User talk:Ravenpuff/Archives/2020/January

Prep 5 hook tweak

Hi, in reference to your tweak of the lead hook, now you have "victory" twice. I think the emphasis is supposed to be on the second "victory". Best, Yoninah (talk) 20:34, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, but the phrase you used (triumph of liberalism over populism) is lifted from the source. That's why the page creator substituted "victory". Take a look at my tweak. Yoninah (talk) 00:13, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

@Yoninah: Yep, your alteration's fine by me – although couldn't we also circumvent the close paraphrasing issue by using quotation marks? — RAVENPVFF · talk · 00:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

We could, but I was impressed that the page creator used his own words. Yoninah (talk) 00:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Page moves contrary to RM discussion

• Move log 01:01 Ravenpuff talk contribs moved page Talk:John Cain (41st Premier of Victoria) to Talk:John Cain (41st premier of Victoria) ‎("Premier" in lowercase per MOS:JOBTITLES)
• Move log 01:01 Ravenpuff talk contribs moved page John Cain (41st Premier of Victoria) to John Cain (41st premier of Victoria) ‎("Premier" in lowercase per MOS:JOBTITLES)

Ravenpuff, please put them back. Surely, your should have noted Talk:John Cain (41st premier of Victoria)#Requested move 25 December 2019 --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:11, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Oops. Now reverted. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 01:17, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Related discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography#WP:JOBTITLES. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Can you please fix the talk page too? The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:57, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you ...

... for many copy-edits, - so helpful for us foreigners. I am not sure, though, about the Laura Aikin hook, - she appeared, and it's clearly a unique fact from a past. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:43, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

No problem, Gerda; we all do our part to make the Main Page as polished as possible. Regarding Laura Aikin: I normally use the present perfect tense when referring to people who are still alive (which she presumably will be at the time of her DYK appearance). In this case, "appeared as Marie" is a condition that still applies to Aikin in the present, although the actual appearance was in the past, so we could very well say "Aikin has appeared as Marie". My apologies if this may all sound a little too technical, but this practice is also what I've noticed in previous DYK hooks as well. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 10:52, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Syntax of "formal taxon name" plus "taxonomic rank"

Hi Ravenpuff, I've noticed that when putting together POTD captions, you are consistently getting the syntax of the combination of "formal taxon name" plus "taxonomic rank" backwards. That is, you are saying something like "Oxudercidae family" rather than the correct "family Oxudercidae". Examples of this usage are illustrated by the statistics from the following Google Ngrams: kingdom Animalia, Animalia kingdom, phylum Chordata, Chordata phylum, class Mammalia, Mammalia class, order Primates, Primates order, family Hominidae, Hominidae family, genus Homo, Homo genus, species Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens species. This is the opposite of the normative syntax of the combination of a taxonomic rank plus an informal taxon name, e.g.: kingdom animal, animal kingdom, phylum chordate, chordate phylum, class mammal, mammal class, order primate, primate order, family hominid, hominid family, species human, human species. None of this reflects any special rule or rules of syntax for taxonomic terms; it simple reflects the differences in the way English handles noun combinations that are, or are not, compound nouns, e.g. element mercury, mercury element vs. thermometer mercury, mercury thermometer, or planet Mars, Mars planet vs. rover Mars, Mars rover. Basically, "Oxudercidae family" is equivalent to "Mars planet" or "mercury element", and it is wrong.

I would normally preview the captions and correct this type of error, but you are also in the habit of writing the captions or editing them shortly before the creation of the protected version. Would you be able to try to avoid this problem in the future? Thanks, WolfmanSF (talk) 19:32, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@WolfmanSF: Well, I was already aware of the rule and believe that I'm already following it in my POTD blurbs – perhaps the "Oxudercidae family" example from yesterday's was an honest aberration on my part. However, saying that I "consistently" get this the wrong way round does seem a bit unfair. Revisiting last year's POTD's, most of which I drafted, I find only examples of "family <taxon name>" or "the <informal name> family, <taxon name>", not "<taxon name> family", so I'm unsure where you got that notion; perhaps you've found some other examples where I genuinely wrote it wrongly? That said, I'll be more careful to use the correct syntax in future usage. In addition, if you've spotted a mistake in a protected POTD blurb, please post a report at WP:ERRORS. I know that I used to schedule POTDs just two days or so before their Main Page appearances, but now that other people are helping to write and schedule POTDs, there should be more room to fine-tune blurbs before they become protected. Cheers! — RAVENPVFF · talk · 01:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for my unduly critical review; it's likely I remember mistakes better than correct examples. Regards, WolfmanSF (talk) 18:31, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

By the way, I invariably correct POTD blurbs when that error crops up; unfortunately, as explained above, I can't always do that to the protected versions. WolfmanSF (talk) 20:09, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I won't belabor this any further, but just to show I'm not totally imagining things, checking the history here shows another example of this situation. WolfmanSF (talk) 00:53, 16 January 2020 (UTC)