Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 14

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Should we use a different descriptor besides "invented"?

I've been active to varying degrees on this talk page for a while. I remember when we put the "don't invent new ones" language in there. It was a compromise to clarify that individual editors should not make some style up themselves that doesn't exist in the sources. From what some people have said, though, this particular line may be creating issues out in "the field." Sometimes, when you have a guideline like this one that inspires a degree of reflexive dislike ("My favorite band is BAP, not Bap! I use a RAZR, not a Razr!"), editors will look to any language in the guideline that they think might give them an "out" to do what they want. It seems that "don't invent new styles" may be doing this here. Clearly, the style used by the New York Times and other major publications is not what we mean by an invented style. Perhaps we can just leave the "invented" stuff out, and instead go with some variation on, "Choose from among styles used in secondary sources"? Croctotheface (talk) 20:45, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I can support that.--New questions? 20:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

As I have stated previously (see above discussion), the only thing about this is that we should be clear about exactly what kinds of secondary sources we are using, and what does this mean if we can't find a secondary source that follows our exact guidelines in the "list of principles."--New questions? 20:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable.i also support.Lucia Black (talk) 20:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

At some point in the next few days, I'll look to make some changes along the lines of what you're suggesting that remove the "inventing" bit. The other questions you have should probably just be hashed out on a case-by-case basis. Croctotheface (talk) 20:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Manual Disambiguation vs. Trademark

Wikipedia allows the first letter to be lowercased, but what i find more out of place is the capital V in mid title since it doesnt seem to be any acronyym. However, thats not a big issue. The problem what i have with WP:Trademark is how inconsistent it seems. For example, the band "fun." (its more common and simple name is instead "Fun (band)" because the claim is it contradicts common english, yet somehow allow "Strawberry Panic!!" Now i can understand if it makes it difficult for sentence structure (one would assume the sentence ended on fun. And when it does two periods would be at the end.) But i think at least the article name should be "fun." regardless and add a notice (similar to how we add those notices like "X redirects here, for more info look at X (disambiguation)) to show why we cant use the common name in sentences structure.

For example:

Article name would be "fun."

The notice would say "Due to sentence structure issues, we cannot use the common name in sentence structure" or some thing similar to this.

Then the article begins as it as it normally does.Lucia Black (talk) 19:52, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that mentioning issues of style would be the way to go. We generally try to use standard English because it's easiest to read, but mention the style that the company/bad/whoever else prefers right up top so that readers see it and recognize it and know about it. That's what we've done here. As far as one band name versus another, I'm not familiar enough with those cases to say, but it's possible that the overall consensus of editors would be to use "Strawberry Panic" without the exclamation points, but that discussion never happened. It's also possible that they've discussed it and decided there were compelling reasons to use that style. Either way, I'm confident that Fun will do continue to do well however we style their name on Wikipedia. Croctotheface (talk) 06:29, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

you really provided no real answer other than "consensus knows best" but the reasoning behind it is what irritates me, ive seen other titles defy standard english, and im simply not buying "it defies standard english" because not all of it defies standard english, it just interferes with sentence structure. We currently have "Fun (Band)" for the current name despite "fun." Being the more common and simple name (and official, but thats just to make clear that its not an optional stylization).

I propose trademarked names to be allowed even if they defy standard english depending if a) the stylization is significantly more common than the other b)it is simpler and shorter over the alternative c) it would need disambiguation if they didnt use stylization.

And if this ever happened, they would still use the lesser version if interfered with readability. For example "fun." Would be the title of the article, however would continue to use "fun" throughout the article with a notice above (similar to the notices of disambiguation) that states "for sentence structure issues, the article will use its less common name to optimize readability" or something like that.

why should the article's title be the common usage and within prose at the same time if they can differ and can help avoid unnecessary disambiguation."Lucia Black (talk) 06:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that the project page does a pretty good job of explaining the rationale for why we do things this way and not some other way. I think it's important to remember that with all these weird cases, there are usually two or more styles that exist out there in sources. We have to pick one. There are reasons (even if you disagree, a consensus of editors think they're pretty compelling) not to simply defer to the trademark owner in making that choice.

I don't want to go back and forth on the issue. I'm not convinced that for a band name that's pronounced "fun," it is "simpler" to stylize the name as a proper noun that isn't capitalized and with a random period at the end. As far as what's more "common," you might be surprised if you do a lot of looking around. The New York Times, for example, seems to use the period but not the lowercase F.

But beyond that, we don't use a survey of publications because that would very likely result in a mishmash of styles based on unreliable and unscientific "polling" of sources. Now, your point about internal consistency is fair. There are cases out there where we use names that probably should be standardized but are not for whatever reason. But I don't think anyone, even someone like myself who really believes in the idea behind MOSTM, would want to have a "police force" going around and "fixing" these cases.

Finally, forgive me if I'm misreading the situation, but if your motivation is that you really like the band and want Wikipedia to be friendly to them, I'll reiterate that they're going to be just fine. There's no special animus toward them, just that they use a weird style and our MOS recommends against using it. In fact, it's precisely the sort of case that this guideline was designed to address. Croctotheface (talk) 07:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think a more natural assessment is in understanding the general purpose of article titles in general. First of all, we have Wikipedia:Article titles for a reason, and unlike this page, it is a policy, not a guideline. It is not a matter of "surveying publications," but rather, simply matters of recognizably and naturalness. So rather than thinking about polling which one is most common in publications, it is better to more simply think about which styles are most recognizable and which styles are most natural. Sometimes, the benefits of recognizably win out (for example, I would say that if a unique style in common usage disambiguates the title, it contributes a great amount towards recognizability), and sometimes the benefits of naturalness win out (for example, if there does exist a commonly used "unique style," but it looks a lot more natural in the normal style and it is still widely recognizable to readers that it is the page that they are looking for). For this purpose, I would say that the initial lowercase "f" does not play a large role in recognizability, but the period does. Therefore, I would recommend a title of "Fun."--New questions? 07:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it's important to note that this page is not meant to be a noticeboard for interpreting this guideline or the MOS in general. I suspect that this has been discussed at the article talk page already. If nothing else, the fact that we have three people here proposing three different styles should indicate that trying to have set of bright line rules that govern every single case is neither possible nor desirable. Croctotheface (talk) 08:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Lowercasing the first letter isnt an issue as many articles follow that without raising issues of standard english. I personally believe wikipedia is very welcomed to lowercasing in titles. Its more about the period at the end. And although, i personally enjoy the music of the band and consider myself a fan, the reasons are not to pay respect to them. They are merely an example that encomasses many other articles. My reasons are that the stylized nature of a name on the title is much simpler, more common, and more recognizable yet somehow made to a vague name that needs disambiguation making it longer than necessary just so it can look natural. My proposal allows to still use the most "natural" name during most of the prose yet still using the stylized, more common, simpler title as the most common name. Another example is "Awkward." to "Awkward (TV series)"

i think my proposal seems fair so that "TM trumps disambiguation" when appropriate and still use the most natural name. I just find unnecessary disambiguation something that we should put priority over standard english (if it meets the terms i mentioned already). The article C (anime) gives a similar notice to what i was referring to when such situation would occur. I believe that the title of an article shouldnt be subjected to how it will be refered in common prose especially if it will need disambiguation.Lucia Black (talk) 08:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think I've said about everything I have to say about this issue, but I'll reply at least once more, at risk of repeating myself. What we do now does not keep secret the "fun." or "Awkward." styles. Your proposal seemed to be that we shouldn't use them because they would disrupt the prose, but we should awkwardly say that we wish we could use them except they're too darn disruptive. That doesn't seem fun at all! (See what I did there?)

To your disambiguation point, most people who search for "fun" are probably looking for the article that's there now. Someone who puts "fun." into the search box will get the band. In the past at least, punctuation was considered a less than ideal way to disambiguate. Expecting someone who comes to Wikipedia without prior knowledge of the band or their preferred way to style their name is more likely to be confused by the sort of practice you're advocating than someone who is familiar with the band would be by our current practice. I'm still a little puzzled by your assertion that a nonstandard style is "simpler." It's probably also worth pointing out that using something like (band) in the article title is not somehow a bad practice that we'd prefer to avoid.

For what I hope will be my last comment on this, I think that there certainly could be reasonable arguments to use "Fun." or "fun." and possibly other formations, too. Editors at the article can always reach a consensus either that the current interpretation of the guideline is wrong or that the article would be improved by ignoring the guideline. I just checked the talk page, and that has not happened even though you've pushed this issue several times over the past few years. So it's not as if you haven't had a chance to make your case and try to convince people. At some point, you may want to consider whether there just isn't a consensus for your position. Croctotheface (talk) 09:45, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's kind of a Bad Idea to use one style in the title and a different style throughout the article. Messes with expectations, I think. —Frungi (talk) 09:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Which article are you referring to here? Croctotheface (talk) 09:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I misread it (I really should be sleeping), but I thought that's what Lucia Black was suggesting: for instance, naming the article "fun." but using "Fun" throughout the article. —Frungi (talk) 10:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

@Croco ive only argued about it throughout last year. The article "fun." can still be in the disambiguation page despite not needing disambiguation as many other disambiguation pages have links to articles have similar names (but not exact). Hypothetically "X (disambiguation)" would also have "X!" In its page. "Fun." Or "fun." The capitalization isnt a strong issue. Im merely using "Fun (band)" to "fun." as an example to a wide variety of articles that have similar situations.

@Frungi I dont think it would be bad because we already use disambiguation and we dont use the name alongside disambiguation throughout the prose. And the notice wouldnt be that disuptive. But its not like this is a universal move that makes wp:mostm virtually useless, i gave my set of conditions in which it would be appropriate to do so. So it wont be incredibly common for us to see these notices, just probably monthly basis if visit wikipedia regularly.Lucia Black (talk) 18:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think current practice at Wikipedia is to try to avoid adding something like "(band)" to an article title at all costs. Relying on a tiny little period to disambiguate seems to me to have a high potential for confusion. Croctotheface (talk) 19:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

In actuality, in many cases, a certain stylization does help a lot when it comes to recognizability, for example, .hack. If a certain stylization adds both to recognizability and disambiguation (rather than to detract from recognizability), then surely it would be a good way to disambiguate.--New questions? 19:43, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Crazy styles are always more "recognizable." That's usually why marketing managers use them, and it's something that this guideline wants to avoid. I don't think anyone is going to end up at the .hack article and wonder how they got there. It's entirely possible that someone would wonder how they got to an article titled fun. and wonder why they're reading about a band and not the state of enjoyment. But even if you disagree, it's at least debatable, and editors at that particular article decided to go the way they go now. If they wanted to change it, I wouldn't fly off the handle (or even care all that much), and I doubt anyone else would either. Croctotheface (talk) 19:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe you haven't seen the article frenzy? In general, I question whether "wonder how they got there" is a principle that is used as you say (when it comes to how we generally title articles, we usually specify it enough so that people who are at least somewhat familiar with the subject would recognize it), but even so, I would question whether or not people would randomly put in a dot after a word or title they are searching for, because putting in a dot after "fun" is a conscious decision, and they certainly know they are going to get something other than "fun" as a concept even if they don't know about what "fun." is. So it seems like the stylization certainly gives a lot more clarification about "how they got there" to people who just type it in than what we have at frenzy.--New questions? 19:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

For a while, the article Half-Life was the main home for the video game, on the theory that the capital L disambiguated from the scientific concept, which is at Half-life. It was moved on the theory that the distinction was too subtle. I actually disagreed at the time (which I'm pretty sure was forever ago), but I've come around to seeing the wisdom. For me, Fun (band) is a better title, both for stylistic and disambiguation reasons. As I said earlier, I think there are solid arguments for using a style with the period or lowercase F or both, but they don't seem to have persuaded the editors there. Given that this is not a noticeboard, not the place to discuss how best to disambiguate...I'm not sure how much more there is to say about it here. Croctotheface (talk) 20:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, certain types of stylizations have different degrees to which they can add clarification and recognizability to the title, but I think that to argue that it "doesn't add enough recognizability" in all cases is making a sweeping generalization that can be inaccurate in many cases.--New questions? 20:24, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that crazy styles will always be more recognizable, however, the question is when the most recognizable, stylized name helps avoid unnecessary disambiguation. The likelyhood of someone adding a dot (even by mistake) and expect the same result would be very low. And i doubt someone will see it as a complete mystery "how they got there" itll take a good 10 seconds max for one to say "oh, i typed Fun. instead of Fun". Half-Life/Half-life issue is virtually different from the proposal here as both versions change literally nothing to the character count. Which is the point. "Fun." has less characters than "Fun (band)" and the reason why the disambiguation exist is because the period was removed.Lucia Black (talk) 20:37, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Part 2

I really feel like this idea is the least intrusive, most beneficial that can be used throughout wikipedia, and i feel the idea isnt really given true attention. This would help avoid unnecessary manual disambiguation (and help avoid modifying character count). For example: "Awkward." Is 8 characters, but changing it to "Awkward" now makes it 7 characters. I think this type of modifying is the worst and completely different from the rest as TR@DEMARK would be Trademark or TiTlE would be Title and the modification wouldnt mean taking out characters, instead just replacing them.Lucia Black (talk) 07:10, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Why do we have the "ooVoo" thing?

The guideline doesn't explain why we should use "ooVoo" or "i-MiEV". I removed those examples because it's not clear from the context why we use them. Are those nonstandard-looking styles that are used universally or almost universally in our sources? Or are they just styles that probably do go against the guideline but we use them anyway for some reason or another? Croctotheface (talk) 15:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Apparently, it is because they are used universally in our sources. If you think they go against the guideline, then you are free to open yet another move request. Failing that, I think that those examples should be added again (perhaps with the explanation that they are used universally in our sources) because this is the current practice.--New questions? 16:11, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

If it turns out that these are deliberate choices, I'd add a section that says something like, "Sometimes, styles that appear unusual are used universally by secondary sources. In such cases, Wikipedia should use those styles rather than invent new ones."

However, before we do this, we need to be sure about two things. First, we need to know that editors made a thoughtful decision to use those sources (in other words, they're not just unaware of the guideline or ignoring it) and second, we need to know that those styles are used universally in secondary sources. Croctotheface (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I've also started a move request at Talk:AutoCAD#Requested Move as a test in order to be sure whether or not these pages are at their proper position. Feel free to participate in the discussion. And yes, your choice of wording and the necessity for sureness that they are used in secondary sources makes sense. Due to uncertainty as for whether or not those pages are currently at their correct title, I'll wait until the end of the move request before inserting that.--New questions? 16:33, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Err, not gonna lie, this seems a little WP:Pointy to me. If you don't actually believe that the articles should be moved, you shouldn't propose moving them, which can be a bit disruptive, as a set of test cases. Why wouldn't you just ask the question I asked? As I said, I can envision three reasons we'd use a weird style. First, editors could be making a deliberate choice to use the style because it's universally used in sources. Second, editors could be making a deliberate choice because they like the style a lot and reached a consensus to ignore the guideline. Third, they could just be unaware that the guideline exists. Why not just ask them? It seems a little bit like the idea was to throw the RM discussion in their face so that it serves as a sort of shock to the system and they express some sort of contempt for the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 09:56, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

It's because they are the ones that seem like they could reasonably be challenged for a rename under these guidelines, and sometimes interpretations of these guidelines are different for others, so I believed that perhaps there may have been some others who would have wanted a rename. In fact, even without asking, it seems quite obvious at a glance that it is a combination of the second and third possibilities that you mentioned, and not the first one, which is why I believed that a rename request was in order (even if personally disagreeable). Therefore, given how they weren't originally named with following this guideline in mind, the actual purpose was to affirm whether or not they are where the consensus would like them to be, if they are going to be added as examples here. If you believe I improperly worded the rename request, perhaps you could try re-opening them individually later.--New questions? 13:04, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Generally speaking, I don't care to go through articles and propose moving them, so I have no intention of doing that. As far as I can tell, few if any editors who agree with this guideline take it as any sort of crusade. If the discussion doesn't reach a consensus that illuminates the reason that we use "ooVoo" or any of the other styles, there really won't be any basis to amend the guideline to mention them. Basically, it's good practice for editors to refer to and follow this guideline when faced with a naming decision. That articles are "out of compliance," which is a phrase it feels silly to use in this context, doesn't say much about anything, not the guideline or the articles or their editors. Especially given close cases (I think "AutoCAD" is standard English and "AutoCad" is not) and the fact that Wikipedia tends to evolve toward the consensus position, it's usually unhelpful to provide a shock to the system like this. Croctotheface (talk) 06:29, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Those were added without edit summary and without discussion by an anon recently. I took them out, then noticed this discussion. Let's talk about whether they are useful examples of some point that MOS:TM is trying to make. I suspect not. OoVoo commonly has initial cap in sources (also as Oovoo and oovoo as well as ooVoo), so seems odd that we'd endorse the odd style for that. The i-MiEV makes more sense, as the letters are pronounced, I think (EV being acronym for electric vehicle). Dicklyon (talk) 06:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

AFAIR from the last time (see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 13 § Forcing UN-capitalization is wrong, and not widely-used), the MOS defies common usage in favor of "proper English capitalization" (as though proper names (or proper nouns, whichever it is) should be subject to such a rule). IMO, when it comes to something simple like capitalization, we should use the common usage so as to accurately reflect WP:RS, just as with anything other facet of a subject. When it comes to using unusual characters, I can see that there may have to be some moderation.

As I recall, though, it was determined that consensus was not reached to overturn the existing rule, and the discussion died, with people apparently going back to doing what they've always done – quietly creating and approving articles that defy the MOS. Unfortunately, I listed a bunch of examples that another editor WP:POINTily moved to "standard capitalization" (like Motorola Razr) . I contend that there is, indeed, consensus to follow the common usage in primary and secondary sources, simply based on the number of editors that have created articles with titles that defy the MOS. That point was either not made well enough, or lost on those that closed the discussion, though. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:44, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll be a little bit snooty here. I think that the reason such articles get created is that editors who haven't thought through these issues make articles that use "official" formatting, and the article subjects aren't super-important, so there's no rush to "fix" them. The reality is that "common usage" in major publications much more heavily favors standardization than even this guideline does. Major publications standardize all sorts of things that Wikipedia, for one reason or another, has made a decision by consensus not to standardize. Almost no major publication uses Yahoo! for the tech company, and yet we do.

So the question sort of becomes, why treat cases differently when they similar in form? "TIME Magazine" and "Motorola RAZR" raise precisely the same issue of using all caps for emphasis. Should we have a mishmash of styles because there are a lot of low level tech blogs with little to no editorial oversight that use "RAZR," but basically everyone who writes about the news knows better than to scream "TIME" at us?

But that's a poor example anyway, since there are tons and tons and tons of publications that use "Razr." Here's a Google News search. Particularly note the names of publications that use each style. It's almost exclusively no-name sites that do the RAZR thing. As is often the case here, someone says "follow the sources" and then cites an example where doing so would not reach the result he thought it would. Croctotheface (talk) 09:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Hm, actually, while this "ooVoo" thing isn't an easy example, I don't think it is a bad example at all. In my judgement, if the MOS can't handle this properly, this indicates that the MOS needs to be further refined rather than that the example is "bad" and removed.

More important, that IP's edit did have an edit summary ("clarifying what is meant by "already in use," adding eamples", see: [1]), and prior to this there actually was a lengthy discussion ([2]). While we didn't formally reached a consensus to a much more significant change proposed by several editors (giving the style as used by the owner of a name much more preference, if it is consistently used in primary or secondary sources), the essence I took out of this discussion (not only because there was a clear majority for it, but also because even almost all of the expressed views opposing the change agreed in this respect as well AFAIR) was that there actually is a general consensus that we must not invent new styles, and instead choose only among those styles already in common use in reliable secondary sources -- and among them choose the one most closely resembling standard English, of course -- but specifically not choose any unestablished styles just because they happen to be "accidently" used in a single isolated but otherwise (content-based) reliable source, also not choose styles used in unreliable secondary sources, and definitely not create any new styles not used outside of the English Wikipedia. Actually, I took that IP's edit to the MOS as a reflection on this prior discussion, and therefore agreed to it. Now removing the "in reliable secondary sources" part from

"Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official," as long as this is a style already in use " [in reliable secondary sources] ", rather than inventing a new one."

is a significant step back, if you ask me. It puts too much weight on the beginning of the sentence. People could misinterpret this as if they were allowed or even encouraged to bend a name until it fits into virtually anyone's style (including our own default house-style), if they find only a single occurrence of a name in this form anywhere via Google etc. (And if we allow "anyone's style", it's downright odd to exclude the owner's style, unless it conforms with other styles already.)

Therefore, I left out the examples (although I personally don't oppose them) but had put the IP's clarification back in (EDIT: had "New Questions" not readded it already in the meantime, that is).

Personally, I would even switch the sentences around to make it clearer:

"Choose among styles already in common use in reliable secondary sources instead of inventing a new one. Among those, choose the one most closely resembling standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers non-standard formatting "official"."

What do you think? --Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Here's my personal view on the whole matter: The Wikipedia reader is the most important consideration. When it comes to encyclopedia article titles, especially ones named for proper nouns, recognizability is paramount. Names should be chosen based on what the average Joe would expect the name to be, within the bounds of common sense as with all things. All-caps is entirely unnecessary in the majority of cases, but if the average person (with some familiarity with a subject) would reasonably expect to see funky capitalization in a name, Wikipedia should use that capitalization. Unfortunately, determining what the average reader would expect can only be done on a case by case basis. Sure, it's more convenient for editors to just refer to the MOS and follow whatever it says, but I'm not convinced that's best for the readers. —Frungi (talk) 09:48, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

How would we test that, though? If the "average reader" is used to reading the New York Times or other professional publications, he or she may be more likely to expect standard English. If the average reader is more used to reading corporate manuals and press releases, he or she may be more likely to expect the crazy styles. Forgive me if I'm misreading you, but I feel like this is designed to be a very flimsy excuse for someone who wants to insist on NOT standardizing. The reality that I think a lot of people miss is that this talk page can be something of a magnet for people who dislike standardization. They come here, notice comments from other editors who disliked that their favorite article was moved or that the article on their favorite band uses an "unofficial" style, and they assume that these principles aren't supported by a broad consensus. But they are. Most editors who read this guideline and support it don't come here to talk about it because they don't need to. They just cite the guideline where appropriate and keep it in mind when they edit. Croctotheface (talk) 09:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

This isn't meant to be an excuse; this is simply my opinion. I'm actually a fan of standardization in general, but I think it shouldn't be as high a priority here. Or rather, I think we should use different standards here than simply conforming to the normal standards of the English language. Ideally, the entire English-speaking world would be polled on how each name should be styled, which of course is ludicrously unrealistic. In the simplest cases, if a name is standardized (i.e., every source styles it the same way) as something that's not "standard English", we should use that name. But yes, in many cases, it can be very difficult to determine what the best title would be for a general audience. And as I said, that would have to be decided on a case by case basis. —Frungi (talk) 10:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that what you describe is more or less the way this guideline is interpreted on Wikipedia. The trouble comes in because a lot of editors severely underestimate how common standardization is among major professional publications. Croctotheface (talk) 10:18, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

There are a variety of ways to test what the average reader expects, and it is the current practice for all article titles that are non-trademarks.--New questions? 18:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you really think we treat trademarks "differently" or "unfairly"? Could you give me some examples of crazy styles that fly for non-trademarks specifically because editors don't believe that this guideline applies? Croctotheface (talk) 19:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

It certainly seems to be the case. Whether or not something counts as a "trademark" or "not a trademark" seems to be right now used as single criterion in deciding whether it should be judged under one set of guidelines, or another. An often cited example is k. d. lang or brian d foy or bill bissett, which is at its current title because it is considered a "personal name" rather than a "trademark." However, it doesn't take much to find examples that haven't been disputed as frequently: 't Hooft operator (or is the apostrophe supposed to be pronounced?), (−1)F, ³D₄, (ε, δ)-definition of limit, or δ-hyperbolic space. Or lint (software) or ncurses or bzip2 because they are not "trademarks" even though they are names. Or gnuLinEx or fli4l or m0n0wall. The list goes on and on. Perhaps one may argue that the usage of symbols or capitalizations is meaningful, but what makes it any less meaningful it were used in the name of a trademark? (More generally, if the name of a trademark used a misspelling of a common English word and it clearly meant that English word, we don't correct it because we perceive this "intentional error" be meaningful to the name. Why should stylizations be considered any differently?)--New questions? 03:52, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you think there is a "rash" of invented styles on the encyclopedia? In my experience, we standardize much less often, despite what does seem like a fairly strong recommendation here to standardize. Do you have a lot cases where we standardize and, say, the New York Times does not? Croctotheface (talk) 09:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I like standardization a lot as well, but sometimes reality is less ideal and more complex. Particularly names (including tradenames) are something that cannot reasonably be standardized upon in many cases, because they are highly individual - and for a reason. Actually, to make otherwise similar looking things easily identifiable and recognizable is the core purpose of giving it a name. If you change a name, it is no longer the same, but will address something/someone else.

Who are we to overrule someone else's (typically the owner's) decision regarding a name? It's the same as if we would start to "improve" poems or novels to make them more conformant with standard English, thereby ignoring that the authors typically used (or even invented!) a particular form for a reason - they are the masters of language, not we. They have the authority to invent new language, not us (in Wikipedia, that is). Ignoring the owner's/original author's decision is a form of hybris that really strikes me.

As an encyclopedia we exist to report what exists in the real world and describe how it is, not to create a possible more consistent model world within Wikipedia and try to "correct" reality. It's not only not our business, it is even against our core principles, as we must not "invent" stuff here. All we are allowed to do is to "cite" a name as it exists. (Exceptions must be made when a name cannot be represented in the Latin alphabet, when diacritics are used which are unavailable in a normal English context, or graphical characters are used, of course.)

Since you asked, yes, I think the English (and only the English) Wikipedia has an unfortunate tendency to invent new styles, as there are some editors who misinterpret the MOS (they often seem to ignore the second part of the cited sentence) and sometimes rigorously enforce their interpretation. Over the years I have run into quite many article titles where proper names were distorted until they fit into our default house-style, even if this changed their meaning or made them look odd as they no longer reflected an established style. I haven't kept record of them, as I don't have the time to start move requests for them, but I have recognized them as distractingly odd peculiarities of the English Wikipedia.

