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Forum:Proposal to Capitalize Titles Canonically

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I would like to make a formal proposal (this is it, FYI) to be voted on by the Halopedia community regarding the standard of titling articles. Halopedia has a problem in its titling standard, which I am responsible for as a result of goofing around in the wiki’s early days. Currently, the standard is to capitalize the first letter of every important word, the way one might for writing a newspaper headline, as opposed to the actual way that subjects are presented in canon. An example of this practice is the article “Moray Space Mine”, which is rendered in my copy of Halo: First Strike as “Moray space-mine”. Because of how the article is titled, its capitalization of the start of every word is retained in the article itself. This is a problem because Halopedia should accurately report on what is canon (or at least officially produced) rather than fanfiction. It may not be fanfiction in the usual sense of imagining stories or characters, but fan-created material to pretty up the look of canon should be equally unacceptable. I therefore propose that Halopedia adopt a standard of titling that incorporates the most accurate officially produced spellings in combination with basic grammar.

I’m not saying no capitalizations, but only when it makes sense for a properly grammatical depiction of the words. “United Nations Space Command” is okay because its capitalization follows grammar in that the UNSC is a proper noun, but “Deep-Space Artifact”, “Flagship”, “Unit”, and many others are capitalized inappropriately. Some are ambiguous due to inconsistency in canon, such as “Plasma Rifle”, which is rendered with capitalization in the manuals and without it in the novels. I would suggest that manuals follow the same sort of standard of capitalizing things as Halopedia currently does as a means of presenting its material effectively to the average gamer, and that novels have more accurate canon, and therefore “plasma rifle” is the more appropriate rendering of the subject.

I have already addressed this issue in a blog and Jugus recently made a thread in Talk:Main Page, but these have thus far gone ignored. As formal proposals are not ignored and get voted on and determined as good or bad policy changes by the Halopedia community, I am therefore presenting this issue as one, similar to the usergroup proposal going on now. Hopefully this change can be accepted by the community and be brought into effect as soon as possible. --Dragonclaws(talk) 01:02, June 21, 2010 (UTC)

Voting

Support (19/4)

  1.   Support - It really gets on my nerves when nearly every single word in the title is capitalized. --SPARTAN-125 Cally99117
  2.   Support - 5əb'7aŋk(7alk) 14:14, June 21, 2010 (UTC)
  3.   Support - Needless to say, I wholeheartedly support this.--Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 14:15, June 21, 2010 (UTC)
  4.   Support - I am in full support, Halopedia has serious capitalization problems, and things are starting to look very messy. I'm sick of seeing sentences like "Halsey replicated the Spartans through Flash-Cloning, and trained them with the help of an Artificial Intelligence program". I've seen the proper use of capitalization on another wiki I frequent, and things look much more tidy and efficient. - Halo-343 (Talk) (Contribs) (Edits) 14:21, June 21, 2010 (UTC)
  5.   Support - Ultra Force 17:36, June 23, 2010 (UTC)
  6.   Support - As per Cally. - JEA13 [iTalk] 16:15, June 22, 2010 (UTC)
  7.   Support. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 17:32, June 22, 2010 (UTC)
  8.   Support. - This is why I moved "I Love Bees" to "i love bees" (yes, a lowercase "i" is possible.).-- Forerunner 17:42, June 22, 2010 (UTC)
  9.   Support - Col. Snipes450 23:24, June 22, 2010 (UTC)
  10.   Support - --Blah 23:14, June 23, 2010 (UTC)
  11.   Support -- Specops306 Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek 02:00, June 24, 2010 (UTC)
  12.   Support - Sounds reasonable enough. GySgt. Gonzalez -Comm Open- -Body Count- 03:49, June 24, 2010 (UTC)
  13.   Support- Holy shnap yes! It has always bothered me how "unggoy," "sangheili," "jiralhanae..." all the species names have been capitalized. Every time I try to fix it, my edit is reverted. Species names are not capitalized! We really should follow grammatical rules... it's a wiki for freaking sakes! Sorry, but it has always bothered me. Yeah, I support. =) --Fluffball Gato 01:48, June 25, 2010 (UTC)
    Well, actually, in every canonical instance, the alien species names have been capitalized. One variance is with Kig-Yar, which is more often spelled as Kig-yar, and human is the only species name canonically spelled without capitalization. --Dragonclaws(talk) 01:01, June 27, 2010 (UTC)
  14.   Support — Seems like a sound proposal to me and as per pretty much everyone else. User:CommanderTony/Sig
  15.   Support - Why not. Kougermasters (Talk) (Contribs) (Edits) 04:31, July 2, 2010 (UTC)
  16.   Support - Odysseas-Spartan53 18:42, July 2, 2010 (UTC)
  17.   Support - Heh. Should have voted weeks ago. GySgt. Gonzalez -Comm Open- -Body Count- 01:19, July 5, 2010 (UTC)
  18.   Support - Despite it looking incredibly unprofessional, it makes sense grammatically. Therefor, I guess my support deserves recognition. -DinoBenn says "Fight to the End, Never Give In" 03:15, July 6, 2010 (UTC)
  19.   Support - No reason not to.FatalSnipe117 02:38, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Neutral (2/0)

