Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 64

message: I'm not sure that these belong in the MoS, but they're definitely tendencies that I think make WP harder to read:
#Parenthesis mayhem - Perhaps some editors feel that if they add something in parens it's not really a "full" edit or something.  IMO it's bad style.   Obviously some parenthetical remarks are truly off the main course of the sentence or graf, but these are rare.   I recall one writer who said that using parens is like whispering, dashes like shouting, and that too much whispering would make others suspicious.   (I forget what happens with too much shouting; maybe they become annoyed.)   As you can see I don't always eschew parens, but I think we need to gently encourage people to avoid them.   Examples: 
:*: This article is about the torture method. For the (related, but much milder) technique used in BDSM, see Strappado bondage - probably a non-native English speaker, judging by the rest of the article
:*: The Tuck' (a.k.a. The Snow Bowl) (Raider fans refer to it as The Snow Job) (January 19, 2002, Oakland Raiders vs. New England Patriots, AFC Divisional Playoff Game)
2.Conditional to mean past - I understand this in conversation.   "The Patriots would go on to win the Super Bowl," because from the frame of reference we're talking about, they hadn't yet done so.   But for encyclopedia entries this is almost always unnecessary and makes the article harder for both native and non-native speakers to read.   Obviously there are some cases where it's unquestionably warranted, particularly for hypotheticals.   Tom Brady moved his arm forward because he thought he would be able to get off a pass.   But IMO the conditional is way overused and we should be encouraging clearer use of the past for past events.   
I'm open to criticism of my criticism, but I think both these style guidelines would be worth gentle suggestions to new editors.   Not sure where to put them, though.   Regards, PhilipR 03:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two writing peeves 

message: If a source document contains a bullet list, how should I indicate that I am quoting it exactly? I suppose I could start each item with ** instead of * to get extra indentation, but I'm not sure that would convey to readers that it is a quotation. --Gerry Ashton 21:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Quoting bullet lists

message: The obvious thing to do is to adopt the happy compromise that is Canadian spelling. In Canada, we have "labour organizations" and "tire centres", which cannot exist in the US or UK. By taking a little from US spelling and some from UK spelling, we have achieved perfection in English-language spelling, and are happy to export our creation to the rest of the world in order to achieve the unity of English-speaking peoples. Wikipedia can help bring this vision of linguistic utopia into being by ruthlessly enforcing the use of Canadian spelling and brutally crushing any dissent. 
Well, it's just a suggestion. Ground Zero | t 13:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The perfect compromise

message: Note: there is currently a vote and/or discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy about removing the recommendation not to use fixed pixel sizes for images. Shinobu 07:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed px size for images 

message: A while back some editors started to develop a new way to implement external images. By now we have finished the template.
The size of this template is variable to fit better with other templates in the article.
The link to the image is always given with a description of its content. This description is basically an interpretation and for this reason it has to be sourced with a link to the website(in accordance with all guidelines for the use of websites as sources). Both reference styles are possible. It is optional to affix additional unlinked text after the linked description, possibly a legend for maps in foreign languages and so on. It is advised to use redundancy (2-3 links for the same subject) so we don't loose information in case we have to face troubles with the image link of a website(it can get blocked, the url changes or the site shuts down,...). It is possible to add up to 20 image links with the templates on the right side. If you have more, start a new template and please let it be known here that there is an article with more than 20 external image links.
The older version on the left is still functional and the same rules apply to it, but it is advised to use the new version with its significant icons. The old version has no limit to the number of image links. The specific icon for external image links can also be inserted manually prior to the link: 
I suggest to integrate it into the manual of style. Wandalstouring 18:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New template for external images 

message: I have read the style guidelines regarding English dialects in articles.
However, if a term is used in one dialect that refers to a geographical location where another dialect is (most usually) used, then, is it good style to retain the term appropriate to the article's dialect, or to that geographical location's (most general) dialect?
One example is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest-Lasting_Light_bulbs
Where the section reads:
"The fifth longest-lasting light bulb was in a washroom at the Martin & Newby Electrical Shop in Ipswich, England. Given its shape and design, it was thought to date from the 1930s. It burned out in January 2001."
Here, a 'washroom' is described as the location of a light-bulb in a shop in Ipswich, England. In English English, such a room would be described as a 'lavatory', 'toilet', or some-such (these terms seem to be class-determined also!).  So, would it be appropriate to leave the article 'as is', or to make some sort of alteration to that term?
This raises a significant worry for me - one close to my heart:
The unhyphenated form of 'cooperation' (etc) is in widespread US-usage, as contrasted to the hyphenated form 'co-operation'.
This latter form is, both, in widespread use in (the rest of) the English-speaking (and not-usually English) world and has a significantly different meaning than that used in (certainly in contemporary) US usage. 
(See, for example, the 'International Co-operative Alliance' publications.) 
With the (now) numerically-dominant use of US English, the unhyphenated form 'cooperation' is now, for example, even the (UK-based) Oxford English Dictionary's prefered usage: the certainty being (my fear) that the meaning of the hyphenated form will (eventually) be replaced by that of the unhyphenated form.
What would be/is the Wikipedia style-guide response to all this? - an example of politicking the lexicon?
Thanks!
john courtneidge John courtneidge 17:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the first major contributor to an article about light bulbs wrote in the US dialect of English, that dialect should be used throughout, even when refering to light bulbs located in England. --Gerry Ashton 18:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

