Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 61

message: Look what I found:  And this one looks different too. This is exactly why I don't like these. Is there a way to actually do something about it, instead of discussing this on WP talk:MOS till the end of time? Shinobu 04:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yet another quote template

message: There are currently three interrelated debates, and I think we could use some new voices:
# Symbols as words e.g. I ♥ NY, Toys "Я" Us
# All capitalized trademarks e.g. WWE RAW, TIME
# Trademarks with Question Marks (?) and Exclamation Points (!) e.g. Yahoo!, Guess?
If you have even a slight opinion, please chime in under the relevant discussion. I personally have been involved in this debate for almost two years. I think it's time we came to a global consensus... the straw polls on specific articles' talk pages just lead to more revert wars. – flamurai (t) 03:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outside opinion requested at [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (trademarks)]] 

message: At feticide, an editor has changed "(sometimes referred to as fetocide)" to "(sometimes mistakenly spelt fetocide)". I pointed out that we had cited sources of medical professionals using that spelling, and for us to call it a mistake, would not only be POV pushing, but also be spitting in the face of Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English. So I am here to ask for a third opinion at Talk:Feticide to weigh in on these matters. Is it ok to call common variant spellings used by professionals in the field of study in question a spelling mistake?--Andrew c 15:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, I am the other party in this, and it is clear to me that fetocide is a misspelling for reasons given at Talk:feticide. It is certainly not a matter of national varieties of English. It is an exaggeration to say there are "cited instances of medical professionals" using this spelling, and it does not appear in any dictionary.. at very best it is a recent and uncommon neologism. It is much more likely to be a mistake. Zargulon 16:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Of the medical journals available in the index at my university, I find one citation using fetocide, from May 2002 in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. A Google search on fetocide yields about 11,000 hits. I suspect many are from people who genuinely had no idea how to spell the word, and more from people whose fingers slipped, since the I and O keys are next to each other. Some of the hits come from pages about the German heavy-metal band. Therefore, I don't think fetocide is a variant spelling. But I also don't think it's a misspelling worth mentioing in an encyclopedia article. Any time I see Wikipedia call something a mistake, it feels condescending. We don't need to point out the mistakes of others unless we're going to write about why the mistakes are notable. Otherwise, who cares? --Rob Kennedy 21:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Rob Kennedy. My own comments are at Talk:Feticide. What I would do is create a redirect, "Fetocide" -> "Feticide", if what hasn't been created already. I say this just to round out the discussion for what should happen in similar cases. (Despite the fact that I am sure this suggestion is already in the MOS somewhere.) --Charles Gaudette 23:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: ??? Foeticide or feticide as a legal term refers ... – flamurai (t) 01:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: flamurai, I think your question — if I can call it that — is vauge, and if it is what I think it is, this belongs on the Talk:Feticide page, not here. It is not helpful to divide (and hide) the feticide dicussion on this talk page. --Charles Gaudette 17:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  What question? I was just pointing out the foeticide is mentioned in the article. – flamurai (t) 23:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fetocide vs. feticide spelling policy (3rd opinion needed) 

message: I tend to find user boxes useful in the sense that one small box can convey more than one will typically be able to convey in a small sentense. But I have seen that most of them come with a 'Category' which the user may not wish to add. e.g. my page belongs to 15 categories whereas I wish to retain only three of them but at the same time want keep all the user boxes there on my page (would have added more boxes but the categories...). Vjdchauhan 12:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really a stylebook issue. Maybe Wikipedia:WikiProject Userboxes is a more appropriate venue. Anyway, you could use subst to copy the user-box code into your page, and then edit the result to remove the category link. --Rob Kennedy 17:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: User Boxes without 'mandatory' categories

message: The content of this section is far from a "miscellaneous note" (that's the supersection it had been in). 
We need to tell readers early and prominently, not late and obscurely, what to do when MoS doesn't tell them what they want to know. 
And in general we need to point them to well known manuals of style early, rather than let them read through large amounts of "here's what we think" before they finally read "here are the recongnized worldwide authorities on style". 
TH 19:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I moved ''When all else fails'' section upward

message: Is there a guideline that requires the first mention of a location in an article (especially in the introduction) to specify the country concerned? Just for clarity?
When I'm browsing articles, I'm very regularly bugged by the fact that most editors writing about a location in their home country omit the country's name. I do know that in 99% percent of the time, the location's name is linked to an article specifying the country. Yet, especially in an article's introduction, I guess it'd be convenient not to have to click away to a second article just to know whether Troy is in the US, the UK, or even in Turkey.
Moreover, lots of American editors seem to think that mentioning a state is enough, but honestly, as a Dutchman, I cannot always see the difference between US, Canadian, Australian, Indian, British etc. area names.
If there already is a policy/guideline on this, please tell me. If there is none, I hereby propose one. -- Bakabaka 11:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd avoid instruction creep here. "Troy", because very ambiguous, almost always deserves clarification (except in the context of ancient history). And I'd always clarify anything that is not worldwide common knowledge ("Rosario, Argentina" or even "Sibiu, in the Transylvanian region of Romania"). But we don't really need always to say "Paris, France" or "Amsterdam, Netherlands", or "Beijing, China". - Jmabel | Talk 23:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is bugging me too, and I can't find a policy that's relevant. What I'd particularly like is a policy which states the level of detail to be used, and how we handle the difference between a country (i.e., technically, a state) and major subdivisions of it (e.g. a US State, or a component nation of the UK). The example that seems most common – and results in frequent mild edit wars – is the question of whether to say British city, England or British city, United Kingdom. Whilst both may be correct, the danger with saying "England" seems to me to be that it contributes to some people then taking "England" to mean "United Kingdom", which is a common mistake. I know this isn't Wikipedia's problem, as such, but if we can avoid ambiguity, we should. The trouble is, English nationalists start to take offence and revert to "England", arguing (quite correctly) that the British city in question is indeed in England... see what I mean? – Kieran T (talk | contribs) 20:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specifying locations 

