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February 2017

Drafting an RFC on narrow-gauge railway titles

See my draft at User:Dicklyon/rfc#RfC: Hyphen in titles of articles on railways of a narrow gauge. I invite anyone who wants to help make it a neutral question and productive discussion to make tweaks there, or make suggestions, or start your own alternative proposal. Thanks. Dicklyon (talk) 01:56, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

S, I have noticed Bermicourt, Bahnfrend, Mjroots, and Redrose64 on the negatory side, just you and me on the affirmative (actually Redrose64 may be more neutral, at least open to using hyphens sometimes). Let me know if you think it would be appropriate to notify more, or everyone in the RM discussion, or wait until the RFC starts for that. Also, where is an appropriately central place to do this, and is there a standard way to cross-list with projects? Dicklyon (talk) 01:58, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: Just got home from work; will try to have a look at the details tonight or tomorrow morning. I would think it should be sufficient to RfC this at either WT:MOSCAPS or WP:VPOL, notifying WT:AT and WT:MOS, the talk pages of the rail projects (not just the UK one – this stuff should be consistent), the talk page of Guild of Copyeditors, and also WT:CONSENSUS (because the efforts against AT/MOS on behalf of wikiproject control are an anti-WP:CONLEVEL move). That should encourage enough side-wide, diverse commentary.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:39, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
This one is about the hyphens, not the caps. Maybe WT:MOS? Dicklyon (talk) 04:44, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
@Dicklyon:: Oh, duh. I meant WT:MOS. Anyway, I suggested an edit to the lead question. I would also suggest Tony1 and RGloucester as helpful for drafting the pro-hyphen side (and it would make for an equal balance of direct invitees, if we consider Redrose64 in the middle).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:54, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
Yes, thanks for fixing my typo. I'll notify tony and R. Dicklyon (talk) 04:58, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Katherine Johnson

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Katherine Johnson. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Template still needed?

Hi, is Template:Taxobox/core/sandboxMOS still needed? It's not being maintained with changes to the live template. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:53, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Nopers. That was subst'd after the discussion closed, so it has been unneeded since the. I put a {{Db-author}} on it, so it should go away shortly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:53, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Indigenous Europeans

That's funny, I didn't even consider the possibility of Indo-Europeans being non-Indigenous. I was just curious if your commentary on what specific groups are or aren't (Hungarians vs. Indo-Europeans) is actually specifically addressed in the literature, or if you're taking the different definitions and considering how they would apply to Europeans yourself? If professors/historians really are discussing indigenous peoples of Europe, it sounds like you could write a kick-ass article about it. Ribbet32 (talk) 21:45, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

@Ribbet32: Short answer: It's not something I've looked at in any great detail, but have noticed the issue come up at least in vague terms. I do think an article could be written about it, but it would be conceptual and would require a great deal of research, as well as the neutral admission of conflicting, shifting, subjective views. A long answer exploring the outlines of some that:
Extended content

There's an ongoing dispute (off-WP) about the nature of the IE languages and how they developed west of the Indo-Iranian branch. The invasion model is being challenged by mounting evidence. The still-dominant but weakening theory, going back to the 1800s and reinforced within living memory by the Kurgan hypothesis of Gimbutas and others, has generally been that north-central Asians, the proto-Indo-Europeans, invaded Europe in waves of chariot-led armies and pretty much just took the place over, wiping out some populations and intermarrying with others, but almost totally dominating the linguistic, genetic, and politico-economic landscape of the area after their arrival, except for isolated holdouts like the Basques.

