Wikipedia talk:Specialized-style fallacy

A 2011 post that prefigured this essay

It is a false god to say that something is "official". It is common among specialists to allow creeping capitalisation, which is harmless if kept within the specialism. It then becomes a slight badge of honour to show that one knows how "it is done". We should resist the push to use specialist structures, where they aren't necessary, whether it is phraseology, grammar or capitalisation. They obscure meaning for the non-specialist user. Rich Farmbrough, 05:14, 28th day of January in the year 2011 (UTC).

From: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animals/Draft capitalization guidelines#Horse breeds. Thought this was worth preserving here as background.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:44, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Specialist style fallacy

I don't think "strawman" is being used in the normal manner here, where it seems the term refers to a weak, unsupported argument in favor of a position. Usually a strawman argument is a debating technique that refutes the opposition's position by framing it in its worst possible (and most easily knocked down) way.

Instead I think the specialist argument is simply a weak, fallacious argument. Maybe just call this the "Specialist fallacy". Jojalozzo 03:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Now I prefer "Specialist style fallacy". Jojalozzo 00:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Works for me. I was using "straw man" in its more general application of "the erection of a plausible-sounding but false argument, weaker than the opponent's real one, so that one can then argue against the weak effigy instead of the real argument". When I started this page, I was only going to address the SSM in its form of asserting that disagreeing with a specialist style preference was an attack on the existence or reliability of the specialist sources, a clear straw man, but in the course of writing it, it actually grew far beyond that to include other fallacies inherent in specialist style reasoning, so I'll move the page. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Updated the text. Fortuitously, the WP:SSF shortcut was also available. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:46, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Reliable source style fallacy?

Can't this argument be generalized to the "Reliable source style fallacy", i.e. the sources we use for content are not necessarily our best sources for style? Jojalozzo 02:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I coincidentally just added a box that says that. I like the name as it is now, has a certain ring to it and is memorable, and basically only specialists ever make this argument, but the text could probably make your underlying point clearer. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 16:01, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I worked the idea in better, and it brought up another one (which suggests not renaming), which is that the SSF can be used without any explicit claim with regard to reliable sources, but instead relying on the fallacy of appeal to tradition, an argument that in some debates long preceded and appeared far more frequently that the RS-based variant. I think the RS argument was an "ah HA, let's try this!" moment that came along as an attempt at WP:GAME after the "it's just how it's done, dammit" tradition argument flopped.

PS: WP:Reliable source style fallacy, WP:Reliable sources style fallacy and WP:RSSF all redirect here now, too. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 16:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Cases in point

This essay was originally inspired by specialist insistence on capitalizing the common names of species of certain (but not all) organisms, but it is much more broadly applicable. — SMcCandlish

For a good example of the MOS vs. tradition with job titles, see Talk:Chief Mechanical Engineer. Jojalozzo 17:07, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow, perfect case. I love the pile of reliable fact sources cited in the RM discussion, as if they had jack to do with how to capitalize in an encyclopedia. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 20:48, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I had a similar experience with traditional capitalization of job titles in US military articles with same results. The CME's were all Royal Engineers (army engineer officers) as well as the heroes of British railway enthusiasts, so are deserving of Extremely High Regard and Upper Case. (I am personally in awe of the CMEs' accomplishments but suppress my enthusiasm for the good of the project.) Jojalozzo 22:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

DickLyon pointed out another: Talk:Halley's Comet/Archive 3#Requested_move. The preponderance of the evidence was that non-specialist sources don't capitalize, including Chicago, which specifically used "Halley's comet" as an example. (I would have been initially loosely in favor of capitalization, because a chunk of ice and rock in space that is big enough to land a spacecraft on seems to me to be a "place", and we capitalize place names in English, but it's not an argument I would push against mainstream lower case usage, which is clearly in the majority.) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 17:17, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Here's an opposite case, of specialists "getting it" without fanfare, despite plenty of capitalization in works in their field (I've seen it myself, esp. for diseases caused by organisms): 'For capitalisation, Wikipedia article titles use sentence case rather than title case (for example, "Diabetes mellitus" rather than "Diabetes Mellitus").' – WP:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 20:28, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Another bad case: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#A lead is not a lede: Despite several clear consensus discussions against referring to Wikipedia leads as journalist ledes, because the words have exactly opposite meanings, journos and journo students keep editwarring the incorrect term back into WP:LEAD. This has been going on for at least 4 years. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:06, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Even worse, possibly the most asinine case ever: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Equine/Archive 5#RFC: what units should be used for horse and pony heights?. Horse specialist proposes that we refuse to convert weird units like Hand (unit) to inches as well as to metric, despite US readers largely needing such a conversion, just because specialists never use inches to measure horses (worse, actually - they do use inches for small horses, but never for big ones. Yes, really.). If it weren't stale, I would hand out a WP:TROUT over that user-hateful idea. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 03:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

That's really unfair. Read the discussion again. It is mostly very good natured and a good example of a group of editors finding out together what best do to. The proposer JLAN does make the mistake of forgetting his non-specialist readers (who may need a third unit conversion) but that is such a common and general mistake. Most of the "what do specialists do" aspect is about choosing the primary unit, which seems fair enough. He then learns from his fellow editors that we need to consider that audience too and he does't argue the point further. He's making none of the mistakes and behavioural problems listed in this essay. The pattern of the discussion is very much "ok, here's how I interpret MOS and here's what I've figured out when trying to guess how all the folk in the world measure horses, what do you think?". It is a complicated subject because it seems different kinds of horses are measured differently and in different parts of the English speaking world and elsewhere. He repeatedly asks his fellow editors for their thoughts and appears to respect them and the consensus that forms. No trouts required. Saying this is an example of SSF is like saying that because I've probably made a few grammar and spelling mistakes in this paragraph, that I'm some kind of fundamentalist anti-speller who disregards grammer rules. Colin°^Talk 10:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I haven't seen anyone else launch a proposal that says things like "[articles] should not use inches as inches are never used for the measurement of horses", "Three-way conversion is unnecessary, superfluous and ... [the three-way conversion template] is obsolete, and may be discarded", etc. Virtually every respondent at that RfC opposed the proposal, American and British, horse editors and not. That the proponent learned from the mistake is good, but it doesn't make the proposal any less an example of SSF at work. Making some typos is not at all comparable to clearly and deliberately proposing to reduce unit conversion functionality specifically because the unit the proponent would deprecate – the unit overwhelmingly more intuitive for literally hundreds of millions of Americans – does not agree with typical usage in that field. I'm not personally picking on the proponent, I'm saying that the proposal itself clearly illustrates the "can't see the forest for the specialist trees" problem this essay addresses. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 09:31, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

PS: It belatedly occurs to me that you may be reacting especially to my use of the word "asinine". Some people think it has some superlatively epithetic nature, like "asshole" or "ass-hat". Despite the POV-pushing junk entry on the word at Wiktionary (one of the worst I've ever seen there, and I've raised the issue on its talk page), it actually simply means "stubborn or recalcitrant" like an ass in the original zoological meaning of the word. It doesn't imply "moron", "evil" or anything else awful. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 12:59, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Having got that off your chest....

