Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 99

PD
I reverted the addition of quotations marks not being necessary when we use works in the public domain, because this is a contentious issue, and there's no consensus that I'm aware of. For my own part, I don't understand why we would ever want to quote anyone, PD or not, without quotation marks. If an entire article is lifted from a PD source, then it might be enough to attribute it at the top or bottom of the text without quotation marks, but where the PD material is being incorporated into an article with other writing in it, then it strikes me as plagiarism to lift it without quotation marks and clear attribution. SlimVirgin talk| edits 22:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * One problem is the intermediate case, where the article used to be the 1911 Britannica, but large parts of it aren't anymore. Do we want to put the rest of it in quotation marks, which will tend to freeze the Britannica's dated information in place?


 * This works the other way around too. Almost all US geographical articles have a paragraph of bot-added demographic information, with a prose attribution to the 2000 Census. Does this need quotation marks, and if so, who wants to check that it hasn't been modified in the last five years?


 * I suppose the answer may be to define these as not quotations; but if so we should say so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't understand and don't tend to agree with the assertion that putting material from 1911eb in quotation marks will "tend to freeze the Britannica's dated information in place". Putting the original 1911eb passages into quotes would clarify which are the dated passages and explain to potential editors why there is an unusual wording in place (it is just a legacy from a big paste-in originally, it is not the consensus product of some big discussion).  Editors could then be more confident on the need to question those passages and reword / revise them as necessary to improve the article, removing the  quotes in the process.  If a study of a random set of articles revised to show the 1911eb passages by quotes did in fact show that editors tended not to edit those passages, relative to a control sample of articles where the passages were not indicated, then this could be addressed by other means (perhaps by adding a friendly tag inviting editors to change the 1911eb passages).  But anyhow, there is no proposal on the table to require use of quotes for PD material.  The proposal of SEWilco is to prohibit use of quotes with PD material. doncram (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Doncram claims putting PD text in quotation marks will not freeze the information, yet he removes alterations in order to freeze PD text within quotations. (diff) If it's a quotation, it must not be altered.  If it's public domain text which is being reused, it is not a quotation and does not need to use quotation style.  -- SEWilco (talk) 17:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't want to start it all again, but that comment is deliberately obtuse and misleading. I can't talk with this guy. doncram (talk) 22:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * About the geo-demographic-census information, perhaps it would have been better to add the material originally with quotes, and a tag-box inviting users to edit the material (and remove the quotes). If a whole lot of geo-demographic-census articles were to be edited to add quotes now, though, it sure would help editors if a tool were created that would run a proper "diff" between an original version and the current version, or perhaps between any given external webpage and the current page.  The current proposal again is to prevent anyone from taking on such an effort, however, not to require such an effort. doncram (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind SV's removal because I thought the text was unclear (it seemed to forbid quotation marks rather than just not requiring them, but it was hard to be sure). But it's complete nonsense to say that the reuse and modification of PD text is "plagiarism". Plagiarism is a matter of not giving credit, and it's about the ideas, not the wording. We need to give credit for the ideas, whether the publication is PD or not; this is necessary and sufficient to avoid plagiarism. --Trovatore (talk) 22:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It's about both ideas and wording. PD is no different from non-PD in this respect. Tony   (talk)  02:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As long as you give credit, it isn't plagiarism, period. Credit doesn't prevent something from being copyvio, but it always prevents it from being plagiarism. --Trovatore (talk) 09:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, then, reviving it from the linked to archive... Please do fix the wording. I did prefer the second suggestion, but there was more support for the first phrasing so that's what I put in the MOS.  -- SEWilco (talk) 15:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I concur with SlimVirgin, in general, but also with Sept./PMA in that certain usage of PD material have to be defined as "not-quotations" or they'll end up either frozen or mangled. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 07:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

PD quotation suggestion

 * Suggestion: Add something like the following to the Quotation section. -- SEWilco (talk) 13:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Public domain
 * Quotation shall not be used with reused public domain text except for short sections where the article has to preserve the original style and spelling of the text.
 * Support. That nicely satisfies the specific concerns I have in this area.  I think this statement is needed to control the level of conflict caused by strongly held philosophical differences in this area, differences not adequately addressed in existing Wikipedia policy or guideline.  Quotes effectively lock text from the wikification and copyediting otherwise compelled by MoS.  Quotes also imply specific importance in the unaltered state of the quoted text, an implication that overshadows the refinement gained in source attribution.  Quotes imply notable importance in preserving the source text in an unaltered state, and will mislead the reader into conferring more significance onto the source text than is constructive. --Paleorthid (talk) 18:16, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. This is spot-on. Quotes (or a quote-box) should only be used when the text should not be changed because it is being attributed to the author. For example, a direct quote from an old PD source where copyright has expired, which is used to provide historical context, etymology, etc., should not be changed (e.g. see: clapotis). But large chunks of PD text manually transcluded to WP should not be quoted, because it should be changed as needed to update or expand the coverage of the subject. For example, material from the 1911 Britanica should be updated, not quoted, as it is typically out of date. Also U.S. Government sources are valuable, but may need to be revised to reflect a worldview. Dhaluza (talk) 23:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Generally, no other publication considers it acceptable to incorporate chunks of text written by others without specific attribution; we shouldn't be the first. The legal status has nothing to do with the issue because the concept of plagiarism vs. proper attribution isn't founded on any legal obligation. Thus, framing this as a PD issue is misleading. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The issue here is forcing text into a quotation style; want to propose a phrasing which repeats that attribution is still needed? That little policy Verifiability kind of likes things to be attributed to their source.  -- SEWilco (talk) 16:32, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Quotation marks are the standard method for attributing words to another author in English writing. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There are differences between a quotation of what someone said and text which is reused. A book version of Treasure Island (1950 film) or Catholic Encyclopedia does not wrap all the reused text in quotation marks.  Nor is it Wikipedia custom to freeze EB 1911 text in quotation marks.  -- SEWilco (talk) 04:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Suggested rewording: -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Public domain
 * Quotation should not be used with public domain text added to articles except for short excerpts where it is useful to the reader to have text shown as it was in the original source.
 * Support. Sounds better than "used with reused" and focuses on reader rather than whatever an "article has to".  -- SEWilco (talk) 19:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Support reworded version: This version fixes the two problems I had with the original. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 07:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

This is not the forum for that sort of proposal. The MOS is about how to format things. The issue is whether these are quotes at all, or simply incorporated material. If they are quotes, of course they should have quotation marks. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 14:04, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Then please define the difference between a quotation and incorporated material so WP:MOSQUOTE can be more specific than requiring block quotation for "four lines". -- SEWilco (talk) 14:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Disagree with Carl/CBM. This is the forum (the only one) for matters of this sort, unless the scope of WP:V and/or WP:RS changes radically from what is a valid source to how to cite a valid source.  One could possibly argue that WP:CITE is a good target for this, but an actual read of that document suggests otherwise; it is a how-to page on the usage of the   system and its alternatives (and frankly belongs in the   not   namespace to begin with.) —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 07:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Monthly update of substantive styleguide and policy changes
Sandy and others have requested regular updates of substantive changes to MOS (not just copy-editing). I've now broadened the scope to embrace changes at the main styleguides and policy pages. Here's the whole-month diff I based it on for the MOS main page.

JANUARY 2008

'''Manual of style, main page
 * Non-breaking spaces. Added: "In compound items in which numerical and non-numerical elements are separated by a space, a non-breaking space (or hard space) is recommended to avoid the displacement of those elements at the end of a line." A caveat was inserted concerning disadvantages of using the nowrap template.
 * Captions. Added: If a caption contains a complete sentence, any other sentence fragments in the caption should themselves end with a period.

FAC instructions
 * Added: "If a nominator feels that an Oppose has been addressed, they should say so after the reviewer's signature rather than striking out or splitting up the reviewer's text.... nominators should not alter, strike, break up, or add graphics to comments from other editors; replies are added below the signature on the reviewer's commentary."

Non-free content policy
 * Criterion 3. Removed: "If your image is greater than 500–600px add to the Image: namespace and someone from Wikipedia will shrink the image to comply with this guideline."

FEBRUARY 2008

Manual of style, main page
 * Numbers as figures or words. In the body of an article, whole numbers from zero to ten (rather than the previous zero to nine) are spelled out in words. [Now inconsistent with MOSNUM] The previous insistence that ordinals for centuries be expressed in figures (the 5th century) has been made optional (the 5th century or the fifth century).
 * Avoid first-person pronouns. It is now acceptable to use we in historical articles to mean the modern world as a whole (The text of De re publica has come down to us with substantial sections missing).
 * Foreign terms. "Unitalicized" was added to this point: "A rule of thumb is: do not italicize words that appear unitalicized in an English language dictionary."
 * Spelling and transliteration. [Additions underlined, removals struck through] For terms in common usage, use anglicized spellings; native spellings are an optional alternative if they use the Latin   English alphabet. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, role, and Florence). Article titles follow our naming conventions. Diacritics are optional, except where they are required for disambiguation English overwhelmingly uses them, whether for disambiguation or for accurate pronunciation (résumé, café ). Where native spellings in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek and Cyrillic) are given, they normally appear in parentheses (except where the sense requires otherwise), and are not italicized, even where this is technically feasible.

WP:Layout
 * "See also" sections. Slight rewording: Links already included in the body of the text are generally not repeated in "See also"; however whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense.
 * End sections. Greater flexibility is now permitted in the order of these sections: although the preferred order [of the sections is "See also", "Notes" (or "Footnotes"), "References" (or a combined Notes and references), "Bibliography" (or Books or Further reading), and "External links", it is permissible to change the sequence of these ending sections if there is good reason to do so. However, if an article has both "Notes" and "References" sections, "Notes" should immediately precede "References".

WP:Footnotes
 * Op. cit. was added to Ibid as an abbreviation that should not be used in footnotes.
 * Addition (underlined): "Unsourced or poorly sourced material may be removed from any article, and if it is, the burden of proof is on the editor who wishes to restore it."

FAC instructions
 * Phrase added (underlined): Before nominating an article, nominators may wish to receive feedback by listing it at Peer review or the League of Copyeditors.
 * Phrase added (underlined): Nominators are expected to respond positively to constructive criticism and to make an effort to address objections promptly.
 * Minor changes to the mechanics of adding a nomination.
 * Addition: "[Stating at the top of the page] a reason for nominating, and a declaration of "Support" are not necessary."

MARCH 2008

Manual of style, main page
 * Multiplication symbols. Inserted: Do not use an asterisk to represent multiplication between numbers in non-technical articles. The multiplication sign in exponential notation (2.1 × 108) may now be unspaced, depending on circumstances (2.1×108); previously, spacing was always required in exponential notation.
 * Images. There were minor changes to the advice concerning the direction of the face or eyes in images, and concerning the size of images.
 * Punctuation in quotations. "Punctuation" was added to the requirement that "Wherever reasonable, preserve the original style, spelling and punctuation".
 * Em dashes. "Em dashes are normally unspaced" was strengthened to "should not be spaced".
 * Instructional and presumptuous language. "Clearly" and "actually" were added to the list of words that are usually avoided in an encyclopedic register.
 * '"Pull" and block quotes. Removed: Pull quotes are generally not appropriate in Wikipedia articles. Added: Block quotes can be enclosed using quotation or quote (as well as the existing specification, i.e., between a pair of "..." HTML tags).

WP:Layout
 * "See also" sections. It was clarified that links should be presented in a bulleted list, and that rather than grouping them by subject area, it is helpful to alphabetize them.
 * As an alternative to striking out their "objection", reviewers may "cap off their resolved comments; the cap should include the reviewer's signature, and editors [not nominators] should cap only their own commentary.

FAC instructions
 * Added: "Nominators must be sufficiently familiar with the subject matter and sources to deal with objections during the FAC process. Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article should consult regular editors of the article prior to nomination."

WP:Non-free content policy
 * Criterion 8. The second clause was removed: "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding ."
 * Enforcement. Inserted: An image with a valid non-free-use rationale for some (but not all) articles it is used in will not be deleted. Instead, the image will be removed from the articles for which it lacks a non-free-use rationale.

