Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 157#Implementation of the consensus

Proposed wording for the ''Subject preference'' RfC at the WP:NCP talk page

{{FYI|Notice of a discussion elsewhere that is relevant to MOS:IDENTITY}}

Over a month ago an RfC on subject preference was initiated at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#RfC: Subject preference.

In one of the subsections of that RfC a new wording to be included in the guideline is proposed: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)#Approach.

It was suggested to avoid mere local consensus, so this proposal has been listed at :Template:Centralized discussion.

Feel free to chime in! — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 06:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC) {{small|(Notice originally posted to WT:AT by Francis Schonken.)}}

Italicization of climbing routes

The wikiproject natives are restless and making up their own rules again. This is a problem because wikiprojects are just pages at which editors agree to coordinate their collaboration on particular topics; they are not independent authorities on anything, much less WP style guidelines, and per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, they cannot trump broader consensus, as at MOS. In particular in this case, the misnamed Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article Guidelines#Routes is giving a "guideline" that conflicts with MOS and MOS:ITALICS specifically, making up a new case of "required" italicization. It's seems to be yet another incidence of WP:Specialist style fallacy at work, an imposition of a style quirk from specialist publications that doesn't make sense in a general purpose encyclopedia and violates the WP:ASTONISH rules for all readers other than those who are climbing enthusiasts who read lots of publications that use these italics; it's simply emphasis for its own sake. This has implications beyond climbing, since it would imply the italicization of other forms of trail, which would then imply italicization of larger and more formal trackways, e.g. lanes and streets and highways. [It actually has even broader implications, for the italicization of all "creative performable works" in sport, as detailed below. Beyond this, the root issue is actually broader still, about declaration of novel, narrow-audience stylistic quirks as "conventions" without evidence that their uses is conventional in English at all. This is not trivial. 07:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)]

My recommendation would be to:

Immediately move Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article Guidelines to Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article recommendations I've already performed this move; if it's reverted, I'll open a WP:RM discussion.
Change the wording there to: "While route names are sometimes italicized in climbing publications, Wikipedia does not italicize route names (nor formation names). For example: {{xt|The Nose of El Capitan}}, not {{!xt|The Nose of El Capitan}}.

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼ 06:00, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

:PS: Most articles at :Category:Climbing routes do not even comply with that pseudo-guideline anyway. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼ 06:02, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

:Hmm. I'm not familiar with other cases of 'WP:SSF' (whoever wrote that essay obviously has got overly annoyed about this at some point) and whether they do any harm to the encyclopedia or not. Some points/questions about this case:

:#Quite a lot of climbing guides etc. do use italic names for climbing routes so this doesn't seem an unreasonable thing for Wikipedia to do.

:#I wouldn't rely on the average article on a climbing route, climber etc. as being a good guide for precedent. Climbing articles are in general pretty underdeveloped.

:#Climbing routes are normally named by the person who (thought them up or) first successfully climbed them. In a sense they are the 'major works' of the climber, with a subsequent climb of the route being somewhat akin to a performance of the of the work.

:#WP:ASTONISH! Really? I think the Principle of least astonishment is meant to apply to things far more astonishing than the choice of 2 similar styles of displaying text. About the strongest reaction I could imagine from the average reader would be 'Oh, I didn't know climbing routes were italicized'. If I'm missing something could you please explain how 'The average reader' is 'shocked, surprised, or overwhelmingly confused' by italicized climbing route names?

:#Could you elaborate on why italicized climbing routes are 'simply emphasis for its own sake' and how the same statement doesn't apply to the other names and titles in WP:ITALIC? Equally could you elaborate on why italicized climbing route names don't make sense in a general purpose encyclopedia?

:#Do any general style guides cover the italicization or not of climbing route names? Or even the general case of what to do with things that haven't been covered by a style guide? If I look at some guides to italicization online they don't mention climbing routes, but given that proportionately few people write about climbing routes this is hardly unsurprising in a general guide.