Wow. The author is a bit angry. No? I bet you're glad you got that off your chest. IMO, the best thing you can to is (metaphorically) scrumple up the paper and write it again. There's probably some good stuff in here but it (a) is TLDR at 3000+ words and (b) comes across as "I'm right and you're not only wrong but really stupid too (and to emphasise how stupid you are, I've wikilinked all the logical fallacies and common WP misbehaviours you've committed)". I don't follow all the goings-on at WP so perhaps there are some really bad specialist style disputes going on. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation is all I can find. As a opinion essay, it doesn't have to be balanced of course, but it descends into the gutter when it paints all-who-disagree as evil, stupid and troublesome. Do the folk you disagree with have no good points?

I found this essay because WP:MEDMOS was quoted temporarily as a case of 'of specialists "getting it"'. I was initially confused. The sentence quoted concerned capitalisation, for which MEDMOS merely repeats the MOS guidance of sentence-case for article titles. However, the sentence goes on to say "For punctuation, e.g., possessive apostrophes and hyphens, follow the use by high-quality sources", which is exactly the sort of "specialist style fallacy" this essay seems to be written against.

As background, the above sentence was added to WP:MEDMOS by WhatamIdoing (talk · contribs) after some heated discussion at WikiProject Medicine which moved onto MEDMOS. The discussion concerned the hyphenation of various carciomas vs WP:MOS and "English hyphenation rules". I don't want to open up old wounds on that one. I can't speak for WhatamIdoing but I support the sentence if it puts an end to edit warring over trivia. Otherwise, I'm not fussy about keeping it.

Our guidelines on naming, spelling and grammar are a right mix, sometimes deferring to published works, seeking the common usage, or obeying some written rule. The most important virtues of any guideline in these matters is that it minimises the risk of picking a stupid choice and that it provides a means of settling disputes among editors.

The author could do with swallowing an AGF pill. If the folk who live in Milngavie where told that they are stupid for not spelling their town "Mulguy", they'd probably respond with hostility, commit a few logical fallacies and if pushed hard enough, start breaking some WP guidelines. The same goes for our precious specialist writers. We need to keep them, not point them at essays that seem to be written to make them feel inadequate and unwelcome. Colin°^Talk 21:55, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is certainly long. I'll leave it to someone else who understands the issues to shorten it; it's too one-editor at this point. It will never be super-short, because of the number of tactics that pushers of specialist style will use. (I could document every single one of them mentioned with recent diffs, but the point was to write a general essay not ankle-bite at any particular editors or projects). There are some really bad disputes going on, e.g. at WT:MOS on capitalization of animal species common names (Bald Eagle, Goldfish, Domestic Cat, Bottle-nose Dolphin, etc.) No one has been depicted as evil. I've even been careful to make the point that the SSF is usually good faith, just misguided, and how to tell when it is, rarely, being used in bad faith, because the pattern is very clear.

Re: MEDMOS and "follow the use by high-quality sources" – It doesn't say "high-quality medical sources that contradict high-quality general style/grammar sources", and while I'm not a doctor, I've not seen any cases of a preponderance of medical reliable sources wildly diverging from reliable regular ones on grammar and style matters, much less seen WP:MEDICINE engaging in a 7-year WP:BATTLEGROUND about it, the way WP:BIRDS has over bird species common name capitalization. "X cell carcinoma" vs. "X-cell carcinoma" does not raise any "that's totally ungrammatical!" alarms in the heads of our general readership, unlike capitalizing non-proper nouns (indeed, I doubt that even most medical readers would notice the hyphen or its absence, or care at all).

"The most important virtues of any guideline in these matters is that it minimises the risk of picking a stupid choice and that it provides a means of settling disputes among editors." I strongly agree, though I suppose our interpretations of what that actually means in practice must differ somewhat. I don't see that the "rename Milngavie to be phonetic" example is comparable to anything at issue here. No one is telling, e.g., legal specialists that they should rename all the Latinate legalisms (that I know of – there probably is some crank somewhere who's made such a suggestion, I guess).

I'm not sure how to do what you suggest. This essay was written specifically because of certain specialist editor camps becoming so entrenched on a specialist style matter that they have engaged in demonstrable bad-faith behavior to shut up people who disagree with them, who come from all "walks of life", including being specialists in other fields. It's unclear to me how to address this problem with zero amount of rubbing some people the wrong way who don't deserve it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 20:45, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

You mention the case of animal species names. This essay summary says it concerns "style and article naming" which covers also spelling, hyphenation, italic, abbreviation and the choice of specialist terms vs lay terms, perhaps more. For me to be convinced this is a "fallacy", you'd need to make the case there's a widespread problem with various such issues and that those deferring to specialists are nearly always wrong. Colin°^Talk 22:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The animals thing is just one (major) example. It comes up all the time. The thread immediately before this one provides several more example. The problem is widespread, but wouldn't need to be for the reasoning to be fallacious, which is a matter of logic/reason, not popularity or severity, which are differences of degree, not kind. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:36, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The above thread just has more capitalisation arguments. I'm not seeing this is a general problem. I don't aggree that deferring to specialists for advice on article naming is fallacious -- just one of several ways of determining a good name. For one to write an essay called "specialist style fallacy" and to describe it as a general problem rather than describing one instance, one does need to show this is common and severe. You haven't convinced me. Colin°^Talk 09:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Look again. "Lead" vs. "lede" is not a capitalization issue. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

