Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 13

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 10Archive 11Archive 12Archive 13Archive 14Archive 15→Archive 17

°C-ute

Please see Talk:Cute (Japanese band) where it is argued that this guideline says we should name the article °C-ute -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 02:06, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I see what happened now. There are no reliable sources that refer to the subject as "Cute" so per this very guideline where it says "choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)" we should not use "Cute" because it is not used by the general public.—Ryulong (琉竜) 20:46, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

RfC at Template:Trademark

Hello. An RFC in Template talk:Trademark § Edit request on 8 December 2012 requires additional input from community. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 15:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Using trademark symbols in quotes

The "General rules" section says

Do not use the ™ and ® symbols, or similar, in either article text or citations, unless unavoidably necessary for context (for instance, to distinguish between generic and brand names for drugs).

If "in citations" means "do not use them in references when you're giving the title of the reference or a quotation from the reference", this seems like an odd rule; writers of press releases, Web pages, etc. are not bound by Wikipedia's style manual, so it doesn't make sense to me to remove trademark symbols when quoting the title or body of a work. Is that really what is intended and, if so, why? Guy Harris (talk) 07:11, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Important RFC at WT:TITLE

Editors will be interested in this RFC at Wikipedia talk:Article titles, to confirm the roles of WP:TITLE and MOS in determining article titles. The question affects the smooth running of many discussions on Wikipedia, including RMs. The more participation, the better.

NoeticaTea? 07:11, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Hoo boy!

Apparently, more than a few things have happened here since I stopped editing actively. If you peruse the archives, you'll see that I have a pretty strong opinion about matters like this, but I'm less inclined to stick around and argue about them. I actually did start working on a broader explanation of the rationale behind this guideline, and I put it here:User:Croctotheface/MOSTM/Essay. I'm not sure if anyone who disagrees would be convinced by any of the arguments there, and I know some of them were raised already, but I figure there's little harm in pointing it out.

Lastly, I want to point out that in nearly every single case, mainstream publications standardize much more than we do. Basically every time someone says, "NOBODY BUT WIKIPEDIA DOES IT THIS WAY," that statement is just factually incorrect. Croctotheface (talk) 09:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Forcing UN-capitalization is wrong, and not widely-used

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The third bullet under Trademarks#General_rules says:

avoid: REALTOR®, TIME, KISS
instead, use: Realtor, Time, Kiss

In combination with the other rules, this seems to mean that all-caps words or parts of words that are not acronyms need to have only their first character capitalized, regardless of common usage or trademark. I contend that this is un-necessary and wrong. To anyone familiar with them in print, it looks like we made a mistake and forgot to capitalize the way the subject themselves does. In some cases, like the examples "KISS" and "TIME", the capitalization clarifies what we're talking about.

The iThings and eThings exception implies that we do care something about preserving common usage, so why not with all-caps?

Further, widespread usage in WP contradicts the rule. Until today, when User:Trivialist chose to "fix" these after I found them for the purpose of arguing against doing so, the following 32 articles showed capitalization according to the subject's own, sometimes widely-known, usage. I found them by looking through category lists of just a couple thousand articles, suggesting it's quite widespread. If you include links to such articles, "fixing" could involve tens or hundreds of thousands of articles.

Pasadena Symphony and POPS PRISM RAM Mobile Data Sony CLIÉ PEG-SL10
SYS Technologies RED/BLACK concept TEMPEST BLACKER
FALCON (cable system) LINCOLN MAYA-1 REMBRANDT-1 (cable system)
ANTILLAS I RIOJA-1 (cable system) ULYSSES (cable system) ALINE Systems
ChemADVISOR, Inc. KAOS Worldwide ReproMAX SiBEAM
Motorola 4LTR Motorola AURA Motorola FONE Motorola KRZR
Motorola MING Motorola PEBL Motorola RAZR Motorola RAZR2
Motorola RIZR Motorola ROKR Motorola SLVR Motorola ZINE

I propose that the standard be changed to say that we try to replicate existing usage when it involves only capitalization. This eliminates the need for the inexplicable iThing exception, the camel-case ambiguity, etc.

