Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Trademarks/Archive 7

Archive 1

←

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

Should we cite other style guides as part of the rationale here?

In light of recent discussions, I think that this guideline would benefit greatly from an expanded rationale section. One of the best things we could do is cite other style guides that recommend standardizing nonstandard trademarks. I think some editors come here and get the mistaken impression that Wikipedia is somehow on the fringe here, when in fact we probably give more leeway to nonstandard styles than every other major general interest publishing operation I know about. I recall that a while back, some other editors and I were talking about developing the rationale behind this guideline a bit more, and this might be one way to do it. I'm working on something myself that's probably somewhere between an essay and a proposal for amending the guideline, but I'd be interested to hear more thoughts on this particular idea. Croctotheface (talk) 06:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

More on the guideline in general

For me, that would provide no benefit. I don't consider it the "right" of those sources to rename things either. I provided my feedback here specifically to discourage such a thing from being in our MOS, so sourcing it doesn't really help. The issue is something that has irritated me for some time and on numerous sites, not just Wikipedia. (The BJ Snowden issue may date from two years ago, for example.) And I do notice a number of situations in which Wikipedia is doing the right thing: ohGr, .hack, iPod. I'm prepared to find myself in the minority here, but I want to maintain the integrity of all proper nouns. As I see it, when you try to enforce "English" rules on proper nouns, you are creating a new English word to replace the actual proper noun. "ohGr" becomes the English word "Ohgr" which replaces the actual noun. That seems to me presumptuous, and not at all NPOV. - BalthCat (talk) 22:50, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I sectioned off your reply, but it really doesn't much address the questions I asked, and I don't want to have discussion of the issue I raised short-circuited by a discussion of the separate issues that you raised. (Besides, you disagree with the guideline, so I don't think anything at all could be added to the guideline (except maybe "Ignore the following:") that would get you to support it.) I do want to respond to the other points you raise, though. In general, I'm confused about different parts of what you've said here. On one hand, you talk in the above section about being guided to some degree by what sources, or at least a "significant" number of them, do. However, based on what you say here, the fact that a lot of sources do something shouldn't much matter if they are, in your estimation, wrong. If, say, 100% of sources use a certain style that you believe is "the wrong name," I don't see why, in your view, that would not just make the error worse, more pervasive, more insidious, and therefore even more in need of correction.

Likewise, I don't see how you can maintain this notion that standardized styles are "wrong names" and yet be open, as you are above, to using them if it's what the company had initially used. If you define the correct style as "what the company wants us to use," then why does it matter how long they've used it? If you see trademarks, as you seem to, as analogous to personal names, wouldn't changing my name mean that using my old name is incorrect?

Finally, I made my "call the company" point above to illustrate that I'd expect similar results from your rule as one that said "call the company and format the trademark how their branding department tells us to." I didn't mean to say you suggested doing that, but after reading your latest replies, I'm confused about why you'd object to that. If they are solely able to decide how we present their trademark, what better way than calling and asking? You specifically reject the notion that what reliable sources do should matter here, so why not call them and get the "right" way straight from the horse's mouth? Croctotheface (talk) 02:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

You are approaching this from the perspective that Wikipedia is, by default, correct in forcing proper nouns to adhere to a particular English language standard. I do indeed disagree, and I think that this is a form of bias against trademarks and (more importantly) artistic endeavours choosing to eschew particular standards. I'm not advocating we enjoy using the mainstream style contrary to the actual style. I'm saying that before we consider violating the actual style, the majority of sources we cite should already be violating that standard. In other words the policy CAN be changed to my satisfaction without nullification: it would require sources reflecting the mainstream style disparity in advance, rather than applying one by default. And yes, it will still be wrong. The article will not be named after the entity or work, but rather the title will reflect what the entity/work is KNOWN AS. I'm aware that this is already the case in other situations, such as Cincinatti Strangler; however, even in that article, as Laskey is "proven" to be the Strangler, he is referred to by his name, rather than as "the Strangler".

re: significant sources above: I specifically mentioned niche media; so I'm not sure why you are suggesting small town newspapers regurgitating press releases apply. Is TIME's niche small town presses that regurgitate press releases? To put it more explicitly (since that appears necessary), if a group such as ohGr is referred to in a substantial proportion of Industrial music sources with the original/non-standard formatting, then it should not matter that one article from the New York Times choses to override it, as the NYT is not a notable source for Industrial music. The burden, once sources establish that a particular entity/work uses a non-standard style, should be upon finding sources to show that contrary style usage is notable and important enough to override that.

The "call the company" point irks me because to do so is obviously WP:OR and, if you're posting on a project talk page, you probably knew that before you typed it. Perhaps unfairly, I also read into it the implication that my preferred method is unsupportable by sources, and that I prefer kowtowing to corporate branding. In reality I simply disapprove of the default-to-override nature of this MOS entry, and I feel it represents a bias that interferes with accurately reflecting non-standard proper nouns. It is also entirely plausible that we find reliable sources showing the actual style of a trademark, entity or work, and then represent the media-standardised presentation within the article body: "ohGr, often presented as 'Ohgr'." I may not have been entirely clear, but I'm not just pulling this out of my ass. - BalthCat (talk) 03:21, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that there may be a discussion worth having here with regard to artistic endeavors. Personally, if I were completely in charge of writing this guideline, I might make some distinction or recommend a degree of leeway on that basis. For instance, I would never suggest using "Oliver" instead of "Oliver!" for the name of the musical, because the exclamation point there serves some purpose, even if it's hard to precisely pinpoint what that purpose is, and sources so overwhelmingly use the exclamation point that I find it hard to seen an argument that something used so frequently is nonstandard. However, you haven't chosen to pursue gathering a consensus for any such change; instead, you've put forth completely reversing the entire guideline, and as such, I can't help but note that the practical effect of the changes you proposed would be that we never standardize anything, including corporate names. Again, the purpose of my "call the company" argument is to suggest that if your rule has no meaningful distinction from just letting companies brand departments make the decision, then there might be a problem somewhere with your formulation.