:#If I give a couple of examples from Lynn Hill, a recent featured article on a climber, so probably the most heavily scrutinised:

:#*'but after experimenting with it during her ascent of Vandals, she found it a useful way to learn challenging climbs' - Doesn't seem confusing to me as it is. Without italics would be clear too.

:#*'1979, Pea Brain 5.12d, Independence Pass, Colorado − First free ascent and first female ascent of the grade, with John Long' - Again doesn't seem confusing. Without italics it would need extra punctuation of some kind. This is from a section that is rather like a bibliography or references section in a book or paper, which often italicize the name of the work. I find that having italic sections in bibliographies aids my ability to scan through them - I find the same here, without any italics the whole section would become harder to read.

:#I don't find the slippery slope argument very persuasive. It doesn't seem reasonable to extrapolate to roads especially as AFAIK there is no particular precedent for roads being italicized.JMiall ₰ 19:30, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

::I'm not sure why you think you can refute the reasoning at SFF if you aren't familiar with it and haven't even come to an opinion on whether the issues it raises actually matter to the encyclopedia. Denigrating those who do care about it has having "got overly annoyed" isn't a valid argument. Taking your points in the same numerical order:

::#This is the main line of faulty reasoning that necessitated WP:SSF. MOS bends over backwards to accommodate specialist preferences, but only when they do not conflict with normal usage. This conflicts with normal usage, namely the principle that we do not willy-nilly emphasis things for non-conventional reasons, like grocers' signs so often do. As for this particular issue, field guides of all sorts almost {{em|universally}} engage in various sorts of emphasis-for-its-own-sake, specifically to make scanning the text easier. (SSF actually already mentions that.) Has nothing at all to do with what WP should do in encyclopedic writing (WP actually has its own version of this, namely boldfacing the article topic in the lead). It does not at all indicate a professional convention within a field.

::#Consensus is not based on "precedent". What is actually being done at climbing articles, by the entire range of editors who have worked on them, is a very, very good indication of what the consensus is on how to edit them, vs. one editor's recent insistence on adding this odd-ball italicization and trying to make a "guideline" out of it. Aside from that, there is a strong, decade-long consensus at MOS to not italicize (or boldface, etc.) things unless they're enumerated as exceptions here. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy, this trumps micro-consensuses at wikiprojects, who really need to come here and gain consensus to change MOS to add their case as an exception.

::#No one could take that argument seriously. By that reasoning, every single thing that's not being done before should be italicized and named after whoever does it first. But we don't do that at all. Works are published or performed creative output, not exercises in navigational problem-solving. Even where we do actually treat some such successes as proper names, they are {{em|not italicized}}, e.g. names of sailing and other trade routes, names of long-distance racing routes, etc. I observe that in fact plenty of them are not actually named after their first climbers. There does not seem to be any real standard being applied here, even at the proper-naming level, and even if there were, that has nothing to do with italics. See also the fact that we do not italicize other moves and maneuvers in other sports or other fields more broadly. Not movies in chess, not medical procedures, not skateboarding tricks, not welding techniques, even when they are treated as capitalized proper names (which is also done too often on Wikipedia, but that's another matter).

::#You seem to be unaware of how WP:ASTONISH is frequently applied here. It is in fact quite {{em|surprising}} to people to see italicization and other style effects applied in nonstandard ways, and this astonishment and negative reactions brought on by it are a perpetual source of strife on Wikipedia. This is why MOS exists in the first place, and it's why ArbCom cases like WP:ARBATC have led to discretionary sanctions hovering over the topic. People get very worked up about it, even if you personally don't. But I guess you do, too, if you're going to write an itemized list of 8.2 arguments in favor of italics here.