Update of the past three months now pasted over the previous March update; important to give people the bigger picture. Tony  (talk)  09:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Fantastic, Tony. This makes all the difference in how user-friendly MoS is. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:07, 5 April 2008 (UTC) P.S. the See also link addition is mine.  If links are not deemed to be a "substantive" change, feel free to revert, but I think we absolutely need to keep track of what the linked material says. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Dan. OK for the added link point, but let's try to ration the update to a list of changes that directly affect usage "out there". Tony   (talk)  03:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This is wonderful - could this be posted to the Signpost where more people will see it? I had no idea this was here - I just stumbled across it. Awadewit (talk) 04:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Enormous sigh of relief, I've been clamoring for this for so long :-) But we don't need the See also link; we need to know what changes in article editing.  Will discuss at WP:FCDW how to work this in to the Dispatches.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm ... to try to see the bigger picture, don't you all think that these monthly updates might be a magnet for the reportage of changes in other styleguides and policy pages? When the crunch comes, I don't think the changes worth mentioning (the significant ones) would come to a large number each month. I'm happy to include other changes if people report them to me (perhaps under the heading "Other pages"; this is a necessary service for the whole project. Tony   (talk)  09:29, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Could that be solved by doing a quarterly update in the Dispatches, rather than monthly, so you can focus on the truly substantive changes? And then just put the monthly changes here and at FAC, so we can keep up? Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 14:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

←I thought maybe pages linked directly from MoS would enter the picture more; however, if we're really going to start keeping track of changes to all style guidelines, and clearly that's desirable, then what links to what is unimportant, so I'll revert. Whee, another project. If we'll all volunteer to keep an eye on a few pages apiece, it shouldn't be that hard. Hey Duke, we need another WP-space page to hold the summaries, and another acronym! Just to demonstrate self-control, I won't create it. The place to keep people up on what changes have happened recently to style pages is probably in a box at the top of the relevant talk pages; then possibly, WT:MoS could have a box at the top with links to all those individual boxes. For auto-archived pages, can we configure so that it doesn't archive the summaries?

While I'm talking (which is different, um, how?), I have figured out that WP:GAU is a complete no-brainer, and I'm sorry I represented it as potentially divisive. I've been reading pages such as Linguistic prescription (the first See also link from TCMOS), and I'm getting the sense that prescription requires description, and I don't see descriptive studies that meet even minimal standards for usefulness anywhere on Wikipedia; we need at least one. Studies have to be, at a minimum, large, random, and careful; working with the reviewers and editors of every GAN that passes should reasonably large and random, and I'll try to be careful, but of course people looking over my shoulder would help to educate me and spot my biases, and more people actually conducting the survey would be fantastic. As a bonus, GAN is, for many editors, the first time they run up against a wall of "you can't do that, you must do this, MoS says so", and that's the perfect time to conduct a language-description survey; it gives them the impression that we are listening and we care. Of course, this impression will be dashed on further exposure to Wikipedia :) But it at least gets us off on the right foot, and may over time increase respect for the place of MoS in Wikipedia. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 13:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Subjective impression: this is exactly the right time for Tony's idea of summaries. A month ago, we had a novel-length argument at WP:LAYOUT on what to do about an obvious contradiction among style guidelines, and got nowhere ... but we got nowhere for a legitimate reason: everyone had leftover things from previous arguments that never got resolved that they felt like they had to say.  For whatever reason, the air has cleared a bit on most style talk pages, and there's been no resistance in the last 24 hours now that the issue has resurfaced.  I think, I hope, this is a great time to finally get rid of the contradictions among style pages. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Tony does not note that he disputes the exponential change. Does this mean he is withdrawing his objection? If not, it should be noted. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:53, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * A page has been established for users to notify substantive changes to styleguides and policy pages here. Monthly update summaries will be stored on a dedicated page here in chronological sequence, as a service to the community. The summaries will not rely on the notifications alone, but will involve a survey of the whole-month diffs for each of the major pages. Tony   (talk)  06:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You're giving yourself a lot of work Tony, but this is one case where I have no problem with one person (Tony) being assigned to the job; the job of summarizing is benign and useful and there's a need for consistency. There's still a question of whether it would also be useful to have boxes at the top of style talk pages which Tony then filters for his report.  I can see that having a box at the top of a style talk page could potentially mean that, after we've hashed everything out, we then have to rehash the whole discussion as we write the summary.  As with everything else, it just depends on the quality and goodwill of the discussion, whether that would be enlightening, or just create more work.  My inclination would be to trust the mob until that's not working, as a win-win: either it works, or we can point to the reason we don't do it. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 12:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment, Dan; I guess it's a lot of work, but I've asked users to notify on the talk page, so I'm covered if I neglect something and there are complaints. I intend to do MOS main page thoroughly, and cover a few other important pages. Funny thing is, when you skip over the copy-editing and reversions, there's not all that much in other pages—MOS central trumps all in terms of dynamic change. The others are often as not just a single change or none at all. I think it's best if a single person does it (cohesive). I will have difficulty in doing it when my real-life workload is huge; but the next few months should be OK. Tony   (talk)  12:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, that's twice you've said you're willing to do it all ... and I am more than happy not to do it! - Dan Dank55 (talk) 13:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd be willing to do it myself, if it's such a lot of work....Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * As a first step: everyone seems to have an idea of which style guidelines they want to keep up with and which ones they don't. Isn't there another name for a style guideline that we don't really have to keep up with, namely, "not a style guideline"?  Other than style guidelines that are maintained by specific projects (and possibly even including those), couldn't we suggest demotion for one or more of the 70 style guidelines in Category:Wikipedia style guidelines to essays or how-to guides?  Even if we don't demote them, can we somehow reduce (below 70) the list that we're keeping up with?  As a second step, after we have a list of guidelines we're interested in, I would be very much in favor of posting a notice at WP:COUNCIL and WP:VPM advertising a push to iron out any issues that anyone has with style guidelines, and we can just be honest with people that it's a pain for everyone to have to keep re-learning guidelines, so we're hoping everyone will have their say now and the guidelines will then stay stable for a good long while.  After looking around all the style pages, I'm just not seeing a lot of fussing and fighting, so I think this would be a good time to do it. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I did a quick survey of some of what I understand to be the more important styleguides and MOS subpages, finding little to include for March. That is, I suspect, the norm; by asking users to notify important changes on the talk page I've established, contributors can't then complain if their pet change wasn't included. MOS main page seems to have the most to record by far. Thanks to Anderson for his offer; I may take that up in the future. Tony   (talk)  01:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, as promised, I made a post at WP:COUNCIL: "Regular WP:MoS editors would like to invite all the WikiProjects to give input on the talk pages of any and all style guidelines pages (See category:style guideline). The more consensus we can get on style guidelines, the more stable the style guidelines will be, and that will make less work for everyone." I think I'll also add an invitation to the WikiProjects for input at WP:GAU; the clearer it is that there is a channel for input (at least at the level of GANs) that genuinely reflects their concerns, the less (I hope, I guess) individuals will feel the need to heed Churchill: "Whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender".  (Sept, I hope it's clear this is not a dig at you; I'm talking about discontent that doesn't make it to WT:MoS, but that people in the WikiProjects are aware of.)
 * Also please see my edit today at WP:LAYOUT, Notes 1 and 2, regarding the order of end sections, if you're into that kind of thing. It was a very long argument at WP:LAYOUT, but things have quieted down for the moment, let's see if we can get some momentum going. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Guys, Sandy reverted me at WP:Layout, and we talked about it here. I actually agree with all 4 of her points; but if you look at the month-long battle we had on that issue (with simultaneous battles on the same talk page), it will be clear why I want to be "well-behaved" (or at least act like it!), so I want to do just one thing at a time.  I explained the reasons for why See also is almost always first and External links is almost always last (but I didn't mention that specific wikiprojects disagree); Sandy pointed out, reasonably enough, that this violates WP:CREEP; I agree, but I don't want my reasoning to entirely disappear, it needs to be "within reach" for when people feel like challenging it.  How about if we put my reasons in a footnote at WP:LAYOUT?  If that seems like a good idea, then I'll wait a couple of days to make sure I'm not getting static from the wikiprojects, and then address the other problems Sandy pointed out. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keeping up with this page really makes me crazy. Dank55, what does the layout page have to do with Tony's monthly update?  Anyway, I don't disagree with the principle of the change at WP:GTL, but the language needed help.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sandy, if what we're doing now works, hopefully you won't have to! Btw ... not a peep of protest from any of the wikiprojects so far, and I've been contacting them on a number of levels and in a number of places. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Might be worth banning carrots for expontentation in the same breath as asterisks for multiplication (they sit next to no hyphens for subtraction). J Ѧ ρ 05:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Please raise substantive issues about previous changes to styleguide and policy pages separately; this section concerns only the process of reportage. Tony   (talk)  07:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

PC language #1. Chairman vs. Chairperson vs. Chair
Hi all, couldn't find anything on a cursory search - has anyone discussed whether we should opt for a preferred term? I always found chairperson ungainly and was much pleased with an expert on gender's use of the succinct and monosyllabic chair. Any thoughts (apart from the usual moan on instruction creep which I will preemptively acknowledge) :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * "Chair" is widely adopted by professionals and journalists in the U.S. TCMOS, Sections 5.202 and 8.31 (online, by subscription) - Dan Dank55 (talk) 04:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree: "Chair" is the best way. BTW, it doesn't matter that the "man" in "chairman" didn't refer to the male gender in the original French; what is important is the likelihood that it will be perceived as gender-specific by modern English-language readers. Tony   (talk)  04:09, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, is it significant enough to have written down somewhere as a guide? Do we have a gender neutral language section yet? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

(outdent. sound of ruffling through wiki-pages...) ....hey looky what I found - Gender-neutral language...should something be appended here? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