Generally, I'm still unsure about the nature of your objection, since you have now said that your principled belief contradicts your recommendation for what the guideline should actually say. If your concern is just that some things might get standardized on WP despite only being standardized in a small handful of sources, well, I don't think that happens in practice here. I don't know of any cases, at least.

Finally, I'm curious about whether you think that any degree of standardizing is ever appropriate. If a company always wrote one of their trademarks in a certain font or font size, and they furthermore insisted that such stylistic decisions were integral to the meaning of their name, would you believe that writing that name in plain text and regular size would be incorrect? Would that change if it were not a company's trademark but rather a band's name? Croctotheface (talk) 03:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Use of (tm) and (R) in direct quotes?

When we are making a direct quote from a printed work (press release, etc.) should we or should we not preserve the stupid (tm) and (R) symbols? By extension, should we or should we not preserve them in the titles of cited works? I disagree with another editor's interpretation, but I'm perfectly happy to go with whatever the community decides. In my opinion, the title of a cited work is itself a quotation and should be treated as any other quotation, but I'm not sure, so let's break this up into two separate issues:

• Should we or should we not preserve (TM) and (R) in a direct quotation of a printed work?
• Should we treat the title of a cited work as a direct quotation?

-Arch dude (talk) 14:36, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

On your first point logic says yes, but years of reading TSR blurbs back in the 80s say no -I would be inclined not to quote anyone who keeps saying TM and R. On your second point yes - up to a point: We already use standard caps, whereas many books, magazines and albums ALL CAP or SMALL CAP or title case The And Of. Rich Farmbrough, 06:58, 27 August 2009 (UTC).

Clarification

The guideline explicitly calls out ™ and ® symbols, but not the © symbol. I had assumed the same rule-of-thumb on use applied to that symbol, but I wanted to confirm it and can't find it here. Is there a different guideline for the use of that symbol? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Trust common sense. If two of the three are treated one way, so is the third. (That's until someone provides a good reason otherwise. Good reasons trump common sense.) -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:58, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Application of this guideline to titles of creative works?

Recently I've come across a few instances where this guideline was used as justification for changing the titles of articles on creative works, such as television episodes and music albums. I'm not entirely convinced that that is wise policy.

There's a question of rationale that comes to mind. When a company, such as eBay, decides to use an unusual capitalization, it's pretty obvious that it is done to create a certain amount of "eye-catchedness", that is it's purely to attract potential consumers and is fully commercial in intent.

In contrast, the same, I believe, cannot be said about unusual album/film/tv series or other such titles. The use of unususal spellings, punctuation or capitalization, particularly when presented as part of a graphical design that juxtaposes them to create a visual message, is a full part of the creative, artistic process and may have very little to do with commercial intent, outside of the normal belief that a higher quality, more meaningful work often becomes more popular.

The main justification usually presented for not using such unusual spellings, capitalizations or punctuation on Wikipedia is the desire to present a company more neutrally by only using such variations if they are universally used. This is fully in line with the bedrock NPOV principle, and reflects the desire for Wikipedia not to become an avenue for the commercial interests mentioned above. This is good solid policy.

The problem with applying it to artists and their creative works, in my opinion, is two-fold. First, by treating them the same as purely commercial ventures, we implicitly assign purely commercial motives to them and their actions. That is a mistake. We don't know, unless it's verified, that such is the case. Therefore we shouldn't.

Secondly, intellectual honesty demands that we reflect the authors' determinations and creative process. That includes the titles of creative works, including variations from normal English. In short, if we change any aspect of a title, we are changing the title of the work. That is something that is blatanly dishonest from an intellectual standpoint. And it may in fact have copyright implications. Remember, titles are part of the creative work, and therefore using the title actually constitutes a fair use of a portion of the work. If we alter the title in any way, we actually forfiet fair use protections, for we are not accurately representing the portion of the original work.

Using oddly formatted titles of creative works without alteration is not unusual, either, as reliable sources such as Roling Stone and The New York Times's Arts section do just that. I believe we should as well. oknazevad (talk) 06:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you'd have much of a problem with how this is handled in practice. Personally, I favor standardizing some creative titles, since it's possible for them to go completely overboard or to create miscellaneous annoyances. But there are likewise plenty of cases where I'd favor using a nonstandard formatting. The implication of your last paragraph, that we should follow what our sources do, is basically the rule of thumb that I'd use. Croctotheface (talk) 10:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I favor standardizing some creative titles, since it's possible for them to go completely overboard or to create miscellaneous annoyances. Thats exactly the sort of standardizing I oppose. Whether or not it's "overboard" (a POV, btw), it's the decision that the artist made. Being that it's their work, it's their decision. All we can do, from an intellectual honesty standpoint, is report on their decision, not force our rules on it. While using other sources may be proper for interpreting unclear examples, we should stick to what they do. oknazevad (talk) 22:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

