agree that COMMONNAME would not apply to the BEA_TLES logo, as that stylization is not considered an integral part of the name of the band (we know this because the stylization is not routinely repeated by sources when they discuss the band). Howver, I feel that COMMONNAME does apply in the case of deadmau5... as the stylization is considered an integral part of that name (we know this because the stylization is routinely repeated in sources when discussing the artist). Blueboar (talk) 17:38, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

When you try to make that distinction, you are making the whole thing too messy. Irregardless of how the terms are visually presented, it's pronounced "The Beatles", as determined by COMMONNAME. Whether to use the bolt/capital T form is a matter or MOS:TM (which presently says to ignore those facts). --MASEM (t) 17:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I think I know what Blueboar is getting at. With a title, you can alter font, font size, font appearance (i.e., bold, italics, underline, superscript, subscript), etc. You, however, cannot change the exact alphanumerical characters in an English-language or a translated title. Those characters constitute the name of the title. I think that is what Blueboar is suggesting that we look at in deciding WP:COMMONNAME. SciGal (talk) 20:07, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes you can - "Seven" is a perfect example where the press regularly changed the "Se7en" to proper English. And we do do it with names to - we never bent over backwards to meet Prince's symbolic name or the album with the symbolic name. We call her "Kesha". "Deadmau5" is reasonable only because there is enough people out there that call him "dead mau five" verbally, making the "5" character integral. If people called "Ke$ha" "ke dollar sign ha" regularly, then yes, "Ke$ha" would be fine, but no one does. That's why it's important that how we present names has to be related to how they are regularly/commonly spoken and pronounced, and letters and symbols that do not at all factor into the pronunciation are a strong indication of vanity characters that we should ignore. --MASEM (t) 21:28, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think I was talking about Prince's symbol, which not even the high-level sources could pronounce or write. That was a purely graphical design. I was talking about the actual characters, as in Ke$ha and deadmau5.

Also, you cannot always rely on a standardized English spelling to lead you to the correct pronunciation of a word or a name. Take, for instance, Typhoon Haiyan. If I did not watch the news or listen to podcasts, I would have pronounced the name Haiyan "Hay-yawn" because of the "ai" and "a" phonemes in the Anglicized spelling of the name. The proper pronunciation, however, is "Hi-yin", something we English-speakers would not have been able to guess based on spelling. SciGal (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Sigh... I'll say it again - pronunciation is not a serious factor. Pronunciation can be easily explained in a parenthetical. If there is a concern as to pronunciation, just write: Ke$ha (pronounced "Kesha") is an American singer/songwriter... or In 1995 Brad Pitt starred in the movie Se7en (pronounced "Seven"). No, what matters here is basic recognizability. When a name is presented in a specific way in the vast majority of sources, that is how our readers will expect it to appear in Wikipedia.

Supporters of MOS:TM go on and on about the need to use standard English... but when a name is presented in a certain way by a significant majority of English language sources, I would argue that usage make the presentation standard... and not following the sources would be to promote a non-standard variant. Blueboar (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

That's certainly an argument available to you under the current guideline. In fact, I think it's the argument that won the day (and the argument I advocated) for using "Deadmau5" instead of "Deadmaus." Croctotheface (talk) 12:29, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

A broader comment as well: as others have pointed out, MOSTM is a tool for figuring out what style to use when more than one style is present in sources. It's meant to help editors make non-obvious editorial decisions. It's important to remember that the vast, vast majority of the time, trademark owners preemptively decide to help us out by following the guideline to begin with by choosing a style that already comports with standard English. For those cases when they do not, I read this guideline as saying, basically, "We don't care that a style is 'official.' We do prefer that it be standard English." Most of the time, it's pretty clear. Sometimes, you'll have difficult cases. When you have difficult cases, then this guideline might not have all the answers, and that's OK. That's why we have discussion and consensus and all that good stuff. I'll point out one important difference between this issue and the stuff that WP:Commonname is designed to address. With WP:UCN, you're essentially asking a question like, "What name is most common" or "What would the average reader expect us to call this thing?" For something like "use the style that's most common in sources," we lose that sort of common sense question to ask and we're left with vote counting, which is difficult if not impossible. The average reader, if she reads high-level publications for a general readership (AP, NYT, BBC), would probably expect standard English. If the average reader reads stuff that owes more fealty to the bands/companies it covers, she might expect crazy nonstandard styles. Does this mean that high-level sources should have more "votes" in our tally? If so, how many more votes? This gets unworkable very quickly. Croctotheface (talk) 12:29, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