One (still uncorrected) example, which comes to my mind right now as I have also used it in previous discussions is Bap (German band). There is no German band named "Bap" - the band always was (and still is) named "BAP". It has been used this way in all primary and (virtually) all reliable secondary sources for decades (someone found a counter-example in another discussion recently, where someone actually used the wrong capitalization in what otherwise might have been a reliable source, but it doesn't really count given the hundreds (thousands?) of reliable (and printed) sources consistently using the correct form "BAP"). This is a very annoying example, where the English Wikipedia has invented the previously not existing form "Bap" (all the other WPs correctly use "BAP"). Given its "normative power" as a widely referenced site, other English (unreliable) sources have recently started to use this wrong Wikipedia form as well. Very bad... --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Bap was unreferenced, so I added refs to a couple of secondary sources that style it as we do. It's not an invention, it's the most English-like styling of a name in which all caps would wrongly suggest that it's an initialism. Dicklyon (talk) 17:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Whether or not there are "invented" styles already out there, if we all agree that we shouldn't "invent," then it only makes sense to mention it, especially when there is nothing in this guideline that seems to recommend the capitalization of "MiEV" even though the New York Times clearly uses it. The only portion that would make it recommend "MiEV" is a "no invented styles" phrase.--New questions? 18:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

But the text already says we shouldn't invent styles. Your change would focus attention on it as if it's very important, but it seems to me like we basically never "invent" a style, and the guideline and current editing practice has done very well to avoid that problem. I'll ask again: what is the practical problem you're looking to solve? What are all the cases where we are "inventing" styles and this guideline needs to make very explicit that we should not? Croctotheface (talk) 19:25, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The practical problem is that its current mention separates it from everything else. If something appears in the lead, it should at least be explained somewhere else and elaborated on. We have a "convenient list" below the lead, but it doesn't mention something very important in the lead. That makes this page somewhat of an inconvenient reference.--New questions? 19:52, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Again, I really fail to see the problem. I don't mean to badger you about this. How is the guideline confusing or inconveniencing people? Where are all the articles at invented titles? How often is this happening that we need to mention "don't invent" more often than twice or more prominently than once in the lead and once in the list? If anything, we currently overemphasize it, given that invented styles just don't seem to happen in practice. Croctotheface (talk) 19:55, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

To make it more clear, I meant that it is the text of the guideline itself that is the problem that makes it inconvenient for people reading it. Right now, we have something stated in the lead, and it is not clarified at all about what is meant by it. That is the practical problem here.--New questions? 20:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The problem, though, is that the "invented style" problem seems almost entirely hypothetical. I don't know that I've ever seen a case where an article invents a style, so my conclusion is that people aren't confused about what we mean by it. Nobody here has cited an accurate "invented style" example. Neither "Bap" nor "Razr" is invented. To illustrate the issue you discuss, we would need to cite an example of an invented style as "what not to do," but it seems that major publications basically always choose the style most closely resembling standard English anyway. Croctotheface (talk) 20:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

So are you arguing that the line doesn't even need to be mentioned in the first place? I would suppose that the reason we don't have many "invented styles" might at least partially be due to the specification that we shouldn't invent new styles. Perhaps the bigger problem is with how it is currently mentioned is that it is not clarified, leaving it up to individual interpretation (of which there are many) about what exactly is an "invented style" or not. This comes up as a problem in many renaming discussions when people bring this "no invented styles" up, because ultimately as currently stated, it is very much arbitrary. As it is, it mostly confuses people when mentioned, rather than clarifies.--New questions? 20:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

My argument is that the guideline in its present form does a good job of avoiding any "invented styles" problems. I just don't see the issue out there in practice. Your suggestions seem to come from a belief that inventing styles is rampant or serious enough that the guideline needs to address it better. I'm not sure what you mean by "arbitrary," since the language seems pretty clear to me, and the implementation seems very good as well. Croctotheface (talk) 20:27, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I think there may be a misunderstanding here. Regardless of whether or not inventing styles has been rampant or not, what I am saying is the problem is not that it hasn't been emphasized enough, but rather it hasn't been made clear enough about what exactly it is saying. It is simply given one mention in the lead, and nothing more, and nothing is said about exactly what constitutes an "invented style" or not, which leads to a lot of confusion in renaming discussions when this subject is brought up.--New questions? 20:32, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Really? It seems pretty clear that an invented style is a style that does not exist in sources. I get that because the guideline says to choose a style that exists in sources rather than invent a new one. I have a hard time seeing how that's confusing. Croctotheface (talk) 20:34, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, I'll go one further. The only people who might be confused about this concept are people who really don't want their favorite band or the brand of phone they use to be written differently in Wikipedia from how it's written on their favorite album or owner's manual. People who oppose standardization want to act as if the style used by major publications such as the New York Times is "invented," but it obviously is not. The issue is tendentious editing, not any sort of ambiguity in the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 20:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but the question is, which sources? Should we count only English-language ones, etc.? What does this mean for special characters, etc.? I think that those things should be clarified given how they were points of confusion in the past renaming discussions.--New questions? 20:49, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

There will never be a bright line set of rules that obviate the need for discussion by making it 100% clear what to do in all circumstances. I think that's a feature, not a bug, since the current state of applying the guideline seems very good to me, and I still fail to see what practical problem you're trying to solve. That potentially contentious decisions require discussion is not a problem. Croctotheface (talk) 20:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I would argue that if people can bring up the guideline to support whatever they want to support by citing different parts of the guideline and ignoring others, then it would seem like the guideline would contradict itself and needs to be clarified about how it doesn't contradict itself. For example, the fourth requested move at Talk:Cute_(Japanese_band) had exactly that problem.--New questions? 21:00, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

(Out dent) They really can't, though. The guideline is clear, so long as you set aside willfull obtuseness. How do you think the guideline "contradicts itself"? The presence of cases that arguably go against the guideline are not internal contradictions. Croctotheface (talk) 00:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

For example, it states not to invent new stylizations (i. e. only use ones in reliable secondary sources), but certain provisions in the "general rules" might imply to create new stylizations if the only stylizations used in secondary sources do not follow what is currently in "general rules," because it is nowhere mentioned there.--New questions? 00:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's why they're "general" rules. They're not designed to cover every weird corner case. After returning to this same point again and again, I don't really think that the guideline can be written to satisfy you. It'll never cover everything. There will still be disagreements about close cases. Editors will have to use judgment in concert with the spirit of the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 06:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Can it at least be made more cohesive, so that editors can’t argue different parts of the guideline against each other? —Frungi (talk) 07:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

We can certainly make changes to clarify, but I'm not sure that it needs it. Remember, the change in question was something like, "However, use: ooVoo." That didn't clarify anything. In the only example cited so far (Cute (Japanese band)), an editor incorrectly asserted that "Cute" was an invented style, but other editors showed that it is not. Likewise, an editor here asserted that "Razr" was an invented style, but hundreds of sources use it. Honestly, I'll bet we could just remove the entire bit about "choose from among existing styles" and nothing or next to nothing would change. A band that receives very little coverage in English sources is a difficult corner case. The guideline won't be able to make a clear recommendation there, but that's why we have discussions and reach consensus. Croctotheface (talk) 07:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Saying that an editor "incorrectly" asserted that it was an invented style is an assertion that is still up for debate. It is true that the previous wording doesn't clarify anything, but either ooVoo goes against the guidelines or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, it is not at all clear why it doesn't, which is something that needs to be clarified.--New questions? 14:27, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm just going to ask point blank: is this yet another exercise in someone (you) coming to this talk page to try to discredit the guideline because you dislike that the article on your favorite band or the phone you use or whatever else doesn't use the "official" style? You seem to be willfully obtuse to the points I've been making, and I've repeated them several times. I don't really want to repeat these points again, but I will, out of the hope that you'll actually engage with them. The reason that article uses "ooVoo" could be one of three things. It could be that all our sources use "ooVoo" so anything else would be an invented style. It could be that editors at the ooVoo page decided to ignore the guideline for some reason. It could be that they used "ooVoo" when they probably shouldn't because they were either unaware of MOSTM or unaware that a more standard form exists in sources. None of those set it up as a "precedent" that you could use for a WP:WAX-type argument to use the "official" style used for your favorite band or favorite phone.

Beyond that, you seem to be making arguments that are not designed to improve this guideline, but rather "expose the inconsistencies" so that you can feel justified in ignoring it. The reality is that obscure subjects (such as small tech companies) or subjects that get little or no coverage in English sources (such as the Japanese band Cute) or subjects with names that don't make it clear whether odd-seeming capitalization serves a purpose or not (such as i-MiEV) are difficult cases that the guideline can't adequately address. That there may be an argument for using "i-MiEV" doesn't mean we should use "RAZR" or "TIME Magazine." If your goal is to get a "However, use: ooVoo" into the guideline so that you can cite it as evidence to use any weird style, it's not going to work.

Finally, some of your recent comments leave me more convinced than ever that the guideline in its present form is more than adequate to demonstrate what we're supposed to do. You can always make your case at the talk page for your favorite band or phone for why the guideline shouldn't apply. If you can reach a consensus to ignore the guideline, the article will ignore it. Beyond that, don't come here and try to sabotage the guideline, make tendentious arguments, propose moving a whole bunch of articles and then "oppose moving as nominator." That's not productive, and it's not the way we do things here at Wikipedia. Croctotheface (talk) 20:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Croctotheface that the current guidelines are adequate, even though a few titles are left in a gray area. On "ooVoo", it really not clear, since nobody has started an RM and made a case for changing it and had a discussion. I mentioned that a case could be made for "Oovoo" or "OoVoo", since those also appear in sources; but I haven't looked into whether they occur enough that I'd want to claim they're "in use". The guidelines don't tell us how to decide that question, but they do make the question clear enough at least. What doesn't make sense is to try to use gray area and undecided cases as if they are precedents, and enshrine them in guidelines without consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 21:02, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Guidelines are meant to be a description of general current practice and consensus. If there exists a consensus to ignore the guideline, it is the guideline that needs to be updated to reflect the practice. It does not help to have guidelines that ignore what we practice. We have had many other guidelines that were changed due to the fact that it did not accurately describe current practice. For example, the guideline on Userpages that previously stated not to have anything unrelated to collaboration on Wikipedia articles. What I mean is not to simply add back in "ooVoo" without explanation as previously, but to add it in with explanation, as even yourself have proposed earlier.--New questions? 16:58, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Yet again, you've engaged with none of the points I've raised. I'm not going to repeat them again and again just so you can ignore them. At this point, it's hard to think you're operating in good faith. It seems pretty clear at this point that you disagree with this guideline and just want to weaken it. Croctotheface (talk) 19:19, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

From the discussion last year: "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."

If you insist on google news only, I get 17:6 RAZR:Razr for a Google news query of "Motorola razr" and clicking on the "See all 27 news sources" —[AlanM1(talk)]— 09:04, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Yours is a very old and familiar argument here. First, why would "the number of hits for search string X vs. Y on Google" inform what we do here? I suspect you could find similar results for certain honest-to-gosh misspellings. For the Google News search, which is obviously more informative, how many of those are sites that are subject to strict editorial control, versus something like "RAZR NEWS WORLD OMG I LURVE MY RAZR AND I'D CERTAINLY NEVER THINK OF DISRESPECTING ITS ALL CAPITALS BRANDING DOT BIZ"? Wouldn't a better question be why the stye is used by The New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, Associated Press, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger, BBC, LA Times, New York Magazine...do I need to continue? Because I can keep bustin' ya up all night. Do you really think Wikipedia's manual of style should emulate random Android blogs rather than those sorts of publications? Croctotheface (talk) 10:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

AlanM1's data (17:6 RAZR:Razr) clear show that a style like ours (Razr) is common in the mainstream; that many news organization are OK with using an English styling even when the manufacturer uses a SHOUT styling. Is he seriously saying that we should follow the majority (or Google estimate of majority) instead of the editorial style that WP converged on, which in MOS:CAPS said we avoid unnecessary capitalization, and in MOS:TM saying we avoid vanity stylings in preference to more English versions that are in use? Dicklyon (talk) 15:13, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Concerning trademarks vs. non-trademarks

(Reply to Croctotheface copied from above) Whether or not something counts as a "trademark" or "not a trademark" seems to be right now used as single criterion in deciding whether it should be judged under one set of guidelines, or another. An often cited example is k. d. lang or brian d foy or bill bissett, which is at its current title because it is considered a "personal name" rather than a "trademark." However, it doesn't take much to find examples that haven't been disputed as frequently: 't Hooft operator (or is the apostrophe supposed to be pronounced?), (−1)F, ³D₄, (ε, δ)-definition of limit, or δ-hyperbolic space. Or lint (software) or ncurses or bzip2 because they are not "trademarks" even though they are names. Or gnuLinEx or fli4l or m0n0wall. The list goes on and on. Perhaps one may argue that the usage of symbols or capitalizations is meaningful, but what makes it any less meaningful it were used in the name of a trademark? (More generally, if the name of a trademark used a misspelling of a common English word and it clearly meant that English word, we don't correct it because we perceive this "intentional error" be meaningful to the name. Why should stylizations be considered any differently?)--New questions? 14:27, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Is this really just another "let's call the branding department and ask them how they want us to promote their products" argument after all? The editorial judgments behind this guideline are well supported across the project. Trying to use every single weird style at articles that attract attention from a lot of editors would not fly. The distinction between commercial and not commercial may make sense or it may not, but there's at least a rational reason for it. It's similar to what other high level publications do. And this guideline is just not going to change all that much. Even if you find four other guys who agree with you and you change the guideline because of it, there just isn't enough support across the project to use "PGA TOUR" or "TIME Magazine" and it will get changed back. Croctotheface (talk) 20:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

No, it is, for one, a matter of recognizability as stated earlier, as well as any other question addressed by the general guidelie but not addressed here. Taking the example of recognizaiblity, right now, this guideline makes no provision for ensuring that whatever style used, that the standardization doesn't interfere with how people might recognize it or accidentally skip over the webpage because it didn't seem to be the topic they were looking for. For example by Google search, if people find the entry for Wikipedia but think it's about a different topic because it doesn't use the stylization. I have encountered this first-hand when searching for someone and almost overlooked the Wikipedia result because I thought it was about something else. It doesn't require being a "fan" of something in order to realize that this is problematic.--New questions? 16:53, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't the "recognizability" argument you propose apply to any weird style? By their nature, weird styles are quite recognizable because they're unusual. This guideline says that we have made precisely the opposite editorial judgment: we think that readers are better served when we standardize, so we will as long as there are sources that standardize. The requirement that we choose only from styles that exist in sources serves as a safeguard here. But look, the reality is that a position like yours (or at least what it seems to be) that would basically say, "let's use whatever style is 'official'" just wouldn't fly here. We'd get all sorts of ugly styles and the encyclopedia would look like a bunch of corporate press releases had a battle royale. There just isn't support for that. If you somehow "won" and managed to revers the policy, it would reverse back before too long. But really, I don't think I see a point in participating in this discussion when you tend to ignore the actual argument I've made in favor of reasserting the point you raised in the first place. Croctotheface (talk) 19:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

"Reliable secondary sources" parenthetical

I'm confused about why people feel compelled to add this parenthetical. Is there an issue out there with people citing unreliable sources that standardize trademark names in cases where every reliable secondary source does not standardize? That seems unlikely to me. In reality, the most reliable sources also tend to be the ones most likely to standardize. Croctotheface (talk) 10:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. In order to justify the idea that there is "another formatting in usage," people cite all kinds of unreliable sources like usage in Amazon etc. Those should, of course, be excluded when considering "formats that are in usage."--New questions? 18:05, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Why remove it? Should sources that are not reliable secondary sources be considered? If not, I don't think it hurts to be explicit. But if so, this should be addressed as well: in use by whom? —Frungi (talk) 18:20, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I would also like to question if you are disputing the phrase in the first place. If you are not disputing it, then why not state it?--New questions? 18:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Could somebody point me to the places where this is happening? And could you point out where editors somehow remain confused based on the current wording but would not be confused if we made this change? I favor removing it because I don't see what good it does on those grounds, and nobody has given an example of something bad or unfortunate that making this change could've averted. The change strikes me as unnecessary because when we speak of "sources," we plainly don't mean an email that you just got from your boss. Plus, just as a writer, I dislike parenthetical phrases like this because they're usually bad writing. Croctotheface (talk) 19:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

See Talk:Cute_(Japanese_band). Regardless of what title the article should be at, I think we all agree that taking examples from sources like Amazon should not be counted here.--New questions? 19:39, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

How do you think that discussion would've gone differently if the guideline says what it does now? (And seriously, it's bad practice to put in contentious material while it's being discussed. How hard is it to wait for the discussion to play out.) Croctotheface (talk) 19:44, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

That is not the main issue discussed here, is it? I do no want to guess on "how the discussion would've gone differently," because the problem is the citation of unreliable sources, not anything else. Do you agree that unreliable sources should be discounted?--New questions? 19:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but there are plenty of other things that I believe that don't need to be spelled out. I'm not actually convinced that Amazon is an unreliable source; for instance, if we needed to know the weight of a certain product, I'd think Amazon might be fairly reliable. But, really, do we need to specify "reliable, secondary" every time we mention sources? Does anyone really get confused when we say "choose among styles in use" but would not be confused by "choose among styles in use by reliable secondary sources"? It just seems like unnecessary wikispeak. If the guideline as written is creating problems, then OK, but it doesn't seem to be. Would you at least agree that there's a point at which we don't need to specify fairly obvious notions such as this one? Croctotheface (talk) 20:03, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Certainly, and for the limit, I would say "at most once per section" and "at least once in lead, and once in main body (if mentioned in lead)."--New questions? 20:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

“Styles in use” with no qualification could be misconstrued to mean “by the general public,” and that it’s acceptable to go by how random Twitter users refer to it or something. I’m honestly not seeing any downside to specifying that it should be limited to acceptable sources. As for editing during debate, why not err on the side of caution? It seems more contentious to remove it than to include it, and it isn’t misleading in any way. —Frungi (talk) 22:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Has this been a problem some place? It seems to me that if you want to add new material to the guidelines, you ought to show why it's needed. Did someone cite a tweet for some such thing? Dicklyon (talk) 23:08, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I’m saying that until consensus has been established either way, it would be best to keep it in, and there is no compelling reason not to. The clarification confuses no one, and its absence creates potential for confusion. —Frungi (talk) 23:21, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Also, this sounds like an argument from ignorance: you haven’t seen evidence that it’s a problem, therefore there’s no potential for it to be a problem. —Frungi (talk) 23:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it has been a problem, with people citing Amazon etc. See the above discussion.--New questions? 23:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see it. The mention of Amazon there seems like it was fine. Nobody suggested using a style because Amazon used it. Lacking any actual problem, there's no reason to leave new undiscussed material in the guideline until after a discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 23:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Why should we wait for symptoms of a problem before addressing it? And, again, why not specify to use reliable secondary sources if these are indeed the only acceptable sources? If you believe I’m wrong in saying that the clarification does no harm and introduces no confusion, then please explain. But if not, isn’t it better to avoid potential confusion than to ignore the possibility of it? —Frungi (talk) 00:01, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I would say that the mention of Amazon was problematic, because it is not from a reliable source. Or are you saying that unreliable sources should be counted?--New questions? 00:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Bit of a tangent, but assuming there’s not WP consensus against this, I generally consider Amazon a reliable source. The question is whether the information is primary or secondary, or from some guy that’s selling it third-hand. —Frungi (talk) 00:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, I guess that I also do not have much really to comment about the general reliability of Amazon as a secondary source in general - although in this case, it doesn't seem like the information is primary or secondary, which is why it looks somewhat problematic (as well as other citations of stylizations used online shops that are also not primary or secondary).--New questions? 00:41, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Just in general, it strikes me as a random bit of wikispeak that doesn't inform anyone of anything. It would be like saying, "Don't forget that Wikipedia is not a crystal ball" in the section on camelcase. The phrase "reliable secondary sources" strikes me as the sort of thing that editors say when they want to puff up their argument. Just like the WP:Crystal argument is silly/irrelevant, adding "reliable secondary" strikes me as irrelevant when it has never been a problem before. Someone could make the same argument that New Questions has been making ("Just to be clear, you don't think Wikipedia SHOULD be a crystal ball? Do you? HUH?") to defend that sort of addition. Croctotheface (talk) 06:11, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree entirely. It’s not a non sequitur. A reasonable person could read “styles already in use,” with nothing (in the entire lead) qualifying who may be using them, and assume that it just refers to general public use with no regard to sourcing. I still think there’s no reason not to specify what kind of sources should be consulted for questions of style. —Frungi (talk) 07:48, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Again, I have pointed to an example where people are misled into thinking it is just any sources, not reliable secondary ones. Certainly a clarification does more good than harm.--New questions? 14:27, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Since you're so against using primary sources, that means you agree that we should discount, say, a band's "official" material, or the press release given out by a given company? Your focus on secondary sources means that you're 100% in favor of giving no weight at all to "official" styles in favor of what secondary publications do? Croctotheface (talk) 20:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's the question. Should we consider the style used by primary sources? And whether primary or secondary, should we only consider sources that the article uses, or anything that could be used a source? —Frungi (talk) 22:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Generally speaking, I don't see why we should limit ourselves to being unable to consider any sources that might shed any light on the topic. It seems pretty clear to me that New Questions isn't all that interested in improving this guideline; he's interested in trying to change it in a way that he thinks would make it easier for him to argue that some article or another should use the "official" formatting of some trademark. However, he seems to hold a mistaken belief that this is some sort of wiki-legalistic process that, should he manage to get the right "poison pill" into the guideline, will somehow change everyone's mind and cause all sorts of cases to come out differently. That isn't how things work, and it's not what will happen if he gets his way. In actuality, this guideline informs editors who discuss potentially difficult or contentious issues and reach a consensus. People cite this guideline, and the theory behind it, because it makes sense to them and improves the encyclopedia, not because it just lacked some loophole language that will let someone wikilawyer their way into having their favorite band's name written in all caps.

I actually think I've changed my mind; I no longer think that descriptor is unnecessary verbiage; in actuality, it would unnecessarily limit the discussion to "reliable secondary sources" when in fact there may be a place for reliable primary sources or even, in unusual circumstances, for unreliable sources in the discussion. Croctotheface (talk) 23:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Primary sources are generally the worst to look at for styling; like Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, where many of the seconary sources that capitalize it are either copying or referencing the self-serving Bortle's primary source title. Many sources call it other and more generic things like Bortle's scale, Bortle's dark-sky scale, the Bortle dark-sky scale, etc. Even if the copies of the primary are in a majority they do not as a whole establish that the term is a proper name and ought to be capitalized, because an awful lot of sources disagree. Per MOS:CAPS, then we should downcase it. Many titling decisions are made on such lines; the primary sources are seldom given much weight, because they tend to have the worst WP:SSF problems. If it were a trademark, that would be different, case wise, but similar consideration of sources. For many topics, though, "reliable" secondary sources are so thin that you have a choose a style with very limited evidence of anything; then consider whatever uses you find. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

If reliable secondary sources are that thin, I’d question whether the topic belongs in Wikipedia at all. —Frungi (talk) 04:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm just saying that I don't think we benefit by writing the guideline in a way that would demand that we pretend primary sources don't exist. MOre than ever, I've come to consider this guideline as establishing principles that should guide the discussion of contentious issues. Sometimes, this guideline makes it easy, but nobody really cares about those cases. There isn't a movement to shout "TIME Magazine." For harder cases, why limit ourselves if something potentially informative comes from a source that is not a "reliable secondary source"? Croctotheface (talk) 04:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps limiting it to only secondary sources does seem a bit rash, but I think it can be generally agreed that secondary sources should be the primary consideration. Since we are having this discussion right now and some here seem to be unsure about whether primary sources should be included, or unreliable sources, then surely this is a matter that requires clarification, right?--New questions? 17:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I should switch again, just because "reliable secondary sources" tend to be rather strongly predisposed toward standardization. Generally, the more reliable the source, the more it standardizes. Croctotheface (talk) 19:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Philosophy of MOSTM

Here's the way I see the philosophy of this guideline:

(1) We prefer to standardize, for all the reasons the guideline asserts.

(2) We don't want to get in the business of inventing our own ways of standardizing weird trademarks.

(3) So, to combine (1) and (2), we take some guidance from our sources. We require that the form we use for standardizing unusual styles must exist in our sources.

(4) We don't use a "majority of the sources" standard because this is a question of editorial style. If anything, we're closer to a "majority of the style guides" standard. For instance, if most of the major style guides advocate a style (say, "iPod" or "eBay"), then it's difficult to argue that it's not actually standard English. That a lot of sources that cover a certain company's products replicate the "official" style, and that there are more sites like that than sites that use AP style, shouldn't really inform what we do here.

(5) Some cases will be difficult. (A subject that receives little to no coverage in high-level publications, or little to no coverage in English sources, or the title of a creative work or band where there is arguably some meaning packed into an unusual-looking stylistic choice.) For those, this page is designed to provide helpful rules of thumb, not to be so comprehensive that it obviates any need for discussion.

(6) It's a mistake to read this guideline in a WP:WAX sort of way, where the argument is something like "because we prefer "eBay," which looks kind of weird, we must allow ANY weird style!" Just read the guideline the way it was meant to be read: "Standardize, so long as the standard form exists in reliable sources."

(7) Articles that appear "out of compliance" with the guideline may be deliberate editorial choices, or they may be mistakes/oversights. The presence of factual errors in articles would not somehow support the notion that we don't care about facts.

I could probably go on for a while. But I think that 1, 2, and 3 above basically hit the way you should apply the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 20:03, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Nice summary! Can you do that for MOS:CT and some of our other guidelines, too? Dicklyon (talk) 20:24, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Could you put that in an Essay for easy future reference in case these questions come up again? Because I can see this being very useful. —Frungi (talk) 21:20, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I highly disagree ith #4. Because it implies that standard english is determined by the editor. I also agree with putting this into an essay.Lucia Black (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Can you explain differently why we don't use a "majority of the sources" standard? Dicklyon (talk) 21:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

To expand on that point a little bit, we don't follow our sources for other matters of style, either. For instance, we say that people "die" rather than "pass away." We don't use honorific titles like "her royal highness." If a majority of sources covering an individual use "passed away" or an honorific title, we wouldn't defer to the sources there, either. Again, the purpose of a style guide is to maintain the same style across the entire publication, and treating similar cases differently because the "vote tally" of sources were different doesn't make sense. Plus, it makes no allowance for the "quality" of sources. Generally, the more reliable a source tends to be, the more likely it is to standardize. However, if a lot of high quality sources with well-respected style guides use a format that appears nonstandard, it is probably worth a second look for us. Croctotheface (talk) 21:59, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

And as far as I know, we've not seen a case where editors disagree on what is more like "standard English", even though there's no such standard. Dicklyon (talk) 22:04, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Another approach

Being in the camp that would prefer to represent names with the characters and capitalization that are used by the namer (as closely as possible), I've realized that there is maybe another way to look at and deal with the conflict.

