Talk:An Introduction to Animals and Political Theory

Citation Style
Currently the citation style used is in dispute. Style guides in general are clear that internally to an article, style changes need to be discussed first. I cannot see any real argument for one over the other at the moment. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:51, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:CITEVAR offers a clear argument in favour of mine; "it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved". I also note that Checkingfax does not actually know what a citation style is, writing that they "have not changed [my citation style"], and claiming that citation style is a matter of using templates or not using templates. The style favoured by the other editor (in which multiple authors are credited as "Torvill, Jayne; Dean, Christopher") is one alien to me, so is certainly not standard in political philosophy/political theory. In the book which is the subject of this article, Cochrane uses "Torvill, J. and C. Dean", which is a gender-neutral version of my favoured author formatting. (To be clear, my citations do not fully mirror Cochrane's; I'm just illustrating that the other user's favoured means of referring to multiple authors is not a familiar one. I'd be intrigued to see the style guide that recommends it; it strikes me as unnatural.) Josh Milburn (talk) 11:08, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Citations, etc.
Can I ask why you are messing with the citations in this article? It just went through FAC, where there was an enormous fight about citation formats. Is swooping in and changing them really the best move? Josh Milburn (talk) 19:19, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * In case it isn't clear from the above, I have reverted you on the basis of WP:CITEVAR. I don't particular mind the dashes-in-place-of-names thing, or the way you spaced out the bibliography, but I strongly resent the HEY-YOU-FIX-SOMETHING-I-WANT-YOU-TO banner, and I do mind the in-line interwiki links and redlinked name-of-living-person-in-citation. The first I object to for obvious reasons: templating a new FA is exceedingly bad form, and demanding ISBNs in references is ridiculous. The second I object to because it's frowned upon at FAC; it's not something that exists in any real-world style guide. The third is advised against in the MOS (redlinked biographies are problematic, and redlinks are not ideal in citations- and I say this as someone who loves redlinks). I'm sorry if this comes across as a little curt, but I am sick of dealing with this kind of thing. Josh Milburn (talk) 19:29, 3 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi ,


 * To begin, I would like to say that I would really like to have this conversation without it immediately descending into ownership behaviour. I wasn't going to say anything despite you saying "Can I ask why you are messing with the citations in this article? [emphasis added]", but in addition to that remark, you later used an edit summary that said "Please do not change my citations without consensus." With all due respect, you do not have any citations.


 * Let's review the changes I made (I had to go through it myself just now, because I couldn't remember the exact changes I made a month ago):
 * The addition of and refend and necessary conforming changes which, if I understand correctly, you take no issue with;
 * The use of long dash, which you take no issue with;
 * Changing "Ph.D" to "Ph.D.": While I believe the MOS permits it to be spelt with or without periods, there is no conceivable rationale for half-and-half;
 * Moving open access to after the link in question;
 * The addition of links to author/editor links: Their use was previously inconsistent. I don't, however, have particularly strong feelings about the issue of red links or the inclusion of ill to create red links;
 * The addition of access dates to citations that included links to URLs but that lacked persistent identifiers;
 * The conversion of portal to portal bar so as to eliminate the excessive white space at the bottom of the article;
 * The addition of lacking ISBN; and
 * The replacement of Portal:Philosophy and Portal:Politics with the more specific and relevant Portal:Social and political philosophy.


 * Let me know if I missed anything.


 * I should also note that some inconsistencies within the format and/or with the MOS remain. In particular:
 * The first digit(s) of the second number in page ranges are inconsistently dropped/retained (e.g, "424–42" vs "660–679");
 * When being used as an abbreviation for the word "editor", the MOS requires that "ed" be followed by a period; and
 * Footnotes are not being consistently followed by a period.


