Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Danah Boyd

message: Having skimmed through a bit of the AN Archive92 discussion, I wish to note to the parties that any peripheral arguments about how BLP should be applied to Wikipedia generally will be ignored and discouraged, as mediation does not apply to policy disputes. However, the name of the article is certainly within the scope of mediation, and hence this case will be accepted/rejected on the basis that all parties agree to mediation. Daniel 07:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

message: First of all, thanks for accepting my offer to mediate - our current official mediators are a little swamped, and I'm glad that you guys are brave enough to work with someone with less experience than them ;)
Basically, my role here is to guide parties on both sides as to what issues should be discussed, ensure that everyone gets a fair say, and help us resolve this dispute. I will not take sides or express opinions. If at any point you feel unhappy about the way this is going, please do let me know. I can be contacted via my talkpage, or via e-mail. I will treat all e-mail correspondence as completely confidential. 
As Daniel says above, mediation does not apply to policy disputes. Thus I request that all discussion be limited to the scope of the article's title, and BLP not be treated as the all-encompassing issue at stake here (though I suppose it will be brought up at some point!). 
It would be helpful if we could just have each party give a statement - however brief - about how they stand on the issue, any thoughts about it, and how they would like for this to move forwards. 
Thanks, ~ Riana ⁂ 12:43, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preliminary comment from mediator 

message: === Statement from Neier ===
As I outlined in a couple of different sections on the article's talk page,  capitalization schemas are a matter of style, and not as a matter of content; and that is how Wikipedia treats it as well.  Even though reliable sources have their own editorial styles, those source alone are not a reason to override the MoS.  I also agree that the mediation is not the place to debate current policy; but, how the current policies apply to the subject.  So far, there has not been any convincing argument put forth against the notion that capitalization is a stylistic issue. Neier 14:53, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Preliminary statements from parties

message: As I outlined in a couple of different sections on the article's talk page,  capitalization schemas are a matter of style, and not as a matter of content; and that is how Wikipedia treats it as well.  Even though reliable sources have their own editorial styles, those source alone are not a reason to override the MoS.  I also agree that the mediation is not the place to debate current policy; but, how the current policies apply to the subject.  So far, there has not been any convincing argument put forth against the notion that capitalization is a stylistic issue. Neier 14:53, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement from Neier 

message: My own opinion is that Wikipedia should follow the lead of outside sources and popular usage, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). I understand that Boyd (who edits as ) prefers the spelling of her name to be "danah boyd", but popular usage as indicated in multiple media sources such as San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, New York Times, Financial Times, Newsweek magazine, NPR, and others capitalize Boyd's name normally: "Danah Boyd". I am adamantly opposed to either renaming the Wikipedia article to a title of "danah boyd" or copyediting the article so that the name is lowercased throughout the text, as some anon editors have attempted. I do, however, think it's reasonable to include a mention of the subject's preference for lowercase spelling in the lead of the article, as it was here.  --Elonka 19:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement from Elonka

message: First off, I'm pretty sure that the MoS (trademarks and people naming) is pretty clear about this, no?  I don't think there has been anyone saying that the MoS doesn't say that the name should be lowercase.  The main argument I've seen is that the article is somehow incorrect if we don't bend the rules of English to accomodate the stylistic whims of the article's subject.  Unusual capitalization and trademark formatting is unnecessary flair that is designed to catch the eye, which reduces readability (which is my guess why most reliable sources disregard it as well).  Just because Danah Boyd doesn't want to follow normal stylistic rules of English doesn't mean we have to in order to be correct.  The article should still mention her preferred capitalization of course.  Anyways, the primary argument for lowercase seems to be ignore all rules in order to make Wikipedia better/more accurate.  This increasing the accuracy business seems silly, since if the article states her preferred formatting, no information is lost.  It also does not make Wikipedia better in any way to reduce readability by forcing the reader to deal with unusually styled proper nouns.  Wickethewok 20:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement from Wickethewok