From local linguistic evidence to mtDNA studies, there are stronger and stronger indications that the cultures of Europe are genetically primarily indigenous (i.e., of mostly pre-IE, Neolithic European stock), the more so the further one gets from the Mediterranean, and that the IE languages (and other cultural trappings, like gods and burial customs and pottery and farming techniques and so forth) in the area were not imposed on them, but adopted gradually (probably because it was economically expedient) and with considerable influence from the substrate indigenous languages. E.g. the Celtic languages may well have arisen in the western fringe of Iberia after coastal contact, and spread both north to Ireland (Goidelic) and eastward to France and Germany (Continental Celtic or Gaulish) whence north again to Britain (Brythonic). This view is hardly completely accepted (yet?), of course. But it's attracting its own multi-author books, conferences, etc. The most prolific researcher in this area I know of is John T. Koch, though he is often marshaling the materials of others (much of which was originally published in Spanish, French, etc.). The more I look at the evidence for it the more I think the resistance is habitual/territorial academic denialism. I was talking with someone on Academia.edu about what Koch has published, and she went from "that guy's just a nut" (based on what older academics had said to her about his ideas) to "hmm, I'm going to have to look into this in a lot more detail" after just a little looking over what he and others in that subfield are publishing. It's interesting that some of the old hands like Barry Cunliffe are jumping ship.

Another case of that resistance effect seems to be the traditional academic blind spot for the early influence of Semitic (probably Punic/Phoenician) language and culture on the Germanic/Nordic branch of IE (via probable sea invasion at Denmark, many centuries before far-ranging Nordic people and their proto-Slavic cousins established direct, overland trade with the Middle East). With Germans having dominated European linguistics and philology for so long (plus that rather nasty period in politics in the mid-20th century, the resolution of which was clearly not as firm as many would prefer), there's obviously going to be controversy about this matter, even when the relationship is obvious and easily shown, especially in words relating to the sea, travel, trade, and conflict. John McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue summarizes the Germano-Punic argument in a chapter. He also covers the similar denialism of English linguists about the obvious influences of Brythonic and Nordic languages on Middle English (it's just "coincidence" to them that English and Welsh share a feature found in almost no other language on earth).

Part of what this all points out (and which other writers address more directly) is that "Europe" and "European" are modern socio-geographical concepts, and highly subjective and politicized, like many other such concepts and conceptualizations. Even as recently as 250 or so years ago, the principal distinction drawn by Westerners was between Christendom, heathens (those who had rejected Christianity and should be killed or enslaved) and savages (those to whom Christianity had not yet been offered, who should be converted and made subjects of Christian monarchs); it was not between Europe (which was full of enemies) and elsewhere (which sometimes yielded allies, and usually provided "savages" to exploit and convert to Christian subjects after their land was seized by force). Charles C. Mann's 1493 covers this in some detail as it pertains to the colonial era and its aftermath.

Arguments about Europe and nativeness/indigenousness become anachronistic very quickly. The Hungarians were firmly European (a permanent socio-political force on the landmass, Christianized, and increasingly interwoven into pre-existing Western systems of kinship, sovereignty, trade, law) by the time the notion of Europe as a meta-culture began to develop in the Age of Reason. Even the collapse of the vestiges of the Byzantine Empire under the sieges of the Ottomans didn't do it; that too was entirely a Christendom versus Islam conflict, as were the Crusades of the 11th–13th centuries the preceded it (they were about securing Christian, and especially Roman Catholic, not "European", control over the Holy Land and trade routes in and around it). While arguments for/again Hungary being considered "properly" European apply at least as much to Bulgaria (though founded as an empire by Turkic nomads, it was Christian before 900), Hungary itself could even be central to these matters. It remained predominantly Christian (since the early 11th century), though divided into Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant under the Ottomans (1526–1718), with some influx of Muslims, but religiously tolerant. The migrations and warfare had much more impact on the genetic mix than on the cultural one. 1684 may be a watershed year for Europe as "a thing", when a unified anti-Ottoman army (the Holy League, founded in 1684 and often described today as "European" in nature) of forces from mostly Catholic lands to the west (as far away as Spain and Sweden) took on the Ottoman Empire, and rid all of Hungary of Ottoman control by 1718. After a century of internecine warfare and revolutions in Europe, the monarchist Holy Alliance emerged in 1815 (initially to prevent more anti-monarchy revolutions, but quickly turning to having at the Ottomans again, and in re-instituting colonialism). This in turn had much to do with the prompting of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which directly addressed "Europeans powers" as such.