—[AlanM1 (talk)]— 21:10, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. We should not replicate pretentious capitalization. Trademarks are designed to grab attention, and that's fine, but Wikipedia is designed to be easily readable. We should write in standard English whenever it is reasonably practical to do so. Most trademarks should have the same capitalization as other nouns. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
It looks to be not as bad as AlanM1 says; many of those are already redirects to titles that conform better to our guidelines (oh, I see he notes that they were just recently fixed; that's OK, too). Others are acronyms that are never found in sources except as acronyms, so those are OK, too. We do try to choose from among existing styles. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to talk about Ithings, Ethings, ITHINGS, ETHINGS, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
I specifically excluded acronyms, as those are allowed in all-caps. I don't understand why referring to RAZR as Razr, or KISS as Kiss, is any less wrong than referring to iPod as Ipod – to someone who works in the wireless telecom or music field (or pays any attention to the subject), they look just as wrong. Given the timeframe involved, it's almost certain that the user that "fixed" all of them yesterday did no research as to actual usage by "reliable sources" because the MOS says he didn't have to. It's clear that the original creator of those articles (and likely many hundreds/thousands more) took care to use the known capitalization of the subject, and I don't believe (from reading the vast discussions in the past) that there is a consensus on this rule – certainly not enough to allow unilateral changing of existing articles. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 15:30, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
As I have argued on this page before, I agree with AlanM1 that it is inconsistent to impose our own editorial rules on most forms of idiosyncratic upper/lower casing, but make an exception for one-letter lowercase prefix names. Readability is, I suppose, a concern, but IMHO, in an encyclopedia, it's more important to be typographically accurate about the names that were given by the originators of the things we are describing in articles. Regards, Letdorf (talk) 19:35, 13 August 2012 (UTC).
Not if the companies are being inaccurate themselves. Most of them use frivolous capitalization to be eye-catching and trendy. Why should we do their advertising for them? We should use correct English. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:15, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
I contend that this is about names of things, which, like names of people, are not "correct English" (nor are they incorrect English). In modern times, we try not to change people's names as long as they can be written in Latin (or whatever) script and reasonably pronounced. We don't force Mobil (Oil) to be written "Mobile". Why should capitalization rules apply to names when grammar and spelling do not? —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 03:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Shouldn't an encyclopedia document and acknowledge the fact that a company or organisation chose a frivolous, eye-catching or trendy way to present their trademarks or other proprietary nomenclature? Is it the role of an encyclopedia to pass judgement on what is a right and proper way to name things? You may find such things offensive, but isn't it the case that Wikipedia is not censored? Regards, Letdorf (talk) 19:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC).
Why not just follow the treatment of the name in secondary sources? I'm actually surprised to see "Razr" elsewhere; I had thought that would have been an easy one to opt for all-caps, but there it is. And compare the use of "iPod" by the same source. Imposing consistency either way (standardizing all capitalization according to abstract grammatical rules, or following each and every branded stylization of a brand name) would seem a foolish thing to do, and one that would take us out of step with how reliable sources actually cover these topics. postdlf (talk) 19:40, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Darkfrog24 says: "We should not replicate pretentious capitalization. Trademarks are designed to grab attention" and also "Most of them use frivolous capitalization to be eye-catching and trendy. Why should we do their advertising for them?" ← that is fine and all, but saying "always use standard English formatting" is not exactly what I think is best in every circumstance. The reason is because it pretty much ignores everything at WP:TITLE―right now, it is basically saying, "use standard English formatting, disregarding any concerns related to common usage in secondary sources, recognizability, etc." I think it is much more sensible to follow formatting in secondary sources than to try to impose some hard rules across all pages. For this reason, I propose a change to the third point:
  • Proposed text: Even if a trademark owner considers a certain (nonstandard) formatting "official," defer to secondary sources and the guidelines in WP:TITLE [regarding recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness, consistency, and everything else] to decide which formatting to use.

