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I hope you don't mind I jumped in and made a few minor revisions to the wording in the section Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Serial commas. I think the word "sometimes" in the middle of the sentence muddies the clarity of the statement. I also think the examples are poor, and the explanations of the examples are quite confusing, and would be even more so for non-native speakers of English and young people. I think better examples are needed and the explanations that accompany them should be made more explicit and crystal clear.  – Corinne (talk) 21:12, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Angels rush in where fools fear to tread. EEng 21:13, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

The examples are insipid (even after I worked on them fairly recently to not have BLP problems), but they seem structurally sound. It wouldn't be difficult to replace them with something less silly, something plausible for an article here. We also need to do so with the quoted-dialogue examples pulled from Finding Nemo since they're not illustrative of encyclopedic writing. Someone (I'm pretty sure I remember who) forgot they were writing examples for WP's style guide, not a beginners' guide for middle-school students.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

• "In such cases of ambiguity, clarify one of three ways: ... Add or remove the serial comma."—it seems the MoS is allowing mixing serial and non-serial in the same article. That's sensible, but I can't imagine any reviewer accepting such non-uniformity of style. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:58, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

  Except it also says to be consistent within the same article. So, if adding (or, rarely, removing) a serial comma to fix an ambiguity would require using the same style in other sentences in the same article, do it; if that would break one or more of those sentences, then obviously just rewrite using one of the other techniques to resolve the ambiguity, like using separate sentences or clauses. Easy-peasy. No one seemed to have an issue with this, for years, until just now, so I think the issue is illusory.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

  PS: I further have to object to re-introducing the patently false equivalence between ambiguity caused by lack of a serial comma and ambiguity caused by insertion of one; there's about a 100-to-1 ratio in real writing. It's difficult to construct an example in which the latter happens (and as SchroCat pointed out in "revtalk", it's a hallmark of poor writing), while the former kind of problem can arise any time one or more of an inline list's items are complex, especially when one contains its own "and".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:15, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I was hoping this would be an opportunity to explore "foolish consistencies", such as the insistence on groups being referred to strictly in the singular or strictly in the plural within a single article, which conflicts with actual North American usage (and which has come up more than once at FAC). The MoS could do with allowing a little pragmatic inconsistency. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I had never heard that before, that groups should be referred to strictly in the singular or strictly in the plural within an article. I agree with your last statement. You aren't referring to saying "The committee were" in once place in the article and "The committee was" in another, are you? I believe the first is British English and the second American, so I think that should be consistent. I would have no problem, though, referring to "Native Americans" in one place in the article and "a Native American" in another. I'm puzzle why someone would insist that one must select either the singular or the plural and be consistent throughout an article. Where is that from? Curly Turkey, were you thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson's saying, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," from his essay Self-Reliance?  – Corinne (talk) 01:18, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Corinne: In NAmEng, groups are normally referred to in the singular ("The government is in recess"), but there are many exceptions: compare "The Barenaked Ladies is an Canadian rock group" to "The Barenaked Ladies are some of the most recognizable faces in Canada". There are reviewers who declare that North Americans should be forced to use either plural or singular consistently, and since *"The government are in recess" is unacceptable NAmEng, then articles in NAmEng must default to the singular consistently, even when that is inconsistent with actual NAmEng practice. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Curly Turkey. I can understand using the singular when that kind of construction appears in the article, but are you saying that just because "The government are" is always unacceptable in North American English, these reviewers say writers must always use the singular in any article? If so, I think that's ridiculous.  – Corinne (talk) 01:49, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that's the case—either that or "Recast! Recast!"—to "solve" a non-problem. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:54, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Aside from the WP:EMERSON issue .... That "American rule" doesn't really hold, for anything that has a plural-form name, as you (CT) suggest, so the GAN/FAC reviewers are wrong to assert robotic consistency. If MoS is [misinterpreted as] being too rigid about it, it should probably be tweaked. It's unfortunate that WP:Common sense is not always applied (i.e., to rationally conclude that "do something stupid" cannot be the actual intent of MoS's wording). Anyway, the vague UK/Commonwealth tolerance toward (and alleged but unprovable preference for) things like "The university were adamant about the neutrality of their scholarship system" (in lieu of "was" and "its") is:

1. nowhere near universal but simply a matter of house style for particular publishers (proof: "Cambridge University has been blasted for ..."[1], "The university has declined to respond ... [2], a two-for-one in "The UK government is to establish a new unit to counter "fake news", Downing Street has said" [3], and a zillion other examples, also found in Australian, etc., mainstream publications);
2. frequently regarded as stuffy;
3. on the decline, especially when the context is in reference to the entity as such, while the plural form is mostly used when the reference is more collective of individuals (and this is also true in the US and Canada, differing primarily by degree/frequency).

The real-world commonality effect of the Internet is affecting usage rapidly.

This is probably the makings of a "2018 English" approach for MoS to take: Use the singular when referring to an entity in a unitary sense ("The university was adamant about the neutrality of its scholarship system"). Use the plural in a collective sense ("The student body seem largely satisfied with the university's policy changes"), or when the name of the entity is plural in form and preceded by "the" ("The Botswana Lions were the division champions in 2016"), unless it is necessary to stress the singular nature of something, e.g. as intellectual property ("The Botswana Lions is now a registered trademark of Lions Sport Ltd").
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:15, 24 January 2018 (UTC); clarified: 11:33, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish: "for anything that has a plural-form name, as you (CT) suggest"—replace "Barenaked Ladies" with "The Tragically Hip" and the examples are exactly the same: "The Tragically Hip are some of the most recognizable faces in Canada". It has nothing to do with plural forms. I believe one of the cases that came up was Megadeth (not inherently "plural", but "Megadeth were ..." is appropriate in many cases), but there were a few of them. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:21, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

"The Tragically Hip are some of the most recognizable faces in Canada" is plural because "faces" is. Compare: "The Tragically Hip is a Canadian band" and "Megadeath was an American band" are both perfectly grammatical, but the plurals can also be used when the intent is to stress something about the members rather than the band as unit; that's already covered by the draft text. But the singular wouldn't be used in the latter (as-a-unit) case for a band with a plural-form name that has a leading "the" (e.g. "Barenaked Ladies is a Canadian rock band" is potentially awkward but pretty common, while "The Beatles was an English rock band" is extremely awkward and rare). The leading-the part is what's missing from the draft (or was).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:33, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that's the point I've been making—that reviewers have been insisting that groups must be treated as singular in NAmEng articles, thus "GROUP are" has been disallowed in the name of consistency: if you've used "Megadeth is", then you cannot use "Megadeth are" in the same article—or, by casting the net wider, disallowing both "the government is in recess" and "Megadeth are a metal band" in the same article, and since "the government are in recess" is unacceptable NAmEng, "Megadeth are" must be disallowed. Q.E.D.

I'm surprised you say "Barenaked Ladies is a Canadian rock band" is "potentially awkward"—Google gives 8,300 hits for it, versus 4 (!!!) for the plural version. It doesn't seem too many people find it awkward at all. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 12:11, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Use a broader search [4]. But, sure, it's not an ideal example of a without-"the" plural case that sounds awkward, probably due to familiarity. Imagine I start a band today called Purple Rockets and we intentionally avoid using "the" with it. "Purple Rockets is a California band" and "Purple Rockets are a California band" seem both pretty likely to me, depending on how strongly one is thinking of the band as a unit with a trademarkable proper name versus thinking of it as a group of people or just letting the brain parse the plural structure on auto-pilot. As soon as you add "the", all bets are off, and people will be strongly prone to use the plural.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:48, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
PS:, BNL has an album named Barenaked Ladies Are Me. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:50, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

SMcCandlish—you didn't look very carefully at the results. Most of those hits are to the albums Barenaked Ladies Are Men and Barenaked Ladies Are Me. You also have to filter out non-Canadian Commonwealth results, which will defualt to plural (and yet were vanishingly few in the "Barenaked Ladies are a Canadian Band" example). What you seem to be missing are (a) NAmEng uses both singular and plural for groups; (b) in many cases in NAmEng, only the plural is acceptible ("The government is in recess"); (c) "XXX is a band" trumps "XXX are a band" in the majority of cases in NAmEng—especially when not explicitly plural, but even when they are explicitly plural.

My point is that the MoS should step out of the way in cases like this and let native NAmEng editors write natural NAmEng articles, and not demand artificial "consistency" (or allow itself to be interpreted to demand such a thing). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:05, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: I can filter out the album names and still get lots of immediate US hits, e.g. in Huffington Post, CBC News, Axs, Los Angeles Weekly, FM radio station websites, Rolling Stone, etc. [5], and the band themselves use "are" [6]. Regardless, frequent occurrence of we/are plural constructions for band, team, etc., names in plural format when when following the ("The Beatles are still selling a lot of albums") – and common-enough usage of it even when not followed by the ("Pixies are doing a reunion tour") – in N.Am. usage proves conclusively that the blanket assertion that "singular it/is is required in American English" is false, the assertion you don't want to see asserted.

So, we seem to be talking past each other, and wandering off the field. You were earlier arguing for "Megadeath are", and what I drafted [in the later revised form] wouldn't affect the apparent preference for "Barenaked Ladies is", since the band name isn't the Barenaked Ladies. If we don't say something like what I drafted, the currently oversimplistic MoS material on it is liable to continue to be misconstrued as forcing unnatural constructions for hyper-consistency's sake. We could round it off with something like "In cases where usage in sources in the same national form of English is widely mixed, either style is acceptable."
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That'd be good. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:53, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I didn't read every word in this thread, but just reading this last suggested wording, I think only if you've been in on this discussion would you understand it. "In cases where usage in sources [written] in the same national form of English as WHAT? is widely mixed, either style is acceptable." Sorry to throw this small wrench in.  – Corinne (talk) 16:03, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

A merge is proposed for templates like ((IUPAC_spelling)) and ((British English Oxford spelling)). See this TfD. - DePiep (talk) 13:30, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

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.