@ Croctotheface... Determining COMMONNAME is not just a matter of counting up sources. We do give more weight to some publications and less weight (or even no weight at all) to others ... what concerns me are situations where high-level publications (AP, NYT, BBC, Rolling Stone) all routinely present a name in a particular way. This guideline does not account for those situations. It needs to. Blueboar (talk) 14:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes it does - it ignores that for favoring the most readable version that ignores fancy spelling. We are aimed at a global readership, readers having various degrees of familiarity of English and certainly without assuming they are aware of contemporary topics in Western countries, unless the readership of NYTimes, AP, etc. Hence, by choosing to ignore the vanity put into names (when we have a reasonable way to use regular English) we have a easy-to-follow guide that neutralizes extensive discussion. --MASEM (t) 16:21, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

But when a name is presented a certain way by a significant majority of reliable sources (especially the high-end reliable sources)... it is no longer vanity. Sure, it may have started out as vanity... but routine use has transformed it into something that is accepted and standard. Blueboar (talk) 13:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

If there were a way to write the guideline such that it made clear that we have a strong preference for standard English, but that a situation where all high-level sources agreed on a style that looks nonstandard, I'd probably support it. I do not agree with Masem about this. The notion that this is entirely a value judgment that's about condemning "vanity" strikes me as much too prescriptivist. If a style is used in EVERY high-level source, then it's acceptable within standard English. Croctotheface (talk) 13:11, 5 February 2014 (UTC) 13:09, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Recap of Arguments

Extended content

Okay, for the sake of everyone else reading this, let’s recap the arguments made both for and against changing MOS:TM. Reasons for Change MOS:TM in its current form does not readily allow for exceptions to standard English. Even when exceptions are made, those with a similar type of issue (e.g., CamelCases, lowercase first letter and capitalized second letter) are considered in violation of MOS:TM as exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis. Readers who come across a subject that they have read in a reliable source may not find what they are looking for if the application of MOS:TM alters the spelling of a name. Articles containing titles of book, e-books, magazines, plays, poems, operas, songs, computer programs, television shows, movies, web sites, and blogs have been flagged for violation of MOS:TM if they use non-standard English capitalization and/or spelling in their names. Articles about artists, companies, and consumer products have also been flagged for the same reason. This happens even when the vast majority of high-level reliable English-language sources (e.g., the New York Times, the Associated Press) use the non-standard English version over the Standard English version. In some instances, the current guideline suggests that editors also change the names of foreign titles should the English translation contain non-English characters that have no English equivalent. For example, editors who use the current version of MOS:TM might flag articles with “Ojjj” characters as a part of their subjects’ names as the “Ojjj” characters are unpronounced in standard English. Several editors have raised concerns about the possibility of trademark infringement. If you want read these concerns, see the above section and read here, here, and here. (For that last one, the consensus seemed to be that WP should not use trademarks in a generic way as an “editorial obligation” [words of several members of that conversation], but there was a disagreement over whether to use the actual trademark or a generic term to describe products in an article.) Reasons for Keeping MOS:TM as Is Editors may not use reliable sources in writing their articles. The editors may use fan sites, Facebook, and Twitter feeds and not academic journals and high-level news sites (e.g., the AP, NYT, Time, Newsweek, USA Today) to gather their information. Global readers who are unfamiliar with a subject may be confused if a nonstandard English capitalization and/or spelling is used in an article, and the readers would have difficulty reading the article. Changes to MOS:TM to allow exceptions more readily will weaken the guideline. Did I miss any concerns? SciGal (talk) 20:41, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