Since this page does not seem to be frequently visited, I am going to attempt to draw attention to this by making a bold edit through WP:BRD. Of course, since this might possibly be a major change, it can be reverted by anyone who disagrees with this for the duration of the discussion, although I urge that there do be more discussion here about it. How many here support or oppose this change?--108.20.144.127 (talk) 01:13, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

  • Sounds right to me. My primary objection is that Kiss (instead of KISS) simply looks wrong, as do most of the changes at the top of the article that were made when I pointed out they were inconsistent with the existing rule, at least to people familiar with the particular topic area. I believe most other sources try to stick to the original namer's capitalization scheme for clarity and recognizability – WP shouldn't be any different. For example, Google "Motorola" "RAZR" to see 80–90% RAZR, and some of the Razr hits are from WP or its mirrors. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 03:37, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Having read the change, I disagree with the last line "In most cases, common usage prefers standard English formatting." I don't believe this is true, and it should be up to the user to do their due diligence to determine what common usage is. In fact the first line "Even if...." implies that common usage will be contrary to the namer's (trademark holder's) usage. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 03:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Since a week has passed by without anyone (including the reverting editor) expressing an opposing opinion, I am therefore reinstating the edit previously made. There appears to be some concerns that AlanM1 has made over its precise wording; I guess that the details in the wording could use a little adjustment.--192.5.110.4 (talk) 17:38, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
    Sorry if I missed this; too much stuff on my watch list. My opposing opinion was expressed in my edit summary when I reverted this change the first time. I don't see that this opposition has been addressed in any of the comments above. In past discussions I have seen on this page about trade marks, I have seen no consensus that WP:TITLE should override the actual trademark. Actually I believe that WP:TITLE should defer to this guideline in the case of trade marks, not the other way round, and this guideline should strive to respect the trade mark's actual formatting, using common sense judgment to determine when this isn't appropriate. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
    I should have been more succinct, too. My objection in the wording is simply that it is not neutral. I believe we should stick with the formatting used by the predominance of secondary sources, as long as it produces a title that is technically acceptable in WP (i.e. no unusual special characters, etc.). Where do we go from here? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:59, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
    I think Amatulic is right about not deferring to WP:TITLE. However, I do see adequate consensus for the other part: stick with secondary sources. Thus, here is a new re-wording to address Amatulic's concerns:
Even if a trademark owner considers a nonstandard) formatting "official," the title should follow how it is most commonly used in secondary sources independent of the trademark holder:
Does this seem adequate?--192.5.110.4 (talk) 05:47, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
How about changing bullet 3 to: Follow the capitalization most commonly used in secondary sources (e.g. Motorola RAZR and KISS)."?