Weighing the arguments, there is a clear consensus for the proposal i.e. to Y accept and promote the project guidelines to the status of MOS.The opposing !votes have been well-rebuttled and the desired move may be executed accordingly.~ Winged Blades^Godric 05:05, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

---

Should WP:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines be moved to WP:Manual of Style/Video games, as part of the MoS?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:33, 22 December 2017 (UTC); revised 18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Background and rationale: I'm normally skeptical about wikiproject advice pages, since most of them are represent single narrow viewpoint, conflict with site-wide guidelnes, and haven't been worked on since the mid-2000s. However:

• This one is comprehensive (for the topic), as well as actively maintained and stable (as such things go).
• It really is all style material (in successive sections with subsections: relevance, tone, and sectioning; spelling, italics, punctuation, capitalization, jargon, and similar style details; then image usage).
  • Many such wikiproject pages are dumping grounds for all kinds of stuff about topical notability, original research and independent sourcing, etc., but this one is not; non-style material is only touched on, appropriately, in WP:SUMMARY style and cross-referenced to the main pages on such matters.
• It's been tagged with ((Guideline)) for over a decade, and I don't see any controversy about this since 2007. VG articles actually seem to be following it, which means it can be taken as a legitimate guideline.
  • However, it's aberrant for a guideline to be in the "Wikipedia:WikiProject" sub-namespace; this implies (and can frequently lead to) WP:OWNership over its content. An actual style guideline should be in "Wikipedia:Manual of Style/" (and a non-style one directly in "Wikipedia:").
  • This move was actually previously done unilaterally and without discussion, then reverted, on 3 December 2013. It wasn't a bad idea, but needs an actual WP:PROPOSAL like this one.
• It appears to be consistent with MOS (and other WP:P&Gs) throughout; the page history demonstrates a continual maintenance effort to keep it synched with site-wide best practices.
  • Many such pages are full of "here's how we want to defy the rules because our topic is magically different" nonsense; this isn't one of them.
• The move would be consistent with MOS:TV, MOS:FILM, MOS:FICTION, MOS:COMICS, MOS:ANIME, etc. The video game guideline has already had a MOS:VG shortcut for years, which is confusing if it's not part of MoS. This probably could have been done via WP:RM but I like to be formalistic about adding pages to MoS proper, to avoid later disputes.

The only cleanup work it seems to need is some copyediting to be more concise; better cross-referencing to other parts of MoS (which may also result in more concision – one can simply state a rule and link to where it is, rather than restate the rationale for it); and removal from the lead the statement that it's a wikiproject page; then the appropriate page-top template and categorization, updates to shortcuts, and addition to the ((Style)) navbox.

PS: The only other WP:PROJPAGE I know of that is MoS-ready is Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style (for a similar pattern of good reasons). It should either be moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Computer science or Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer science/Style advice. See also previous thread about merging salvageable parts of the abortive WP:Manual of Style/Computing into it. I've recently found several abandoned wikiproject pages at "/Manual of Style" names and moved them to "/Style advice" names because they were clearly not guidelines, were not MoS-compatible, and were just low-input essays or even ((Failed)) proposals; I tagged some of them with ((Superseded)) when applicable, pointing to current MoS sections that cover the same stuff in currently maintained and accepted ways.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:33, 22 December 2017 (UTC); revised 18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Comments on MOS:VG

• Support per nom. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk • contribs) 01:40, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support - assuming there is no downside to this, which it doesn't appear to be. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 01:49, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support no glaring problems like, no or must have infobox. ..or can't link to so and sI etc... Would like to see User:SMcCandlish trim this a bit.--Moxy (talk) 03:12, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  It's worth doing it slowly and in stages, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  04:22, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support I read through it and it seems good. Galobtter (pingó mió) 04:18, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support I am in agreement, it makes sense to move it._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 11:50, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
• I have quibbles with parts of the page here and there. Some of it gets more into "what a video game article is (not)" and strays away from the style aspects, or touches a bit more on categorization aspects than style, (or... x-not-quite-MOSy-thing) but our MOS is not exactly a traditional MOS either. Broadly, support, and we can talk through the parts that might be better off in other places (or centralized, as I've discussed elsewhere with SMC). --Izno (talk) 12:38, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  Most of the topical MoS pages do that. This page is one of the least problematic in that regard, and it's easily cleaned up, to the extent is needs it. More on that in the extended discussion section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• This is probably the most obvious exception to the way we usually think about WP:Local consensus... it is a “project” guideline that has input from a very large group of editors and is strongly supported by the entire community. Because it IS project related, and covers more than just style, it is not really appropriate to call it an MOS page. Yet because it IS so strongly supported, there is a desire to “promote” it out of being just a “project” guideline. Yet because it IS so strongly supported, there is a desire to “promote” it out of being just a “project” guideline. I would say leave it where it is... but think of it as having the same WEIGHT as an MOS page. Blueboar (talk) 14:52, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  Replied in the extended discussion section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• Broad support as natural evolution/maturing from project- and scope-specific guideline to a project-wide one. Since we don't really have topic-based guidelines (yet), the MoS seems as good target as any following existing precedent. Individual issues with guideline can be resolved as needed. It seems broad, neutral, based on existing guidelines/policies, despite originating in a single project (a large one though). —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 19:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, only because it does not yet seem clear how the VG project retains its "control" on this. We at the project clearly are trying to stay in the bounds of established MOS, the last thing we want to do is fork the existing MOS as if we are s pecial. That said, the content that goes beyond MOS like article guideline suggestions are things we as interested BY editors move quickly on that potentially would be bogged down by having this as a project wide MOS. O appreciate that the page is recognized as a good basis, but I am very concerned that trying to elevate project level guidelines to wp-wide ones loses some of the project's capabilities. --Masem (t) 08:30, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

  Not sure what to tell you other than a) if the goal is for a small cadre of editors to control the page, then it's not a guideline (though I don't think that really is the intent); and b) it's not been a problem for TV, movies, anime, comics, fiction/novels, popular music, classical music, etc., nor numerous sports, or country/ethnicity/language projects, nor various fields like mathematics, law, medicine, and so on. If there's just some nebulous concern along "those Others from MoS are going to tell us what to do" lines, that's actually a less likely outcome if this becomes part of MoS, since it's then part of the MoS gestalt instead of some page most of us probably thought of as an essay (to not care much about), or weren't even aware of.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:41, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't see the upside. The content doesn't warrant any increase in standing than what it currently has as a project advice page. And I say that as a major contributor... If these sorts of pages need title standardization, I'd sooner see them grouped as "topical advice" than "style guidelines". (not watching, please ((ping))) czar 16:37, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The upside is that the community backs it, not just the cache of editors hiding out on WT:VG. No questions ever elsewhere of "it doesn't say 'guideline' on it", of which we have had a few before. --Izno (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

    But last I checked, the page functions as topical advice, not as a guideline with firm expectations, e.g., WP:WAF. It's more like a codification of common sense, but its text is not delivered as gospel and editors are freer to disagree than they are with MoS guidelines. czar 02:03, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose -It functions exactly as it should now. If we start having issues like "Hey, that not an official MOS, so I'm not following it" I'd reconsider, but I experience this very little, if ever. We've worked very hard to make this, and it works. I don't want to risk breaking it by shoe-horning it into a different standardized form. Sergecross73 msg me 15:08, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Meaning what? No one has mentioned any standard form or a shoehorn.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  16:58, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Well, it sounds like there's more to it than just renaming it something with MOS on the name, or you would have just done it and not had this discussion. Sergecross73 msg me 04:45, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

      Nothing more to it at all. As I said in the opening statement: "This probably could have been done via WP:RM but I like to be formalistic about adding pages to MoS proper, to avoid later disputes." Various pages have previously been added to MoS without discussion, with such moves later being reverted as undiscussed, and sometimes outright objected to (e.g. because the projpage is question is a terrible pile of WP:CREEP and WP:OWN – which this page isn't, though I detect a disturbing level of OWNishness in the oppose comments so far, enough that should this MoS merger fail, it's likely to result in another RfC to demote this back to a WP:PROJPAGE essay. There is no such thing as a WP guideline that is completely controlled by a tiny handful of wikiproject people. I.e., WP:VG is badly sabotaging its own interests here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:22, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

      • Its nothing more than "If its not broke, don't fix it", so please assume good faith. "Sabotage" is a stupid word choice for choosing to retain something that functions as a well oiled machine too. Sergecross73 msg me 00:47, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