• COMMENT. This so-called "recap" is heavily skewed to promote a certain point of view, and does not accurately represent the arguments and points made above. I ask any editors coming here for the first time to take it with a pinch of salt. I've collapsed it for this reason. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:22, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the concept of a recap would be beneficial... so if you think SciGal's recap is problematic, perhaps you could write one that (in your opinion) does accurately represent the arguments and points made above. Blueboar (talk) 14:03, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Rob Sinden, those seven reasons were the seven most common themes that run through 16 pages of talk:MOSTM. SciGal (talk) 19:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Rob Sinden, in case you missed it, I did ask whether there were any more reasons either for or against changing MOS:TM. SciGal (talk) 14:37, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

• On point 2 of the "pros to change", this is what redirects serve. If "Numb3rs" was at "Numbers", searching for "Numb3rs" should find the redirect page that leads them to "Numbers". So the searching issue is a non-starter against the change.
• On point 3 of the same, we would have to make it clear that for a name that, via COMMONNAME, the foreign title is considered the right title and that title uses accented characters or anything similar (in the appropriate method for that language), MOS:TM is not telling them to change that. We would never have a title , per WP:UE, that consists only of non-English characters (like kanji). --MASEM (t) 20:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

But thats the problem, you see, by using the less common name (universaly less common) we also indirectly lie to the readers.Lucia Black (talk) 21:28, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Fancy spelling is a separate issue from common names. And no, it's not lying to the reader, when usually that alt spelling is the first thing mentioned in the lead. --MASEM (t) 22:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I should have split up point 2 into two different reasons, especially since I found both of the reasons both individually and jointly in the archive pages. SciGal (talk) 00:51, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, first, how can you tell the difference between a nonstandard English spelling that was intentionally created to and a nonstandard English speling that was designed for promotional purposes, just by looking at the name itself?

Second, redirects are sometimes not enough, or they are nonexistent. To use a trademark/brand name example that uses standard English, if I saw the name Kiss (for the Kiss Canon EOS 7 camera) in an article in the New York Times, I would type Kiss in WP's search engine. I would then come to the page [Kiss]. I would then have to go to the disambiguation page to find "Kiss, a brand name for consumer-level Canon EOS cameras in the Japanese market since 1993". If I use the words "Kiss" and "camera" in WP's search engine, I would come to WP's search results page for those terms, and I would have to find what I was looking for. If I use the words "Kiss" and "Canon" in WP's search engine, I would come to another search results page where I would have to remember which camera I would looking for.

Also, titles of works and programs have been flagged for violation of MOS:TM numerous times. This is something that I have noticed many times in the archives. As for titles with non-English characters, the issue never was whether the entire title would be untranslated. The concern was that a character may not be translated into English when the non-English character is a part of the name. SciGal (talk) 00:48, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Common sense, not pendatic adherence, needs to apply here. It will be plainly obvious when a name uses a vanity character in its name instead of regular spelling; it may require someone that knows that native language to affirm that but that's not an issue to work policy around. As native English speakers, I expect that all of us can recognize that "Numb3rs" fits no normal English spelling/character rules, and if we come across, say, a French band that uses something odd, a persont that also speaks French can figure that out.

As for search, there is no issue if the person does not land on the expected search page on the first try in the search box, as long as the trailing of hat notes and disambiguation pages gets them there within two more links (assuming they typed the right term). It is impossible under any naming scheme that we can cover all possible cases that a user may be searching for, we simply need to make sure that the links to guide the user are clear and quickly get them at the point. MOS:TM is meant to be the policy used everywhere, hence why it needs to take priority on trademarked terms. --MASEM (t) 01:54, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Masem, is MOS:TM a policy or a guideline?

As for the spelling, common sense indicates that you can't judge the intent of the person who created the title just based on appearance. For that, you need to conduct research to see if a nonstandard English name was designed just for promotional purpose or was the actual name. In most cases, no one will mention the intent of using a specific character, so you cannot assume intent.