::#It's emphasis for it's own sake, because it's emphasis, but there's no widely-recognized rationale for it here. We have some universally-accepted italicizations, e.g. of book titles and movie title, but this isn't one of them. It doesn't make sense in a general-purpose encyclopedia for the same reason that putting certified "gold"-selling album titles in a yellow font doesn't make sense, or underlining the names of movie characters doesn't make sense. It's emphasis just to emphasize for reasons "someone" finds important but which the average reader won't understand and for whom it's distracting and annoying.

::#Not that I can find, and I have a whole shelf-full of such books. The general rule is to not use italics or boldface or other form of emphasis except by convention. This isn't a convention MOS recognizes and no one's made a case to recognize it. The existence of such a convention in number of external style guides on English writing would help persuade people on WP that this is a convention that is recognizable enough that it's not unhelpful here. But we don't have any such evidence. The facts that it's just some handful of people writing about a narrow specialist topic and making up their own unrecognizable "convention", so unknown even to climbers that most climbing articles here don't even use it, are the very reasons that this is unencyclopedic SSF stuff. You can't demonstrate how solid and universal a convention it is by noting how few people use it and how little it matters in the real world and how few of the specialists in that area even use it. probably writes for one of them, or reads one a lot, is trying to get WP to adopt it, but even the project on this topic isn't bothering.

::#The examples don't seem confusing to you because you're used to them and like them. And whether it's {{em|confusing}} or not isn't the criterion of interest here anyway; it's {{em|distracting}}, unusual emphasis (in this case, not even based on a real convention) being pushed by specialists in a narrow field on everyone else, and it causes readers to stop and think "this is weird; why is this italicized?", instead of just absorbing the article. The fact that something might need punctuation is perfectly fine, and expected. Emphasizing misc. things as a substitute for punctuation is not permissible. That example needs punctuation {{em|anyway}}, since we cannot count on italics being preserved in all re-uses of WP content (any time you're depending on italics or boldface to be available in order for the content to be parseable, you're probably making a mistake). Besides which, a route being treated as a proper name and capitalized is already more than enough emphasis to begin with.

::#You're failing to understand, then, why it's a slippery slope, despite my spelling it out clearly. On a gentler grade, there is no difference between an climbing route and a trail. There is no particular difference, nomenclature-wise, between a barely-established trail and a very well established one, worn into ruts. There is, next, no particular difference between a long-term trail and a road; the one historically becomes the other. Cf. also the likening to racing routes, etc.; we never italicize any such things.

:: — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼ 23:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

For those who like external sources to ground MOS reasoning in, The Chicago Manual of Style (16th and still-current ed., 2010) says at "8.55 Thoroughfares and the like" that such things are capitalized (only - not also italicized). A climbing route is a thoroughfare, just a vertically specialized one used by a select few. Who wants to bet that precisely zero mainstream English-language style guides recommend italicizing something like this? — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ⚞(^Ʌⱷ҅̆_⚲͜ⱷ^{^})≼ 08:08, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

As I thought I clearly said, I was trying to deal with just this case on its own merits not all the other cases that prompted the writing of that essay. Good job you didn't denigrate anyone with [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheNativesAreRestless your 1st sentence] eh?