We have a difference of opinion, and that's fine; I don't see much benefit to restating my position here. I'll just say two things. First, I certainly support "reporting on their decision", but that's very different from using the style they choose every single time within the text of the article. Second, there's nothing wrong with having a point of view; your belief that X or Y is intellectually honest is likewise "a POV". Croctotheface (talk) 02:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Caps

So if I'm reading this right, SHeDAISY is an unacceptable article name? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 04:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

First, I'm not 100% sure if this guideline is geared toward article content only or both article content and names. I think it's been applied every which way. The considerations would be the ones described in the article: are there multiple different ways of formatting the name of the band that exist in reliable sources? DO any of them more closely resemble standard English than "SHeDAISY"? Is "SHeDAISY" so commonplace that any other style would become effectively nonstandard? In general, I definitely think "SHeDAISY" is nonstandard, and this guideline would recommend choosing something more standard if it exists in sources. Since this is the name of a musical group, you should ask at the relevant music guidelines/projects, particularly WP:MUSTARD. Croctotheface (talk) 10:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Most sources, including Billboard and their official website, indicate that SHeDAISY is the most commonly used spelling. It shows up as such in Billboard's chart archives. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 17:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, for me, "most" would not be sufficient to indicate that a nonstandard style is effectively standard. I did a quick Google News search that found several reliable sources that chose to use a different style to make it more standard. If you want my opinion, I'd probably pick a more standard version. That said, I'd again suggest you take this up at WP:MUSTARD rather than here. Croctotheface (talk) 19:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

When consensus goes against MOS, MOS always loses. Steelbeard1 (talk) 21:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, editors could certainly form a consensus to not apply the guideline. I have no idea what that has to do with what he asked, though. Croctotheface (talk) 22:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Regarding SHeDAISY, remember the edit war regarding ABN AMRO started by MOS warriors like yourself, Croctotheface? ABN AMRO article editors won that war. Steelbeard1 (talk) 10:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Man, you must have some serious issues if you're still thinking about "winning" like a year later, or, really, if your approach to editing Wikipedia has to do with "winning" at all. However, thinking back to then, I still find myself amused at your altogether remarkable inability to comprehend what people were saying to you, so I suppose I'm not immune from being backward-looking in some sense. But really, I still fail to see the relevance of this comment to the discussion at issue here. Of course editors can reach a consensus to not apply this or any guideline, but TenPoundHammer did not ask about whether to apply the guideline or whether it's possible to reach a consensus not to apply a guideline. He asked about how the guideline would apply, and I gave him my view and made a suggestion about another place he could look for more opinions on the matter. That's what helpful editors do, and if you prefer instead to do whatever you can do see that this guideline is not applied, then I suggest you look in the mirror and consider who the real "warrior" really is. Croctotheface (talk) 11:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Me and many other customers, clients and staff members past and present of ABN AMRO who edit that article. Get it? Read the ABN AMRO talk page which is still much longer than the actual article due to the edit warring. Steelbeard1 (talk) 12:49, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I forgot how many laughs came from arguing with you, since you're always SO angry and SO clueless at the same time. What does anything you've said here have to do with how to apply the guideline, which is what the original editor asked about? Croctotheface (talk) 18:58, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not angry and I am not clueless. You seem to be. I, again, am a customer of ABN AMRO's unit LaSalle Bank Midwest which, for almost all of its history, was Standard Federal Bank until it was sold to and absorbed by Bank of America. Steelbeard1 (talk) 21:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Considering that you seem to think that this conversation is about ABN Amro, I'm not sure what you are if not clueless. Croctotheface (talk) 21:19, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

You are still clueless, Croctotheface. The official legal name is ABN AMRO in all-capital letters. That was what the edit war (which you lost) was about. Steelbeard1 (talk) 01:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Why are we talking about ABN Amro? That discussion happened a year ago and has no bearing on anything that TenPoundHammer asked about. And you don't even know what an edit war is. (Hint: editors disagreeing about something is not an edit war.) This is endlessly amusing for me, but it's probably wise at this point for us to move on to more productive things. Croctotheface (talk) 01:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

For those wondering what this is about, go to Talk:ABN_AMRO to read all about why Croc still does not get the point (even if it's pounded to his head with a sledgehammer) as you can clearly note that he still calls the Dutch financial institution "ABN Amro" when everyone knows that this spelling is completely wrong. Steelbeard1 (talk) 01:42, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm still not sure what ABN Amro has to do with anything anyone has been talking about in the last 10 months or so. Why are you still talking about this here? Croctotheface (talk) 02:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

