User:Ben MacDui/Fauna draft

I often contribute to articles that incorporate references to both flora and different animal taxa. Consistent presentation of the species names with respect to capitalisation is a challenge as WP:MOS

a) allows different projects to use different systems and

b) includes various other complicating guidelines.

• MOS diff per talk 20.8.08
• Discussion at MOS following removal on 25.5.10 - agreed phraseology is now at WP:MOSCAPS
• Wikipedia talk:Consensus/RfC in June 2010.

Pre-existing policy

MOS is clear that:

"Scientific names for genera and species are italicized, with a capital initial letter for the genus but no capital for the species;"

MOS also believes that:

"Common (vernacular) names of flora and fauna should be written in lower case—for example, oak or lion."

So far so good.

MOS then bumbles on:

"There are a limited number of exceptions to this:

1.Where the common name contains a proper noun, such as the name of a person or place, that proper noun should be capitalized; for example, The Amur tiger may have a range of over 500 square kilometres, or The Roosevelt elk is a subspecies of Cervus canadensis."

Note than an 'Amur Tiger' as opposed to a 'tiger' is not really a common name at all. Besides, who is the arbiter of 'common'? I dare say golden lion tamarins are common enough in some parts of the world, but in Auchtermuchty they are surely 'Golden Lion Tamarins' (or perhaps 'Golden lion tamarins' or even 'golden lion Tamarins').

Then all coherence is lost when we encounter the problem identified above:

"2. For specific groups of organisms, there are specific rules of capitalization based on current and historic usage among those who study the organisms. These should ordinarily be followed:" and "Insofar as there is any consensus among Wikipedia editors about capitalization of common names of species, it is that each WikiProject can decide on its own rules for capitalization. "

WP:MAMMAL tries its best to explain:

"The issue of the capitalization of the common names of mammal species is unresolved on Wikipedia and our pages are inconsistent. A large majority of reliable sources do not capitalize and thus there is a strong descriptive argument against doing so. Capitalization will often not "feel" right for editors for this reason. Conversely, because species names are proper nouns there is also a strong argument in favour of capitalization. Upper case usage is well-established with Aves species, for example. There are actually three possibilities in capitalizing:

1. Never capitalize.

2. Always capitalize.

3. Capitalize when the species itself is referred to, as this is proper noun usage, but not where the phraseology indicates a common noun. Thus: "The Tiger is a carnivore" but "three tigers were observed in the conservation area."

The third is most correct orthographically, but it is also the most difficult to maintain." No kidding.

MOS also says (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)#Capitalisation of common names of species):

"The Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae), also called the mopoke"….??

If it is 'Southern Boobook' surely it has to be 'Mopoke'.

MOS also says:

"In a hyphenated name, the part after the hyphen is not capitalised. For example, White-tailed deer, Red-winged Blackbird, Wilson's Storm-petrel."

Note the ludicrous inconsistency in the example used, arguably more glaring than the clarity the example offers.

What is a chap to do? There have been screeds of unresolved discussion with no resolution save that the Projects defend their divine rights. Users then randomly appear on articles editing capitals in and out and there is no overall guideline to say what is right and wrong. One of my favourite remarks on the subject is from Wikipedia talk:Footnotes: "Without a consistent style, as any professional publication has, Wikipedia reads like it was written by children. It's ironic that Wikipedians refer to each other as editors, because if there's anything Wikipedia is in desperate need of, it's an editor." (--JHP 04:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC))

Proposal

Under present protocols there seems to be very little point in requesting that the different projects agree with one another. Its obviously the best solution but it seems to have attempted numerous times with no success.

However there is no reason why articles that cover many different taxa should have to put with the shortcomings of this particular aspect of the wiki-menagerie.

The proposal is simply:

For articles incorporating a variety of taxa:

• piped links shall be used to create a consistency of appearance using title case per WP:BIRDS for species names.
• lower case shall be used for entries that are either very common (dog, cat) or are not species such as eagle or bilberry.

This has been used in various FA's and GA's without any complaint.

I accept that there are various possible solutions but this seems to me to be the best. Obviously I can't enforce criteria for any ensuing discussion, but I do think it would be helpful if editors entered the discussion with a view to putting the coherence of the encyclopedia first and their own project's policies second.

To be clear, I have no intention of running around amending existing articles in some kind of organised way. Nor am I proposing that individual projects change their policies.