That's not an example of your fallacy and the folk in the discussion aren't committing a fallacy, merely disagreeing on word meaning and usage. Language evolves and the meaning of words can sometimes be more a statistical measure than an absolute. I'm reminded of "computer program" and "dialog box" where in the UK that spelling has evolved a computing-only meaning. Is someone writing "computer programme" wrong, quaint or just statistically outnumbered? Anyway, your fallacy needs to show that making the "defer to specialists" mistake is nearly always wrong. It seems to me that we should take guidance on spelling/style from a number of sources, including specialists. This essay is saying that those using or preferring one source of guidance are always making a stupid mistake. What it ignores is the great number of times when deferring to specialists is a superb choice and one nobody would ever argue about (hence you don't get involved). I do think you've built your case on outliers rather than reality. Colin°^Talk 09:16, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

They're engaging in exactly the same fallacy, pretty much word for word: They're demanding a specialist usage because reliable sources in their specialty do it, ignoring the fact that the actual reliable sources for style and grammar (including vocabulary distinctions) in a general work are not specialist sources. Someone writing "computer programme" is simply not North American. I don't see what your point might be with that one. There is nothing statistical about the lead/lede issue. Lede has a precise definition (even if some sources didn't understand this and glossed over the details) and it is at odd with what WP does in the lead sections of our articles. I never said anyone was stupid. It is a mistake to push specialist style ideas on a general audience when they conflict. When they don't, no one cares.

We're arguing past each other. You're arguing that specialist style is usually great, and only in "outlier" cases causes problems. I'm arguing that specialist style that doesn't conflict with the expected normal stye is not at all the subject of this essay and isn't a concern to or for anyone. It's like I've said "dogs that bite people for no reason are bad", but you're arguing "dogs are usually very good pets; it's only a few outliers that cause problems, so stop being a dog-hater!" I'm not "ignoring" that deferring to specialist usage is often helpful; I'm only addressing the bullheaded fight-to-the-death insistence on doing so when doing so does not serve the interests of our readers, only of specialist editors. The specialist style fallacy is that specialist style always trumps everyday style even in a general work. Observing that this is a grossly unhelpful idea in an encyclopedia is not an attack on specialists (I am a specialist, of several sorts!), but a criticism of stubborn insistence that everyone re-learn to read and write in a specialist way because their specialty is, well, special. Sorry, it's not. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 03:15, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Well I don't see the SSF in the lede argument at all. The only connection with specialists is that the spelling variant "lede" is jargon used by journalists (specialists in a form of writing). I don't see anyone arguing the journalistic form "always trumps" or as this essay puts it "must also be the most reliable source for deciding how to name or style articles". Merely that some people regard it as a spelling variant of the same word; that some people believe it has (or has grown to have) a subtly different meaning; and that some people believe it has a meaning that is a distinct subset of the "lead" meaning (where that subset/different meaning is unhelpful when describing our "leads"). I think others disagree with you over whether that word has a "precise meaning".

The "computer programme" issue is related to the lede issue. Actually folk outside of the US wouldn't write it that way. There must have been a point when all sorts of grammar and spelling fusspots went red about how tech folk are misspelling the word in British English writing. Then gradually they accept defeat and agree the US form is not only acceptable but preferred when writing about the software. Indeed, the variant is helpful in that a "computer program" is really nothing at all like a programme of events. My argument is that the lede spelling change is one of recent evolution. Folk are just doing their honest best to work out what the word usage is today and how and whether it should be used in our guideline page. I don't see anyone always or over- deferring to specialists.

Back to this essay. So you agree that sometimes specialists can be a useful source of spelling and style. This essay says the mistake is to assume these specialists must always be the best source, or for someone to over-defer to the specialists. The counter argument to the former is that I'd say you were perhaps guilty of assuming the dictionaries and style guides must always be the best source and that in any dispute between them and professional writing by specialists in the subject, the specialists are clearly inadequate writers. The latter is one of degree and that cannot itself be a fallacy, merely opinion. You may often disagree with people who hold such opinions, but that doesn't mean they are committing a fallacy.

Re "stupid". Your essay spends most of the middle section mocking the folk this essay targets. That might come across as funny to some but actually people react very badly to losing face and is very unlikely to be a useful form of argument if you are trying to convince anyone they are making a mistake.

Wrt spelling and meaning of words, I've seen many dictionary definitions of medical terms that are deeply unhelpful. over-simplified and at times very old fashioned/outdated (and I'm just a lay reader, not a medic). We just have to do our best to judge whether to go with a specialist source or a general dictionary for some things. Colin°^Talk 09:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Re: 'I don't see anyone arguing the journalistic form ... "must also be the most reliable source for deciding how to name or style articles".' Go read the current and previous debates at WT:LEAD and its archives. That exact argument has been presented. Re: "computer programme" – I'm not British (any more; I lived there as child and learned to read and write there), so if you say that "computer program" is now standard British English, I believe you, but I don't see that it's particularly relevant. No one is going on a disruptive, tendentious organized campaign of editwarring about how to spell that. Of course I and everyone else that I know of agree that sometimes specialists can be a useful source of spelling and style – namely when their preferences don't conflict with general usage in ways that confuse and upset people, presume specialist knowledge, or are too arcane for laypeople to follow. If you don't think that MOS should treat English-language style/grammar guides and dictionaries as the most reliable sources on English-language style, grammar and words, then that's something you'll have to take up at WT:MOS. I'm highly curious what you'd suggest as a replacement. The fact that some generalist works exist with imprecise definitions doesn't mean anything. Some dogs bite people, but this doesn't make all dogs bad. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 09:42, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

(outdent) I think we're going round in circles now. Specialist sources and general dictionaries/style/grammar guides all have their place. It is a fallacy to assume either of these sources always give the best advice for our naming/style rules in articles. Being fundamentalist about naming/style is wrong. This isn't maths. Editors will vary as to how much weight they give to sources. Specialists will tend to give more weight to specialist sources and generalists to generalist sources. Extremist in one camp view the extremists in the other camp as fundamentally wrong, rather than respecting their opinions. This essay is harmful in the sense that it can be used by members of one camp to ridicule all the members of the other by describing only the beliefs/behaviours of the extremists. That in itself is a fallacy. Colin°^Talk 12:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Neither I nor anyone I'm aware of has said that generalist sources always give the best advice or that specialist sources never do. MOS for its entire existence has defaulted to the general sources, per basic common sense, and followed specialist sources when (i.e., if and only if) they don't conflict with generalist ones in ways that piss people off and cause endless e-bloodshed. The real fallacy I've been trying to point out the entire time is that there is no such thing as a generalist editor. Everyone is a specialist of one sort or another (almost always several kinds of specialist, e.g. car salesman/hockey nut/Baptist, or web developer/industrial music maven/parrot keeper). These specialties may be professional, cultural, avocational, whatever. But we all have them. This necessarily means there is an unlimited number of specialist style peccadilloes, and they all have to be ignored with equal impunity when they're problematic, or chaos reigns. It's a classic scalability problem.