  1.   Neutral - It looks unprofessional. Kougermasters (Talk) (Contribs) (Edits) 21:06, June 21, 2010 (UTC)
    True, that's also how I see it. For example, "Assault Rifle" looks better than "assault rifle" in my opinion. But the reason why I supported was because "assault rifle" is the correct rendering. -- Ultra Force 17:37, June 23, 2010 (UTC)
  2.   Neutral - Yes, it looks too much like 'omg halopedia is really lame it sucks and bungie shud go sock on micrsofts nutz' (What I'm saying is lack of capitalization looks poorly written) SPS Harbinger 19:42, June 23, 2010 (UTC)
    That is actually bad grammar. The first letter of a sentence should be capitalized, as well as letters in an acronym, and the writing should also have punctuation and correct spelling. I assume what I've written so far looks fine? Do You Really Want To Read Something That Looks Like This? Do you want to [[Read]] writing that [[Looks]] like this? What I'm saying is that capitalization in and of itself is not evidence of proper grammar. Either way, altering the official presentation for aesthetic purposes is like inserting fanfiction because the story is better than what Bungie came up with. Halopedia should accurately report on the subject, not change the subject to improve it. --Dragonclaws(talk) 00:04, June 24, 2010 (UTC)
    Hopefully not offend SPS Harbinger here, but the people who think the lack of capitalization looks like bad grammar really wouldn't care. --Fluffball Gato 01:51, June 25, 2010 (UTC)
  3.   Neutral --Reddy645 20:54, June 26, 2010 (UTC)
  1.   Neutral - If there is a clash between the games and the novels, it should be written as in the games. I noticed someone metioned their uncapitalisation was reverted. Different items require different capitalisation.Banshee Boy 09:17, July 5, 2010 (UTC)
    User does not meet voting requirements. --SPARTAN-125 Cally99117

Oppose (0/0)

Comments

Just clarifying something, this is the actual article title, not just links leading to that article? GySgt. Gonzalez -Comm Open- -Body Count- 23:05, June 21, 2010 (UTC)

Article title and links as a result. Links should generally be direct and there shouldn't be a million redirects simply because of grammar. --Dragonclaws(talk) 03:50, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

Then the Assault Rifle page will have it's title changed to: Assault rifle, lol. --SPARTAN-125 Cally99117

There is no Assault Rifle article. The article is "MA37 Individual Combat Weapon System". Apparently we will have to change every "Assault Rifle" redirect link to either "assault rifle" or "MA37 Individual Combat Weapon System", and then delete it. - JEA13 [iTalk] 16:41, June 22, 2010 (UTC)
Well, there's an Assault Rifle disambiguation page. I just used a weapon as an example of inconsistent capitalization in canon, and don't propose moving the weapons from their official designations. --Dragonclaws(talk) 17:31, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

Re: i love bees: I think people accept that more because it references a URL. People expect computer stuff to be lowercase, such as .fortune. --Dragonclaws(talk) 18:35, June 22, 2010 (UTC)

Just to add, does this proposal apply to section titles as well? I mean, I'm also pretty tired of seeing things like "Early Life" instead of "Early life" and whatnot. - Halo-343 (Talk) (Contribs) (Edits) 13:06, June 30, 2010 (UTC)

I didn't think of that, but it makes sense to me to implement it in the headers as well. --Dragonclaws(talk) 04:56, July 1, 2010 (UTC)

When is the final vote decided? It seems like nobody opposes... and I really want to begin de-capitalizing stuff.--Fluffball Gato 04:40, July 1, 2010 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know the protocol... --Dragonclaws(talk) 04:56, July 1, 2010 (UTC)
A couple of us are doing it now. -- Cally99117 06:37, July 1, 2010 (UTC)

Is this meant to apply to the main title of the page, or just the links linking to it. If it's just the links, I could dare less whether capitalization is corrected, and would vote for this proposal, but if this is applied to the main title (as in changing this title from "Forum:Proposal to Capitalize Titles Canonically" to "Forum:Proposal to capitalize titles canonically"), I'm afraid I'd have to vote against it. In pretty much every sense I've heard the word 'title' used, it denotes the name of the page. If it's a name, then every word should be capitalized, except for 'the' and words like that. - dehydromon 02:31, July 3, 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is a forum, so it can be spelled however I want it to be spelled. On the Halopedia encyclopedia, though, I mean the actual title should conform to grammar. Understand that it's not just the name of the page as in a title, and it is the address and the name of the subject. The name of the subject "pencil" should not be capitalized unless it is at the beginning of a sentence. Names of articles are not like newspaper titles and should be treated like sentences unless it has some special stylization like i love bees. --Dragonclaws(talk) 08:25, July 4, 2010 (UTC)
At which point does this proposal pass? There is no obvious opposition.--Sangheili Commando 021: Fluffball Gato 17:32, July 8, 2010 (UTC)
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