  • We have had at least one editor suppose that WP:VG/GL is "just" a project page simply because it has not gone through the WP:PROPOSAL process, and I have gotten a similar feeling from a few others as well, though nothing explicit. If it works--and it does--then we should put it to the community, as has been done for this discussion, and let the community decide if it actually works. I don't want to risk breaking it by shoe-horning it into a different standardized form. I think this gets to the comment ferret made, but I'll reply to him separately. --Izno (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Well, it's hard to respond without you explaining what exactly you're talking about, but I've been pretty active with WP:VG since 2010-2011, and I can't think of any times where an actual consensus was affected by this. Some random grumbling? Sure. But nothing that actually affected things. Sergecross73 msg me 04:45, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
  • Oh, and lastly: It would encourage users to engage with the page who are not typically video game writers, as well as allow us to refer to the page authoritatively (especially with newbies!) as the guidelines. (I'm thinking of another writer who went against the Layout expectations set out in WP:VG/GL.) --Izno (talk) 18:56, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Our MOS is a resource for editors. As such, it is the obvious place to go when one wants to know this or that about Wikipedia's house style. Project pages exist more for content collaboration and, as such, are not nearly as obvious a location for style guidance. If style advice on a certain topic has widespread (not only project-wide, but site-wide) support, then not putting it in our MOS does a disservice to editors and, ultimately, readers. Primergrey (talk) 16:19, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Per Blueboar, Masem and Serge. I have concerns about statements that it needs a few things removed or trimmed before it's truly suitable and "100% style". What will ultimately be removed? What is WP:VG's say on that? If the result is that our current subpage, "Article guidelines", moves to MOS, but we have to create a brand new "Article guidelines" to cover the things removed, we have split our guidance on VG articles and made it more difficult to point users to said guidance. Like Serge, I don't ever really see any challenges such as "That's just project advice so not following it". -- ferret (talk) 16:30, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

  My argument is that nothing substantive in it should be removed at all, because it's standard operating procedure for topical MoS pages to have summarized bits of naming, notability, and other stuff in them, then referring to main pages on such matters for the details. The page in question is already doing this well, though it probably wouldn't hurt to summarize a little more and merge more, since VG already has both WP:NCVG and WP:NVG. What it actually needs work on is concision. One of several examples: "That said, it is still possible to use gaming jargon in an article. This could be of necessity if the game's concept deals closely and often with the jargon. The jargon would, however, have to be clearly explained (simple and clear sentences) before its first use in the article." This could be compressed by about 50%, retaining all the real meaning, and actually get the point across better and more memorably.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  16:58, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

  My comments in that direction have not been "we should remove obviously good sense entirely from Wikipedia without replacement elsewhere" but instead a) we should remove !rules that do not (obviously) jive with broader guidelines and policies (if there are any such--I've noted a few) and b) if there are matters not covering style in the document, I'd like to see those documented elsewhere as not-style issues. We do a disservice to our editors currently by not distinguishing style from content guidelines--across the board for topical matters, even, not just with respect to video games. As I said, I'd prefer to see it in a different form from today, but that's not a discussion that is make or break. (And clearly, I am but one editor.) --Izno (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support—there are compelling reasons that matters of style and formatting throughout en.WP, let alone within these related wikiprojects, should be harmonised. WP's high-level policies reject the notion of ownership, and that seems to be what is fuelling some editors' objections. They should be disregarded. Tony (talk) 00:29, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

  If it were only relegated to issues of style and formatting, I would have no problem, since that part of the VG MOS follows global MOS. But the VG guideline s are more than MOS issues, particularly related to organization, appropriate content, and notability, which are to be taken as advice, not exacting standards. One speaks of ownership issues but in my mind it is more an issue which those MOS enforcers that "own" the MOS that will try to make unilateral decisions on our content advice, which MOS should not be covering. --Masem (t) 12:27, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support – The VG style recommendations seem like they fit best under the MOS, and as Tony says need to be kept in harmony. I don't see a downside to putting this as part of MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 05:54, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support – Given the length and extent of the advice at WP:VGG that applies to both style and content, a portion (if not most or all of it) would seem more appropriately placed in the MOS. The film project has MOS:FILM for example, which combines both content and style guidelines. Though it is listed there, it is primarily maintained by members of the film project with occasional help from non-members. That's how it should be, and VG project members shouldn't fear the change. Others listed at CAT:MOS show how commonplace this has become. I agree with the motivation behind the proposal; the additional oversight would be a good thing. If VG members feel that some items in WP:VGG don't belong in the MOS, simply retain said items within the WikiProject when there is consensus to do so. --GoneIn60 (talk) 18:47, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support per nominator. Jc86035 (talk) 09:17, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support: we should also try to move the other projects' style advice into the main MoS—it is often the case that editors try to bring in what is believed to be MoS-compliant style only to be told of another set of guidelines. –Sb2001 00:37, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

  Indeed. Most of the sports-related ones could be merged into a single MOS:SPORTS with sport-specific sections.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  09:53, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support per Sb2001.--Kevin Dewitt ^{Always ping} 19:48, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support MOS:VG move to unify it under WP:MoS and increase visibility.   —  Hei Liebrecht 19:20, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:NOTGAMEGUIDE. Video games are not so distinctive a topic that we need pages of rules just for them. Andrew D. (talk) 18:00, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

  Not responsive to the RfC; we already have the guideline and have for many years; the question is whether it's a good idea to have a lone style guideline that is somehow not part of MoS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:33, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Extended discussion of MOS:VG

• Question I know this may strike on the "ownership" point above but... What impact will this have on the project's ability to make changes based on discussions and consensus that occur at the project's talk page? WP:VG/DATE, WP:JFN, WP:VGSCOPE #6, and WP:VG/MIXED for example are relatively new or recently adjusted (within last two years), that arose from such discussions. -- ferret (talk) 02:41, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, is like to know this too, before I support. Sergecross73 msg me 03:54, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  I don't think there'd be any real effect, judging from the other media-topical projects and associated MoS pages. WP:VG is unusually good about not WP:POLICYFORKing this page from broader guidelines, anyway – among the main reasons I think it's MoS-ready. I would suggest to just move discussions about the MOS:VG from WT:VG to WT:MOSVG. When that doesn't happen, a pointer on the latter to a discussion on the former should be good enough; I think people just want to see that it was discussed somewhere. It'll probably be mostly the same project people most of the time (low potential for dispute between the pages), but it's helpful if some unconnected WP:FRS respondents get involved – a stronger, broader consensus (WP:CONLEVEL). Can have good synergistic effects; e.g., the recent overhaul of MOS:FILM on "Production" sections can be generalized, with minimal retooling, to MOS:FICTION, and WP:SUMMARY-treated as essentially the same key points in MOS:TV, MOS:COMICS, MOS:VG, etc., and was intended to do that from the start. Wouldn't've happened if it was just some wikiproject page that none of the MoS regulars were watching.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  04:22, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  That the VG/GL page has had discussions about content in it not on its page has actually concerned me for a bit. When it is obvious the matter that comes up at WT:VG is about the guidelines page, it should be moved to the talk page of the guide page. --Izno (talk) 12:38, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  Sure; I just doubt anyone will flip out if there's an occasional exception, just as they don't when it happens with the other media-topical MoS pages and the associated wikiprojects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  I find it makes it harder to track when, where, and why changes are made to the PAG page. This one in particular has seen me needing to go Back And Forth between two separate sets of archived pages. --Izno (talk) 18:25, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• A note: Should this have an RFC tag? --Izno (talk) 12:38, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  We could always open an RfC to find out. EEng 13:47, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  RFC yourself out the door. --Izno (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  There izno need to get defensive. EEng 16:55, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  Seemed superfluous for a question that could have been resolved at WP:RM, and has already been advertised to the relevant projects and to VPPOL and VPPRO. But I put an RfC tag on it just now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  I don't mind whether it's an RFC tag or an RM tag--those both have a different set of people even than those who watch VPP or VPPR. However, WP:PROPOSAL has a specific idea in mind when proposing an addition to the PAGs. --Izno (talk) 18:25, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• Re Izno's initial comment, on not-strictly-style material: It's better for a topical MoS page to have a tight WP:SUMMARY-style segment on topical notability or naming conventions than to fork off an entire new "WP:NTOPIC" or "WP:NCTOPIC" for that if it'll say essentially the same thing in five paragraphs, instead of two sentences with cross-references to more general WP:P&G pages. It's also perfectly legit to put a notability or naming convention or whatever guideline tag on a section; we do this in various topical guidelines, and at WP:SAL, to avoid pointless profusion of short, topical pages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  I broadly agree with this comment (though, I note both WP:NCVG and WP:NVG :). My concern is more toward the "what is a video game-related article" side, as well as some stuff about sourcing that has elsewhere it could go (and some stuff on the current WP:VG/S that could go elsewhere also). --Izno (talk) 18:30, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  A bit further: WP:NOT does a NOT-great job at defining what Wikipedia is, for which we are probably seeing one of effects here. There is a lot of guidance on how to write a good article and not simply how to make your article have a conformant style. --Izno (talk) 18:32, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

  Yeah, there is cleanup to do. WP:COMICS is perhaps a better example (or, rather, a clearer example of what's not better). The MOS:COMICS page has extensive material on naming conventions yet there's also a separate WP:NCCOMICS page, and last I looked at them they weren't even in agreement. It would be much better to merge and reconcile that NC material to the NC page for it, and at the MOS page leave behind either no NC material at all, or just a few-main-points synopsis with a ((Main)) pointing to the NC page. WP:VG already has this under much better control. That said, "how to write a good article on X" is a common feature of many of the better topical MoS pages; it may be the most natural way to do that, since a great article on medieval monarchs isn't going to look much like a great article on viruses or on the concept Chicano. MoS, though, does have it's MOS:WBA general, non-topical supplement page (why that's at WP:Writing better articles without "Manual of Style/" in it is some historico-organizational mystery, and another thing to add to the no-deadline cleanup list, especially since it's explicitly self-described as an MoS supplement page. Yesterday I found a page like that described as a MOS:ACCESS supplement and moved it to be under WP:Manual of Style/Accessibility/ along with the rest of them).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:38, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

• Re Blueboar's initial comment, on WP:CONLEVEL: The level of support is what we're actually testing here, and there's no such thing as a ((Guideline))-claimant that has the same weight as a wikiproject page as it would have it it were not one. This is not the only topical page to have had ((Guideline)) on it for years without a proposal, and they should not all retain it; it was removed in favor of an essay tag on several of them of them recently after discussions of their level of site-wide acceptance ([11] among others). Things like WP:MEDRS are not under WP:WikiProject Medicine (despite mostly being developed by the same people) for a reason: it's like keeping the article you've written as a draft in your userspace indefinitely; at some point it's ready to face the world, or it's old trash we don't need. I think MOS:VG is ready.