Somewhere between the 1680s (almost two centuries into Spain's cognitive dissonance about enslavement of native "savages" of the Americas, most often by conquistadors defying orders from the Spanish crown) and the 1810s, "Europe" had finally emerged as a socio-political concept, and it would take significant amounts of reading to nail that down, probably with conflicting answers from different fields. The germ of the split probably goes back in one sense or another to split between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, yet it was clearly not conceptualized as "Europe" versus "the East" in that era (and many Byzantine/Orthodox lands were firmly within usual definitions of the European landmass).

Note also how even today definitions of "Europe" vary, and include or exclude Russia based on geographical versus political versus dominant cultural focus (and may include "Russia proper" or "white Russia" while excluding "greater" or "Asian Russia" as well as most of the former USSR more east than the Balkans), mediated by the prejudices of the writer/publisher and/or the target audience. The same is also true of areas sometimes classified as part of Eastern Europe and sometimes not, all of which were invaded from the east multiple times during written history. Yet the same also happened to Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as Spain and parts of Italy, so "invaded much by outsiders" is hardly a cutoff for whether to define a national culture (if there really is such a thing) as "natively/indigenously European".

Another issue is that the Mediterranean cultures of classical antiquity, including those centered in Rome, Greece, and Carthage, thought of themselves as empires of and defined by that sea, with northern Europe seen as a faraway land that was the source of much trouble but little value (beyond slaves after putting down the trouble again). The "European" Mediterranean powers were much more interested in the Middle East and North Africa, and keeping Muslims/Moors away from Christian lands, than in conquering all of Europe. The same was true of the Ottoman Empire, the (mostly German) Holy Roman Empire, and even true of Hitler and Mussolini, who expended tremendous effort to keep and seize northern and northeastern African land, while leaving Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Ireland, and (to the extent anyone thinks of it as European) Turkey alone, for the most part, as long as they kept out of it, for the most part.

If we did have an article about "indigenous" or "native" Europe, I think it would have to focus primarily on the conceptual conflicts and their sources, and then delve into the genetic and linguistic evidence of long-term, pre-IE continuity into modern times in the geographical area, despite continual admixture, all the while being clear that the concept is a strictly modern overlay on history, which didn't really have a concept of "Europe" until the Early Modern era, and which is still subject to definitional dispute. The fact that Europe isn't really a continent but a large peninsula surely has much to do with this. :-)

PS: Yet a further complication is that "Europe" or "Europa" as a geographical term originally referred to Thrace (which is now part of Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece, in descending order of territory held, and was formerly [in reverse chron. order] Ottoman, Golden Horde, Bulgarian, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, and independent). "Europa" sometimes meant just the southeast part of Thrace (the now-Turkish part, surrounding Byzantium/Constantinople). Thrace formerly also included Macedonia and parts of what for a while was Scythia, but eventually re-narrowed and was eventually distinguished as Thracia/Thrace from more westerly Europa, which started to include Greece, etc, and was now a broader regional term instead of a sub-national local one, somehow. It took a long time for "Europe" to come to mean the sub-continent it now labels (Smith's dense Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography of 1857 goes into some of this but does not cover the development of the term beyond the classical period). Broad-national identities like "French", "German", "English", "Spanish" evolved much faster than any sense of Europeanness (even then this locality-consolidating meta-nationalism sometimes emerged slowly, as with "Italian" and "British" in the modern sense, or not at all except in post hoc romanticism, as with "Celtic").

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:04, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
FWIW: I saw a brief item recently, likely in Nature, about a genetic study of how, around 3000 BC?, farmers from Anatolia were mixing with the Neolithic hunters across Europe. I believe "non-indigenous" is generally applied to the last wave to arrive. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:00, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
It seems to be applied to the last wave to arrive before the era of post-medieval European colonialism.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:20, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Only before? Well, I don't know if there is any scholarly or academic qualification of the term, but I would say the general pattern of immigrations continues. Like the Irish moving into the Italian neighborhoods (or was that the other way around?), contemporary Chinese settlers into Tibet, etc. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:03, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Seemed to be before. I don't know of anyone who refers to European-Americans, white South Africans, or even Hispanics in Latin America as the (or among the) indigenous peoples of those areas; the term always refer to those who were there before the European colonials arrived.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:21, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Response in wrong place

 Done
 – I ended up just deleting it, since my later comments in the extended discussion section covered those issues.