This is most amusing! I love the way that people argue that a company's name is "legally" ABN AMRO. No, there is nothing legal about that. They have just registered a particular formatting style as a trademark or copyright or whatever. It is still written in the English language. The English language does not generally use such non-standard capitalisation. That is what WP:MOSTM explains - to use standard English capitalisation where companies style their brand differently. In the case of ABN Amro, editors decided to ignore MOSTM and use the non standard capitalisation instead. This is perfectly acceptable in wikipedia, as long as it is agreed upon by consensus. However, in correct English usage the name is ABN Amro. Perhaps you should contact the BBC and inform them of their mistake here, or maybe The Times, or The Telegraph, LA Times, NY Times or many, many more. All of these suggest that the standard capitalisation of ABN Amro is sufficiently widespread that it is technically and grammatically more correct. However, as stated above, consensus opinion was formed to ignore MOSTM in this instance (apparently). Anyway, as Croc wonders, why are you still going on about this? The original question regarded SHeDaisy. Croc answered this by stating that if a more standard capitalisation is sufficiently widely used, then wikipedia should adhere to the style that most closely resembles standard English... unless consensus is formed to ignore MOSTM. Nouse4aname (talk) 08:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Becase SHeDAISY and ABN AMRO both involve non-standard capitalisation, it is relevant for this discussion. If you bother to read the ABN AMRO talk page, you will see that journalistic citations do not agree and turn out to be irrelevant. Again, I am talking about the legal corporate name of which several examples are given in the ABN AMRO talk page. But I only have time to give you an example from ABN AMRO itself at [1] and I don't want to start another debate with the MOS warriors who lost the ABN AMRO naming battle so I will stop. Don't rebut or else I will give more refuting evidence. Steelbeard1 (talk) 11:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, you didn't address a single point that I raised there. Well done. You are confusing the name of the company with the stylistic preferences of said company. The way they style their name has nothing to do with what the word actually is. In standard English, the name is written ABN Amro, as evidenced above by multiple independent sources (which are not "irrelevant"). You are confusing the way the name is styled with the actual name. ABN Amro and ABN AMRO are the same name. They are spelt the same. They are said the same. The difference is in the non-standard styling of the font. This is done purely for marketing or other reasons and has no bearing on the actual "name" of the company. The company has simply registered a particular way of styling their logo. This does not make it the "legal name". The fact that numerous third party sources use ABN Amro over ABN AMRO further supports this, a point that you seem to ignore. Again, as stated above, SHeDAISY should follow standard English capitalisation as explained in WP:MOSTM, unless there is overwhelming evidence to support the use of non-standard capitalisation. This would include, for instance, the lack of any other capitalisation of the name apart from SHeDAISY in independent sources. However, as other sources LA Times, NY Times for example use standard English capitalisation, this would suggest that wikipedia should also. We do not lend undue weight to a company's stylistic preferences. We write in English, not in corporate logos. I look forward to reading your "more refuting evidence". Nouse4aname (talk) 12:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I am done with talking to the anal retentive MOS warlords. They are worse than the leadership of North Korea and Iran! Steelbeard1 (talk) 14:16, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

That is an entirely immature and ignorant response that is completely unwarranted. Perhaps one day you will learn to appreciate other editors viewpoints and constructively contribute to this collaboration. Nouse4aname (talk) 14:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Outside view

Hi. I've dealt with this issue a lot while working in requested moves, and I can confidently say that, next to the use of diacritical marks, capitalization of trademarked names is our most contentious naming issue. People get quite upset over it, and it is easy for people who are upset to get personal, as we see in the thread here. I am going to do my best to avoid that. I don't have a preference one way or the other, except that consensus be respected, and that we be the best encyclopedia we can be.

Now, I have observed, over the course of well over a thousand moves, in over two years, that there is a pretty strong community-wide consensus for our practice of removing special formatting from trademarked names. There are many examples where we have moved away from special formatting, and it stuck. Some that spring to mind are Time (magazine), Kiss (band), Thirtysomething (TV series), Korn, TNA Impact!, and Brian D Foy. Examples where a move away from special formatting hasn't stuck include: Bell Hooks, K.D. Lang, ABN AMRO, and apparently, SHeDAISY. Cases such as iTunes and eBay were determined to be exceptions in the same vein as CamelCaps, where the special formatting actually plays a role in parsing the word correctly.

The consensus supporting standardization certainly consists of more than a handful of people. There may only be two or three present in a particular discussion, but there have been literally hundreds of Wikipedians that I've seen voice support for the "remove special formatting" guideline. There are also many Wikipedians - probably just as many - who feel we should preserve special formatting to the extent we are able. Naturally, there are limits. We're not going to replicate typefont or the colors of letters, even in a case where the company always uses that font, or those colors.

If we're going to start following companies more, when it comes to how we style their trademarks, then we might want to be a bit consistent about that. Those who support following companies' formatting, I wonder where you would draw the line? Would it be proper to move all of the examples I've cited above to TIME, KISS, thirtysomething, KoЯn, TNA iMPACT! and brian d foy? Would it only be proper to move some of them? Where is the line drawn, if it's not going to be drawn where I've come to expect it? -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to hijack this thread or, in my reply, direct attention away from GTBacchus's highly relevant and insightful questions. I'll just say, however, that in my experience looking at these debates, the number of people who sincerely articulated a position opposed to standardization in general was rather small. Rather, the people who were vocal about a given case tended to be editors of a given article and, apparently, fans or clients or customers of the entity covered by the article. So the only point you raise here that I'd disagree with is the expectation that there may be as many editors opposed to standardization as in favor of it. I think that there is probably a tipping point where that would occur, but I strongly expect that special fonts or colors are well on the side where most editors would still support standardization. Croctotheface (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