  Would you have us just move all topical MoS pages back to wikiprojects (and consequently cost them a lot of acceptance)? WP:PROJPAGEs is how they originated, same as in this case. So, no, this is not an exception to how we normally do things, it's just not been done in a while, because most topical style pages under wikiprojects have either been moved into the real MoS years ago, or tagged ((Historical)), ((Essay)), or ((Rejected)). Most such page ideas get strongly rejected (see, e.g. [12] and [13] recently) or just ignored (even for massive projects like WP:MILHIST, e.g. here), even when the output of multiple RfCs [14], even when non-topical but of narrow editorial concern here (see also about 95% of what happens at WP:VPPRO). There's also the repeated failure [15][16] to get consensus for the idea that topical subject-specific notability guidelines (SNGs) can trump the WP:GNG. The continual gist of all this: the community takes a dim view of attempts by a topical group of editors to control guidelines; it even inspires efforts to demote them to essays, and these sometimes succeed [17],[18]. We have a bot that reports "[pagename] has been added to the MoS" in posts to WT:MOS, and most such additions are immediately reverted back to WP:PROJPAGE essays or individuals' d[r]aft proposal essays.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

my only point (if there is one) is that not all project guidelines are equal... many are indeed low on the consensus scale... but some enjoy broad consensus. This is one of them. What I reject is the idea that we need to in some way “promote” it to MOS status to make it more “official”. Just accept that it enjoys broad consensus. Blueboar (talk) 00:02, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Sure. Whether the material and the editorial pool that put that page together have earned it the right to be taken seriously isn't in question here; the fact that it should be is why this is proposed for adoption into the site-wide style guidelines. Under a wikiproject name, the "just accept its consensus" ideal is less likely to happen for any particular editor who encounters it. It's also organizationally problematic; if people don't actually encounter it in the MoS pages, they're less likely to encounter it at all, plus more likely to assume there's no coverage of the topic; time is limited, and they're not going to go trawling around in wikiproject pages in hopes of finding it. The consistency and consolidation are useful both for finding the material and keeping it in synch.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:18, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

If you think it could be improved, improve it. No need to change it to MOS. Blueboar (talk) 17:08, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

if people don't actually encounter it in the MoS pages, they're less likely to encounter it at all, plus more likely to assume there's no coverage of the topic; time is limited, and they're not going to go trawling around in wikiproject pages in hopes of finding it. Yup yup yup. If it isn't in the style box, I'd assume there isn't a broadly accepted guideline. Also being there affirms that it has broad consensus to someone who doesn't know much about it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:02, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

• Two major concerns I have. First we have to acknowledge that WP has so called MOS warriors, that fight a lot about exact adherance towards MOS standards. Second, the standards that affect the overall WP like about punctuation, those are fine to make sure are consistent. But much of the current vg guidelines is advice, not meant to be read as standards, or what other MOS feed into our guidelines but not creating new MOS. This would be like the issue of infoboxes on BIO articles, which resulted in case that says this can't be forced. Making the vg guidelines a MOS level would trigger those that are stickers to MOS adherence override local consensus on, say, article content order, where that local consensus had previously determined the non MOS order wickedness for that article. It is why we give these as project level advice, not absolutes that MOS are often read as. I know there are other MOS from other projects that are in the MOS but I have also the MOS stickers thy to enforce those as if they were policy. --Masem (t) 19:16, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

• As SMC has posted to several other MOS project pages looking for the idea of unified media MOS, this is a bad idea. The different forms of media have different ways of how they are treated in the relevant media. The structure used to cover a film differs greatly from that of a musical album, from a TV series, or a video game. Trying to unify these is really a bad idea, coupled with those that want to enforce MOS with a degree of strictness, is a recipe for orobkems. Segregate the true MOS elements out from these, but leave elements like struxture, cintent, etc up to each project. --Masem (t) 23:59, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

My mother has a recipe for orobkems that's just to die for. The secret is to add just a hint of mishegas along with the kabuki. Struxture and cintent give me heartburn. EEng 00:18, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

• Question... is there anything in the VG guideline’s style section that is not ALREADY in the main MOS? Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
  • As best as I am aware (eg one of the VG MOS's authors), no. That style/formatting stuff can be taken as "Here is what are applicable aspects of the site-wide MOS that affect VG project articles", and does not attempt to introduce anything new. The structure/content/notability stuff is based on what the core content policies look for (NOT, V, etc.) but where those policies are not rigid, we going into more depth on advice there. --Masem (t) 15:21, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Then moving it is pointless... the style section of the VG guideline is simply a reiteration of already established MOS guidance. Blueboar (talk) 15:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
      • That I agree with. I also express concern that we have wikiproject guidelines like film, music, etc. pushed into MOS when, to the best of my understanding, those were similarly written to reiterate/summate how the appropriate style and formatting MOS apply to articles in those fields. They are not creating a new style/formatting MOS. (Contrast this to something like WP:MEDMOS, MOS that applies to medical topics that cross many topic fields and possible wikiprojects. I do think that having links to this project-level content guidelines in one easy-to-find place helpful but they should not be considered a part of MOS but subservient to MOS, and thus, where there is advice that is outside the standard format and style MOS, should not be enforced as some editors typically seek to bring articles into compliance with the MOS. --Masem (t) 17:06, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Having a subcategory in the MOS that concentrates on a specific topic area such as film or video games allows for tailored examples (especially those that have been a heated subject of debate at one time) to add additional clarification that may not have been as clear otherwise when reading the general MOS. Complementing the MOS in this fashion is helpful and not unnecessarily redundant. I imagine it's the same reason why a style section exists at WP:VGG. If there was no point in moving it on the basis that it reiterates MOS guidance, then there's no point in having the section to begin with. Just provide a link to the MOS. The logic in the argument goes both ways. --GoneIn60 (talk) 19:58, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

The problem is that these MOS sections in the wikiproject guidelines are not new MOS (that I'm aware of, and definitely the case for VG), they are a summary of the most common standard MOS points that can come up while writing articles in topic space to be most aware of, a type of FAQ. Given how complex our MOS are, this is completely reasonable for any wikiproject to offer. It seems much better to have a completely different category of "content guidelines" that sit outside of the site-wide MOS. Only a few would apply across a large number of articles, the rest are content guidelines with many reasonable exceptions that apply to narrow topic areas, including those set by Wikiprojects. I will note these cannot be managed in isolation of site-wide consensus (eg a wikiproject cannot override core notability principles) but it is still important that they are developed by editors with the most interest and involvement in those articles. --Masem (t) 14:28, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I can understand and appreciate that viewpoint. Keeping content advice housed under the WikiProject makes sense. Regarding style guidance being just a summary, it's worth mentioning that the same holds true for MOS:FILM and other similar subcategories in the MOS. These pages are not new MOS either. The debate is whether or not that "FAQ" should be housed in a more general Wikipedia namespace as opposed to the project's. The trend appears to favor the latter, and giving it more visibility may help keep it in check; VG editors maintaining it could unknowingly contradict the MOS. I'm not implying that has happened or will happen, but it seems reasonable to want to move it on that basis. Doing so may help avoid creating a recipe for future conflict with the MOS, whether intentional or not. The more oversight you have, the less likely that will happen. There's also precedence to support this. MOS:FILM is well-maintained by those closely affiliated with the project, with the added bonus that non-film members are more likely to weigh in on talk page discussions. Moving it wouldn't damage the project's ability to maintain it. I don't feel too strongly about it either way, but it's worth having the discussion for sure. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:26, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

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.

Followup notes:

• Didn't notice it until just now, but this was an even better idea than originally thought, as its subpage WP:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines/Naming had already been moved to WP:Naming conventions (video games) quite some time ago; this MoS move is therefore consistent with the general pattern of migrating well-accepted wikiproject NC pages to NC names and style pages to MoS names, and outside the WP:WikiProject sub-namespace where WP:OWN issues have a strong tendency to arise.
• Move now completed, including talk page and its archives. Redirects updated.
• Text normalized to MoS style; recategorized and tagged as an MoS page; resolved a handful of conflicts with the main MoS pages; plus did various copyediting, formatting cleanup, separation of footnotes and reference citations, etc.; and added a few notes not likely to be controversial [19].

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:42, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

WP is broadly against typographical decoration being used for apostrophes, in favour of the straight character.