OK - I'll move this over to the talk page....Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If someone will confirm for me that "Chair" is also widely adopted by academics, professionals and journalists outside the U.S., I'll put it in a new Examples section on that page. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 13:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * (indent) certainly 'Chair' is used in Australia, alongside 'Chairman' and the ungainly 'chairperson'.Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll confirm for you that it is PC claptrap. The word is Chairman, regardless of the gender of the Chairman. Remember that the Womens Institute has Chairmen. Mayalld (talk) 21:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What's your source? I mean, either formally, like a style guide, or informally, where do you see "chairman"? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If the title is set by law, I would follow the governing law, and leave political correctness up to the legislature. I would only start thinking about replacing "chairman" with "chair" if it was an informal title not established by law. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:15, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It is highly regrettable that middle-aged men are still riling against what has become common courtesy, and a practicality with respect to writing inclusive text. Tony   (talk)  15:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know if Tony1's comment was directed at my post, but I intend no discourtesy towards women. I only seek to make law-making bodies bear the responsibility for their choice of titles. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * To rephrase: this is very much a generational thing, and I suppose that which generations we're talking about can vary from country to country, which is why I asked if anyone can tell me what's going on outside the U.S. Gerry, I agree that we can't start censoring the word Chairman when it's part of a proper noun (and I'm thinking Tony agrees); but in the U.S., it's very hard to find, with the obvious exception of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  So, the military is behind the times on language usage; I'm shocked, shocked. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)  P.S. Update: the article Chairman (official) is completely wrong, giving a very narrow meaning to chair.  I'll put it on my to-do list, but I'm going to be tied down with style guidelines, WT:V, GAU and GAN for a while, if someone wants to fix it.  I gave the TCMOS cite above; I would be surprised if every language and professional manual of AmEng doesn't say the same thing. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I arbitrarily chose one big state to check: New York. A search on their law site gets 1,301 hits in 256 documents. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Law and lawyers are slow to change because of the reliance on precedent. It's an occupational hazard. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know about native speakers, but many non-native speakers might find the usage of an article of furniture as a name for a title at best amusing, and at worst confusing. I don't like chairperson much, but it is much clearer; personally, I prefer good old chairman. Waltham, The Duke of 05:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Beware WP:NOR/WP:NPOV issues on this one. I was at EFF when Esther Dyson was the board chairman.  She insisted on that title, rejecting what she saw as excessive P.C.-ism and even latent sexism in the title "chairwoman", and when I suggested "chair", she said "I am not a piece of furniture".  Different people feel strongly about this issue - in different, sometimes surprising, directions.  I would suggest that "chairperson" is an okay default, but also that using "chairman"/"chairwoman" is also okay when the article subject's gender is known and provided that the article is written in a balanced manner and no "oooh, she's a chick" slant is evident in the text; "chair" by itself should not be used except as a verb ("she chaired the committee") - if for no other reason than it won't make sense to non-native English speakers - and always go with a) the official title if it is known, or b) the preference of the article subject when that preference is known, in that order. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 07:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll be a piece of furniture any day. English is supremely flexible in nouning and verbing and morphing semantics (part of being a "borrowing" language). If you can chair a meeting, you can easily be the Chair. Someone ask the reference desk about this (no, not a piece of wood—a person). PS I hate "chairperson" too, with a vengeance. And "chairman", as I said above, is too likely to be associated with a former sexist ways. "Chair" is nice and neat, too: "The silliest things were said by the Chair" (squeak ... creak ... squish ... kaplonk) Tony   (talk)  09:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If we're going to deprecate terms that have only been coined or reappropriated in modern usage, we've got a lot of articles to go through and rewrite in compliance with the 1950 edition of Webster's dictionary. Chair is a perfectly standard term in contemporary English for the person in charge of a committee (e.g. "The Chair recognizes Mister Smith."); non-native speakers will just have to learn it along with the rest of this quirky language. - JasonAQuest (talk) 13:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if this is helpful, but that hasn't stopped me before. Stanton, IMO it's not irrelevant that Esther is a woman.  Even when I think I have a good feel for what words to avoid when talking about women, blacks, gays or other groups who have gone through similar struggles, I will always allow members of the group very wide latitude to break the rules in any way they see fit.  It's our/their battle.  I still think it's true that there are quite a few academics, journalists and professionals who regard the unknowing use of the word chairman as embarrassing, and that a large majority of editors at WP:GAN very much want to know information on what is potentially embarrassing, and the details of how and why, even if they are free to disagree with it.  That doesn't mean it needs to be in MoS; maybe this is another use of summary boxes for style guidelines archives. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd say that your example is not exactly on-target, Jason... In "The Chair recognizes Mister Smith", emphasis is given not so much on the person acting as chair as on the fact that there is someone heading the proceedings, and that Mister Smith has been recognised by this authority, in this case a Chair. I hope you understand what I am trying to say here.
 * In any case, to state my opinion on the greater issue, I feel that we ought to be rather reserved in any suggestions in the MoS regarding gender-neutral language, including this rather controversial, as has transpired, example. This is one of the few areas where truly everyone seems to have an opinion, and prescriptiveness is therefore the least acceptable by the editors. Waltham, The Duke of 04:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Nicely put, Duke. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Acronyms
Two of the Stephan Leeds edits seemed fine; I reverted the two on acronyms, but note that I added that the word acronym often means both acronym (original sense) and initialism, which is exactly the reason that the language seemed a bit confused, to Stephan and probably others. So, after adding the explanation, I like the fact that acronym wanders between the two meanings, because I've noticed that it wanders in just the same way all over Wikipedia; might as well get people used to it. The dictionaries solidly support both meanings. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:47, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Image icons and flags in infobox headers
'''revived from archive. it was archived too soon. '''


 * I don't know if i've done this according to protocol, but the ongoing discussion pasted below from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes, most probably should have been opened here.

This may be related to the flag issue raised two sections above. I noticed some back-and-forth reverting on the Al Gore page as to whether the Nobel Prize image belonged there. Is there a policy or consensus regarding this? OhNo itsJamie Talk 17:46, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure where it goes but I think it's nice to have on there. I've been trying to ensure that all prize image placement is at least consistent within the prize field, and for Nobel Peace Prizes, which Al Gore was awarded, it appears to be next to the name in the infobox. --Eustress (talk) 18:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * as merely decoration, i don't believe the nobel tokens should be displayed in the infoboxes header. much like the flagicons, once permitted, editors tend to go wild and place any- and every-manner of decalcomania to highlight the slightest identifying characteristic. the practice has been deprecated in infobox musical artist for a plethora of reasons, and i think this one should be nipped before the genie is out of pandora's box. (how's that for a mixed metaphor trifecta!) --emerson7 01:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think placing an Nobel Prize image (not just any decorative icon) will underestimate one's other characteristics or overemphasize the value of prize. The Nobel Prize is one of the most recognized awards throughout the world and worth a space in the infobox. If we can have a collection of icons for other awards, we might need to consider a special section in the infobox. eDenE  02:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * then where does it end? if this is allowed to proliferate, i won't be long before little pics of medals of honour pop up, and olympic medals, and on and on in the same manner of the flagicons. --emerson7 02:13, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the image is not helpful and thus it shouldn't be there (what is the reason for having it?). I don't know what a Nobel prize looks like, and I certainly can't recognize it from such a small picture (unlike some flags). I think that this is true for most people. I asked for opinions at Template talk:Infobox Scientist but did not get any reactions. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:59, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it is a hasty generalization, although I don't know how many people can recognize the Nobel Prize medal. If you really don't know you might want to look it up. Notable awards are very helpful to know about a person fast. However, many infoboxes lack such section and it is not a small job to edit all those infoboxes. So, the question is how helpful placing the icon would be for readers. I don't know, but it will be helpful for me at least. eDenE  20:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't have an opinion on keeping the graphic, but if you keep it, I think the addition of a "Nobel" or "Nobel Prize" caption would be preferable, since most people won't recognize the icon. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 04:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I am in favor of keeping the Nobel image, as it is, and where it is. However, as is the case with actor boxes, a section on "awards received" that gives further information would be useful.  I think a caption at the top would be unwieldy.  However, I am fervently opposed to the removal of said images whilst this discussion is still ongoing, as has happened at the Seán McBride article. ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive'  15:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think the image adds anything at all to the article, and is simply a distraction. The average reader will just think "what's up with this little 'golden man' picture?".  Disclaimer: I'm the principal author of WP:MOSFLAG, so I am rather skeptical of the value of decorative icons. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 06:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Spacing on units of measurement
It must be there somewhere, but I can't find it. Do we care if an article uses 5g or 5 g for grams? Is it OK for there to be no space between the 5 and the g ? Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Manual of Style? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:17, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No, Fv; that says we have to add nbsps when we have a space, but doesn't address whether it's OK to have no space. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * See 13619 for a proposal to add non-breaking spaces automatically. — Omegatron 02:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Manual of Style (dates and numbers) point 10.


 * "Values and unit symbols are spaced (“25 kg”, not “25kg”). The exceptions are the non-alphabetic symbols for degrees, minutes and seconds for angles (the coordinate is 5° 24′ 21.12″ N, the pathways are at a 180° angle, but the average temperature is 18 °C)."


 * J Ѧ ρ 03:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That's it, Jimp; thanks ! That section is so dense that I just didn't see it in there.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 04:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

SI symbols and unit abbreviations

 * Temperatures doesn't explain why one uses °C and °F for Celsius and Fahrenheit, but just K (not °K) for Kelvin; it's because, unlike the other two, the Kelvin scale is absolute and thus not measured in degrees.
 * This section ought to include the rule that, to avoid ambiguity, millionths of a metre (μg) are known as microns, not as "micrometres" or, worse, "micrometers", because a micrometer is a measuring instrument.
 * Squared and cubic metric-symbols: what is the Wikipedia standard for the inverses of such units? For instance, in stationery shops I've seen good-quality paper as having a weight of "80g/m2" or of 80gm-2, both meaning "80 grams per square metre".  Does Wikipedia have any preference for one or the other?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.171.129.75 (talk) 17:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * My comments:
 * Temperatures I've never seen an authoritative statement about why "degree" was dropped from Kelvin. The change was made by the General Conference on Weights and Measures. If you want to claim this is why, please supply an authoritative citation.


 * Microns are obsolete (See http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf page 155). Micrometre and, in the USA, micrometer are correct. If you don't like the possible confusion between micrometer the instrument and micrometer the unit, write to your congressman. If you don't have a congressman, you're out of luck. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to take your word for that, Gerry, rather than pulling up a PDF with at least 155 pages, but this is a complete surprise to me. American Heritage does say "no longer in use".  Micrometre and Merriam-Webster say that micron is fine.  Scientists and engineers still use the word frequently.  I'm fairly sure that a MoS rule that says to avoid micron will be widely and forcefully ignored by scientists and engineers, at least in 2008.  I agree that micrometre/er is completely fine. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

This is the wrong venue for this discussion. The section in question is simply a summary of what is at Manual of Style (dates and numbers), so any issues with its advice should be raised at WT:MOSNUM (other than MOS corrections to the accurate summarization of what is actually said at MOSNUM). —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 06:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

MOS thoughts
What are the community's thought's on the recent changes to the lead and infobox on Wales (the previous version being here)? I'm sure this is against MOS, but would like to be sure, and if this is so, take specific MOS pages back to the talk page if possible. :) --Jza84 | Talk  22:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * We've just been discussing that, actually; that article could be the poster boy for the evils of sandwiching text between images on the left and right (including the ToC). Search for "sandwich" above.  However, the old edit was also evil, although less so ... that's a huge rectangle of white space.  People hate that. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 23:58, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ahhh. I see. I agree that it could be the poster boy for a clearer MOS on sandwiching. There are some interesting suggestions too however at Talk:Wales about the use of colours around the infobox which are also causing me concern. --Jza84 | Talk  01:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, hopefully we'll write something up when the current discussions are finished. In a nutshell, the main problem with sandwiching text between images is that not everyone is using the full width of the screen, or using a high resolution, or even necessarily reading Wikipedia on a computer, so you can get some very tightly squeezed text on some screens if you put pictures on both sides.  Anyway, I tried to find more information for you on colors or borders, but other than the text and links in WP:MOS, I'm not finding anything on principles of page layout and design, in WP:PICTURE, or the how-to table articles, or in the HELP space, or in WP:LAYOUT, or WP:IMAGE.  Can anyone tell me where to find more advice ?  - Dan Dank55 (talk) 02:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This is the sort of thing I was hoping would be covered in a separate MOS page dealing with images, as I suggested recently. The general subject of layout could use some better and more consistent guidance than is available currently. - JasonAQuest (talk) 03:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The example in question (Wales) is rather strange, in that the same image (the mountain) is repeated later in the article. That looks stupid to me, and should probably be one of the things discouraged, not to say disallowed, by a potential new MoS page for images. Waltham, The Duke of 05:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Btw, I asked over at the Reference Desk/Misc, and the best they have so far is, "look at magazines". Jason, FWIW, the Duke is quite gentle and respectful of editors, generally.  I've noticed that saying things like "looks stupid" is an occupational hazard of MoS editors; I find myself turning into a priggish schoolmarm at times. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 12:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Well guys (and girls?), I would recommend that a clearer MOS be written (I'm surprised this isn't already explicit). I also invite you to comment at Talk:Wales, where there are several neon infoboxes in the pipeline. --Jza84 | Talk  12:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ack. Jza, ignore my "white space" comment, I've been trying a new add-on for Firefox and it suxxors, it was blanking some elements. Nevermind! - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

←Did a search on "DTP" and "image+layout" at Ref Desk/Computing, 100 links, no luck. But Julia at WP:REFDESK gave this answer:
 * Eureka. The best site gives you heaps. Ignore the (ironically) clunky layout, and that it's meant for a wide screen, the content (range and all on topic) is good. This example "Getting Started with Page Layout" supports your answer, from "Less is more" onwards. Googling "graphic design principles" gives you others to explore; but this is the best for starters. Julia Rossi (talk) 13:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

- Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

WP Signpost on FAC and FAR/C reviewing
Dear colleagues—Reviewing at these sites is where a knowledge of MOS and its subpages can be of significance. This week, the article is all about how reviewing is critical to maintaining WP's high standards, and the other advantages of being a reviewer. Here's the link:

Wikipedia_Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches

We're happy for the word to be spread, since we need more reviewers; if you have a mind to review, please drop in at WP:FAC or WP:FAR. Tony  (talk)  08:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Who wrote the article? Nice work!  - Dan Dank55 (talk) 12:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, now I see ... Karanacs, Tony and Sandy. WTG. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yea, but. My favorite contribution got taken out, because it was an insider joke from Yomangani, that "non-regulars" wouldn't get!  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 19:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Kudos to the writers; it is an enlightening article. Pity about the quote (it includes most of the well-established FA producers), but I consider the reason for its removal quite valid. Waltham, The Duke of 04:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Exponential notation circumstances
"Exponential notation can be spaced or unspaced, depending on circumstances;"

What do we mean "circumstances"? J Ѧ ρ 12:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I did ask the same question and was howled down. I think the last three words should be removed as redundant. Tony   (talk)  13:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The long but still not satisfactory answer is at WT:Manual of Style/Archive 97. The short answer is: EB and most popular scientific magazines will always space them, but then, they've got lots of space.  The typical science or engineering journal article will start to unspace them as soon as a line gets crowded with numbers and variables.  So, what you do will depend a lot on whether the number is surrounded by text, or is part of a crowded mathematical expression.  We don't have a lot of crowded mathematical expressions on WP yet that include numbers in scientific notation, as opposed to variables (or that's the sense I get from the wikiprojects ... I could be wrong); and we might never, since "textbook" material is often pushed off to Wikibooks and linked there.  Individual editors will probably be highly influenced by their background and their intended audience. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 13:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Might I suggest trying to figure out some decent guidance, and possibly putting it in MOSNUM? That part of MOS can point to it (more than it does already). SamBC(talk) 13:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, just a phrase or two about avoiding a crowded appearance in long strings would do it? "Depending on circumstances" is just what we tell editors not to put in their article text. We should set an example here. Tony   (talk)  14:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed, Tony. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 15:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * For those of us who have a feel for how to interpret the MOS those three words are redundant. However, I can picture new comers getting all worried as to whether they've got the right circumstances and even searching in vain for details which aren't spelt out anywhere.  Remove the three words, don't make it sound as if there's any consensus on what constitutes a circumstance in which to do what, add some advice on the pros and cons either way and let people rely on common sense to determine what to do. J Ѧ ρ 15:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm perfectly happy to see the three words removed; this is one of things, like within-article consistency, on which we should have a general note. . Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

←This might be one of those cases where a summary box that shows up at the top of the relevant archived page comes to the rescue, if some people want WP:MoS to give only the prescription that applies (theoretically) to all articles, and does it succinctly, while other people want to know more about what we think (incredible, but true). We could even use an RfC-like bot to have one page that people could watchlist that adds links to new summary boxes as they show up. My sense is that people have agreed with my proposal at WT:V for me to do that at WT:V. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Dashes again (groan)
I'm very happy to see Stanton saying things like "In many fonts, the characters are completely indistinguishable to the human eye". I hated to bring up dashes again for two reasons: there was a lot of disagreement, and my position makes me a complete hypocrite, after saying how much I like to rely on style guides. For this issue, I think information from 1999 and 2003 is just too old to be useful. I think the distinction between en-dashes and em-dashes has died; the length of both of them varies from magazine to magazine and browser to browser, no one keeps track of the distinction any more, and worrying about them comes across to most people as overly fussy. (Pot. Kettle. Black.) Look at the title bar at the top of your browser, and you'll see that both Wikipedia and your browser think that a hyphen is the proper "dash" to use, even in the most prominent places. The fact that persuasive writers are doing much of their own copyediting these days is becoming the death of typesetters' characters of all kinds. Bottom line: I would love to see MediaWiki simply eliminate the em-dash and tweak the en-dash, so that no one ever cares or knows about the distinction any more. I think just about everyone would think that a slightly longer (or not, depending on browser and font) en-dash looks best with spaces on either side when used as a dash, and that people would naturally use hyphens where en-dashes are now used without spaces (as in "2002-3"...I can't bring myself to use an en-dash there). - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I left out the best part; 90% of people who see "2002–3" (with an en-dash) and then search for it later won't find it, because they'll search for it with a hyphen. This sinks that use of the en-dash in my mind. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Doesn't en-dash mean the width of the letter n and em-dash mean the width of the letter m? Isn't a hyphen the same as an en-dash? Don't answer that. It's more than I ever want to know. 199.125.109.96 (talk) 21:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Grin. That's what they were supposed to mean, but they range anywhere from that to twice as long as that, depending on what magazine you pick up or what browser and font you use. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hyphens are (often but not always) slightly higher and shorter than endashes; they also have a different unicode character. I agree that we should not be rule-making with such enthusiasm. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:38, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks Sept. And I have more support: APStylebook.com says about minuses: "Use a hyphen, not a dash".  In fact, "en-dash" and "em-dash" don't even appear in APStylebook.com these days, they talk only about dashes, and say that they should almost always be spaced.  As I said.  This is probably because APStylebook.com is constantly updated.  If we could just get MediaWiki to use a shorter em-dash, instead of that big 2-m-long thing that's going to hurt someone if it gets loose, then em-dashes wouldn't look so bad with spaces around them. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 00:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Dan, I shall be blunt with you... There is a Greek saying about this sort of treatment: "if hand hurts, we cut hand". It is used negatively, to indicate over-simple solutions trying to deal with a problem by simply removing the problematic element. And that will simply not do.
 * Both em dashes and en dashes have their uses, one cannot know about people's attitude towards them, and the inconsistencies of some publishing houses are not a cause for concern. Besides, some magazines may use slightly longer en dashes, but their em dashes will be correspondingly longer as well. Not to mention that there is nothing to worry about as far as em dashes are concerned; there is the issue of their spacing (which has been resolved), and that's it. People mistakenly use hyphens all the time, but em dashes are very rarely used in place of en dashes or hyphens. Not only would removing em dashes not have but the very slightest of benefits, but it would also remove a useful and popular formatting tool. Waltham, The Duke of 01:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * One cannot know about people's attitude towards them. I thank Your Grace for putting the case for leaving things alone in a sentence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I am slightly confused as to the purpose of this thread. If "leaving things alone" means retaining the current distinctions between hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, as these are currently stipulated in the Dashes section of the Manual of Style, then I suppose I agree with this statement. In any case, I do not agree with Dan's gloomy predictions, and I intend to stay around for at least another year, if only to have Dan pay me a monthly tribute after he is proven wrong. I intend to use the money in order to install central heating in Waltham Hall; fireplaces simply won't do any more. Waltham, The Duke of 03:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No, it means reducing them to the point where they are actually the consensus of Wikipedians; perhaps attributing those claims which can be attributed to the style guides from which they are derived, and mentioning the styleguides which disagree. If this were article text, WP:NPOV would require this; I don't see what grounds we have for a different standard. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, well, I cannot agree with that. First of all, half the editors of Wikipedia (very conservative estimate) are about mediocre, or worse, when it comes to writing skills, this including both native and non-native speakers; I should not trust the consensus of these people to produce a good writing manual. This is not about policies, where good judgement and common sense are skills not uncommon; this is about a specific set of skills, knowledge, and expertise, which are not widespread on their own, and are rather rare to find combined. And no, this is not an article either, so there is no matter of point of view. Individual guidelines are weighed on their virtues, not on a basis of "represent all existing styles" (I am not referring to dialects here, so don't even think of using it as an argument). Not everyone can be right, Mr Anderson, not even here. Waltham, The Duke of 04:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, thanks. I see I have confounded two separate points: we should give due weight to the AP style guide as a reliable source, whatever the literary skills of Wikipedians. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * All you have managed to confound, Mr Anderson, is the clarity of your own position. You always say that you want the MoS to be less prescriptive, and in this case you say that you prefer to leave dashes in the discretion of Wikipedians, yet you now come and say that we should give weight to another style guide as a reliable source. If we are to use a standard, why not use a higher-level one? "Whatever the literary skills of Wikipedians"? Who is supposed to educate whom, Wikipedia its readers or vice versa? The standards ought to be above mediocrity, not below it. Waltham, The Duke of 05:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * A useful, descriptive, Manual of Style would include reasons for doing A and not doing B, which literate editors would consider (for another example, the reasons on image-facing above may be novel to many). When professional manuals disagree, we should admit it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You use useful and descriptive as if they were synonymous. I agree that it would be better if some kind of explanation would be provided for a number of guidelines, but this should certainly not be construed as an excuse for making the Manual of Style any less prescriptive. By saying "which literate editors would consider" makes it sound as though editors would have to ask themselves "do I want to do this or do I want to do the opposite"? Which is, of course, ridiculous; editors either follow the Manual's recommendations or ignore them (except in FAs). Waltham, The Duke of 17:52, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Anderson will take any opportunity to push his anti-MOS agenda, hummmm. He's not helped in forming his view by his insistence on using one of these shonk fonts that makes little distinction between hyphens and en dashes—the designers need to be horsewhipped for that, because they are (or were, at the time) ignorant of a basic aspect of the punctuation required in good writing. And while a few of the distinctions may be a little tricky, the basics are dead easy. The proof of the pudding is that, by and large, the use of these three basic characters has improved markedly among FACs over the past six or nine months. It's not so usual, nowadays, to have to raise dash issues, as much as Anderson would have us see this as a putsch by "a small band of" anally retentive word-nerds who've "taken over MOS". It's just good writing, sorry. Anderson, please change your font. Tony   (talk)  02:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * A provincial view; the distinction between length of dashes is modern and artificial. I do not support eliminating emdashes (I do not read Dank55 as doing so either); I support not worrying about editors' choice between legitimate stylistic alternatives. If Tony thinks something squashy, he doesn't have to use it; he should accord corresponding liberties to  others. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I concede that with so many en-dashes and em-dashes sprinkled around Wikipedia, it may be a few more years before the en-dashes die and wither into hyphens. And as I say, I'm hypocritical to assert some style issue based only on my WP:OR and one style manual; one of these days I may look for sources.  But if the second dash hasn't disappeared from "persuasive" online writing by 2009, you guys are going to owe me another barnstar (that's three). - Dan Dank55 (talk) 02:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I see, you oppose endashes; are you prepared to let those benighted enough to prefer them to hyphens to continue using them until they wither away? Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not picky about which one to kill off and how to do the deed, I'm just making a prediction that the way it will eventually happen is, unspaced en-dashes will be replaced by hyphens, as preferred by APStylebook.com. We'll see. - <- hyphen Dan Dank55 (talk) 02:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