S, in this diff you've added a rebuttal to a section that I had intended to be for plain position statements, opening arguments as were, instead of in the threaded discussion section where I had hoped such things would go. I think this invites more of same, which could become a mess. So I invite you to move it. Dicklyon (talk) 00:09, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Will go look into it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:04, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review - newsletter No.2

Hello SMcCandlish,
A HUGE backlog

We now have 803 New Page Reviewers!
Most of us requested the user right at PERM, expressing a wish to be able to do something about the huge backlog, but the chart on the right does not demonstrate any changes to the pre-user-right levels of October.

Hitting 17,000 soon

The backlog is still steadily growing at a rate of 150 a day or 4,650 a month. Only 20 reviews a day by each reviewer over the next few days would bring the backlog down to a managable level and the daily input can then be processed by each reviewer doing only 2 or 3 reviews a day - that's about 5 minutes work!
It didn't work in time to relax for the Xmas/New Year holidays. Let's see if we can achieve our goal before Easter, otherwise by Thanksgiving it will be closer to 70,000.

Second set of eyes

Remember that we are the only guardians of quality of new articles, we alone have to ensure that pages are being correctly tagged by non-Reviewer patrollers and that new authors are not being bitten.

Abuse

This is even more important and extra vigilance is required considering Orangemoody, and

  1. this very recent case of paid advertising by a Reviewer resulting in a community ban.
  2. this case in January of paid advertising by a Reviewer, also resulting in a community ban.
  3. This Reviewer is indefinitely blocked for sockpuppetry.

Coordinator election

Kudpung is stepping down after 6 years as unofficial coordinator of New Page Patrolling/Reviewing. There is enough work for two people and two coords are now required. Details are at NPR Coordinators; nominate someone or nominate yourself. Date for the actual suffrage will be published later.

Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:11, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

CSS styling in templates

 Done

Hello everyone, and sincere apologies if you're getting this message more than once. Just a heads-up that there is currently work on an extension in order to enable CSS styling in templates. Please check the document on mediawiki.org to discuss best storage methods and what we need to avoid with implementation. Thanks, m:User:Melamrawy (WMF), 09:11, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

@Elitre: Thanks for the note. I've made some supportive initial comments over at the meta talk page about this.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:39, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Genealogy - newsletter No.1

Newsletter Nr 1 for WikiProject Genealogy (and Wikimedia genealogy project on Meta)

Participation:

This is the very first newsletter sent by mass mail to members in Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy, to everyone who voted a support for establishing a potential Wikimedia genealogy project on meta, and anyone who during the years showed an interest in genealogy on talk pages and likewise.

(To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, see below)

Progress report:

Since the Projects very first edit 9 december 2002 by User:Dan Koehl, which eventually became the WikiProject Genealogy, different templates were developed, and the portal Portal:Genealogy was founded by User:Michael A. White in 2008. Over the years a number of articles has been written, with more or less association to genealogy. And, very exciting, there is a proposal made on Meta by User:Another Believer to found a new Wikimedia Genealogy Project, read more at Meta; Wikimedia genealogy project where you also can support the creation with your vote, in case you havnt done so already.

Future:

The future of the Genealogy project on the English Wikipedia, and a potential creation of a new Wikimedia Genealogy Project, is something where you can make a an input.

You can

Cheers from your WikiProject Genealogy founder and coordinator Dan Koehl

To discontinue receiving Project Genealogy newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.
Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery Dan Koehl (talk) 22:28, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

ANAE

Resolved
 – Contact made.