How does this affect primes? Specifically at UIC classification of locomotive axle arrangements and this change. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It is clearly marked as being a prime sign, not an apostrophe, so the only relevant part of that MOS section is "Characters resembling apostrophes ... are represented by their correct Unicode characters", in this case the correct Unicode for a prime sign. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:51, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

So what about a fairly vast renaming of articles and categories, to move from Co'Co' to Co′Co′, Co'Co' locomotives to Co′Co′ locomotives etc.? It's a serious amount of work. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Amounts of work are not the issue. But where are the sources that confirm these should be primes, not apostrophes? Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The main source in that article is offline, but a little searching found other sources that confirm this [20]. Whether they may have been influenced by our own writeup is hard to tell, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

It's funny that the book says "the prime sign" but uses an apostrophe of single-quote mark. Dicklyon (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS applies, specifically the "Sometimes the most appropriate title contains diacritics (accent marks), dashes, or other letters and characters not found on most English-language keyboards" bit. Hence the policy is "provide redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters". Batternut (talk) 09:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

  That redirect will happen automatically anytime we move from apostrophe to prime. Dicklyon (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• MOS:MATHS#Special symbols probably applies to these texts, ie "As a rule of thumb, specific mathematical symbols shall be used, not similarly looking ASCII or punctuation symbols". I mention this somewhat grudgingly, as I think there is an impact on usability, in that readers will have difficulty searching within the page for words or phrases containing characters that look like something they can type on their keyboards though actually they cannot (easily at least). Readers of mathematics articles may expect such trouble, but I suspect readers of articles like this will just be surprised and annoyed. Batternut (talk) 10:26, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
  • This case doesn't seem to have much to do with mathematics. I don't see why mathematical style guidance should apply. I would look to railroad-related sources to see what they do.
    As an aside, "shall be used" sounds awful — if we want to keep this guidance, it should at least be changed to "should be used". When was it added, and was there discussion at the time? --Trovatore (talk) 10:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

MoS:MATHS because prime (symbol) is a maths symbol, listed in List of mathematical symbols. (The "shall be used" shall be discussable at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Mathematics, I would h'imagine. When added and discussed? No idea.) Batternut (talk) 11:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

It's not a math symbol when it's not being used for mathematics. --Trovatore (talk) 19:26, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

MOS:MATHS says, first line: "This subpage of the Manual of Style contains guidelines for writing and editing clear, encyclopedic, attractive, and interesting articles on mathematics and for the use of mathematical notation in Wikipedia articles on other subjects." (my italics) Batternut (talk) 21:41, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

If it's not being used mathematically, then it isn't mathematical notation. --Trovatore (talk) 22:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Don't you think these notations are mathematical entities? They look like it to me. Dicklyon (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

No, not really. Apparently you use the prime to indicate the presence of a "bogie", whatever that is exactly. I don't know much about it but it doesn't sound much like math. --Trovatore (talk) 01:10, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

According to Urban Dictionary, a bogie is another word for a cigarette. Still not math. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:46, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I would say the usage follows the maths usage, ie "to generate more variable names for things which are similar" (per Prime (symbol)#Use in mathematics, statistics, and science). For example, where "B" denotes a pair of powered axles mounted in the locomotive frame, "B´" denotes a pair of powered axles mounted on a bogie. Batternut (talk) 09:21, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

It certainly has a conceptual similarity to the mathematical usage, and may be inspired thereby. But it seems to me too far removed from mathematics to make it worth bothering about mathematical stylistic conventions. The B here is not a variable or a function symbol or any other similar thing to which we might apply a prime in mathematics; it's a code for an arrangement of railcar wheels. I would just find out what is typically done in railroad literature, and do that. --Trovatore (talk) 19:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

It's more like chemistry example perhaps. "The carbonyl carbon in proteins is denoted as C′, which distinguishes it from the other backbone carbon". In this, C is not variable, it is always carbon, just mounted differently. Replace "carbon" with "3 powered axles", "backbone" with "locomotive frame", "carbonyl" with "bogie" and, we have an axle arrangement! Batternut (talk) 20:57, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

It could be like chemistry, or like math, but it isn't chemistry or math. I don't see any need to enforce some sort of cross-field consistency in usages based only on analogies. Let's just find out what the railroad people do. --Trovatore (talk) 20:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Just find out what the railroad people do - that could be quite a big ask! Authority may say it must be typed with a key not on anyone's keyboard, but that just might not be what people do. Google ignores such typographic niceties. Falling back to our own guide (yes, MOS:MATHS "for the use of mathematical notation in Wikipedia articles on other subjects"), already well cooked, just makes life easy for us. Batternut (talk) 23:46, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

But it isn't mathematical notation! In caps, bold, italics, multiple exclamations!!!1!!1!. It's possible to make a decision that the unicode primes should be used, but no, MOSMATH does not apply here, because it isn't mathematical notation.

We ought to do whatever the railroad people do, assuming it isn't outright ugly or difficult for us in some way, because that will minimize surprise for people who know the subject, and prepare those who don't for what they'll encounter in the literature. Forcing it into a Procrustean bed made by a different subject might be "easy", but that's about the only good thing to say for it. --Trovatore (talk) 01:49, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Well "Bo′(A1A)", "(2Co)(Co2)", "1′E1′h2Gt" etc all look like maths, so general maths formatting makes sense to me, imho. Perhaps the whole MoS is just one big Procrustean bed then? Batternut (talk) 10:00, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

[21] uses apostrophes and calls them that. Don't know how authoritative or typical it is.  – Modal Jig 02:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

This 2008 book also uses "apostrophe" but this and this newer one use "prime sign". —David Eppstein (talk) 02:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

That second example of David Eppstein's looks like apostrophes to me. Batternut (talk) 11:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean that the notations "look like" math. As in, they're abstract and use symbols? That doesn't make them math, in my estimation. --Trovatore (talk) 20:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

We are clearly failing to convince each other, Mr T. I suggest we save our breath/keystrokes. Batternut (talk) 21:01, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Given that the article is at Co-Co locomotives, a well-sourced spelling (and "Co′Co′ " in one exact form or another is just UIC's rendering), this seems like a non-issue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:54, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Africa#Should South Africa articles use "continental system" numbers? which could benefit from MoS and WP policy regulars. It was prompted by edits changing South Africa to 12 345,6 format. Searching the MoS talk archives revealed lengthy discussion Grouping of digits and also Indian currency number conventions.

I am supposing that MOS:ENGVAR applies to number formats - dates are mentioned explicitly, though numbers are not. Batternut (talk) 01:35, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Definitely shouldn't be in "12 345,6" format on en.Wikipedia, per WP:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Decimals: "A period/full point (.), never a comma, is used as the decimal point (6.57, not 6,57)." The "12 345,6" style is almost entirely non-English, and to the minor extent it's used in English it's ambiguous and not understood by the majority of our readers. They all do understand "12,345.6" and "12345.6" (which cannot actually be said for "12 345.6", though "12 345.6" with a   thin-space character is marginally less awful and geeky; we're using that in some technical articles, but not everyone is happy about that).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  18:18, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

MOS:DIGITS says   is problematic for screen-readers. Thus ((val)) and ((gaps)) seem the preferred if not the only way to do gap separation.

Interesting. This should be re-examined. I'm skeptical that modern screen readers have an issue with  ; if they do, then there are other places in MoS where it's recommended and needs to be replaced with a template that's kerning with CSS instead.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I understood SMcCandlish's "Definitely shouldn't" to apply to commas for the decimal mark, but that 12345.6 can perhaps grudgingly be used. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Africa#Should existing South Africa articles be changed to use gaps as thousands separators? discusses imposing gaps across all South Africa articles. Batternut (talk) 21:04, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

The really imposing gap is in Arizona, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  08:33, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

NHR says that spaces should be used in technical contexts, otherwise commas. It is probably safer to stick with commas only, but a change in policy doesn't seem to be required at this time. –Sb2001 00:34, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

No way. Why do we even support the comma=gaps options? Dicklyon (talk) 03:43, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

As a compromise between mathematical purists who would prefer not to have any separators at all because they're not a meaningful part of the number, and editors who think that numbers are more readable when broken into smaller groups of digits? (I'm in the former group.) On the other hand, if "no way" is a response to the question of whether we should use this weird South African format, I agree. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:15, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

South African articles should use 12,345.6, unless they are specifically about a mathematical or technical topic (which should be rare). Kaldari (talk) 06:23, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I see that the MOS page has a "this page is policy" header even though I thought that while generally accepted, it was unenforceable. Does DONTHIDE always have to be followed or are can it be excepted? Thanks, plz ping L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 22:49, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Um... The MOS is NOT marked as a policy... it’s marked as a guideline... which means that while it (generally) should be followed, there can be (and are) occasional exceptions. To know whether a specific situation is one of those “occasional” exceptions (or not), we would need to know the specific situation. Blueboar (talk) 23:09, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Someone suggested adding a collapsible route table to a Transit station during an RfC but DONTHIDE was invoked as a reason against that. I don't think it is an accessibility issue because the material we are looking to add could be found externally, and while that may be an argument againsty inclusion, I don't think a collapsed template on the page will be a major issue. In the MOS header it was the "it is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow" part which was throwing me off because common sense can vary among editors. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 23:19, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

To clarify the instruction... note that it says “should attempt to follow”... not “must follow”. It is strongly encouraged guidance, but not “law”. Which means it isn’t an always or never thing.

