Ghyll talk:Quezlarian Numerals

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Revision as of 22:40, 12 September 2004 by Morbus Iff (talk | contribs) (I am me, and he is I. I am, I am.)
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All new pages to be capitalised properly by decree of sbp now, k thx. If you see any phantoms that are going to cause problems in the future, please fix them! --Sean B. Palmer 18:43, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Is "Roman numerals" capitalized? That's was the whole point of this entry, ten months ago. --Morbus Iff 19:23, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Incidentally, are you advocating all pages be all ucwords? Why? I'm not sure that's right. --Morbus Iff 19:24, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

In seeing your other comments, it looks like you are. I'm steadfastly against it. Some things are just not proper names. "Awal shrinkage" should not be capitalized, any more than the "Luminous text". The distinction I've seen, and have been keeping conscious of, is between proper names and not. Bobby Shwarmph yes, Awal shrinkage, no. So, all references to "Council for Quezlarian Research" now needs a capital "For"? Forcing ucwords on all wiki pages is the equivalent, IMO, of CamelCase. The removal of CamelCase in wikis, one of the "good things", was to make reading entries better and more English like. Implementing a forced ucword seems backwards: another arbitrary decision that breaks the rules of English, imposed because one player can't keep things straight. --Morbus Iff 19:30, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

In fact, it's the opposite: I can't keep them straight because they break the rules of English! The rationale is that the page names form the titles of the entries, and "[i]n most house styles, all the major words in an English title are capitalized — 'major' meaning the first word, the last word, and everything in between except articles, conjunctions, and prepositions" - Lynch on Titles (which means that the "for" in your example doesn't need to be capitalised). In-page references probably should be capitalised normally though. --Sean B. Palmer 19:31, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

But therein lies the rub: how are we actually using the page titles? In most cases, they're being used inside a sentence, so the natural inclination of a person is the follow the non-title rules of English, as we've been doing. I think it's absolutely insane to force users to link to a page one way (ucwords) and then force (or, for the grammatically annoying, do ourselves) a different title for the link itself through the use of wiki syntax. The intent of wikis is to colloborate on the body of entries, and that's where all concessions should take place: in making it easier for the user to do what needs to be done. Users are thinking in sentences, not titles, and requiring them to redouble their efforts by thinking both ways (one for the link, one for the title) is obscene. Although a lack of (immediately findable) written policy, this appears to be how Wikipedia handles it (Mushroom_cloud, Nuclear_weapon) and also Encyclopedia Britannica. --Morbus Iff 19:52, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

The most concessionlessful approach would be to have [[Quezlarian numerals]] look up similar page titles in the wiki, and link to any that share its case. But in the absence of that, I'd rather do what's correct English than to have people be lazy; by extension, your argument says that it's alright to use txt spk in entries, leave out punctuation and apostrophes, and not capitalise anywhere since that's easier for the user too. Why have people link at all--too difficult! Our highly academic and scholarly lexicon has been a shining example of pedantry since its inception--correct quoting style, the Morbus removing whitespace hither and thither, anality in every nook and cranny--and this construct should not be any different. Therefore, we ought to use a [[Quezlarian Numerals|Quezlarian numerals]] [Changing over to BBC World Service! Rise for the national anthem!] syntax throughout the wiki. --Sean B. Palmer 20:03, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

I disagree - I see no reason to make the lives of our users more difficult, or to fly in the face of tradition. Similarly, your argument about txt spk is absolutely retarded - it'd only stand to reason if, in fact, our users were doing that already - people aren't going to "devolve" into morons regardless of this decision - they will, however, have to make conscious effort to jump out of the sentence and into titling and wiki syntax. Forcing them to break with sentence trandition, to think about syntax and not their fiction, and to train them the incorrect way to contribute to the Wikipedia, or to suggest that the Britannica is "wrong" is, IMO, damaging in the extreme. I mean, sure, we're pretty smart fellows, but breaking with 100 years of encyclopedia tradition seems absolutely high and mighty. Remember the goal here: we're making a Lexicon, and in traditional examples, there are no "page titles" - just text entries. We shouldn't, just like Clean URIs, make a decision on naming or titling because of our technology (where every term is a page). Quite frankly, I've already got a zillion more important babysitting tasks to accomplish then to schoolmarm sentences into proper constructs because there's no clear indication that, yes, you're writing a sentence, but no, think about titles in your body. --Morbus Iff 20:32, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

A hundred years of encyclopaedia tradition? You should've polled some more encyclopaedias rather than just finding two that support your point of view: the IEP, Encyclopaedia of British History, and Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy don't follow the "convention"--just from the first two pages of Google results for "encyclopaedia". As for having a zillion more important tasks than schoolmarming sentences, I direct you to your own Accidentally clicked here, so decided to be some of TEH ANEL diff--the first change in which is you correcting the "Folktown Records event" heading to "Folktown Records Event"! And I'm not forcing them to break with sentence tradition at all: they're having to make links anyway, so they might as well make proper ones.

Perhaps we should throw this open to a vote, since we're clearly not going to agree between ourselves, and I'm confident of my position. What say ye? --Sean B. Palmer 20:56, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Well, DrBacchus's recent change is an interesting one: he changed "Awal shrinkage" to "awal shrinkage" and it redirected properly still. Is that because of a redirect on the page? Awal Shrinkage doesn't seem to go anywhere. If that is the case, we can set the redirects up ourselves... but DrBacchus has also demonstrated just how confusing this whole thing is, since his change seems to be erroneous: in the original article, "Awal" is capitalised throughout. I'll revert his change. --Sean B. Palmer 21:11, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Nope - MediaWiki automatically capitalizes the first letter of all wiki links, and this has been a bone of contention - as far as I know, there's a bug report running around for it to stop. As for "Awal shrinkage", in this case, it should be capitalized because, as we both know, it's the name of a person. As for the Folktown Record Event, I'm surprised you're considering that a good example: those are headers to a table, irregardless of technology or page titles. Concerning the vote, do whatever the hell you want, but if it passes, it becomes your responsibility to correct all the sentences, including my own. Regarding the polling of two supporting encyclopedia, honestly, I didn't poll or check others: I thought of the two that were the most well-known, in my head. Non-committally, perhaps they've trained me the wrong way, though I still find the extended wiki syntax effort daunting, unnecessary, and intrusive. Unfortunately, of your choices, I only "recognize" one (and by the Stanford name alone) which, naturally, doesn't invalidate their import. It doesn --Morbus Iff 21:52, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

doesn? Did you have more to say, before I reply? --Sean B. Palmer 22:27, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)

Huh. I have no clue what that is. Sounds like an unfinished thought, left behind due to the allure of a paused X-File. Please go on. --Morbus Iff 22:40, 12 Sep 2004 (EDT)