Re: "[WP:SSF] can be used by members of one camp to ridicule all the members of the other by describing only the beliefs/behaviours of the extremists" – Accepting that at face value, how would this be resolved? The essay was created for a real reason (seven years of entrenched editwarring, including massive amounts of absolutely provable disruptive editing, just over one such issue), and I'm not the only one finding it valuable. Where exactly is it crossing the line (and what line) in your view, and how can it still address the problem, but not lend itself to misinterpretation or mis-citation? I've tried hard to ensure that it's clear that SSF is only a bad-faith issue in very clear-cut cases, and that style matters should even follow specialist materials when it doesn't cause conflicts with general-use expectations (e.g., it's ''Homo sapiens'', not Homo Sapiens or homo sapiens or ''Homo'' '''Sapiens''', etc.).

There's some other stuff to address, but it seems less important so I've collapse-boxed it, so this doesn't look like the wikiproverbial "wall of text".

It's not just about individual extremists.

Specialist style when it conflicts with general, broad usage is doomed at Wikipedia because no one understands or agrees with any particular specialist style peeve except the specialists pushing it; specialist type X and specialist type Y often have directly conflicting specialist style demands; and editors cannot possibly remember much less agree to every conceivable specialist style demand. By stark contrast, we all certainly can and generally do easily and firmly agree to an arbitrary across-the-board rule. MOS consists of nothing but such rules, and people tend to understand and abide by them, even when they conflict with personal preferences, because they grok what the purpose is. The only time problems arise is when, by blind coincidence, a certain critical mass of will-not-budge partisans for a specific style exemption happen to be specialists in the same field and, through self-selecting accretion, form of a kernel of highly politicized, coordinated "do it our way or we'll [insert something WP:POINTy here]" activism. Over time it becomes more and more all about their preferences and intra-field norms that no one else follows, against others (WP:BATTLEGROUND). They can get so entrenched that they are no longer thinking of what the encyclopedia needs, only "defending" "their" articles from "attacks" by "no good faith" "style warriors" pushing "this shit again" and trying to "cause [their] project to fold", etc., etc., etc. All of that melodramatic nonsense is direct quotations from recent SSF-pushing debates. I couldn't make this stuff up. Try this one: "[It's] an age-old struggle, that of those daring to be free-thinkers striving for excellence, against those desirous of the accumulation of power." I mean, really. Even if Derek Jacoby narrated that with Shakespearean splendor it would still be utterly farcical. (And not solely because blind, lock-step adherence to a specialist publication style preference far outside of its arguably appropriate context is the furthest thing from "free-thinking"; it's downright robotic.) It's unfortunate that WP:SSF had to be written, but it did have to be. There are obviously WP:NOTHERE parties for whom editing WP isn't about building an encyclopedia, it's about engaging in a some kind of exclusive specialist club. Here's another quotation for you: "In case the caps warriors force lowercase on [topic], I own [domain.name], so we could just move there and build a far better [topic] wiki than ever could be made here." NB: The longer quotations were two different editors, pushing the same agenda; I could quote many more from the same project. [I'm intentionally not putting diffs here, and am redacting details, because this is about the general issue not this editor or that, this project or that; if someone wants a diff because you don't believe me, e-mail me.] So it's not a one-editor problem, it's a "we've coalesced into a political action committee that will do whatever it takes to get our way" problem. And its happening more and more, across the entire project. And I mean the project, of Wikipedia; no one Gs an F about your or my little wikiprojects.

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 11:16, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Specialists can be very useful for naming, I agree, but are often not so great for style. Not that they're "wrong", just that their style is often not so great for a general encyclopedia. For example, specialists tend to omit hyphens from compound adjectives that are very well known in their field, whereas those hyphens provide much needed cues to readers outside their specialty (e.g. small cell carcinoma versus small-cell carcinoma, which had a big discussion some place in the last year). Dicklyon (talk) 15:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Viewpoint

You say "The most reliable sources on ... in a general-interest work like an encyclopedia are reliable generalist works on style and grammar. Specialist works are notoriously unreliable for this purpose..." To me this fairly clearly says that the generalist sources always trump the specialist ones.

The balance between general sources and specialist sources has to be found and does it really matter if you come at it from one direction or the other? You will always find some cases where the other side has a better argument.

For example, our article naming policy gives Heroin as an example of a common name choice over the INN name. It is a good choice but not because we should use everyday brand names rather than INN names. In fact Wikipedia always uses the INN names for medical drug articles. There are only two drug articles I can think of on Wikipedia where the brand name is used. Heroin and Aspirin. Both are ex Bayer trademarks and aspirin is actually the INN. Folk read the heroin article because it is an illegal drug and not because it is a painkiller medicine (it is only used as such rarely and in a few countries). The caffeine example in that policy page is similarly flawed – people read about the drug in their coffee, not about some chemical compound. The name is chosen here because it suits the audience for the article, and their expectations, not because it is more commonly used. So for medical drugs, it is actually better to default to the INN name, because brand names would give us no end of problems, and to accept the very few exceptions to the rule where the everyday name is better. Colin°^Talk 16:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