text: What’s the difference between cooperation and co-operation? Do they mean anything other than "working together." I wasn’t aware that the OED expressed any form of preference for the words it catalogs. --Rob Kennedy 19:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The difference between cooperation and co-operation is not a dialectal one in my mind. I always hyphenate adjacent identical vowels between a prefix and a base even though I'm American in order to avoid confusion (e.g., anti-inflation). So I think that we ought to spell things in a way that confuses people the least. Hyphenation is one thing, but British spelling tends to be unphonetic. For example, catalogue is pronounced [kætəlɔg], so why would you put a -ue at the end of the word?? It isn't pronounced [kætəlɔguε]. There is no valid reason for the spelling. Another example would be moustache, in which the o serves no purpose other than to confuse ESL speakers. American's write it as mustache.--Best Username Ever 02:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Cross-English' terms, and 'politicking the lexicon' 

message: The Manual of Style section on Quotations looks old, it makes no mention of any of the newer Templates which add various quotation functionality, such as shaded boxes, pull quotes, etc... This conservative section is now being used by a small but vocal minority to delete certain quotation templates, such as :Template:Cquote. Yet, we have about half a dozen or more quote templates being widely used. This is confusing and leading to style war conflicts because this MoS page tells users to use "blockquote", with no mention of any of the newer quote templates. -- Stbalbach 02:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A half-dozen different styles is not a good idea. —Centrx→talk • 02:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Please let's reach a consensus to trim :category:quotation templates down and give it a logical arrangement. —Gennaro Prota•Talk 04:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  MoS on Quotations  

message: Hi guys,
I thought that you could reply to this before I could even figure out something making sense: we have two articles, Red carpet and Red Carpet, whose titles only differ in their capitalization. Furthermore the former article has an Other meanings section for what should actually be a dab page. Could you suggest a suitable arrangement for the whole thing? Thanks. —Gennaro Prota•Talk 18:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd quickly rename the software Red Carpet (software) and use the "other meanings" section to create a dab page. As for the "Red carpet" article, a title for that is slightly less obvious; how about Red carpet (hospitality) or perhaps the more intuitive Red carpet treatment? – Kieran T (talk) 19:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense to me (preference for "Red carpet treatment"). Objections anyone? —Gennaro Prota•Talk 19:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

text: From dictionary search, "red-carpet" seems the most common spelling. On second thought, I'm not sure whether we should limit the entry to "treatment"; in the end this could be more suitable for wiktionary, at least for now, where the reference to the 20th Century Limited is nothing more than what can normally be found in a dictionary's etymology section. —Gennaro Prota•Talk 12:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opinion needed on title fix 

message: The end of Fair use has begun:
Wikipedia:WikiProject Stop fair use
--ROBERTO DAN 17:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fair use 

message: After watching this page on and off for 2 years, I've noticed a repeating pattern: quite often style guidelines that were established through lengthy discussions are revised or removed entirely with minimal or non-existant discussion. In most cases I have seen, this decreases the quality of the guidelines rather than improving them. The main problem seems to be that once discussion of a topic has run its course and the discussion is archived, it is no longer evident that edits to a particular topic may be overriding consensus established previously. Of course, we all know that consensus can change (the straight quotation marks rule for example), but in many cases these edits do not reflect consensus, but merely the opinion of one editor who may not be aware of previous discussion(s). I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is other than recommending that no significant changes be allowed to the manual of style without discussion on the talk page (which will hopefully cause previous discussions to be brought up for consideration). This may sound draconian, but at this point I think pretty much every word of the manual of style has been disected, discussed, vetted, and rehashed multiple times. These guidelines have a long and voluminous history that in many cases new editors are just not aware of. I feel like the years of discussion that have gone into crafting these guidelines should count for something. Call me a stodgey stalwart standing in the way of wiki-progress if you must, but it seems to me like these guidelines should be a bit less subject to random edits. Any thoughts on this? Kaldari 08:02, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Another helpful change might be to include rationales directly in the text. This would explain the reasons to users who would otherwise "know better", and also would lead to more people being convinced to follow a particular style recommendation and elucidate exceptions to it. This should be done for all guidelines and policies, anyway. —Centrx→talk • 08:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly agree.  And I also agree that including rationales in the text might help.  Maybe a Manual of Style for the Manuals of Style might help (joke, not serious).  Seriously, though, I follow what you're saying.  Neonumbers 03:06, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or perhaps a permanent link to the discussion where the consensus was formed, either in the text or a comment? Apart from that, I would appreciate it if a few instances of this bitrot were provided, so I can see for myself whether this is an issue or not. Shinobu 21:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The permanent link would certainly help. However, in many cases, there does not appear to be any original discussion, merely references to an ever-receding consensus; some of the most controversial parts of this guideline seem to have been written in by one or two editors without consultation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:25, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manual of style bitrot