In the Kiss camera example above, I see your point, but our readers might not. In searches, there might not be any hatcaps to redirect you if you use words which lead you straight to search result pages. SciGal (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

The various MOSs are guidelines but apply to all parts of writing, and thus have more weight than something like COMMONNAME that only applies to naming pages. Yes, we can figure out the intent of a entity that creates a vanity spelling that is nowhere close to proper use to of the native language, it's called "common sense". And if there are places where hatnotes should be but have not been properly applied, that's not a reason to change the naming policy for articles. --MASEM (t) 16:01, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Every edit that is made on Wikipedia should be for the benefit of the reader. The question to ask, at the end of the day, is not about which style is approved by which house, but which title is most likely to be of the greatest benefit to the likely reader of a given article. It may be that the difference between, for example, Deadmaus and Deadmau5 is insignificant in this respect, and it may be that readers will tend to believe that Numb3rs is the name of the show, and coming across a different title might momentarily disorient them. I don't know whether that is really the case, but making that determination should be the hinge of our discussion of titles, and should be the hinge of our discussion as to the wording of policies on titles. bd2412 T 16:32, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

On redirects... I will just note that we could just as easily have the article at "NUMB3ERS" and redirect the non-stylized "numbers". Which version is the used for the article and which is the redirect is determined by WP:COMMONNAME.

As for using "common sense"... I reject the argument that WP:COMMONNAME only applies to article titles. To me it makes NO sense at all to use the COMMONNAME in the title, and then not use it in the body of the text. Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

MOS:FOLLOW contravention?

Statistics Canada publishes demographic census data on visible minorities. The order it presents the minority groups are as follows, based on largest to smallest populations: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japanese.

My inquiry is two-fold:

1. Is it contrary to MOS:FOLLOW to present this data within tables in an order of groups inconsistent with the order published in the StatCan source?
2. Is it contrary to MOS:FOLLOW to use different terms for the groups than those published in the StatCan source?

The concern about #1 is that some editors may reorder the groups to match their preferences for whatever reason, or it can be perceived that they have been intentionally ordered to align with someone's preferences.

An example of #2 is using "African" rather than "Black", or using "White" rather than "Not a visible minority", or in the case of Demographics of Canada#Visible minority and Aboriginal population, aggregating "like" groups into greater groups (like rolling Chinese, Korean and Japanese into "East Asian").

For your background, consider this discussion that triggered this inquiry.

Cheers, Hwy43 (talk) 04:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

So, shall I take this inquiry elsewhere? Would have thought the watchers of this page would be resident experts on MOS:FOLLOW and could assist. Note it is recognized that the aggregation of "like" groups as the second example for #2 above also crosses into SYNTH/OR. Hwy43 (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry it took so long to get to your comment. Personally, I do not see how MOS:FOLLOW even applies in this as MOS:TM primarily discusses trademarks and, as you can see, titles of works and programs. Have you considered asking the people over at [2] about how to label the groups? SciGal (talk) 21:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

SciGal, thanks. Took it at face value from the other editor that MOS:FOLLOW was likely being contravened. Reading MOS:TM in its entirety, I see it doesn't cover this issue. Should have looked more closely first. Inquiry withdrawn! Hwy43 (talk) 03:43, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Never heard of MOS:FOLLOW. I see it was added in Oct. 2013 in this edit. I've nominated the redirect for deletion and will delete the shortcut notice. This is a silly term for the section; we have lots of things to follow; why this one? Dicklyon (talk) 05:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

This is actually a WP:NOR question in both cases. The idea in #1 would not be counter to policy, as long as it wasn't done for a POV-pushing or other anti-policy purpose (or demonstrably with such an effect, even without such a purpose). The data might have been presented in the source in order of population, but might be more useful here in alphabetical order. WP likes tables to be auto-resortable so people can arrange them as suits their personal research and understanding needs, so it's largely a moot question unless something weird and bad is going on (e.g. rearranging them under continental headings, and excluding or including "Arab" from "Asian", without having a reliable source that the original category intentionally excluded or included people who self-identify as "Arab" but are from African vs. Asian families; just an example. The idea in #2 would sorely transgress WP:NOR, and also fail WP:V. It's not even terms that are important here, but the definitions. Between one study and other, the same terms can be used with radically different meanings and covering different sets of data.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  13:20, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Trademarks that begin with a lowercase letter

"The exception is trademarks that begin with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter are not capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules:

   avoid: He said that EBay is where he bought his IPod.
   instead, use: He said that eBay is where he bought his iPod.