The article title is really just a reference key to the article itself, and we're forcing a certain style on that key, not the subject of the article. iPod could just as easily have a title of fQ7yT56D as long as there is a search and redirect mechanism from all reasonable variants of the name. As long as the lead sentence clearly identifies the correctly-stylized "common name" and any necessary pronunciation issues, I'm coming around to being at peace with it.

There is still the issue of the title being so prominent in the article rendering, though. How about a template like {{Common name|tHe c0mmoN nAmE}} that would cause the <h1>-level article title to be rendered as tHe c0mmoN nAmE instead of the article title if the user sets a certain mode in their common.css? This way, both camps can get pages as they like. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:39, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

What about IP editors though? Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 09:27, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I may not be "in the weeds" enough with the technical issues you describe to follow what you're saying. However, this guideline doesn't merely apply to article names, it applies how we write names in article text as well. Croctotheface (talk) 18:59, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The styling of the Macy's example

In a list of examples, we provide the stylized example Macy*s. However, when I look at how the company actually styles its name, it looks more like Macy^*s, MACY^*S, macy^*s, or ☆macy^*s. Should we change the example? I guess I suggest changing it to Macy^*s. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:09, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I would say no since there stylized name is not what you are proposing. It is more like replacing an "'" with a "*". It is positioned low and not high like your proposal. See their web site for examples. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

That's funny, when I look at the web site or the logo shown at File:Macys.svg, i.e., , it looks like the "*" is always positioned up relatively high. What do others see? Perhaps the font is browser-dependent? —BarrelProof (talk) 20:34, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Your logo example has the * almost touching the letters. Your text example has loads of white space above the letters using Firefox. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:54, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess it must be a browser-dependency issue then. Sorry for the disruption. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:15, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree that the star is clearly superscripted in their graphics. And of course, they have a good deal more control over the typesetting in graphics than we do in plain HTML without a ton of fidgeting and futzing, so you can’t reasonably expect to achieve the same effect using <sup>...</sup>. But how about “macy^★s” (Unicode black star, superscript, 20% size)? But obviously all of these methods should be equally discouraged. —Frungi (talk) 03:34, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The Unicode star does seem like an interesting idea. But on my laptop, the 20% scaling was too small. "macy^★s" looks better there (with 55% scaling), but I think there may be browser and platform dependencies for that too. And the !xt template seems to fail on it - I get "Example text" when typing "{{!xt|macy<sup style="font-size:55%;">★</sup>s}}". —BarrelProof (talk) 06:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, there’s definitely something broken with that template. I’m thinking it’s incompatible with HTML tags or something. And sorry about my horrible choice of scaling; yours and mine look identical to me because Safari evidently refuses to scale it below a certain size. But in Firefox, your 55% definitely looks better. —Frungi (talk) 00:59, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Irregardless, it seems that all of these options add a space between the 'y' and 's' which is not in the logo. It would be interesting to see what the corporate style sheet says about how to create this. But no matter what, this shows the difficulty of using text to represent graphics. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:32, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

There is actually a combining asterisk above ( U+20F0 ) that could be used with a zero width space ( U+200B ). That can be used to type macy​⃰s assuming the fonts support it. Not suggesting we use this, just showing a way it could be done. PaleAqua (talk) 15:05, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that does look more like the logo. But as you say, this would be dependent on the font used since like you I suspect it is not included in all fonts. Now, if we can force the font in the example here that could be an acceptable use. It would be nice to know what font is included in the corporate style sheet. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I really don’t think any of this matters. The way people might be inclined to write it is “macy*s” (possibly “macy^*s”), so if we say, as we do, to use an apostrophe and not a star, that should also discourage getting fancy with it. —Frungi (talk) 19:27, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I found the problem with the {{!xt}} template. It was the use of the "=" sign, which causes the template to get confused about parameter assignment. Using explicit parameter assignment fixes it, so typing "{{!xt|1=macy<sup style="font-size:55%;">★</sup>s}}" produces "macy^★s" (and typing "{{!xt|1=macy<sup style="font-size:55%;">​⃰</sup>s}}" produces "macy^​⃰s"). —BarrelProof (talk) 19:38, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Don’t you hate it when someone solves an annoying problem whose solution seems obvious in hindsight? =) —Frungi (talk) 04:08, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Requested move of Deadmaus

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Deadmaus#Requested_move_3_.28to_.22Joel_Zimmerman.22.29. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:27, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

It's time to NiGHTS

Even though your precious guidelines are meant to be limited, the so-called "consistency" that is supposed to breed from them is fake; therefore, you may as well throw this article down the shredder for all the good it could possibly do. Something needs to be done!

I wish for "NiGHTS" be respected, because it's sensible and also because it's the character's name. If you're worried about the other ridiculous copyrights out there, I will certainly say "so be it, we can change those case-by-case" like with everything else.

The tripe about iPod and eBay somehow being more special is exactly that: tripe. Despatche (talk) 13:44, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

May I suggest decaf? Croctotheface (talk) 22:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

But seriously, snark aside, you want the guideline to carve out an exception for this one video game series/character...apparently because you like the games a lot and believe this particular weird capitalization should be used, but we can do whatever we want with other trademarks that you don't care about. I don't really see why this should be. The guideline is pretty clear that we prefer standardization. Your beef seems to be with editors at the pages about these various games, who seem to think that this guideline makes sense and should apply. They could certainly reach a WP:IAR-type consensus to ignore the guideline, but they haven't. I'm not sure why raging against this guideline would do you any good. Croctotheface (talk) 22:21, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this one character in particular should not receive special treatment.--174.95.111.89 (talk) 06:24, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

I pulled out NiGHTS specifically because it was more than just a title, but I don't see how you could read it as a pure exception; consistency is really important. Despatche (talk) 10:27, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Considering that NiGHTS would not be consistent with this policy that would appear to strengthen the case against using it.--174.93.171.179 (talk) 02:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Crucible of the TM guideline

Check out Talk:Deadmaus#Requested_move_2. Super interesting; doesn't this seem like a logical exception? Should we rewrite the guideline to account for cases where the non-standard-english spelling (Deadmau5) is by far the dominant spelling? Anyway, thought this might interest y'all. Red Slash 08:54, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for raising that here. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:31, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I would also like to point out the recent move of Tech N9ne to Tech Nine, as another example of a logic exception to the rule, and a reason to change the guideline. When 99% of reliable sources online and in the article, refer to the subject as "Deadmau5" or "Tech N9ne" that should be the name of the article. STATic message me! 22:53, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I went through the archive and couldn't find a consensus to add the misleading seven/se7en example (misleading because they were used interchangeably, in fact "Seven" was used much more often than "Se7en" in secondary sources.) Capscap (talk) 17:44, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The "Se7en" example was here for several years (four years, I think). I think the fact that it stayed here unchallenged for so long is a pretty clear indication that it had consensus support. Consensus doesn't have to be achieved by pre-discussion. It can be achieved by WP:BOLD editing too. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:16, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

• Just think of the chaos if we allow digits to appear in article names! The moment we allow Deadmau5 as an article title then the servers will explode! Or something. Surely there is a _reason_ why it is utterly unthinkable that article titles must not ever gain digits to match their well-sourced canonical names? It's a good job we don't allow Henry VIII or Hal 9000 Andy Dingley (talk) 18:05, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

As has been explained to you previously, when you made the analogy to Perri 6, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the use of numerals in article titles; it is 100% to do with the use of unpronounced decorative characters. Henry VIII is pronounced "Henry the Eighth". Hal 9000 is pronounced "Hal nine thousand". Deadmau5 is NOT pronounced "dead mau five", it is pronounced "dead mouse". It is spelled with an S, and the S is styled as a 5. The number 5 is unpronounced and purely decorative, and THAT is the issue. Please stick to the subject and stop drawing patently false analogies. Wetdogmeat (talk) 19:06, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually a significant minority of people do pronounce it "deadmowfive", many more than use "Deadmaus". MidnightRequestLine (talk) 19:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

We need more opinion and consensus on this. Starting RfC. See on page for reasons. Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 18:33, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

We don't yet have a neutrally worded question or issue that would require broad community input. Let's discuss, and then if we get to a point where we need more input, together frame a simple, clear, neutral question, and set up a proper RFC. RFC is not simply a call for more editors to pile onto a discussion.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll repeat from what I said over there: If there are two or more styles that exist for a name where one style is the popular albeit non-standard means of spelling, ala Seven/Se7ev and Deadmaus/Deadmau5, we should always use the style that makes it easiest to read in English, irregardless if the non-standard means is the most popular and most frequent use (ie it would meet COMMONNAME). This is because we can't expect the reader to be aware of this in an article, and makes comprehension difficult. (If you've never heard of Deadmau5 before, that name looks impossible to pronounce). If there is no alternate accepted style, then yes, the non-standard style should stay, but as long as there is a non-"cool" way of showing the name, we should title our articles after that and use that style as the preferred way to represent the topic within the article. Of course, redirects on the "Cool" style are perfectly fine, and its even appropriate to start off the lead by showcasing the "cool" style so that the reader is aware that if they see the "cool" style in references, its the same as the normal spell. --MASEM (t) 19:59, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Its not a matter of being "cool". It's a matter of sources. And I am not just talking google hit counts... Deadmou5 wins on quality of sources as well... I'm talking Rolling Stone magazine, BBC and The New York Times type of source quality, folks. And they are not doing it just to be "cool". These are not fan club websites.

As for "always use the style that makes it easiest to read in English", good argument for not allowing titles with diacritics (which most English speakers don't understand)... but I would NOT suggest starting that debate up again. Blueboar (talk) 20:47, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I have what should be a simple question… Who defines what constitutes "non-standard English" when it comes to proper nouns? If the majority of reliable, quality sources all spell something one certain way, does that not make that spelling "standard"? —Frungi (talk) 21:49, 8 June 2013 (UTC)]

Sources all use KISS for the band, but we use Kiss to make it work in standard english pross. So it's not an issue of sourcing, its an issue of being readable. The same should apply here, particularly when we're talking about a spelling that is not normal of the source language it comes from. English does not use numbers as characters internally in words, so it simply begs for whether the name can be read by the average reader if they are not aware of the implied meaning. --MASEM (t) 22:09, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

So then it’s sort of a question of who the average reader would be—who would be the most likely to look up an article on someone like Deadmau5: a fan of Deadmau5 that already knows who he is, or someone who’s looking him up due to being not at all familiar with him and would be confused by a weird spelling. I honestly want to argue for using the “correct” spelling of any given subject, but I have to agree that we should cater more to the latter demographic. —Frungi (talk) 22:41, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

but the latter category is likely to see "deadmau5" (because that's what 99% of sources & sites use) and search for that in order to look him up. Or if they heard the name, they'd look up deadmouse. But they would not look up deadmaus. I'm not sure what tools are best at demonstrating this, but according to stats.grok.se, deadmaus has been viewed 2769 times in the last 60 days (1371 this month), while deadmau5 has been viewed 306,015 times (31,024 this month)Capscap (talk) 22:45, 8 June 2013 (UTC).

True, but I’m imagining they see “deadmau5” and think to themselves either, “Dead-mau-five?” or, “That’s a funny-looking S.” And then they see “Deadmaus” on WIkipedia and it all makes sense. But that’s just my opinion. —Frungi (talk) 22:56, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

This is why most articles, where there are two or more common forms of the term used or abbreviations or the like, we always start the article with listing those out. eg right from one of the examples: "Seven (sometimes stylized as Se7en) is a 1995 American thriller film..." which then the reader has now learned to expect both terms in sources. But if they come in from another article or start in the middle, they may not see that, so there is still potential for confusion if the non-standard spelling is used. --MASEM (t) 00:47, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Keyword is "sometimes". The movie is named "Seven", and it is sometimes called "Se7en". Deadmau5 is named Deadmau5, and is NEVER called Deadmaus unless the person is mistaken. So, we should have the title be "Deadmau5", and then in the first sentence, write "pronounced Dead-mouse" so that people know how it's actually pronounced. What we should NOT do is make up a random name out of the blue and use it as the article title. We can't use Deadmaus. We can't use Deadmauz. We can't use Deadmouze, because they are not words. Deadmau5 is the only word people in the real world use. MidnightRequestLine (talk) 20:02, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Sources most certainly do NOT all use "KISS" for the band. Also, if ALL sources use a style, then this guideline clearly says that we should use that style, however nonstandard it seems. Croctotheface (talk) 23:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

If the only printed name for deadmaus was "deadmau5", the "s" never ever at all being used in reliable sources, then yes, we ourselves would use "deadmau5" even though that's a problem in terms of pronunciation since we have no grounds to create the alternate name (it would be original research). That's not the case here, since there some RS that give us the "s" version. --MASEM (t) 23:17, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with User:Masem; I'm strongly opposed to the reproduction of vanity stylisations and decorations in article titles in general, for the reasons stated, and for the additional reason that reproducing these aspects of branding simply doesn't befit an encyclopedia. As for the reasons stated, I can attest, as someone who knows very little about Deadmaus and has never listened to his music, but had seen his name in places, that until I was directed to this article from the RM at Tech N9ne, I was under the impression that his name was pronounced "dead mau five". If his styled stage name was Deadmou5e, I'm sure I would have assumed the 5 was a stylised S, but there's no particular reason to assume that with Deadmau5 (and if you google deadmau5 pronounced you'll find quite a few people wondering about the correct pronunciation). Wetdogmeat (talk) 02:24, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
• Remember, the sources we follow for our style guidelines are stylistic sources, not content sources. We only look to what reliable sources call a subject (that is, WP:COMMONNAME) to determine what the title should be, not how we style that title. In this case, WP:COMMONNAME points us to title the article with the artist's stage name, not his birth name; MOS:TM points us to style that stage name in a way that is as close to standard English as possible. Powers ^T 16:02, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

• It's interesting. I'm not overly familiar with Deadmaus/Deadmau5 except from seeing the name in print here and there. I honestly thought it was prounced "dead mau five." Not sure what that's worth, if anything. I'm generally against changing the guideline to weaken it. As with all our guidelines, there are commonsense exceptions. The spirit of the guideline is "use Standard English." If every single source save one uses "Deadmau5," then it's difficult to argue that "Deadmau5" is not standard English. Likewise, if no major sources use "Deadmaus," then it's hard to argue "Deadmaus" is standard English. To me, this is a compelling argument available to someone who wants our article to use "Deadmau5" that probably should win the day in a move request or similar discussion. If this argument did not convince a consensus of editors, then I suspect there may be more to the story here and "Deadmaus" may not be as rare as people are saying. (It's worth reiterating that if every single reliable source uses a style, then MOSTM does specify that we should use it rather than invent something ourselves." However, if we change the language of the guideline to explicitly mandate the use of nonstandard styles, then every malcontent who wanted us to use a fringe "official" style that no major publications use would see it as a green light to make that change. We see people come to this guideline all the time and try to cite this or that example to prove that their pet case should not be standardized, even if it plainly should. It would be a logistical nightmare. Croctotheface (talk) 08:16, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• Reproducing these aspects of branding allows us to be more accurate at the expense of certain sources who may wish to be otherwise. Once again, it solves everyone's problems, except for those who simply cannot stand conflicts with those rules they have so carefully ingrained into their head; I do not mean this as a joke or as an insult.

Whether or not it's "readable" is irrelevant; we as English speakers already disagree enough on basic rules, and some of those rules are unintuitive and word-specific; it's very hard to fight for some thing called "English prose" when this concept can be just about anything it wants. This, really, is why I do not agree with many of the current language-related policies and guidelines: they're trying to impose order on something that can't really support it, and this hurts accuracy; since exceptions can be considered and acted upon, "fake consistency" is introduced eventually.

When a group decides to actually be consistent about their strange language, we should honor that. Why should we honor some non-related group or groups who want the first group to be in error? (Not sure I've explained that very well, hopefully you get the idea.) Despatche (talk) 10:48, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• Note that on 4 June 2013, deadmau5 moved to Deadmaus (diff), losing its {{lowercase title}} template as well as the stylized "s." This guideline is quite clear on the matter of lowercasing the first letter: "Capitalize trademarks, as with proper names." "Trademarks rendered without any capitals are always capitalized." "Trademarks beginning with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter do not need to be capitalized if the second letter is capitalized." So this clearly was a misuse of {{lowercase title}}, which is only intended for one-letter lowercase prefixes. The guideline is less clear about the "5." "Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced." But the "5" is pronounced, it's pronounced as an "s." "Included purely for decoration?" No, since it is pronounced, it's not purely decorative. Those wanting to advise against using that "5" might consider strengthening this guideline by adding a new general rule to advise against using leet. – Wbm1058 (talk) 11:20, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
  • The "5" is not pronounced in any way shape or form in a manner than an unaware English reader would expect. Ergo it is unpronounceable. --MASEM (t) 12:38, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
    • So his name is pronounced "dead-mao?" I don't think so. Do you want to imply that this artist is a communist? Wbm1058 (talk) 13:17, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
      • I didn't say was it completely unpronounceable (like the symbol Prince used), but just not pronounced in any manner consistent with normal English speaking. There is no place in the world where "mau5" can be seen to be pronounced as "maus/mouse". Remember, we're working ont he assumption the reader has no idea who deadmau5/deadmaus is. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
        • But there is a place in the world where "mau5" is pronounced as "maus/mouse". That place is leet. That's why I'm saying he may have found a hole in this guideline that it may be reasonable to fill. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:43, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
          • We don't write "leet", we write in standard English varieties. "Leet" is not one of those we consider (just like we don't consider Engrish as one, either). --MASEM (t) 13:50, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
            • Ah yes, we have Wikipedia:Use English, which redirects to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), where there is a section #Modified letters, that says, "The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged; when deciding between versions of a word which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language (including other encyclopedias and reference works). The policy on using common names and on foreign names does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name as verified by reliable sources." So in this case, "5" is a "modified s", and such use in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged, and there are apparently plenty of reliable sources using deadmau5. Nothing in that guideline rules out leet-modified letters. Another guideline hole that I wouldn't necessarily object to filling. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:21, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
              • It is a huge stretch to presume that a "5" is a "modified s". That guideline is written around elements like accent marks, umaluts, circumflexs, and the like. --MASEM (t) 14:44, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
                • Yea, I know, unlike French and German, leet doesn't get any respect on English Wikipedia. Chiseling that disrespect into this guideline would perhaps go a long way towards resolving individual article requested move debates. How huge that stretch is will be a matter of opinion until then. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
                  • Let's see, how long have French and German languages been around? How long has "l33tspeak" been around? --MASEM (t) 15:11, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
                    • Not sure how relevant that argument is, as the current guideline doesn't say anything about languages needing to have a significant history. Now, if the guideline were updated to say, "The use of modified letters without long-term significance is discouraged", then I wouldn't object to that. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
                      • So let me go make up a language and require that any articles on WP follow that? Again, scholars recognize French and German. l33tspeak is a novelty that we cover as a notable topic itself but shouldn't consider as a real language for writing any other article. --MASEM (t) 17:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• Also note that Wikipedia still has an article titled deadmau5 Circa 1998–2002, which has an open requested move at talk:deadmau5 Circa 1998–2002. However it seems that the "style police" have yet to notice Full Circle (deadmau5 album). We'll have ongoing tension between two editor constituencies: the "content creators" who are likely fans of deadmau5 and want to keep the stylized name, vs. the "style police" who have never heard of the musician but want to adhere to proper English style. – Wbm1058 (talk) 11:50, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• Introduction of trademark styling, logo styles and "Official" versions of names in to the encyclopaedia would be wrong. The present system of explaining the stylised system is the correct way to do things, it informs readers of the trademark and how it actually reads, but it also serves a more important task of informing users that a Wikipedia editor has gone though the text and checked it. The removal of trademark styles is a good indicator that the article has been checked for neutrality at the same time. I agree with the point that MOS:TM needs clarification in regard to Leet. Finally, just to widen the point beyond Deadmaus, I knocked this up.
  New video game company, M0s™, hope to score a hit with their new game called Tr@y'dm4rk2. The developers have stated that Thi4f inspired them to make their game. It will be a documentary game in the style of What tнē #$*! D̄ө ωΣ (k)πow!? with an accompanying YouTube channel by the people behind Cartooи Haиgover. The game will feature music by , †††, RVDXR KLVN and tUnE-yArDs. The game is in no way a spoof in the style of 2Ge+Her.
  - X201 (talk) 12:05, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

  I find this simultaneously amazing and horrifying. The titles are missing italics, though, which I’m not sure if that would make it better or worse. —Frungi (talk) 18:21, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's not overstate the case, though. Surely there's a difference between a weird-looking style like "Deadmau5" that a lot of publications, including reputable ones that take matters of style seriously, and the sort of over the top scenario of your hypothetical. Croctotheface (talk) 23:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• Personally, I am glad that Wikipedia avoids being "led by the nose" by those who try to make themselves stand out by turning their trade names into distinctive logos. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:24, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• Editors supporting deadmau5 point to WP:COMMONNAME in support, but I can poke a little hole in that argument too. WP:COMMONNAME says "Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural. This is often referred to as the common name." This assumes that the name that is most commonly used is always the most recognizable and the most natural. I think that's not always a good assumption. I find that Deadmaus is definitely more "natural" than deadmau5 – and each is equally "recognizable". Until very recently, I wouldn't have recognized either one. Maybe that guideline should be updated to explain what to do with the exceptions where the most commonly used name isn't the most natural name. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:10, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Not so... You might want to take another look at how the WP:AT policy defines the term "Natural":

• Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles.

Given the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the move, it seems clear that the variant Deadmau5 is what readers are likely to look or search for, and what most editors use when linking in other articles. Therefore that is the more natural title. Blueboar (talk) 13:47, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

That's irrelevant, because the manual of style governs how we render titles we select, not WP:AT (via WP:COMMONNAME). And that makes sense if you think about it; otherwise, we'd end up using "deadmau5" as the title but writing "Deadmaus" in the article, and that's just silly. Powers ^T 17:41, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Artistic license, or something like that

I'm actually a little surprised at the unanimity of the sentiment in favor of "Deadmaus". The cited sources in the RM discussion are kind of weak. They're not really where we'd look for the top style guides. I was expecting to see something like the NY Times or AP in there. I personally find the 5 annoying, but it seems like there's a pretty clear consensus among the style guides that we care about that it's the better style to use here. I'm nervous about changing the guideline because it would invite editors to relitigate all sorts of crazy styles that basically no respectable style guide would use, but it seems pretty clear to me that "Deadmaus" is not standard English based on the kinds of sources that use it versus the kinds of sources that use "Deadmau5". Croctotheface (talk) 02:45, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion, this is really not the place where we should decide what title to choose for that one particular article. Inserting an extra section header to further split the discussion of that page's name makes the situation worse. This is the discussion page for the manual of style, not the discussion page for That article and not the article's Move review discussion page. The discussion to decide on the title of that article is already taking place in at least two other places. The discussions here should be about general policy, not what to call that article, except as an example to guide the policy discussion. That article may end up being an exception to the general policy. Such things happen (although I am not expressing an opinion about that particular case here). Here we should talk about the policy. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:29, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

My purpose in sectioning this off is twofold. First, i think that my proposed interpretation of the policy is plainly reasonable. I think that "here are five sites you've never heard of that use a style" is not a strong argument, and if we establish that there's a consensus that it's not a strong argument, that could help people in the future who are struggling with how to interpret this policy. Second, there might be some place to stake out language in the guideline that describes cases like this. I think that there may be, for instance, some notion that a number in an artist name signifies that they are involved with electronic music. The exclamation point in Oliver! is plainly considered standard English by pretty much everyone, but why? Is it pronounced? It seems like an exclamation point is a signal that the show is a musical. Croctotheface (talk) 03:43, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

It's punctuation being used for punctuation - aka a standard English approach, so no one is going to be confused by it. (I'm sure someone can point to titles that end in question marks too that are using those as question marks). On the other hand, if the title was "Ol!ver" (using the exclamation as an inverted i), that's very non-standard and we would correct it. Again, this is not about non-alphabetic characters in titles, this is about any ASCII or extended ASCII character being used in a non-standard method for English or the appropriate language that is unrecognizable, such as the 5 in deadmau5 or the 7 in "Se7en". --MASEM (t) 16:05, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

And even punctuation is standardized, viz Macy's instead of "Macy*s". The only way I can see "deadmau5" becoming acceptable as an article title is to jettison the rule against typographic embellishments either wholly or in part. And there certainly doesn't seem to be any consensus to do that. Powers ^T 23:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

What rule against "typographic embellishments" are you referring to? That term is not used in this guideline. Is it in another guideline? Wbm1058 (talk) 00:33, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

From a legal perspective, there's a significant difference between stylization that uses alternative characters and stylization that uses graphical elements. This is subject to the trademark guidelines of different jurisdictions. In the U.S., only Latin letters, Arabic or Roman numerals, and common punctuation are considered part of a name. Anything else is considered graphical. Macy's Inc. has a trademark on MACY'S. The star is a graphical element that is covered along with typeface and layout by a separate design/style mark. So legally speaking, there's only one form of the word: MACY'S (which our MOS dictates should be written as "Macy's"). On the other hand, Warner Bros. has to have separate marks for SEVEN and SE7EN if they want to protect both forms, because the USPTO considers those to be two different words.

We shouldn't base our guidelines on U.S. intellectual property law, but there's a spirit inherent in that law that's helpful to us: when a proper name can be represented using standard characters (say, ASCII characters only), it constitutes a unique word. If it has to be represented with a special character, it's not. This can apply to Wikipedia because article titles can't contain symbols or characters not universally supported. Macy★s can be ruled out as a superfluous embellishment; titles like "deadmau5" and "Se7en" shouldn't be ruled out on those grounds, but should instead be given consideration based on WP:NAMINGCRITERIA:

• Are they recognizable? Yes.
• Are they natural (in the WP:CRITERIA sense of the word)? Generally, yes.
• Precise? Yes.
• Concise? Yes.
• Consistent? For that we have to look at MOS:TM, which tells us that special characters are to be avoided. But "5" and "7" aren't special characters; they're standard. If the original purpose of the guideline was to sanitize article titles and keep them Web-friendly, then the numerals should be fine. If the purpose is to help the unfamiliar reader by preventing the substitution of characters that preserves pronunciation of common English words but alters the lexicographically documented spelling of their modern forms, then these variations could be disallowed. But there is a significant need to balance comprehension with naturalness, so that readers who are familiar with the topic aren't confused by an uncommon rendering of the name. I suspect that local consensus may be necessary, on a case-by-case basis.