That sounds simple enough, and the page has been changed accordingly. I think that this change has enough agreement to be considered consensus.--192.5.110.4 (talk) 22:00, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I have reverted that change to the guideline. This is a bigger issue than it might seem. In particular, it is not sufficient or wise to appeal to principles that are suitable at WP:TITLE (looking directly at "reliable sources"). This is a mater of Wikipedia style, including the styling of article titles, of course. The title is as much a part of the article as any other of its elements. Styling is the province of Wikipedia's manual of style, which draws its principles by consensual discussion from rather special reliable sources: major style guides, manuals, dictionaries, and the like.
If this discussion had been advertised as an RFC, I would have joined it. It was not; so many interested editors missed the fact that such a change was on the table. Please make an RFC: one that is well-structured, informatively advertised, and neutral, as required by WP:RFC and bearing in mind the discretionary sanctions that ArbCom has imposed on all MOS development and discussions (see notice at the top of this page).
☺
NoeticaTea? 02:15, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I would have reverted the change as well, if Noetica had not got to it first. Besides Noetica's points, the examples are just plain incorrect. Motorola Razr is not generally rendered in all-caps in secondary sources; see recent examples in ABC News, The Age, and India Today, to cite just a few. Kiss is also not generally rendered in all-caps; see recent examples in the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and Billboard. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 02:20, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
@Paul: That does not appear to be true, as cited earlier. A google of "kiss" "gene simmons" -wiki results in hits of a ~3:2 ratio of KISS:kiss in the first ~50 hits. A google of "Motorola razr" -wiki gets ~4:1 RAZR:Razr in the first ~50 hits. A google of "tempest" "nsa" "eavesdropping" gets ~7:3 TEMPEST:Tempest in the first ~50 hits. just plain incorrect is just plain incorrect.
@Noetica: Nobody's trying to hide anything here. I posted in a couple of places (WT:MOS and somewhere I forget) to try to get attention to this discussion, but I didn't want to be accused of canvassing or spamming. I agree this is a big deal, because WP should look professional. My biggest problem with Kiss and Razr (as it would be with IPOD or imac if WP style forced them to be shown that way) is that they simply "look wrong" to anyone used to seeing them in print elsewhere, and that makes WP look bad and unreliable, which is bad for everyone who works hard on it, giving fuel to our critics. I'll try to put together an RfC soon, unless someone more experienced would like to do so (please?). —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:25, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
AlanM1, try your searches in Google News, rather than in Google. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 04:00, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
AlanM1: I'm sure you are acting in good faith. If you want to initiate the RFC, I will be happy to advise on the wording and the procedural aspects, so that everything is presented neutrally and informatively. Too many RFCs grow tangled and futile; it is good to be vigilant from the start. I have some experience with managing them. You can show me a draft at my talkpage if you like, and I will happily assist in keeping the whole thing orderly and readable.
NoeticaTea? 11:16, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
For the record, I would have reverted it, too. WP style is not generally based on following "most common" style of others. That's why we have a style guide. Dicklyon (talk) 04:11, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Capitalization