Can you give an example of where some specialist usage agreed with normal usage and then the MOS bent over backwards to accomodate it? As far as I can tell climbing routes get italicized for exactly the same reason that book titles are - because they are strings of words applied as a name that it might be possible to misconstrue if it wasn't made clear that it was a title of some kind. Seems conventional to me.
I only mentioned this because of your PS above. What point were you trying to make other than one about precedent? Anyway, WP:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_editing rather undermines your claim that consensus is not based on precedent.
I take that argument seriously although I'm not saying that it should necessarily outweigh other arguments. Creative output is coming up with new things, whether they are climbing routes or books or whatever. You seem to be trying to argue based on generalising massively and I'm not sure this is helpful. The italicization of ships in the MOS is quite specific and yet hasn't led to all things that travel through the ocean being treated the same.
If it is being applied like that then I suspect it is being applied wrongly. Minimising total surprise of all wikipedia readers would mean that the MOS here had to follow the most common style in the world. And no I really don't get worked up about italics, I'd never really thought about it before, the guideline was nothing to do with me. I've checked my edit history and I've listed climbing routes as both italicized and non-italicized. I just thought that it was worth replying as nobody else from the project had.
but what is the rationale for italicising book titles etc here? If fundamentally it is just that when book titles are written about externally then they get italicized so we do it here, then why doesn't the same argument apply to climbing routes? If it is that when book titles are written about externally then they get italicized to avoid confusion from the reader so we do the same here, then whey doesn't the same argument apply to climbing routes?
Your are making things up - it is not unrecognisable, it is fairly common in climbing guides but not universal. If it was unknown to climbers why would any articles use it at all? Steph Davis which has had a bit of recent attention uses this format. I would love to find a style guide that covered the case of writing about climbing routes in a generalist kind of way. As you've checked a shelf full of books I think it is fairly safe to say that no convention has been set by a style guide. Therefore if there was a general convention set by books that mention climbing routes then it would be a reasonable one for wikipedia to adopt.
If someone hadn't come across written climbing route names before then why would they think it weird? If they had then there's a decent chance that what they had seen previously was italicized.
ships haven't generalised to all vehicles or things on water, books haven't generalised to all written things.JMiall ₰ 21:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

:#That was three discussions in one:

The entire MOS consists largely of such cases, MOS:NUM in paritcular is mostly a long string of specialist stuff that MOS has adopted because it was clearly demonstrable in sources, was arguably helpful {{em|and}} (not "or") didn't not sharply conflict with normal English usage or cause any other WP:KISS or WP:ASTONISH problem. As just one of hundreds of example, the requirement to format unit as 42 ft. It's geeky and nitpicky, and virtually no one cares, and it even contradicts common usage (which is to run the number and unit together), and it forbids another common usage, to add "." of many non-metric unit abbreviations, and so on. Many editors hate it, a very large number ignore it, but virtually no one ever {{em|editwars}} over it. People just get over the fact that it doesn't match their preferences and they move on.
I've already addressed your "climbing routes are like book titles" analogy. Reiterating it as if no one addressed it doesn't magically make it unaddressed. You're also again ignoring the facts that no reliable sources on the English language agree with your desire to capitalizing climbing routes or any other kinds of routes. And reliable sources on climbing in particular (which are not really relevant with regard to what MOS should advise as a writing style matter, if the style jars with normal reader expectations) have not agreed on this as a uniform convention, you just have a few who do it.
Your position that climbing routes are "creative works" is unadulterated WP:OR.

:#We just disagree on that, and it's a side point anyway.

:#All style guides generalize. All rule systems about anything generalize. They have to. There's a finite limit to the number of rules anyone can remember much less care about enough to adhere to. NB: I'm unaware of any ocean-going vessels that are not italicized, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

:#Then open a thread about what you see as misapplication of WP:ASTONISH at its talk page and work to clarify it's wording or scope. NB: Wikipedia generally {{em|does}} use the most common style in the anglophone world for whatever style question has arisen, as determined first by consulting reliable sources on usage and grammar and secondly by seeing what mainstream sources {{em|do}} (e.g. Google N-Grams tells us what's being done in books). As noted in point 1, {{em|if}} it's not confusing/annoying to the majority of readers by directly conflicting with normal usage, and it's reliably sourceable as a real-world convention, and likely to be helpful to readers, MOS will often override an imprecise common usage with a more precise technical one (again, see MOS:NUM for piles of cases). Italicizing climbing routes doesn't meet any of these criteria.

:#Italicization of book titles is universal convention recommended by all style guides and familiar to all readers.

:#Not universal even in the specialist field you claim it's a standard in. It's NOT a standard, it's something you like and that some other climbers like. No one said "it was unknown to climbers". Who's "making stuff up", again? Please to read WP:SSF; you argument fits the pattern there.