message: I agree with the users above, particularly Neier.  In addition, I'd like to address the main points I've seen for de-capitalizing the name:
*This is a BLP issue—need to respect subject's wishes
*:I addressed this issue at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive92#Use of BLP justification getting out of hand.  The overwhelming response was that there was no BLP issue here.
*The MOS says use should be as subject wishes: WP:MOS-CL#Mixed_or_non-capitalization
*:This was brought up by User:DragonflySixtyseven.  I followed the link, but disagree with the conclusion.  Here is the applicable paragraph: For personal names, capitalize normally within the article, but include the lowercase spelling within the lead. For the article title, follow the lead of outside sources and use the most common spelling and capitalization, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions. For example, if The New York Times and USA Today routinely capitalize the name, use the same style here on Wikipedia. If the situation is ambiguous, capitalize normally.
*Danah's website is a "reliable source" and as such, is sufficient to lower-case the name
*:For this point, see Neier's response.  Yes, Danah's website can be used as a source.  But it should be used as a source only to inform that she says her name is "lowercase", not to actually treat the style as such.  Sources are for facts and content, not for style.  Capitalization is a style issue (The Chicago Manual of Style has addressed capitalization extensively, just as we have here with our own MOS, at WP:MOSTM and WT:MOSTM.
*Her name has been legally changed to "danah boyd"
*:Mostly the same point as above, but with the "legal" appeal.  However, we can't verify this, and most people seem to be of the opinion that "legally", names are case-insensitive (even if the application was filled out in lowercase).
*If the NYT or other major sources spelled her name Dana Boyd (jumped of a cliff, etc.) would we do so also?
*:Capitalization is not spelling.  A D is the same letter as a d.  This point is not a matter of opinion, either.
*"I'm inclined to be extremely wary of the MoS in this case"
*:Here, I think, is one key to this issue.  The guidelines in the MOS have been formed by consensus, and are certainly not unchangeable.  However, we do again need consensus, to do so.
The above responses summarize my feelings on this issue. -- Renesis (talk) 21:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement from Renesis

message: First of all, I have to agree with the previous statement; we are discussing capitalization and thus formatting/style here, not a content (and subsequently not a BLP) issue. Hence this case falls primarily under the scope of the Manual of Style, which like any other Wikipedia guideline was formed by a previous consensus. The current tonus of the MoS and its many sub-pages is to follow standard English text formatting and I believe we do that not just for the sake of readability, but also neutrality, as dismissing stylized (or "eye catching", as Wickethewok put it) typography where we can helps us to provide each subject which an equal "weight" in the typesetting. - Cyrus XIII 23:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement from Cyrus XIII 