←Based on the above conversation, it looks like I should have been clearer from the start.
 * I won't, in general, try to identify trends in style, for as long as the WP:GAU survey is going, because it might bias the results.
 * I'll make an exception for dashes, because the trend appears clear to me. EB (online) only uses one dash now, for instance, and EB is on the "formal" end of some style issues.
 * However, MoS in general and FAs in particular have no obligation to follow online as opposed to publisher-house usage, nor to favor the trends of the moment over common usage 5 years ago. The trends of the moment could change.  So all I'm doing is adding an  asterisk to the conversation: please keep an eye open for evidence that dash usage is changing, because some day, we may need to change.  (And hopefully, when that happens, our bots will be smart enough that it won't make any work for anyone.)
 * As a separate point, there is a real problem that most people won't be able to find "2002–3" in a search because they'll be searching with a hyphen. Can anyone come up with a clever solution for this problem? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I suppose we are talking about en dashes in text, right? Because there should always exist alternative versions with hyphens as redirects, so we are covered as far as article titles are concerned. Waltham, The Duke of 16:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed, although if MediaWiki can give us some magic answer, it might also get rid of the need for the redirects you're talking about. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * And in any case, Dan, searching for year ranges has always been problematic: 2001–3 (which I dislike)? or 2001–03? or 2001–2003? or hyphens? So many choices, so redirects will help, and so will an intelligent searcher, who'll persist with the possibilities. As for dreams that en dashes might dissolve into nothingness, on WP or anywhere else, they're just not going to, I'm afraid, gentlemen. Tony   (talk)  16:42, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Gentlemen? I am perfectly willing to tolerate endashes, if only they would return the compliment, dash it all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay. Same time, next year.  There's still one pending dash issue; we did make progress in the previous discussion with spaced em-dashes.  We agreed that there was pretty wide support in style manuals and elsewhere for not spacing very long dashes, but on the other hand, lots of Wikipedians like spaced em-dashes, including Stanton and G-Guy.  I'm not sure how long the em-dashes look on their screens; mine are as wide as 2 m's.  I'm wondering if we could get everyone rowing in the same direction if we could get MediaWiki not to have em-dashes be quite that long in the default font; they are, after all, em dashes, not 2-em-dashes. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * An em dash in my browser look like about an m and a half. But, as has been mentioned, it's not just the size we should be concerned about; spaced dashes mean that line-breaking will be odd; although non-breaking spaces can be used for spaced en dashes (which will be more convenient if the double-comma proposal is adopted), the gap will be too large for such a tactic to be used with regards to em dashes.
 * In any case, 10 April 2009 is a Friday, which suits me just fine. See you then. Waltham, The Duke of 03:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm strongly opposed to messing around with em dashes and the like. The default font is just fine for all three symbols. Just don't space em dashes; if you want to use a spaced dash as an interrupter, use a spaced en dash: it's simple. Tony   (talk)  04:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm comfortable with that. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 12:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section breaks
Some of the stuff in style talk pages and archives is dense with useful information and some of it is eloquent or pithy, and right on point for questions that come up routinely. Does anyone mind if I stick arbitrary subheading section breaks in older discussions on talk pages? How about archived talk pages? It would make it easier to refer someone to an old argument if I think the question they're asking has been answered eloquently by someone else. It also seems to me that's a lot better than just telling them what I think was most important ... it lets them see whatever everyone was saying, if they want to, and doesn't strip the context away. The downside is the potential for a whole new kind of edit warring, but I really think we're above that. What brought this to mind was Stanton's comment here. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:34, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * For archives, which is not visible in talk space, but enables a link of the form Archive N , may be preferable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Unobtrusive, noninflammatory.  Perfect.  - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:55, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Captions again
SlimVirgin's recent suggestions for revising the last clause of our Captions—Formatting guideline, which I backed, did not attract sufficient support. I'd like to have a new go at it. I propose revised wording that would raise the standard for caption writing. The second part of the clause, which no one specifically defended, would be dropped—it is ancillary at best to the core directive, in either form.

Here is the current language:


 * "Captions should be succinct; more information about the image can be included on its description page, or in the main text."

Here is my suggestion:


 * "Caption text should meet the same standards of concision, clarity, accuracy, and verifiability that apply to other article text."

In sum, this would shift the emphasis of the clause away from the connotation of "short"—though that would still be there, conveyed by the lead use of "concision"—and toward the connotation of "well written". It is clear to me that many editors, concerned with the quality of expression elsewhere in articles, ignore it in captions. I believe the proposed rewording would help address that issue.—DCGeist (talk) 23:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Support, but on the other hand, I support several of the alternatives to the current wording. Btw, "Conciseness" gets 100K more Google hits than "Concision"; not a big deal, but I kind of prefer the former. Slim posted this above, which I think is beautiful (too long for MoS, but possibly useful for this discussion, although note that this was meant for newspaper photos:) "[Captions] tell the reader, briefly and clearly, the basic details of the picture and tie it to the story it illustrates. Remember that photos attract even the most casual reader, so captions are probably the best-read words in the paper, after headlines. Like headlines, caption must be crisp. Like stories, they must be readable and informative, interesting and lively ... Use at least two short, snappy sentences. One long, involved sentence is boring. Stick primarily to explaining the action in the picture, but don't speculate. Watch attribution and don't let libel creep in." - Dan Dank55 (talk) 23:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * On first look, DCG, this appears to be an acceptable solution. I'll wait to see what other people think, though. Tony   (talk)  02:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I would prefer
 * "Caption text should be as concise, clear, accurate and verifiable as other article text."
 * Why use abstractions when we don't have to? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose; it doesn't say anything (of course text in captions should be sourced, reliable, encyclopedic like the rest of the article; that's instruction creep). Captions should be succinct.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It says pretty much what we say now, therefore not creep; the difference between concise and succinct is that concise is less likely to be misunderstood as a word limit. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Query Sandy, when you assert that it "doesn't say anything," you imply that you find that captions are already in practice held to the same standards of concision, clarity, accuracy, and verifiability as that applied to other article text. I don't find that to be true at all. But we might be spending our time with different articles. Is that, in fact, what you find?—DCGeist (talk) 02:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I oppose any change that removes the focus from saying captions should be concise. Clear, accurate, and verifiable are great.  Well-written should be implied (har har), and if you say anything about being informative, interesting, etc. you are going to start getting short stories instead of captions.  Principles of visual literacy indicate that if a caption needs to be more than a short sentence, the visual is crap anyway.  P.S. Please don't use the term "concision"; this is a reference document, not a Charlotte Brontë novel. -- Laser brain   (talk)  20:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Er, you do realize that it's the proposed text that says concise, and the present text that says succinct? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * DCGeist's suggestion above reads, "Caption text should meet the same standards of concision, clarity, accuracy, and verifiability that apply to other article text." I was stating my preference that the word not be used in the event that someone prefers DCGeist's version. -- Laser brain   (talk)  21:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you; consider my rephrasing, not far above. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

PS I'd rather say that "Caption text should be short unless there is a good reason for a longer caption." That allows longer captions, with the burden on the writer/nominator to justify a longish caption: in Dan's case, I'm sure that would not be a problem. Tony  (talk)  06:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Anderson's and Dan Geist's proposals are hardly worth saying. Who ever thought that the same standards didn't apply to caption text? And meeting the same standards implies that if the main text is not quite concise/succinct/whatever, the captions can be like that, too. Tony   (talk)  06:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * What does the present text say that is worth saying? That captions should be "succinct"? If this is being abused to mean short, we should say short, as Tony argues below. If not, who ever suggested that captions should not be succinct propriâ sensu? Let us either make this say something, or take it out. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I support DCGeist's suggestion. I'd rather not see any wording that implies captions should be short, because we see too many good articles with longish captions, so people are voting with their fingers. SlimVirgin  talk| edits 07:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Whether captions are short or long should depend on the caption and the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, but many editors need reminding that it's especially important to remove fluff from captions. So often, an attempt to shorten a caption improves it. This one I did this morning. Tony   (talk)  01:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The impression I get from reading the previous discussion about captions and this one is that we have a lot of examples of good and bad captions, and it's too much for WP:MoS. I just rewrote the lead on WP:Captions; it was too flowery.  The article could use a lot of the points that have been made in these two discussions.  I'm not very good at judging captions, but I'll put it on my todo list in case no one else gets to it.  I am adding a link from WP:MoS to WP:Captions. - Dan - Dan (talk) 02:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

National varieties of English - Consistency within articles
If you have external links that are in conflict should you leave them in conflict? Basically should external links be left to describe what the destination says or should the links title here on the wiki article be converted to the appropriate English or American wording to match the rest of the article? SunCreator (talk) 15:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are quoting the title, quote it accurately. WP:ENGVAR is intended to avoid disconcerting changes of variety with no good reason, because they leave the reader wondering why. This is a good reason, and there are others; look for the press-up issue which is on this page or the last archive .Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Should we add a general point?
 * Be consistent within articles. If an article makes a stylistic choice at one point, don't change it at another point unless there is a good reason to vary; it confuses the reader without helping the encyclopedia.


 * We now repeat essentially this at many points; we could do so at many more. Instead, let's say it once, as a separate point, and refer to it where absolutely needed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but please drop the last clause—finish with "vary". Tony   (talk)  01:50, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Why not give a reason? It will increase the authority of this page if its edicts are not seen as arbitrary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I finally have an answer to this kind of question IMO. See my archiving proposal below. - Dan - Dan (talk) 00:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Useful, but would a link to our miscellaneous discussions really be more helpful than just saying that we want within-article consistency so as not to be confusing? Does anyone have another reason for it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Order of references and External links should be reversed
The MOS currently says that the references section should come before the external links section. Why? It seems that people would be more interested in EL then refs. -Icewedge (talk) 20:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Some of the reasoning is explained at Layout, under "Notes". I would also dispute the idea that more people are interested in external links; "Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links". Paul Erik  (talk) (contribs) 20:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd say that shouldn't be a main Manual of Style page question in the first place. This should be in the province of Layout, a separate guideline page.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 20:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You know this Gene, but I'll say it for the readers: WP:MoS is intended to be written in WP:Summary style, like pretty much everything else on Wikipedia, meaning that whenever there's a lot to say, it should give a summary and then link to the "main" page on the subject. So, you're saying that the summary should be shorter before it hands off to WP:Layout?  Icewedge, here are the reasons for the order from WP:Layout (written by yours truly, and feel free to suggest clearer language): "Any section which concerns material outside Wikipedia (including References, Bibliography, and External links) should come after any section that concerns Wikipedia material (including See also) to help keep the distinction clear."  Also, "So many articles have the External links section at the end that many people expect that. Some External links and References sections are very long, and when the name of the section is not visible on the screen, it could cause problems if someone meant to delete an external link, and deleted a reference instead. Keeping the External links last may also be helpful for editors who patrol external links." - Dan Dank55 (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that having the EL section at the bottom is bad because most people would see the refernces and then not continue on, but, oh well. -Icewedge (talk) 03:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, Dan, thanks for expanding on my point.  I don't really care if the summary on the page here is shorter or not; what we need are more editors here who recognize that when something is brought of that is really in the province of the subpages, that should be recognized as soon as possible and the discussion transferred to the appropriate subpage.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 12:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you guys brought this up, I'm going to change "may also be" to "is". We were having a big discussion at the time I first made the argument, so I was timid, but there's really no "may" about it. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 13:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

A "scope" section in the style infobox?
I don't know if anyone else had this reaction, but when I first started editing on WP, I looked at the "style infobox" on the right on all style guidelines pages and thought, "70 style guidelines pages, ranging from Anime to US highways? That's a lot of work, I'll just learn as I go." Wouldn't it help a bit if we at least moved the guidelines pages that don't have all of WP as the scope down lower in the infobox in their own section, to help make "Layout" and other widely applicable pages stand out more? I have asked over on the Anime page how they feel about that, since they're up top, and they might have feelings about moving it down. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:09, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Style guidelines for etymology
I've seen Greek words used in etymology shown in Greek alphabet, and also in transliteration (for example in clepsydra). Which is right? Should both be used (for the benefit of those who don't read the other script)? Paul Koning (talk) 17:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * See Naming conventions (Greek). - Dan (talk) 17:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Default thumb size of images
Is it fair for someone to go around removing a custom size of any image they find? They keep claiming this page states they are right, but as far as I can tell, the standard thumb size is simply the default preference, and is not a rule to be rigidly followed. Thoughts? Timeshift (talk) 00:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's a guideline and not a policy for a reason. The "don't force thumb size" rule can be ignored if there is a compelling reason. Van Tucky 00:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I note the term "not recommended" was recently changed to "not necessary" the reasoning being that a number of FA's already have set pixel size. That’s like not making seat belts in cars mandatory because many cars don’t have them.--Merbabu (talk) 00:56, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