:#Because it's not normal English usage, and is interpreted as inappropriate, confusing, even misleading emphasis.

:#Ships have in fact generalized to aircraft, spacecraft and probably several other kinds of vehicles other than automobiles, and real-world style and grammar authorities note these cases as conventions. None of them accept such italics for routes/ways/tracks/trails of any kind. Next. Book title italicization has of course generalized to all written things of a similar scope, such as plays, screenplays, magazines, journals, poetry anthologies, opera librettos, etc., etc., as well as e-books and e-magazins, comics, and by analogy to photographic, radio and electronic programming including TV series, movies, webcasts, etc. By analogy with quotation marks used for book chapter titles, they are used for magazine, journal, website, etc. article, for TV show and webcast episodes, etc. All of this usage is consistently covered in all style guides and used almost consistently in all mainstream publications. Again, not true of climbing routes or anything related or analogous to climbing routes.

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_⚲͜ⱷ^ʌ≼ 06:55, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

This isn't really about climbing routes in particular, it's about the declaration of something novel and of limited, specialized interest to be a "convention", when there's no evidence that the usage is in fact conventional in English at all, maybe not even in the field for which the claim is being made. (Note how closely this relates to the topic dominating most of this page below this thread, and every other thing that pops up on the radar at WT:SSF, BTW).

It may be helpful to take a step back, away from a subject you are personally invested in and replace it with something fictional. Here's what your argument equates to: {{tq|"My hoverboarding magazine always puts hoverboarding tricks in italics, and lots of hoverboarders read it, so they're familiar with it and I'm declaring it a convention, and by the way these tricks are creative, performable works and so are just like movies and books. No mainstream style guides so far cover hoverboarding tricks, so the magazine is the reliable authority and MOS has to obey it and use italics for tricks in hoverboarding articles.}} Um, no, {{em|no}}, it doesn't.

If you {{em|still}} don't believe this, go have a look at real-world articles here and tell me how many places you find any of the following italicized: football plays, fencing moves, skateboarding or surfing tricks, cue sports techniques, martial arts moves (except where they're italicized for being in a non-English language), or any other "performable work" in any sport. You're the one who liked that analogy to named "creative works" that can be re-enaced as performances, remember, since the analogy to trails and roads didn't work for you? It's certainly a much more apt comparison than books and movies. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_⚲͜ⱷ^ʌ≼ 07:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

:That hoverboard statement isn't what I'm saying but I'll rewrite it so that it is something that I agree with:

:Hoverboarding magazines, books etc. often but not always put hoverboarding tricks in italics, and people who have ever previously read about hoverboard tricks are likely familiar with this, and other people at the hoverboarding wikiproject, probably more knowledgeable than me, have declared it a convention on wikipedia, which I'm happy to go along with. By way of deciding if some more general principles regarding italics should instead apply to this case, then one that can be considered is that these tricks are in some way creative, performable works and so are in some way like movies and books - other principles should also be considered. No mainstream style guides so far cover hoverboarding tricks, so the canon of works that do cover them is the best available reliable authority, and as MOS hasn't previously considered hoverboard tricks if it wants to be bothered having a rule for them, then either the position of adopting the wikiproject convention or the general convention used in the canon should have reasonable weight in the decision.

:In fact surveying say 100 random works from different eras and publishers that cover hoverboarding tricks, preferably works that are as generalist as possible, and establishing what the normal usage is would seem a very sensible thing to do.

:By way of a very small survey of climbing magazines that I have available where I am now:

:#Climber (magazine) - italicizes climbing route names, book names & other standard things in body text

:#Summit magazine - doesn't italicize climbing route names or book names in body text

:Both achieve a readable end result. Both would be perfectly reasonable ways to format wikipedia.

