Add a link to new discussions at top of list and indicate what kind of discussion it is (move request, RfC, open discussion, deletion discussion, etc.). Follow the links to participate, if interested. Move to Concluded when decided, and summarize conclusion. Please keep this section at the top of the page.
Help talk:Table#Indenting tables – Help page is conflicting with MOS:DLIST and MOS:ACCESS on a technical point. No objection to fixing it, and a suggestion to just do it WP:BOLDly, but the work actually has to be done. (Aug. 2023 –Jan. 2024)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks#Minor consolidation merge – To merge a line-item (about stylization of stage/pen names) out of MOS:INITIALS (where the one of the examples is only semi-pertinent anyway) and into MOS:TM, leaving behind a cross-reference to MOS:TM from MOS:NAMES. Because of some things that apply to personal not corporate names, this ended up not being practical; intead the MOS:BIO material was cleaned up and cross-references between the two MOS sections was improved; description at: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Minor overhauling. No objections or other issues have come up. (Nov.–Dec. 2023)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#MOS style for odds – About changing MOS:RATIOS to specify a format (new or otherwise) for betting-odds ratios. Result: No formal closure, but apparent general agreement that the : style for ratios in general applies to odds ratio in particular like the rest, and MOS:RATIOS updated to say this. (Oct.–Dec. 2023)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 187#Proposed change MOS:TERRORIST – On how WP uses terms like "terrorist/terrorism" and "freedom fighter", specifically to add a requirement "these words should only be used in quotations or referencing third-party use of the term". Result: "nearly unanimously opposed". (Oct. 2023)
Talk:2023 Hawaii wildfires/Archive 2#Use of Hawaiian symbols in names – Involves MOS:HAWAII and could have implications for what the guideline says due to wildfire news bringing many more editorial eyes to that page than to WT:MOSHAWAII. Result: Archived without closure or any clear consensus; the general gist seems to be that the state of Hawaii is named Hawaii, the island is named Hawaiʻi, and diacritics (ʻokina and kahakō) should not be suppressed in the more localized names (and the US Geological Survey, which sets official placenames, along with the Hawaiʻi Board on Geographic Names, which basically tells USGS what to do in Hawaii/Hawaiʻi, both agree). (Aug.–Sep. 2023)
Talk:Bayes' theorem#Requested move 23 August 2023 – MOS:POSS stuff. Result: Not moved. Lots of invalid arguments, and confused attempt to pit WP:COMMONAME against MoS (COMMONNAME is not a style policy, never has been one, and never will be; every proposal to incorporate a style matter into a policy has failed). (Aug. 2023)
Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2023 August 5#Hyphen vs. En dash usage (Wikidata)? and d:Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2023/08#Hyphen vs. En dash to separate years of birth/death? – Relating to concordance between wikidata descriptions and enwiki "short description". Result: Good summary: "as long as you choose a comprehensible form, your edits are fine. However, you should not change existing descriptions for stylistic reasons, and also not to unify desriptions for a given set of items"; also observations that various languages, e.g. Spanish, do not use an en dash for this purpose. So, Wikidata will not be changing away from hyphen as default, and any desire to have WD material, like automatically provided short descriptions, will have to do that change on our end. (Aug. 2023)
Talk:SAG-AFTRA#Requested move 20 July 2023 – move to SAG–AFTRA like AFL–CIO, or is there a reason to hyphenate as SAG-AFTRA? Result: Not moved. The closer actually misunderstood the guideline wording badly, and this has created a WP:CONSISTENT policy failure with titles of other such entities including AFL–CIO, and the Famous Players-Lasky decision covered just below. This probably needs to be re-done. (July 2023)
Talk:Famous Players-Lasky#Requested move 24 June 2023 – proposal to use dash instead of hyphen. Result: Use the dash per MOS:DASH; a followup RM to add "Corporation" to the title rejected that idea despite WP:NCCORP supporting it, one of several recent RM incidents suggesting that at least some portions of the page do not enjoy consensus. (June–July 2023)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 182#RFC: MOS:GENDERID and the deadnames of deceased trans and nonbinary persons – Primarily about "When should Wikipedia articles include the former name of a deceased trans or nonbinary person who was not notable prior to transitioning?" Result: "there is a consensus against using the former names of transgender or non-binary people, living or dead, except when of encyclopedic interest or when necessary to avoid confusion. Also, there is clear consensus that a former name is not automatically of encyclopedic interest. Where, exactly, the lines of encyclopedic interest and avoiding confusion are is not simple or clear and will likely need discussion on individual articles, although there is definitely space for more guidance in the MOS". This has let to a lot of follow-on discussion and dispute. (May–June 2023)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#2022_archive#Neopronouns RfC (moved) – several options were under discussion, including singular they, using neo-pronouns like xie, always referring to subject by surname, etc. Result: strong consensus to use singular they for subjects who use neopronouns. (Oct.–Nov. 2022)
Talk:Winston-Salem, North Carolina#RfC about Info Box – involves MOS:INFOBOX and MOS:ICONS and should be a broader discussion than just about this single article. Summary: about 50% of our US city articles include highway signs in the infobox, which is very inconsistent. Result: Near-unanimous agreement to remove them, though this does not appear to have resulted in changes at other articles and probably should. (June–Sep. 2022)
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#RfC on self-linking within article prose – Result: "There is a consensus that self-links within prose should be allowed and that linking should be based on editorial discretion." This is about linking to one section of an article from another section of the same article. (Nov. 2021 – Jan. 2022)
Talk:Rolling block#Case and hyphen – "rolling block action" vs. "rolling-block action", and "Remington Rolling Block breech" vs. "Remington rolling-block breech". Result: inconclusive discussion (May–Dec. 2021).
