Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 1

message: FINALLY! (fitting first word, eh? ^_-)
A place to discuss product names in Wikipedia.
Since it's currently discussed, I will start with DOOM³. That's the way it is printed on the game's box.
Now I won't object for lower letters, even though I would like to use the correct spelling, but "³" just has a different meaning. Even more so for Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.² which is the "official" spelling when written, according to a Raven employee who I asked.
Everyone writes Heavy Metal FAKK2 (notice the missing space between K and 2) "for the sake of our sanity" but shouldn't an Encyclopedia use the game "how it's meant to be played"? SCNR
This is just my 2(euro)¢ and I would be happy to have any decision made, so we can just move on, without having to rename more and more articles every day.
Should "to the power of" and abbreviation dots in product names be used or not? -- Lightkey 18:51, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Bearing in mind that I know very little about these games, I would probably write them as "Doom3" and "Heavy Metal Fakk2". If I knew more, the answer might be different. Maurreen 19:14, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: I don't understand the question. Maurreen 19:14, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Woooo, thanks for the prompt answer.. well, which question do you not understand? I'm looking for a talk page like this for the questions that I've written in that link. -- Lightkey 19:21, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't get the "three questions". I don't play computer games. But maybe have you tried a page for Linux games? Maurreen 19:34, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Errr.. that is a page for Linux games. ;) I have tried to get the questions more clear with examples, maybe it's understandable now? -- Lightkey 19:54, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Misc.

message: The current rules are flawed. 
Why are the names of different sports NOT capitalized? 
If one were to look at the RULES of PROPER NOUNS, one could see that a noun is capitalized when it cannot be broken down into further sub-genres. 
e.g. person—>male—>adult—>Frank
or liquid—>soft drink—> Coke (where this can be broken down further IF you add “Diet etc.”)
SO… let’s take a look at sports…
games—>sports—>basketball (cannot be broken down anymore unless you add “Street or European or World or American”)
Why can’t it be “Basketball”?? After all, "Basketball" IS the NAME of a sport.  WHY is it considered a COMMON NOUN? I understand why “basketball” (in reference to the actual ball used to play the game of “Basketball” is considered a common noun but the sport SHOULD be capitalized.
“I play Baseball.” “Do you have a baseball?”
I state this because languages are ALWAYS capitalized. English, Korean, Spanish etc.
They shouldn't because thats now how regular English works, as of this point. If you want to change it, become a grammarian and lead a revolution.  Whats on wikipedia shouldn't differ from the real world.70.187.205.60 02:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The style you're suggesting, as far as I know, is not used in any publication whatsoever.  And things can always be "broken down" into component parts.  "Frank" in your example probably has two eyes, arms, and so forth, and his eyes have components as well.  Proper nouns are reserved for unique individual entities.  Sports are not individual entities.  Croctotheface 03:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  CAPITALIZATION OF SPORTS  

message: I was wondering what the policy is on bold and italics in trademarks. For example, the Oneworld (airlines) article has the "one" in bold text and the "world" in regular, like this: oneworld. It is written like that throughout the article. Is this appropriate? Should it be used the first time and then not at all? I could not find any website other than oneworld's that followed this convention. Kjkolb 19:36, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
:It should be written as "Oneworld", in regular type. WP style is to follow standard English, regardless of preference of the trademark holder. The possible exception would be in reference to the trademark itself. For instance, "The airline writes its name in the form ...Maurreen 19:49, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bold and italics in name 

message: Does this section cover a dollar sign used instead of an S? It covers punctuation marks used instead of other punctuation marks (such as an equal sign used instead of a hyphen or an asterisk used instead of an apostrophe), but what about a currency mark used instead of a letter? --   03:57, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dollar signs used as S's 

message: Please see my suggestion at Talk:Time (magazine).  An edit war is going on on Time (magazine) and I believe the issue should be resolved here. (An anonymous user is criticizing User:Mb1000 for not obeying the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks) guidelines, when he himself is not obeying the three-revert policy.  Anyway, I believe that this policy should be revised to allow trademarked-based capitalization to be used (in titles and/or article text) when the alternative is incorrect. This would include TIME magazine but not REALTOR (since TIME != Time but REALTOR = Realtor). Anyway, thanks in advance for your thoughts.
--Renesis13 01:11, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a similar debate going on about MGM MIRAGE.  The trademark for this corporation is the all capitals version.  The guidlines cause the trademark to be diluted as "MGM Mirage".  There once was a corporation named MGM Mirage, Inc. that was absorbed into the current corporation MGM MIRAGE.  Why are we against following the trademarks? -- Jagged 22:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "MGM Mirage" and "MGM MIRAGE" are, linguistically, the same thing, just with different capitalization. The fact that there were two different entities that had the same name but were distinguished only by capitalization does not change the fact that the names were the same. There are many cases of two things having the same name, and the key is to disambiguate using a semantically salient element, such as the date of formation, or who owned it, rather than something completely non-salient like capitalization. Nohat 22:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  My original point was that TIME and Time are NOT the same thing linguistically.  This trademark guideline causes such sentences as "Time says...", when "TIME says..." would be much clearer.  Not to mention that Time (magazine) is not a disambiguation of "time" but rather it's very own word - as in TIME magazine. -- Renesis13 19:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  But they are the same thing. Capitalization does not change the linguistic identity of a name. Your example is a red herring, because the correct handling would be "Time says", which is not ambiguous, but in general it's better to attribute statements to people rather than organizations. Nohat 19:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Regardless of whether my example was grammatically correct or not, I said "such as"— there are many other examples where this is a problem.  My point is that considering the frequency with which people refer to the magazine as just "Time" instead of "Time magazine", it would help to have the capitalization to distinguish it. -- Renesis13 19:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  But there are plenty of magazines with titles that are ordinary words, such as Fortune, Money, Gourmet, People, Details, Playboy, etc., and we get along just fine without placing their titles in all caps. I don't see that there is any special need for Time to be capitalized differently. Nohat 19:42, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  TIME magazine 