So it's not cast in stone despite some editors beliefs that it is? Excellent :-) Timeshift (talk) 00:57, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Correct - "if there is a compelling reason" it can be ignored. But, remember the guideline is there for a number of good reasons. --Merbabu (talk) 01:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed! But thanks for shifting the goalposts, at least now you won't just be blindly removing custom image sizes without discussion first :-) Timeshift (talk) 01:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Incorrect - I don't "blindly remove image sizes" and I see no need to change the way I approach it. If anything the onus is on those going against the MOS to establish "compelling" grounds to do so, especially when this leads to images making certain articles look awkward for readers with smaller screens and/or higher font sizes. If you want higher image sizes for your own reading, change your preferences (which of course one can't do if pixel size is specified). --Merbabu (talk) 01:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Not at all - MOS is a guideline not a policy, and if someone (note the minority, you) has a problem with it, it is up to them to gain concensus. Thankyou :-) Timeshift (talk) 01:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This is getting off the topic but if I'm the "minority" who is the "majority" - you perhaps? Again, you don't seem to understand *why* there is a preference for these image guidelines, nor specifically why your insistence on going against the guideline (without compelling reason i might add) is a problem on the Brendan Nelson page. --Merbabu (talk) 01:39, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You are the only one that wants to change it. I want it kept at a larger size, and nobody has disagreed with me, and kept the status quo. Nobody agreed with you on the BL talk page. Thus, as the images are at the non-default and only you want to change it, yes, you are the minority, and by default I am the majority. I've already given my reasons for a larger size on the BL talk page. Let's get this clear - to change something from the status quo that is disputed, you need consensus. You do not have consensus. Is that clear enough for you? Have a good day :-) Timeshift (talk) 01:42, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No, Merbabu is not the only one who thinks the wording should be changed. I happen to think that the wording should go back to "not necessary" rather than "not recommended." The reason for this is due to the infinite variety of imaging needs. It is more common, in my experience, to have varying sizes than standard ones. The variations depend on the type of image and the way the text is placed on the page. As one experienced professional editor once put it: "you have to relieve the wilderness of text." I also think that when editors have taken the time to adjust the sizes for a better visual appeal, someone should not arbitrarily change them, quoting this guideline, as happened here. Sunray (talk) 06:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, on exactly the grounds that you state. I hereby propose that the relevant clause be changed from "specifying the size of a thumbnail image is not recommended" to "specifying the size of a thumbnail image is not necessary." This will allow the default style to remain default sizing, while cutting down on disruptive changes to articles where, as Sunray suggests, editors have thoughtfully specified image sizes to maximize aesthetic quality and thus readability and informational value.—DCGeist (talk) 06:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I support this wording. - JasonAQuest (talk) 11:54, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

(deindent) I think the status quo ante is fine and should not be changed without good reason, which I do not see. Otherwise we will have articles which are tailored for one particular screen size/resolution combination by a well-meaning editor with (say) a laptop running on 800x600, which then look like ass on a larger monitor. Hardcoding thumb sizes should only be done where there is agreed to be a good reason for it. Otherwise they can safely be removed. --John (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Often our MoS drives Wikipedia best practices. Sometimes it must recognize and reflect them. John raises the concern that there are "well-meaning editors" out there making articles "look like ass" by tailoring image sizes for their own aesthetic satisfaction to the detriment of other readers. He sees no good reason to change the status quo. But there is a good reason, and there is evidence for it.


 * The editors who are creating our very best work here at Wikipedia, our featured articles, tend quite a bit more often than not to specify image sizes in those superior articles. I took an essentially random sample to ascertain whether this perception was supported. I looked at two rather different categories of featured articles, History and Media. I ignored lead images (for which we have a specific sizing recommendation) and articles whose main text uses only one image or none at all. I proceeded alphabetically, from the beginning of the respective lists, looking at the first ten articles in each category with multiple main text images and whether they specified sizes for them or not. Here are the results:


 * History
 * 1981 Irish hunger strike: unsized
 * Mumia Abu-Jamal: sized & unsized
 * Act of Independence of Lithuania: sized
 * Samuel Adams: sized
 * Alcibiades: unsized
 * Ike Altgens: sized
 * Ancient Egypt: mostly unsized
 * Anschluss: sized
 * Harriet Arbuthnot: sized & unsized
 * Arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm: sized & unsized


 * 4 sized
 * 3 mixed
 * 3 unsized


 * Media
 * 300 (film): sized
 * Alien vs. Predator (film): sized
 * Padmé Amidala: sized & unsized gallery
 * Animaniacs: sized & unsized
 * Aquaman (TV program): unsized
 * Arrested Development (TV series): sized
 * James T. Aubrey, Jr.: unsized
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender: sized
 * B movie: sized
 * Battlefield Earth (film): sized


 * 6 sized
 * 2 mixed
 * 2 unsized


 * I suggest that though this sample represents only a very small percentage of our featured articles, it accurately reflects the truth: the editors who do our best work here know very well how to specify image sizes in order to maximize article readability and informational value, as confirmed by some of our most demanding readers, those who pass judgment on FA candidacies. Far from making articles look like ass, specific image sizing seems to be regarded as a vital tool at Wikipedia's highest level of accomplishment.


 * I suggest, in conclusion, the current wording of our MoS is outdated and out of touch. Insofar as it deters some editors committed to excellence from specifying image sizes it is doing our encyclopedia a disservice. Insofar as it encourages other editors to interfere with the thoughtful sizing of images in articles undergoing development, again it does our encyclopedia a disservice. When our Manual of Style repeatedly fails to reflect the nature of our very best work, it is time to adjust the status quo here.—DCGeist (talk) 01:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. This issue keeps popping up, the present policy is flawed and poorly thought through. You might wish to see an earlier discussion on this issue, where I put forward some proposals. G-Man  ? 03:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you ever tried viewing articles with hardcoded image sizes on a very small or very large monitor? There is good reason behind the current consensus not to hardcode image sizes, and neither the existence of articles labelled as FA which are currently noncompliant with this, nor the supposed fact that "it deters some editors committed to excellence from specifying image sizes" (do you have evidence of this?) can really gainsay the fact that on anything other than the particular monitor size you are fine-tuning the image layout on, it will indeed end up looking like ass. Hence the preference for not hardcoding the image sizes, but letting signed-in users specify their own. --John (talk) 04:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, you stated above that the images in 1981 Irish hunger strike are sized. They are not. You can maybe check the rest of your examples rather than have me do it. Obviously it hardly strengthens the appeal of the sample you have presented us with if you have made other errors. --John (talk) 04:44, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Quite right. My apologies. That leaves 15 out of the sample of 20 that employ specified sizing to some degree (10 exclusively specify image size). Only 5 do not employ specified sizing (and, in fact, one of those--Ancient Egypt--does have a couple sized images after the lede, versus about two dozen that are unsized). I regret the error, but it hardly undermines the point of the exercise. You find it convenient to dismiss the FAC process when it suits you, but the fact is that it is our well-established system for determining what qualifies as our best work. And a large percentage, perhaps most, of our best work, relies in part on specified image sizing.


 * John, what is your evidence for the claim that "on anything other than the particular monitor size you are fine-tuning the image layout on, it will indeed end up looking like ass"? I have provided evidence that belies that claim. If those 15 FAs cited above actually looked like ass to even a modest proportion of readers, it is difficult to imagine how they would have won FA status. I look forward to seeing what evidence you can provide. If you are unable to provide evidence to support your claims, perhaps you should consider the possibility that it is your unique viewing method, whatever it entails, that is making so many articles look like ass.—DCGeist (talk) 05:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Have you ever tried viewing articles with hardcoded image sizes on a very small or very large monitor? --John (talk) 06:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If by "very small monitor" you mean something like an iPhone or other handheld device, no I have not. I can well imagine the issues specifically sized images would pose for such users; however, given all the other webpage issues they put up with in order to enjoy handheld surfing, I can't agree that this is a significant problem. Navigating over an outsized image on such a device strikes me as no more off-putting (and perhaps less so) than navigating over the outsized ads or blank spaces or simply unwanted content that one learns to deal with in that viewing context.


 * I have viewed articles with hardcoded image sizes on at least one very large monitor (browsing with Safari); those articles looked just as good to my eye as they do on my own laptop and on the other laptops and standard desktop monitors I usually work on.—DCGeist (talk) 06:42, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, so this subject has come up here again. So let's pick this apart:

1: The current default thumbnail size is 180 pixels width. The current default doesn't seem to limit image height, so an image can be much higher than 180 pixels. But an image which is wide but not high still only becomes 180 pixels wide and thus much lower than 180 pixels.

2: Many editors think the current default thumbnail size is too small, so they set larger sizes. I myself am one of them. Even though that I use 800×600 in screen resolution I think the current default is way too small. Back when I started reading and editing Wikipedia most images had their size manually set and I enjoyed reading articles with large enough images to actually be seen. But then some years ago some editors started using bots to remove the image width from most images. Since then I consider most images too small to actually be useful, instead I have to manually click the images to view them in a separate window. But loading the images separately is often too much trouble. Instead Wikipedia has for me more or less become a text only media with some small decorative images on the side that doesn't really serve as encyclopaedic content. That's right, if the image is so small that you can't see the thing you are supposed to see, then the image is not encyclopaedic any longer, then it is only decorative. Why should we even put effort into making nice images when they can not even be properly understood in the articles? I for one stopped doing diagrams for exactly that reason. And I know other editors who gave up on doing images too. And that is a loss for Wikipedia.

3: Those that argue for not specifying image sizes always says: "The reason you should not specify image size is so users can them self set the image size they need in their user settings." Well, let's see, from what I remember of the stats we have about 32000 page loads per edit and the average reader views about 1-4 pages per visit here. I guess that means the wast majority of readers of Wikipedia are not logged in editors but rather normal not logged in readers. Most users probably have no idea that they can log in and set their image size preference. And I bet that the wast majority of readers surf Wikipedia from normal computers, not from hand held units with mini screens. So by having too small images we destroy the experience for the wast majority of readers.

4: Now, all this might seem like an issue "set versus not set image size". But as I see it the real problem is that the default image size is too small. If the default image size were large enough then I think we might be able to reach an agreement that most images should not have the image size set. But as long as the default is way too small, then many of us will never agree to use the default. So what we really should be discussing is what default size the images should have.

5: I think the default size should be set to something that is proper for the majority of readers. That is people that surf the Wikipedia with screen resolutions between 800×600 and 1280×1024. (Actually, even 800×600 is very rare nowadays, at least based on the stats I see on other web sites where they collect such stats.) The minority of users that use hand helds are the ones who should have to learn to log in and set their default thumbnail size. At 800×600 in screen resolution the reading area of the articles are about 600 pixels wide so more than 300 pixels wide images as default would be more than half the article width. And at 1280×1024 in screen resolution then I think that most diagrams aren't readable and other images aren't enjoyable below 250 pixels in width. So I suggest the default should be somewhere between 250-300 pixels wide. And to pick a precise value: I suggest 280 pixels width as the default.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've removed "Image size is a matter of preference" for now while we discuss this; obviously it is true but it is not a good thing to put in a manual of style. We should be concerned here with adopting norms that benefit the readers; if we are unable to do so then a free-for-all emerges. We should be trying to avoid the free-for-all, not codify it. I believe this section has been stable as it is now for a while and it would be great if we could leave it that way while we discuss the matter and arrive at a consensus. I don't think I feel all that strongly about this, but I would be rather concerned if poorer users (who are probably more likely to be using a low resolution like 800x600) were to be disadvantaged in their use of this site. I remain to be convinced that letting editors hardcode images will be to our benefit. It's worth remembering that this project is intended for the readers, not the editors. --John (talk) 04:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * There seems to be consensus for something like this, John. The reason is that a small number of people were using the wording to go round removing image sizes. Unfortunately, the MoS is often misused in that way, so it's safest to stress in contentious areas that it boils down to preference. SlimVirgin  talk| edits 04:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Then I'm confused, Slim. We currently start the MoS with "The Manual of Style, often abbreviated MoS, is a style guide for users that aims to make the encyclopedia easier to read in English. One way of presenting information is often just as good as another, but consistency promotes professionalism, simplicity and greater cohesion in Wikipedia articles." How can we have consistency to promote professionalism if we have, as the very first clause, "Image size is a matter of preference"? --John (talk) 04:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Because it's one of the issues on which there are no rules. Some people prefer to use thumbs, others (I would say most) prefer to choose a size, so we should really leave it up to individual editors. This page can't list rules for everything anyway. The more it tries to, the more unpopular it becomes, which has the effect of people wanting to ignore it entirely. So it has to steer a steady course. SlimVirgin  talk| edits 04:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * John, perhaps a compromise would be to add something like: "If an image size is specified, editors should bear in mind that readers using smaller monitors may have difficulty reading the page if images are too large." SlimVirgin  talk| edits 05:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I would answer that, unlike much of what is covered in the MoS, promoting consistency between articles in terms of main text image sizing does not in fact promote the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person (that's Webster's defining professionalism). Regional variations duly noted, we all speak fundamentally the same verbal language here on the English Wikipedia—that language, of course, is English. Maintaining consistency in verbal style to the degree reasonably possible does promote professionalism and other good things. But the visual language of images is so multifarious, their form and content so diverse, that consistency is a chimera, its enforcement (that "misuse" of which SlimVirgin speaks) a shackle.