" Why not Ebay or Ipod? 78.35.203.149 (talk) 21:36, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

In most of these trademark names where it is "first letter lower case, second letter upper case, all remaining letters lower case", the first letter is meant to be pronounced separately and often is an initialism ("i" for "Internet", "e" for "Eletronic"), so they are presented the way they are pronounced - "eBay" is pounded "eee bay" and not "ebb bay") (as "Ebay" would imply), and "eye pod" as opposed to "ip pod"). --MASEM (t) 21:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I remember back in the '90s when I got a credit card bill with a charge for "EMILES" and thought I must have accidentally signed up with some new airline scam like eMiles. Turns out it was just the restaurant Emiles, as I figured out eventually. Anyway, these kinds of things, the initial-vowel pattern, are probably best treated as we say, which is what all reliable sources do, pretty much. I don't think you'd find any good sources saying Ipod or Ebay; if I'm wrong, hopefully it's few enough to dismiss anyway. Some stats: [3], [4]. Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Dicklyon has it right... we should follow the reliable sources, and present the name as they do. Blueboar (talk) 13:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Except where they do something we would not permit, e.g. rendering Kesha as Ke$ha. There's no need to have an argument about this. We're already adequately "codifying" this sort of thing here, and don't need to make any sweeping genralized statements; RS are often in confict with each other and cannot be <ahem> relied upon for style matters, because why a music or tech magazine pics a specific style has nothing to do with my MOS has selected its own. Conflicts break out over, e.g. Numb3rs only because people fail to read MOS correctly or fail to understand how it relates to WP:AT correctly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  13:26, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Standard English and descriptivism

I've talked about these issues a few times on this talk page. With this guideline, I think that there's a much greater "risk" of bad outcomes from people who want to use a nonstandard style (like RAZR for the phone) that basically no high-level publication uses than there is from people who want to go nuts "correcting spelling" on everything because of their prescriptivist sense of what English is. The move to "Deadmaus" falls into that latter category, but it was corrected. I think that there's a rough consensus for something like my position: we prefer to standardize, but we need to use discussion to figure out difficult cases, and if there's a local consensus for a nonstandard style (even a local consensus I'd disagree with), that's not a big deal. I'm generally averse to changing the guideline because I think that there isn't really a problem with bad outcomes the way the guideline is written now. I think that the guideline as written has pretty much gotten us the sorts of results that most editors on the project feel OK about.

I also don't think that there's a disconnect between the language in the guideline and the actual practice of editors. So, for instance, "Deadmau5" looks nonstandard, but a more standard-looking alternative only barely exists in sources. In a literal way, using "Deadmau5" might appear to contradict the guideline. But my view is that "standard English" hews more closely to the practice of high-level publications that are widely read by general audiences and care about matters of style in a serious way. So if ALL those publications use "Deadmau5" and only a few less-than-significant-but-still-reliable-per-WP:RS sources use "Deadmaus" or whatever else, then it's pretty hard to say that "Deadmau5" is not standard English. The same thing would apply to iPod and eBay.

Now, I still have some fear that there are editors out there who want to "look for opportunities" to get rid of what I consider the heart of the guideline, the notion that we don't give weight to "official style" and that we prefer to standardize. There's been a lot of comments here that go something like, "Well, see, we're using iPod or Deadmau5 or ooVoo; therefore, we should use RAZR too." I don't want to make a change to the guideline that encourages that sort of stuff. I think that trying to make it "commonstyle" in the mold of WP:UCN would do this. I can just hear it, "Come on, everybody knows it's a RAZR! It says it right here on the box of my new RAZR which I love so much!" "Come on, everyone know's she's Ke$ha! It says it right here on her Twitter account that I'm constantly refreshing." In both those cases, high level publications tend to standardize. Within fan communities, they don't. Some reliable sources hew more to the fan communities, but high-level sources do not. Who's to say what's "common"? It depends entirely on perspective. But I don't think that most editors here want our articles to read like press releases, which is what would happen if we started using "RAZR" and whatnot.