Talk:Love On Top#Requested move 25 April 2021 – Revisiting whether to capitalize the first word of a compound preposition even when that word is a short preposition; MOS:5LETTER might need a revision. Result: No consensus, not moved.
Talk:Woman on Top#Requested move 6 April 2021 – Multiple proposals like "Receiving partner on top", "On top (sex)", etc., motivated by gender and language-reform advocacy views. Result: essentially a WP:SNOW: "not moved, and with a reception likely to strongly discourage near-future requests. ... Consensus in this discussion is strongly in the direction that any such move would be OR/SYNTH violating article title policies."
Talk:Bolognese School#Requested move 26 July 2024 (15 articles) – Lowercase school for "schools" of artistic styles of painting that are not the names of actual institutions? Result: Lowercase except two that were found frequently uppercased in sources
Talk:War of 1812/Archive_29#Capitalisation of "house" and "senate" – as stand-alone terms in prose. Result: Not a formally closed discussion. In summary, shortened forms of names for institutions are not capitalized unless they are "a shorter but still specific form", not just a single generic word. The material at MOS:INSTITUTIONS probably could be clarified on the question, as this isn't the first time the matter has come up.
Talk:Hurricane Alley#Requested move 11 July 2024 – Call this the "Main Development Region" or "Main development region"? Result: "Main Development Region" without prejudice against considering "Main development region"; new RM opened.
Talk:Popverse#Redirect templates – Should the "avoided double redirect" tag to applied on a correctly capitalized redirect when there's a similar but miscapitalized redirect? Or should only the miscapitalized one be so tagged? Result – Removed tag from correctly capitalized Popverse as inappropriate, and left it on PopVerse which is miscapitalized.
Talk:IMP.#Requested move 9 June 2024 – All-caps for this shortened form of "Impactors"? Result: All-caps retained since sources seem to do that.
Talk:Pied-Noir#Lowercase – Lowercase "Pied-Noir" (or use "Pied-noir" or "Pieds-Noirs" or "Pieds-noirs" or "pieds-noirs")? Result: Lowercase "noirs", leaning lowercase for "pieds" as well.
Talk:Toy boy#Requested move 17 December 2023 – Should lowercase indicate a boy that is a toy rather than the title of some published works? Result: Yes; disambiguation moved to uppercase.
WT:WikiProject Freemasonry#Capitalization – Where do we draw the line of capitalization of offices and such in Freemasonry? Result: Some say just follow MOS:OFFICE, others want to follow Freemasonry's conventions. No clear consensus.
Talk:NTV Plus#Requested move 15 September 2023 – Is all-caps an appropriate distinction between Russian and Nepali TV channels? Result: No; use ordinary title case for proper name, not all-caps.
Talk:Sangaku#Capitalization: is the article title just an ordinary Japanese word borrowed into English, or a proper noun? (note - while the discussion was not formally closed, all instances are now in lowercase
Talk:Welsh Revolt#Requested move 30 July 2023 – Initially Welsh Revolt → Glyndŵr Rebellion but subsequently a question of capitalising the second word in any choice. Result: Lowercase "rebellion".
Talk:In Search of...#Requested move 10 October 2022 – Should the "of..." become "Of..." because it is the last word of the title? (a two-article RM) Result: Retain lowercase since truncation of a longer title is implied.
Talk:Lost Decades#Requested move 7 July 2022 – Lowercase "Decades", among other issues? Result: Not moved. The closer commented about primary topic status but did not comment about capitalization.
User talk:Snickers2686#MOS:JOBTITLES – "until [JOBTITLES is] applied consistently, which it isn't in this set of articles, then to me, it doesn't apply at all". – judges generally lowercased
Talk:National Historic Landmark#Requested move 18 January 2022 – Multimove to lowercase for "National Historic [Capitalized singular]", "National [Capitalized plural]", and "List of Historic [Capitalized plural]"? Result: Withdrawn after near-unanimous opposition to the central principle based on the linguistic concept of a proper name, noting consistent capitalization in sources.
Talk:g-force#Requested move 7 January 2022 – "g-force" or "G-force"? Result: RM procedurally closed (made no difference) and usage in article prose already changed to "g-force".
2021
RMs on capitalization of "Attorneys" and "Ambassadors" (or rephrasing to avoid the plural formal title): – all downcased
WT:AT#RFC on dash-separated titles for sports events 2 January 2022 – Capping of "Men's Singles" and "women's doubles"? Result: No consensus to ban dashes, no consensus on capitalization; consensus that capitalization should be worked out at WikiProject Tennis.