 * I suggest again that the evidence I've adduced above shows that many of our most dedicated editors, those most committed to excellence, do serve our readers by specifying images sizes in a way that suits the particular articles and the particular images they are dealing with. As SV hints at, our MoS serves as more than a guideline to writers and editors; it serves as a raison d'être for our gnomes. Many of them do very fine work indeed. But some take the letter of our suggestions here as law, enforce it insensibly, disrupting articles and wasting the valuable time of contributors who would rather be contributing. It is my experience—and I'm guessing SV's—that this matter of image sizing is one of the main (and, as I've argued, evidently dispensable) sources of such disruption.—DCGeist (talk) 05:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, DC, you needn't explain any more what you are trying to do or why you are trying to do it. I understand it, just disagree with it. Think of the guy in rural Uganda on 800x600 for a moment here. As an editor here myself, of course I see the value in allowing editors their choice. But think of the readers and their experience; that ought to come first. Try changing your screen res down and browsing some of the example articles you mentioned earlier and I think you will see what I mean.


 * Slim, I do likewise understand politically the reason why you propose what you do, I'm afraid I just disagree with that too. If there are user conduct issues, there are avenues for these to be addressed. Putting what amounts to an "anything goes" clause into our MoS seems retrograde as I had understood there were good and valid reasons to allow signed-in users to set their own image sizes, and seems to devalue the whole notion of having a MoS at all. I appreciate your suggested compromise and I suppose it may be that we end up specifying numbers there. However at the moment, my issue as a user with pages formatted like that is that on my large monitor the little 125 and 200 that people choose look ridiculously small.


 * On procedural grounds, I disagree with you that there has been enough of a consensus here to change the long-standing status quo. Something like this, that affects many articles, especially if as you suggest there are user conduct issues as well, deserves a much wider discussion than we have had, in my opinion. I'm disappointed that you have reverted even as this discussion was ongoing. --John (talk) 05:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

John, it's inappropriate for you to suggest that I needn't explain my position any further. You, I, and SlimVirgin may be the active participants at the moment, but we are not the only people involved here. You may understand my every thought, anticipate my every argument, but this debate is open to all. It's the community as a whole we address on these project talk pages, however many people are weighing in at a given moment. It would be nice indeed if those who disagreed with us would appreciate the greater virtues of silence. A talk page, however, ill lends itself to such bliss.—DCGeist (talk) 05:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The point made by Slim is crucial, IMO. As the discussion, above, demonstrates, we have editors with very different points of view on this subject. Each has a point. However, the MoS is a guideline, not a directive. It is not something that should be enforced by editors in such a way as to overrule other editors. Does anyone disagree with this? Sunray (talk) 07:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Almost no one who ever participates in the discussion here would disagree. However, we must recognize the fact that there are certain number of editors—a number greater than trivial—who do misuse the MoS, enforcing its recommendations as law on articles that they have no other interest in or knowledge of. It is thus incumbent upon us to recognize the distinction between those stylistic matters where Wikipedia quality is best served by cross-article consistency and those where quality is better served by deferring to editorial judgment. In practice (in this less-than-ideal world), the MoS does a better job when it devotes its energies to the former matters and is humble or entirely silent on the latter.—DCGeist (talk) 08:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Concur with DCGeist on virtually everything. Also this "issue" of big images on tiny devices is a red herring: They already forcibly resize images that are too large; this has been true since WebTV. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 00:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

A technical question, I presume
Firstly, why, how, or where is the default size "in the overwhelming majority of browsers" set at 180px? Can it be changed? Or is this a browser, rather than a wikipedia change? Surely that would be the key. Personally, I think specifying image sizes is a solution worse than the problem of the pic sizes being a bit too small. This partly based on me being a minimalist with markup, and partly because of the flexibility of no image size specified. It would be nice if the unspecified default could be say 200 or 220px. 250 and 300 (or worse) starts to look silly.

Secondly, in the meantime, rather than say "matter of preference" with no limit, can't we find a compromise and put a limit on any specific pixel count (if we must have one). Say 220px (or less favourably 250 since it is so common). --Merbabu (talk) 14:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ages ago I put forward this suggestion so I'll table it again; It seems to me that rather than setting pixels, the best solution would be to allow editors to set the proportion of the width of the article space that an image would take up (say 5% 10% 20% and so on) which would be uniform regardless of the monitor size. That would allow editors to set a page layout that would be constant regardless of the viewing device, thus solving the 'images looking different on different monitors' problem. I asked about this on the village pump and was told that it was feesible to do this, but nothing ever happened. Seem as this issue has come up again it might be time to investigate this further. Any comments? G-Man  ? 20:45, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This absolutely should be set as a percentage. Aside from the brain-dead date formatting, this the highest-priority fix to the MediaWiki software that I would make. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 09:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Percentages are not the solution. Just because someone has a wider screen or keeps their browser window wide, doesn't mean they want it taken up by the images. If I drag the right side of my browser to double the width on my screen, the images would quadruple in size; I'd actually see less text.  Percentage-scaled images would also kill caching, since every page load would require a custom-scaled image.  Even just resizing one's browser would require an image reload.  All over a false assumption.  Because most of the time when an editor sets a size for an image, it's to enlarge it to the appropriate threshold for readability, not because they feel it should fill more/less of the screen.  That is, they're making their judgments based on absolute size, not screen percentage. - JasonAQuest (talk) 12:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You say Just because someone has a wider screen or keeps their browser window wide, doesn't mean they want it taken up by the images. Well then, anyone who wants to set their own size for images should have that option on the user preferences, as an opt-in feature. Secondly it should IMO be a job for the editor to set image sizes and proportions, that is after all one of the major functions of an editor of any publication whether online or in print. I am not a technical person so I have no answers to your other points. However it surely cannot be beyond the collective wit of the many programmers et-al who work on the wikipedia sofware, to come up with an image formatting system which is better than the deeply flawed one we have at the moment. G-Man  ? 19:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Percentages are good for some things, but images are not one. I can think of numerous articles whose layouts could easily be wrecked by images arbitrarily resizing depending on the size of the window (infoboxes, for a start, would be broken, as would any page that has an image somewhere above another image; if both increased, they'd push each other around and cause even bigger bunching issues). I would also assume there would be some tie-in with our Fair Use policy, about how FU images can't be displayed over a certain size (I could be mistaken about that, though). Really, I don't see any actual benefit to this other than changing something for the sake of changing it... EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 02:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

However, you are certainly right that such an effect is very rarely seen, primarily because it looks very, very bad. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 03:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Having embedded images rescale themselves in response to window size changes would be a huge departure from how nearly every site on the web currently operates. Images are GIFs or JPGs or PNGs, which are fed to the browser as rectangles with fixed dimensions.  If you make the window bigger, they shift around, but they don't grow.  It's how the technology works, and it's what people expect.  Eventually web sites will evolve to the point where scalable graphics formats are commonplace and bandwidth and local processing will be cheap enough to do it on the fly at the client, but let's let some simpler web sites with more modest processing and bandwidth requirements and a more disciplined editorial approach go there first to pave the way. - JasonAQuest (talk) 02:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Er, actually, it's very, very easy to scale GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs in the browser; you just use a percentage in the IMG tag's height and width values. (I'm a web developer by trade, I kinda know what I'm saying). I know for a fact I saw the effect in at least Netscape 2.0, so it's not a new feature, and wouldn't impact bandwidth or local processing.


 * You say I don't see any actual benefit to this other than changing something for the sake of changing it. in fact there is a very good reason for changing it. As noted above, and in the many discussions about this issue. It is very clear that the present system of using pixels to size images is deeply flawed and utterly unsatisfactory. Hardcoding image sizes leads to the problem of images taking up different proportions of the page depending on which monitor you're viewing it on. And the surposed 'solution' to this - not hardcoding image sizes. Leads to the problems described above, that the present image size default is too small to be legible on many monitors; that the vast majority of viewers are not signed in and do not have the facillity to change their viewing preferences, and even if they did do, images are different shapes, meaning that the 'one size fits all' image size, leads to wildly different sizes. In short, I fail to see how any image sizing system could be any more flawed or worse then the one we have at the moment. I am not a technical person, but surely with the programming brains we have at our disposal, it cannot be impossible to find solutions to the problems with the proportion based system that you note above, and come up with something better then we have at the moment. G-Man  ? 19:54, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Block quotes vrs Pull quotes
I strongly disagree with the change to the block quotations section of MOSQUOTE. Block quotations and pull quotes, the latter of which cquote is explicitly designed to be per the template instructions, are two very different styles of quotations. Basic grammar dictates that block quotes don't ever have quotes around them, that's how you define a block quote: a long indented quotation without quotation marks. To say that it's good practice to place the large colorful quotation marks of cquote around a style of quotation that by definition has no such marks, doesn't make much sense. Van Tucky 00:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've always thought the large clunky quote marks were the height of ugliness. Tony   (talk)  02:04, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed, Tony. VanTucky, I'm wondering whether pull quotes are being defined as a kind of block quote in WP:MoS.  If they aren't, then I can't make sense out of this sentence (assuming some pull-quotes don't have quotation marks): "For quotations, use only quotation marks (for short quotations) or block quoting (for long ones), not italics." - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with italics? For some short phrases, that is; I'm not talking about any long quotations. Waltham, The Duke of 04:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Wrong form of markup. It's really that simple. We don't put TV episodes in italics or TV series titles in quotes because that's simply not how it is done, by general English language style guide conventions.  I don't know of any style guide on the planet that recommends putting quotations in italics.  Thusly (and in accordance with MOS) I delete the italicization of quotations on sight and will continue to do so. :-) —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 08:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the argument is that they make text harder to read, and I suppose also that they're superfluous if you use quotation marks. SlimVirgin  talk| edits 06:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I suppose it's better to just delegate quotations to quotation marks (they have the name, after all) and simple words and phrases to italics. It makes more sense.
 * Actually, the distinction already exists in the MoS, it's just too fuzzy and scattered across various pages. (By the way, am I the only one who thinks Titles and Text formatting should be merged? They're almost duplicates of each other.) Waltham, The Duke of 07:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge, merge, merge! And with regard to the original topic, #$%& pull quotes.  They are news style, and WP:NOT a magazine or newspaper. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 08:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Slim: italics best reserved for short bits of text (words as words, highlighting, marking items as titles, etc) because it's harder to read than roman face. MOS rightly says don't italicise a quotation just because it's a quotation. Tony   (talk)  08:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Italicization vs. quoting of words-as-words
I've raised this issue before, but apparently need to do so again. MOS itself, along with various language, rhetoric and linguistics articles (cf. pleonasm as one example), are hard to read and understand largely because of the use of italics instead of quotations marks for "words as words", against common practice (but in accordance with some - yet not all - style guides), while also "operator overloading" italics for many other purposes such as emphasis, titles, and foreign words/phrases. In the course of normal editing, it seems to me, if I may guesstimate based on experience and memory, that only maybe 20% of articles that need to make use of words-as-words italicize rather than quote them. I suggest that we move to a recommendation to quote instead of italicize them, unless doing so would make the article hard to read or understand, in which case use italics, but definitely use one or the other, favoring quotation marks (and double ones at that, for consistency). —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 08:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I need help sorting this one out. I agree with Stanton, but on the other hand, if you look at WT:V, you'll see one conversation after another that would be more difficult to follow if the distinction between "words as words" and things that need quotations were not followed.  When people get the distinction, it just makes the writing so much snappier.  On the other hand, the argumentation in talk-space is different material, and done by a set of people that doesn't at all represent a survey of WP readers.  It's wierd how often today the answer seems to me to be "We need an archive summary box for people who want to know more."  I would kind of like to point out this distinction in styles to regular MoS readers since it's so pervasive, and so important, in talk-space. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:02, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I've done more reading. I can't say that I agree with Stanton or with WP:MoS; I can only say that I need to spend some time gathering examples and opinions. - Dan (talk) 15:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Scriptural style
Some while back we finally got consensus on the idea that "the Bible" should be capitalized, even though it customarily is not among some Christians for reasons that aren't particularly explicable. Now, I wonder, can we get consensus on italicization of titles of religious works just like any other. It seems really, really weird to me that this exception would be made, especially given the highly subjective nature of the definition of "religious work" or "scripture". In offline style, I often see Koran (or Q'ran or whatever transliteration is preferred) italicized, and same goes for the Talmud. If we stick with non-italicization, what is the dividing line to be? Oahspe? the Iliad? Bagavad Gita? Tao Te Ching? At what exact point do we say "this is a religious work, and this one is not"? I say, just avoid the problem (which raises WP:POV and WP:NOR issues, in spades) entirely, and go with consistent italicization. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 06:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I like the flavor of not using MoS to push a POV. On the other hand, the answer to so many WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOR questions is, "Let the religions tell their own story in their own words."  If the Baptists want one thing, but the Methodists want another and most Presbyterians don't care, I've got no problem at all with italicization.  But is the opposition more organized, more consistent than that?  Does the Vatican take a strong position? Btw, for anyone reading, no matter what we think, don't blame us on this one; if there winds up being a consensus not to italicize, it would be because of policy (WP:NPOV etc) issues, which are out of our jurisdiction.  Go next door.  - Dan Dank55 (talk) 12:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The Iliad a religious text? Surely a line should be drawn for more border-line examples, but this one is completely counter-intuitive. Waltham, The Duke of 17:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it was. As Herodotus said, the Greeks knew the names and actions of their gods from Homer and Hesiod. The real point, however, is that Iliad is the title of the Iliad, or at least can be; but "Bible" is not a title, it's a proper name.


