Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 7

message: Because this page is so long, I have moved the archives list to an archive directory. Maurreen 17:12, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Archives

message: Does anyone mind if discussion of the following is moved to a separate page?
#The quote at the beginning of style guide.
#Fowler's "good" guidelines.
#The expressions "period" and "full stop."
#The serial comma.
#"U.S."
:Maurreen 06:20, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I have moved all of the discussion related to the above toWikipedia talk:Manual of Style (jguk's changes). Maurreen 07:34, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: My guess is that other Wikipedians would prefer this sleeping dog to lie. jguk 22:19, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't take my occasional silences for complacency or disinterest. I was off the 'Net for a week or so (including the brief Request for comments period on these changes). Now that I'm back, I'm rather weary of seeing people deliberately misconstrue each others' arguments which are already largely based on personal opinions and anecdotal experiences. Since I'm not getting sufficient action on my call for authoritative sources, I'm slowly working on my own research on leading authoritative sources in the various dialects of English. I expect it will take me at least another month, maybe significantly more. (American sources are relatively easy; British, Canadian, et al. are more challenging from my location. But I'd rather do it right than quickly.) If I find that the constant repetition of opinions, unscientific, biased polls, Google searches, and general bickering still haven't produced adequate research on global English publishing practices by then, I'll publish my results. Where and if warranted by the multi-national results, moderated by Wikipedia philosophy, I'm liable to do some jguk-style major editing and page moving, then challenge everyone to prove me wrong for doing so. Editing the Manual of Style and its associated elements should not be done as casually as it's been for the past few months, and I plan to raise the level of this debate even if it kills me. ☺ — Jeff Q 04:12, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Jguk's changes

message: In case anyone is interested, I wanted to let you know that I have reopened the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (jguk's changes). Maurreen 06:57, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: My guess is that other Wikipedians would prefer this sleeping dog to lie. jguk 22:19, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't take my occasional silences for complacency or disinterest. I was off the 'Net for a week or so (including the brief Request for comments period on these changes). Now that I'm back, I'm rather weary of seeing people deliberately misconstrue each others' arguments which are already largely based on personal opinions and anecdotal experiences. Since I'm not getting sufficient action on my call for authoritative sources, I'm slowly working on my own research on leading authoritative sources in the various dialects of English. I expect it will take me at least another month, maybe significantly more. (American sources are relatively easy; British, Canadian, et al. are more challenging from my location. But I'd rather do it right than quickly.) If I find that the constant repetition of opinions, unscientific, biased polls, Google searches, and general bickering still haven't produced adequate research on global English publishing practices by then, I'll publish my results. Where and if warranted by the multi-national results, moderated by Wikipedia philosophy, I'm liable to do some jguk-style major editing and page moving, then challenge everyone to prove me wrong for doing so. Editing the Manual of Style and its associated elements should not be done as casually as it's been for the past few months, and I plan to raise the level of this debate even if it kills me. ☺ — Jeff Q 04:12, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Reopening discussion

message: I've seen a bunch of articles that italicize fictional characters, for example, "Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs." I've never seen this before. Is there any precedent for this? I've also seen character names placed in quotes instead of italics. Should something about this be placed in the style guide? – flamuraiTM 08:00, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)
:A completely undesirable development. I agree with banning it in the style guide asap and then enforcing that ban before the custom becomes too widespread to stop, jguk 08:16, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly it can't be banned, but the style guide should remind editors to use formatting sparingly.  If it's used too much, it loses its meaning. --Sean Kelly 22:03, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree that the names of fictional characters shouldn't be italicized, but I don't see the need to add it to the style guide. Maurreen 05:23, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fictional characters 

message: I tried to find some good advice on structuring articles in wikipedia namespaces. All I found were some pages in the Style and How-to Directory, some pages in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, and some links on template:FAPath. They mostly deal with the issue from a general stylistic and aesthetic viewpoint, and only touch on the underlying reasons for giving a logical and fairly standardized structure to encyclopedia articles.
I've therefore written up a draft guideline for writing articles in a "pyramid structure". Being mostly based on common sense, it is in part a description of what we already do, but its goal is also to explain why structuring articles in this way is good. It's at User:Zocky/Pyramid structure. Please feel free to improve and comment. 
I'm not sure how to proceed. Proper structure should obviously be a FA requirement, and this should probably also be in the how-to series. But since structure is a fundamental editorial issue which heavily affects both quality and NPOV, it could also be a part of the Manual of Style. Zocky 19:45, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article structuring 

message: A massive chunk of information seems to have been carelessly lost in this edit.  I am talking about the section on External Links in particular.  This is referenced as WP:MOS#External Links from a number of places.  E.g., the editing help, the external links page and so on.  Given the amount of editing that has  gone on, I'm not going to do an immediate revert to the version from November 24 before that edit, but I think it might be a good idea, at least until the material is moved elsewhere and/or correctly linked.  Comments anyone?  Mozzerati 10:01, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)
:The edit was to replace the Manual of Style with a shorter version that had been discussed beforehand. The references to that discussion should be somewhere in the archives (though, I'm afraid, I don't know where). From memory, I think the material on links got moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) on Maurreen's suggestion, though I stand to be corrected.
:However, this Manual of Style is a living document, feel free to propose any changes you think are appropriate, jguk 19:23, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The earlier discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Draft trim (November 2004). Maurreen 22:50, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Massive lost information