Ibadibam (talk) 01:48, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The first two answers are wrong. You have to think of a person who has zero idea what "deadmaus" and "seven" are, but for some reason has to read about them. Because nowhere in standard written english are numbers dropped into words like that, it's not recognizable and will cause confusion. They are not natural by the same reason. They may be in l33t speak, but we don't recognize that as a natural version of english. That's the problem - using those versions is find if the reader is aware of what these are, but we don't make that assumption and that's why they fail as appropriate titles for the subjects. We do want the reader to be aware once they start reading about these that they do use the alternate names "deadmau5" and "Se7en", but for being accessable we can't use that form everywhere. --MASEM (t) 19:40, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Masem, I get a little uncomfortable when you say that it's our job, when applying this guideline, to "correct" punctuation or anything else. We've been very clear that we don't do that, that our job is to select from among different ways to format a trademark, some or all of which may be "correct" depending on what sort of style guide you want to have, but that our style guide prefers standard formatting.

Specific to Oliver!, I've never been involved with the production, but is your argument that the exclamation point is somehow pronounced? That it's not decorative? I somehow doubt that people exclaim the title of that show every time they say it.

But we can set that aside as well if you prefer. It seems that the quality of sources using "Deadmau5" is much, much higher than the quality of sources using "Deadmaus". I'd still like to hear answers to my original point. Why is it that the style used by the New York Times, BBC, Rolling Stone, and Associated Press not standard English? The sources using "Deadmaus" seem like a bunch of no-name outfits. Croctotheface (talk) 18:52, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, you're right "correct" is the wrong word. Taking the hypothetical "Ol!ver" example, if the only way that is marketed and reported and described in nearly all sources (save for fringe) is with the exclamation point in place, we don't have sources to go on to say "Oliver" is the same as "Ol!ver" and would be stuck with the exclaimation-point version. But as long as there's enough RSs that, as part of routine reporting on the work, offer the alternate more-readable spelling, then we should use the spelling that is more accessable to the rest of the world instead of a small population (that is, to your comment on the NYTimes, etc. - they're all written towards the assumption the reader knows who deadmaus is, while we have to assume the reader has no idea.) --MASEM (t) 19:35, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that there's any evidence for the premise that the NYT or AP assume that readers know who Deadmau5/Deadmaus is, and I also don't see any evidence that there is such an animating principle behind this guideline. The guideline says that readers are best served by standard English. Our general references for standard English are other style guides. It seems like a pretty much impossible argument to say that other style guides prefer "Deadmaus". Likewise, I have trouble divorcing this from the "correction" mentality, which doesn't serve the readers.  ::::::: More broadly, I get kind of annoyed/embarrassed when WP is the most prominent source that uses some nonstandard style, which does happen from time to time. (Last I checked, basically no other major publications scream Yahoo! from the top of their lungs.) I feel the same way in reverse. I really have trouble seeing how we're not the biggest publication using "Deadmaus," which, if it's not an invented style, is pretty close. Croctotheface (talk) 22:33, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. We seriously need some guidelines on selecting our sources for names. What’s acceptable? What isn’t? How ubiquitous does something need to be before it becomes “standard”?

Speaking of “standard English”, that term in this guideline appears to apply specifically to formatting (per MOS:TEXT) and capitalization, and not otherwise changing a name to suit our preference. If someone uses a number or some other non-exotic character instead of a letter, and major publications all do the same, my opinion is that it is not our place to say otherwise. Accessibility is a valid concern, and in severe cases, that can be addressed with specialized templates (see for instance {{KIA}}, as an unrelated example addressing a similar problem). —Frungi (talk) 00:24, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

All that being said, in this particular case, the NYT has used “Deadmaus” at least twice before: [3][4]. But they’ve also accompanied “Deadmau5” with a pronunciation: [5][6][7]. —Frungi (talk) 00:35, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't personally view a number being substituted for a letter as being any less exotic than an oddly-placed asterisk, bracket, punctuation mark, or space (or lack thereof), and yet we seem to have agreed to "avoid: Macy*s, skate., [ yellow tail ], Alien3Alien³". —BarrelProof (talk) 00:45, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

And in the same vein why our capitalization rules favor keeping proper names in sentence case unless they are true initialisms, as to make prose readable by anyone. --MASEM (t) 00:50, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

That’s actually Alien³ with a superscripted “3”, and that’s purely a matter of formatting. In the other examples, none of the characters in question are part of the name. One could argue for “Macy*s”, but mainstream (even primary) sources commonly use an apostrophe instead. —Frungi (talk) 01:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about that copy/paste error. But superscripting and unusual capitalization also does not seem any more unusual to me than substituting a number for a letter. Not to mention the "Se7en" example that's been in the list for the last four years (which I just restored, as I see no consensus to remove it). —BarrelProof (talk) 01:27, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

I’m saying such substitutions fall outside the scope and spirit of this guideline, especially when we would be going against mainstream reliable sources. One reason I’m discounting these examples for this discussion is that the same sources that use “Deadmau5” also use “Yellow Tail” and “Skate”. —Frungi (talk) 01:38, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

We don't follow reliable sources for style. We have our own house style, just as every other publication does. Powers ^T 00:41, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Replacing characters that are widely considered part of the name, I don’t classify as “style”. Please clarify. —Frungi (talk) 01:09, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

That's what I was arguing in the Deadmaus discussion: the concept of spelling only applies to letters, not numbers. Deadmaus and Deadmau5 are spelled the same, and in the latter case the S is styled as a number that looks a bit like an S, but it is still a functional S and not a functional number 5. The number 5 is pronounced "five", so it would only be part of the spelling if the name was pronounced "dead mau five". There is really no difference between the styling of the letter S as a number 5 and the styling of the letter A as a triangle or the letter T as a cross or whatever, except for the fact that the number 5 appears on normal keyboards; it's no less an unpronounced decorative character in the context of the word than Δ or †. The fact that the character appears on normal keyboards is the reason the style is so frequently reproduced in sources.Wetdogmeat (talk) 01:24, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

By that logic, those same sources would also use, e.g., “Macy*s”, “[ yellow tail ]”, and “skate.” They just as easily could, but they don’t. So I have to assume that the majority of professional editors don’t consider the “5” in “Deadmau5” to be a mere matter of house style, and I really don’t think it’s our place to be the ones to make that judgement call. —Frungi (talk) 03:23, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, none of those examples are quite the same as replacing a letter in a word with an unpronounced character that looks a bit like it. So, I don't think that follows logically at all. Wetdogmeat (talk) 04:14, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Exactly, they aren’t. This guideline does not explicitly encourage replacing alphanumeric characters when it’s not widely done elsewhere, and I’m of the opinion that this is a Good Thing. —Frungi (talk) 05:03, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

What you asked to be clarified was how the number 5 in the name could be classified as style, which is what I explained, but now you appear to be talking about something else that I haven't commented on. You said it follows logically from my argument that the same sources that use Deadmau5 would use those other styles, but you didn't explain why. The distinction that I made was between unpronounced replacement characters that do appear on a normal keyboard and unpronounced replacement characters that don't. So, if Zimmerman liked to decorate his name DEΔDMΔUS, you can be sure these same sources would not reproduce that style because the character Δ doesn't appear on a normal keyboard. There is no difference between a 5 standing in for an S and a Δ standing in for an A except that one appears on normal keyboards and one doesn't. Wetdogmeat (talk) 15:48, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t reproduce something like “|)ead|\/|@us” with any regularity, either, and all of those characters are standard. But the fact is they do reproduce “Deadmau5” rather than calling it a style choice and substituting their own. I assume that this is because these mainstream, non-niche sources consider it a matter of spelling rather than style (it’s spelled with a numeral that is pronounced like a letter); you assume that they choose to indulge the style. Regardless of which case is more likely, I say it’s better to not risk altering a spelling to suit our own preference.

That being said, Masem does have some very good points below. If major non-American sources from various regions spell a name in a more readable way (or if there are no such sources), I’d support using that spelling on those grounds. Otherwise, I don’t. —Frungi (talk) 05:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Again, that's not really analogous; what you have there is multiple normal characters standing in for other normal characters |) for D and |\/| for M. But if he liked to style his name Deadm@us, then yeah, I think they'd be as likely to reproduce that as they are Deadmau5. My point is primarily this: Deadmaus and Deadmau5 are spelled the same, but styled differently. A 5 is not an S, just as a Δ (or an @) is not an A. If someone likes to put triangles in their stage name in place of A's, like many witch house acts do, that doesn't mean their name is 'spelled' with triangles; it doesn't make any more sense to talk about 'spelling' a word with numbers than it does to talk about 'spelling' a word with triangles. If the editors of NYT or whatever disagree with that, then that's their business, but by any definition of the word 'spelling' that I'm aware of, they would be wrong. The concept of spelling only applies to letters, not to numbers (or triangles). Wetdogmeat (talk) 16:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Though many of us are arguing this guideline should do this for readability and accessibility as long as other sources have "normalized out" the non-standard use of characters or punctuation. We do it for many other cases (eg in capitalization), and it doesn't seem wrong to not include it to cases like Seven and deadmaus, even if many more of the sources do use the non-standard approach. We're writing for comprehension, not outright respect of trademarks that are purposely awkward to include in standard English. --MASEM (t) 05:20, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

As we should—doesn’t any respectable publication write for comprehension? But part of that is using the most common name in mainstream use. If that name happens to have a funny spelling (whether with numerals or not), we should respect that, because that’s what we do. I admit I’m not sure how best to address accessibility concerns in such cases; is it possible to tell a screen reader how to pronounce something? —Frungi (talk) 06:27, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Except, I wouldn't call WP a mainstream publication. Those cases, they have a good idea who their audience is and thus can expect them to be aware of the popular culture at the time - eg this is my point on the NYTimes when they use "deadmau5", particularly when it is in their music and arts section which already narrows the audience further. Yes, not everyone that reads the NYTimes will know who deadmau5 is, but the NYTimes has a strong idea that their audience will more than likely be Americans with even periphery knowledge of deadmau5, so using the name without explanation is fine for them. But on WP we have no idea who our readers are, beyond a basic assumption of English language comprehension. We have no idea what knowledge of the popular culture is, and while we would expect that a higher proportion of visitors to the deadmau5 page are going to know who the artist is, we don't have the same assurance that the NYTimes has. Hence, we should aim to be a bit broader and recognize that the stylized name "deadmau5" will be confusing if you've never heard of the artist and have no idea what "l33tspeeak" is. Since there are alternatives published in reliable sources that give us a less confusing name, we should use those instead in our general prose and titling.

(Irregardless of this discussion, I do believe there are simple tech solutions that can be used to wrap terms to provide exact pronouncation for screen readers, so I don't think accessibility for disability is necessarily a problem. Accessibility for non-native English speakers, on the other hand...). --MASEM (t) 14:15, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

This whole deadmau5 thing is utterly ridiculous. The original RM was closed far too soon and when discussion was still going on. A second RM was closed because it was the "wrong venue", and the MRV was closed because "well, technically, the closing admin did nothing wrong", despite the blaring evidence from all three discussions that there was never any consensus for a move in the first place, therefore the page should never have been moved. As for this guideline, imo there is nothing that needs changing, because this is a guideline, not a rule written in stone, the fact that there will be exceptions is spelled out quite clearly at the top already. The only thing that needs changing is the mindset of people who don't have enough common sense to spot a clear case for an exception from a guideline. But apparently Wikipedia is now a bureaucracy, so we can't rely on this. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 14:13, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I have a broader comment to raise here. A lot of the stuff I've seen in recent replies in this section really do strike me as a "we know best, we should CORRECT a problem" sort of attitude. I keep coming back to Masem's comment about "correcting" "errors" because it's so fundamentally not the spirit of the guideline, but it's clearly what some people want to do here. The spirit of the guideline as I understand it is "use standard English." As far as how to determine standard English, we take guidance from our sources. When you have very, very few publications using the style "Deadmaus," I have a very hard time understanding how that's considered "standard." I think that Masem's argument about looking out for someone who may have no exposure to the article subject is pretty much beside the point, since all sorts of elements of an article could be confusing to someone with little to no familiarity with the subject. A name like 50 Cent, which is not a phrase that's used in standard English except as the name of a rapper, would be confusing to someone unfamiliar with the rapper. The rule Masem proposes would justify changing that name; "What is this 50 Cent, that's ungrammatical! We should use 50 Cents!" All I really see here are very top-down, paternalistic sorts of arguments that come down to something like, "we know best." Croctotheface (talk) 18:56, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

There is a facet of sources, I don't question that. If the only place "deadmaus" was used over "deadmau5" was in a handful of SPS blogs or wikis, or even as a one type typo in a larger publication, it is clear the world at large readily accepts "deadmau5" and we would use that as we have no reliable sources to back up this alternate version. But even if there is a small but significant number of reliable sources that use "deadmaus" over the bulk that use the "deadmau5" (the more "English-correct" version over the "cool" version), we should go with the former to make it easier for the majority of our readers to read our content. What is "small and significant" I dare not put a number on; someone pointed to me before that the split of ghits between "deadmau5" and "deadmaus" was about 100:1, but I'd still say given we're talking ghits in the 100,000s for the latter, that would be enough to make me use "deadmaus". Again, to stress, if we're already mucking about with case and other aspects of a trademark name to make it easier to read (And very often in a manner that reliable sources don't do), this conversion seems like a no-brainer extension of that. Otherwise, we're double-speaking what MOSTM's purpose is. --MASEM (t) 19:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I think that this guideline is pretty specific that our goal is not "make it easier to read...in a manner that reliable sources don't do." I think it's very clear that this guideline says "use standard English." I have trouble understanding how anyone can believe that a style ("Deadmau5') that's used almost universally by major publications, the very sorts of publications we generally look to as models of style, is somehow how not the standard English style. The "readability" standard that you seem to hew toward may be a reason we prefer standard English, but it's not the central tenet of the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 19:46, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I just don't see how one can call "Deadmau5" as "standard English" because no amount of background in the English language will tell you how that is pronounced; you have to be aware of how the artist has wanted people to interpret that to understand it, and that's an assumption we can't make for a worldwide encyclopedia. As others have stated, the 5 is purely there to act as a stylistic "s". Standard English (backed by enough sources) tells use that really should be "Deadmaus". I realize this isn't as bad as the Prince case where he changed his name to an unpronouncable symbol, forcing nearly all reliable sources to come to call him "the artist formally known as Prince" in lieu of publishing the symbol, but its the same type of thing. On Prince's page we briefly cover this, but simply the discussion as just referring to him as Prince because its just that much easily to write and read about. --MASEM (t) 19:59, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

If we were really intent on converting proper names to standard English, we would use “Dead Mouse”. “Deadmaus” is no more “standard” than “Deadmau5”—even less so, depending on the definition you use. Neither name is English. —Frungi (talk) 00:51, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Not true. "maus" is "mouse" in German, so while it "not English" it follows the standard practice of a established language. So "deadmaus" at least without knowing who or what that is, at least that can be pronounce/read without any difficulty. Sure, its not a word in any English or German dictionary, but the grouping of letters and symbols is not something you can't easily infer elsewhere. On the other hand, while I understand that the "5" is a stylized "s", that is not easily inferred and so "deadmau5" can be easily mistakenly read as "deadmaufive", which is obviously not what it's meant to be, but what I would expect those unfamiliar with the artist would infer. Using a bare number in the middle of a word is very non-standard in any language (save for l33tspeak), and creates confusion that we , though establish sources, can avoid including in WP. --MASEM (t) 14:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

We’re discussing altering titles to make them conform to “standard English”, and German is not English, so my point remains valid. —Frungi (talk) 06:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I think the intent is clear where it says "the style that most closely resembles standard English". Dicklyon (talk) 07:05, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Reminder: This page is not about Move review, nor about Deadmau5. This is a talk page for the trademarks guideline. Please keep your comments on topic. If you want to use Deadmau5 to illustrate why the guideline needs changing, please do so, but don't use this as a forum for generally complaining about the result of a recent move, or proposing other solutions for a recent move. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:38, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I cannot catch up and read every single thing here, so I'm not sure how relevant it is to this section, but I just posted this message on EdJohnston, the admin that closed the move reivew's talk page. I think this is the most important point in this issue: I would like to ask you to please reconsider your decision regarding the Deadmaus/Deadmau5 issue. Ke$ha and Se7en can be validly renamed Kesha and Seven because they also go by those names. People use the name Kesha, and people use the name Seven to refer to the film. They weren't exclusively Ke$ha or Se7en. The reality is that Deadmaus is not a word. It was invented by wikipedians and this is a great example for why wikipedia cannot be considered a reliable source - because wikipedians can create and publish total nonsense. Deadmaus is not a word. I understand the argument against Deadmau5, but Deadmaus is absolutely NOT a viable alternative. This is quite frankly embarrassing to wikipedia. MidnightRequestLine (talk) 19:24, 17 June 2013 (UTC) May I suggest that we temporarily change the article's title to "Joel Zimmerman" for the time being? Once we come to a consensus on the Deadmaus/Deadmau5 dispute, then it could be changed back to whatever is agreed upon, but Joel Zimmerman is accurate and uncontroversial. It certainly isn't his WP:COMMONNAME, but then again neither is Deadmaus. Deadmaus isn't a name at all. It's wiki-created nonsense. MidnightRequestLine (talk) 20:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC) My understanding is that the decision declared by EdJohnston in closing the Move Review for the current "Deadmaus" article was not about whether the best name for that article is "Deadmaus" or "Deadmau5" (or "Joel Zimmerman" or "deadmau5" or something else). It was about whether the action taken when closing the original requested move was reasonably appropriate or not at the time, based on the policy and information that was available at that time. That may be worth keeping in mind. Also, some sources had been identified during the discussion that used "Deadmaus", so the "5" was not being used exclusively in sources. (I believe there were about 8 such sources identified.) —BarrelProof (talk) 19:53, 17 June 2013 (UTC) Instruction creep. Wikipedians are trying to make move review a relevant forum and it is just hindering progress with settling this issue. Most of those sources also used the name "Deadmau5" later in the article, indicating it was a typo. If it were up to me, I'd say we should bypass these cumbersome processes and take a simple vote. I know it's not up to me, so no need to tell me that "wikipedia doesn't care about my personal opinion". MidnightRequestLine (talk) 20:07, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Prescriptivism vs descriptivism

Now, it seems to me that there are two main opposing viewpoints here. One is that standard English words exclusively use letters (and occasionally punctuation like apostrophes and hyphens), and thus we should exclusively use letters even if most sources don’t. The other is that widespread use constitutes standardization, irregardless of how well a name does or does not fit with the language at large, and we should respect that “standard” usage even if more readable variants exist in a minority of sources.

Is there any reconciling these two viewpoints? Because I’m pretty sure that we’re never going to get consensus that one is right or that the other is wrong. —Frungi (talk) 05:02, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Im for respect of the naming decision given by creators and publishers. Because theres a strong chance A) we're removing character count of the actual title. Example "Fun." (4 characters) are now "Fun (band)" (3 characters + manual disambiguation). B) adds, manual disambiguation when we natural disambiguation is available.

Isnt there even a rule that allows us to use non-english keyboard letters in titles, as long as theres some form of redirect? So its pointless to be standard english exclusive. I understand wikipedia wants to have the most standard english title, but how can titles meet those standards? If a ton of titles dont try to.

also wikipedia is a well known and considerably reliable source among sources we use. So us editors choosing the most standard english name possible might encourage the sources we use to use the more rare name.Lucia Black (talk) 05:13, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I’m afraid I really don’t understand the relevance of your point about character count. Could you elaborate on why that specifically is a problem?

Anyway, WP has editors who are as strongly in favor of hewing to standard language rules as you (and I) are in favor of respecting the original and widespread form. This is why I asked about reconciling the two views rather than arguing for either one. Do you think it’s possible? —Frungi (talk) 05:24, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

It changes the titles distinction. Example: "Fun." is more recognizable than "Fun" (just the word fun, no longer a distinct name). But because one claims its not standard english, we have to stick with "Fun (band)". Yes it redirects, but it implies "Fun" is the most accepted name, not "Fun." or more officially: "fun." But thats not an issue as mandating capitalizing the first letter isnt changing the distinction by all that much. The period at the end adds more distinction and recognizability to even first time readers. And those who dont, can be taken to a disambiguation page to help them find it. Or better yet, if they dont know the distinction they'll type in "Fun band" or "Awkward TV series" which can redirect them to the actual name for informative and clarity sake.

Lets say theres a title known as "Jack_", and the "underscore" isnt promounced. It would make the title less recognizable to remove unknown, unheard characters. Some titles are more visual than pronounciation.

I dont think it will ever be reconciled. Ag the core its about standardization over accuracy.Lucia Black (talk) 05:41, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

My own opinion is that fun. simply doesn’t have a name well-suited to being written about. I would have to see some sources on the subject to be sure, but since the particular punctuation used in the official name changes or confuses the meaning of a sentence, and the name is a very common English word, I think it would have to be capitalized and unpunctuated in order for the reader to be expected to have any idea what’s being written about. As for the hypothetical Jack_, it sounds like in that case the underscore would be purely decorative, and so it makes sense to not include it. If the extra character affected the pronunciation in some way or stood in for another letter or letters, though, I would say it has value to the name and should be included as part of it. —Frungi (talk) 06:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

I think thats where it boils down to. What one considers "decorative". I consider all characters in a title to be part of the title and should not be removed to standardize english. I can completely understand why one would avoid it in sentences, but not in the title space. Theres nothing saying we cant have the title as "fun." and use "Fun" in the prose.

However I do believe "decoration" exist in a title. For example if Jack had a turn-a instead of an "a". J(turn-a)ck vs Jack wouldnt be a huge issue as it would still have the same number of characters (4). But Jack_ vs Jack, is completely different. Not only would it need manual disambiguation but it would remove the distinction between the media from the rest. It also encourages more innacuracy. Example: if Jack_ was a music artist and heade albums that have his name, lets say: "Jack_ live: video album" would we also remove the underscore? The innacuracy would escalate even further.Lucia Black (talk) 06:34, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Correction: There are three viewpoints, the third being that we should respect the stylized name as originally formulated, regardless of what any other sources do and regardless of its practicality in running text. I frankly feel that consensus is largely against this third one, though. —Frungi (talk) 06:12, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a non-linear problem. Therefore, no firm lines can be drawn. I think the binary distinction you draw are opposing ends of a continuum. For example, we wouldn't want François Mitterrand to be at Francois Mitterand, even if many reliable sources forgot to use the special 'c' - it just doesn't look right. So, we allow that one little character. But that opens a flood gate - so you get to people like Srđan Muškatirović, and some start to wonder, hmm, that looks TOO foreign for me. There were epic debates, probably still ongoing, about vietnamese diacritics, and names like Mỹ Hội Đông which just scare some people ("That's not ENGLISH" they insist). There are also issues of reproduction of characters in typesetting machines and keyboards/unicode, and google book scan search *missing* diacritics on characters, and other *technical* restrictions that IMHO should be discarded as a result (like the fact that tennis players must register using some stupid old system that only accepts ASCII, and then many sports newspapers parrot the ascii-ized names of our Serbian friends.) Then we get into trademarks and band names, where people start to get creative and use punctuation, non-standard characters/spacing, numbers, etc - and there's no reason a band couldn't do all of the above, and call themselves šỹộĐôçôđ5!! instead of Syodocods. So it's non-linear, because there isn't a particular place where you can say "Ok, this goes too far - let's revert fully to ascii" - but there are things that cross that line, and you *do* revert fully to ascii. The challenge for this guideline is really more about WHAT to do when WP:COMMONNAME, which is a policy, contradicts this manual of style, which is a guideline. If NY Times and BBC and Rolling Stone all call the band šỹộĐôçôđ5!!, and thousands of blogs and fans and so on do the same, should we still defang it just because we don't want to scare off readers? The one limit that does seem to be clearly drawn is no non-roman characters (like Вук Јеремић), but diacritics, numbers, punctuation, all have their place and are used in many titles. All we can do is give better examples, but ultimately the line is fuzzy and negotiated at every RM. There is no bright line.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:37, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

My issue is mainly character count, becayse every character is part of the title. To remove a character and not have a replacement is like altering the title.

Yours is somehow if we accept one letter in a title, we accept have to accept all letters that are used multiple times in english. As for your vietnamese issue, we can use Herburn so it doesnt affect too much. Your hypothetical band, also uses a name that doesnt mandate removing characters.

Overall, if there is room for an altered name (and commonly accepted as an alternate), we should use it to avoid too many unnecessary character searching. Theres no way that hypothetical band couldnt offer an alternate name even if fans use that one more common, and it still has the same number of characters.

