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Neutrality
editThis is a promising article, but unfortunately, it reads too much like a fansite biography than a Wikipedia article. --The most intelligent Wikipedian to exist, period! 14:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
- Please re-assess this article, as I have done a major overhaul. --Royalbroil 03:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Why the comma?
editUser:The Bushranger disagreed with my observation that the comma is almost never used for this driver, and reverted my bold changes to remove it, saying "the comma is standard and is, in fact, often (most?) used in reliable sources for this driver". My observation was based on the overwhelming abundance of sites not using a comma, as "Johnny Benson Jr." as seen in Google web search snippets and book search snippets (neglecting the sites and books that are wiki mirrors). I agree that I over-stated the point in my edit summary "Comma is never used with that name", but still, it seems like 70–80% of fan sites and books and such omit the comma. So I'm wondering what The Bushranger meant by "standard" and "most?".
I had moved the page some time ago, based on the advice of the MOS at the time to not use the comma except for persons who did so insistently, but that got undone in the big comma backlash, along with a bunch of Mexican wrestlers and other who really never get the comma. I'm working on carefully undoing some of the overreach of that backlash, and this seems like a good place to start. What do others think? Dicklyon (talk) 22:56, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
And as for other NASCAR drivers, page after page of Google search snippets suggest that the comma is almost never used. Dicklyon (talk) 22:59, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
- Well, the original move, awhile back, linked to WP:JR in the MoS. What it says now, at least, is Editors may use or omit a comma before Jr. or Sr. so long as each article is internally consistent, with no comment on "insistent" useage. In this case, a quick check of some of the most prominent NASCAR sources (Jayski's and NASCAR.com most notably) shows that both with-comma and no-comma useages are used, however the pages you'd expect to be definitive (the official NASCAR.com souvenir page, and the page for this driver at Racing-Reference which is part of ESPN's family) use the comma. That said, after having looked it up, I'm rather surprised to find that no-comma is apparently the recently (as in circa-1993-onwards) preference of the various language mavens (although the reason for the change appears to have been "because we said so"). Personally I see the use of the comma as both more consistent with the sources and much easier on the eye, but that could just be my personal preference; if there's a WP:CONSENSUS that there shouldn't be a comma, then I won't object to it, but all the "Sr."s and "Jr."s etc. in Category:Racing drivers as a group at once, instead of having some one way and some the other, as that way lies feeding the nabobs. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:05, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
- I know; I think it's sad that we moved away from recommending the modern comma-free usage in general, but we did, in the "backlash" I mentioned that was provoked partly by my efforts to move toward implementing the advice of the MOS. Anyway, most articles are NOT internally consistent, and as editors we can try to fix them by moving toward how the names are usually portrayed in the relevant field (which is why I'm starting with wrestlers and drivers, where commas are very rare indeed). If car racing editors really prefer to use the comma for some reason, even though sources in this field mostly do not, I'll go away and stop bothering about it here. Dicklyon (talk) 23:18, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
- One of the reasons the modern guides suggest omitting the commas is the widespread awful-looking error of using a comma only on one side, and forgetting to offset the Jr. by a pair of commas; and that when that is done, it can look too busy. To avoid the busy look and the errors, omitting commas altogether has become the modern preferred style. For a long time, WP:JR said so, too, though the number of editors inserting commas into titles without exceeded those like me trying to go the other way. Dicklyon (talk) 00:19, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- See this book or this one and this one and this one on the need for pairs of commas, or none. There are many others, but mostly not with online previews in Google Books. Dicklyon (talk) 00:54, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
- Here is an in-depth analysis of the comma issue, including why The Elements of Style changed to prefer no commas. Dicklyon (talk) 00:58, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
I started a multi-RM discussion at Talk:Dale Earnhardt, Jr. I somehow missed putting this guy into it, and not sure how to revise, what with all the template magic going on. Anyway, if we settle on those it will be clear what to do here. So please discuss there if you care. Dicklyon (talk) 03:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)