 * You certainly read a great deal into a template. WP:TMC tells us, "Their [cleanup templates'] purposes are to foster improvement of the encyclopedia by alerting editors to changes that need to be made." It is not a demand of a particular editor to do something and I do not appreciate it being mischaracterized as such. And I see no reason why a new FA would be treated differently from other articles. I further reject the implicit suggestion that editors have an obligation to check how recently an article became an FA before making edits that they believe would improve the article.
 * You certainly read a great deal into a template. WP:TMC tells us, "Their [cleanup templates'] purposes are to foster improvement of the encyclopedia by alerting editors to changes that need to be made." It is not a demand of a particular editor to do something and I do not appreciate it being mischaracterized as such. And I see no reason why a new FA would be treated differently from other articles. I further reject the implicit suggestion that editors have an obligation to check how recently an article became an FA before making edits that they believe would improve the article.


 * That being said, I'm not going to start a war over the inclusion of ISBNs. It seems beyond silly that one would specifically want them excluded, but we all have better things to do with our lives than to argue over something like that. (I should note that that is why I refrained from converting the references to Wikipedia's default format or adding anchor links to the notes which would be useful to the reader – I've seen territorialism and arguments over that kind of thing before and I would really rather stay out of it for the most part.)


 * I don't think it is right you reverted my edits wholesale. I would be surprised if you didn't agree with most of them (and you haven't mentioned any concerns with most of them) and it seems you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I also don't appreciate an administrator of all people saying "Can I ask why you are messing with the citations in this article? [emphasis added]" and directing an editor to "… not change my citations without consensus [emphasis added]". Graham (talk) 21:04, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I would really like to have this conversation without it descending into accusations and wikilawyering, but we haven't exactly got off to a good start, have we? Actually, if I'm being honest, I don't really want to have this conversation. It's a waste of my time. Anyway: If you're going to enter the conversation by accusing me of violating ownership guidelines because I reverted your edit which was in clear violation of WP:CITEVAR, I can't express confidence that we're going to get anywhere productive. I'm not particularly interested in being lectured. (And I'm certainly not interested in your "administrator of all people" stuff. The fact I have the ability to delete pages isn't an invitation for you to patronise me.)


 * Before we "review" your changes, let's ask one simple question. Did you change the citation style? The answer is yes. This is not advised by WP:CITEVAR, for obvious reasons. In this particular case, your changing of the-citations-I-created-but-are-not-mine was particularly ill-advised, given that this article was just promoted to FA status, and given that this happened despite my having to deal with an edit warrior who insisted on changing citations and then flatly denying it. These facts change the whole tone of the conversation. Please don't just dismiss them. (And yes, you made your edits a month ago. That is part of what has irritated me, as I didn't notice, and now the article has sat with an ugly banner at the top for a month. Would that piss you off if you cared about the article? It probably would.)


 * Moving on to your particular changes:
 * "The addition of and refend and necessary conforming changes which, if I understand correctly, you take no issue with;" You do not understand correctly. I take issue with people changing citations without anything resembling consensus contrary to WP:CITEVAR. I do not have a particular objection to the change itself; had you asked/raised it for discussion, I would have expressed no objection. That is not the same as saying I do not object now. That said, and partially in the spirit of compromise, I will not complain if you make the change again.
 * "The use of long dash, which you take no issue with;" Ditto the above.
 * "Changing "Ph.D" to "Ph.D.": While I believe the MOS permits it to be spelt with or without periods, there is no conceivable rationale for half-and-half;" Yes, fine, that seems like perfectly reasonable gnoming. I didn't notice it; your changes were hard to assess individually because of the largescale nature of the edits.
 * "Moving open access to after the link in question;" Yes, I object to that. That's changing citation styles without good reason, and is completely contrary to the use described at open access. In future, please review template documentation before attempting to use templates with which you are unfamiliar.
 * "The addition of links to author/editor links: Their use was previously inconsistent. I don't, however, have particularly strong feelings about the issue of red links or the inclusion of ill to create red links;" I do, for the reasons I have explained.
 * "The addition of access dates to citations that included links to URLs but that lacked persistent identifiers;" These are courtesy links to journal articles. We're citing the journal article, not the webpage. There is a long-standing consensus that courtesy links do not require access dates.
 * "The conversion of portal to portal bar so as to eliminate the excessive white space at the bottom of the article;" I have no opinion on this.
 * "The addition of lacking ISBN; and" I seriously object to this, for the reasons described.
 * "The replacement of Portal:Philosophy and Portal:Politics with the more specific and relevant Portal:Social and political philosophy." Again, no view.
 * I am, then, supportive of one change, neutral on two, would have been supportive of two if they were gone about in the right way, and am strongly opposed to three. (I accept that there may be some small inconsistencies in the referencing. I had to remove the templates from the citations to get a troll off my back. This may give you some context as to why I may not have reacted to your edits in the most graceful way possible.)