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is consensus that ‘serve’, ‘served as’, etc. is acceptable in many contexts without concern for neutrality, and while in other contexts it may be bad writing or poor phrasing, these questions are superseded by the overwhelming consensus that the MOS should not have a rule on this language. — HTGS (talk)03:35, 17 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
In many articles about living persons, and particularly about persons in positions of authority, e.g. member of parliament, corporation CEO, city councilor, etc, the lead paragraph often uses the verb "to serve" in denoting the person's work." E.g. "Ms Smith serves/has been serving/has served as member of the XYZ Board of Directors." In this related discussion, the issue was raised about the potential for meaningless excess in that term's use. (Here's a useful essay on that.) This, of course, applies to biographies about persons no longer living.
Comments are invited on the following options:
A Use any simple form of "to be," e.g. "Smith is Acme Ltd auditor."
B Continue to use "serve" in biographies, e.g. "Smith serves as Acme Ltd auditor."
I would go with B, which does continue to reflect both formal proper, and common, usage, particularly in fields like politics and public office. But both forms are of course perfectly correct and acceptable. MapReader (talk) 19:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither. This is not something that needs a broad rule. Either form is acceptable, as are other options. My most common experience is that people use "serve" to capitalize a title while complying with MOS:JOBTITLE, going for "served as President of Aybeeceedia" instead of "was the president of Aybeeceedia", which seems like a silly workaround but whatever. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
A is/was reflects everyday speech. To my ears 'served as' always sounds either pompous or somewhat euphemismistic, he "served as President of Aybeeceedia", but wasn't really 'up to scratch'!Pincrete (talk) 07:00, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither per FFF, the euphemism angle is understandable in some cases but this also seems within the bounds of quite common language variation. CMD (talk) 07:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither – is should be fine most of the time, but synonyms are not forbidden, and the occasional usage of serve, even if maybe a bit pompous and not strictly needed, does no harm. Gawaon (talk) 07:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
A is preferable in almost all cases; "serve" is appropriate for military personnel and the like (and also for waiters and tennis players!), but is empty WP:PEACOCKery in other cases. Better to stick to plain English (but hoping this is not something we're going to embody or enforce in yet another MOS rule). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither - both are acceptable. Also, it isn’t a dualistic choice… consider that there are other verbs besides “served” and “was” that might be appropriate. Don’t be formulaic when writing. Blueboar (talk) 12:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
A since any variant of "serve" denotes a positive attribute, which goes against WP:NPOV. It's not a neutral verb no matter how many clothes we try to dress it with. The opening paragraph of WP:WTW is explicit: "Certain expressions should be used with caution because they may introduce bias. Strive to eliminate expressions that are flattering, vague, or endorsing of a particular viewpoint." -The Gnome (talk) 14:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's not positive or negative. Adolf Hitler served as Führer of the Third Reich! Reinhard Heydrich served in the SS. It's completely neutral. I'm mystified as to why anyone should think it was not NPOV. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither because we don't need any more WP:CREEPY rules. He served as president, he was the president, he held the position of president, he worked as president, he became president, he was elected/appointed as president, he took office as president... Any of these will do under most situations. The idea of Public service being a form of service (as in servants, as in the opposite of powerful people seeking their own aggrandizement) is not a form of peacocking, nor is it a euphemism. It may be aspirational (the rest of us hope that the politician will serve the country instead of his own interests), but there's nothing inherently or egregiously non-neutral about it, especially when applied to people who didn't exploit their roles to harm others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:47, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
No rule needed. Here, there is more than one way to say something, and variety can still make for good, and interesting writing (also, 'serve' is not hard to understand in the example given, rather the NPOV or related arguments are much too strained, when not baffling). As an aside, we should probably not usually write, 'someone is job', rather than, 'someone is broad occupation', followed by where they have served in that occupation. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
No rule, please. Either one could be at least annoying to too many editors and possibly disruptive if applied to existing text. There are figures in history of whom I wouldn't use "serve" – Caligula served as emperor from AD 37? – but we wouldn't need a MOS rule for that. NebY (talk) 18:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither, as both are appropriate for many articles and editors can use their heads—even if this freedom results in the occasional awkward lead sentence. As my troublesome nitpick, I actually do think serve has a vaguely positive connotation compared to the bare copula—but I don't think it matters enough, as every word has a web of connotations and none is truly neutral in every situation. Doesn't register as a WP:W2W in any case. Remsense诉18:21, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither --- WP:LOCATIONLOCATIONLOCATION, which The Gnome linked in his OP, is my essay, and I'm flattered. However, we don't need a rule on this. My objection to served as is that it's usually surplusage; but it has its uses now and then, and I don't see any kind of flattery or peacock-iness in it. But I will say that, applied to Hilter, it does take some of the edge off to say he "served". That's for sure the wrong word to use for him. EEng19:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
This needs to be said: The term "to serve" is being pronounced neutral in this discussion by sundry contributors. Is it really? Because if an ostensibly neutral term cannot be used at the extremes, it cannot be used anywhere. The Hitler example trumps all arguments to the contrary. It cannot be made more clear. -The Gnome (talk) 19:59, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