This essay is about style, though, not naming. It can have relevance in naming discussions (especially with regard to style of name, e.g. capitalizing vs. not capitalizing. WP:COMMONNAME and its interplay with WP:COMMONSENSE, however, are what control whether or not heroin or diacetyl morphine is a better article title. It's not totally orthogonal (if I may be geeky) to this essay and it's purpose, but somewhat tangential. Generalist reliable sources are going to be more reliable on prose style (vs. what the factually correct name is) for a general audience than specialist works, so they do "trump" them in that sense, but only where there's a style conflict between "your random specialty" and "the entire rest of the world". For example (to use the perennial organism naming stuff again) there is no conflict between normal style and ICNZ, etc., demanding that bi/trinomials be given in the style Felis silverstris catus, with that specific capitalization and italicization. The entire concept of scientific nomenclature and the names themselves come from the specialty of biology; there is no general, non-science-nerd convention that this would violate. Capitalizing Domestic Cat or even Cat is nonsense in Wikipedia (or a magazine, or a newspaper or a novel), no matter how many journals do it, because common names are common by definition; they arise from the general population (either in fact or, when someone gives a new "common name" to a freshly-described species, in imitation of and consistency with genuinely common naming), Trying to force capitalization as used in some journals and animal-specialist books on general purpose prose is a ridiculous external imposition of one tiny group's "secret club" behavior on the entire world. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:42, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Scope

I think the essay needs to drop the issue of naming. It is covered by our policy. Stick to “capitalize, italicize, hyphenate or otherwise style the name of a subject”. I don’t think “layout” is an issue either, unless there really are folk insisting that articles in their speciality are double-spaced or right-justified? And the horse-measurement issue noted above is covered by our guideline on jargon – you need to explain technical terms to an unfamiliar audience. It isn’t one of style and anyway the editors involved didn’t display any of the misbehaviours listed in this essay. Colin°^Talk 16:07, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

It needs work. But naming shouldn't be totally dropped, because of lot of people remain confused in the wake of WP:Naming conventions being moved to WP:Article titles and promoted as a policy. They think it means that MOS is no longer relevant to article naming, but they're wrong. WP:AT derives all of its style-specific naming advice from MOS, and always has. On, layout and jargon, I'll have to re-read the whole thing and see where that can be pared down. As with naming, they at least need to be mentioned in context, since they are related (the same fallacies are brought to bear). PS: "Layout" here doesn't have anything to do with line spacing or margins, but with MOS:LAYOUT. While specialist-generated disputes about infoboxes and sections are less frequent than SFF issues with regard to orthography, they still happen sometimes for reasons covered by the essay. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:42, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Another reason why naming shouldn't be dropped is the conflicts about use of 'non-English' letters in proper names. The example of SSF that I have seen most often goes like this: Sports publications simply drop umlauts and accents in people's names, so we must do the same. Hans Adler 22:19, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Copy edits

I made some copy edits in the lead to seek a more neutral tone and, according to my personal style, near-Joe Friday brevity. If you find that these contributions are helpful I will make time to work on the rest. Jojalozzo 19:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Not even looking yet. :-) I'll just sit back and leave this alone for a while. The criticism above probably has some points. The piece is too long and too tooth-gnashy, with too many links to fallacy articles and WP essays. Others may want to tweak it too. I put it in the WP namespace on purpose. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to use "Vol.", "pp.", etc. in citations instead of ambiguous formatting like "9 (4): 7"

You are invited to join the discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1#RfC: Use "Vol.", "pp.", etc. consistently between citation templates, instead of ambiguous formatting like "9 (4): 7". The talk page at Help talk:Citation style 1 is where the discussion about most of our citation templates is centralized. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Ship hyphenation, another case of SSF conflicts with MoS

FYI

 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships#Hyphens. Fortunately this is snowballing against the ungrammatical specialist usage. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 00:28, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Cultivar group capitalization

FYI

 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

At Talk:Cultivar#Following MOS and the thread immediately above it there's been some (not entirely collegial) discussion of use or misuse of capitalization of the term "group" in botany, what is called the "cultivar group" in long form. The actual official ICNCP standard in botanical literature is to capitalize the word as "Group" when it appears in a name (just like Genus is capitalized and italicized, species is italicized but not capitalized, etc.; there are real rules for scientific nomenclature of organisms). An example would be "Brassica oleracea Italica Group 'Calabrese'" for Calabrese broccoli (note "Group" not "group").

The issue: At least one editor has insisted on always capitalizing this word, everywhere, if it refers to cultivar group, e.g. "As Group names are used with cultivar names it is necessary to understand their way of presentation." By contrast, at least one other editor feels that this is a WP:SSF problem, and is the same error as always capitalizing "president" simply because it is capitalized when used as an job title with someone's name, or always capitalizing "corporation" because it is capitalized when included as part of the official name of a company. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 23:39, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Continued en-dash usage forumshopping

FYI

 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

At Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports#New RfC, David1217 and Apteva launched another "hyphens vs. en dashes" RfC with regard to airports, after one RfC and various requested moves have already declined to override WP:MOSDASH on this. Someone seems not to have noticed WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and WP:OWN. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 02:37, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Apteva launched yet another anti-dash campaign (this time over comets, airports, wars and a few other things), after many before, from article talk pages to the Village Pump, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 133#Three corrections. User was RFC/U'd for disruption and forum shopping, but raised the issue again at WT:MOS anyway. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 01:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Ungrammatical capitaliztation of "technical analysis indicators"

FYI

 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

At both Talk:Relative strength index and Talk:True strength index are various very typical SSF debates, where specialists (in this case, financial ones) repeatedly demand capitalization of these common noun phrases, which are non-proper-name terms of art in their field. No one else bought it. As usual, those insisting on their stylistic quirk (that people who are not specialists in that field will just interpret as a typo) fail to understand the difference between a specialist source being reliable on matters of fact about that specialty, vs. being a reliable source on English usage in a general-audience encyclopedia. The usual "follow the sources!" refrain is repeated, without realizing that for style, the overwhelming majority of reliable sources – newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, other encyclopedias, etc. – never capitalize these specific phrases nor other common nouns and noun phrases of similar sort, regardless of field/speciality. The specialist sources that do so are dwarfed by the standard-English practice used everywhere else, which has been turning away firmly from German-style noun capitalization since the late 18th century. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 08:40, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

See also Talk:International political economy. —Tamfang (talk) 01:05, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Endless debate over -re or -er spelling in Theater District, New York

FYI

 – Pointer to a relevant discussion elsewhere.