 * As for "You certainly read a great deal into a template": Believe what you want. Your use of the template very clearly indicates that you hold that ISBNs must be added to this article. (Whoever you want to add them. Let's not argue semantics.) That, of course, is untrue. There is no requirement for ISBNs, and the obsession with ISBNs in citations is an invention of Wikipedia editors. I'm not sure I've ever seen ISBNs used in professional academic work (but that's not to say that it never happens). You say that "It seems beyond silly that one would specifically want them excluded"; I agree, and I don't specifically want them excluded. But another thing that's "beyond silly" is placing a huge banner in the article demanding them.


 * To finish: I am completely with you about not wanting to get dragged into frankly ridiculous arguments about citation formatting, or some preferred template, or similar nonsense. But here I am. I am dragged into this when I want to be or not when someone forces changes into articles I care about. I hope this clears some things up. Josh Milburn (talk) 00:07, 4 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Regarding, I sincerely empathize. I think just about anyone who has been at this for while knows that a degree of emotional investment, whether or not it is always helpful, is only natural. And I agree with you when you say that "neither of us want anything radically different". I don't think there'll be any fratching. {


 * I do hope that you can see that given the comments you had made, both on my talk page and in your edit summary, an ownership attitude was a reasonable inference. I recognize, however, that you made those comments in the context of other disagreements over this article and other disagreements over style, making the motivations behind them more understandable.
 * I do hope that you can see that given the comments you had made, both on my talk page and in your edit summary, an ownership attitude was a reasonable inference. I recognize, however, that you made those comments in the context of other disagreements over this article and other disagreements over style, making the motivations behind them more understandable.


 * Of the nine changes listed above, I think that the only ones that could be argued to be a change in the citation style are the addition of long dashes and perhaps the moving of open access symbols. Putting the references section into two columns does not change the style of the citations themselves. And if WP:CITEVAR was the issue, I would have hoped you would have reverted selectively rather than performing a blanket revert.
 * Of the nine changes listed above, I think that the only ones that could be argued to be a change in the citation style are the addition of long dashes and perhaps the moving of open access symbols. Putting the references section into two columns does not change the style of the citations themselves. And if WP:CITEVAR was the issue, I would have hoped you would have reverted selectively rather than performing a blanket revert.


 * Not having terribly strong feelings about this, and not wanting to prolong this process, I won't bother reinserting access dates.
 * Not having terribly strong feelings about this, and not wanting to prolong this process, I won't bother reinserting access dates.


 * I actually did read the template documentation before making that edit. It says:
 * In this case, however, citation templates are not being used. I would assume the only reason that form is being prescribed for cases when citation templates are involved is because adding these symbols into the citation template would mess up the bibliographic data (provided that these symbols aren't incorporated into the CS1 module or whatever other citation template is being used). You'll notice that in the example in the template documentation there are two symbols, one of which immediately follows the link in question and is now built into CS1. Looking at WT:CS1 and its most recent archive, it appears that the intention is to allow for these symbols in CS1 for URLs as well and for the symbols to immediately follow the link (thus making it clear which link it applies to, as is already the case with the PMC ID in the example). Therefore, I did the same here, figuring that no one would take issue as it neither violates the MOS nor any external style guide (presuming that the inclusion of the symbol somewhere in the citation is a given).
 * In this case, however, citation templates are not being used. I would assume the only reason that form is being prescribed for cases when citation templates are involved is because adding these symbols into the citation template would mess up the bibliographic data (provided that these symbols aren't incorporated into the CS1 module or whatever other citation template is being used). You'll notice that in the example in the template documentation there are two symbols, one of which immediately follows the link in question and is now built into CS1. Looking at WT:CS1 and its most recent archive, it appears that the intention is to allow for these symbols in CS1 for URLs as well and for the symbols to immediately follow the link (thus making it clear which link it applies to, as is already the case with the PMC ID in the example). Therefore, I did the same here, figuring that no one would take issue as it neither violates the MOS nor any external style guide (presuming that the inclusion of the symbol somewhere in the citation is a given).
 * In this case, however, citation templates are not being used. I would assume the only reason that form is being prescribed for cases when citation templates are involved is because adding these symbols into the citation template would mess up the bibliographic data (provided that these symbols aren't incorporated into the CS1 module or whatever other citation template is being used). You'll notice that in the example in the template documentation there are two symbols, one of which immediately follows the link in question and is now built into CS1. Looking at WT:CS1 and its most recent archive, it appears that the intention is to allow for these symbols in CS1 for URLs as well and for the symbols to immediately follow the link (thus making it clear which link it applies to, as is already the case with the PMC ID in the example). Therefore, I did the same here, figuring that no one would take issue as it neither violates the MOS nor any external style guide (presuming that the inclusion of the symbol somewhere in the citation is a given).