For research purposes (in the vein of WP:WRE), I'd be happy to send you the full PDF of Atlas of North American English by email (though I almost never use the Wikipedia email feature and would need to relearn how that works). I obtained it myself by another Wikipedia editor's generosity and have been poring over it for a couple years now. Let me know. Wolfdog (talk) 00:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@Wolfdog: That would be hot! You'll probably need to use the e-mail feature to contact me, then await a direct reply. I don't think the e-mail feature here allows file attachments.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
Wolfdog has email enabled, so you can start; worked for me. Dicklyon (talk) 04:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Rafael Díez de la Cortina y Olaeta

 Done
 – I closed this one.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Rafael Díez de la Cortina y Olaeta. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Daddy Yankee

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Daddy Yankee. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization

Resolved
 – Raised the issues at the ArbCom noticeboard.

The Arbitration Committee has resolved by motion that:

In remedy 4.2 of the 2012 Article titles and capitalisation case, standard discretionary sanctions were authorized for all pages related to the English Wikipedia Manual of Style and article titles policy, broadly construed. By way of clarification, the scope of this remedy refers to discussions about the policies and guidelines mentioned, and does not extend to individual move requests, move reviews, article talk pages, or other venues at which individual article names may be discussed. Disruption in those areas should be handled by normal administrative means.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 03:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization

"you're picking a side and becoming a soapboxer in the very dispute of which you decry the existence"

Don't you mean "in the very dispute the existence of which you decry"? EEng 04:59, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Idly, I think this reads better: "the very dispute whose existence you decry." No idea what dispute you refer to, just offering a grammar aside. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:34, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm just giving SM a hard time. It's in my job description. EEng 06:39, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
@EEng: Well, "of which you decry the existence" and "the existence of which you decry" are completely equivalent, other than the former being more businesslike and the latter being more more poetic or evocative. I'd originally written the more casual "the very dispute you decry the existence of", but predicted that someone would leap on that as "incorrect" just to be pissy, forgetting that talk pages are not written like article prose, so I changed it.

@Euryalus: "whose existence you decry" is incorrect, because who/whom/whose/who's are only used in reference to persons and to things we personify psychologically (e.g. our pets) or metaphorically ("Death, whose hand touches all men", "Britannia in whose glory ...", etc.); it's ungrammatical to use them with the inanimate. I've long thought it unfortunate that English doesn't have an inanimate whats or thats or whichs to go along with animate whose. However, I would add back a proper plural you into the language first (not a big fan of y'all, yous[s], yinz, you lot and other colloquialisms). Our loss of ye was a bad one, and is inexplicable. Maybe one of the colloquialisms will eventually become universal.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:05, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

You make a fair point. I've actually come round to EEng's "existence of which." But of course I also deny the existence of a dispute between his version and mine. -- Euryalus (talk) 09:34, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Inanimate whose

Resolved
 – The Inanimate whose article has been overhauled to match the sourcing quality and neutrality level of Singular they.
Split from an 11 February thread

Some folk around her need to peruse inanimate whose. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:10, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm aware of it; it's a poor article using WP:CHERRYPICKED sources to advance a viewpoint.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:34, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
That's quite the accusation. What sources would you balance it with? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:36, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
@Curly Turkey: It is correct that application of whose to only persons isn't right; that's why I clarified carefully, as do various style guides. The observation that inanimate whose has been in use for centuries is a half-truth; it's been in use for a) cases of personification as well as for persons, b) often in poor-quality writing and in casual speech for the everyday inanimate, and b) sometimes in higher-quality writing for the everyday inanimate but subject to criticism for it. When the construction at my place is done and I have easy access to my huge collection of style guides and the like, I'll be able to introduce more sources to that article. In the interim, I can see what I have around in e-book form, though this is low on my hit list of English usage articles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:45, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm not really interested in your assertions on the subject, only the sources. You seem to think I've ignored or distorted sources I know about (thus "cherrypicking"), which implies it should be easy to find such sources that I was never able to. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:10, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
(addressing both parties) Sounds like a good use for Talk:Inanimate whose. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:31, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
@Mandruss: Yes, I will do that, after pulling my foot out of my mouth, and going over some initial search results while prepping for being able to source this more adequately.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:25, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

[od] @Curly Turkey: I did not look at the article history and didn't realize it was the product of only two editors, rather than being one like Quotation marks in English (which has been picked over by many editors, but remains terrible and full of incorrect statements, and an entire approach that is full of the nationalistic nonsense that makes linguists roll their eyes and laugh ruefully) or like Singular they (which is much better). So, I apologize for how I characterized the article and the work behind it, since that obviously came across as a criticism of your work in particular without my realizing it. Mea WP:JERK culpa.