That sounds a bit extreme. Remsense said it well: no word is truly neutral in every situation. So if that's the thing to aim for, we may as well shut down this website and all go home. Gawaon (talk) 20:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think us editors are particularly vulnerable to logocentric fallacies—i.e. we're liable to treat the lexical word as the predominant or even only issuer of meaning, while affording phrases, sentences, and other composites no credence to really influence what connotations individual words must themselves possess. Remsense诉20:48, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Neither I have no problem with Richard Nixon saying that he served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. That's not euphemistic and is normal English, even though most presidential historians rank him poorly. Cullen328 (talk) 20:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
That’s because some of us are imputing some sense of merit or sacrifice into the term “serve”, which isn’t really there. Serve can mean simply fulfilling a purpose, or function, and there is plenty of common usage where no merit is implicit, such as “serving as a bad example”. MapReader (talk) 04:28, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
So, me saying to someone Thank you for your service, for example to a veteran soldier, denotes nothing positive whatsoever; it is an abject expression of thanks for wearing a uniform, and nothing more. And, logically, I could express the same thankful sentiment to a traitor soldier. -The Gnome (talk) 14:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Really you are making my point for me. Your quoted phrase does, but not because it includes the word “service”. It is positive because of the “thank you”. Had you said “I confirm your service” or “I note your service”, your comment wouldn’t have been received as positive despite the word ‘service’. Whereas, had you said “Thank you for your time in the army” or “Thank you for your work”, that would be received as a positive comment without any need to refer to serving. MapReader (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Either, see wikt:serve#Verb, particularly entries 1.2, 1.4, 8, 12. There are contexts where the word "serve" is non-neutral, such as smiling politely whilst putting meals in front of customers in restaurants despite a torrent of verbal abuse, but the original post gives "Ms Smith serves/has been serving/has served as member of the XYZ Board of Directors." as an example, and that is different from plate-juggling. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
A or some other neutral alternative that suits the context. "Serves/served/serving" is a WP:NPOV failure, in being promotional and (positively) judgmental language. An argument could possibly be made to retain those terms for military and maybe even governmental functions, but even those uses have their long-term opponents. It's entirely inappropriate for corporate and other misc. organizational (school, team/squad, nonprofit/NGO, etc.) roles. PS: The fact that we have a bunch of articles doing this just means we have a bunch of articles to clean up. Cf. WP:FAITACCOMPLI and WP:NOWORK. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 02:18, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Comment Sorry to say, but this is yet another RfC out of the blue, with no discussion on how to frame it. There certainly should have been an option C -- a new rule saying either A or B is OK, and D -- meaning nothing new added to MOS at all. This RfC is already a complete mess out of which nothing useful can possibly come. EEng20:20, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
A Is there a specific case where anyone feels that "served as" is better, not just as good? Is it the case that "served as" has WP:NPOV problems in some people's idiolects, but not others? If so, does that mean that it has WP:NPOV problems? McYeee (talk) 01:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
That's what consensus is for in the abstract, and the examples proffered to illustrate why served should be generally proscribed have not really attracted consensus. Remsense ‥ 诉01:18, 15 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
I might just be out of my depth here, and I might not have been clear, but I just don't really understand any argument in favor of the usage of "served". I think my preconceived definition of the word is just less neutral than yours. I'll bow out for now. McYeee (talk) 01:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Aye, it's worth making explicit—no one is really saying it's superior in any or as good in all situations, but the MOS is meant to be as frugal as possible. We try to allow editors flexibility in things like word choice as much as possible, and we don't want to tell them what not to do unless it's almost always wrong (roughly, if it's more work to fix than it's good for to allow). See WP:CREEP. Remsense ‥ 诉01:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
No rule needed. The claim that "served" is pov in general has no basis. Argue specific cases on the respective talk page, but don't impose a general rule where none is needed. Zerotalk07:54, 15 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I just noticed this edit by User:Nikkimaria on 8 October 2023, which linked to a 2018 RFC I had never heard of.
Then I traced the talk page archive for this article and saw why: because User:SMcCandlish initiated a RFC on the village pump on 6 July 2018 and then linked to it on this talk page from a subheader under an earlier heading initiated by User:Netoholic. As User:Netoholic correctly pointed out at the time, this was highly improper. User:Netoholic had merely proposed planning for a RfC, not initiating one immediately.
Even worse, the subheading was worded in a cryptic fashion, "RfC opened at WP:VPPOL". Because this talk page gets so much traffic, it would have been very difficult for WP editors who do not read through every post to this talk page on a daily basis to immediately recognize the importance of what that subheading meant.
It would have been much more fair to all interested editors to give notice of the 2018 RfC under a new heading that clearly and expressly advised that User:SMcCandlish was trying to alter the community consensus on such a hot-button issue, such as "Request for Comment opened on U.S./US debate at village pump". But from the circumstances under which it was initiated, I suspect that developing a true community consensus was not the purpose of the 2018 RfC.
I have reviewed the archived discussion from July 2018. I fully concur with User:Pyxis Solitary's accurate analysis of the situation in response to User:SMcCandlish: "You are trying to push your position down everyone's throat".