There should be a limit to how much alteration a title can offer. We can alter 1 letter to its accepted replacement, but if theres multiple letters, we cant replace them all to fit english, we then choose the alternate yet accepted version that doesnt use those characters. However I still think the issue is altering names that end up getting their own album/book/spin-off that uses that very name and theres no alternate accepted name. we have to use the stylized, difficult one no matter what for accuracy.Lucia Black (talk) 07:56, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

There's a far cry between accented characters used in their normal purpose in the native roman-like spelling of a proper name (eg not used for visual style) like Mỹ Hội Đông, and where they are only there for visual appeal, ala the deadmau5 or Fun. cases. (off hand, Fun to "Fun (band)" already follows from the skate.-->Skate (video game) example. We should be removing "visual style" based names in favor of approach normal-English (or other native language romanized names) as long as there are reliable sources - not the majority but enough to not be the exception - that provide us with a proper non-"cool" approach. If we as WPians have to guess at how to make the visual style into something more English, we're creating original research barring cases where it is simply impossible to show the visual name. --MASEM (t) 13:44, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Re Deadmau5, considering that the artist and many reputable sources all spell it with a “5”, one could argue that that is the spelling of a proper name. Yes, it’s an unconventional use of a numeral, but it’s clearly spelled with a “5” by professionals who decide how things ought to be spelled. —Frungi (talk) 18:03, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

My argument is precisely that we are, if not "creating" original research, then very strongly overemphasizing low level sources to a degree that can resemble "research" when we do what you suggest. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, this is very much about how to interpret the guideline, but I keep harping on the "Deadmau5" example because it seems so stark: we have to go out of our way to find very minor league sources that use the letter instead of the numeral. Publications that care very much about readability and basically nothing at all for being "cool" use Deadmau5. Other cases (Fun/fun./Fun.) might be harder, but this one really doesn't seem to be. And if the guideline is causing RMs to come out this way, we probably do need to modify the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 15:34, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Theres nothing stopping us from accepting visual-oriented titles. In fact, if we accept them more, this would be a whole lot better. Fun/Fun./fun. Situation is only harder if the title used as namespace and the one in the prose are the same.Lucia Black (talk) 16:00, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The fact that you auto-capitalized the word after “fun.” is one very good reason that we should not necessarily use display names in articles. It makes things unnecessarily harder to parse. And while yes, we could theoretically use different names for titles and content, it just seems like a very Bad Idea to have that kind of inconsistency between an article and its own title. —Frungi (talk) 18:03, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

auto-correct is done by mobile phone and too lazy to go back. yes, I noticed. Also if we could, we can. The level of inconsistency will only matter if we dont explain to the reader why we cant use the proper name in prose. Ive been proposong a "Due to grammatical restraints, we cannot use X title in prose" notice for readers.Lucia Black (talk) 18:09, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

To go back to Obiwan's hypothetical šỹộĐôçôđ5!! ... and the question "should we still defang it just because we don't want to scare off readers?"... The only people that might be "scared off" are those surfing random articles. That isn't the average reader. The average reader is someone who comes here searching for information on a specific topic... Which means that there is a strong liklihood that the average reader/searcher has already come across the variant with all the funny characters... and that means we won't scare the reader away by using those same funny characters... indeed it is likely that seeing the name with funny characters is why the reader is looking the name up in Wikipedia in the first place. The average reader probably is someone who came across the funny name in a source, and wants to find out more about it. That reader is not going to instinctively search for the name using "normal" lettering... he/she is going to search for it using the funny name. And he/she is going to expect to arrive at an article that uses those funny characters in its title. If he/she arrive at an article that uses a "defanged" title, he/she is going to question whether he has arrived at the right article. This is what I call the "Principle of least surprise" (which is something that should probably be added to our WP:AT policy as a sixth criteria). Blueboar (talk) 14:27, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Right, but this is why I called this non-linear. There isn't a continuum, whereby more and more diacritics get added - instead, we have things like Mötley Crüe, which is acceptable, but MANY others, which are not - and this sometimes depends on the capability of the reliable source to reproduce the diacritics, for example. If you have a black and white book, you don't use that as a source for which color of blue picasso used; in the same way, if you have a newspaper without any diacritics, you don't use that as a source for reliable spelling of words with diacritics. What happens in practice is, we let some of these through, and others we pare dramatically back to diacritic-free versions. So it all depends - but I can guarantee you that šỹộĐôçôđ5!! would probably never survive as an article title, no matter how many sources used it. Deadmau5 OTOH may come back, but Tech N9ne was moved without a big uproar. So it's really case by case. FWIW, lots of great band names here Metal umlaut --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes... exactly... it is a case by case thing. That's because COMMONNAME is a case by case application. This is why there is conflict between COMMONNAME and MOS/TM ... one is intended to be applied on a case by case basis while the other is intended to be applied on a wiki-wide basis. This causes conflict in specific articles (but not in other articles).

That said... I thank you for raising the issue of Metal umlaut... it is an apt analogy. I am not trying to do an OTHERSTUFF argument... I think it would be helpful to explore why we don't seem to have any problem with the ö in Toilet Böys or the äs in Infernäl Mäjesty, but do seem to have a problem with the 5 in Deadmau5? in what ways are they the same, and in what ways are they different? Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

If one were to try to formulate it, I would say ö is a diacritic mark on a roman character, while 5 is a stylized s. We have no problems with ö, or even a double one! - at Paul Erdős - but for a rock band, it is clearly vanity/metal umlaut-esque. So it's really the edge of a knife. Technically, you could have a crazy stylized name like šỹộĐôçôđ, but how do you render 5ỹộĐôçôđ? As sỹộĐôçôđ? or do you de-fang it entirely as sydocod? These are unanswerable... --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:00, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's unanswerable at all... In fact I find it easily answerable... I would simply survey the sources that talk about the topic, and do what they do - whatever that may be. If the sources present it as šỹộĐôçôđ, then we present it as šỹộĐôçôđ... if they present it as 5ỹộĐôçôđ, then we present it as 5ỹộĐôçôđ... if they present it as sydocod, then we present it as sydocod. Or to put it another way, we follow WP:COMMONNAME. The beauty of WP:COMMONNAME is that most of the time, we don't have to worry about what to do... we let our sources tell us what to do. The only time we have to make a choice is when the sources are so mixed in their usage that we can not determine which version is the COMMONNAME. And the sources can at least help us to limit the choice. It really is that easy. Blueboar (talk) 01:55, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

To answer something Blueboar said a few replies up, I think that all policies and guidelines are applied on a case by case basis. I think that the best application of MOSTM is something along the lines of UCN, just applied to high-level publications that care about matters of style as much as we endeavor to here. That most fans use a certain style, for instance, is irrelevant to me, no matter how common it is. That nearly all high-level publications use a style strikes me as highly persuasive (as my comments so far indicate). Croctotheface (talk) 02:51, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Exactly right... what we are looking at when determining the COMMONNAME is usage in reliable sources, and it is absolutely appropriate to give more weight to the usage in higher end reliable sources. If an examination of the sources determines that the COMMONNAME is šỹộĐôçôđ we use that. If fans come by and say "You idiots, the name is 5ỹộĐôçôđ, it's spelled with a 5", we point them to WP:Official name and say "Don't talk to us, talk to the sources... we simply follow usage in the sources". If the sources in the Deadmau5/Deadmaus debate indicated that Deadmaus was more commonly used in reliable sources, I would be arguing just as vociferously for using that as the title.

To translate all of this into MOS terms... the style guidance on names should be: "Follow the usage in reliable sources, per COMMONNAME... in cases when no COMMONNAME can be determined we recommend X." This would bring this guideline into sync with our WP:AT Policy and end most of the debates. Blueboar (talk) 11:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that "Common Style" is superior to what we do now, unless we're going to start seeing more cases like this one where there is a pretty overwhelming consensus of sources that we ignore because of the specific way that MOSTM is phrased. The issue is that there are reliable sources with very different style guides from ours. I might be more inclined to go along with an approach that asked what was common among high level publications that are looked to as models of style. So if a particular style is more common among AP, BBC, New York Times, etc., then that strikes me as persuasive. But that also strikes me as persuasive that such a style is standard English, which is what the guideline uses at present, so I don't see the benefit to changing. Croctotheface (talk) 16:13, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes. If we turn to sources to determine our own style, then we will be left with a mishmash of styles rather than one unifying style that can be applied site-wide. Publications have style guides, and follow them even where they disagree with others. The New York Times always refers to people with honorifics after the first reference, even though most publications (including us) just use last names. That's a style issue, and we would be just as correct to choose to follow NYT's style on that as any other... but the important thing is that we pick one and stick with it. Having to turn to sources to determine how to write every thing in the encyclopedia would be both confusing and tedious. Powers ^T 17:47, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

This actually makes sense and appropriate for how all other aspects of MOSTM works when it conflicts with COMMONNAME. We strip stray punctuation (ala fun.), we ignore all caps if not initialisms (KISS), and do everything else under the name of the style guide to keep the overall work consistent and easy to read. It would thus make sense that as long as we aren't using an undocumented and/or unorthodox non-stylized spelling of a proper name, we can justify its use under the style guide. Readers coming here to look for "deadmau5" will likely not bat an eye seeing "deadmaus" instead because its an accepted alternate spelling - just not super common. As long as we do this across the board (which we have done), then we're being consistent. --MASEM (t) 18:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

My argument is precisely that "Deadmaus" is not an accepted alternative. It is very fringe. Masem, I don't think you've ever addressed my argument that a style that is used universally by major publications with serious style guides is pretty much "standard English" by definition. Croctotheface (talk) 19:18, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I feel like we're going in circles. Oone side is asking "why not?" but the other is worried about readability. But how far does readability can go? Im trying to determine why cant "deadmaus" be the redirect to Ddeadmau5". I think at least we should allow numbers to replace letters in an article.

and if we cant use periods for purely grammatical and readability issue, but if we could we would, then we have to make it obvious for the reader. How "accepted" is deadmaus as an alternative? In what way? The band fun. Is only "Fun" based on we cant use it if we want our sentences to make sense. So even if we dont have "Fun." "Awkward." Etc. people will know that the mire accepted name kn wikipedia is the one with the period but cant physically be used without affecting readability. I really wish someone would address this idea. Im tired of it being ignored. Its the best of both worlds in my opinion.Lucia Black (talk) 18:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

A number used in the middle of characters, by nearly all established languages, is universally read as a number, so someone who does not know who "deadmau5" is will think the name is read photentically "dead-mau-five", which is not correct, and that will happen comprehension (particularly since the mouse imagery is part of his style and hence part of his name). Using the stylistic version will confuse readers, just as using "fun." would too. Readers that know who deadmau5, however, will have no confusion on seeing "deadmaus". We capture the comprehension of the largest segment by using the non-stylized approach. --MASEM (t) 19:09, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

"And?" "So?" "Your point being....?" Is ky responce to phonetic typing, how will it confuse readers exactly? If I had no prior knowledge of Deadmau5, and hypothetically I discovered deadmau5, and then I read the article and it shows its pronounced as "Dead mouse" am I, a reader who had no knowledge of this subject, going to argue why its not "Deadmaus"? No I would not, and im pretty sure first time readers wont. And for the record, several people pronounce it as dead-mau-five aswell. So its pointless to argue against deadmau5 because prose still explains the pronounciation. Another example: Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy is pronounced Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy because duodecim is 12 in latin. Its not phonetic and many wont get the reference at first, but that doesnt mean it cant be used. Since when does the title need to be phonetic?Lucia Black (talk) 19:32, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

also, again, my idea of adding a notice is ignored. Please adress it or I will never let it go because I dont know whats wrong with it.Lucia Black (talk) 19:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

The redirect will happen either way this is resolved. If it ends at deadmau5, then "deadmaus" will point there, and vice versa. Redirects are cheap, so it's not an issue of providing the alternate searches. --MASEM (t) 03:11, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

All the more reason to not have such a restricting policy on trademark. Wow, you really dont wamt to address my idea. Fine, jll just be bold about it.Lucia Black (talk) 04:20, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sticking on the popular example: If we used the widely-accepted spelling with a numeral, clueless readers searching Wikipedia for Deadmaus or Deadmouse would find that widely-accepted spelling, while clueless readers searching for the funny-sounding Deadmau-five would find exactly what they’re looking for and the proper pronunciation. It seems to me that in cases like this where a form in plain Roman letters is in the clear minority (among sources, search results, and actual searches), it would be not insignificantly more confusing to the reader to use unadorned lettering than to follow expectations. —Frungi (talk) 04:25, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The searching issue is separate (and trivially solved) from the reading issue. --MASEM (t) 04:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Readability of the title is irrelevant, trivial, not important. Many titles out there that arent stylized nature also have readability issues, but no one says "hey, lets give it the proper phonetic spelling for readability". Deadmau5 is readable in general, not jn the sense that they aitomatically know its pronounced Dead mouse, but that you can recognize the letters to assume a pronounciation. And it doesnt really matter if they read it wrong. Clock on the article and you get the right pronounciation. You looked up dead mouse rather than deadmau5? No worries redirect. basically theres nothing stopping wikipedia to use these type of titles, for example if a title was called "R3tc3n" but pronounced as "Ret-Sen", there would be no issue. This purely a subjective issue.Lucia Black (talk) 04:45, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not only the title, but how the term is used in prose. Save for any distinction to discuss the variants of the name, the title and the prose body should use the same exact spelling, whether stylized or not. If it was just a title, I'd argue it would be a lot of ado about nothing, but we're talking about in the body as well and that affects readability. --MASEM (t) 04:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Playing devil’s advocate for a moment here: Say you’re reading an article on house or dance music to learn about a subject of which you know nothing, and you’re suddenly confronted with a name ending in a number. Nothing you’ve ever seen in an encyclopedia has prepared you for this; perhaps it seems entirely unprofessional (if you don’t read the professional publications that use the same name). Now, is this an acceptable reader experience? (Sorry if I sounded snarky there; I honestly didn’t mean to. I’m hitting bed soon, so I may not be a very good devil’s advocate at the moment.) —Frungi (talk) 05:11, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

@Masem: all the more reason tobuse the proper name. To use the other and use extensively in prose would be odd just for readability sake. In prose it wouldnt differ.

@Frungi, if reliable sources use deadmau5 and they are also professionals, who are we to question what is professional? Your question just screams to me "Is it encyclopedic".Lucia Black (talk) 05:27, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Is that a bad thing to scream to encyclopedia editors? —Frungi (talk) 06:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Like what we do at Kesha, right? (where the predominate name is Ke$ha but we stick to her given name and the one easier to read?) --MASEM (t) 05:41, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

no, I consider deadmau5 more proper than deadmaus. Look, wikipedia is falling behind. Maybe years ago, these types of names werent as common, and more simpler, but now stylized names are being accepted more and more. KE$HA only has one odd symbol. It doesnt really matter all that much. Sure it looks odd but completely readable. Deadmau5 has even less of an issue as its a number, which can be used in proper english.Lucia Black (talk) 05:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually, according to Google Trends, Ke$ha is significantly less popular than Kesha among internet users. I take that to be representative of the general public (our target audience), but of course we should abide by decent reliable sources—of which, I believe, a much greater percentage use “Kesha” than “Deadmaus”. —Frungi (talk) 06:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

73M Ke$ha hits vs 34M Kesha hits. Trends might be good for some indication but that's based more on search, and not on reporting which is what we should be looking at. --MASEM (t) 06:17, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Search hits aren’t any better a measure of reliable sources than search trends. Besides, I wasn’t saying that we should base our titles off of search trends. But it is rather striking that most Kesha fans don’t use the dollar sign in searches, but the Deadmaus searches without the numeral amount to a typo. And my point still stands about the respective ratios of “Kesha” and “Deadmaus” in reliable sources. —Frungi (talk) 07:44, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

It is rather frustrating to me that Masem seems almost completely unwilling to acknowledge or respond to this vein of argument. I really don't see how we can say, based on the information in sources, that "Deadmau5" is not standard English. We would need to conclude that basically none of the major sources that we would generally look to as paragons of standard English style actually care about standard English...but that a few no-name blogs have it on lockdown. Nobody has really answered this concern, and I think that silence is very telling. Croctotheface (talk) 00:26, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

break

Point is whether we really need these restrictions against official names if they are more common and less intrusive than one would expect.Lucia Black (talk) 06:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we need be legible to end readers who may not be familiar with the pop culture when they encounter these names. That's the whole basis of what MOSTM is built on - readability over preciseness. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

But these type of readers are becoming nore scarce. Times change, and more and more time passes, the more unnecessary it is to cater to these type of readers. Basically we're under-estimating them by having this restricting guideline. I think we should update the guideline.Lucia Black (talk) 21:10, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Er, no? I would suspect that the number of people that use Wikipedia and know who deadmaus is are much smaller than those that use Wikipedia and have no idea who he is. There may be more hits on that article of his from the former group, but we're talking how we reference him wikipedia wide.

A thing to remember: using the non-stylized name will keep text understandable to both those in the know and those unaware, while using the stylized name immediately disenfranchises the latter group. --MASEM (t) 23:31, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

under what basis? Even if its a large number of readers who dont know deadmau5 over the ones who do. Thats no excuse. In the prose, we state "pronounced as dead mouse" so even if readers who are unfamiliar already acknowledge how its supposed to be pronounced. Plus we have dozens of sources naming it deadmau5, and nit deadmaus. This is what i mean by underestimating reader's readability. The english speaking world is using more and more visual trademark names to recognize them and just because you may not know who deadmau5 was, that doesnt mean it would confuse readers within prose of the article.Lucia Black (talk) 00:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

But what about outside the article? A person reading about electronica music will not have been told "deadmau5" is really "deadmaus" and this will harm their understanding. I respectfully disagree that the world "recognizes" stylized text at a point we can use it readily; younger generations in first world countries, yes, but that's a minority of the world's population. --MASEM (t) 01:25, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

There you go again. You're not actually focused on the problem but keep inventing more. How is it a problem if they misread it at first glance? Its still "readable" in general. Sure it may be mispronounced but, like I said, that is an issue that doesnt involve trademark names alone. Manga is often pronounced "main-ga" or "man-ga" when actually closer to "mon-ga". So what if a reader misreads it at "Deadmau-five" its nothing compared to a title that uses multiple unrecognizable characters that makes it not only difficult to pronounce but difficult to search as well.

Your respectful opinion still holds no ground here, compared to mine. Because yours is based completely on intuition or gut feeling as we have proof the english speaking world uses the name in reliable, recognizable and respected sources. Even if you claim that its a small number of readers compared to the others, you cant deny that sources outside of wikipedia, hundreds of sources use deadmau5, so even if one was to discover deadmau5 outside of wikipedia it will be read as either deadmau-five or dead mouse. But thats no excuse whatsoever to avoid "deamau5". You shot yourself in the foot by trying to use "outside" wikipedia as a reason.Lucia Black (talk) 04:05, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

At long as a non-trivial number of reliable sources use the alternate spelling that makes it easier for the largest population to understand the work, then we should be using that. If it were the case only one obscure work used "deadmaus" over "deadmau5", that would not be enough to convince me to break the larger consensus of using "deadmau5". But that's not the case here, we have over 200,000 source links from google alone, so "trivial" is not met here. I know its not the vast majority of sources (which are in the 20million on deadmau5) but its' not a number you ignore. Because these sources give us a nice, standard way of spelling the artist name without fancy style, we should use them. --MASEM (t) 07:12, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

No, but 20 million (including NYT, AP, and BBC) are the ones you "ignore"? I'll repeat again that the standard here is not reability, and it's certainly not "what Masem considers nice, standard, and not fancy". The standard here is "standard English", and your argument is that the AP, BBC, and NYT care more for "fancy" or "cool" or whatever else than they do for standard English? Aren't these publications precisely what we look to for standard English? Isn't AP style basically the gold standard? Croctotheface (talk) 18:22, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Masem, you’re missing something: “Deadmau5” can be pronounced (not mis-pronounced) as "Deadmau-five”. “Deadmaus” can not, so it’s simply a wrong spelling. I don’t know why we keep going back to this name as if it’s representative of anything; it’s a fringe case with two valid pronunciations. —Frungi (talk) 19:01, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

His name is spoken "deadmaus". "Dead mau-five" is absolutely wrong, and that's the problem with the stylized spelling is that we are confusing the person who is not familiar with that name. And in terms of ignoring the plurality of sources, we do this all the time with other MOSTM naming aspects, like allcaps names or funky punctuation - despite having less harm in terms of readability compared to stylized spelling - are done without question. And no, "deadmau5" is not recognized English - you cannot point to any standard English dictionary to find a 5 used as an s. Again, I stress the point about sources like AP and the BBC in that they have a reasonable expectation that their audience will know who deadmau5 is to begin with - we don't because our target audience, by default, is much larger than any of these sources. So what works for them does not work for us. --MASEM (t) 19:20, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The standard is not "does this usage exist in the dictionary" either. I and others have raised examples that would run afoul of this sort of prescriptivism. Should we move 50 Cent to 50 Cents (rapper) or better yet Fifty Cents (rapper) because the dictionary would look more favorably on them? I don't think that most readers of the NY Times are familiar with Deadmau5, and you've shown no evidence either that they are or that the paper's editors believe they are. But again, you insist that "'deadmau5' is not recognized English", but that position requires you to argue that NYT, AP, and BBC publish, what? Unrecognized English? Croctotheface (talk) 19:26, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

"50 cent" is fine, as "50" like that is pronounce and understood as the word "fifty". On the other hand, if someone decided to go around like "50five" (pronounced "fifty five"), this would be a case I would argue for correcting if that "fifty five" version is spelled out in reliable sources, since that is confusable with a pronunciation like "five zero five". I'm not saying that those other sources are breaking standard English, just that they know their audience is more apt to follow the pop culture. They're also not there to education like we are. We have more responsibility to a more diverse audience to consider. --MASEM (t) 19:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Wouldn't "50 cent" not be fine because it isn't in title case? And why, if your guiding light is the dictionary, would you be so OK with an ungrammatical phrase? Finally, could you answer my question? Are the AP, NYT, and BBC publishing "unrecognized English"? Oh, wow, read quickly and didn't see. So it seems like you agree that "Deadmau5" is in fact standard English? If so, what's the debate? That's precisely what the guideline tells us to use! Croctotheface (talk) 19:54, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Our responsibility is to inform our readers. It is not to misinform them or mislead them by claiming or implying that a fringe spelling is somehow “standard”. If every source of any merit uses a certain rendering of a name, it’s our responsibility to do the same, regardless of whether a few volunteer editors ideologically disagree with the practice.

If anyone disagrees with this stance, please make your argument here. If anyone disagrees with whether it applies to Deadmau5/Deadmaus, please make your argument at Talk:Deadmaus. —Frungi (talk) 01:51, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

We're using the deadmaus case as the core example to talk about this guideline, because despite several other clear cases (Seven, Kesha, etc.) deadmau5 is an outlyier. "Deadmau5" is not standard english as there is no english word that combines letters and numbers in the same non-space-containing set of characters. As this guideline says "Manual of Style (trademarks) advises against the use of "special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words", which is exactly the purpose the "5" is serving in place of the expected "s". --MASEM (t) 02:26, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Before continuing on this topic, I think it’s incredibly important that we get a solid lock on what “standard English” means. We’re not going to make any progress as long as you and everyone else are using different definitions. —Frungi (talk) 02:36, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I was wondering that. I'd define it as any word that can be assembled using the letters a-z and only uses numbers in a numerical meaning. The re-purposing of numbers or symbols to mean something other than their original use is not standard English. Edit: although even then problems like "ZQYP" is pronounced as "Yacht" can still arise.. - X201 (talk) 11:34, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

There's certainly no definition I can point to, but that is the essence - the construction of a word using the standard alphabet in a manner that is consistent with standard classical languages across the board. "deadmau5" fails because nowhere in any classical language is a number mixed with alphabetic characters within the same word. If there was some company that came along and used the name "Ghoti" pronounced "fish", that would be cause for confusion. Basically - any case where if you are unfamiliar with the term in question that the term is presented in a manner that you as the reader will struggle with what it is actually trying to say. Now the question then becomes if a non-trivial number of reliable sources have pointed out how that name can be written in a manner that does fall within this "standard" before considering replacement. Not every such word falls into that gap - eg there are numerous populated places across the globe that have names that "break" expected classical language but that is the only name that the place is known by with all but a tiny handful of reliable sources using that name as given, in such cases we really can't change that.

Basically, I'm seeing this as a three pronged test: if the "word" is a novel construct that would have potential to confuse the English reader, if there is an obvious and non-novel equivalent word that would reduce that confusion, and if that non-novel way is demonstrated in a non-trivial select of reliable sources. This test can be applied to nearly every case that has been demonstrated so far to show it works. --MASEM (t) 14:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Im sure the issue is whether we should consider "standard" "english" as absolute. There are more and more titles originate from english language but not technically english, I think we have to allow these titles if A) no strongly accepted alternative is out there B) doesnt affect the prose. However, I still think we should hold official/common name at a more higher light. Not in the sense that we see them as absolute but recognize them. We have to also recognize how influential wikipedia can be. So if theres an article with a modified name and sources are using an entirely different one, that means wikipedia is the odd one.