Sourcing: I understand that you want sources, CT. I just don't have many handy right this second, nor complete cites for them. A quick spin through some Google hits (while I gear up for better material, and will present that at the article rather than here):

  • The Oxford English Dictionary says of this construction: "usually replaced by of which, except where the latter would produce an intolerably clumsy form". That's probably the #1 source for "the other side" to add, when a specific page number can be tracked down. I don't have this on paper, just in Windows CD-ROM editions. I'm on a Mac now, but am building a PC, so I'll be able to get a CD-ROM cite at least at some point.
  • According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, inanimate whose has been contested since the eighteenth century (but this was mentioned without a citation or direct quote; I own this one and can dig it up when I can find it in the pile). So, this debate arose during the transition from Early Modern English to Modern English, the same era when many other things changed, like wherefore, thither, ye, etc., were dropped; punctuation and spelling were normalized; the split of American from British orthography occurred; German-style overcapitalization of "Nouns" was abandoned, as was "Capitalization for Emphasis" in formal writing; etc., etc.). It's no accident that fans of inanimate whose mostly cite pre–1800 usage, e.g. Shakespeare, and that modern writers mostly avoid the construction – they know it's controversial and that people will object to it. At any rate, it is not possible that the view is unsourceable if it's been a debate subject for 200 years. This MW bit is worth digging up directly, since it's important, and you cite the same source for something else, but without the page number.
  • People report (online, recently) having been explicitly taught not to use whose for the inanimate, even as others say this idea is wrongheaded. It isn't possible for people to have been taught not to use whose in this way if that wasn't considered a rule in some works and in some entire pedagogical approaches to English, so obviously the sources exist.
  • The "underlying belief that whose can only properly be applied to people, not to things ... has in the past been the firm rule of grammarians and generations of children have been taught it." [1] This is clearly true, but a better source can probably be found, or better yet sources can just demonstrate it without us having to state that as someone else's observation.
  • Mignon "Grammar Girl" Fogarty (whom I would not cite and do not consider nearly as reliable a source as some do, since I've caught her in clear errors like equating logical quotation with British quotation punctation styles, among other gaffes) concedes [2] "There is, however, some argument about whether it’s OK to use whose to refer to something that’s not a person or animal: a car or a tree, for instance.", even as she disagrees with those who make this argument, yet links to another article about people disagreeing with her on it (that link is unfortunately broken, though).
  • Another writing blog [3] (also not useful in the article) gives the same advice MoS's own lead does about disputed usage: "you could always take my favorite approach to grammatical conundrums, and rewrite the sentence completely to avoid the issue entirely", giving a quite typical example of doing so, along with the whose case and an of which alternative. (I have to note that we would not have the of which alternative if people didn't object to whose.)

I didn't say anything about whether sources are easy to find; for style and usage matters they often are not. They are also easy to misuse. Many of them make claims that are grounded in nationalism, will wildly see-saw from descriptivism to prescriptivism and back to suit their editors' whims, are often written for a specific register of use or particular fields, and make assertions that are contrary to those of other works. It's important to keep in mind that all the commercial style guide are in competition with each other, and have a vested commercial interest in overstating things as authoritative rules (for as well as against) that they define. Some of them make outlandish claims, as does Garner's; there is no construction used for an inanimate object with whose that cannot be easily rewritten to avoid it, despite what he says, and he's full of a lot of unsupportable assertions of this sort.