In the case you are discussing... I do know that there is a LOT of debate right now over whether Wikipedia should even HAVE airline destination lists. So this was probably suggested as a potential compromise between the two extreme camps. Things are still up in the air on that broader issue... with no clear consensus (yet). The idea of collapsing the lists is an interesting idea, worth discussing further... but there is no way to know now if it will or will not be accepted. If it is, we can amend any policies or guidance to account for it (one of the beauties of Wikipedia is that our policies and guidelines are not written in stone, and can be amended if necessary). Still too early to say whether it gain consensus or not, however. Blueboar (talk) 23:41, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok, thank you for explaining to me :) L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 00:11, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Collapsed content in article bodies is "user-hateful". Either the information is relevant and should be presented, or it is not and should be moved to a spin-off article or just removed per WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE. "Enforcement" is the wrong mental model to apply to this or any other page. There's a consensus that hiding content in articles in unconstructive – it's not just an accessibility problem but several kinds of usability problem (e.g., it makes the content inaccessible in the mobile view, and it also interferes with in-page search). Collapse boxing is frequently used in infoboxes and navboxes, however; they already have accessibility limits, and are not part of the core content of the article anyway, so doing it there isn't a big deal. None of this has changed in years, so the consensus is clear. Whether something's in a guideline, a policy, or an essay with site-wide acceptance (like BRD and AADD) is irrelevant; either it represents consensus or it does not. The question is whether there's some overwhelming reason to ignore the consensus in this particular case. There would not appear to be such a reason; there's nothing unusual about this particular kind of list or table, and if "this may not be of interest to all readers" and "this is long and detailed" where collapsing rationales, then we'd be collapsing hundreds of thousands of lists and tables, but we are not. "Maybe Wikipedia shouldn't have destination and timetable lists in transit articles at all" is a WP:NOT debate, not a MOS:HIDE one.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:14, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the phrase "user-hateful"! It's perfect. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 17:23, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

It's an old one, the opposite of "user-friendly". Bruce Sterling was using it as early as 1994 in The Hacker Crackdown. Weirdly, The Jargon File doesn't include it, though it has "programmer-hostile" as a humorous synonym of "user-friendly".[22]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:25, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

There is a discussion about allowing pre-nominals and post-nominals for school articles. See WT:WPSCH/AG#nominals. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:06, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#L'Hôpital's rule.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:34, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedia users. Some people on here tend to use Common Era (CE) and Before Common Era (BCE) when talking about calendar dates.

Now those terms aren't widely understood by the general public, they are also deemed to be politically correct and therefore offensive.

The terms Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD) are acceptable. Also acceptable are the terms for different era's used by the Islamic faith, the Jewish faith, the Sikh faith, the Hindu faith and the Buddhist Faith.ScottieRoadPatriot (talk) 21:13, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@ScottieRoadPatriot: What is acceptable to you, or any specific person, is not what we have decided, by consensus decision, to allow on Wikipedia. WP:ERA is clear that many different kinds of era are acceptable. --Izno (talk) 21:23, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

This is perennial rehash of what's been discussed again and again and again at WT:MOSDATE. The belief that no one knows what CE and BCE means is false. (It's essentially the same argument as "no one in America knows what a centimeter is, so ban the metric system", or "only Americans use the spelling 'aluminum', so it should be prohibited.") Even if it were true, it wouldn't matter because MOS:ABBR has us link such initialisms on the first occurrence and preferably with <abbr> markup; we even have templates for this already. The idea that they're "offensive", to anyone other than Christian viewpoint-pushers, is false. (And BC and AD are not prohibited here anyway, we just don't use them much in contexts without a clear connection to Christianity or related Western history). And we already cover other calendar systems (and their conversion to the modern Western one) at WP:MOSDATE. I'm not sure what ScottieRoadPatriot means by "Now those terms aren't widely understood", anyway; they certainly have not decreased in use.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Greengrocer's apostrophe's

Just another in my series of humorous section heading's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EEng (talk • contribs) 03:31, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@EEng: Is that what that's called? Drives me nuts. --Izno (talk) 04:20, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

LOL. I was going to fix it, with my typical "heading cleanup" edit summary, but now it's enshrined.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

The irony of someone complaining about something that isn't an error with an obvious style error is far too rich. --Jayron32 19:23, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

And the idea that acting so as to avoid offense, is itself offensive, displays a certain lack of insight. Kablammo (talk) 20:15, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

A certain offensiveness, I would have said. At least, I personally am offended by his (I have to assume deliberate) omission of secularists from the list of faith-based groups who are allowed to determine names of eras. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:35, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:Henry III of France#Why the anglicized "Henry"?
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:17, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

See Taejo of Goryeo#Family. I would have thought "issue" was the same in plural. Wiktionary defines it as a synonym of "offspring", and says that "offspring" can be pluralized with an -s or not, for what that might be worth. (Homestly I don't think I've ever seen "offsprings" referring to more than one child of someone.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it is always "issue", never "issues". -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:14, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree... I suspect the confusion arrises from the fact that he had issue / offspring by multiple consorts. While having children by multiple ladies may well have caused issues at his court, when discussing genealogy they all should be referred to as “issue” or “offspring”. Blueboar (talk) 12:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Just an anecdote: "issue" in this context is WP:JARGONy. --Izno (talk) 13:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Not really. It's used in many reliable sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:10, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Which doesn't stop it from being jargon? I have literally never seen or heard or used "issue" as anything other than a synonym for "problem", as a noun. --Izno (talk) 18:54, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Your life experience is not a reliable source we can use to edit text in Wikipedia. --Jayron32 19:02, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The OED, on the other hand, is. :-) 1931 E. Linklater Juan in Amer. 31 In 1873 he married a Miss Harriet Dormer, by whom he had issue Hildebrand, Oswald, Caroline, Cuthbert, and Anne. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarekOfVulcan (talk • contribs)

Yes, I'm glad we agree that my life experience is not a reliable source; hence, "anecdote" up the way. I'm just noting that if you tried using this to refer to [royal] offspring outside this apparently-specific context, the reaction would be "um, what?". Dictionary.com note "Chiefly Law. to proceed as offspring, or be born or descended." (as its 5th listed use of the verb); MW lists it only as a synonym for offspring and progeny as its 4th definition; the OED website lists it last of its nouns and "Law formal mass noun Children of one's own.". That makes it seem very much jargon. --Izno (talk) 19:19, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, the OED page I'm looking at lists it 5th out of 19, with " Offspring, children, descendants (also occasionally with singular reference). Also occasionally with reference to animals. Also fig. Now chiefly in legal contexts or with reference to family history." So, granted, jargon, but the examples included aren't exclusively jargon.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:58, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure its widespread use in English layman sources means it's intelligible to majority of native speakers, so WP:JARGON is a bit much, but I wonder about that example sentence you quote above User:SarekOfVulcan: it reads to me like the kind of thing we would not generally write per WP:NOTOBITUARY. That said... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, "issue" meaning "offspring" is a fairly old-fashioned, somewhat euphemistic usage that only retains currency in a few fields such as law that tend towards an intentional staid formality. Not necessarily incorrect, but not a style we need to imitate per se, as it becomes the sort of straining for formality that we should avoid. oknazevad (talk) 19:34, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Used in the bible too, and you can't say that's old fashioned! ;-) I tend to agree with you about avoiding such formality though. Batternut (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I dunno: what synonym is most appropriate in this case? If it were my article draft, I might have actually written "children" and got a chill up my spine because it felt a bit too informal (plenty of them probably grew up, and all of them are dead anyway) but the synonym "issue" didn't come to me so I settled with "children". But I don't know if I agree with actively changing "issue" to "children". I basically agree with WW below here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the use of "issue" for offspring has ever been common in colloquial English. Regardless, though, it is very commonly used to refer to the lineal descendants of a royal person, and as such should be familiar to any educated English speaker.  White Whirlwind  咨  19:40, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Not common, but certainly not jargon. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:32, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

• Issue is specifically a person's natural children, ie excludes adopted children. Hence its use in royal and legal situations, particularly wills. Wiktionary suggests some synonyms (at wikt:issue), but for the specific use at the Taejo of Goryeo article I'd suggest "lineal descendant" or just "offspring". Batternut (talk) 09:45, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Offspring is so much better...according to (ever reliable) wiktionary "issue" is "(now usually historical or law) Offspring: one's natural child or children." I certainly hadn't heard of it, and even googling it is quite hard to figure out what it means (just search "royal issue"). Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Galobtter: You hadn't heard of it? Did you read the article and become confused about what it was talking about? We can't create style guidelines under the assumption that every word used anywhere in the encyclopedia should be familiar to all of our readers without any context. In the context of the article, I imagine that even if I wasn't already familiar with the word I would have been able to figure out immediately what was meant. "offspring", on the other hand, feels a bit too ... graphic? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:02, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

​This is actually especially for the infobox, actually (not in the body), where some months ago on another article I first saw of it. In the infobox there is no context whatsoever. And we certainly should strive for the most recognition and clarity, and not use terms considered historical/legal-only. Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:07, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

If it's good enough for HRH Elizabeth II, it's good enough for me, infobox and all. Batternut (talk) 10:39, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she doesn't have a lot to say. I say let's stick with "offspring" as a modern, formal, but not too formal. oknazevad (talk) 20:24, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

How about "children"? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:17, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Children generally includes adoptees, which may not be intended. Batternut (talk) 13:56, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

But often is, even in royal contexts (e.g. Roman emperors adopting nephews as "sons" and heirs), and being natural children doesn't always matter (e.g. European bastardy), plus there's things like matrilineal inheritance as practiced by the Picts before their absorption by the Dál Riata (the king's sister's son was first in line for the throne, and whether the king had children – natural or otherwise – was irrelevant). It depends on the cultural and legal system. This is another instance where the infobox is too blunt an instrument, and the situation (if complicated) should be explained in prose, and the infobox bent to agree with it (e.g. "Children: Foo, Bar (adopted), Baz" or whatever. We have separate parameters for succession anyway. "Children" is fine, "issue" is confusing and obsolete, and "offspring" is liable to incorrectly limit the scope in too many cases.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:11, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Although I don't believe that "issue" is obsolete, as its use continues in legal and royal circumstances, I suspect the word will not be understood by a sufficient portion of readers, and using "children" in the infobox is reasonable. "Children" may typically be taken to mean natural children, and other cases (where reasonable to do so) can be hinted at as suggested by SMcC. Batternut (talk) 13:38, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

To the extent it may not be obsolete, "issue" is MOS:JARGON.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:59, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

The issue of using Wikidata descriptions for Wikipedia articles on Mobile view and in other applications where there have been problems was discussed in several places, and the latest, this RFC, has closed as The consensus is #5 for the first question - To populate the magic words by starting with blanks, and allowing them to be filled in manually and/or by bot (as per usual bot procedures). The consensus is #2 for the second question - Show no description where the magic word does not exist. This provides a way to ensure that the disambiguation description of Wikipedia articles is editable on Wikipedia, and remains within the control of Wikedians regarding BLP and other relevant policy, and can be protected from vandalism in the same way that our other content is protected, without treading on the toes of the Wikidata community.