NO CONSENSUS
There does not currently appear to be a consensus here among established editors at this time. --Nouniquenames

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should trademarks with non-standard capitalization follow standard English capitalization (defined in style guides, etc.) or follow capitalization as used in (reliable, independent) secondary sources? 192.5.110.4 (talk) 19:33, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Survey (capitalization RFC)

Original votes and comments only. Follow the standard, readable format. Please: all responses and discussion in the discussion subsection, below.

  • As used in secondary sources As of now, our guidelines is closest to the APA style guideline when it comes to the capitalization of trademarks. There are many reasons to have a manual of style on matters such as punctuation and sentence structure due to the fact that reliable secondary sources may not get these things correct all or even a majority of the time. However, there is something deliberate in the act of creating non-standard capitalization/formatting in trademarks, and therefore nonstandard capitalization/formatting should not be considered a mistake. I believe that for this reason, the capitalization of trademarks is one area where English is a living language that cannot adequately be specified through rule books. Sometimes, these usages of non-standard capitalization are merely for decoration in logos and do not gain widespread usage―of course, and we don't want to replicate "KRAFT Macaroni" or "macy*s" or other ridiculous things that were only for decorating logos. However, when they do gain widespread usage, then I believe we should follow how they are widely recognized. Commonly given examples of non-standard formatting include eBay, iPod, etc., but there are also others, like ooVoo, AutoCAD, M/A-COM Technology Solutions, inSSIDer, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, etc., and I believe that to force standard capitalization on them is a very bad idea.--192.5.110.4 (talk) 19:33, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Follow standard English capitalization. This is a matter of how Wikipedia style is applied, not a matter of following the styling choices made by others. MOS, of which WP:MOSTM is an important component, defers to "reliable sources" in the way that is appropriate for any manual of style: not directly, but by appeal to general principles that Wikipedia adopts, in the interest of clear and accurate presentation to readers. The reliable sources for MOS guidelines are major style guides and manuals, dictionaries, and similar resources. If we call for direct appeal to usage in particular sources, we spark interminable discussions that must be replicated at many talkpages: What are reliable sources for the styling of this or that trademark? How are their preferences to be weighted? What happens on Wikipedia when preferences in the sources change (making further analysis and discussion necessary)? On the other hand, with the current provision most styling decisions for trademarked words and phrases will be easy and efficient. Where they are not (perhaps in cases for which "standard English capitalization" is not well defined), then there can be recourse to discussion at an article's talkpage. It may sometimes happen that a capitalization guideline needs to be changed, to reflect longer trends in common usage (at WP:MOSCAPS, I mean); but nothing of that sort seems to arise for the present issue. If it does arise, that technical matter should be dealt with independently of this RFC.
    NoeticaTea? 23:27, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
  • No change: We do not need a hard-and-fast rule on this; things are working fine as they are. Where a trademark is overwhelmingly done a certain way ("eBay"), it is done that way here. Where everyone ignores the actual typography of the trademark ("Macy's" vs. "macy's"), it's done that way. This should be determined on an article-by-article basis. (Note that we do have a hard-and-fast rule against trying to duplicate cutesy typographic effects, like the color scheme of "eBay", the color scheme and backwards "R" of "Toys R Us", or the star in place of an apostrophe in "Macy's".) The only MoS concern really raised is that when a trademark begins with a lower case letter, and is used in an article, then either sentences must be written to not begin with that trademark, or it must be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence. This is not a proper English sentence: "eBay is an online auction site." Same goes for trademarks that begin with non-spelled-out numbers, like "4Chan". — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:59, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
  • As used in secondary sources: We should follow the majority of secondary sources. If there is no clear majority, we should default to the creator's capitalization.
  • Wikipedia should look professional. Part of that is following standard publishing practice. I believe that standard practice, in most cases, is to try to follow the capitalization of the creator of a product or service, and cited various examples in the earlier discussion.
  • There are already exceptions in the existing rule for iSomethings and eSomethings, for the reason above. I don't know why it should be limited to these particular naming schemes only.
  • These are proper nouns. Names of products and services are proper nouns, just like those of cities, people, works of art, and bands. "Standard English capitalization" does not apply.
  • We already ignore the existing rule. In the original discussion, I cited many existing articles that follow the creator's capitalization scheme, and estimated that there may be many thousands that do so. Editors already want to do it this way, at least until someone realizes it doesn't follow the MOS and moves the articles (as happened when I cited the examples above). The MOS should clearly be changed based on the large number of editors that already decided it was wrong.
—[AlanM1(talk)]— 06:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Discussion (capitalization RFC)