As I have argued elsewhere, the Chicago Manual of Style's adoption of the irritating British English tendency to drop periods in abbreviations makes zero sense as a matter of style or policy (which is why other American style guides continue to resist it). I have long suspected that the sloppy tendency of British writers to drop periods arose from the UK's egregious mismanagement of primary and secondary education, perhaps because it wasted too much money on idiotic things like nationalizing healthcare and railways. So there weren't enough resources to go around to adequately train and hire enough teachers to teach British children how to punctuate properly.
California is full of British expats fleeing their nation's decaying educational system in search of greener pastures. American parents are happy to pay a premium to put their kids through college prep schools where they can read Chaucer with a Cambridge alum (as I did as an adolescent).
The RfC discussion is full of dubious statements such as, "half the people I argue with have the style guide". No, they don't. Most people own, learn, and use the style guides appropriate to their occupational fields.
There are over 1.33 million lawyers in the United States. They are drilled in law school on the Bluebook or the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation, which both adhere to the traditional American preference for U.S. over US. As far as I am aware, only three states omit periods in abbreviations in their state court citation styles: Michigan, New York, and Oregon. The rest of the states, the territories, and the federal courts consider those three states to have gone insane on that issue.
The vast majority of American lawyers continue to use U.S. in their personal and professional writing and expect others who work for or with them to do the same. In turn, U.S. continues to be used extensively in American English, because of how lawyers tend to dominate the management ranks of government agencies and also some corporations.
None of these points were raised in the 2018 RfC. I would have definitely raised them immediately, if I had known of the RfC at the time.
In the next two months, I plan to visit a public library to consult a variety of style guides to assess the current style situation in other fields, then initiate an RFC to switch MOS:US back to the pre-2017 version. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:14, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
To compare major English-language legal style guides: Bluebook uses full stops for every abbrev. term and acronym, including looong ones, as a matter of style. By contrast, the UK's OSCOLA uses no stops for any abbrev or acronyms (and uses commas instead of stops to separate elements of citations). Open-access legal style guides in the US (which see more acceptance now) will either copy an old version of BlueBook (The Indigo Book) or emulate their university publisher style (Maroonbook). For the rest of the Anglosphere (except Canada iirc), it either looks very much like OSCOLA (e.g. AGLC) or a hybrid with some mix of stops.
Fwiw, I learned "U.S." in my school newspaper's MOS because we voted every 2 years on a what newspaper's MOS to use. (A now-ancient version of AP, which has the similar inconsistencies of "U.S. and UK"; the sole reason is "US" looks like the uppercase word "us".) Bluebook and OSCOLA by contrast aim largely for consistency with stops: yes vs no. But note that nobody outside of the respective legal communities uses either style, even though they have extensive style guides for general citations and prose. By contrast, AP, NYT, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, APA, etc all see wide general adoption in the US -- whether by inertia or no, general audience publishers continue to use it or adopt house variants based closely around it. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:41, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
My tldr is that for the millions of lawyers in the U.S. who put stops on everything, there's an equal (or greater?) millions of lawyers in the Commonwealth who put stops on nothing. I sympathize with feeling blindsided by the RfC, but if having ignored the BlueBook is your primary argument, then I can't see how it's not neutralized. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:46, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I was tempted to quit reading this rambling wall of text at the point where you tied punctuation to health-care policy and railways; but I soldiered on! Then when you said that some US (or U.S.) states judge other states' sanity based on period non-usage, I again was tempted to quit. But I read on to the end. Final analysis: I should have never started, since there's little more here than your personal musings. EEng18:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Why we should focus so much on lawyers? "Law" appears not at all nor "legal" more than three or four times in the RFC, so I know it isn't a reprise of a major subject from that debate. English legal writings today remain full of fossilized languages that goes back pratically to the French. UK barristers even still wear wigs in court. Not the best role models for us in matters of style, in my opinion. Largoplazo (talk) 23:02, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Some soldiers, yesterday, expressing their opinion about the suggestion that they update their uniforms Barristers wigs are really a kind of hat. You wouldn't expect a soldier, police officer or McDonalds crew to work bareheaded. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:19, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, but if for some reason anyone proposed that any of those people start wearing wigs, the withering response would be, "Huh? Come join us in the 21st century, please." Which is kind of the point here. EEng23:52, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Those all serve practical purposes. A McDonald's crew member's hat keeps hair out of other people's food. A soldier's helmet protects from head trauma. Even a policeman's cap provides a visor to shade the eyes. And I do often see police officers without any headgear. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:18, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