So I'd be fine with amending the guideline with a short note or example interpretation of standard English. I'd want to make reference to the sorts of things I said here: high-level publications, style guides, caring about precise written language, and so forth. And I think that if the NYT standardizes, but other high level publications do not, we should still recommend standardizing. Editors can ignore that at individual articles if they reach a consensus to, and that's OK. If that's not OK, or if that means we need to scrap or seriously weaken the recommendation to standardize, then that just encourages editors who like this guideline to be WP:Battleground-y about it, and to go around to individual articles to attempt to bring them back into "compliance" to avoid the guideline getting trolled. Nobody wants that. Croctotheface (talk) 13:42, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Re: "there are editors out there who want to "look for opportunities" to get rid of what I consider the heart of the guideline, the notion that we don't give weight to "official style" and that we prefer to standardize"... I share that concern, and just want to make it clear that I am not one of these editors. While I strongly support the idea of a shift to "Commonstyle" (based on source usage, and heavily weighted to high-end sources)... I also strongly support making it clear that we give no weight to the "officialness" of a stylization. In those rare cases when the sources indicate that we should use the "official" stylization , it's because the vast majority of highly reliable sources do so... and not because the stylization is "official". Blueboar (talk) 15:46, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

And the problem with using sources, even staying to high-level sources and avoiding "fan" sources for whatever the work is, will still cause debate beyond what already is a problem at COMMONNAME. This is because any editor with some savvy will be able to a present a seemingly fair argument that "these sources all use form X, only these few use form Y" to promote one way or another. COMMONNAME already gives enough problems per WP:LAME, we don't want that duplicated at MOS:TM. --MASEM (t) 16:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Masem, you seem to think that debate is a bad thing... it isn't. Reasoned, constructive debate is part of the consensus building process... debate (otherwise known as discussion) is one of the primary ways we improve articles. Of course adopting a "Commonstyle" clause won't get rid of every debate... nor should it. What it will do is give us a consistent, evidence based mechanism by which the debates can be resolved.

The fact is, right now, we don't even get to the point where we can have reasoned, constructive debates about stylized names... any debates we do get quickly devolve into IDIDN'THEARTHAT stubbornness over which of the conflicting policy/guideline should take precedence. No, adopting a "Commonstyle" clause won't end all debates ... but it will give us a consistent starting point on which to base those debates. Blueboar (talk) 16:56, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

We already have a consistent mechanism by which to resolve these debates. It's our MOS. Trying to source style will only make things more, not less difficult. --Rob Sinden (talk) 17:00, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

No, we currently have two competing mechanisms... this MOS and COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 20:04, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

No, MOS and COMMONNAME are two separate mechanisms. Common name applies first to determine which name is the best way to title an article, but MOS:TM applies to all prose and tells us how to present a name that maximizes readability to all English readers irregardless of what vanity spelling is done. There is a clear distinction here; CommonName is what tells us to compare Kesha to Kesha Rose Sebert (Kesha being the most common by sources), while MOS:TM tells us that once Kesha is selected by CN, to use "Kesha" over "Ke$ha". Same with Pink over Alecia Beth Moore via CN, while using "Pink" over "P!nk" via MOS:TM. --MASEM (t) 21:01, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

There's a style/content distinction here. If there were a consensus that the dollar sign is an intractable part of what Kesha's name is, not just a different way to write the name Kesha, then we should probably use it under WP:UCN if it's more common. Croctotheface (talk) 22:43, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

This is where the deadmau5 case falls - while the common way it is pronounced is "dead mouse", there are enough sources that also call it "dead mau five", making the five an integral part of the name in that case. On the other hand, no one pronounces "Ke$ha" as "key dollar sign ha", everyone recognizes the dollar sign is not prounounced as show, but really is an "S". Thus for sake for readability for the lower-common denominator for WP from MOS:TM's POV, we use the version that matches how the term is actually pronounced to avoid confusion. --MASEM (t) 22:53, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I consider pronunciation a useful test for sure, but I don't think the consensus view hinged on pronunciation in that case. Croctotheface (talk) 23:39, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Re: Deadmou5... I have to agree with Croc. The pronunciation question may have been what convinced Masem and a few others to accept the consensus view, but it wasn't what caused the consensus to form in the first place. If you read the various AfD discussions, the consensus formed when it was noted that high-end sources routinely referred to the artist as "Deadmou5". The "pronunciation" argument was icing on the cake.

Re: Ke$ha vs. Kesha - the consensus in that debate also formed based on an analysis of the sources... what is interesting is that the analysis gave us a different result from the "Deadmau5" debate. Consensus formed in favor of Kesha (the current title) and against Ke$ha when an actual analysis of the sources was done, and it was discovered that the higher-end sources didn't routinely present the name with a dollar sign.