  • Noetica: It is true that calling for usage in particular sources will "spark interminable discussions" whereas simply following how this guideline is written now is "easy and efficient." However, just because it is a more easily-reached decision, doesn't mean that it is a better one. The current guideline results in pages that are significantly more difficult to identify when people come across it in Google searches and other things like that because people have a particular capitalization in mind when they are looking for it. It may seem to be a bit of work to determine exactly which capitalization is best, but that doesn't mean we should just skip the work and cut corners in sacrifice of making Wikipedia better.--192.5.110.4 (talk) 12:08, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
  • SMCandlish: Actually, this is not true. For example, the page Flow (video game) was not changed to FlOw despite the overwhelming usage of "FlOw" in secondary sources, due to people citing this guideline. I would suspect many other examples of this as well. I do think that this is something that needs to be fixed.--129.22.42.117 (talk) 00:49, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • ... including the examples I cited at the start of the section, which were promptly moved according to the existing rule – not what I was trying to accomplish by pointing them out :( —[AlanM1(talk)]— 06:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
  • In response to some of the above, "interminable discussions" are an inevitable part of any open forum, and their mere presence is a blatant invitation for such. Regarding this subject in specific, I do not see how a rule such as this can be seen as a way of preventing controversy rather than creating it. An identifying mark that is made up of alphabetic characters (IE: a name) is still the mark specifically identifying the company, item, person, etc, and stands in form as it was registered, given, etc by the person/people who assigned the mark. It can not be properly referenced by taking this combination of alphabetic characters and changing their formatting in any way, because the result is no longer the same mark, regardless of whether or not it can be read to be pronounced the in the same manner (as would be the only apparent reasoning behind allowing this sort of change). I refer to some other comments with regard to the fact that the formatting, in some cases, is beneficial or even necessary to readily clarify the specific subject matter without further lengthy text. This all very clearly means that referring to a company, product, or person by use of a series of alphabetic characters that are not formatted in exactly the same manner as they were formatted when the alphabetic mark was assigned is incorrect, and that stating that the modified form is indeed the "name" of the company, product, or person, is actually the passing on of misinformation (even if the correct form is referred to once in parentheses at the top of a very long article that repeatedly uses the incorrectly-modified form, presumably simply so the point of its otherwise non-use "can't be argued"). Given that this rule does not only encourage, but indeed attempt to enforce the presentation of misinformation, it would seem that it is contrary to Wikipedia's main function. That is, of course, assuming Wikipedia's main function is to attempt to provide clear and correct information, rather than to attempt to tailor information to the taste of those at the top level of Wikipedia's ownership 75.84.15.136 (talk) 02:23, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Status (capitalization RFC)

It seems the RFC hasn't attracted any further attention. Here's what I believe to be a summary of the comments above. If I've mis-interpreted anybody's position, I apologize, and please move your sig to the appropriate category:

  • The following editors prefer the existing guideline, which uses "English capitalization" rules for products and services whose creators have chosen a different capitalization scheme, regardless of how it is used in secondary sources (except for iThings and eThings, and acronyms):
  • The following editors oppose the existing rule, and would prefer capitalization as used by a product's creator (primary source) and secondary sources:
  • These editors have views that don't fall neatly on either side:
    • — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. (believes no change to be necessary, but also agrees with the use of secondary sources' style)
    • Trivialist (talk) (used the existing rule to change the non-compliant examples I found at the start of all this, but later agreed with the bold edit by 108.20.144.127 (possibly on procedural grounds – to attract attention to the question))

Now what? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I think you can include me as supporting the "existing guideline". I said we "try to choose from among existing styles", but we try to choose the one that's closest to normal English and our capitalization and punctuation style. Dicklyon (talk) 03:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 Done. Moved. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 11:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
You can add me to the list of editors who'd prefer to give primary and secondary sources a higher priority than blindly applying our own style guide rules in regard to capitalization and spelling of products, at least when these primary and secondary sources are consistent and the original name can be represented in Latin letters. (Actually, I planned to add a section in the discussion above as well, but never found the time.) At the minimum we should follow what is already stated in the guideline, "editors should choose among styles already in use (not invent new ones)". If we would, article titles like this Bap (German band) could not occur (Background: The band's name is BAP, not Bap, and it is consistently used this way in all primary and secondary publications in the past some thirty years, including foreign language sources and in all other-language-Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia is the sole exception, and we are actively inventing a new form here as some people read this into the style guide). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 Done. Added. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 11:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Forward

What prompted me to start this discussion was the move by another user of 32 articles to titles that conform with the piece of the MOS in question, only upon my mentioning those as examples of articles that disagree with the MOS (IMO correctly). What's supposed to happen now? Is someone really justified if they want to go through and move thousands of non-conforming articles to the "correct" (and IMO poorly-appearing) capitalization? It seems that the lack of consensus should cut both ways – there is no agreement one way or the other, and the MOS should reflect that, no? I would like to move the example articles back to their original titles, since there was no consensus for (or against) the rule by which they were moved. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:42, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