But many of these people's uniforms are updated every so often. No soldiers or police officers are dressed like their 1900 counterparts. Not sure how often McDonalds updates its outfits but in that case the headwear is designed to keep their hair out of the food. I'm not seeing what purpose a hat on a barrister serves other than to make them a target for mockery. (Which I suppose some might think they deserve.) Largoplazo (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Have you been hiding under a rock? For over five years I have seen article after article making sure we use US over USA or U.S. and this is just now being contested? Sports articles have been complying on a slow but steady basis. Not sure why we would want to change back even though the original RfC was shady. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:37, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Indeed. Skipping over the OP’s obvious expertise in winning friends and influencing people, McCandlish et al are right that the tide of change is slowly moving towards not punctuating acronyms. You don’t see such horrors as ‘U.N.E.S.C.O.’ very often nowadays. CNN is an example of a widely-read media source - both within the US and beyond - that now doesn’t use punctuation even for shorter acronyms like ‘US’. But we should note that the current consensus doesn’t outlaw or deprecate ‘U.S.’, but simply requires consistent non-punctuation when there are always-unpunctuated acronyms, like UK or EU, in the same article. Which seems very sensible to me. MapReader (talk) 23:22, 3 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Circa 1900 "educated" meant knowing the classics (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer, etc) and fluent in Latin. Knowledge of engineering, science, etc counted for nothing. So most engineering projects were headed by somebody who knew no engineering but could quote Chaucer. Stepho talk05:52, 4 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Citation needed! IIRC, Victorian engineering - manufacturing, power generation, chemical, construction; railways, ships, armaments, consumer goods - was still being carried out by people who knew more than a bit about engineering, but Chaucer was rarely studied in UK universities circa 1900, when e.g. Oxford had only recently (and against much resistance) established a faculty of English literature. NebY (talk) 08:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Something about Britishdepravity and the price of private education and healthcare in the US and adolescence? I'm too worried about a lawyer making threats like In the next two months, I plan to visit a public library. NebY (talk) 09:26, 4 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I just noticed this edit by User:Nikkimaria on 8 October 2023, which linked to a 2018 RFC I had never heard of. ...So, if you're trying to sell us on why this is an emergent crisis requiring swift and decisive action, you're really whiffing it. Explain again how this 11-month-old action, based on a 6-year-old decision by the WP:CABAL, was the product of a deliberate conspiracy to sneak in rushed changes without having to obtain your personal seal of approval? FeRDNYC (talk) 11:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure why about 80% of the OP is devoted to personally bashing me. Some people seem to have too much time on their hands and a bad habit of personalizing style disputes. Instead of blathering on and on about "intent" to open an RfC, just open an RfC. Sheesh.<To get to the meat of the matter, WP style (per MOS:ABBR) is to not use dots in initialisms or acronyms.
We've been tolerating a sometimes-exception of "U.S." because of rather widespread use of it, but the only reason it has that use is that it looks like the word "us" in an ALL-CAPS HEADLINE. Wikipedia never uses those, so there is no real rationale for making a MOS:ABBR exception to avoid "US", which is increasingly common in external source material as well, since fewer and fewer publishers use all-caps headlines and headings. There's sometime an strange assumption that "U.S." is somehow "required" for references to the US government, but this clearly isn't reality; e.g. the US Air Force's official abbreviation is "USAF" not "U.S.A.F." But WP really doesn't care about "officialness" of spellings anyway.
PS: This has nothing of any kind to do with British (and broader Commonwealth) English style of dropping the stops/periods from contraction abbreviations (those that begin and end with the same letters as the full word: Dr, St, Bt or Bart); the major British style guides, that are not house-style of particular news publishers, continue to recommend dots for truncation abbreviations: Prof., Fr., etc.; none of the recommend retaining dots in acronyms and initialisms. The pretense that "U.S." is an "American English" spelling is a silly red herring distraction. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 05:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Never link part of a word, link the whole thing, including the possessive suffix. In fact, as I can tell from your examples that you've noticed, if you use the wikicode [[Batman]]s you'll get Batmans, and if you use [[Batman]]esque you'll get Batmanesque, precisely because linking a partial word wasn't wanted. (Though that technical trick doesn't work for apostrophe-s, but the style rule still applies.) Largoplazo (talk) 12:04, 6 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Largoplazo, the apostrophe case is why I'm asking. The technical part of it could be fixed, but I want to make sure that's the right way to go. I've noticed the Batman's example at Help:Wikilinks, where 's is not wikilinked, though it says "This does the right thing for possessive". So what's the right thing? Ponor (talk) 12:12, 6 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Help:Wikilinks may be wrong. I believe it's wrong. Maybe [[Batman]]'s did produce Batman's when the help page was written. WP:MOS should tell us what's wrong or right, and whether it matters. Ponor (talk) 13:37, 6 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
If that's your response, then you still aren't getting it. The article contains a list of books—a bibliography—and not a list of bibliographies. Largoplazo (talk) 16:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Please forgive me for broaching one of the subjects with dozens of previous discussions linked in the header, but this has been bugging me and it seems major enough to be a source of consistent confusion and discrepancy. Generally, articles about classical figures (or at least that's the most helpful scope I can ascertain) with Greco-Latin names ending in S like Archimedes seem to consciously diverge from MOS:'S. It seems to be a real problem, as these are among the most prominent examples of what the aforementioned guideline is meant to cover. As we seem rather unlikely to happen upon a well-defined exception for the MOS, what are we meant to do here? Remsense ‥ 论12:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Why should it have anything to do with the date of the subject? We do not change our language to classical Greek to talk about Archimedes; why should we change it in other ways?
But now I'm wondering about a different issue. A possessive 's or s', at least the way I would speak it, is voiced, more like a z. So is the way I would normally pronounce the s at the end of the name Archimedes. If I were more stuffy about Greek pronunciation (remembering that scene from Bill and Ted) it might be different. But for some reason, some other names ending in vowel-s (including Moses and Jesus) end with an unvoiced s for me. If I spell the possessive "Moses' " and pronounce it "Mozəz", I am substituting the final consonant rather than merely dropping a repeated consonant. But if I spell it "Moses's", and pronounce it "Mozəsəz", it seems more logical to me because I am still pronouncing both the name and the possessive the way I would expect to.