You're right, Croc, that these numbers are difficult to gauge. It's the same question with diacritics - on any particular article, there might be a crowd of editors who want us to retain all the dots and twiddles of their native language, but the broad consensus of Wikipedians who support the "follow English language sources" strategy are much more numerous, when looking at the project as a whole. That broad consensus just doesn't tend to show up to each discussion where the guideline is in play. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It's worth noting for cases where MOSTM has won out, that being able to say MOSTM is policy through being mentioned on WP:NAME was probably a factor. MOSTM must be one of the most widely and sensibly ignored guides on Wikipedia, and the timesink caused by people coming to articles to try to enforce it in good faith is an excellent case for junking it. Let editors decide this case by case and do not direct people to follow one way because of a particular guideline or policy which is not widely supported, and has a ridiculously convoluted set of "legitimate" exceptions symptomatic of a problem. Please do an RFC or whatever it is that is done with a view to weakening MOSTM to reflect actual practice. This page has a constant stream of objectors who are then told by one by one that "consensus" says otherwise. 86.44.17.85 (talk) 23:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at the consensus that formed the guideline. There are more editors who participated then, years ago, than all those who have happened by this guideline to protest since then. Your belief that the editors who recommended applying the guideline in relevant discussions were somehow doing so despite their own feelings gives those editors very little credit. Had they disagreed with the guideline, I don't see a reason they would somehow support applying it judiciously. Beyond that, the people who object to this guideline have never supported some rule like "do whatever the company does," at least not after full discussion. Intriguingly, those editors always seem to want to say, "Well, of course we should standardize some things, but not standardize X," where X is whatever thing they are a fan or client of and therefore care about. The reality is that most guidelines and polices, let alone this one, are often ignored. I don't see the prevalence of, say, extremely long plot summaries means that we should modify the appropriate guideline there to say that long plot summaries are fine in all cases. Croctotheface (talk) 02:15, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

That's an unserious reply. Your first two sentences expect me to believe you've done a count of some sort? :) On your other point, if you don't think that sometimes editors do what they think "the rules" instruct them to in lieu of independent reasoning, you need to get real. You say "intriguingly" a lot of editors lobby for a case by case system. Well golly gee imagine that! That's just what I would opt for! Normal rules of capitalization are not followed on WP for, say, open source software which has not trademarked its name (there's a strong tradition of all lowercase software titles in free software), plus camelcase and all manner of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" exceptions, as noted, so a house style is already out the window. This is not a matter of enforcement of a sound guideline. What exactly is the argument for this policystrokeguideline? Obsolete paranoia about commercial entities on WP, I suspect. 86.44.16.7 (talk) 06:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Civility is valued here, first of all. If you can't make your points without being caustic, then perhaps you should reevaluate whether you are truly interested in contributing to a collaborative project such as Wikipedia. As far as the notion that people apply this guideline only because it's a rule...again, it's pretty easy for a given editor to not cite this guideline if they don't agree with it. For someone to be willing to affirm that a certain action should be taken because of this guideline, I don't see any evidence there that they do not believe in the guideline. It's very easy to not take the time and effort to write something; why would you go out of your way to do that if you don't even agree with the rationale behind what you're saying?

Based on your reply, I have to question whether you understand this guideline. You first misunderstand my point about what editors come here to say. They essentially say, "Apply this guideline to everything else, I understand why you should, just don't apply it to my favorite magazine or to the bank where I work or to to my favorite band." In other words, they agree with the principle behind the guideline, but they don't want us to standardize this thing that they like.

Furthermore, your objections don't really seem to be objections here. This guideline does not cover non-trademarked names, so I don't see why you'd bring them up as some kind of problem here. This guideline specifically says that camelcase is a judgment call, so again, what's the objection? You seem to be reading the guideline not as it exists, but as you imagine it might be. That that there exist articles with trademarks written in a nonstandard way does not mean that this guideline is not being applied; it means that there are applications yet to be made. I have no interest personally in scouring the encyclopedia for nonstandard styles and fixing all of them, and that doesn't somehow mean that this guideline has no value. That you don't understand the logic of the guideline could say more about you than it says about the guideline.

Ultimately, I just don't see what you want this guideline to say that it doesn't already. Your objections aren't actually issues where the guideline disagrees with you. Croctotheface (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's nonsense from beginning to end. If no one has ever suggested that you take time off from commenting on this talk page, let me be the first. Though I have no doubt of your good faith—you're clearly doing your best—your verbosity, unclear thinking, and unsupported assertions add up to a kind of obstructionism. 86.44.29.33 (talk) 14:10, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

What, exactly, does this comment contribute to the discussion? If, as it seems, no one has ever told you that it's a waste of everyone's time if you post here just to insult someone, allow me to be the first. You came here and said that the people who have said that we should apply this guideline don't actually believe in applying it. You offered zero evidence for that position, and now you're charging me with making "unsupported assertions"? Croctotheface (talk) 04:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

NeXT and NeXTSTEP

This issue has risen again (as it does from time to time) on the talk pages of the NeXT and NeXTSTEP articles. My own view is that the "no funny capitalization" rule in WP:MOSTM is one of the few WP policies and guidelines that I have a problem with, in my 4+ years' worth of WP contributions. IMHO, the job of an encyclopedia is to (within reason) document reality as accurately as possible and not distort it to fit its own self-imposed dogma. This should include reproducing the unorthodox capitalization of trademarks where such "deviancies" are well-documented and accepted outside of WP. It's also inconsistent to allow the specific cases of CamelCase and "a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter". Typographically, writing "NeXT" as "Next" (for example) is just as "wrong" as writing "eBay" as "Ebay".

Of course some trademark owners go to extremes of using specific colours, fonts, non-standard symbols and glyphs etc. and I agree that would be going too far in the context of WP. Problems can also occur if a particular presentation of a trademark conflicted with the syntactical rules of the wiki software - a good example is the {{lowercase title}} hack. But otherwise I can't see this guideline being justified on technical grounds. Letdorf (talk) 13:18, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

I'm pretty sure nobody says that there are technical reasons for the guideline. It's clear that we could capitalize titles however we want with the current software. The reason behind our "avoid funny capitalizations" convention, as I've seen the most people articulate it, is that Wikipedia is not in the business of promoting brands. Funny formatting make a brand name stand out, and stick in the memory. I think that a lot of Wikipedians hold the view that replicating funny formatting is tantamount to marketing.