When there's no consensus for a proposal to change a guideline, then the guideline does not get changed. If someone moved a non-conforming article title to standard formatting and capitalization, they could cite this guideline as support for that move. If there was a reason that it was controversial move, then it should probably go through a WP:RM discussion. Just as a further note: This guideline has been in effect for years and has withstood many challenges during that time, but there has never been enough support to change the general guidance of "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules." Further evidence that this has broad support across the project is that editors frequently cite "per MOS:TM" in their rationales at requested-move discussions, suggesting they believe that the guidance on this page makes sense to them. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 21:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
The problem, though, is that unlike other MOS guidelines, there seems to be a significant number of people that either don't know about, or choose to ignore, this guideline, as evidenced by the number of articles that I was able to quickly find with non-compliant names. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 18:05, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I also should add that I don't find Matthiaspaul's argument all that persuasive. It's the same sort of arguments we had a few years ago at Talk:Deus (band). He says that all sources other than Wikipedia refer to the band as "BAP" not "Bap" even though it is not an acronym. Yet the first source I checked, Billboard, which tends to be fairly careful about this sort of thing, refers to the band as "Bap". See here for example. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 21:59, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

This is a very important point. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a whole lot of styles that our MOS would standardize but the AP or NY Times style guide would not. There was a line in the RFC that says something to the effect of, "Isn't standard publishing practice to defer to the subject?" No, of course it isn't. Croctotheface (talk) 09:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Since you are referring to my example, this is in fact the first time I see the band's name written as "Bap" ever (that is, in more than thirty years). I'm deeply astonished (as I searched Google as well somewhen last year). I guess, one should never say never. ;-)
But realistically a single occurrence (or even a few of them) will not change the substance of my argument. It could be a typo (not in your example), a transmission error, the author could have been influenced by reading Wikipedia's article already, or he just didn't care to research and present the band's name correctly, I don't know. Digging deeper I now even found a few more hits for "Bap" in online documents, but still these remain very isolated occurrences (and it is well possible, that the English Wikipedia is already influencing them). I could not find a single occurrence of "Bap" in printed publications (mostly books). All other language editions of Wikipedia use "BAP" rather than "Bap", as does the vast majority of people.
"Bap" is certainly not any kind of established or widely accepted form to write that band's name. Still the English Wikipedia ignores all this evidence and boldly invents and even enforces a different form for the sole purpose of complying with its Manual of Style (instead of improving the manual accordingly, as it is obviously lacking in this respect).
We are here to document and describe what exists and as it exists, not to invent or interpret stuff. If a style-guide has the power to override our core principle, if language is allowed to overrule identity, something is going wrong, and it should be corrected, or things will become Kafkaesque. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:11, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
I and others have addressed the "language/identity" issue here and elsewhere. There is a distinction between style and content. For the question of this particular band, the best thing for me would be to see what style English language sources tend to use for the band. Our article on them doesn't cite any, and every source I found searching Google News is in German, so that makes it difficult.
Also, to be clear, you acknowledge that the style we use does exist in sources, yes? You use the word "invent" to describe using "Bap" instead of "BAP," but that doesn't seem to apply. Croctotheface (talk) 16:42, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that this is better framed not as "change a guide line" or "not change a guideline" but rather to "have the guideline one way" or "have the guideline the other way." When there is no consensus, I think it is better to have it a middle ground, since "no consensus" does not automatically mean that what is currently in use is what is to be decided on.--192.5.110.4 (talk) 03:42, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it's also worth pointing out that even if a dozen or so editors here did reach a consensus to just go all-out for press release/defer-to-the-company-every-time style, it would never last. Some of the cases might not be important enough for people to care about, and "Ke$ha" or whatnot would stay, but "PGA TOUR" or "TIME" magazine just wouldn't fly with a wide swath of editors, especially those with experience writing for publications that follow AP style. Croctotheface (talk) 09:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks/Archive_13&oldid=1137422563"