:I am not claiming that all things that are a bit like creative works should automatically be italicized, just that the same principles should be applied generally. So if many reliable style guides say something should be italicized that has properties x, y & z then there's nothing inherently wrong with italicizing other things that have properties x & y if the style guides don't mention what to do with them, provided a readable end result is achieved. I have no idea if football plays etc. are normally italicized externally to wikipedia. If they always/never are then wikipedia should do the same. If they mostly are/aren't then wikipedia should probably do the same. Either way italicizing them here is no big deal as they are by nature things that are only going to appear in a very small proportion of articles.

:Imagine a Venn diagram of all possible phrases in which certain subcategories are picked out as things to be formatted. The subcategories each belong to several more general categories that themselves have other subcategories. If general style guides don't indicate which general category formats, or similar subcategory formats, should take precedence for formating a subcategory then shouldn't we bear all of them in mind when deciding what to do? JMiall ₰ 19:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

::Too tired to get into all of this right now, but "people who have [n]ever previously read about {{var|X}}" is not a rationale we use for anything on Wikipedia. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 13:37, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

::I'd bet real money that this italicization was the idea of someone at Climber magazine, and that pretty much no one anywhere else even talks about it. A google search on "italicization of climbing routes"[https://www.google.com/search?q=INTERNATIONAL+CODE+OF+NOMENCLATURE+FOR+CULTIVATED+PLANTS+torrent&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb#channel=fflb&q=italicization+of+climbing+routes&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&safe=off] is instructive. It's mostly Wikipedia discussion, followed by {{strong|a long stream of wildly inconsistent climber usage}}: "the climbers (with the guides' names italicized)" (that's not routes); "the first use of the selected climbing terms will be italicized" (that's not routes in particular or consistently, but everything one time), "any term in italics is either italicized for emphasis or is a climbing-related term whose meaning can be inferred..." (that's not routes, it's everything); "The italicized ... refers to figures, access and egress points" (that's not routes); "for the meaning of italicized terms, see the Glossary" (that's not routes, it's everything); "Route names are bold-faced and even italicized to make them readily identifiable in the text" (finally, routes, but not the style you suggested, and clearly just use of italics+bold for emphasis, precisely what MOS is saying not to do so for things like this!). I'm only finding one source, Yankee Rock & Ice that does what you'd suggest, and even they admit it's problematic: "We have generally italicized route names. But in some case where a mountain feature becomes a route, it's not always easy to say when it is one and when it's the other."

::In short, there clearly is no convention at all to italicize climbing routes in climbing publications.

::Getting back to the points I skipped the other day: Specialist works on football, and billiards, and birds, and rocks, and engine maintenance, and model airplane building, and whatever {{em|routinely}} use some form of empahsis, be it italics, capitalization, boldfacing or whatever, to "big-note" things they find important and make their guidebooks easy to scan in a hurry. It's not a standard way to write English, it's a jargonistic usage of specialty works, and is not emulated on Wikipedia. They're not both "perfectly reasonable way to format Wikipedia". Adding inappropraite emphasis to emulate field guide style and sports magazine journalism is not encyclopedic writing.

::The same principles that apply to italicization of book titles {{em|are}} applied generally, to other published works like films, magazines, etc. I've already covered why a method or technique in sports, which is what a climbing route is, is not like that. Wikiprojects do not get to "declare [anything] a convention on Wikipedia"; we have a guideline and a policy that directly contract you on that. The idea that because something as minutely specific as climbing routes (or hoverboard tricks, whatever) are not covered specifically by name in general grammar and style guides that provide rules that clearly cover these areas under more general principles, that we should instead do only what some magazine does simply because it's topical, is flatly absurd. What if your climbing magazine wanted to put climbing routes always in bright green Comic Sans, underlined and bracketed with teddy bear icons? What one random source is doing isn't relevant in any way to what Wikipedia needs to do for a general readership and editorship. Feel free to create your Venn diagrams. You'll find that sports terminology like this is never italicized in mainstream sources. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:28, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

