Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 71

message: What is Irish English?  SlimVirgin (talk) 06:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: English as spoken in Burkina Faso Ireland. Strad 20:19, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

text: It may seem silly to you, but this debate has been gone into many times, and your side of the argument appears to have lost. See Why not settle on a standard written English? a long way up this page. Also, British English and Cornish English are not remotely commensurable. British English is a standard form taught and used in many countries of the world. Cornish English is a very local dialect unknown, I would suggest, to anyone outside Cornwall. Woblosch 13:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Varieties of English

message: I'd like to propose a few templates be created to identify the variety of English settled on for articles.  It would be a talk page template to help when there are discussions when people start flipping words back and forth.  A good example is the flipping back and forth between "organisations" and "organisztions" on 2007 Iranian seizure of Royal Navy personnel.  Any of the templates should point to the national varieties section of this article to provide further guidance.  Suggestions for initial template names are "" and "".  Any comments? --StuffOfInterest 16:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This might be a good idea, but I think it should focus on specific spelling issues rather than countries. While I don't think that you should mix words like colour and honor, I don't mind it if you have color and organise. Also, in Canadian English, for example, you might find honour, or, less commonly, honor. "British English" doesn't tell you whether to write -ise or -ize, although a consistent choice needs to be made. So I think the template should focus on series such as -ise/-ize, -our/-or, -re/-er and so forth, and the template should be flexible for isolated cases like tyre/tire, etc., where you can enter the words in question. Also, having a place for the dates the choices were made would help clarify whether a choice was long-standing. And I think people should only use the templates for spellings that actually occur in the article, so they can't use the template "preventively". Joeldl 20:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

text: As long as it's not one of those boxes that sits at the very top of the article. The last thing we need is more of those. Putting it on the talk page or somewhere else might be good. Strad 03:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Templates to identify language variety of an article 

message: Many articles include horizontal lists, often wrapping over several lines, and separated by pipes (|), bullets (•), hyphens (-) or other such characters. These characters may be spoken, intrusively, by assistive software ("bullet cat bullet dog bullet..."), and the content is not marked up, in the HTML source code, as a list, which reduces functionality on some devices and reduces semantic meaning.
There is now CSS available for horizontal lists, like this one:
*cat
*dog
*horse
*cow
*sheep
using the templates  and . See, for example, areas of Birmingham. The separators are now CSS borders, and are ignored by text readers, etc.
Such lists can be used anywhere in an article, including infoboxes and templated footers.
This needs to be reflected in the relevant section of the MoS, but I'm not sure how. Can someone assist, please?
:Andy Mabbett 10:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  No. It’s not a pipe symbol. It’s not a character at all (which is why it’s appropriate for avoiding screen readers). It's a vertical border drawn on a box around the text. --Rob Kennedy 19:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Okay; I think I understand!  Thanks for reply, David (talk) 13:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Horizontal lists

message: Re...
* Do not place left-aligned images directly below second-level (===) headings, as this disconnects the heading from the text it precedes. Instead, place the image directly above the heading. For example, use:
 
 === Section 1a ===
 First paragraph of section 1a.
: not:
 === Section 1a ===
 
 First paragraph of section 1a.
...perhaps the simpler/"safer" advice is simply to recommend that left-aligned images aren't placed immediately below section headings...?  Thanks for any feedback, David Kernow (talk) 18:45, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I reworded it accordingly; see #Left-aligned images above. Eubulides 21:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image section  

message: Please mention something about
shortcuts vs. offline users.Jidanni 11:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since this is a question of refering to shortcuts that almost always point to teh Wikipedia: namespace, there should be no reason to cite or link any of them in any article (because doing so would be a self reference). Therefore this isn't a Manual of Style issue, since the MOS is about how to format articles. DES (talk) 12:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  shortcuts vs. offline users 

message: I have been contributing to Wikipedia for 2 years and I now have a question about how style guidelines should be worded. Can a style be both optional and required? There is a debate going on in Manual of Style (dates and numbers) on binary prefixes that is caused in part to the wording of the guideline. I do not want to cover any of the issues in that debate on this talk page. I came here so I can get an opinion that is not biased by that debate.
There are two valid styles, the Style A and Style B, and the guideline is worded like this.
The use of the new Style B in the Wikipedia is not required, but is recommended for use in all articles. If a contributor changes an article's usage from Style A that change should be accepted. 
In practice the style is optional until some user changes it then it is required. When all of the significant contributors object, a first time contributor says the change must say because of the manual of style. If this is the case, shouldn't the guideline say that style B is always required? 
Did the visiting contributor (who has never made any other change) violate the other manual of style rules in Wp:mos#Disputes_over_style_issues . This is my first time I have had a problem with Manual of Styles. Can a style be optional until one person says it is required? -- SWTPC6800 23:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Can a style be both optional and required?