I find it practically a sin (cant think of another word, so forgive me for the dramatic view) to portray a topic under a heavily uncommon/modified title. Basically it goes down to, does the english speaking world care about standard english to the point to find the less common and less known alternative? Does it cause a huge uproar to avoid the common trademarked name?Lucia Black (talk) 07:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

The majority view here appears to be that we should adopt a descriptive rather than prescriptive view in cases like this—that is, if sources generally considered to use standard English widely use a certain spelling, we should consider that spelling to be standard English, even if it conflicts with our prescriptivist sensibilities. Which brings us back to the question I posed at the top of this subsection. —Frungi (talk) 17:09, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Except we break this all the time for other aspects of MOSTM like allcaps names or funky punctuation (the Macy's example). We're prescriptive there in the sense it tells us to take action despite what majority sources say (though I would suspect that this came as a descriptive part of our earlier practice before formalizing the MOS). --MASEM (t) 17:16, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I don’t think Macy’s is any kind of counterexample to what I said here. I can’t recall ever seeing it written as “Macy*s” outside of logos. Even the official website uses an apostrophe in text. As for all caps, that’s purely a matter of style; cases like “Deadmau5”/“Deadmaus” are not. —Frungi (talk) 17:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Also many people here dont agree with prescriptive ways. Its too absolute and practically dictator talk. Also, I dont even see how deadmaus/deadmau5 actually falls in prescriptivism because whether we go with one or the other, it doesnt benefit new readers knowing what they looking at anymore than the other. Making opposition for deadmau5 that much useless.Lucia Black (talk) 20:44, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a MOS and meant to provide consistency across the work. No, we shouldn't be dictatorish in the approach but where we are potentially harming our readers by sticking to something that is not universally understood; this is we try to normals all trademarked names that otherwise fall outside this "standard" of English to versions that are easily readable as "standard" English. --MASEM (t) 22:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

• Just would like to point out that Deadmau5 is not a trademark for Joel Thomas Zimmerman. The actual trademark for Deadmau5 has nothing to do with this performer. Deadmau5 is simply the most common spelling - not sure this helps...but here is the facts.Moxy (talk) 22:11, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

What you fail to understand Masem is that its getting subjective. If we just make it "resemble" standard english, then it defeats the purpose. If this MOS was all about what we normally discourage and what we allowed more than absolute disregard of reliable sources, it would be completely different. If you dont want this to be dictator, then why say that we choose the least common/known title and intentionally disregard sources for the sake of what one considers standard english. I dont think we can treat titles the same way we treat words. As long as the title itself doesnt disrupt the flow of the sentence. And thats what I believe this MOS was for, to determine what is more intrusive in a sentence. If not, thats what it should be about.Lucia Black (talk) 22:43, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I have a hard time believing that one accept rules like "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", as long as this is a style already in use, rather than inventing a new one:", and "Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words" (both straight out of the MOS), which is to normalize titles to avoid disrupting the flow of the sentence, and not see how something like "deadmau5" to "deadmaus" is a correction of the same type, to improve sentence flow without sacrificing the name of the trademark. It's exactly the same ilk as all that. --MASEM (t) 23:34, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Because it’s changing the spelling from something that is a good deal more universally understood: the name as it appears in any reliable source of any merit, including mainstream news. As I’ve said before, we shouldn’t be misleading and misinforming our readers by using or advocating fringe spellings, regardless of any WP editors’ personal feelings on the matter. MOS:TM does not apply to “deadmau5” except to capitalize the D. There are no unpronounced characters (the 5 is pronounced as an S, or sometimes as the number 5), and there is no non-standard text formatting. The MOS does not say that we may change the spellings of words to suit our preferences if the alternate spellings are supported by a low-quality minority of sources. It also does not say that we may substitute one pronounced character of a name for another at our sole discretion, or that numerals may not be used as parts of names (e.g. 4Kids/4Licensing Corporation). —Frungi (talk) 00:05, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

"deadmau5" is the fringe (albeit accurate) spelling for most of the English-speaking world, because it doesn't follow any rules. Yes, a plurality of sources use that spelling but there is a non-trivial number of reliable sources that provide a more standard spelling that most English-literate people will be aware of. Remember, in standard English , there is no point where "5" is pronounced like an "s". It is strictly a stylized character and falls into the case of "simply substitute for English words" (read, using "5" for "s"). And on 4Kids and the ilk, it's not a problem as there's two facets here that are different: the "4" is actually pronounced "Four" as in "FourKids", so there's no confusion, and second, I've never seen any reliable source replace the "4" with "Four", so there would be no sources to make that change on if we had to. The "4" is not being used as a stylistic replacement here. --MASEM (t) 00:13, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I always thought the 4 in "4Kids" stood in for the word "for". Anyway, the 5 in "Deadmau5" can be pronounced as the number (see discussion here), just as the 4 in "4Kids". Regardless, I think you're interpreting the guideline too broadly: "s" is not a word. —Frungi (talk) 01:30, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Masem, if the main pronunciation were "dead mau five," would you favor using "Deadmau5"? Croctotheface (talk) 18:52, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It shouldve been enough that people do already pronounce it as dead-mau-five. But even if it was officially pronounced as such, the argument would probably whether we use "deadmau5" or "deadmau 5". Beside the point...I dont agree how its officially pronounced doesnt matter as long as it can be pronounced in some shape or form.Lucia Black (talk) 18:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If it were pronounced that way, yes, then "deadmau5" is accurate, and that style would be fine. If it was the case that it could be pronounced either way (deliberately in reliable sources), then it would be a matter of determining which is the most appropriate name, and using the spelling that matched the more common pronunciation. As best as I'm aware - and I may be completely wrong here - that the bulk of audio reliable sources (not laypeople) pronounce it as "dead mouse", which pushes towards the more proper phonetic spelling of "deadmaus". --MASEM (t) 19:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, by far "the bulk of [written] reliable sources [not no-name blogs]" write the name as "Deadmau5." It's curious that you're willing to use that standard when pronunciation is involved but not for determining what style is standard English. Croctotheface (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

its confusing and self contradicting to follow such a method where we ignore the common spelling (misleading readers to believe the one we're using is more acceptable) for the sake of the official/common pronounciation which is far more subjective in my opinion.Lucia Black (talk) 18:54, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

RFC for when dominant style in reliable sources violates the style guidelines

Related to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks#Crucible of the TM guideline and the Deadmau5 moves (1, 2, 3 and 4, plus this move review after number 2)... should we change this guideline to state (as per this diff):

Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules, even if the trademark owner considers nonstandard formatting "official", as long as this is a style already in widespread use, rather than inventing a new one:

and

Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words or letters (e.g., ♥ used for "love"), unless a preponderance of reliable sources uses the stylized name.

In both cases, italics show new words (none were removed). Should we thus change the guideline? Red Slash 05:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Heh, don’t think I’ve ever seen WP:BRD done by a single person before. Anyway, I disagree with “widespread”. In my eyes, this is something that should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and not by a permissive or restrictive guideline. Maybe it should explicitly say that it’s to be determined case-by-case? —Frungi (talk) 05:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The "widespread" seems better aligned with the WP:TITLETM policy ("unless the trademarked spelling is demonstrably the most common usage in sources independent of the owner of the trademark") than the current wording. Note that WP:TITLETM is policy, whereas this page has the lower status of guideline (and this page already has a hatnote saying there will be some exceptions and exceptions are allowed by consensus). Personally, I think Red Slash's suggestion looks reasonable. I think "case-by-case basis" is looser – too much looser. Devolving to "case-by-case basis" seems equivalent to not having a guideline at all. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah, good point on TITLETM. I rescind my objection. —Frungi (talk) 23:49, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

The way they are worded, the two sentences create different criteria. Consider a band named L33T, with search results showing 10 sources that use Leet and 30 sources that use L33T. The first sentence says that Leet is in widespread use, so it's OK to pervert (IMO) its title. The second sentence, though, allows the article to be named L33T (as it should IMO) because a preponderance of sources use that spelling. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:09, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not so simple. A 30-10 ratio is not necessarily enough to establish a COMMONNAME. A lot depends on which sources use each variant. If the 10 that use "Leet" are high end sources (such as Rolling Stone) and the 30 that use "L33T" are all lower end fan sites, the minority that use "Leet" may actually outweigh the 30 that used "L33T". On the other hand, if you had a 300-10 ratio, the high end sources may not be enough to outweigh all those lower end sources. COMMONNAME isn't about what is "correct"... it's about what is likely to be most recognizable and moste natural - as those terms are defined at our WP:Article titles policy. Blueboar (talk) 13:52, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I realize that. The point I was making, though, is that the two rules are logically different, creating even further ambiguity. The first says "use Leet as long as it is used elsewhere" while the second says "don't use L33T unless a preponderance of the sources do". By using small numbers above, I meant to say that the census was of all high-quality sites, in which case the two rules are contradictory. OT (for this subthread): As far as what is recognizable and natural, to anyone familiar with a subject who pays attention to stylization and cares about it, a version of a name modified to fit some style guide's sense of how things should be named will almost always be like nails on a blackboard, regardless of whether the New York Times or The Enquirer choose to use it. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 01:10, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's assume that the majority using L33T are high end sources like Rolling Stone and the minority using Leet are the unreliable fansites (As is the case with the mau5 vs. maus issue). In this instance it would be easy to see that L33T should be used but the article is moved to Leet anyway and cannot be moved back per WP:BRD because bureaucracy > policy and consensus. It is the instances like that which I fear may become more common in the future that prove that we need to alter the wording like this. PantherLeapord (talk) 01:51, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I can't support language like "preponderance" that suggests we have to constantly "count votes" from sources to see which one is marginally more prevalent. If that means different standards from seemingly-similar guidelines, so be it, because I think that this guideline basically gets it right basically all the time. Deadmau5 is really the first case where it seems like the language here has lead us astray. I'd prefer to modify the guideline such that we explain "standard English" is probably aligned with what AP, NYT, BBC, etc are doing, rather than generalized notions of what your English teacher may have preferred. Croctotheface (talk) 15:07, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

So, you don't think this is a strong enough change to the policy? I wanted to create a reasonable exception for things like Deadmau? because the sources support the 5 version almost to the point of absurdity. I wanted to maintain the spirit of the guideline with regard to marginal cases. Maybe "preponderance" is still too strong. I think the problem comes with that little "etc" you put after the AP, NYT and BBC. Where does that line get drawn? How reliable is reliable enough? Other issues like that make it difficult to say exactly how "good" of sources we need, so I just put a preponderance of reliable ones as per the standard definition of a reliable source. Red Slash 00:42, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

My general issue is that editors want to use crazy styles that high level sources basically never use all the time. If we say "preponderance" or anything of that nature, then they'll say, "well, all these blogs use it!" The Deadmau5 case is the first one I've seen where the language of the guideline led to a silly result. I think that this sort of change to the guideline would see a lot of people using Google hits to try to determine what a "preponderance" is so that they can use "Ke$ha" or whatever else. Croctotheface (talk) 01:50, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, we have the definition of reliable sources to fall back on. And, between you and me, lots of people already use Google hits in arguments like this in disregard of WP:GOOGLEHITS already; I can't see how this would make things worse. Red Slash 17:20, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Determining when stylization should be considered an integral part of a name

I would like to propose a new concept that (I hope) might help resolve the ongoing conflict between MOSTM and COMMONNAME... If the stylization is considered an "integral part" of a subject's name, we should include it... if the stylization is not considered an integral part of the name, we should not include it. I would use WP:COMMONNAME to determine whether the stylization is an integral part of the name or not. Let's look at two examples to illustrate the concept... The Beatles and Deadmou5

• The Beatles: On most of their albums (and on their drum set) this band stylized their name (as best as I can reproduce it here) like this: BEA_TLES. This stylization is not, however, used by reliable sources when discussing the band. Thus, the stylization should not be considered an integral part of the band's name, and we should not include the stylization in our title.
• Deadmau5: For now, let's accept the argument that the "5" is merely a stylized "s" (I know not everyone agrees with this... but stick with me). Unlike the stylization used by the Beatles... The Deadmau5 stylization is used by an overwhelming number of reliable sources when they refer to the band. Thus, the stylization should considered an integral part of the band's name, and we should include the stylization in our title.

Is this concept an acceptable compromise? 13:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC) (added note: this was originally proposed by me... I messed up the signature Blueboar (talk) 01:29, 8 July 2013 (UTC))

It's appealing, but I fear it would open the door to fun. and Ke$ha. Powers ^T 19:12, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, but if that's the way reliable sources refer to them... is it our call to make to turn those names down? Is it? I'm asking. Red Slash 19:48, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

As I've said throughout this brouhaha, we have our own style guides. Our style guide says we avoid weird embellishments like those. Powers ^T 22:50, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I know that is what the guide currently says... The beauty of having our own style guide is that we can change it if we want to... my proposal seeks to make such a change... to allow a "weird embellishment" when a COMMONNAME examination of reliable sources indicates that the "weird embellishment" is routinely considered to be an integral part of the subject's name. Blueboar (talk) 01:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Is this your proposal? No one signed it. Anyway, I was simply answering Red Slash's question. Yes, it's our call, because that's what style guides are for. We certainly could change the style guide to punt on these sorts of names and allow other sources to dictate our house style, but the basic answer is, yes, it's our call. Powers ^T 01:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Of course I signed the propos... D'oh!... my apologies. I have added my signature for the record. Blueboar (talk) 01:29, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• If the stylization satisfies the following criteria, then I would consider it to be the correct option:

1. First and foremost, it must pass WP:COMMONNAME, as that is policy, and the MOS is a guideline. This means Ke$ha, Deadmau5, Tech N9ne, and several others should be located at names that are the greatest convenience to readers. Lets not forget, that this is what Wikipedia is here for. Also, an example of an article where logic has prevailed: 3OH!3.
2. The stylization consists of regular unicode character(s). This also means that characters unlikely to display correctly on the vast majority of enwiki viewer's machines will not be present.
3. Italics, bold text, superscripts/subscripts and other similar things must be discarded/ignored. So the Beatles example would not pass muster here.

• The above is merely common sense. We are here to aid viewers, not ourselves. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:52, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Lets not forget that it also promotes an alternate name that not all readers know is the least accepted name. WP:TRADEMARK tries to act as a trumpcard against WP:COMMMONNAME. The new guideline should allow all or at least most of these. As long as it can be readable or pronouncable. This mos isnt convenient for readers familiar with said topic, but worst is once they do get familiar, they get ubeasy about the name too. Also, im particularly uneasy about the word "stylized as..." because it implies, the alternate, least accepted name is the correct way.Lucia Black (talk) 17:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

So, great, we title an article with unpronounced or alternative characters, thanks to your rule of ignoring WP:TM when it comes to article titles. But then within the article, we normalize the name of the subject per WP:TM, meaning the article title no longer matches the article body. That makes no sense. Powers ^T 18:50, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• I said precisely fuck all about the main body of the article, so where did you get that idea from? Regardless, I should've realized that certain people appear to lack any common sense, as that sort of thing would suggest we aid readers, not ourselves, and that this formatting would be standard ′throughout the article... Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

  Well, if you're proposing that the body of the article ignore MOS:TM as well, then that's a completely different discussion. That's essentially asking MOS:TM to be ruled defunct and inapplicable. That's a very big change for a guideline that has strong, long-standing consensus. Powers ^T 21:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Support this change as bringing this part of the MOS in line with policy and good sense. We should always follow our sources—that's our job, that's the express purpose of the project. If sources don't use a "normal" name, it doesn't belong here. —Frungi (talk) 17:59, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not "our job" to simply follow sources on issues of style. We have our own HOUSE STYLE. We have never let sources dictate our own style. What kind of encyclopedia outsources their style guidelines to taking a poll of sources? Should we use the Oxford comma only when a plurality of sources about the subject of the article use it? Geez. Powers ^T 18:50, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

False analogy Lt... There is a difference between "style" in reference to grammar and punctuation, and "stylization" in reference the presentation of names. Saying that we should follow sources when it comes to the stylization of names would have no impact on our our style guidance when it comes to grammar and punctuation. Blueboar (talk) 19:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

If we follow sourced stylization, we open ourselves up to all sorts of issues, move wars, etc. Normal text should be preferable to stylized text unless there is no other resonable option. Seven vs. Se7en, etc. We're better off with things as they are, then make an exception to the rule if common sense tells us to. --Rob Sinden (talk) 20:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

As I've pointed out several times before, we already use a house style to present proper nouns/names in a style that is much more readable than what the trademark owner would probably like it to be (eg: CamelCase, not ALLCAPS; no nonsensial/unpronounceable symbols; etc.) This ("deadmaus" for "deadmau5") is not a stretch of that same approach. --MASEM (t) 20:36, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

A massive overhaul? Yes. But move wars? Not really. This MOS isnt built on commonsense, its been built to follow closest to english standard regardless of commonsense.Lucia Black (talk) 20:12, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Lets remember how subjective it really is, and im a little tired of hearing "we have our way, and everyone should just deal with it". We should make changes for readers convenience. And I doubt certain words are difficult to promounce. And even then, wikipedia doesnt outlaw them in policies either. What we consider a "trademark" stylization is also subjective.Lucia Black (talk) 20:42, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

That's what using "deadmaus" over "deadmau5" does, it is for reader convenience. I have zero doubt that a reader, fully aware of whom "deadmau5" is, will be confused seeing "deadmaus" used instead, but the reverse is not true; if you aren't aware of whom "deadmau5" is, that "spelling" is very confusing, while "deadmaus" is not. --MASEM (t) 20:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Its for first-time readers' convenience, but once they get well-informed outside of wikipedia, confusion comes in. And no, the confusion isnt based on "why is It referring to deadmaus" the confusion is "why does wikipedia favor deadmaus over deadmau5????"). You assume the trademark-impared are dozens of them, but thats hust ridiculous and a huge stretch. Many people run into several trademark names outside of wikipedia. Even if a first-time reader sees it. Will a reader will say "what?????? Deadmau5 is pronounced dead-mouse???????? Why is this article called deadmau5??" I highly doubt it, because A, it seems like theyve never runned into a trademarked name in their life. We're trying to cater to readers.

I can understand why one would ask "why is the DJ spells his stagename deadmau5 over dead-mouse" but thats nowhere near wikipedia's fault and wikipedia shouldnt make a policy defying guide. So a reader will never ask "why does wikipedia refer to deadmau5 by what its officially and commonly known by?" HOWEVER, the complete reverse WILL bring familiar editors to ask "why does wikipedia prefer deadmaus over the more common name".

Give up the fascade that the trademarked impaired are the vast majority.Lucia Black (talk) 21:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• As long as the number of "trademarked impaired" (a rather derogatory title) is more than a trivial number, it is a concern we should have to worry about. They may not be the majority, but they are readers and we shouldn't be disenfranchising them because we employ a "cute" style that is difficult to understand. This is about accessibility to the maximum number of readers. --MASEM (t) 21:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• Question for clarity before a reply on this topic. Should FcεRI be called "Fc epsilon RI" or TRG@ be called "T-cell receptor gamma chain C region PT-gamma-1/2" because of this style/trademark guide?.Moxy (talk) 21:15, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Given those are specific abbreviations, those are fine. --MASEM (t) 21:30, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Youll have to prove it Masem. At this point, it boils down to what you can prove. And the fact that tradenar and stylizations are oractically everywhere. Whether its in wikipedia or not, theyvwill run into it. And it doesnt take more than 1 article to make those trademarked impaired into a trademark supporter. So why should wikipedia go out of their way to make these policy defying notions?Lucia Black (talk) 21:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Prove what? It's common sense that there are readers who will not know that "deadmau5" is really pronounced "dead mouse" instead of "dead mau five". There will always be these people, even moreso once the artist starts to fade from notability once his leaves the industry. Note, a key factor is that the alternate "spelling" (the "deadmaus" version) needs to be used in more than a trivial manner in other reliable sources; we can't "scrub" out the cute/stylized version if we are creating the non-stylized version ourselves. For example, if there were a person that wanted to go by "$bill" (pronounced "dollar bill"), but no sources outside of a blogs or the like used "dollar bill", we'd have to stick with "$bill". This is not the case with "deadmaus" since more than 100,000 ghits show a number of reliable sources that use it. It's far less popular than "deadmau5", for certain, but its also a non-trivial use, and thus available for us to use. --MASEM (t) 22:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Did we not solved on day two of Wikipedia's launch this problem of people not knowing the spelling - thus we have created redirect option for non common spellings that lead our readers to proper terms? Titles should be correct and redirects used no?Moxy (talk) 22:45, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I doubt there are 100,000 "reliable" google hits. Regardless, you're misinterpretting what im saying. It doesnt matter if editors wont immediately know if deadmau5 is pronounced as dead-mouse. It doesnt flipping matter. The article will always clarify it. So im dismissing that completely, because im done with you going back to points already countered/dismissed. Im serious, let it go, your refusing to get the point. And its disruptive.

I dont care about that at the moment. I care about making things more complicated then it should for the sake of a subjective issue of making closest to "standard english" even if the name isnt exactly "english-origin". And the WORST part of it all that this mos is against trademark names. These rules dont apply to other types of titles. Such as Weiss Kreuss (or something like that).

It shouldnt be wikipedia's responsibility to force a method for first time readers just because theyll be temporarily confused. We add content indiscriminately so we shouldnt discriminate against a certain title.Lucia Black (talk) 22:40, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes it should be our responsibility, otherwise we're making WP less accessible as an educational work. We're also talking about what happens on articles outside of the given page, where we would likely link to the page in question. The MOSTM rules apply across the board, not just to the title or the page it is on. --MASEM (t) 23:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. Given the wide impact the suggested changes would have to Wikipedia, and the whole MOS, this needs to be discussed on a wider forum, if at all. --Rob Sinden (talk) 23:51, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

We're not making WP any less accessible by switching deadmaus to deadmau5 and any similar situations. And this is where rrue intentions lie, where one or two editors core argument is whether its encyclopedic,not whether a reader will get confused. Because honestly, that argument was pointless, we both know better than to believe there a large number of trademark impaired when it comes to readers because we both know whether they'll read about it in wikipedia or not, the trademark sticks, and the readers will question w I kipedia's methods, not the topic of the article.

Unless we have to cater the mentally challenged or dislexic. In which again, not our issue. Its not wikipedia's responsibility to over simplify for these editors when the changes are ridiculous. We fullfill what we need. Whether an editor gets confused isnt our problem if we do things right and using deadmau5 is most definitely not wrong if most of the reliable sources use deadmau5. So if you question the professionability of it, yoy also question all the sources we use.Lucia Black (talk) 00:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that we should introduce a judgment call as to what is "integral." Besides, I don't think that should be the test. If Deadmau5 came out and said that the "5" is NOT integral to the name, I'd still favor using it because basically all our sources do. I don't think there's even a reasonable argument that "Deadmaus" comports with MOSTM as it exists. It's just not standard English if zero English publications use it, save for a few no name blogs. Nobody has given a remotely satisfactory answer to this point. Croctotheface (talk) 08:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The problem was that there were a few reliable, non-blog sources that used Deadmous... not many, but a few. But lets not re-argue the Deadmau5 case... that was just a handy example.

I think you misunderstand what the proposal is... we don't make a judgement call as to whether a stylization is integral or not - the sources do that for us...We simply evaluate the sources (as we do for every COMMONNAME determination). If a significant majority of sources (taking into account the quality of sources as well as the quantity) routinely include a stylization when referring to the subject, then we know that our sources consider that stylization to be an integral part of the subject's name... and that we should include that stylization in our title per COMMONNAME.

On the other hand, if a significant majority of our sources don't include the stylization when referring to the subject, then we know they don't consider the stylization to be an integral part of the name, and we should follow the sources even if the stylization is "OFFICIAL".

To illustrate... lets say a band uses the following stylization for their name: ∅⋈∈N (pronounced "Oxen"). If the sources (especially the higher quality sources) use the ∅⋈∈N stylization when discussing the band, then we know that the stylized characters are considered an integral part of the band's name... we would use them as well. If, however, the majority of sources (especially the higher quality sources) use "Oxen" when referring to the band, then we know the stylization is not considered an integral part of the name, and would use "Oxen" as well. It does not matter what the band wants or says... we still follow the sources (Per "OFFICIALNAME"). Blueboar (talk) 13:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Which immediately breaks when we talk about Kesha (where "Ke$ha") has the majority of google hits over "Kesha"). --MASEM (t) 13:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

What breaks? If a significant majority of reliable sources refer to her with the $ (and especially if that usage is reflected in high quality reliable sources), then I would say the $ is considered an integral part of the name... and we would appropriately change the title to reflect the sources. From what I can gather, the sources are somewhat mixed... but I freely admit I have not looked into the specifics. The point is, if the primary reason we don't use the $ is that the guideline currently says not to, then yes.... changing the guideline per my proposal might well mean we have to reexamine that title. No problem. We do things like that whenever we change policies or guidelines. Blueboar (talk) 14:09, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this line in the guideline is worth remembering, and a very good reason for why we don't use vanity styling: "This practice helps ensure consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others." --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

And that's a strong point. When names are knows to use "cool" spellings as to draw attention but where there is clearly a more "normal English" way of providing that same name justified in sources, we should always default to the latter. Again, we do this for names which have odd or different case (we take KISS to Kiss, we take "fun." to "Fun", etc.), it is not a stretch to replace "cool" characters with the proper characters when we have sources for that replacement, all to assure consistency of language and avoid undue attention. If we don't have sources that give use a fair replacement, then we can't do it, but in most cases discussed, there are the obvious documented versions available. --MASEM (t) 14:20, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

But when reliable sources (especially highly reliable sources) routinely use a particular stylization... it is no longer a vanity styling. It becomes the accepted normal way of presenting that name. We actually draw more attention to the subject by not following the stylization used in sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:24, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Not really. Its the attention within Wikipedia, not to other works, that we need to worry about. Putting a name like "Ke$ha" next to "Rhianna" (for example), one's eye is immediately drawn to the former because it is "off". That's a systematic bias we can avoid since we know, from sources, we can also write that as "Kesha". --MASEM (t) 14:39, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I disagree... when the reader is expecting to see the name presented as Ke$ha (having seen it written that way in most other sources), then not seeing it presented that way draws attention to it. They come away thinking "huh?... that's odd... it should be Ke$ha". Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

You're making an improper assumption about the reader. Because we are a general global encyclopedia, we should be assuming that the average reader has no idea who these people or organizations or whatever are that use these odd spellings. Those that know who, say, Kesha is and know its normally "Ke$ha" will not be confused as to whom we are talking about if we mention "Kesha", but as you note, may go "well, its weird they aren't using the stylized spelling" and shrug it off. Readers that have no idea who Kesha is will have no idea how to interpret "Ke$ha" if they encounter that term outside of her page, and even if it takes one click to resolve that, that's confusion in the process. --MASEM (t) 16:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Blueboar, why do we use this "integral" language as the test, then? If it's just counting votes among sources, why do we appeal to "integralness" when that's 100% reducible to something else? And by the way, if we make up/agree to a definition of what sort of behavior among sources determines "integralness", that is still our judgment of what is or isn't "integral". Croctotheface (talk) 09:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Is WP:NPOV an issue?

This discussion reminds me a lot of the discussion we had several years ago concerning using "Non-neutral" names in titles (titles like Boston Massacre or Tea Pot Dome Scandal, where the standard COMMONNAME for the subject contained a potentially non-neutral word or phrasing). In that discussion we finally realized that by avoiding the seemingly non-neutral yet standard, accepted name (ie the COMMONNAME) we were actually inserting our own POV into the article. We were actually being non-neutral (or at least less than completely neutral) by going against the sources.
While this discussion is not as clear cut as that one, I think one could make a similar argument here. So let me ask: By not following a COMMONSTYLIZATION (to coin a term), do we end up inserting our own (minority) POV over that of the sources (the majority POV)? Are we in fact being non-neutral by not following the stylization found in the majority of reliable sources? Blueboar (talk) 15:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I think we should be pretty strict on this due to the promotional implications. The guideline gives us the option to "choose among styles already in use by sources (not invent new ones) and choose the style that most closely resembles standard English". Therefore, we don't have to follow the majority, or even the vast majority, say - providing it's a style in use in reliable sources, we can use it. As other publications choose "Kesha" (albeit the minority), and as this is the style that most resembles English, so can (and should) we. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:46, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Again... this is about changing the guideline, so quoting what it currently says is not a valid argument against changing it. You have not really answered my question... if a distinct majority of publications choose Ke$ha and only a minority choose Kesha... (note I said if)... then doesn't our current guidance in favor of Kesha conflict with WP:NPOV... and tell editors to give WP:UNDUE weight to the minority view on how to stylize the name? Blueboar (talk) 15:58, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it give WP:UNDUE weight if we follow the vanity styling. Someone mentioned Prince in a discussion the other day... --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I am not saying we should follow the vanity styling... I am saying we should follow the sources. There is a difference. I would agree that using a vanity stylization is UNDUE if the majority of sources don't use it... but if the majority of sources do use it, then it is hardly UNDUE to follow the sources... in fact it's DUE.

