Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 57

message: I cannot find a consensus for how to treat wikilined possessives. Should the "'s" be located within the link or outside of it? My preference is the former, with the "'s" included in the link:
:during Bill Clinton's presidential campaign...
rather than:
:during Bill Clinton's presidential campaign...
Stylstically, I think keeping the link intact throughout the word makes more sense than linking only part of a word. Perhaps there is already a consesus on this, but I haven't found anything... Anyone?
Porlob 17:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely no existing consensus, and I doubt' we'll get one. - Jmabel | Talk 17:18, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I slightly prefer the 2nd, for cleaner wikicode, and less potential of confusion. --Quiddity 19:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur.  --Jaberwockynmt 21:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikilinked possessives

message: By hitting "random page", I ran across 1,3-Butadiene (data page) today.  It's a bit odd in that it has no text, no stub, or anything.  My first thought was to put  on it.  But apparently it's linked from the infobox of 1,3-Butadiene, and is meant to be an "expanded infobox" for that page.
:Category:Chemical data pages has many other pages similar to that, though at least they give a clue as to their context (eg. Barium hydroxide (data page)).  Others are more or less a giant infobox (Bentiromide (data page)), though since they're not remotely like a normal encyclopedia page, they sometimes pick up robotic templates like .  Anyway, is this sort of page to be encouraged, or discouraged?  If discouraged, are there any suggestions on how to procede?
I know that some templates sometimes use page-specific "subpages" in template space (eg. Template:Latest stable release/AOL Instant Messenger is pulled in by Template:Infobox Software2), would that be more appropriate for this?
(I wasn't sure where to ask this question, sorry if this isn't the right place) --Interiot 01:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why would such a supplementary data page be right aligned? I mean, if you've got the whole page anyway, why not make it a normal table, at full width? Shinobu 23:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subpages? 

message: ; The problem
* Most edits to the navigational templates, categories, and language links show up under one of the standard appendices in the page history (usually “External links” or “References”) because the editor almost invariably uses the section edit link (who wants to deal with more wikitext in the edit box than they have to?) and fails to override the default in the edit summary.
* While a navigational template is supposed to be visually separable from the preceding text, this often isn't the case in practice.
* Some newbie editors (such as myself, long ago) want to put the navigational templates under “See also”, which would seem to be the natural location for a collection of wikilinks to related articles.
; Solution 1
* There should be a separate standard appendix, named “Navigation”, for navigational templates.
* Examples of this solution can be seen at United States presidential election, 1789 or United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
; Solution 2
* The template  could be used as a section header instead of “Navigation”.  The main difference between this option and Solution 1 is that, within the article, the section header appears to be blank; instead there's just some vertical space, the horizontal rule, and the edit box.  (This, of course, applies to the default Monobook skin.  While the visual effect is slightly different depending on the skin, it works in all of the skins.)  The section still appears in the table of contents, and the section is listed by default as “” in the edit history.
* Examples of this solution can be seen at First Continental Congress and United States court of appeals.
OK, so am I totally crackers or what?
— DLJessup (talk) 15:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Navigation as a standard appendix 

message: Aren't the first letter of every word in a title supposed to be capitalized?  So why aren't the first letters of all the words in Wikipedia articles capitalized?  That would mean the section headings too.  And then there's the template that says, i.e.: iPod, the first letter of the article is specifically supposed to be uncapitalized.  It teaches the reader how to write iPod, but then none of the articles have a lineatthetop to say [something like] how you're supposed to capitalize the word, when you should, when you shouldn't, i.e.: if it is the first word of a sentence of in a title, or if it compounded into a name, and never in all other circumstances.  What's the deal?100110100 07:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but Wikipedia:Naming conventions is pretty clear. Martin 08:55, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Or WP:CAPS. If it really bothers you you can always write a user script to change the way titles are displayed for you. Shinobu 09:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Title capitalization is entirely a matter of style; some newspapers, for example, Capitalize All Words In a Headline Except Very Small Ones, while some newspapers Only capitalize the first word. As for the iPod issue, that's why we have the line The correct title of this article is iPod. The initial letter is capitalized due to technical restrictions. Whether to capitalize when iPod or eBay starts a sentence is, again, a matter of personal style; I don't know if it's addressed in wikipedia's style. - DavidWBrooks 10:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  You should write the link as you would outside Wikipedia; i.e. iPod and eBay.  The only reason that the articles themselves start with a capital letter is a technical restriction, so that when writing, you can type blah with a lowercase letter and get it to link to blah, the article with a capital letter.  Ral315 (talk) 21:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Titles Of All Articles