 * As usual, we should follow usage, not make up our own. I believe this to be that Bible is roman, and the individual books are italicized in some circumstances but not others: ("The Book of Job", and "In Job, Job himself says..." but "Job 3:14" and "to quote Job " (even when the words quoted are God's or Satan's)). Evidence would be more helpful than declamation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The Ancient Greeks may have used the Iliad in this way, but it was not a religious text in itself, because it was not written as such; it was an epic poem (and one centred on the adventures of mortal Achilles, for that matter).
 * Ah, the debate on the original function of epic poetry; the answer may not be beyond conjecture, but there is a lamentable shortage of evidence - complicated by the argument whether Greek and Sanskrit epics do in fact have an common IE ancestor. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * In any case, I do prefer current practice as it is. Mr Anderson is right: Bible is a proper name (something also evident from the word's use in snowclones). Waltham, The Duke of 03:49, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see now, Sept and Duke, it's not as simple as I thought. One clue is the "the" in front of Bible, Talmud, etc.  I still think that this has to be an NPOV discussion first before style even enters into it; perhaps it already has been.  I keep up at WP:V but I don't keep up at WP:NPOV; can anyone point to relevant talk pages or archives? - Dan (talk) 15:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Did anyone in this conversation express a distaste for evidence? Is there anyone in this conversation who doesn't regularly produce evidence, and lots of it?  I don't have a good feel for this one.  Like I said, "Let the religions tell their own story in their own words."  They sometimes have strong feelings about which words, which language, and even which fonts.  If this is the nature of the issue, then we can't decide that here, that's WP:NPOV and other policy.  This is the third time this general idea has come up in a week; I put a motion on the table that as soon as something is, or might be, a matter of policy instead of guidelines, we stop debate and send it next door, and let those guys (which includes some of us, of course) think about it.  That seems like the best use of wiki-people-resources to me, but I can see the other side if anyone wants to disagree. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

No-break spaces discussion continues at bugzilla
For people who missed Omegatron's announcement above, the link is https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13619. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 22:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Omegatron responded affirmatively in the bugzilla thread to, "Would anyone like me to survey among article reviewers and MoS editors to see if they see potential problems from a broad rule such as "number space letter never wraps"? He is not proposing a character of any kind; he's asking the developers to simply keep lines from wrapping at certain characters when they're displayed.  We could either go with a long complicated list such as User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/unitformatter.js, or we could try something more clever, such as "always prevent a wrap at (number)(space)(letter), with the following exceptions".  So, this is the survey, do we have a preference?  (Also asking at WP:WGA). - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Reply to your comment at bugzilla (because we really don't need to be arguing over MOSNUM at bugzilla): How is "9999 bottles" a "compound item" like 19 kg? Can you point me to something in the archives that supports that?  It's not at MOSNUM. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 13:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah. I don't know what "compound item" means, then.  The wording should be clarified. — Omegatron (talk) 16:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you're right, it should be. Certainly it doesn't mean that "2008 we" is a compound term, as in "In 2008 we had a great year."  Most numbers followed by letters in WP will not be compound terms by any definition.  Hopefully, the WT:MOSNUM folks will help us out, I showed them that link to the .js list of symbols you mentioned and asked for input. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:08, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I guess that should be wrapped, but it would normally be "In 2008, we". I think "900 bottles" probably shouldn't be wrapped, though, for the same reason that "900 kg" shouldn't be. — Omegatron (talk) 16:11, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine, make the example "The weather of 2008 remained". The same point applies; we should break after 2008 if that is where line end comes; and not doing so may well produce inferior layout. I presume this is especially likely if we are dealing with a large integer and a long word: "1274770137409 factorizes". This is a question of balance, of course. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Changing the renderer in this way will fix most of the situations where nbsp is needed. While it will produce some layout quicks as a side effect, it should substantially reduce the need to add nbsp everywhere. You said before the "minor collateral damage" may be worth it. Gimmetrow 18:30, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That proposal would in many cases make breaks in improper places more likely rather than less likely.
 * But mostly, why does the MoS call for an nbsp in "ninety-nine&amp;nbsp;bottles"? It didn't in the old rules, before the wording was changed with no consensus. There's no reason whatsoever to prevent a line break there.


 * Second, for those "compound items", why is it only the space between "numerical and non-numerical elements" that is addressed in the MoS? In most such "compound items", it is far more important to prevent a break within the numerical elemente (e.g., in "0.453&amp;nbsp;592&amp;nbsp;37 kg" or in "6&amp;nbsp;3/8 inches" than it is to prevent a break between the numerical and non-numerical elements.  It is also far more important to prevent a space within the non-numerical elements such as "3.7 J&amp;nbsp;mol−1 or in "85 sq&amp;nbsp;ft" than it is to prevent a break between the numerical and non-numerical elements.


 * But, like I said, the Bugzilla proposal will make it more likely to result in a break between "sq" and "ft" if it puts a nonbreaking space after the number "85". And anything that would deal with both of them is something far more complex than what has been proposed at Bugzilla.


 * The other problem is those short-sighted editors who think the most complex measurements we will be dealing with are the "19 km" discussed above. Nobody's going to complain much if we put a non-breaking space in it, even those who don't think one is necessary there.  But why in the world should the MoS call for a non-breaking space in "150,000,000 kilometres" (which is used on Wikipedia)?  Why would we want to prevent a break between the numerical and non-numerical elements there?  If we are going to do that, why don't we also prevent a break between any noun, and any adjectives which precede it? For example, "green&amp;nbsp;jacket" when we talk about the Masters. How are those "compound items" any different?  That would make just as much sense (0&nbsp:= 0).  Gene Nygaard (talk) 21:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

And for this discussion, I just want to reiterate that false matches (or missing matches) are not a big deal. The worst thing that can happen is a line wraps or doesn't wrap when it's not supposed to or supposed to. We should try to come up with a good system for recognizing the right circumstances, but please don't block this from being implemented altogether just because of a few corner cases. We can always override the automatic behavior with explicit nbsp entities and nowiki tags:

« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word »« word » — Omegatron (talk) 16:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * To get this exactly right, whatever that is, would take some work. I propose the following as a good-enough solution: the MediaWiki software should only insert a no-break space when it renders the html if one of 20 to 30 abbreviations (such as "ft" or "sq") is preceded either by a number, or by one of those abbreviations, or by special characters (such as the multiplication dot that's recommended in the SI spec at http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/).  There seems to be a difference of opinion currently on whether "200,000 millimetres" should break or not; we shouldn't let that torpedo this proposal.  It's easy enough to add "millimetres" to the mix if that's desired.  I don't have an answer for how to handle "200 000" (i.e. 200,000 in the U.S.).  We have been instructed not to think about server performance, but if for some reason that's an issue, then only apply this rule to articles that are rated B or higher. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 22:06, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm most concerned to see the increasing use of non-breaking spaces between such items as 25 cities. As Anderson points out, the downside is the risk of inferior layout—a stretching of interword spacing if your screen size catches it. So while I support non-breaking spaces between values and unit abbreviations (i.e., "symbols") I think the current wording in MOS needs revision to prevent overkill. Tony   (talk)  06:39, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. We should go back to a rule applicable to unit symbols, before Tony1 changed it last July.  I'd come to accept that, even though I don't think it's always necessary in that case either.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 11:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The following information may or may not be helpful. Use at your own risk. I have only considered units of 1 or 2 roman letters, since there are few common units that are longer, and the ones that are longer will not look so cryptic by themselves at the beginning of a line; this excludes the SI units "rad" (radians), "mol" (moles) and "kat" (katal), and a few U.S. units. We may want to include all the greek letters, especially omega, and the degree symbol. The sheer number of these, and the fact that it would be a real plus if most editors can easily memorize when a rule will apply and when it won't, suggests that we might perhaps want to simplify. We might use only a set of more commonly used units; or we might say that the rule would apply to all 1- and 2-letter words, or all 1- and 2-letter words with the exception of certain common English words. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Derived from http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-2/table3.html: A, Bq, F, g, m, cd, C, Gy, H, Hz, J, lm, lx, M, N, Pa, S, s, sr, Sv, T, V, W, Wb.
 * Possible prefixes in front of any of these: da, h, k, M, G, T, d, c, m, µ, n, p. Others are less common.
 * Derived from http://www.onlineconversion.com/article_US_units.htm: bu, dr, ft, gr, in, lb, mi, oz, pk, pt, qt, rd, t, yd.
 * Others I can think of, including units from Bobbiewik's page: ac, B, cc, cu, dB, dy, fl, hp, hr, kn, kt, sq, yr.

Whatever you decide, please don't debate this to death and prevent it from being implemented altogether. — Omegatron (talk) 15:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It makes you hate physics, all this, doesn't it? The entire alphabet is used in five different ways just to cover all these units, their multiples, their sub-multiples, their variants, their variants' multiples...
 * In any case, I definitely agree to using hard spaces between numerical values and abbreviations, and between the elements of abbreviations of more words than one. I am not that knowledgeable in scientific notation, but this makes sense, so I am supporting. I also think that if numbers are written with spaces instead of commas (which looks weird to me), then these numbers oughtn't to break in any way, so hard spaces should be used as well. I am not sure about the full names of units, but I think I lean slightly towards using hard spaces—it is better for the reader, and it creates consistency, as in many cases the elements are joined by hyphens (e.g. 24-foot ladder). I don't know about what's going on with dates; I believe dates should remain whole, and that autoformatting should include hard spaces. Other than that... I'm afraid that a lot of discussion will go into this. Waltham, The Duke of 23:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I understand, Duke, but it seems to me that the no-break space debate gets its legitimacy from the Principle of least astonishment, which says that user interfaces are good when people find things in the places they expect to find them, and bad when something in the interface makes the person stop and go, "Huh, what's that?" When a person's eye is running down a page, if the first word on a line is "mm" or "Hz", that's an example of a bad interface, because the apparent typo catches the person's eye, and may make them waste time looking at the end of the previous sentence to see what's going on, before they go back to skimming the article for whatever they were looking for.  So this is an issue for all Wikipedians, not just us science geeks.
 * It will be hard to write rules if we try to cover every unit, there are so many. But I don't even think we should, because the same principle that makes "mm" odd at the start of a line also makes "IA" (Iowa, in the U.S.) odd at the beginning of a line.  We should instead make a list of all the one- and two-letter words that do not look odd enough at the beginning of a line to catch someone's eye, and try to get the bugzilla folks to implement html rendering which does allow those to wrap.  We probably need more data before we can figure out which 3-letter words don't look strange at the beginning of a line; I suggest we postpone that discussion until we've deployed and tested a solution for one- and two-letter words. - Dan (talk) 17:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)