The article: I think its lead is adequate and neutral, but after that it's a pro-whose piece, that does virtually nothing but attempt to refute critics of the usage. It should take the same approach and care for neutrality as Singular they. Presently, it cites a grand total of three style guides (in various editions), three grammars, two dictionaries, and a couple of other things, most of them British, and too many of them citing each other (i.e., in the same camp and forming a circular confirmation-bias echo chamber). So, one viewpoint is well-represented and supported, while the others are missing, aside from passing mention of one in the lead, and a hint about it (thats could not have evolved colloquially if there was not widespread revulsion to use of inanimate whose).

There are three views, basically: 1) that it is perfectly correct, is always preferable to "of which", and need never by replaced by anything else; 2) that it is utterly wrong; and 3) that it's awkward/controversial and should be usually be avoided, including by using of which unless also awkward, in which case by doing another rewrite. Clearly, the most common positions are 1 and 3. While (like not splitting infinitives, or avoiding singular they) 2 is untenable from a linguistic description point of view, it is defensible from a logic and semantics one as a register and best-practices matter. Both 1 and 3 are forms of punditry on the matter, while 2 is a practical approach to avoiding the "reader has a mental revolt in mid-sentence" problem. A simple exercise: If option A is considered wrong by a large number of readers, but option B is just considered stilted by some of them, and there's always option C, rewriting to avoid either, then why ever use option A?

Fowler: His objection makes little sense when analyzed. He claims that it's a "folk belief", but this is what all "rules" of grammar, usage, and style are, in the style-book sense of "rule". Fowler, like Strunk & White, et al., have been criticized themselves for similar assertions of how things must be. It's hypocritical for a style guide writer to complain about prescriptivism while indulging in it when it suits their own views. From a linguistic description point of view, there are no rules, only usage patterns that shift at differing rates over time, and which differ between various dialects and registers.

Anyway, sorry again for being unnecessarily critical of the work; I'll bump this up my research stack to try to make up for it. I'm also moderating my own position on the matter to the pragmatic #3 above, since #2 ("utterly wrong") is clearly opposed by too many major style guides. (I've done the same with regard to singular they, split infinitives, adding the serial comma, comma-Jr., and many other matters over the years.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:25, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

  • I was just kidding. EEng 14:44, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
  • That OED quote should be added. The COD, on the other hand, says only "relative possessive determiner of whom or which", and then gives the etymology as "OE hwœs, genetive of hwā 'who' and hwœt 'what'
  • I have access to a 1989 copy of Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. The entry's over a page long so I won't quote it here, but I'll get around to adding it to the article. The concluding paragraph is: "The notion that whose may not properly be used of anything except persons is a superstition; it has been used by innumerable standard authors from Wycliffe to Updike, and is entirely standard as an alternative to of which the in all varieties of discourse."
  • "It's no accident that fans of inanimate whose mostly cite pre–1800 usage ... they know it's controversial and that people will object to it"—more likely to establish pedigree to the "kids these days" crowd. You're not seriously suggesting inanimate whose becomes rare after this point? Webster's above disagrees.
    • This is also the period when the prescription against dangling prepositions arose. Is "recasting" a good response to dealing with people who have that bug up their asses?
  • so obviously the sources exist—I don't doubt it. I'd like to see them.
  • 1, 2, 3—I could say a lot about this one. Recasting should be done to improve clarity, not to appease prescritivists.
  • thats could not have evolved colloquially if there was not widespread revulsion to use of inanimate whose —non sequitur, and I'm sure you understand language evolution better than that. This also makes the assumption that users use thats instead of whose, rather than in addition to whose. I haven't encountered thats in the wild, and my sources are silent on the matter.
  • Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:23, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
  • I'm expanding the article with Webster's—lots of good stuff there. Keep an eye on it to ensure I don't introduce more bias. BTW, Webster's disagrees with your assertion of its restriction to personification cases: "Its common occurrence in poetry undoubtedly owes more to its graceful quality than to any supposed love of personification among poets." Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:25, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Weird ArbCom motion

