User:Pburka/Birds

I was one of the editors who contributed to the downcasing discussion regarding bird names. I'm not part of a MOS cabal, and haven't contributed to very many MOS discussions over the ten years or so I've edited here. I'm also one of the editors who has taken it upon themselves to implement the transition to lowercase species names.

Some of the bird editors have been very helpful, and a few others seem to be resentful that I'm editing their articles.

Several times I've seen it suggested that the bird articles were great before the great MOS war, but now all the experienced editors are leaving and everything is going to hell. As someone who has copyedited dozens of bird articles so far as part of the transition, I have to say that things weren't that great before the MOS debate.


 * Capitalization was inconsistent within and between bird articles. Many articles used mixed upper and lowercase names, other applied the bird name convention to mammals and reptiles, and sometimes even plants.


 * Many bird articles are poorly referenced. If they have references at all, they're often not in-line, and I've found clearly incorrect claims in several articles. (I'm no birder, but I know that pygmy owls don't have a 105 cm wingspan.)


 * Many bird articles aren't written in prose. Instead, they're in point form, like one might expect to find in a guide book rather than an encyclopedia. (I've also found one instance where part of the article was in French.)

Perhaps bringing some new blood into the birds project isn't a bad thing. While some articles are excellent, many are in dire need to improvement. Of course this could have been done without downcasing the names, but I think that the bigger problem is the insular nature of many Wikipedia projects. This seems to foster a counterproductive sense of ownership which helps fuel these battles, and doesn't help the larger project.