Another classic example: Talk:Theater District, New York is overrun by people from the theatrical wikiproject trying three times back-to-back – [1] [2] [3] – to get this article to be at Theatre District, New York, despite the facts that:

1. Virtually no American sources use the -re spelling (being a US place, WP:ENGVAR's "strong national ties" clause excludes British, Canadian, etc., one from any relevant spelling analysis
2. The WP:COMMONNAME is very, very clearly "Theater District", e.g. in newspapers, tour guides, etc.
3. The WP:OFFICIALNAME, which is technically "Theater Subdistrict" according to the City of New York government, uses the -er spelling.

And so on. "We're theatre people and this is a theatre topic, so WP must use the spelling preferred by theatre sources and the theatre project" is the entire real basis of the rename/move putsch, which has rapidly hit WP:DEADHORSE level.

The above quote is not anything any editor has ever stated. I call it an outright lie. This was a false filing from what I see with accusations that are innaccurate.--Amadscientist (talk) 06:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Don't be hyperbolic. It's not a quote, it's a summarizing characterization of a rationale. Asserting it's not accurate doesn't demonstrate it's not. If you feel it's not accurate, show how it is not. PS: I'm even entirely symathetic to the idea that the -re spelling is frequently used in American English to indicate a distinction between live threatre and other uses, e.g. movie theaters, and theaters of war, and whatever. But this cannot be used to impose a fake-ass spelling that directly contradicts all the reliable sources. That's a thick and frothy mixture of WP:POV and WP:OR at work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:01, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

In biology: "the family xyz" instead of "the xyz family"

Hi. Would this be a case of "specialist style" that in normal language should be inverted? See Threskiornithidae and "The family Lymantriidae includes ...". Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 17:40, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I would say no, but I might be missing something. Constructs like "The <more general noun> <more specific noun> <verb phrase>." aren't terribly uncommon in English: "The editor Rui Gabriel Correia asked a question on this talk page." Are there other issues here? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Agreed with ErkiHaugen. I write in biology articles a lot, and it's perfectly fine to say "the genus Ambystoma" (often without "the", actually). This often works better than the opposite, "the Ambystoma genus", which sounds weird to me. It's less weird for some other taxons, e.g. "[the] suborder Feliforia" and "the Feliformia suborder" seem about equivalent, with the latter being less formal. But not always; no one says "the kingdom plant" or "the kingdom plants"; normal English is "the plant kingdom". Insisting on the obscure biology-specialized usage "the regnum Plantae", would be an SSF, since even most biologists don't say this themselves in most contexts, general audience sources never do that, and previous WP debates have already rejected such an obtuse usage (cf. Template:Taxobox and its talk page; it uses "kingdom", and see the article Plant, which is not at Plantae, a redirect. IT can also depend on the exact content. It makes more sense, surely even to a biologist, to write that "the entire Urodeles order was renamed Caudata", rather than that "the entire order Urodeles was renamed Caudata"; the meaning is actually subtly different, with the latter not quite making sense, because the insertion of the adjective before "order Urodeles" makes it apply to the order as a set (of constituent members), not as a singular thing in and of itself, the way insertion of the adjective between the words does.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:50, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

It belatedly occurs to me that "the plant kingdom" vs. "regnum Plantae" is perhaps the ultimate illustrative example for this essay. I have to figure out how to work that in.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:52, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm somewhat late to the party here, but for the record we say;

• the number five
• the planet Venus
• the author Charles Dickens
• the newspaper Isvestia
• the element iron
• the protein haemoglobin
• the philosospher Diogenes

so it's no wonder "the Ambystoma genus" sounds weird, because it is a syntactic monstrosity that could only be dreamt up by someone whose first language is not English, or who does not understand that Ambystoma and Threskiornithidae are English proper nouns. The specialists strictly adhere to common usage in this case, but the italics and latinism seem to confuse laymen into unprecedented constructions. Any counterexamples? I unapologetically correct all this kind of crap, along with "x is a species of spiders/moths" nonsense with which it is strongly associated. William Avery (talk) 01:40, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

The possible counterexamples involve 'real' families: the Walton family, Naich clan, and so on. William Avery (talk) 09:05, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It seems my examples are "restrictive appositives". William Avery (talk) 12:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Editors of the MOS pages

I think it worth adding a paragraph or two bring a bit of balance to I think looks like an attack page.

There is a long standing convention that articles should be consistent within themselves over things like spelling and other issues of style, but there there has never been a consensus for homogenisation of style throughout Wikipedia. The specialist style fallacy (SSF) is also employed by the relatively small number of people who are actively involved in editing the MOS pages, when they insist that Wikipedia in-house style should override the style used in specific disciplines and supported by the sources cited in those articles.

There has long been unresolved dichotomy between the MOS guideline and the Article titles policy over whether article names should follow usage in reliable sources or whether they should ignore the usage in reliable sources and follow usage derived from following the advise in the Wikipedia MOS. This is a particularly contentious area when it comes to the use of dash/hyphen or ndash in names such as "Comet Hale-Bopp" and "Comet Hale–Bopp", as the correct answer depends on whether one views the name of the comment as a name in its own right or a name derived from those who discovered it. Similar disagreements arise over names like Battles of the Mexican–American War and Battles of the Mexican-American War exist. If the article title describes a conflict between Mexico and America (U.S.) than the the MOS advises using an ndash however if the battles are in themselves names for an event then a hyphen is more appropriate. One approach is to ignore rules in the MOS and look for what is used in reliable sources (on the assumption that the experts on the subject will have made that decision). The other approach is to take the MOS based rules approach and make an editorial decision. To date editors do not agree on which approach is best.