You may not agree with that line - many don't, and MOSTM is one of our more controversial naming conventions - but that seems to be how a lot of people think. I'm not personally taking any stance at all. I couldn't really care less, except that I'd like to know just where the line is drawn, because I close a lot of move requests.

Capitalization: should Kiss (band) be at KISS? (Currently it isn't.) Punctuation: should Jeopardy be at Jeopardy!? (Currently it is.) Non-latin letters: should Korn be at KoЯn? (currently it isn't.) One advantage of the "avoid funny formatting" convention is that it answers all of these questions at once: "Avoid funny formatting except where a consensus has formed to retain funny formatting." That's easy to remember and apply. Not the best reason? If you were King for a Day, what would you do? -GTBacchus^(talk) 13:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I would just add to this that there's the issue of, if there is some sort of controversy, following what secondary sources do, not what the company would want. In basically every case where we avoid weird styles, our style is what major secondary sources (AP, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and so forth) use themselves. It's not "our dogma," it's what's in the sources. Likewise, I think that you'll find that for cases where the nonstandard style is more commonplace, we use the nonstandard one.

I also want to point out that considering you (Letdorf) are willing to draw the line on one side of fonts or colors, you're not absolutely in favor of "accuracy" as defined by how the company styles its trademarks. Your difference of opinion with the guideline really is not so huge: you seem to accept the basic premise that we can and should standardize in some cases. Croctotheface (talk) 20:30, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, to respond to GTBacchus, I'm not convinced that avoiding WP being seen to promote brands is an adequate justification for this guideline. If this is a concern, then surely it's more effective to ensure notability, NPOV etc. in articles about commercial products or services, than it is to deliberately write their trademarks incorrectly?

A hypothetical alternative rule of thumb (for the English WP) would be to allow any presentation of an English-language trademark which is widely accepted in secondary sources and can be written with characters from a common Latin character set like, say, ASCII or ISO 8859-15. Thus any combination of upper and lower case letters, plus numerals and common symbols such as '!' and '?' would be acceptable, but non-Latin characters wouldn't. That seems reasonable to me.

And yes, I realize we have to draw the line somewhere, and I think that line should come after mere idiosyncratic capitalization and commonly-used symbols, which is not what this guideline currently says. Letdorf (talk) 21:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC).

So, you'd go for capitalizations and ordinary punctuation, but not for non-Latin characters? That seems reasonable. I don't disagree. I'd also point out that we generally end up following reliable sources, which draw the line a little bit more conservatively than that. The New York Times, for example, tends not to do funny capitalization. TIME magazine? Not from professional journalists. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:10, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll just say that calling it "incorrect" begs the question a little bit here. If you presume that "correct" and "what the trademark owner likes" are the same thing, then your position makes sense. I don't feel that way, particularly for a case like Time magazine, where the only reason I can see for using all caps for the English word "time" is to call attention to it. As GTBacchus says, basically NO professional journalists use "TIME" for the magazine or "PGA TOUR" for the professional golf circuit. When there is such widespread usage that is different from what the trademark owner uses, there is, to me, an open question about what is "correct." Croctotheface (talk) 21:27, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Well... I guess those who publish Time Magazine are professional journalists. Technically. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:46, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's why I said "basically." I wouldn't be shocked if there were a random local paper here or there that uses "TIME" as well, but the usage of professionals is overwhelmingly "Time." In general, the more obscure our articles get, the less standard the usage gets, and I think that's a direct consequence of the lack of coverage received in sources that exercise editorial control over nonstandard styles. Croctotheface (talk) 21:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I was using "correct" above in the sense of "what the trademark owner likes, and is widely accepted in secondary sources". Of course, sometimes there isn't a "one true way" to write a trademark, and then you have to consider what is the most widely-used and easily-recognized form. Letdorf (talk) 00:20, 18 September 2009 (UTC).

I think that you'll find it's very rare for WP to standardize when standard is not the most common way sources write the trademark. There may be some cases where we standardize when most major sources do and most niche sources don't, but that's probably the way it should be. It's sometimes surprising to see how inclined our sources are toward standardizing trademarks. Croctotheface (talk) 16:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

On the merits, do we have sources that standardize NeXT/Next? Because if we don't, the guideline doesn't even recommend standardizing. If very few sources standardize, it's pretty much the same deal. I've found that often, editors challenge this whole guideline, even the stuff they don't really object to, over a single case that the guideline doesn't really cover the way they think it does anyway. Croctotheface (talk) 21:54, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be easier to list the sources that standardize "NeXT" as "Next" -- there are so few of them. A Google search on "next computer" steve jobs (my best effort at limiting the search to articles about this company) is extremely consistent on rendering the name of the company as "NeXT". A news search on the same terms confirms that (although there are many fewer results). Tim Pierce (talk) 00:32, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Another issue is that there are at least three major brands called "next", who use different capitalisations. If you read an article in the Financial Times about a company called "Next", it's likely to be the clothing chain. The retailer "next" use all lower-case in their logo, which gets normalised to "Next", so the unusual capitalisation of the computer company NeXT actually serves a purpose, in differentiating them from other companies.

I strongly disagree with the idea that we should change the capitalisation of brand names in order to avoid giving them free promotion (horrors!). There are plenty of entertainers out there with silly names and perverse spellings, and we don't change the spellings of their names to make them more "sensible". Wikipedia ought to be neutral on that issue, and shouldn't be taking it upon itself to change details to stop certain entities getting attention. If someone has a catchy name, good for them.

