User:Ben MacDui/Fauna draft

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I often contribute to articles that incorporate references to both flora and different animal taxa. Consistent presentation of the species names is a challenge as WP:MOS allows different projects to use different systems.

MOS is clear that " Scientific names for genera and species are italicized, with a capital initial letter for the genus but no capital for the species;"

MOS also believes that : "Common (vernacular) names of flora and fauna should be written in lower case—for example, oak or lion."

So far so good.

MOS then bumbles on: " There are a limited number of exceptions to this:

1.Where the common name contains a proper noun, such as the name of a person or place, that proper noun should be capitalized; for example, The Amur tiger may have a range of over 500 square kilometres, or The Roosevelt elk is a subspecies of Cervus canadensis."

Note than an 'Amur Tiger' as opposed to a 'tiger' is not really a common name at all. Besides, who is the arbiter of 'common'? I dare say golden lion tamarins are common enough in some parts of the world, but in Dunfermline they are surely 'Golden Lion Tamarins' (or perhaps 'Golden lion tamarins' or even 'golden lion Tamarins').

Then all coherence is lost:

"2. For specific groups of organisms, there are specific rules of capitalization based on current and historic usage among those who study the organisms. These should ordinarily be followed:"

and "Insofar as there is any consensus among Wikipedia editors about capitalization of common names of species, it is that each WikiProject can decide on its own rules for capitalization. " In other words biologists working in different areas of the Tree of Life make up different rules. Some are internally consistent.

Official common names of birds are capitalised. Thus Golden Eagle, Common Raven.
Mammals are sometimes upper/lower as in the List of European mammals but it is not always clear what do if the animal appears mid-sentence. It isn't consistent either. "The Polar bear is absent but Scotland is the UK's stronghold of the Pine Marten.
Creatures swim in an ocean of confusion, Blue Whales consorting with Taiwan gulper sharks and bight lobsters, gazing at the Bladder wrack.
WP:FISH says that "Common names should be written in sentence case rather than title case" so they are not usually capitalised: allis shad and brown trout can still be caught in the same stream as Common Frogs nonetheless.
Marginated Tortoises hang out with Hawksbill turtles (or 'hawksbill turtles' if you prefer).
Insects seem to be capitalised e.g. Northern Colletes, although Highland midge isn't.
Flora. The articles are often in the scientific name e.g. Betula pendula for 'Birch'. Scots Pine grow next to Common whitebeam although capitalisation seems the most common in my limited experience.

WP:MAMMAL tries its best to explain: "The issue of the capitalization of the common names of mammal species is unresolved on Wikipedia and our pages are inconsistent. A large majority of reliable sources do not capitalize and thus there is a strong descriptive argument against doing so. Capitalization will often not "feel" right for editors for this reason. Conversely, because species names are proper nouns there is also a strong argument in favour of capitalization. Upper case usage is well-established with Aves species, for example. There are actually three possibilities in capitalizing:

1. Never capitalize.
2. Always capitalize.
3. Capitalize when the species itself is referred to, as this is proper noun usage, but not where the phraseology indicates a common noun. Thus: "The Tiger is a carnivore" but "three tigers were observed in the conservation area."

The third is most correct orthographically, but it is also the most difficult to maintain." No kidding.

MOS also says " The Southern Boobook (Ninox novaeseelandiae), also called the mopoke"….?? If it is 'Southern Boobook' surely it has to be 'Mopoke'.

One final area of clarity: MOS says "In a hyphenated name, the part after the hyphen is not capitalised. For example, White-tailed deer, Red-winged Blackbird, Wilson's Storm-petrel." Note the ludicrous inconsistency in the example used, arguably more glaring than the clarity the example offers.

What is a chap to do? There have been screeds of unresolved discussion with no resolution save that the Projects defend their divine rights. Users then randomly appear on articles editing capitals in and out and there is no overall guideline to say what is right and wrong. One of my favourite remarks on the subject is from Wikipedia talk:Footnotes: "Without a consistent style, as any professional publication has, Wikipedia reads like it was written by children. It's ironic that Wikipedians refer to each other as editors, because if there's anything Wikipedia is in desperate need of, it's an editor."

It occurs to me that if the bird fanciers can come up with their own system for article names, there is no reason why we cannot have one for their use within Scottish articles (using piped links as required). There are various possible solutions and the one I use is to:

  • use title case per WP:BIRDS for species
  • use lower case for entries that are either very common (dog, cat) or are not species such as eagle or bilberry.

This has been used in various FA's and GA's without any complaint. To be clear, I have no intention of running around amending existing articles in some kind of organised way. What I would like, if at all possible, is to be able to point to an agreement of some kind so that when folk attempt to change 'Wild Cat' to 'Wild cat' or 'wild cat' I can smugly put "rv per Wikiproject Scotland guidelines' or similar.