-- PBS (talk) 11:51, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree that "homogenisation of style" is not the goal. But there are many issues of style that have widespread support for consistent application across WP, and these are the things that the MOS documents. Many discussions have found wide support for consistency over exceptions, in many areas, including the general principles of MOS:CAPS for example, even though many "local" groups like to try to capitalize their own stuff. I don't think MOS advocates ignoring usage in reliable sources; but where there are styling choices to be made, the MOS provides guidance, which we generally prefer over letting the styles of others vote. This gives us a little bit of "homogenization" of some style points, if you want to call it that, and making exceptions for titles has generally impressed most editors as a silly idea. And nobody would ever propose "Comet Hale—Bopp" I'm sure, and your characterization of the logic for choosing an en dash is faulty (and many many sources do as we do on that one, the "official" naming org's recommendations notwithstanding -- hence it's a perfect example of the SSF). Dicklyon (talk) 15:00, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Using an mdash instead of an ndash was a a cut and past error by me, (which I have now fixed) so the two suggestions are hale-hypen-bopp and hale-ndash-bopp not (hale-mdash-bopp). "others vote" what vote? "most editors as a silly idea" what is your source for that statement? -- PBS (talk) 21:05, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

• Opponents of MOS/AT are welcome to write their own essay. Balance is not the purpose of an essay of this sort. WP has clear policies and guidelines, and one can either choose to work with them or against consensus. We have no legitimate interest in falsely suggesting there's some neutral balance between these two options. WP is neutral about presenting content in articles, not in internal editor-focused writing for compliance with it's own community rules and best practices. I've rewritten this essay to focus on specialized vs. specialist sources and fallacious reasoning, and this notably moderates the tone. The idea of some long-standing conflict between WP:AT and WP:MOS is actually a long-standing fantasy (which this talk page has covered before; see #Scope). It's a persistent enough confusion that I've actually written a template to deal with it, {{ATandMOS}}, but it's erroneous no matter how persistent some people are in believing it. The very idea that reliable sources on the facts of some science topic or historical event or whatever have gotten style matters right, no matter what, is the very crux of the SSF. A history book about the Mexican–American war, like a journal about astronomy, are not style authorities. For WP (only), the MOS is. MOS serves one single purpose: Providing a style guide for Wikipedia, to stop recurrent style/grammar/punctuation debates so we can get back to content creation and sourcing. It is not a style guide for the rest of the world. It is not a linguistic description of the most common usage. It is not an insider guide in any field about usage within that field in it's own topical publications. It's our way of moving on, with compromises (sometimes uneasy ones), for our publication, which is written for everyone, not just people in particular specialities.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Capitalizing government stuff

As one example among many, it has come up repeatedly whether to capitalize "marine" in reference to an individual member of the U.S. Marine Corp, when the word is not attached to their name as a title. It's yet another specialized-style fallacy. Marines like to capitalize the word, in constructions like "The Marine [sic] returned to the U.S. in July 2014 after a second tour of duty." Journalists will often also do this (having been collectively berated by retired marines, in ranty letters-to-the-editor, for several decades) out of deference or at least a desire to stop being brow-beaten. Linguistically it's nonsense, and is pure politics and spin. It's from the same logic as "There is no such thing as a former Marine!", a common saying among retired marines. It's special exceptionalism, and a soup of several paired-up classic fallacies, including: appeal to accomplishment/appeal to authority ("This is the U.S. Marine Corps we're talking about here! And it's they way they officially do it."); appeal to emotion/appeal to flattery ("Marines are exempt from normal English language usage rules because of their importance and their heroic service"); and appeal to tradition/argumentum ad populum ("It just how we've always done it in the Marines, and so does anyone who respects the Marines.") This grammar-school reasoning has no place here, but the exact same pattern can be observed again and again with regard to alleged proper names in Wikipedia articles and their titles, from vernacular names of species and other groups of animals, to government and corporate job titles, descriptive names of events and periods, and on and on. It's especially prevalent in cases that can be summarized as "anything some government office likes to capitalize". Our failure to get our Proper name article right, and failure to watchlist it enough to keep it from being POV-pushed, are leading to a negative feedback loop, in which WP:RM is getting worse and worse on questions relating to alleged proper names, while that slide into the mire is causing the article to degrade further, right along with RM.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:35, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

You misunderstand entirely, and I wish you would get off your soapbox. If your complaint is that you don't think Wikipedia should ape the formatting of the source material, like USMC press releases, then you need not make foolish claims of cognitive biases to explain your disagreement. I imagine the military services chose capitalization in this manner just as anyone can be a president but only the title of address to the officeholder (President) is capitalized. The general word soldier can mean anyone that serves in a military capacity but members of the United States Army carry the title of Soldier, capitalized. I'll tell you quite honestly, I don't think it matters that much. You are wasting your time, in my opinion, which is a shame because you're otherwise a really good editor. But if you choose to die on this hill then I'll leave it to you. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I decline to argue with you about what you "imagine". If your opinion is that it doesn't matter much, then don't start weird, emotive, ad hominem arguments like this. See also WP:NOT#FORUM policy. No one is going to take your bait.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:33, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Essay

Dicklyon, this is a personal essay. To call it a supplement implies that it has consensus and simply elaborates in a factual way on a policy or guideline. The difference is described at WP:HOWTOPAGES (bold added):

Informative and instructional pages are typically edited by the community; while not policies or guidelines themselves, are intended to supplement or clarify Wikipedia guidelines, policies, or other Wikipedia processes and practices that have communal consensus. Where "essay pages" offer advice or opinions through viewpoints, "information pages" supplement or clarify technical or factual information about Wikipedia in an impartial way.

SarahSV ^(talk) 04:48, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Nutshell

Which Nutshell wording more accurately reflects the content of this essay?

1. Wikipedia has its own set of guidelines for article layout and naming. Facts on a subject should be drawn from reliable sources, but how content is styled is a matter for the Wikipedia community. [4]
2. How content is styled should follow usage in general reliable sources rather than those specialized for the topic in question. [5]

After reading the entire essay I came up with the #2 wording which I think reflects what this essay says. It does not support #1. For example, here is the first sentence from Why the SSF's underlying assumption about reliability is wrong which supports #2: The sources we use to verify content are not necessarily our best sources for style, even in cases where they may be reliable on certain style matters in specialized publications. Wikipedia and its Manual of Style, article titles policy, and related guidance draw primarily upon reliable general-purpose, broad-scope sources for editing guidelines. Note that it's not saying style decisions do not follow sources as #1 states; it says they follow "reliable general-purpose broad-scope sources", which is exactly what #1 says. --В²C ☎ 21:31, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you're coming up with that reading but it's nearly the opposite of what the essay is about. The whole point of the essay is we follow sources for information/facts, not for guidance on how to style. How to style is determined by WP:MOS, not specialized styles for particular topics. Now it's feasible MOS itself can be (loosely) described as following (or perhaps more accurately "drawing from") general style sources (like CMOS, AP, etc.) but overall the point is that how we style articles should follow our "house" style (i.e. MOS), not how any particular source styles information—even if that source is "general" and "reliable". A better "nutshell" more in line with the wording you are suggesting would be: How content is styled should follow WP:MOS, not the style used in sources specialized to the topic in question.