No trailing S seems the more common style in sources in those contexts, which has recently been gestured to on Archimedes' heat ray as to why it is conventional here. I don't agree with that at all, but it's an argument—one that seems to be directly contradicted by existing consensus, which is why I'm a bit flummoxed.
I also disagree with the phonology argument, as that is surely something that varies by accent and likely cannot be clearly distinguished in many cases. Remsense ‥ 论07:21, 16 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
There are two distinct issues.Correct grammar calls for dropping the S only after a plural ending in S. A singular ending in S has an 's possessive form.
Not really, as citation or quotation isn't the same thing as transcription: we're fully capable of diverging in style from our sources (in many cases we are expected to) because it obviously doesn't affect the meaning of the claims. Remsense ‥ 论09:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's generally observed that Jesus and Moses do not take the apostrophe s, to avoid the ziz ziz sound: so Jesus' and Moses'. (Tangent: Suppose there are several people called Jesus, who collectively own something - it would be the Jesuses's.) However it is not generally considered categorically wrong. I forget what MoS says. All the best: RichFarmbrough20:26, 28 September 2024 (UTC).Reply
It's a violation of proper accessibility practice. It causes anyone using a screenreader to have to sit through "jay ay en yoo ay ar wy", etc. Aside from that, there's no justification for the all-caps style or the use of colors. It's like something from 1998. Largoplazo (talk) 14:31, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I wrote Template:Translated blockquote to standardize implementation of Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Non-English quotations. I'm wondering about feedback on appearance. The guideline isn't very specific. I'm particularly wondering about where the language of the quotation should be placed if it is provided. I would further appreciate confirmation of whether the brackets around the translation are appropriate. Those weren't included in most existing examples I found, but I thought they would help clarify that they are a translation and not part of the quote. Once these issues are settled, I propose that the template to be mentioned in the guideline itself. Daask (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would much prefer the original and its translation to be shown side-by-side, but that's a matter of taste. If a language is shown, it should normally not be linked. IMO the use of brackets is consistent with citation templates. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would appreciate the ability to specify the size of the paragraph indent: on Zhuangzi (book), I've manually set the indent for such facing quotes to 1ic, effectively matching the width of one character. Remsense ‥ 论04:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I propose this rule:
However, if any complete sentence occurs in a caption, then every sentence and every sentence fragment in that caption should end with a period.
should be complemented by this:
For sentence-fragment captions, if other punctuation occurs, then that caption should also end with a period.
So if a caption includes a harmless comma or dash, it must end in a period? I don't think that would be an improvement. Our current rule is simple and consistent and I can't see a good reason for such a change. Gawaon (talk) 08:39, 26 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
A sure way to distress readers and editors would be to punctuate captions that aren't sentences with periods, as if they were sentences. That would be very weird indeed, and lead to reverts of insertions of periods or to expansions of captions into weighty sentences, which would then be reverted, and the disruption would continue until the MOS change was reverted. NebY (talk) 15:20, 26 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
We have put together a proposed MoS article for the subject of astronomy, located here: MOS:ASTRO. Is there an approval process that needs to be followed to have it be included on the {{Style}} template? I.e. to have it added to the 'By topic area' under 'Science'. I just want to understand the steps. Thank you. Praemonitus (talk) 17:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
It is relatively uncontroversial for WikiProjects to develop suggestions for article content and to label it as an essay, and does not require a formal RfC and encyclopedia-wide consensus; for a recent example see Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers/Guidelines. Making something a binding guideline on the whole encyclopedia is a much bigger thing, and probably would require buy-in from a much wider pool of editors through a formal RfC advertised at the Village Pump etc. If you are going to call it a Manual of Style it should be limited purely to style and not content or referencing, and be more phrased as clear formatting rules than as vague "you should consider this kind of source for this kind of content" suggestions. Also, I tend to think that suggestions like "The accuracy of the image should be confirmed by an astronomy expert" go far beyond usual Wikipedia norms where we rely on verifiability through sourcing rather than credentials and personal expertise. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:09, 28 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
It was apparently registered as a trade mark (not an RS but see here) which would be good reason to cap. Ngrams indicate some mixed usage but not enough to argue lowercase, even though it is probably passing into lowercase usage. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:50, 29 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
In the Common mathematical symbols section, we suggest using the insert box beneath the edit window, the edit toolbox under the edit window, in the "Math and logic" section of the edit toolbox, and in the "Insert" section of the edit toolbox, which many editors no longer have, or not usually. Assuming it's still present for enough editors to be worth mentioning, can we qualify that briefly so as not to leave many editors lost and confused? NebY (talk) 19:54, 7 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
@NebY: This is the "charinsert" gadget, which is enabled by default for all users and all skins, and if people no longer have it, they've been to Preferences → Gadgets and disabled the "(D)CharInsert: add a toolbar under the edit window for quickly inserting wiki markup and special characters (troubles?)" option. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:02, 7 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I have been encountering ongoing issues with User:Skitash, while I respect some of the work they have done on certain pages, they appear to have a significant bias when it comes to articles related to the Amazigh/Berber ethnic group.The first issue involves multiple pages specific to Berber history, such as Maghrawa and Banu Ifran. When I added the language tag in the lead per WP:LEADLANG for Tamazight/Berber, my edits were reverted by User I made sure to retain the foreign language , which shouldnt even be done, WP:FORLANG, in Arabic, even though it was uncited. User:Skitash justified their reversion of the Tamazight language inclusion by citing Wikipedia:No original research, despite the fact that the word "Banu Ifran" was cited twice for its tamazigh translation. The reason given was that the writing system (Neo-Tifinagh) "wasn’t used back then." However, the uncited Arabic text was allowed to remain. I need clarification: Are we prohibited from adding the lead language just because the writing system was different at the time, while keeping uncited Arabic text even though it falls under WP:FORLANG? Or should both be removed entirely? Im reaching out as i would prefer to avoid an edit war.