@Robsinden, Tony1, Mandruss, Dicklyon, RGloucester, EEng, Curly Turkey, and Ohconfucius:: pinging a few people who seem likely to care about this. I've made an informal request for re-clarification of the recent motion in response to the clarification request about the scope of WP:ARBATC. This discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Further clarification of arbitration motion regarding Article titles and capitalization, and will need further input before ArbCom take seriously the need to revise the confused and confusing motion they wrote, which is also a WP:GAMING enabler.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:32, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Have I taken part in capitalization discussions before? I'm not sure I have anything intelligent to say on this one. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:35, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
@Curly Turkey: The discussion in question is primarily about article titles and WP:OWN-ish "campaigning" at RM on a topical-control basis. That part should sound familiar.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
  • SM, for all my teasing I like you, and I truly wish I could help sort out whatever this is. But I simply don't understand the real issues involved, which obviously go much deeper than dashes and hyphens. EEng 20:52, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
    I don't really think it's that deep. If you look at the caps arguments, it's clear that some editors have never gotten to be familiar with WP:NCCAPS and WP:TITLEFORMAT, and it's not an MOS issue at all. It is common and natural that people want to cap their own stuff. What's less common is that a few will fight so hard when confronted with our policies and guidelines. But it does happen now and then. Pretty much a local ownership thing, is all, I think. The hyphen thing is sort of similar, but the guideance is weaker, and from the MOS in that case; for some reason, still, they don't believe what sources show, and don't understand how hyphenating compounds helps the unfamiliar reader. I made the mistake of engaging in both of these things concurrently, which provoked some otherwise-nonoverlapping small sets of complainers to gang up and put up a fuss. Bad move on my part, and we're all paying the price in the increased difficulty of working through it. Dicklyon (talk) 21:11, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Government of the Republic of China

Moot
 – Closed before I got around to it.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Government of the Republic of China. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Religion parameter in Infobox person

Hi SM! I am from a very small wikipedia (bh.wikipedia) and presently working on the same task, i.e. removing religion information from Infobox person. I see a lot of articles in Category:Infobox person using religion still pending. I think I can help in removing use of this parameter from enwiki articles too. Can I do this for some of the articles in that category? SM7--talk-- 09:11, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@SM7: I don't see why not. If you get resistance, cite the RfC at WP:VPP in which the community decided to remove this parameter from bios, except for cases where the religion in central to the subject notability (e.g., because they're a religious leader).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll do as much I can do ! --SM7--talk-- 19:02, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Neoliberalism

Moot
 – Closed before I got around to it.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Neoliberalism. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review-Patrolling: Coordinator elections

no Declined
 – I have no interest in nominating myself or anyone else for this. Honestly, I don't believe in these "coordinator" "election" things at wikiprojects; they're essentially un-wiki, because we're all equals here.

Your last chance to nominate yourself or any New Page Reviewer, See Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Coordination. Elections begin Monday 20 February 23:59 UTC. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:17, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Taiwan

Moot
 – Closed before I got around to it.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Taiwan. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

New Page Review - newsletter No.3

Hello SMcCandlish,

Voting for coordinators has now begun HERE and will continue through/to 23:59 UTC Monday 06 March. Please be sure to vote. Any registered, confirmed editor can vote. Nominations are now closed.

Still a MASSIVE backlog

We now have 803 New Page Reviewers but despite numerous appeals for help, the backlog has NOT been significantly reduced.
If you asked for the New Page Reviewer right, please consider investing a bit of time - every little helps preventing spam and trash entering the mainspace and Google when the 'NO_INDEX' tags expire.

Discuss this newsletter here. If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

AFD of interest

 Done

Hello! As a participant in previous discussions about a related topic, you may be interested in commenting on this AFD. I am notifying everyone involved in previous debates on the subject. Thanks! Fyddlestix (talk) 17:13, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:George Wylde

 Done
 – I closed this one.

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:George Wylde. Legobot (talk) 04:23, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Publicity still

Disregard
 – No need for my input; routine maintenance.

Template:Publicity still has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 14:09, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Battle of France

 Done

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Battle of France. Legobot (talk) 04:24, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

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