 * So excepting the red link created by ill, am I correct that you have no problem with the other author/editor links being added?
 * So excepting the red link created by ill, am I correct that you have no problem with the other author/editor links being added?


 * At most, it indicates that I view their inclusion to be beneficial.
 * At most, it indicates that I view their inclusion to be beneficial.


 * Would you therefore not oppose their inclusion?
 * Would you therefore not oppose their inclusion?


 * So just to summarize where we're at with the various changes:
 * : [[Image:Symbol confirmed.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Resolved; to be implemented
 * Long dashes: [[Image:Symbol confirmed.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Resolved; to be implemented
 * "Ph.D" → "Ph.D.": [[Image:Symbol confirmed.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Resolved; to be implemented
 * Moving open access: [[Image:Symbol dot dot dot.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Under discussion
 * Author/Editor links: [[Image:Symbol dot dot dot.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Under discussion (possibly resolved)
 * Access dates: [[Image:Symbol unrelated.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Resolved; will not be implemented
 * Portal bar: [[Image:Symbol confirmed.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Resolved; to be implemented
 * ISBNs: [[Image:Symbol dot dot dot.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Under discussion
 * Changing portals: [[Image:Symbol confirmed.svg|20px|link=|alt=]] Resolved; to be implemented


 * Cheers, Graham (talk) 03:58, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Regarding the "still open" elements of discussion...
 * Links to biographies are currently present in citations only when they are not present in the article (and, even then, only once). What is your proposed alternative?
 * I have never seen open access (or related... subscription required, for example) in the middle of a reference. The icons are too big for this to be done unobtrusively. Point taken over the template versus non-template (and, again, it wasn't really my choice to have non-templates here...) but do you know of anything in the MOS or similar that explicitly favours your "insert directly after link" interpretation?
 * I am not strongly opposed to the inclusion of ISBNs. I am opposed to them being demanded, which is how I read (not unreasonably, I don't think) an intrusive template on the article page requesting them. They are not, however, part of the citation style employed in this article, just as they are not a part of many (any?) real-world citation styles.
 * Josh Milburn (talk) 12:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Ideally, I'd like to see this resolved before the article hits the MP! Josh Milburn (talk) 16:20, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

"Non-human"
It is standard in animal ethics to avoid the word "animal" to refer exclusively to non-human animals. This is an inaccurate use of the term, as humans are also animals. It would be like saying "table" to mean "all tables except blue tables". Rather than following this standard throughout the article, I added "non-human" only at the first mention. This is also Cochrane's own practice. Josh Milburn (talk) 23:34, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It may be standard in animal ethics not to use the word "animal" that way, but it is not standard in conventional English, where "animal" would be automatically understood to mean non-human animal. I've no interest in editing this article at all, but I would suggest that at least some consideration should be given to placing more weight on conventional English usage. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:24, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Weight was given to "conventional" English; "non-human" is specified only at first mention. Josh Milburn (talk) 12:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I had noticed. My point was that the merits of placing "(non-human)" before "animals" are debatable, given that no one is likely to understand "animals" as referring to anything other than non-human animals. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)