message: My "hopefully 500 words or less, but probably going to run long" summary:
It's often been repeated that capitalization is a matter of style, and inferred from there that capitalization cannot ever be a matter of factual content. I don't believe that either one of these statements is generally correct, and I don't think that the latter necessarily follows from the former. Consider, for example, articles on the C standard library, many of which -- though the titles in their URLs begin with an initial capital due to limitations of Wikipedia -- present their titles on-page entirely in lowercase and refer to their subjects in that fashion throughout. Wikipedia has -- rightly -- chosen to ignore style guidelines in those articles because there is no such function as "Strlen" or "Strcopy", and no such header file as "Signal.h". In these cases, the capitalization of the title is a matter of verifiable fact, and (I hope) no argument based on a style guide would be able to get them changed: Wikipedia would be (and would deserved to be) laughed at if it presented "Strlen, also known as strlen" in the same fashion that it has previously presented "Danah Boyd, also known as danah boyd". Similarly, Wikipedia has in the past made exceptions for "idiosyncratic capitalization" of trademarks (a much closer concept to that of a person's legal name) such as "iPod", "eBay", etc. and these exceptions have even made their way into Wikipedia policy as examples to follow for similar cases.
A question has been raised as to whether it is possible to legally change one's name to lower-case, and hence whether case can be a matter of fact; danah is apparently a resident of the State of California, so the relevant law is the California Code of Civil Procedure, §1275 through 1279.6, which is silent on matters of case.
Given that, I'm not convinced that this is purely a matter of style; where a name is verifiably capitalized in a way inconsistent with normal style, Wikipedia has a history of going with the verifiably-correct capitalization over the "stylistically-correct" capitalization.
If we accept, however, that capitalization is merely a matter of style and never a matter of fact, then it's also been repeated that mainstream media sources have used "Danah Boyd", and this has often been assumed to mean "the majority of reliable sources", hence per Wikipedia's style guidelines Wikipedia should use "Danah Boyd". However, I believe that an extreme selectivity has been used in recognizing sources and judging their reliability. There are easily-located reliable sources which do not follow the lead of the New York Times:
* The University of California at Berkeley's School of Information, on a departmental web page, lists a "danah boyd".
* Reconstruction, a peer-reviewed journal, lists her in the table of contents of issue 6.4 and in an article in that same issue as "danah boyd".
* Knowledge Tree, a peer-reviewed journal, on its current front page identifies a "danah boyd", and does so again in introducing an article by danah.
* The anthology Best Software Writing I from Apress, a respected publisher of technical books, identifies the author of one of its anthologized essays as "danah boyd" (see amazon.com listing).
* danah has indicated on the talk page of the Wikipedia article on her that official documents such as her diplomas present her name in lower-case.
* danah herself indicates that her name is lower-case.
If necessary, I'll happily conduct a deeper survey of available sources, but it seems from the above that what we have here is, at best, a conflict between reliable sources. Numerous Wikipedia policies place on us the burden of resolving that conflict carefully, but the "resolution" offered so far has consisted largely of ignoring or dismissing many reputable sources out of hand (or, at best, with a justification that they must be ignored because danah may have somehow influenced them -- a justification I'm still not certain I understand). Furthermore, the reliability of newspaper articles in the matter of danah's name has been called into question by danah pointing out other mistakes made by reporters (misspelling her name as "Danah" without the final "h", for example); this makes the problem of resolving the conflicting sources even thornier, but it seems that there is little interest in genuinely tackling that problem.
Furthermore, most of the debate about this article seems to have arisen from people who -- having encountered both this article and outside sources -- were genuinely surprised that Wikipedia used "Danah Boyd" rather than "danah boyd", which also contributes to the question of what the most "common" usage is: if people routinely come to this article and expect it to be titled "danah boyd", then we should consider the possibility that Wikipedia is not following common usage. I'll reiterate that that's precisely how I got into this mess: I don't know danah, and I've never met her, but I was still quite startled when I saw the Wikipedia article on her; having read her publications and other publications which cited her, in addition to her essay on her name, I knew that the correct usage was "danah boyd" and was surprised at the amount of resistance I saw when I read -- and later began commenting at -- the talk page.
The reliability of danah as a source has been questioned, but the initial consensus after a previous RFC on her name was that the information she had supplied was not "unduly self-serving" and that there was no reasonable doubt as to danah's identity in providing information to Wikipedia; to date, no-one has really put forth an argument for how it would be self-serving for her to tell us what her name is.
Additionally, there has been more than a slight hint of POV in much of the argument against "danah boyd" -- Wickethewok's comment above, for example, about not wanting to "bend the rules of English to acommodate...stylistic whims" seems to carry with it something more than a wish to neutrally follow policy. Similarly, an essay Elonka cited on the talk page clearly comes with is own POV -- it takes no pains to hide value judgments it makes about the sort of people who lower-case their names. Others on the article's talk page have raised the question of whether capitalizing "Danah Boyd" in the fashion Wikipedia has used may even be POV in and of itself by imposing a view of what is and is not a "proper" name -- something danah's essay on her name change seems to anticipate. If we're going to resolve this, it should be resolved in a neutral and respectful fashion, with great care to avoid any inkling of POV.
So. Wrapping up:
* I believe there are problems with, and/or solid counterarguments to, the arguments which have been presented in favor of "Danah Boyd".
* I believe that there are good grounds for at least considering that the capitalization of danah's name may be a matter of fact rather than style.
* I believe that even if we accept that the capitalization is simply a matter of style, there has been a pattern of carefully ignoring some reliable sources while overly favoring others in determining the most common usage per Wikipedia's style guidelines.
* I believe that having this article titled "Danah Boyd" is likely to engender confusion in readers who are expecting to see "danah boyd".
* I believe that the appropriate amount of care has not been taken in having an honest, neutral debate about this article.
What I'd like to see, going forward, is an honest discussion of the above points and an honest evaluation of whether "Danah Boyd" really is the correct title of this article and the correct way to refer to its subject. Previous discussions on the article talk page, mostly involving others who've trod this same ground before, never achieved any true consensus -- an RFC in April, for example, ended up with three votes in favor of moving and three votes (all of them participants in this mediation) opposed. I don't really have high hopes that the article will end up renamed, and I previously suggested a compromise which seemed to get shot down, but getting this properly talked out and properly resolved seems like something that's absolutely necessary, or else the talk page for the article is just going to flare up again in a little while when someone else comes across it and thinks the article is incorrectly titled.
(and I realize I didn't come anywhere near keeping this "brief", but maybe it's best as the lone voice on this side to throw out a bunch of things to think about) Ubernostrum 23:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement from Ubernostrum 

message: I was very late in entering this discussion. In my real-life experience consulting manuals of style, I have also come to know that capitalization is a matter of style, not fact. The fact that other publications choose to use lower case for her name is perhaps not surprising, but isn't overly compelling either, as small journals may have looser stylistic standards than major newspapers.  The statements by Danah are clearly intended to promote her viewpoint that others should use lower case for her name, although our style guidelines don't currently allow for personal preference. I feel the correct way for those who favor lower case to proceed is to find consensus to change the manual of style, rather than trying to find an exception here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by CBM 