The legitimate reason for changing capitalisations is to impose an easier reading style on Wikipedia as a document. It's the same rationale that newspapers use for imposing house styles and conventions on their aggregate publications – it's not that they're opposed to companies having catchy typesetting, its just that the importance of preserving that typesetting is considered to be secondary to the importance of making the newspaper easy to scan and read. If we didn't capitalise "next" (the clothing retailer), it'd make articles about them more difficult to read, because the reader would have to try harder to find the uncapitalised name within an article, which might use the uncapitalised word, "next", for other purposes ("The next thing that the company did was ..."). We shouldn't override logo capitalisations out of antipathy ("You're a commercial company, and we're editing these articles for free, so we hate the idea that you might gain advantage from our article, and we're going to take steps to prevent that, yah-boo"). We should do it for dispassionate reasons based on functionality. ErkDemon (talk) 23:49, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

To your first paragraph, there's no more issue with next/Next/NEXT//\/3><+/whatever other formatting of "Next" you could come up with than there would be with multiple companies that use "Next" in standard English form. In fact, it's frowned upon to use spelling or formatting as the sole basis for disambiguation. That's the reason that we have Half-Life (video game) instead of just Half-Life, whose capital L distinguishes it from the scientific concept of half-life. To the rest of your comment, both of those reasons inform our guideline here ("[standardizing] ensures consistency in language and avoids drawing undue attention to some subjects rather than others"). We could change "consistency" to "consistency and readability" if you prefer. You seem to believe that we don't standardize names of entertainers, but that's not true; for instance, Pink (singer) seems to like "P!nk", but we don't use that. Although you say that doing what the company wants us to do is somehow "neutral", that seems like the complete opposite of neutrality to me, especially when other reliable sources standardize the names of trademarks on a much larger scale than Wikipedia does. It would be patently ridiculous to say that it would be a neutral practice to ignore reliable sources and instead base the information in our articles on official company press releases. Lastly, this guideline does not come out of some sort of "antipathy" for commercial entities; the vast majority of the time, we do follow the style that trademark owners like because they choose to use a standard English style. Croctotheface (talk) 00:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Ummm... why shouldn't official company press releases be regarded by WP as reliable (primary) sources? Letdorf (talk) 13:13, 19 October 2009 (UTC).

I didn't say they were unreliable by definition, though they often are. If it helps, add in the word "secondary" between reliable and sources in the above comment. Put another way: "Ummm...do you believe that we should base Microsoft on the company's official press releases at the expense of secondary sources?" Croctotheface (talk) 20:03, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we're meaning different things with the word "reliable" here. WP:RS says: Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand. I'm not sure I understand why an official press release issued by the owner of a trademark would not be considered trustworthy or authoritative with regard to the presentation of said trademark? In what circumstances would a secondary source be regarded as more trustworthy or authoritative? Of course, trademark owners can sometimes be inconsistent in the presentation of trademarks, but that doesn't make them less authoritative. Letdorf (talk) 12:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC).

Press releases are authoritative as far as how the trademark owner styles his trademark, but they don't and should not control what we do here. I think we may be indeed talking past each other. My point was/is that we should not feel beholden to do something simply because the company wants us to do it. I brought press releases versus secondary sources to show a parallel situation: it would be patently ridiculous to tow the "official" line on, say, a company's role in a scandal. If their press releases say they did nothing wrong, but reliable secondary sources present evidence that they're guilty, nobody would say that we should ignore the secondary sources in favor of the "official" word from the company. Likewise, nearly all reliable secondary sources standardize trademarks in the body of their articles, so it's not as if we're somehow the only publication that does this. We basically follow what our sources do. Croctotheface (talk) 21:51, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, of course, with regard to content, primary sources should be treated with caution; to quote WP:NOR: Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge. But I don't see how this applies to presentation; a trademark is the property of its owner and who is to disagree with how they wish to present it? And, as I have said previously here, I believe style guidelines relating to such matters for an encyclopedia don't necessarily have to be the same as those used in journalistic sources; newspapers and encyclopedias are different kinds of literature and serve different purposes. Letdorf (talk) 12:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC).

First off, I'm not sure that what style we choose for a trademark is not a content decision, especially when we're dealing with the style used within the body of the article. Obviously this is a highly charged topic for many people; when controversial issues come up, why do you think the best solution is to disregard the practice of our sources and instead do precisely what the company itself, the company that we are supposed to neutrally compile information about, would want us to do? How does that fit in with Wikipedia's core philosophies? Croctotheface (talk) 18:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, maybe we have different ideas about whether typography is content or presentation. Just to recap, IMHO, it is obvious that a trademark's owner should be considered trustworthy and authoritative with regard to the "official" presentation of said trademark; and, while secondary sources should also be considered (per WP:COMMONNAME), it must be remembered that a journalistic secondary source may be subject to strict subediting style guidelines which (again, IMHO) may not be appropriate to an encyclopedia. Letdorf (talk) 12:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC).