I would argue that the reason why we shouldn't use the vanity symbol for Prince is that few sources use it... they routinely refer to him as "Prince" (with "the artist formerly known as Prince" as a lesser used alternative). Thus, it would be UNDUE for us to go against the sources and use the vanity symbol as our article title. However, if the majority of sources changed, and started to adopt his vanity symbol, then it would be UNDUE of us not to do likewise. Blueboar (talk) 16:03, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Following sources would break other parts of this guideline that otherwise seem to have consensus, such as relating to case (KISS being the prime example). The key aspect about sourcing is that we can't invent a normalized name that no RS (or a very trivial number of RS's) evoke, as to avoid OR. It assures use that we're using a name style that is recognized by some fraction of sources. If it took a lot of deep searching and only came back to find a few sources that used "Kesha" over "Ke$ha", it would be inappropriate for us to use "Kesha" as to avoid the UNDUE factor (we can't introduce OR). Something like deadmau5 is an edge case in terms of the number and ratio of sources to guide us, but Kesha is well established in that its about 2:1 "Ke$ha" to "Kesha", more than enough in the latter to justify the NPOV style. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Im definitely onboard with Blueboar, it would arguably be UNDUE weight to go against WP:COMMONNAME. in ratio of reliable sources, "deadmau5" is the most recognized and the most plastered over his media. So using "Deadmaus" when single or an album says "deadmau5" shows more confusion. Masem, you mentioned earlier its a huge assumption to assume readers will make those type of questions, but dont you think that falls in Your area aswell? What makes a reader believe its suppose to be "deadmaus"? What makes readers believe its suppose to be spelled 'kesha" instead of Ke$ha???

The main argument against these names are solely based on the idea that they are "vanity" or "cutesy" but its the fact that that they are the most common name known by them. Its pure discrimination and makes you guys bias. And considering the sources help us determine, it makes it completely NUETRAL. The only undue weight is using the least common name to please imaginary trademarked impaired readers, in which this case, the mentally challenged and dyslexic. And no this is not an insult, its the truth.

start seeing trademarked names as proper english just as sources do, OR go against sourcesx against policy and make a guide that makes readers who get more knowledge OUTSIDE of wikipedia, realize the more common spelling isnt used.Lucia Black (talk) 18:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

• Apologies if this offends anyone, but I think that the idea of changing a band's name to avoid "promoting" them is utterly ludicrous. It makes no difference whether Kesha's name is written as "Kesha", "Ke$sha", or "K€$h@" (which I made up, obviously, but hopefully you get the point.) We are here to serve readers. They will be looking, nine times out of ten, for the name the artist chose to use. Regardless of if this is "Rascal Flatts", "Deadmau5", "Ke$ha" or whatever, if the artist calls themselves Name X, then people will look for that. If Name Y (in these cases "deadmaus" and "Kesha") are used in some sources, or just make sense as search terms, then they should be present as a redirect, and not as the main article. Complaining about inconsistency with other things is irrelevant - those other things should follow this approach as well. If, as with "eBay", technical limitations prohibit us from using that term, then fine, locate it elsewhere. Otherwise, locate it at the official name. Also, the proportion of sources should be completely irrelevant - does multiple sources making the same false statement turn said statement into gospel truth? No. The most reliable source for a band's name is the band themselves - end of. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 18:18, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • There are no technical reasons why we can't use, say "KISS" or "fun." for the names of those bands. But, grammatically and from an English standpoint, using those names hinder comprehension of the text per our style guidelines. (There are places where some names will conflict with the technical limits of the MediaWiki software, but that's not the subject of discussion here). We have chosen in these other cases to forego the idealized brand name in title and regular prose for readability throughout the rest of WP - we overlook COMMONNAME for purposes of readability. (Nit: I would even argue this isn't a COMMONNAME problem, this is closer to the Yogurt/Yoghurt naming conflict debacle. The Kesha and Deadmaus articles are at the artist's stage name (with or without stylized characters) not their given proper names, as those are more common). The issue of stylized names should be handled the same way we handle all those other cases which place readability over preciseness. As long as on the article about that topic that we identify other ways the name will be seen, we're covering all the bases. --MASEM (t) 18:39, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

If other reliable sources use them, then its safe for wikipedia to use. Fun. is an issue of sentence structure. It would look like it ends a sentence. And that one can be solved by a public notice to readers. And sources, although identify the band as "fun." Throughout the source they stick with "Fun". If Deadmau5 was identified as deadmau5, but throughout the information of the sources use "deadmaus" for simplicity sake, then we use deadmaus. But thats not the case for deadmau5 but it is the case for "fun." And KISS isnt text-altering. All we do is changelto lowercase, although it is is an acronym, its not presented as one (K.I.S.S.). Theres no readability issue with KISS. but if sources refer to KISS in all caps, its a sure thing.

and the only way I consider this a non-WP:COMMONNAME issue is if this was only about capitalization such as "iPod" and such.Lucia Black (talk) 20:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Just generally speaking, the fact that so many editors wanted to apply this guideline to use "Deadmaus" when so few sources use it...I think that shows pretty clearly that theres a consensus for standardization. I'm not sure how productive it really is to try to make arguments that we should go with something akin to "just call up the company's marketing department and ask them how we should format their trademark." Any standard that would accomplish basically the same end (try to count votes to establish a "preponderance" when that would include fansites or other low level sources) should, in my view, be dismissed in a similar fashion. The guideline is clear that we prefer standardization. As I explained with the Deadmau5 case, "standard English" can and should be defined in a descriptivist sort of way, at least some of the time. It's pretty hard to argue that a style used pretty much universally by AP, NYT, BBC, and so forth is nonstandard. If it were only, say, 20% of high level sources, the kind of sources we would look to as arbiters of style and of what standard English means, that used an "unofficial" style that better approximates standard English, that would still be enough for me to say we should standardize as well. The guideline, and the consensus that formed it, says that we prefer standardization. Croctotheface (talk) 09:19, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

@Croc - Not sure where you get the idea that "so many editors" wanted to apply this guideline to use "Deadmaus ... the consensus at the most recent RM was fairly overwhelming in favor "Deadmau5". It was really just a small, but very vocal minority of diehards who supported the Deadmaus variant and wanted to apply this guideline to justify it.

@Others - The argument that we should use what the band/artist uses is not policy. Please read the second sentence of WP:COMMONNAME and the supporting explanatory essay WP:Offical names. We don't necessarily use the stylization (or even the name) preferred by the band/artist - IF (and this is a huge IF) our sources indicate we should use something else instead. Usage in sources is the key. IF a significant majority of sources (giving more WEIGHT to high-end sources) use capital letters when discussing a subject, so should we. IF a significant majority of sources use lower case when discussing the subject, so should we. Why? Because usage in sources is how we determine what is most recognizable and most natural. IF the majority of sources use a stylized character when referring to a subject, so should we. IF the majority of sources don't use it, neither should we. This is why I presented the counter example of Beatles and not [[BEA_TLES]] - It is a good example where majority of sources don't use the band's stylization when referring to it. Blueboar (talk) 13:27, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

What sources give is important, but its clearly not the only factor, otherwise Kesha should be at Ke$ha going by google hits. It's clear we can't invent a style that is not used in sources in an attempt to make the name read nicer, but it is also not the same that we blindly follow the majority spelling. I will agree that "deadmau5" is a fringe case and not as obvious as something like Kesha when it comes to sources to support the easier-to-read spelling. --MASEM (t) 13:45, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

And thats the problem with this guideline, its opted for the easier one regardless if theofirst one can be read in general.Lucia Black (talk) 14:12, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Masem, what "other" factors are involved in the Ke$ha/Kesha debate? It seems clear cut to me... IF a significant majority of sources (especially high-end sources) do in fact use "Ke$ha", then we should use Ke$ha. IF a significant majority use "Kesha" then we should use Kesha. To do otherwise would be UNDUE. So what am I missing? Blueboar (talk) 14:19, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

The fact that the dollar sign is being used strictly for style, replacing what the rest of the sources say is an "s". It makes it difficult to read and places far too much emphasis on her name when it is used in other context/articles. Note, this is why I say it is not an issue with COMMONNAME - we are using Kesha instead of her given name, the question is basically akin to using the US vs UK spelling for yogurt, here using the easier-to-read verses the "trade" version. In other words, it is not really as much about the sourcing as COMMONNAME would otherwise suggest. --MASEM (t) 14:34, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, that raises yet another question. You see, I think the $ is more than just a stylization... due to common usage, I think Ke$ha has transcended style and has shifted into the realm of spelling. Granted, it is a unique spelling that only applies to one person, but I think it is a spelling issue. Beatles vs. BEA_TLES is a style choice... Kesha vs Ke$ha (or Deadmou5 vs Deadmous) is a spelling choice.

Let me elaborate... I hope you would agree that, in the abstract, "Elisabeth" and "Elizabeth" are the same name with two accepted spellings, one using the letter s the other using the letter z. However, that's in the abstract. When dealing with a specific person, only one of the spellings is correct. In the specific it would be wrong for us to spell Empress Elisabeth of Austria with a z... and it would be wrong for us to spell [[Elizabeth II] with an s. The only difference between Elizabeth/Elisabeth and Ke$ha/Kesha is that only one person spells the name with a $. However, just because the $ spelling is unique to one person does not negate the fact that it is a spelling... and it is not just a style choice.

This brings me to your analogy with ENGVAR... I don't think that holds watter, because we don't have one identifiable group of people consistently spell the name with a "$" and another identifiable group spelling it with an "s" (unlike yoghurt vs yogurt).

As for readability, I happen to find Elizabeth to be more readable than Elisabeth... it's what I am used to since most people spell that name with a z. Should I go and change the Empress Elisabeth of Austria article to make it more readable? Of course not. I accept that specific people spell that name with an "s". As for Kesha/Ke$ha, I actually find Kesha less readable than Ke$ha... because every time I see see it with an "s" my mind says "Who?... oh, right, they mean Ke$ha". I find it jarring not to have it spelled with a "$". That's not because I am a fan (I am an "old fart" who would not recognize a Ke$sh song if I heard one)... it's because most of the sources I have read spell the name with a "$". It's what I find recognizable and natural. Blueboar (talk) 16:06, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

The mindset for the reader we need to be taking is one that has zero clue about the Western culture but knows English. The "Elizabeth"/"Elisabeth" is not an issue because both names can be understood as long as you know English, irregardless of your national upbringing. "Ke$ha", on the other hand, does not fit with standard English. Yes, most Western readers, even not knowing who Kesha is, would likely understand that "Ke$ha" and "Kesha" are the same. But that's not all English readers. To these people "Ke$ha" will look like a typo, and make it impossible to understand (compared to your case where you're just more used to seeing the $ form). Removing these cute spells to favor more traditional ones is a way to make the entire work more accessible to all. --MASEM (t) 16:23, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

What makes you say that Ke$ha does not fit with standard English? $ is a standard English language character after all. (as an aside... I have to ask... would you include a "ç" in the name Francois?)

You say we need to keep in mind the mindset of the reader who does not know Western culture, but knows English... I agree. But that reader is likely to be someone who has stumbled upon the name "Ke$ha" in a news source, or on-line and wants to know who or what Ke$ha is. The $ will not look like a typo, because the reader will have already seen it in the source and will be expecting it to be spelled that way in our articles. In fact, if they don't find it spelled that way in our articles, they may think they have been directed to the wrong article. Finally, dismissing Ke$ha as just a "cute" spelling is exactly the sort of thing WP:NPOV says we should not do... This is the standard spelling of this singers stage name... accepted by the majority of reliable sources. Dismissing based on your own POV that it is "cute" is hardly being neutral. In fact, it is being distinctly non-neutral. Blueboar (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Again there is no standard English word (or more specifically, romanized word - such that accented characters would be considered acceptable) where a dollar sign is used as a character. And no, we cannot assume the reader going to Kesha knows who she is - that's why we're an encyclopedia, to present topics that a reader won't know about. Keep in mind, we're not only talking about the page title here but also everywhere on WP where the name may be used. Also "Kesha" is her name, it is stylized as Ke$ha. "Ke$ha" and "Kesha" are the same word for all purposes. --MASEM (t) 17:43, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Again, I have to disagree... there is at least one standard English word where a dollar sign is used as a character... that word is the stage name "Ke&ha". We can call it a "standard word" because so many sources use it.

If we had chosen to use her real name as the article title (ie if the article was about Kesha Rose Sebert)... then it would be appropriate to spell it with an "s". However, as long as we choose to use the more notable stage name as the title of the article (which I think is appropriate)... we should use the standard, traditional spelling of that stage name. Similarly, if we had an article about the generic name "Kesha" (like having an article about the names Andrew or Mary), then we would obviously spell it with an "s"... because the topic of the article (the name Kesha) is normally spelled that way... but the topic here is a specific performer, who goes by a specific stage name... a stage name that has a unique and specific accepted spelling. This isn't a generic overview article on the name Kesha... its an article about a specific artist who goes by the name Ke$ha. To me that makes all the difference.

Finally, I would not limit this to just the article title. That's why I raised the broader issue of WP:NPOV. I would use the $ in the body of the article text as well. I would use her last name "Sebert" when discussing her personal life, and the stage name Ke$ha when discussing her professional life. And I would use Ke$ha in other articles. Blueboar (talk) 18:22, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

(ec) The first time I saw "Kesha", I didn't know who the hell it was talking about. I think we should also consider sources particular to the subject's cultural context, so a pop culture site like The A.V. Club[8] is more relevant to how to display a pop singer's name than The New York Times. Though here, I'm somewhat surprised to see they're in agreement: [9]. If a linguistically formal publication like the NYT spells it as "Ke$ha", that's really saying something. postdlf (talk) 17:49, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Exactly what I have been saying... only more succinct. thanks. Blueboar (talk) 18:24, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

We already have an MOS (for lots of other aspects not just naming) that breaks from any of these formats, so we are not required to do what they do if we believe it is better for us as an encyclopedia. If we were sticking to the NYT's style guide across the board, sure, but we're not.

And again to stress: Someone who does not know who Kesha is will be generally confused about the difference between "Kesha" and "Ke$ha". Someone who does know who she is is being naive if they are confused between "Kesha" and "Ke$ha". We gain the most readers and are the most accessible - key goals - when we use the less confusing version of a name, as long as we aren't venturing into original research to come up with the less confusing version. --MASEM (t) 18:45, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we have a MOS that currently breaks away from following the usage in our sources... the question is should that MOS continue to break away from the sources when it comes to names? Or should the MOS be changed so that names adhere to the usage in our sources? My argument is that we should change.

Something else to consider: The name "Kesha" (with an "s") might refer to numerous people... but Ke$ha can only refer to one specific person (the pop-star). This means the potential for confusion is actually higher using an "s". It is not unlikely that someone searching Wikipedia for the name using an "s" is actually looking for a generic article on the girl's name. However, someone searching Wikipedia for the name using a "$" can only be looking for an article on the pop star. They will be confused if they are directed to an article that uses the generic name. The article entitled Kesha should really be a generic article on the girl's name "Kesha" (discussing the derivation and history of the name, the different eras in which the name was popular, etc. ... as well as dab type "see also" links to articles on various notable people named Kesha, including Ke$ha).

The same is true in article text... an article might refer to someone named Kesha, and not be referring to the pop star. But an article that refers to Ke$ha can only be referring to the pop star. Again, a lower potential for confusion if we use $ when specifically referring to the pop star.Blueboar (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Masem has made his opinion on this known ("...and again", as he has said) ; ) so let's see what others have to say. postdlf (talk) 18:59, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

To be fair, I suppose the same goes for me as well... it's just that I keep thinking of more and more reasons to change the guideline. But I'll back off now, and let others have a chance to discuss. Blueboar (talk) 19:49, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll say one more thing and that is the issue of screenreaders and accessability. "Ke$ha" will not be pronounced by these as one would expect. Neither will "deadmau5". (On the other hand, where numbers are appropriate, like 4Kids, it will behave as expected. Similarly, most screen readers know how to handle accented characters, at least within the Western languages, as well as US/UK spelling differences). Since our goal is to maximize accessibility, we should avoid terms that are potentially problematic for screenreaders. --MASEM (t) 19:24, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

That's a goal. I suppose some oddly-spelled brands like Syfy could also be a problem for screen readers ("sif-EE?"), but we also aren't going to respell those phonetically. Foreign-language diacritics could also be a problem. I imagine much of this could be dealt with through templates that give a phonetic pronunciation to such software, but I think we'd want to see some evidence of an actual problem. Though look at it this way... If Ke$ha would screw with a screen reader, then someone using a screen reader first reads in the New York Times about "Keh-dollarsign-HUH" isn't going to understand why the Wikipedia article is about "Keh-SHA". ; ) postdlf (talk) 19:43, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Deadmau5 isnt an issue in that department. You use pronunciation as the main reason but deadmau5 is completely pronouncable despite the common (but not official) pronunciation is "dead-mau-5" among first time readers. Ke$ha is completely different, but if we clarify, the issue is reverted. Your refusing to get the point and it only makes gonin circles. My patience grows thin because I know where the cycle repeats and its the point where you ignore the fact that "dead-mau-5" pronunciation is acceptable.Lucia Black (talk) 19:55, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I know I said I would back off... but, I have to comment on this. Pronunciation is not even an issue. We can always explain the pronunciation in a parenthetical placed the first sentence of the article if clarification is needed. (Old joke... how would you pronounce "Ghoti"... answer: "fish"... gh as in enough, o as in women, ti as in nation.) Blueboar (talk) 20:47, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

There's really no reason to dismiss pronunciation as a concern. The distinction between style and content can often be informed by pronunciation. Croctotheface (talk) 00:45, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

To me, the pronunciation rather important and can further be used to determine the difference between a purposely done and a stylistic spellng. I will say that if deadmau5 is routinely called, verbally "dead mau five", then "deadmau5" is a reasonable name to use. (even considering the screen readers) I've just never heard him called that, only "dead mouse", but to note, I'm not listening to broadcasts about the world of dj/electronica music all the time so my selection of sources is limited. In contrast, it is always said "Kesha", not "Ke-dollar sign-ha" showing how the dollar-sign form is strictly stylistic and thus drop-able for the properly-spelled "Kesha". --MASEM (t) 13:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

To answer Blueboar's question from a ways up, it looks to me that the most recent Deadmau5 move came out the right way (or the right way in my view) was because, essentially, my argument about what is and isn't standard English seemed to carry the day. That other RMs came out for Deadmaus indicates to me a strong preference for standardization among editors not just here, but out "in the field" as well. They read this guideline and were persuaded to apply it more aggressively than in my view they should have. Howver, the strength of the arguments in favor of Deadmau5 won out, either as a consensus interpretation of the guideline or to make an exception to the guideline. There does not seem to be such a consensus for Kesha-wtih-a-dollar-sign. But the same sorts of arguments that won the day with Deadmau5 would be available to editors who prefer Ke$ha or any other style. I suspect that Kesha-without-a-dollar-sign is pretty common among sources, though. The New York Times, for one, seems to have decided on "Kesha" 2-3 years ago and stuck with it. Croctotheface (talk) 00:45, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it does look like the NYT started off mixed (with some articles referring to her as Kesha and others as Ke$ha), but then settled down to a more consistent Kesha. And if there are other high quality sources that consistently settled Kesha instead of Ke$ha, then I would absolutely have to re-evaluate my opinion on that title. That's entirely my point... to me the key is the sources (especially higher quality sources). Despite all the arguments I have made in favor of Ke$ha, I am actually neutral as to the outcome of any particular naming discussion... I only use the Ke$ha/Kesha debate as an example... as long as our article title is based on the usage in sources and not our own POV of what is a "correct English name", I am content. I fully accept that sometimes following the sources will mean we will use the stylized spelling, while at other times it will mean we don't. I have no problem with that. Blueboar (talk) 01:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

The purpose of the guideline is to settle disputes when multiple styles exist in sources. There will never be a case where an invented style is used because of "our own POV". More generally, I think it's important to recognize that all editorial judgments are a matter of "POV", and we don't really do ourselves favors by pretending that our personal POV is neutral while someone else's POV is bad. Croctotheface (talk) 02:38, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Sunn band's naming

Sunn (band) → Sunn O))) may be of interest to you, considering it revolves around several issues on policies and guidelines. See talk:Sunn (band)#Requested move 2 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:53, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Also Tech Nine → Tech N9ne, another MOS vs AT debate à la Deadmau5. —Frungi (talk) 18:01, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Sunn band is based of the name of the music instrument brand. But it doesnt seem like "Sunn" brand uses the "O)))" from what I can tell from the article.

I think we should determine not by what sources use more Often "in the title and initial sentence" but rather "in the prose of the sources". And its difficult to determine because Sunn (band) doesnt yse a significant amount of sources to tell.Lucia Black (talk) 20:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, see talk:Снова в СССР -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:00, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

and Talk:Концерт -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 10:33, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

And Talk:W-B-X_(W-Boiled_Extreme)#Requested_move_2013 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 07:21, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Sigh, not to re-fight this or anything...

I made an edit that has been reverted by User:Robsinden at [10]. Should that edit be included in the guideline, or not? I am pretty confident it reflects both the consensus here and common practice all throughout Wikipedia. What say you all? Red Slash 01:38, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Your edit summary said "tell me if you like it". He didn't. I don't either. If you're looking to get support for some edit to represent a consensus in some RFC, you should start by saying so, with a link to the RFC and your statement of what you thought was settled there, and a proposed wording. Working this out by fighting over edits to the guideline is the hard way. Dicklyon (talk) 02:03, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems kind of counterintuitive to me to have rules about the exception to the rule included as part of the rule. If you have trouble parsing that sentence, that’s kinda my point. —Frungi (talk) 02:40, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

?? Dicklyon, what are you talking about with "fighting over edits"? Is this outside of WP:BRD? I thought it was a fair interpretation of the RfC. He disagreed. I'm not edit warring. I'm putting it here for a discussion. If you disagree with the proposed change, could you give a reason why? Maybe I'm reading some harshness in your message that isn't actually there. Please do accept my apologies if so.

Frungi, according to that aforementioned RfC this is now part of the rule, not really an exception. deadmau5 is at the correct location according to the consensus-supported version of WP:MOSTM, not in spite of it. Are you seriously suggesting that an article about, say, deadmau5's record company should refer to the artist as "deadmaus"? Red Slash 01:59, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

BRD? More like BRBRD. Once one's edit gets reverted, one takes it to the talk page. Reverting the revert only ticks people off, as apparently happened here. Slash, please propose your change here on the talk page, along with references to the relevant discussion. That thread got really long, and giving a summary and/or some represenative quotations will make it a lot easier for other editors to understand your proposed revision. Ibadibam (talk) 02:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for making one reversion, one time. I didn't think it would tick people off. Proposal below. Red Slash 00:50, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Just for clarity: This RFC on this page, yes? Because you didn’t specify, as Dick pointed out above. And I’ll echo that some explanation on your part is warranted, and details would be helpful. —Frungi (talk) 02:59, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Such an explanation is coming. And my apologies for not being crystal-clear earlier. Red Slash 00:50, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we should just modify the beginning of the guideline to just read, "Use whatever crazy style you want! We love branding, amirite guys?!" The business about "predominantly" did not gain any sort of consensus in any discussion ever, and it should be kept out of the guideline. Croctotheface (talk) 03:32, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the "predominantly" part gained a consensus. Not unanimous, I'll grant you. But sure, go to AN and ask them to interpret it. See what they think. Red Slash 00:50, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Full text of NEW proposed change

I assume Rob approved of the edit I made implementing the abovementioned RFC. Nobody has reverted and the consensus seemed rather clear to me. I then made a new change without prior discussion, was reverted, reverted back clarifying my position, was re-reverted, and then came here. The difference I'm proposing is to make it so that article text will include extraordinarily common stylizations of trademarks, such as iPod, eBay, and yes, "deadmau5".

Avoid using special characters that are not pronounced, are included purely for decoration, or simply substitute for English words or letters (e.g., ♥ used for "love"), unless a preponderance of reliable sources uses the stylized name. For such trademarks, follow the name used in those sources for the article title as well as the first time the name is introduced in any other article, and then editors may decide for themselves whether or not to follow the stylization in article text. For trademarks whose stylization is not predominant, it is acceptable to use decorative characters the first time the trademark appears, but thereafter, a consistent alternative that follows the standard rules of punctuation should be used.

Bold text is an addition. Does this sound okay? Red Slash 00:50, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Dude, I don't care enough to go to AN or anything like that. But the idea that the "preponderance" standard is backed by consensus strikes me as absolutely ridiculous. That standard does not differentiate between fan sites or official company sites that are reliable for certain uses, but that may be more interested in branding and advertising than in upholding professional style as we do here. I can't help but see this as an attempt to just gut this guideline entirely. What else is the point of having the guideline itself say, "Yo, editors can totally ignore this dudes! How awesome is that!" Croctotheface (talk) 00:25, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, as many people said, if this guideline contradicts WP:AT, as a guideline it's the one that has to bend. Also, are you familiar with what a reliable source is? I'm not even being facetious and I really don't want to sound patronizing, but did you know that fan sites are invariably not considered reliable sources, and that we have very careful standards for how we interpret primary sources like official company sites? So yes, "preponderance of reliable sources" is fine. That's also what the general consensus above said. Red Slash 02:38, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I've also reverted your change. I too am not seeing consensus for "preponderance" of sources. Can you please wait until consensus is more clear? Thanks. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:55, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The problem with any sort of "vote counting" standard for a question like this is that not all sources are created equal. "Preponderance" suggests something like "majority of the sources." But all sources are not equally reliable. You say that we have careful standards for primary sources, but that doesn't make them unreliable. Do you believe we should count their "votes" less than the votes of the AP or NYT? If so, how much less? A lot of hits that don't standardize are press releases, which are repeated verbatim, with all stylized tradmarks intact. This sometimes happens at business news sites that, in their original reporting, standardize the trademarked names the way this guideline would recommend. How would you "count" that?

More specifically to your proposal, the discussions (like Deadmau5 vs Deadmaus) you cite didn't hinge on a "preponderance" or "majority" standard; rather, basically ALL sources, including sources like AP and NYT that are most reliable for matters of style, used Deadmau5. There was no need to tinker out whether a "preponderance" existed because it was for all purposes unanimous.

Perhaps most importantly, the central tenet of this guideline is "choose the style that's in standard English." Setting forth a "preponderance of the sources" standard would create a conflict. Is it standard English or is it preponderance? My view is that all these cases that you believe support your preponderance standard are in fact cases where the standard English form of the name includes, say, the numeral 5 at the end. Modifying the guideline to suggest we don't really care about standard English so long as you can put forth a couple of Google searches with enough hits to argue for a "preponderance" would basically just invite crazy branding names.