message: # ”Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.
#* Shouldn't that be “Jabberwocky”?
# Quotation marks affect searching
#* Isn't that a bug (not a style guide rule)? — Omegatron 19:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The first example you give is certainly a poor choice. "Jabberwocky" or “Jabberwocky” should both be fine. We tend mostly toward the former. - Jmabel | Talk 23:45, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: @there is no consensus in Wikipedia on which should be preferred, either is acceptable: I think this is mostly because Wikipedians think the curly ones are a pain to enter. Keep in mind that the English wiki originally had no Unicode support, making “ (“) etc. necessary. I think the curly ones are safe to use now. Question: is it permissable to change typewriter quotes to real quotes? Shinobu 13:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Has nothing to do with curly vs straight quotes.  The title used the same quote mark at the beginning and end of the word. — Omegatron 05:42, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotes 

message: On page creation, creator should search and wikilink that word. New page may enable some red links but what about the ones where the corresponding word was not put put in internal link tag. Can this be made a guideline that can be put on discussion page of new page just after it gets created. Vjdchauhan 06:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't really a style issue. Try Help:Starting a new page. (There's a little bit, but it could stand to be more explicit.) – flamurai (t) 09:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I was not sure where to put this so chose this discussion page. Primarily I want to bring it to notice of Wikipedians does initial review (notability/copyright review etc) of new page and do you think Help:Starting a new page is proper page to notify 'new page watchers' wikipedians. Thanks. Vjdchauhan 10:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: On page creation, creator should search and wikilink that word

message: I'm proposing a policy to either use "title character" or "eponymous" character, instead of "titular" character seen on some pages. The reason being, not all dictionary define titular as a title character, but eponymous is specifically, a "title character". I raised the question at the Reference desk/Language, and people seem to agree that it should be "eponymous" and not "titular". --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Do we really need a policy saying to choose words based on what they mean? I figured that was a given. Where is this a problem? Have you encountered resistance when you changed articles to use the right word? --Rob Kennedy 03:58, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I did, at Naruto, as well as another page which I have currently forgotten. And if you search for titular character, you get 1120 matches, which is grounds for proposing it as a policy, IMO. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title character 

message: ?  Thanks.100110100 06:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Guide to layout has a clear to the point explanation regarding this section. For future reference, it be best to ask such questions at the Reference desk. Thanks.  - Tutmosis 16:08, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the place to ask is the Help Desk. Rmhermen 04:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are There Any Wikipedia Manual Of Style Rules On {{tl|see also}}? 

message: I've noticed that there is inconsistancy in the usage of the words disk and disc.  I was wondering what everyone thinks on this matter.  Here's what OED has to say:
:"The earlier and better spelling is disk, but disc is now the more usual form in British English, except in sense 2g, where disk is commoner as a result of US influence."—Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition, 1989)
"Sense 2g" involves computer-related terms, which is particularly where I've noticed the inconsistancy (hard disk, optical disc).  Do you think this issue should just be treated on a per-article basis as American vs British English is?  Is it even necessary to worry about it, or can we use disc and disk interchangably in the same articles without a second thought?  Or should we perhaps be preferring one variant over the other.  It's a minor issue for sure, but I couldn't find any previous discussion on it. -- mattb @ 2006-11-11T17:58Z
:I would prefer disk, since it seems to be at least acceptable in both AE and BE, and using just one of the two makes searching easier. Anyway "optical disk" should fall in the 2g category, and therefore should commonly be spelt disk, even in BE. Shinobu 02:44, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree. FWIW, the company for which I am currently contracting made the interesting decision in their documentation that a "disc" is a phyisical piece of removable media; anything else is a "disk". Thus, you "place the disc labeled 'Install 1' in the disk drive". Not suggesting that we adopt that, but I've noticed that it decreases ambiguity in some parts of their documentation. - Jmabel | Talk 23:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Using disk in the same sentence with the same meaning but different spelling? I wouldn't suggest to adopt that either. Shinobu 13:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a very subtle difference between disc and disk that has nothing to do with British and American English. For an optical storage medium, it's always disc: for example Compact Disc. For a magnetic storage medium, it's always disk, like in the case of Hard disk. SpNeo 19:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Surely you're joking. Why would we suddenly spell "disc" just because the storage medium is optical? It's the same word. Shinobu 15:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, that's the way I've always spelled it (and seen it spelled). EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disc and disk