The argument about book titles being italicized per standard rule is all fine and dandy; however climbing, is a relatively new and evolving sport, and it has to start somewhere. The guide books, and a lot of climbers use it, in time it will probably be a standardized format, just like books. When the first book was written was its title italicized then? No, because it took time for the new rules to take effect. Who decided those rules? (rhetorical) If the rationale is used that The Chicago Manual of Style, wait The Chicago Manual of Style doesn't specify to, then you are admitting that grammar, and such are a non-evolving science, which nobody in their right mind could agree with. Just my 2 cents. speednat (talk) 18:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

:That's a WP:CRYSTALBALL argument. The actual proponent of this italicization provides two directly comparable reliable sources. One italicizes, the other does not. I dug up more, and there clearly is nothing even approaching a convention to italicize the names of climbing routes in climbing sources, much less in general ones. "The guide books" and "a lot of climbers" clearly {{em|don't}} use it. Some magazine uses it. I wasn't really able to figure out what you mean by "non-evolving science". This doesn't have anything to do with science, but is about writing style. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 02:50, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

=Request for comments (climbing route italics) =

Should the names of mountain/rock climbing routes be italicized, like major creative works, or be given in unstyled text like trails and like sport techniques? [These are the analogies presented so far in previous discussion, above). The issue has arisen because some climbing publications use italics, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Climbing/Article recommendations recommends it – with the text {{tq|"Route names should be italicized, while the formation on which the route lies should not. For example: The Nose of El Capitan."}} – but WP:Manual of Style and its WP:Manual of Style/Text formatting subpage generally discourage such style flourishes unless they represent well-sourced conventional usage. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 08:22, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Oppose. Capitalized? Yes. But italicizing would just be excessive. I think we should consider such routes the same way we consider the names of streets, towns, counties, provinces and countries - none of which are italicized ever. Route names are little more than place names like those. Lazy Bastard Guy 20:01, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Which if any MOS rules apply to citations?

There is a discussion at WT:CITE#MOS rules apply to citations? about whether MOS rules, such as the rules for abbreviations. Since the editors here are now notified of the discussion, any consensus formed in WP:CITE discussion may result in edits to MOS. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:28, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

:And not just abbreviations. Jc3s5h wants ALL aspects of citation exempted from MOS, including dates. Do attend if you have any interest in the applicability of MOS. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:04, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Bird common name decapitalisation (continued, 1)

Split section to allow archival the closed but long discussion. PaleAqua (talk) 14:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

= A simple way forward on common names of species =

The "lower-case or capitalize common names of species (maybe only birds)" dispute that has been ongoing is rather pointless. Not because it doesn't matter (it does matter for WP:LOCALCONSENSUS reasons, for WP:NABOBS reasons, and others), but because the solution is obvious and {{em|is even already being used}}, it just hasn't been applied to bird articles much or at all.

;Complex example:

To invent a complex example to illustrate all the principles, this article's title would be Northeastern boobook, referred to in running prose as northeastern boobook, the same way we'd do snow leopard, and it illustrates a case where the IOC name is not the WP:COMMONNAME for Wikipedia article titling purposes, having different capitalization, hyphenation and a varying name component:

class="infobox biota" style="text-align: left; width: 200px; font-size: 100%"

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IOC: North-eastern Morepork}}{{#if:|
Temporal range: }}

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{{#if:Northeastern boobook in Warkworth, New Zealand|

{{!}} colspan=2 style="text-align: center; font-size: 88%" {{!}} Northeastern boobook in Warkworth, New Zealand

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}}

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{{#if:LC|{{taxobox/species|IUCN3.1|LC

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}}

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|i=Group I (dsDNA)

|ii=Group II (ssDNA)

|iii=Group III (dsRNA)

|iv=Group IV ((+)ssRNA)

|v=Group V ((-)ssRNA)

|vi=Group VI (ssRNA-RT)

|vii=Group VII (dsDNA-RT)

}} }} }}