These short descriptions will be text content hosted in the article and probably selectively visible. We will soon have the task of providing suitable short descriptions for articles, and it may be useful to consider whether this should covered by the MoS.

The Phabricator ticket gives the syntax as ((SHORTDESC:character string)) where the character string is a non-blank text description of undefined length, which is intended to provide a reader with a reasonable idea of what the article is about. Apparently WMF consider it necessary even when the title is adequately self explanatory, but in that case presumably we can simply repeat the title.

There will be millions of these to create over the years, and it would be nice to decide on any limitations and a bit of guidance before producing them in bulk. This seems to me to be within the scope of MoS, so I open the matter for discussion here.

My own opinion is that the short description should be, when possible, sufficient to distinguish between any two items likely to come up together as search results, but remain as short as practicable, so need not be a full sentence, and should be treated as any other content regarding policy and when disputed. I suggest that citing a reference would be inappropriate, and that talk page consensus should be the preferred path in those cases where there is disagreement. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:42, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

For reference, the following are some threads that have looked at some of the descriptions that currently exist on Wikidata, and how they might be improved:

• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_9#Wikidata_descriptions_of_Wikipedia_pages:_How_much_work_to_improve_them? (sample of 30)
• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_10#Extended_disambiguator_analogy (suggested harvesting of ((About)))
• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_12#Strategies_for_improving_the_descriptions (includes sample queries for groups of 200 items of various types; English parishes as a sample case)
• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_12#first_sentences (a sample of 33 'most read' on October 2, comparing Wikidata with en-wiki first sentences)
• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_12#Update_on_experimental_addition_of_short_description_templates (Perspective on scale of task)
• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_12#section_break (Abraham Lincoln; and descriptions that should be blank)
• Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2017_State_of_affairs/Archive_14#Statistically, what fraction of Wikidata descriptions are bad? (discussion of sample of 1000 random pages)
• ...

Some particular areas for attention that have been raised, that may need special focus, include

• Disambiguation pages, list pages, category pages (given very generic descriptions on Wikidata; though dab pages are useful to identify in search)
• Pages with a disambiguator in the page title
• Descriptions including regional or ethnic or national identities
• Auto-descriptions with an overly large number of occupations
• High-value (GA, FA, etc) articles, and articles that are the most heavily read
• Descriptions of living people
• Medical conditions, treatments etc, may need something at MEDMOS
• Other WikiProjects may wish to standardise the format for descriptions of classes of items like ships, works of art, athletes, tropical storms, roads, astronomical objects, chemical compounds, species of living organisms etc.
• ...

(Feel free to expand) Jheald (talk) 15:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC) & Peter (Southwood)

At the moment there are also machine-generated auto-descriptions used as a fallback, when there's no manual description on Wikidata. As a starting point, looking at the code that creates them might give a useful typology of some of the different cases to consider, and some default description formats to critique. Jheald (talk) 16:08, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Sigh... another issue with both mobile view and Wikidata. To my mind, the mobile version of Wikipedia should be based on (and use) the actual text of the desktop version... and not populated via Wikidata (a separate project). Blueboar (talk) 19:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
  • @Blueboar: That's exactly what this section is trying to move towards. But to generate (and police) 5.5 new short descriptions, we need to start from something; and we need to have some agreed idea of what we want. Jheald (talk) 20:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Start with the first few sentences of the lead paragraph of the actual article text (desktop version). No need to involve Wikidata at all. Blueboar (talk) 20:39, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
      • @Blueboar: We're not talking about the preview of the lead, we're talking about a short description. See the images on the right, above. Needs to be maximum about 40 characters, ideally less. Jheald (talk) 21:37, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
        • Use the first few sentences of the lead AS the short description. Blueboar (talk) 22:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
          • The "first few sentences" is not 40 characters. The short descriptions need to be much more concise -- something more like the short discriminators on dab pages. Also, repeating the lead is not ideal, if you're then going to show a preview of the lead, as per Abraham Lincoln above left. But see some of the threads links above for more detailed evaluations of trying to use the opening words. Jheald (talk) 23:58, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Still no reason to involve Wikidata. We could have a ((Short description)) template that provides this information, populates HTML metadata fields for search and indexing purposes, defaults to the lead if under 40 chars, uses the first almost-40 chars of the lead followed by "..." if the lead is longer than 40 chars, and throws an error if you try to feed it a custom description of 40+ chars. Easy peasy. I would suggest making that a Phabricator request, perhaps after an RfC. Best raised at WP:VPTECH I would think, maybe advertised on Meta. Like the sprawling Wikidata thread higher up this page, this isn't really an MoS discussion, but an en.WP (and other projects') data integrity and editorial control policy discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:20, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
• @SMcCandlish: For project management, there's a thread discussing some preliminary thoughts at Wikipedia_talk:Wikidata/2018_State_of_affairs#Practicalities_of_implementation, where you can offer such a suggestion.

But there absolutely is a need for an MoS discussion, to try to clarify what styles we would actually prefer and recommend for the short descriptions, for different sorts of articles -- what to put in, what to leave out, what facts to prioritise. Jheald (talk) 13:33, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

What to put in the description seems more a content issue than a style issue (for one thing, the type of content that should go into the description may not be the same from one topic area to the next... or even from one article to the next). It sounds like you are trying to automate something that really shouldn’t be automated. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

But the point of an MoS guidance (or guidance devolved to WikiProjects) is really to save editors time, to save them from re-inventing the wheel, or having essentially the same discussion about the same issues over and over again in different talk pages.

As a concrete example, from one of the threads above, here's a query for the current short descriptions on Wikidata for 159 parishes in the English county of West Sussex: tinyurl.com/y9ek4y9u. It's clear that the current state is not particularly good, there's a lot of room for improvement.

But what do we want to improve them to, for say the civil parish of Donnington,_West_Sussex? Would we prefer, eg:

• "village and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex in United Kingdom"
• "village and civil parish in Chichester, West Sussex, England"
• "village and civil parish in West Sussex, England"
• "civil parish in Sussex"

Any of the above could be systematically rolled out as an intermediate, first-draft step to replace existing cloned descriptions that don't look as they have been manually edited; and similarly, one could come up with default forms for people; films and media; other sorts of places; etc, etc.

But there is a discussion to be had, as to what forms we prefer or don't prefer, and why. Jheald (talk) 14:46, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Meh... I think ALL of those are equally acceptable... and there are probably others we have not thought of that are also acceptable. We don’t need uniformity for this. The wording of each “description” can be determined on an article by article basis. Beyond purely technical limitations (example: keep it under 40 characters) the editors who work on any given article can figure out how best to phrase the description for that article. We don’t need to over-regulate it further. Blueboar (talk) 15:21, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

@Blueboar: But are they all equally acceptable? I wonder if you're fully appreciating the strength of the imperative to be concise, and to get to the point quickly. Being short and to the point is at a real premium on mobile, as the images on the right show. In fact, if the target length is 40 characters, all of the above are over-length, apart from the last one -- the first is 84 characters long; the others 60, 48, and 22. But there's a real trade-off -- the descriptions are disambiguators, they need to capture the scope of the article too. It's quite a challenge.

(While we're at it, a further alternative:

• "village in West Sussex, England; also civil parish"

-- slightly over length again, yes; but gets straight to the point.)

Yes, the final call will be made by discussion on the talk page of the article. It's not a question of centrally laying down how the descriptions MUST be. But there is a place for central (and project-level) discussion of what works better or not, and examples of best practice -- not prescription or central regulation, but there is a place for discussion and gentle advice, .