Finally, this guideline talks about "trademarks," but that's perhaps misleading. It really deals with non-personal names, or perhaps with non-personal, non-governmental names. The recent cases, if I'm not mistaken, all deal with band names. We may be detecting a sense from our sources, including the sources such as AP and NYT that I believe are most persuasive on these questions, that standard English is a bit more accepting of odd-looking quirks of names that are tied to creative pursuits rather than strictly commercial ones. I think these are all interesting questions...but they have nothing to do with "preponderances" and we shouldn't pretend that they do. Croctotheface (talk) 05:10, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Paul Erik, that discussion is dormant, people stopped posting (presumably because they thought their point had been well made). Consensus for the original change I made, involving the famed "preponderance", is at this point either clear or not. I sure thought it was clear. You say, well, but you were the proposer, how can you decide what consensus is? Well, I did it because there wasn't anyone else who did.

Now, Croctotheface, let's settle the deal--I think we both actually support the same thing. You're just wanting to be far more detailed about the large amount of sources required. I'm absolutely fine with that. I updated the page to try to address your concerns (and then auto-reverted so that it isn't my unilateral contribution, obviously). Here is the diff, integrating a lot of the text you wrote below. (Permanent version here.) Please, edit that version and give me something concrete to work with. I want to avoid another mess like the deadmau5 one where a lot of editors !voted because they felt MOS:TM didn't allow exceptions like this even though WP:AT, a policy, demands deadmau5 over Deadmaus. You do too. So please, take that revision I made and make it your own, let me see what you'd like to make the guideline say. Red Slash 23:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

[I added a level of indentation so that my comment above isn't totally swallowed up.] I don't think that there is a consensus that WP:UCN conflicts with this guideline. There is a distinction between style and content. So, UCN would dictate we use, say, New York Islanders instead of New York Islanders Hockey Club, LP. The distinction between, say, "TIME Magazine" and "Time Magazine" is a stylistic distinction; it concerns how we write the name, not what the name is. There are harder cases that exist, yes, but that's why we have discussions and gather consensus. I think it's important that we not treat stylistic decisions of how to write names as if they are the same as the names themselves. I also want to quibble with the notion that using Deadmau5 constitutes an exception to the guideline. As I've said numerous times, I believe that Deadmau5 is standard English and "Deadmaus" is not, so no exception was made or needed to be made in order to reach that result.

With that out of the way, a change that I would be comfortable with would be modifying the guideline to say, briefly, the sort of thing I said about this particular issue a bunch of times. MOSTM says to use standard English. A style that is used basically universally by high level sources that are considered arbiters of standard English...that style is very likely standard English, even if it has something like a numeral 5 that might look nonstandard. One way to do this would be to add a section above "General rules" that explains this philosophy, perhaps references that the styles used in high level sources/style guides such as AP and NYT are generally good places to look for standard English. The "general rules" section delineates generalized rules, which point out the sorts of things we'd consider standard English when sources aren't quite so unanimous. For Deadmau5, I get the sense that the musician doesn't like to use a capital D, but plenty of our sources do, and we think it's better to capitalize, so we capitalize.

Lastly, I get that you think the Deadmau5 move and move-back was perhaps not our finest hour, and I agree that we could make some small changes to the guideline if those changes would avoid something similar from happening in the future. But I also think that if so many editors were persuaded to follow what they considered the letter of MOSTM, it wasn't because they thought the guideline was bad, and it certainly wasn't because they wanted a "preponderance" standard or anything like that. It's a worthwhile thing to consider when we discuss consensus here. Croctotheface (talk) 10:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I hear you. May I ask a favor? Would you please edit this guideline so that I have some idea what you really want to see done? (And instead of "preponderance" can we go with "overwhelming majority"? Maybe? Or something like that?) Red Slash 00:00, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

The issue for me is that I'm kind of agnostic on whether the guideline needs to be changed. I understand your rationale for wanting to change it, I can get behind a change of the sort I've described...but I'm not totally convinced we NEED to make it. Beyond that, it's hard work to articulate this sort of thing with the right sort of tone for the guideline. When I try, I often veer into more a more conversational writing style the way I did below. So it's hard, and I'm not totally convinced I want to make the change (although, on balance, I think it's probably a good idea to make some sort of change)...so realistically I don't expect to do it. I guess if I were to write it, without trying to actually piece the language together, I'd say something like: "These are general recommendations designed to guide discussion and consensus building; they are not designed to obviate the need for discussion when difficult cases arise. It's probably a good idea to look at our sources--especially high-level sources considered arbiters of standard English style--when determining what style most closely resembles standard English. If a certain style is used universally among high-level sources, or near universally among medium-level sources, it's probably standard English, even if some element of the style appears nonstandard." Again, the tone isn't right, but that sort of thing is something that I would be comfortable having the guideline say. Croctotheface (talk) 05:51, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Japanese song page titles

I've started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Japanese song and album titles in regards to Japanese song titles and MOS:TM is somewhat related.—Ryulong (琉竜) 17:54, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's a change I could envision seeing

This isn't necessarily text that would be appropriate in tone for the guideline. It's a little more like a statement of philosophy. I've written something along similarish lines before.

Sometimes, trademarks are written with different styles in different reliable sources. This guideline contains advice to help editors choose from among those different styles. It's important to remember that the philosophy here is never about "correcting bad grammar" or anything of the sort. We never use a style that does not already exist in sources.

We write our Encyclopedia in standard English, and therefore, we prefer to choose standard English styles, or at least styles that most closely resemble standard English. However, we should also take a more descriptivist approach to interpreting standard English, and take some guidance from our sources rather than our opinion as individual editors of what is standard and nonstandard.

Higher-level sources that pay a high degree of attention to maintaining a readable and uniform style (AP, NYT, etc.) probably deserve more weight than entertainment/gossip blogs, industry trade magazines, fan sites, or official sites, which may be reliable for some or many things, but which also may be more interested in marketing and branding than in neutrally providing information to their readers. This cuts in both directions. For a case like Deadmau5, where basically all high-level publications were comfortable using the numeral 5 despite its nonstandard appearance, it's hard to argue that Deadmau5 is somehow not standard English, and that some style that sees very little use among high level publications is more standard.

On the other hand, that a lot of entertainment blogs use the dollar sign for Kesha/Ke$ha, but very few high level publications do, suggests rather strongly that the dollar sign is not standard English.

All arguments are available to editors who wish to argue that a given style is or is not standard English, including "vote counting" arguments about "predominances" or "preponderances" or the like. We avoid articulating a specific standard here because it's difficult to assign exact percentages to how much a given source should count. Most editors probably agree that the New York Times or Associated Press should "count more" than a Kesha fan blog. But other questions are more complicated. For me, the question comes down to whether you can make a reasonable case that a given style is standard English. It strikes me as pretty hard to argue that "Deadmaus" is standard because it sees basically no use. It likewise strikes me as pretty hard to argue that Ke$ha is standard because high-level publications tend not to use it. But other editors can reach a different consensus, so long as their arguments make sense. Croctotheface (talk) 00:48, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I like the description of the rationale behind the guidelines, and I wish we had more of that. But I have to admit I don’t think it’s appropriate for a manual of style. Maybe an essay linked off from it? —Frungi (talk) 00:25, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

"Fun."

See Talk:Fun (band) where a discussion which may impact on this guideline is taking place -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 00:20, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

But what if "styles already in use by sources" otherwise violate the guideline?

We're having disputes on big.LITTLE again. Despite completely violating this guideline, editors support keeping it at that name because no reliable sources uses "big.Little" instead. Personally, I think that should not be a carte blanche for keeping irregular formatting in certain cases (Deadmau5 is a judgement call for me, because I treat it as a proper noun and not a trademark, since its a person). ViperSnake151  Talk  03:06, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Plenty of sources do use more normally styled variants without the all-caps LITTLE part. Dicklyon (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Same old story. Most sources, correctly, use big.LITTLE. In this case, the capitalization goes to the very essence of the technology, where a big processor has features of a little one (thus the lower-case "big") and vice-versa (upper-case "LITTLE"). The sources that get it wrong either have wrong-minded MOS (IMO, like us), or are just poorly written/edited. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 08:12, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

You're arguing that we have to use a non-standard form of a trademark regardless if it is used by sources? Then if that's the case, why does this policy even exist? It's basically useless. ViperSnake151  Talk  23:08, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Alan, to clarify, you think editors should make individual judgment calls about whether a given nonstandard style "goes to the very essence" of the subject or whether it does not? Should that be the guiding force behind which style to choose? As this particular discussion points out, MOSTM only comes into play when we need to choose among different styles in our sources. Would you favor hashing out, on a case by case basis, whether ALL CAPS SHOUTING is "goes to the very essence" of, say, Time/TIME Magazine but not PGA TOUR? Croctotheface (talk) 09:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

No, the core of my argument is that we should reflect what the predominance of sources use, so we "look right" to readers. I guess I was tangentially pointing out why the style was used by ARM to begin with. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 19:09, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. Wouldn't the key component of what most readers are familiar with have to take into account the readership/viewership of articles, rather than a tally of how many individual sources or individual publications use a style? That seems to heavily favor something akin to "do what the Associated Press does". Croctotheface (talk) 04:12, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Trademarks are proper nouns, too. They're not personal nouns, which might be the term Viper may be looking for. In my view, "Deadmau5" is the proper style because of the number and quality of the publications that use it. It's hard to argue that a style such as "Deadmaus" is standard English if it is hardly ever used generally and hardly ever used by mainstream publications. I think it's very important that editors understand this, rather than view the Deadmau5 case as a free pass to ignore the guideline when it clearly should apply. Croctotheface (talk) 09:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

A Proposal

I propose that we create a WP:COMMONSTYLE guideline to cover all of this. In essence, the proposed guideline would say something like: When a significant majority of reliable sources (independent of the article subject) consistently present a name using a particular stylization, Wikipedia should (if possible) present the name using that common stylization, in both title and text. Blueboar (talk) 12:49, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose - There will be some fringe cases like Deadmau5, but our current approach of rewriting trademark names to make them fit as normal prose may go counter to sources but reduces the amount of possible edit warring that could happen over names (which as WP:LAME shows, WP has had a history of). I can this policy being used to fight over Time/TIME, easily. By forcing trademark names to our housestyle, we avoid such edit wars and make the work more readible for all English readers regardless of their familiarity with the language. --MASEM (t) 14:51, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I also strongly disagree with this. First, we get to choose our own style. A "common name" standard makes sense because it's easy to ask whether people know, say, Mark Calaway or The Undertaker. That's not really discernible for style questions, almost by definition, since they concern only how we write names. TIME vs Time only matters in writing. Second, this makes no distinction between high-level sources that are concerned about matters of style and low-level sources that don't. Third, how "significant" is a "significant majority"? I will say, though, that I dislike Masem's cavalier attitude about going "counter to sources". We should certainly look to sources to determine what is standard English. Croctotheface (talk) 20:53, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

We already know what is standard English, that's defined by our MOS. And as I said, I'm ignoring the Deadmau5 case as an edge case; if we're specifically talking about names that are only differing from a standard written English by their case ("big.LITTLE") or choice of punctuation (ala "fun."), we should always defer to rewrite those in standard MOS casing format since we're not changing the actual words themselves. --MASEM (t) 15:01, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with "fun." If you're removing any character in any title, its as if you changed it. But luckily, "Fun" is used in most of the source's prose. If we go by sources, it shouldn't affect the MOS as much. And I don't agree with standard english is correctly defined. The reason why Deadmau5 isn't an issue its because it can be read 2 ways: Deadmau 5 (as if there was Deadmau 1-4) or dead mouse. Although one is official, at first glance even if misread, it would not confuse editors and the MOS should be updated to allow numbers used as letters "at least" when their at the end of the title.Lucia Black (talk) 15:43, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not trying to group Deadmau5 in this case, which is why I called it an edge case (specifically on the fact that verbally, both "dead mou five" and "deadmouse" are used to refer to the musician). "fun." is always called "Fun" in verbal statements. "big.LITTLE" as "Big Little", etc. There is no question of, if you had no idea how the exact typography could be taken, how you'd likely write the title. There will be exceptions like Deadmau5, so there's no reason to try to group the rest. --MASEM (t) 21:52, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

1) I addressed both, but that doesn't mean I "grouped" them together. The point is "Deadmau5" shouldn't be an "edge case". 2) I don't believe "verbal" is the same. Titles are being more well known visually just as much as verbally even outside the circle of media. Now I completely understand if it affects the structure of the article such as "fun." but that's because the common source uses "fun" in the common prose. If you remove any letter or anyform of character in that title, then it is altering the title "verbally" is the same, but its not.Lucia Black (talk) 22:07, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

What's your definition of the "common source," though? It's much easier to use a "common name" standard to say that the common name is New York Knicks, not "New York Knickerbockers, LLC" or whatever the legal name is; or to use such a standard to say that someone's common name is Martin Sheen, not Ramon Estevez or Jimmy Carter, not James Earl Carter. That's easy to understand and usually easy to apply. For stylistic choices, someone who reads high-level publications might have a very different idea of "commonality" compared someone who follows the PGA Tour/TOUR on social media. So that's not so easy to understand and not so easy to apply. It's further complicated because you pronounce "Time magazine" the same way you pronounce "TIME magazine". Out of idle curiosity, do you really think that the period in the band called "Fun" is pronounced?

Second, I thought you favored, essentially, "Just call up the trademark owner and ask" as a standard? Are you supporting this "common style" because you see it as a mechanism to undercut the guideline? Croctotheface (talk) 02:09, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

1) those names you showed are completely different, its either common name or shorten version of the longer name.

2)That's not what I'm saying. I'm not contesting the rule, just the over generalization and "view" on title alterring. "Fun" and "fun." are considered the same because sources cover it as such in common prose. What I disagree with is removing any character in a title (in general) just because its trademark and wikipedia (us) considering it the same title without second thought. If "fun." was "fun~", would we remove the tilde because its not pronounced? In that particular case, fun~ would be acceptable in both sources and in wikipedia, except for believing if its not verbally said it can be removed and yet blatantly considered the same name. I believe its the common case for punctuation such as periods or commas that should be done for the sake of sentence readability, but anything outside shouldn't be so easy to say "I take one character out of the title and its still the same title".Lucia Black (talk) 04:43, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

But we do. The prime example is Kesha, where the majority of sources name her "Ke$ha" but we ignore that. Why? Because no one verbally calls her "Ke dollarsign ha", it's "Kesha" - so the wording "Kesha" is consistent with how it is referred to in verbal sources. "fun." and "Fun" are the same (it's not "fun period"). The reason that we need to apply IAR and realize there are edge cases is that for something like "Deadmau5", there are two ways the name is verbally said (as well as printed), and thus either printed name is reasonably approiate. Our presentation of the name in MOS types should be consistent with how the name is said and if the name is only said one way (ignoring regional dialects), then we should use the spelling that falls within our MOS that best meets that. That doesn't apply to Deadmua. --MASEM (t) 04:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The reason it doesn't apply to deadmau5 is because that name whether mispronounced or pronounced correctly, doesn't cause confusion. So the "5" is a stylized "s"? But does it cause confusion at first glance for someone whose never heard of such an artist? One look at the article and you say "Oh! Its pronounced dead mouse. Interesting"

Kesha is different as she's never been mispronounced as "Ke-dollar sign-ah" and not only that but there are sources of her being known as "Kesha". Despite being very little. There's enough to generalize.

Fun. is the same as "Fun" but not by our judgement, but the judgement of the sources and even if most sources just call it "fun." the small number would help. And that's why "fun." Is "Fun". Not because we verbally say it one way. And that's what I don't like about it, over genralization because one editor believes taking out 1 unpronouncable character makes it the same title.

We don't conform to the verbal pronounciation but the readability in the prose of an article and by reliable sources if there's a safe alternative. (Which if you tthink hard, why not remove dashes too? Their not pronounced either).

It's a slipperly slope and we shouldn't over generalize this. There is clearly a safe middle ground. If a name A) doesn't interfere with readability B) easy to pronounce even if its not the common accepted form C) Within the means of typing the title within an english keyboard. Then the trademarked name can be used without searching for an alternative. I beg of you to find a flaw in this idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucia Black (talk • contribs)

The very fact that the 5-as-an-S in "deadmau5" can be read (and verbally stated) two different ways is why I'm not trying to cover it in one statement - it is better to recognize that one rule cannot cover 100% of the cases, but if we can get one that does 99% of them and leave the rest to further consensus, that's fine. Every other case - like Ke$ha, fun., big.LITTLE, Sunn O))), for example, is where we can replace it with the way it is written when it is normally pronounced but following our normal MOS for casing - improves readability without misleading the reader. --MASEM (t) 05:54, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The exception provided above allows Ke$ha to remain as "Kesha" and fun. as "Fun" and I'm completely unsure about big.LITTLE but Sunn O))) isn't read as "Sunn Oh right parenthesis, right parenthesis, right parenthesis" Yes verbally, it matters but only to when it can be said without affecting the flow of the article. The hypothetical "Fun~" would be acceptable despite the tilde being silent because it doesn't interfere with readability, and not difficult to pronounce and all letters are found in keyboard. We can't make one rule to cover 99%, and the rest is grey area because this won't cover 88%, more like 70%. I believe the rule I proposed will help cover the 20%.Lucia Black (talk) 06:35, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I think it's very likely that a hypothetical band with a tilde at the end of their name would probably keep the tilde, although I'd consider such a name obnoxious. A few stray replies since I've been here last: Masem, I'm not sure that a majority of sources use the dollar sign for Kesha, though it's possible. I'm still not sure how we could reliably determine "majorities" anyway. Lucia, dashes certainly affect the way you vocalize a sentence--wouldn't you agree? You're probably thinking of hyphens, which affect pronunciation more than you might think. Croctotheface (talk) 06:48, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

A google search I did back during the deadmau5 showed a 2-1 to 3-1 use of "Ke$ha" over "Kesha" (hits in 10s of millions for both). --MASEM (t) 21:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to get too bogged down in this, but are we 100% comfortable comparing hits for one search string over another? I'll acknowledge that with such a clear difference, the search strings are probably representative of some sort of majority, but should we base policy off that? Should we use the same sort of test to figure out which Bill O'Reilly is more notable, for instance? I recognize that you and I agree for the most part on the issue that we're discussing here. But I don't know that we should be so proud of ourselves to go against our sources. If all or nearly all high-level sources used the dollar sign, I think we should at least revisit the issue. I suspect you wouldn't care at all, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. Croctotheface (talk) 22:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

My point is that we regularly do not use the search counts for our MOS and titling purposes. We use "Kesha" over "Ke$ha" despite the latter being more popular, and that's because "Kesha" fits into standard English and there's no confusion. The less we base our naming schemes on sources and more on meeting our standard written English, the less edit wars will come up. Again, there are exceptions to that rule (deadmau5) but I see no reason to otherwise ignore sourcing as long as we are using some form that is documented in sources even if it is not the most preferred. --MASEM (t) 01:34, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

We've seen Sunn O))) among bands. A name with a tilde at the wouldn't seem so obnoxious. But we keep the tilde because its acceptable among the terms I presented, all we have to do is make it official. And yes Ke$ha is used repeatedly in sources and among the common prose, so we have to rely on minority source for alternatives.

I'm simply making an exception that allows less editorial judgement, more guideline.Lucia Black (talk) 07:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I think Sunn Ojjj (which I suspect is not how it's pronounced, but it's how it reads to me, so whatever) has some weird characters. If they received a lot of mainstream coverage as "Sunn" with no Ojjj, I suspect the consensus there might change and we might just use Sunn. This strikes me as a case similar to the ones I'm describing below. My argument is that hypothetical tilde band would keep the tilde under the current form of the guideline because the tilde would likely be used exclusively (or near-exclusively) by sources, including high level sources. Plus, I think editors (both copy editors and WP editors) tend to be uncomfortable removing characters from names, especially if they might hint at meaning. The tilde seems to carry something different from a period. Croctotheface (talk) 07:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot to add: it may very well be that Kesha-with-a-dollar sign is more common, but how do you know that for sure? Google hits? Your general intuition? Croctotheface (talk) 07:27, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The "O)))" is meant to be a sun shooting off sunrays as the band based their name off a amplifier brand simply known as "Sunn" despite sharing the same logo. Its merely pronounced as "Sunn". But the only difference between tthe tilde and period is that the tilde wouldn't affect readability. If it wasn't for that detail, people would/should be just as wary as removing characters off a name.

But that serves my point, there is room for exceptional complimentary rule to not go by our judgement most of the time.Lucia Black (talk) 07:34, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't mean for this to sound harsh, but sometimes I really have trouble understanding what you write. I'm not sure what "exceptional complementary rule to not go by our judgment most of the time" means. I do know that stating a direct preference for using certain characters and not using certain characters would definitely be "our judgment." If consensus changed tomorrow, and all the editors decided the article was better off without the Ojjj/sunbeams thing, then we'd use a different style. I'm not sure why you're so concerned with trying to obviate discussion. The whole point of this guideline is that there are hard cases, and consensus might change. We state a general philosophy and general rules. They are tools that editors can use, in addition to others. Croctotheface (talk) 07:52, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The rule I proposed allows some passive more acceptable names. We both know we can't get it 100% and even then it'll only raise more questions. More defined exception, less judgement calls.Lucia Black (talk) 08:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't really know what "some passive more acceptable names" means. Right now, any outcome supported by consensus is "acceptable." With Deadmau5, your read of that discussion seems to be, "We're comfortable with numbers in this position or that position." My read of that discussion is, "If a style is used almost universally, including by major publications that are arbiters of standard English style, we should probably use it, too." Do you at least acknowledge that my read of that discussion is reasonable and comports with the guideline as it's currently written? Croctotheface (talk) 18:01, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok I thought you knew what I meant to "complimentary" but fine, let's add a fourth term. D) Must be near universal coverage of that name. My proposal adds middle ground to both your views and masems.Lucia Black (talk) 21:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

This is just something I'm curious about. Is English your first language? I'm not asking to be snarky; I just see these occasional idiomatic uses ("meant to complimentary" instead of "meant by complimentary") that seem consistent with your first language being something else, maybe a Slavic language. As far as your proposal, I'm not comfortable changing the guideline when it seems to be working. If stuff like this happened often, I'd think that we might have a problem. I am absolutely against any rule that says "numbers are cool but only at this point or that point." Croctotheface (talk) 22:24, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

it only works, if you ignore the other possibilities. if the hypothetical "Fun~" is allowed, just like "deadmau5", some form of common exception should be allowed "officially" the guideline just gives the allusion of absolute. All it does is may the grey area, not so greay. and yes, English is my first language. But, regardless, even if it wasn't should we make that the main subject? And you're only interpreting it as "numbers are cool" i'm saying "numbers are allowed under a specific circumstance that doesn't affect reading". There is a common pattern among the exceptions. I'm comfortable making it official in the guideline...it's not even that big of a change.Lucia Black (talk) 01:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Blueboar, how different do you think the guideline would be interpreted if we followed your proposal rather than what's there now? I don't think that it would be very different at all. There are plenty of weird-looking styles in use in the encyclopedia, sometimes because they are very common, sometimes because editors are ignoring the guideline IAR-style, and sometimes because nobody has bothered to change them. For most weird styles, a standardized version is actually more common, especially among high-level sources. Croctotheface (talk) 20:53, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

If the standardized version actually is more common (especially among high quality sources) we should be presenting it that way. That's the point to my proposal... whether "weird" or "standardized", we should present names the way the majority of sources present the name. "Follow the sources" is a mantra that underpins Wikipedia... it is at the heart of our core policies. I am not trying to advocate for or against "odd" stylization... I don't really care whether any specific name is stylized or not... but I do think that the determination should be based on source usage. Blueboar (talk) 01:52, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

"Majority of sources" is a very different standard that ignores high-level sources and the fact that they tend to be better arbiters of standard English. Plenty of sources that show up on a Google search, and even a Google News search, are not sources we'd be thrilled to cite in our articles. A lot of those hits are press releases. Sometimes a business publication will print press releases verbatim, with weird styles intact, and then standardize in their original journalistic articles. How would we "count" that? Any attempt to determine "majority" strikes me as fraught with problems.

Besides, we don't generally "follow the sources" for matters of style. We have our own style guide. For what it's worth, I'd be pretty comfortable if we had some sort of procedure where, when multiple styles exist in sources, we checked a few high level sources, saw if there existed a consensus among them, and then went with that style. If high-level sources didn't have a consensus, we could add steps 2 through X to the procedure. But basically, I think that's what we do already. It's why I think that your proposal and others like it are a solution in search of a problem.

The guideline as it's currently written basically says, "We want to standardize, but we don't want to invent styles and "correct grammar" and go off on some sort of prescriptivist power trip." So, we only use styles that exist in sources. I understand that the way the guideline is written, it seems possible that we'd use some style that barely ever gets used. Two responses. First, a barely-used style is pretty much by definition not "standard", so it's not standard English. Second, in practice, we just don't over-standardize. The problem you are concerned about does not exist. In fact, high-level publications tend to standardize much more than we do. The New York Times and Associated Press do not put an exclamation point after the tech company Yahoo, but we do. Now, if I wanted to go through and try to prove that a majority of sources omit the exclamation point, I'm not sure how I could do that. I'm not sure that I'd feel comfortable that whatever mechanism I chose actually did arrive at the true "majority". But even if I did somehow prove it beyond all doubt, I think we'd still use "Yahoo!" This is a guideline, guidelines have exceptions, IAR exists, and I sleep just fine knowing the style we use at Yahoo!, even though I'd use a different style if I were dictator. Croctotheface (talk) 13:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, of course we would give high quality sources more WEIGHT (and give less weight to lower quality sources) in determining the COMMONSTYLE, however, we still give low quality sources some weight... we don't completely ignore the usage in lower quality sources. Determining what is "COMMON" is often a bit of an editorial judgement call. Yet we successfully make such judgement calls all the time when determining the WP:COMMONNAME for the title. It is a system that is proven and works well. Essentially, my proposal is to take the same decision making process that we successfully use for article titles, and apply it to how we present the name throughout the article. Blueboar (talk) 13:54, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

To add to this, again I point to WP:LAME and the fact that editors at WP tend to want to argue to get their preferred result on technicalities. If we used a metric based on majority of sources or majority of high level sources, then we will continue to have endless edit wars on the more difficult names that one person can take a slice of sources and say that those proof their point, while another could take a different slice and counter that. Using our style guide which is near perfectly stable removes any potential for future edit warring, and of course maximizes readability. At Croctotheface points out, as long as the mechanical application of our style guide to a non-standard trademark name produces a version that at least some sources uses, we're not doing anything wrong, and because it is mechanical, there's no way to spin the steps to get a biased result. I agree that there are IAR cases (Yahoo! probably falls into that), but in cases where consensus is significantly split between two or more alternate names, the MOS reduction of the name should be used. --MASEM (t) 14:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)