In other words... in both cases the consensus actually formed once people applied a sourced based "commonstyle" analysis. Yes, the two debates (appropriately) ended in different results ... but the mechanism that ended the debates and caused people to reach a consensus was the same. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

@Masem, where does it say that "MOS:TM applies to all prose"? If the "prose" in question does not contain an actual trademark, MOS:TM does not apply by its own terms. bd2412 T 15:05, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

MOS's in general apply to every main article space of WP, where there is prose. MOS:TM, of course, should only apply to trademark , brand, and service names when used in prose --MASEM (t) 15:14, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Blueboar, I would contend that that analysis is less about what is a "common style" and more about what is standard English. That a source is high-level seems to say a lot about whether a given style is acceptable within standard English and less about how common it is. Croctotheface (talk) 23:21, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

If MOS:TM applies only to trademarks, brands, and service names, then why do titles like Numb3rs, which by the way uses the Numb3rs spelling in the vast majority of sources, especially reliable sources, keep getting changed because of MOS:TM's wording? SciGal (talk) 14:25, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The principle is the same. The argument as to whether a title is technically a trademark seems like clutching at straws. In any case, note that Seven and Alien 3 are given as examples in this guideline. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:28, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

So, why is Tech N9ne allowed under MOS:TM and not Numb3rs? I don't pronounce Tech N9ne as "Tech N-nine-nah"; I say "Tech N9ne". There is not much of an argument there. SciGal (talk) 14:43, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

There was a discussion and consensus was to make an exception in that case, due to 100% of sources rendering it that way. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:48, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

From what I have read in Tech N9ne's archives, there are multiple ways to write Tech N9ne. With Numb3rs, there are only two, and one of them is the commonly recognizable name. SciGal (talk) 15:16, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Stop trying to make this about Numbers. The move request has just been closed. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:23, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The Tech N9ne move back to that name was via Slim Virgin as "I'm closing this following a request on AN/RFC. There is consensus to move the article back to Tech N9ne, per WP:COMMONNAME. In addition, according to 2BARQUACK.COM, it is the subject's legal name." For one, this I think shows the problem that I've statement before - Common name based on RS's should come first to use a stage name over the given name, but after that point it should be MOS:TM to determine how to hand any style idiosyncrasies in the name to make it legible english. --MASEM (t) 16:09, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

As for the "argument as to whether a title is technically a trademark", when a title is flagged for violation of MOS:TM, it is being treated as a technical trademark. SciGal (talk) 15:16, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Exactly, and names of TV shows, films, etc., are treated as trademarks. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:24, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I revised this, and i will say that we already have WP:OFFICIALNAMES to clarify that we don't favor official names over the common one. However, i believe MOSTM shouldn't try to add new ideas or restrictions, but just a guideline to compliment WP:OFFICIALNAMES. And i'm with Blueboar in this instance and i'm sure his analysis was based on whether common style equals standard english.Lucia Black (talk) 12:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:Officialnames is an essay that's designed to help editors interpret this and related policies and guidelines. Croctotheface (talk) 10:31, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

• All style guides are prescriptive by definition. They may derive particular ideas from descriptive linguistics or from prescriptive grammar books and dictionaries, and ours is already more descriptive than average; editors with linguistics backgrounds like me have insisted upon it, but only where it makes sense for the encyclopedia and its readership. Just because MOS is itself prescriptive doesn't mean every cause for us to come up a rule has to be as well. But confusing WP:RS with some notion that we have do everything we think external sources do is a mistake. We use reliable sources for fact verification, not for deciding how to stylize prose here. At any rate, anyone who would try to force Deadmau5 to be at the spelling "Deadmaus" is failing to understand MOS and how MOS interrelated with AT, as well an engaging in WP:OR. If Deadmau5 started using Deadmau$, we'd go with Deadmaus, because the stylistic shenanigans were not consistent and thus not part of the name proper. If he'd always used Deadmau$ we'd use Deadmaus, as we do with Kesha not Ke$ha, and Macy's not Macy^★, etc., because MOS treats these more elaborate glyph-replacement font tricks as purely stylistic.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼  13:38, 23 March 2014 (UTC)