I agree that the trademark owner would be an adequate source for what is "official," but in much the same way that the "official" position of tobacco companies was that their products did not cause health problems, we should not just get out of the way and agree to whatever the trademark owner wants. Also, to be clear, nobody is saying that we must purge any mention of the nonstandard formatting from memory; we should feature it prominently in the lead of the article. As far as whether our style guidelines should be more in line with journalistic secondary sources or corporate press releases, I'm firmly on the side of journalistic secondary sources. Croctotheface (talk) 19:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Guideline in general

It seems to me that the goal of the WP:MOSTM guideline on case and punctuation in trademarks is: trademarks should be written to reflect the most consistent popular usage rather than the trademark owner's preference. Is that more or less what's intended? Tim Pierce (talk) 00:35, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The guideline makes a somewhat stronger recommendation like that. It would recommend standardizing in cases where there is a non-trivial level of standardization that doesn't rise to the level of "most." But the answer to your question, especially in practice, is much closer to yes than no. The guideline says that we should choose among styles that exist in sources, not invent new ones. So, if a style does not exist in sources, we shouldn't use it even if it's more standard. Also, I interpret the language that says "use standard English" to mean that if a style is used overwhelmingly by sources--including those like AP and the New York Times that we'd look to for guidance as to what standard English is--then it's hard for me to really see that style as nonstandard. If the AP and NYT use "NeXT," then we can probably just go home.  ;) Croctotheface (talk) 00:55, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense to me. I'm trying to find a way to word the rule that's more consistent with what seems to be existing Wikipedia practice. Would it achieve the desired goal to say this? "When a trademark uses nonstandard capitalization, follow the styles used by reliable sources (such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CNN) in preference to the trademark owner's capitalization." Tim Pierce (talk) 01:18, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I think that's reasonable, although I'm a little unsure about listing example sources. That list could vary greatly from one topic area to another. Academic sources - when they exist - are better than journalistic ones for encyclopedia-writing, right? -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:12, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'd take journalistic sources over academic ones when dealing with questions of style. Academic journals in many cases won't have full copy staffs or pay the same kind of attention to this stuff that, say, the New York Times does. Croctotheface (talk) 06:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

It's occurred to me that the normalization of trademarks could be more acceptable in journalistic publications, which often have strict style guidelines, than it would be in encyclopedias, which (IMHO) should have more of a duty to be pedantically accurate and have greater fidelity to primary sources in matters of presentation. An example would be Flight International magazine, which used to have a policy of printing all pronounceable acronyms in mixed case (ie. "Arti" instead of "ARTI"). So journalistic sources need to be treated with caution, I think. Letdorf (talk) 12:39, 18 September 2009 (UTC).

Per IAR, I think all sources should be treated with caution. :) -GTBacchus^(talk) 15:14, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

It might also be worth pointing out that there's nothing wrong with letting readers see the style the trademark owner likes to use. And as I've said elsewhere in this discussion, it is not agreed that what's "accurate" is what the trademark owner does, especially when basically no sources do it. We should be skeptical of source,s sure, but we should also be skeptical of what the company we're writing about wants to do. Croctotheface (talk) 16:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, definitely! Didn't mean to imply otherwise. :) The trademark style should certainly be given in the lead, just maybe not used for the title. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:32, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, you could take the point of view that the trademark's owner provides primary sources, and the only problem WP has with primary sources is interpretation of primary source material, which isn't relevant to this issue. Letdorf (talk) 11:11, 19 September 2009 (UTC).

I'm not sure what policies or guidelines you're referring to here, since interpreting secondary sources is no more or less an issue than interpreting primary sources. And even if there were, there's also a question of how reliable primary sources are and whether basing our articles on them creates the experience for the readers that we want. Those seem like the main issues here. Croctotheface (talk) 22:06, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I was referring to WP:PRIMARY. However this is more relevant to content, rather than presentation. Letdorf (talk) 23:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC).

Style issues seem all about presentation, but I'm not really sure what your distinction is here, so I don't want to go down a path if I'm misunderstanding where it's headed. I'll just say again that this is not about denying that a nonstandard style exists, which is what a primary source would establish. We can and should reference the nonstandard style prominently in the lead of the article. This is about saying that we need not and often should not replicate that nonstandard style every time we write the trademark. Croctotheface (talk) 01:33, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I would most certainly favor putting more into the rationale part here, particularly something that demonstrates how all other major publications standardize. (As GTBacchus pointed out, they standardize much more frequently than we do at WP.) I'm not sure if I would favor making that change to the actual mechanism of the guideline...but at first glance I could see myself supporting it. I think something like this might even be a better articulation of my personal approach than the current text of the guideline. I'm curious about whether others think it would make the guideline less controversial. I'm certainly in favor of that.

Also, I've been working on something of an essay in support of the guideline that I figure, with trimming, could become a rationale section. Part of me believes that if we're clearer about how this guideline works and is meant to work, it could become less contentious for an "outsider" to bring up MOSTM at a certain article. It may be time to bring it out for others to consider. Here's my work very much in progress: User:Croctotheface/MOSTM/Essay. Croctotheface (talk) 06:18, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Croctotheface, that essay is a great idea. Thanks for doing this! Explaining this much maligned guideline better than we have done so far can only be a good thing. I think we've occasionally articulated it well on this talk page, but that's a bit transient to be of enduring use.

I agree that the guideline could be made into a less controversial and more accurate reflection of existing practice by noting that we basically follow sources. Principles that we've written down so far - such as using CamelCaps when they have semantic meaning, and "iPod" falling under that same rule - are, I think, abstractions of what sources are doing out there. Thus it's simpler to just admit that we follow their lead that to try and distill the usage of sources into in-house aphorisms. Not that I'm saying we should get rid of those aphorisms; just acknowledge their pedigree. -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:47, 18 September 2009 (UTC)