Furthermore, the first drafts of these will be created by machine, because that's the only credible way we can get to a point of covering 5.5 million of them. So it's a good idea to think about what we actually prefer the machine to make for those draft descriptions. Jheald (talk) 17:54, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

If it were automated, it'd have to use some kind of excerpting algorithm, then. There are expert systems that do this, so we'd presumably have to adapt one of them. Still not an MoS matter, but a VPTECH one. And this is about content, not style. Compressed that much, there is no style, just a few keywords of content, probably not even in a complete sentence. Aside from automation (and, if it were automated, then also when it comes to human fine-tuning of this metadata) it will end up being a case-by-case matter (or at best a topic-by-topic one), just as with infoboxes. The issue is pretty much identical: how to present key tidbits of info in an even more compressed summary than the lead. That's going to vary widely, even within many topics (e.g. chemist bios, or whatever). As for the specific example, "village in Chichester, West Sussex, UK" would work. Whether it's also co-extensive with a "civil parish" is trivia, just like the fact that the the city of San Franciso and San Francisco County, California, are co-extensive is also not crucial information. For longer cases, abbreviation, shorter but less specific word choices, truncation, and other compression might be needed. Example: "place; Lyminster & Crossbush, W. Sussex" fits with 1 char. to spare. Stuff like this is why automation is probably not practical. If such a string were 2 chars longer, we'd have to use "W.Sussex" with no space.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:45, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't see why we should be pulling these from Wikidata at all. It is easy enough to put a template in our article here which contains the text for the short description. Ideally the content and edit history of that description should be visible here, without need to look at any other project. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:10, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

@CBM: That's exactly what this thread is trying to move towards, what's going to be put in place. But to get there, there needs to be some kind of discussion about what forms for those descriptions should be preferred. Jheald (talk) 14:54, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree. I like the goal of having a “short description” (in fact, I would like to see it implemented on the desktop version and not just on mobile)... but we don’t need to use Wikidata for us to achieve that goal. Blueboar (talk) 14:25, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

We absolutely do not need to use Wikidata as a source of short descriptions, but Wikidata does have a lot of short descriptions available for use when they are suitable. When they are unsuitable for Wikipedia, of course they should be ignored, though they may still be suitable for Wikidata, and a better description composed by an editor who has some idea of the scope of the article they are describing. Having some clue of what is needed and what would generally be considered acceptable will save a lot of time and probably reduce the amount of unpleasantness involved. Flexibility is necessary, in some cases well over 40 characters will be needed, Scuba diving comes to mind as an example - the current short description is diving while breathing from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus - 73 characters (on Wikidata it is quite accurate, but longer, underwater diving where the diver breathes from apparatus (scuba) which is completely independent of surface supply at about 115 characters, counting spaces). It may be possible to cut it down, but it may not, and a slightly long description is better than a wrong, confusing or ambiguous description, which may be a bit shorter. Using Wikidata short descriptions is merely a convenience which should save some time.

A short description has definite practical utility, and in principle is a good thing. The problems are with the current method of providing them.

The short description will be visible on desktop when signed in, but may be only as an opt-in, depending on what Wikipedians want. My opinion is that the more eyes on them the less vandalism will slip through, and the better quality they will develop, but there may be people who really object to seeing them.· · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 22:02, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Position in Wikitext and display in Desktop

These are possibly more matters of style than the actual content of the short description.

Logically I would expect the short description to be before the content of the lead, but there may be a better place. From a practical point of view it may not matter, except that for maintenance it would be useful to know where to find it.

As it is in a way an extension of the title I suggest as close to the top as does not conflict with anything else than may be usefully closer to the top. In other words, first thing on the page until someone comes up with a good reason why it must be further down.

How should it display on desktop? It is not regular content, so I suggest display in small text first thing under the title. Could be in parentheses. Opinions? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 12:28, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

See Iris (mythology). I guess standard practice would actually be to give both the English and (one of?) the Greek pronunciations and the article at present is just incomplete on this point, but in this case the common English pronunciation (full disclosure, I don't think I've ever heard a native English speaker talk about her, and Japanese pronunciation is based on the Greek) is apparently the same as the flower, and it's spelled the same. So I'm wondering if the English IPA might be overkill and maybe including only Greek (specifying that it's not the English pronunciation so as to let the reader figure out for themselves that the English one is the obvious one) might be better? As is, though, it's implying that the English one is "correct" and others not. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:46, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

It would depend on a lot of things:

how intuitive the English pronunication is (in which case a pronunciation key may not be necessary)

how relevant the foreign-language pronunciation key would be to the reader. Sometimes there is no accepted anglicized pronunciation, in which case the foreign-language pronunciation key could be very helpful. In other cases, a (say) economic term might derive from French, Latin, or Greek, but the fact that it does might not be relevant to the article (or at least to the lead).

etc.

I can see the argument for including both in Iris (mythology): since the article is about Greek culture (and not just a Greek-derived term), a significant number of readers will be interested in the Greek pronunciation, at the same time, you don't want to imply the English pronunciation is similar to the Greek one, because the Greek-like pronunciation is not common in English.

Whether, how, and where to include either pronunciation would be an editorial decision—there's no broad consensus on this. What do you think would best serve the reader in this article? Do the other editors of the article disagree? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed with everything CT said. It's a judgement call, and for the mythological figure, it's appropriate, while for the other articles disambiguated at Iris it would not be.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:03, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this is the sort of situation that calls for a detailed (and sourced) explanation of the varying pronunciation in the body of the article, rather than a glib IPA listing in the lead. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Assuming it's either-or—there are plenty of articles that give a very helpful IPA gloss in the lead, and then go into finer detail in an "Etymology" section. We serve different needs and types of readers this way. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

This issue has been bugging me for a while. A brief Googling indicates that we use the words "a New York Times article" in roughly 5,000 articles while we only use "a The New York Times article" in just over one-tenth that much. And frankly I'm surprised it's not less; I don't think anyone would come after me for removing the "The". Then there is The Dark Knight Trilogy: movie trilogies usually have a lower-case t "the" before them when referred to in running prose ("the Star Wars Trilogy), but is the trilogy named for the second film, making it "the The Dark Knight Trilogy"? I'm pretty sure I've seen external sources treat it the same as the Star Wars Trilogy (or even the Star Wars trilogy). Has this come up before? Do we have a standard policy on it? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:39, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I should clarify. I did check before, and both the main MOS page and WP:THEMOS:THECAPS list a few examples, but the closest this seems to come to is the titles of "creative works", with the standard example being The Lord of the Rings. But are newspapers with "The" in the name creative works? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:42, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I think it depends on context... “This was outlined in an article appearing in ‘The New York Times’” but “This was outlined in a ‘New York Times’ article”. Or... “He played a detective in the movie ‘The Dark Knight’” but “He played a detective in the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy of films”. Blueboar (talk) 14:44, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

The "The" in titles such as The New York Times are doing nothing more than presenting the real-world name of the newspaper. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, if using the real world name isn't causing a problem then Wikipedia should continue reflecting it in the title. In running text both versions, per Blueboar, have their uses. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:51, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

What Blueboar describes above is ordinary formal English usage. In English, we normally drop an initial article in the name of something when modified by another determiner. Phrases like "A The New York Times article" or "Some The Dark Knight Trilogy character" are clumsy and arguably ungrammatical. This probably doesn't belong in the MOS. It's implied by a general prescription to write in plain, formal English and avoid clumsiness. Also, as with most matters like this, it's best not to make a rule. I can't think of an example right now, but I would not be surprised if there's some odd situation where doubling up determiners actually does make sense. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 15:02, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Blueboar and Ben Kovitz both describe standard usage, but the issue has come up in the past where users have insisted on keeping the The because "it's part of the title". We don't need a rule, but guidance telling us it's safe to drop the The would be welcome. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:13, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

The only problem is that if we give guidance to say it’s OK to drop the “The”, we will get people pointing to that guidance arguing that we should drop it in situations when it ISN’T appropriate to do so. Sometimes it’s better to not say anything, and trust that most of our editors can use common sense. Blueboar (talk) 22:22, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Indeed this is a common problem on Wikipedia: many of our editors, being amateurs or having only a weak command of written English (whether native speakers or not), lack the background needed to apply much common sense to these things. I concur with Blueboar (and you) that the solution isn't to add more rules. That way lies madness. Our manual of style is just that: a style guide, a set of stylistic choices designed to produce consistency and the desired encyclopedic tone of Wikipedia, not a substitute for knowing the customs and conventions of formal, written English. This kind of thing might be best addressed through education rather than rules. User:Tony1 once wrote an entire course on copyediting for Wikipedia, but I'm not sure how well suited it is to people who just don't have a solid command of written English. Another possible solution: something like the WP:Reference desk, where editors could ask people with professional writing experience about these things. Or do we already have something like that? —Ben Kovitz (talk) 00:29, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Actually, having a house set of stylistic choices is, in many ways, a functional substitute for "knowing the customs and conventions of formal, written English". Wikipedia, with a few exceptions, avoids the role of "educator". It specifically does so on talk pages and tacitly through its conspicuous absence in Wikipedia's stated purpose.

Also, someone earlier mentioned WP:THE, which has to do with article titles, not titles in articles. Primergrey (talk) 21:33, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Primergrey: Thank you for pointing that out. Fixed it now. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

It's standard English practice to drop a leading "The" or "A/An" when it's awkward to not do it; thus "My favorite Beatles album is The Magical Mystery Tour" (not "My favorite The Beatles ..." or "My favorite the Beatles ..."). What counts as "awkward" varies by context; it's become conventional to retain the leading article in titles of works after possessives ("J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit") but fairly common to drop it in other constructions that don't read very naturally when it's included ("Freeman's Hobbit co-star Richard Armitage"). It's entirely reasonable, normal writing, to use "Jane Q. Public is a New York Times editor", "As reported in a New York Times article", etc. And we'd never do "in the The Dark Knight Trilogy", as simply redundant. We've done fine without saying anything about this to date, and it's not a source of frequent or heated dispute, so I'm going to go with Blueboar's "Sometimes it’s better to not say anything, and trust that most of our editors can use common sense."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:34, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Side Question

A quick and totally unrelated question: when talking about the three “Dark Knight” movies, wouldn’t the word “trilogy” be lowercase?... ie “The Dark Knight trilogy”? Blueboar (talk) 18:52, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Generally, yes. A specific issue (e.g. a DVD boxset) might actually be literally titled The Dark Knight Trilogy. And some novel series have overarching titles like this (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:02, 14 February 2018 (UTC)