But the point is, #1 is accurate. #2 basically misses the point of the essay and potentially undermines its whole argument, which is why you were quickly reverted. —Joeyconnick (talk) 21:41, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Are we reading the same essay? Can you quote anything from it that supports #1? Here's more that supports #2: The Wikipedia community supports specialized publications' stylistic recommendations when they do not conflict with widespread general spelling, grammar, and other expectations. We side with general, not specialized, practice when there is a conflict. --В²C ☎ 21:53, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

There are two separate debates regarding style: when usage in RS conflicts with MOS, and when usage in specialized sources conflicts with usage in general-purpose sources. For the first we should follow RS (and hopefully fix the MOS). For the second, we follow general-purpose sources and that's what this essay is about, right? --В²C ☎ 21:59, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

If per this essay the MOS is to be followed instead of usage in general reliable sources per #1, why all the emphasis on specialized reliable sources in the title and content of the essay? #1 makes no mention of specialized sources at all, yet that characteristic is central to the theme of this essay, embodied within the essay's title even. --В²C ☎ 22:35, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Joeyconnick nailed it. B2c has completely misread the essay if his proposed nutshell (no. 2) is how he'd summarize this page. In point of fact, MoS already does account for RS usage, but in very limited terms: we follow what sources do stylistically, if it disagrees with MoS's default rule on the kind of case in question, only when the RS are overwhelmingly consistent in preferring the variation for that specific case (thus "The Hague" with a capital T, and Deadmau5 not "Deadmaus", but Kesha and Sony, not "Ke$ha" or "SONY"). The point of this essay is that MoS's defaults are arrived at by a consensus process (based on advice in mainstream style guides), and this consensus cannot (per WP:CONLEVEL policy) be magically invalidated by how specialists in some micro-topic write for other specialists in specialized sources. WP is not a specialized source, but the most general one ever written, for the broadest audience of any publication in history.

  WP does not actually have any principle anywhere to look at what general-audience sources are doing and ignore specialized ones; rather, we do what MoS says to do unless general and specialized sources agree on something different for a specific case. What MoS says to do, in turn, is what is usually based on what general-audience RS are doing, but across entire categories of things, not a zillion topical nit-picks, or MoS would have to be at least as large as Chicago Manual of Style combined with New Hart's Rules and Scientific Style and Format. The only way MoS is readable and practical as a set of guidelines is to be very general, with a "when RS are consistent in making an exception" escape valve.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:30, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Even the title is flawed

Leaving aside the bias in this essay which enables editors to smugly ignore WP:RELIABLESOURCES if they so wish and instead impose a self-created "style" , even the title doesn't stack up. Specialised literature exists. We may not like it, we may wish to ignore it if it uses language in ways we don't like, but one thing it is not is a "fallacy" i.e. a lie or untruth. Specialist literature is important and should always be taken into account in deciding, not how we lay articles out, but what language we use and how it's presented, including spelling, Latin/English/native language, hyphenation, terminology and capitalisation. Notice I said "take into account" not "follow slavishly". This essay, however, strongly argues that it may be dismissed out of hand if we don't like it. Despite that it is frequently quoted in support of "style" changes that, based on the literature, are wholly unjustifiable. Bermicourt (talk) 13:29, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

This article doesn't even present an actual logical fallacy. It's entirely based on WP:IDONTLIKEIT for WP:V (and the closely related WP:RS), which as a core content policy overrules everything else on Wikipedia. The MOS is descriptive of general consensus on style matters, not prescriptive. Antony–22 (^talk⁄_contribs) 02:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

(a) This isn't an article.

(b) It doesn't claim to present a logical fallacy, merely a just plain fallacy.

(c) WP:V and WP:RS apply to the information articles present, not to the way they present it.

No one says not to take specialist sources into account, but there are those who seem to feel we should follow it slavishly. That's what this essay warns against (rather loquaciously). EEng 03:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It certainly does present a fallacy, but one of the informal fallacy class (which is the majority of them). Bermicourt is also incorrect in that it gives no license of any kind to ignoring reliable sources; WP permits virtually any style variance for a specific article subject if and only if it is overwhelmingly dominant with regard to that subject in the reliable independent sources (but not specialized sources only). The mistake here is in supposing that reliable sources for A are automatically and necessarily reliable sources for B (e.g. sources reliable for facts about card games must somehow also be reliable sources for how to best write encyclopedic English about card games, but card-game facts sources are not writing manuals). And we have our own writing manual. "Specialist literature is important", of course; it's where we get most of our facts from on a large number of subjects. But "should always be taken into account in deciding ... what language we use and how it's presented, including spelling, Latin/English/native language, hyphenation, terminology and capitalisation" is completely false, and counter to site-wide consensus and to all of our writing (with the exception of the "terminology" point, but even that we vastly moderate per MOS:JARGON, and our material is nothing like specialized material). We do not write rock musician/band articles in the style of entertainment journalism. We do not write cancer-related articles in the style of oncology journals. We do not write about religious subjects in the style of religious publications. And so on. Finally, the "dismissed out of hand" claim is also false; WP and MoS within it takes a great deal of account of specialized terminology and even style preferences with regard to it (see, e.g., much of MOS:NUM, and various provisions throughout MoS that are directly mirroring real-world, universal standards in fields like zoology and botany, linguistics, and so on). What we do not do is adopt style conventions from specialist literature that are not necessary for our writing, that are not found overwhelmingly in all the pertinent source material (beyond just specialists writing for other specialists in the topic), and especially not those that conflict with general-audience writing norms or which may confuse readers, e.g. by strongly but wrongly implying that something is a proper name such as a trademark. Antony-22's claim is completely baseless; there is no "IDONTLIKEIT" anywhere in this principle; that's pure projection. He's correct that the core content policy is of key importance; what he's misunderstanding is that when RS widely disagree on whether something should be capitalized, seizing upon those that do it because its suits your preferences, declaring the subject to be a "proper name", and insisting that WP "must" capitalize it is a WP:NOR and WP:NPOV failure, as well as contrary to WP:V in cherrypicking particular sources instead of giving due weight to the complete preponderance of them. (Plus the point mentioned above, the failure to understand that a reliable source for one thing, like a sport, does not transmutate into a reliable source on something else entirely, like writing).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)