The second issue pertains to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Manual of Style. On the page for Berberism, User introduced language that seemed biased, stating that the movement is closely tied to Anti-Arab racism. This was presented in a way that gave it undue weight, appearing twice on the page—once within the larger text and once in the first section on Algeria—without proper citation for the upper part. I removed the uper part, even though i believe both fully break Wikipedia:Neutral point of view , but removed the upper one as it not only breaks such but also Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Verifiability but it was reverted by him. I want to better understand the situation, whether I made an error in removing it or if Skitash’s edits were indeed problematic.
The third issue relates to Karima Gouit and broader pages about Berbers. My understanding of Wikipedia:LEADLANG, particularly for ethnic groups with their own language and script, supports the inclusion of Neo-Tifinagh for Tamazight. However, Arabic text is used twice on these pages, while the Latinized form of Amazigh appears only once and Neo-Tifinagh is entirely absent. I need confirmation: Is it permissible to add Neo-Tifinagh, even if cited? And what about the use of Arabic, which is not the ethnic language of these ethnic groups? Returning to the issue of Karima Gouit, she is an Amazigh singer, as indicated by her public profiles outside of her wikipedia page that is fully outdated, songs, interviews, and her latest acting role. She is also a famous activist for the Amazigh cause. Skitash reverted the addition of her name in Tamazight, despite allowing the Arabic version to remain. This is in addition to the broader debate over whether to include her Berber ancestry, which two other editors argued against citing Wikipedia:Ethnicity is not notable enough for intro section, suggesting that it should only be included in the body with proper citations. Despite these discussions on the talk page, Skitash has shown little interest in further conversation even when he was the one behind the removal of the edits, and the dialogue is now largely between me and two other editors who were not initially part of the revision. But as it went on, he decided to put the page under deletion, and trying to place every "old" citation not even related to the subject as "poorly cited", I have since escalated the matter to the dispute noticeboard, but Skitash responded by filing a report against me at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/YassinRi suddenly with questionable cause, while he also has another dispute with another editor relating to inclusion of berbers in their own topics. which is outside the scope of this question, apologies but just wanted to point this out..For Karima Gouit’s page, should her name translation in her native language be included or not? And in terms of dealing with Skitash, is there a more effective way to communicate with them directly, rather than constantly involving third parties in disputes regarding Berber-related topics since he clearly oppose it? TahaKahi (talk) 13:31, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
While you do bring up some specific style issues, I get the sense that this is mostly a content dispute. I wonder if you could cut this down to those issues where you really need help interpreting the MOS, and bring up the other issues in some other forum — see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for help in finding such. --Trovatore (talk) 18:08, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I have brought it up in the Dispute resolution, it met being locked as the person that continues to try and block the Wikipedia:LEADLANG decided to put it under deletion as i mentioned earlier instead of having a conversation and trying to reach a resolution, this extented to him ignoring yet another person, who made a dispute resolution on him for yet the same subject, his disliking of anything relating to Berbers/Amazighs to be included in Berber/Amazigh related subjects, here: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Algeria discussion , instead, the same person took it even further and decided to ignore it, as seen in his response to the alert made in his page when he deleted it: [3].
I understand this matter may not reach a conclusion under MOS, but I would like clarification on one point: Can we establish a decision regarding the inclusion of Berber languages (Tamazight), which is widely spoken in North Africa, especially in Algeria and Morocco, for subjects related to their history and culture? For historical figures like Kahina or Kusaila, who are clearly Berber and not Arab or even Muslim. should they have Tamazight and its neo-script or latinized form included in their Wikipedia intros, per Wikipedia:LEADLANG? would this would apply to historical figures, kingdoms, Amazigh activists, and related topics.A clear decision on this would help prevent further edit wars. From what I've seen, other language versions of Wikipedia include Tamazight per Wikipedia:LEADLANG, but this issue persists only in the English version. It is consistently being contested by two individuals with vague reasoning, as I mentioned earlier. TahaKahi (talk) 18:37, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
What other projects do or don't do is neither here nor there. If you have a specific question regarding a specific edit, then you use the article's talk page and make your case there. Forum shopping, casting aspersions ad misrepresenting the sources to push a POV (like you did) is not acceptable. M.Bitton (talk) 18:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