message: I am joining this mediation late, by permission of the moderator.
My concern is that Wikipedia not appear to be partial to some persons over others in the use of lower-case names.  There are three contexts in which this impartiality must be manifest:
# Determination of whether the person actually has a lower-case name,
# Title of biography,
# Mention of unusual orthography in biography, and
# Use of name in article text, both in biography and in other articles.
I know of four examples of persons with lower-case whose biographies appear in Wikipedia:  danah boyd, bell hooks, k.d. lang, and catherine yronwode.  I do not know have the searching skills to find other examples, but I would like to know about them.  Of particular interest would be persons whose biographies were subject to renamings over the lower-case issue, since the resolution of those renamings may be instructive in refining our precedents (whichever way the conflict was resolved).  Of course, no amount of mechanical searching will find persons whose names are in lower case but who have not had that fact mentioned in their biographies.  In the case of danah boyd, I see the current state of the three contexts in the following ways.
# The determination of whether danah boyd's name is lower case is in dispute, given the appearance of her name with standard capitalization in print media.  I believe this is overridden by reports of her name appearing in lower case in her publications and on her college diploma, and confirmed by statements on her web site.  In addition, I am uncertain of the extent to which upper-case appearances of her name in print media arise from those media's stylistic conventions, as in item 4, below.  Another issue in the identification of living persons with lower-case names is the length of time that their name has appeared in lower case, since we must distinguish between persons who have started using lower-case recently, since the change may be transient.  Ms. boyd's web page claims that she has written her name in lower case since her college years, some time in the 1990s.  My belief in the lower-case nature of Ms. boyd's name makes the remaining issues relevant.
# Her biography is titled in upper case, while the others are in lower case.  This seems to be manifestly partial and misleading.
# The mention of her orthography was added to her biography recently, though I believe it should include some mention of the period of time that she has used lower-case; the current mention, undifferentiated from prior, transient changes of name, tends to discredit Wikipedia users' acceptance of item 1.
# Use of lower case in the text seems to be resolved by using standard capitalization for everyone.  I can accept the rationale, since the use of upper case to signal proper names makes text more readable (consider what we would do with a person named "with are").  However, I am concerned that this convention discredits acceptance of item 1, and I also believe it is discourteous to living persons with such names.  Therefore, I will refer to danah boyd in lower-case in this discussion.  I will not inflict my orthographic judgment of this matter on article text without a consensus change.
Finally, let me express my gratitude for being allowed to enter this discussion.–Dan Hoeytalk 17:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement from Dan Hoey 

message: Basically, include prose about how she prefers to be called by "danah boyd". Include some details, and it could even be included in the lead as the last paragraph. Possibly consider bolding the lowercase name in the prose.
Proposed by: Daniel 07:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal #1: Include parapgraph in article

message: Another possibility slightly differenct might be to remove her birth name from the lead (as it's mentioned in the Biography section, and write something like "Danah Michele Boyd (1977—), known also by her [some appropriate descriptive word] name danah boyd, ...".
Proposed by: Daniel 07:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal #3: Alternative name, II 

message: I think the only workable solution here is going to be a final decree of how the article is to be titled and how danah's name is to be presented throughout Wikipedia; including different variations or using an "also known as" would almost certainly result in someone else later lobbying for moving/renaming, so the only thing that'll work is to actually sit down and solve this in a manner which will carry some authority.
Proposed by: Ubernostrum 16:29, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Something to bear in mind about mediation is that it's a purely voluntary process and its' results aren't binding. The results of any mediation carry abolsutely no "authority" at all. All it can do is help the people who are arguing at about something at one time come to agreement. The parties to a mediation aren't bound by the outcome - though its understanadbly seen as bad form if they go back on what they had previously agreed - and its quite understanable that someone new might be unwilling to acknowlede the result of a mediation they were unaware of and took no part in, per WP:CCC. That being said, the arguments that came up and discussion that took place in mediation remain valid however, and you may want to direct the new party towards those discussions so he understands why the compromise came about. The result of any mediation is based on the goodwill of both the parties and the Wikipedia community to make use of. Daniel 03:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Understood. I just think it'd be a lot harder to point people to a previous discussion which reached a consensus if there ain't no such thing ;) Ubernostrum 06:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal #4: Decide what to call the article 

message: As I've said, I'm personally done with this mediation for a variety of reasons. However, since I know there are some folks here who probably feel strongly about it, I'd like to point out that I've asked for opinions on some reasoning for changing MoS in a way which would impact this article, and if any of you would care to offer some input I'd appreciate it. Ubernostrum 16:56, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slightly OT