message: Can we come to some consensus about idiosyncratic proper name capitalization? There is a discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Proper names. Ideally the end result would be to update the guideline with some more specific text about what to do when someone's name isn't capitalized normally. Any input would be appreciated. - cohesion 00:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idiosyncratic capitalization of proper names 

message: Following an initial query on the Village Pump, it was suggested I raise the question here. Shouldn't there be some guidelines in the MOS about the use and content of Infoboxes? I'm thinking about some guidelines about what constitutes good practice in coding infoboxes, what CSS classes and id's to use, size of images (and/or infoboxes) and, what led me to raise this in the first place, best practice in defining locations. I have already picked up at least 3 different ways of defining latitude and longitude in "Place" IB's. I'm pretty sure there are more. Some seem to be regional preferences, but many are not trapped in the dump scans associated with Google Earth mashup. We should have, at least, a preferred methodology for these things. There are always good reasons for exceptions.. Shouldn't we have an Infoboxes section in MOS? Frelke 18:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe a generic section would be appropriate here, but typically, infoboxes are governed by WikiProject-specific guidelines. You might want to visit some of the various wikiprojects and see how they do it (for instance, the Aircraft project has a section and some project-specific templates for infoboxes in articles that fall under their purview. Akradecki 18:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The MOS already includes Wikipedia:Dynamic infobox templates.  Other guidance can be found at Wikipedia:Infobox templates and Help:Infobox; perhaps adding a link or two to those two pages (somewhere) would be useful?  -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 02:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am inclined to add Infoboxes to the Submanual list. Its WhatLinksHere seems to show that its not listed anywhere meaningful - which is, I guess, why I couldn't find it.  is another possibility. I think I'll propose over there that it should be included. I may even be bold. Frelke 07:37, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Infoboxes and MOS

message: Per this section am I understanding correctly that left aligned pics should be place above the header under second level headings (===) but not first level headings (==)? Quadzilla99 17:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I played around a bit with an article with images, and tentatively concluded that the MoS page really should say that it's wrong to place a left-aligned image immediately below any heading.  Even placing it above a heading, as suggested, is still disconcerting (to me); I think left-aligned images should only appear in the middle of sections.   -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 02:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sometimes it's necessary for short sections with little text that require two images. Unless you want a huge blank gap in the text you have left align one. I'd like to get some input as I think the MoS should be changed to say all left aligned pics (except in the first section of course) should appear directly above the headers. I'm very sensitive to this as I have a relatively high resolution computer screen and right aligning all pics often leaves huge ugly blank gaps in text. The thumb size options in prefernces leaves a lot to be desired as well. Quadzilla99 04:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: What I dislike about having images above section headings is that images appear to be in sections they’re not really in. Click the “edit” link for a section an image appears to be in, and you don’t get the image. Click the “edit” link for the section above, and you find an unrelated image tacked onto the end of that section. --Rob Kennedy 15:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Point well taken.  It does seem like the software should be changed (so it essentially treats an image immediately following a third-level header as if it were above the header, in the text, if you will) rather than hoping that thousands of editors become familiar with this oddity.  Someone want to submit a bug report?  -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 19:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I reworded the guidelines for left-aligned images a bit, so it may affect this topic. For details please see #Left-aligned images above. Eubulides 21:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with this as if you have a high res screen it is sometimes necessary to left align pics at the beginning of sections. Otherwise as I said above it creates large ugly blank gaps in the text. Also the wording "or place elsewhere" leaves something to be desired as it's seems to indicate that the pic should be put somewhere else even if it doesn't even relate to the text if necessary. Quadzilla99 21:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I reworded the guideline to address your second point; thanks. As for the first point, sorry, but I don't follow it. As an editor one can't assume that the user has a high-resolution screen, so one shouldn't place images under that assumption. I agree that the current guideline sometimes produces ugly output, but putting the image above the section header breaks accessibility for reasons described at the end of Wikipedia:Accessibility#Article structure. I guess the "right" fix is to improve the Wikipedia software to format sections better, but in the meantime accessibility is more important than beauty. Beauty is fleeting, but structure is forever. Eubulides 22:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll bring this up at the Pump later to see if we can get a little more talk on it and maybe see if we can spur someone to work on these technical factors. Really if you've ever seen some of these pages with gaps throughout the text it looks very amateurish. Quadzilla99 22:58, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pic placement

message: Surely somewhere on WP there's a guideline or policy for citing quotes from the (Hebrew/Christian) Bible.  I went looking while editing this page, but came up empty.  I assume chapter, verse & translation info is a minimal requirement, so for now I went ahead and added them in the style of the Blue Letter Bible (an excellent reference source BTW), where the King James (or "Authorized") version of the first two verses of the tenth chapter of the Book of Revelation would be cited as "Rev 10:1-2 (KJV)".  I think that's fairly standard, but I'm not sure if it's too shorthand for WP (though the wikilink to the KJV article probably helps...)  —Turangalila talk 04:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You might want to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Bible; there I see reference to the templates  and . --Rob Kennedy 08:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bible quotes?? 

message: I would like to strengthen the wording "Specifying the size of a thumb image is not recommended" - perhaps to "Specifying the size of a thumb image is generally a bad practice, and to be avoided", with some additional explanation why this is so. Thoughts? Andy Mabbett 15:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image sizing