Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 11

message: Regardless of what the style guide says, edit wars will be reduced by communication and cooperation. Regardless of what it says, it will not be perfect and it will not be followed 100 percent of the time. Regardless of what it says, for an article to be subject to an edit war over an issue covered by the style guide is inappropriate at best. Maurreen 19:33, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit wars

message: I often see editors changing the way quotations are indented. Many prefer to write blockquote; others prefer using a colon. I've been told the latter is "bad HTML." Does anyone know what the different schools of thought are on this? SlimVirgin 00:21, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
:Blockquote is more correct, but colon will do fine, even though the HTML is not pretty. Basically, blockquote conveys semantics, and will be understood correctly by (for example) a browser for the blind. The colon just conveys layout information, and the semantics are unclear. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:11, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
:: Not that we care about semantic markup here anyway. The wiki markup precludes semantics. – flamurai (t) 07:16, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Joe and flamurai. So if blockquote is correct (or more correct), does anyone know why some editors insist on changing it back to colon, and why the MoS now says colon, because I'm sure I read on a talk page discussion some time ago that other editors had agreed to use blockquote; though I didn't fully understand the discussion so may be misremembering it. SlimVirgin 07:22, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
:No idea. I would prefer blockquote, but consider colon acceptable. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:25, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
::I believe some people prefer colons just because it's simpler. Part of the point of the wiki is that HTML knowledge isn't needed. Maurreen 09:09, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Indented quotations

message: :::While this sort of topic is on the table — I use HTML-style quotation marks, and if I'm editing an article anyway, I tend to change quotations marks (as I do dashes).  I'd assumed that this was pleasanter and fairer for people whose browsers and/or llinguistic conventions interpreted quotation marks in different ways.  Again, I've sometimes found all my careful work reverted, usually without explanation, sometimes with the claim that that's Wikipedia policy.  Any comments? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 19:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't care how people do it, but I wouldn't want the style guide to call for blockquote. Maurreen 00:46, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Quote marks

message: I've raised this issue at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name), but nothing was really settled there, and really that's subsidiary to the more general question of usage.  In any event:  what to do with the capitalisation of proper names of organisations that begin with "the", and which assert that the "the" is part of the proper name per se and 'ought' to be capitalised?  The naming convention cites both "official title" and "most common name" (without being entirely clear which to apply when).  Examples would include:  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, both of which seem to be pretty precious about their Article.  In the former case there's an additional Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mormonism) document, but that doesn't seem to exactly have a great deal of standing in (to take a not very hypothetical example) page move request discussions.
It strikes me that if the naming conventions are going to appeal to matters such as 'common usage', the MoS is, as a matter of practical necessity, going to have to take a position on what such usage should be, at least in general terms.  To what degree is it legitimate to take the preference and practice of the referent into account?  To what degree should there be a standardised rule?  (For example, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English would be nice and simple -- and widely at variance from current practice.)  And how do we measure 'common' usage?  How do we weight the usage preferences of 'insiders' and 'outsiders'?  Alai 06:58, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I lean against uppercasing "the", at least outside of publication names. I think there is a page or section on this, but I don't remember where. Maurreen 07:00, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There's an established convention for 'works' in general, yes (it hadn't occurred to me until earlier today that newspapers were 'works', but that makes sense, duh), that's discussed here.  For non-works I've seen nothing terribly clear.  Alai 07:48, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I asked a helpful chap at the Guardian's style guide, and his take too, was not to do so.  ("No, we would not reflect such preferences.")  He went on to observe that tG doesn't capitalise its own "the", though as it'd be treated as the title of a work here, that's a slightly separate issue.  More grist to the mill, at any rate.  Alai 04:24, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalisation of organisational proper nouns, etc 

message: I remember reading that links in article's bolded titles should be avoided. ? Hyacinth 02:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think so, but I don't remember where. Maurreen 03:42, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: MoS, section 1, Article titles: "Do not put links in the title." Related to  MoS, section 2, Headings: "Avoid links within headings." Break all rules and all that, but adhering to those two makes matters a lot easier on the eyes. –Hajor 04:03, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: I've seen a few different conventions used:
# Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian: )
#* Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian: )
# Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский)
#* Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian )
# Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский)
#* Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky ()
Note there are three items being varied:
# Language name. Either with a colon, without, or omitted completely. Some people also italicize the language name, but I didn't include that here to make things less complicated.
# Bolding foreign language name.
# Method of marking up translation with language code. Either with HTML, Template:Lang, or nothing at all.
I feel that this should be standardized for the same reason dates of birth and death are standardized: it is a common element across many Wikipedia pages.
My preference is shown in example no. 1 above:
# Always give language name with a colon. Don't italicize it: the colon sets it off enough.
# Bold the foreign language name, as it's an alternate title. It doesn't matter if there's actually a redirect or not.
# Use the lang template. Semantics are good, but we should strive to keep as much HTML out of the articles as possible.
– flamurai (t) 01:15, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
I like to make the name a link to article on another language wikipedia if it exists eg: Battle of Hurtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald)
--Philip Baird Shearer 03:13, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Which would give you: German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald -- that's pretty neat. Think I'll adopt that; thanks. –Hajor 03:37, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standardizing presentation of article title translations