message: Lowercased trademarks with internal capitals should always be capitalized.
: I bought my IPod on EBay
* Disagree. Nohat 05:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: EBay is where I bought my iPod.
* Agree. Nohat 05:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

text: eBay is where I bought my iPod.
* Disagree. Nohat 05:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I bought my iPod on eBay.
* Agree. David Kernow 11:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lowercased trademarks with internal capitals, like iPod, eBay 

message: Lowercased trademarks with no internal capitals should always be capitalized.
: Thirtysomething is a television show that may have been sponsored by Adidas, but not by Craigslist, because it was over before Craigslist existed.
* Agree. Nohat 05:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thirtysomething is a television show that may have been sponsored by adidas, but not by craigslist, because it was over before craigslist existed.
* Agree, but prefer previous. Nohat 05:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

text: thirtysomething is a television show that may have been sponsored by adidas, but not by craigslist, because it was over before craigslist existed.
* Disagree. Nohat 05:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lowercased trademarks with no internal capitals, like thirtysomething, adidas, craigslist 

message: A consensus seems to be emerging here. I therefore propose we add the following guidelines to this MoS:
* Lowercased trademarks with no internal capitals should always be capitalized:
: Thirtysomething is a television show that may have been sponsored by Adidas, but not by Craigslist, because it was over before Craigslist existed.
* Lowercased trademarks with internal capitals do not need to be capitalized if the second letter is capitalized:
: eBay is where I bought my iPod.
* But, if possible, rephrase to avoid beginning sentences with such trademarks:
: I bought my iPod on eBay.
I think we should keep the straw poll open in case opinions change, but this seems to be the consensus so far. Does this seem reasonable?  Nohat 20:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no one commented in 2 days, I have implemented these new guidelines. Cheers to everyone for registering their opinion. Nohat 08:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: These guidelines are more wide-reaching than Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies). More than just company names are trademarks, and this guideline affects not just article titles but the texts of articles as well. At the moment, the company naming conventions do not address any of the issues addressed here, so they don't conflict. Nohat 19:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed new style guideline for unusually-capitalized trademarks

message: How does the rule about trademarks that begin with a capital letter fit with the rule that says "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment"? Why do we allow "DBASE" but not "LEGO"? Evil saltine 21:59, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflicting rules 

message: For example, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.  Is this page's consistent use of a bright red "Na" in the work's title acceptable, or should the title use plain text in accordance with standard practice?
My reading of this guideline suggests that the colour issue should be mentioned once and then ignored (if nothing else, all the bright red is pretty hard on the eyes), but I'd rather not make a controversial edit like that without first checking that I'm not misreading the MoS.  :)  — Haeleth Talk 21:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colours in names 

message: I have a problem with this bit:
:"Do not use trademarks where a generic term is more appropriate:"
The example given is to use oxycodone instead of OxyContin regarding Rush Limbaugh.  What my problem with this comes to is the word "appropriate".  If Limbaugh had, in fact, been using OxyContin (as opposed to percocet, percodan, etc.) then it should say OxyContin.  I like specifics and I see this as a rewriting of history if what is actually happened is genericized to something less accurate.  Why should we say Limbaugh abused oxycodone when it fact the pills he swallowed said OxyContin.  If he managed to home brew oxycodone for himself and abused that then, absolutely, say oxycodone.
If the exact pill he took is unknown but we know it was "some form of oxycodone" then say just that.  As a WP editor, it would not be appropriate to arbitrarily choose OxyContin in this case.
So: my proposal for "appropriate" is to use the generic or the trademark depending on what is verifiable.  If Limbaugh admits that he took OxyContin they say he took OxyContin.  If Limbaugh admits he took oxycodone then say he took oxycodone.  If Limbaugh admits he took oxycodone but OxyContin was found on a search warrant then say "Limbaugh says oxycodone" and "the police say they found OxyContin."
In short: use what is verifiable.  Period.  And remove reference to "appropriate".  (And to avoid digression, argue my points about appropriateness and not the assertions or facts about Limbaugh.  Consider everything I said about Limbaugh and drugs as purely hypothetical to demonstrate my point.) Cburnett 04:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In turn with my previous post I think the whole bit should be removed.  I guess I realized it was rather pointless to say "use what's verifiable" when that's already spelled out in WP:V and trademarks aren't special enough to warrant being repetitive. Cburnett 22:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use generic term