Talk:Die Tageszeitung

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was} move. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

die tageszeitung → Die Tageszeitung — Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks) ("Trademarks rendered without any capitals are always capitalized.") — — AjaxSmack 23:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, I would add that German grammatical rules also call for the word "Tageszeitung" to always be capitalised but the German Wikipedia article on this paper is also at the lowercase version. — AjaxSmack 23:59, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support as nom. — AjaxSmack 23:59, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Oppose. If you look at the cover image provided, you will see that die is written with lowercase in there, too. The newspaper intentionally spells its name un-capitalized, although according to German spelling rules, both letters would have to be capitalized. I don't think that it would be the intention behind the MoS that we capitalize die here, but even if it was, I would say that this is a case for wp:ignore all the rules. Zara1709 (talk) 10:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:MOSTM is targeted precisely at an entity that "intentionally spells its name un-capitalized" as seen by the examples of adidas and craigslist given there. As far as "ignore all the rules" goes, "'Ignore all rules' is not an exemption from accountability" so try to illustrate why this case is different from the examples presented at WP:MOSTM or other similar ones. Otherwise, I will simply counterargue that "Ignore all rules" should be applied to WP:IAR in this case. — AjaxSmack 00:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Accountability?" Obviously, I was referring rather to points like: "Don't follow written instructions mindlessly, but rather, consider how the encyclopedia is improved or damaged by each edit." This newspaper appears 6 days a week, and has appeared for over 30 years now, every time wit the name die tageszeitung. To anyone who knows the paper (if only from seeing it at a news stand) it would be irritating if Wikipedia would capitalize the name differently. And if so, since in German nouns are capitalized, too, the name would have to written as Die Tageszeitung, just as with many other Germans newspapers: Die Welt, Die Zeit Der Spiegel; die tageszeitung is intentionally uncapitalised, to emphasize that this newspaper is different. That's probably only a marketing gag, as with eBay (yes, that's WP's capitalisation, too!), but this is more significant than simply writing a one-word-trademark uncapitalised. And before we no discuss if this is a case for ignore all the rules probably it would be necessary that you take another look at the MoS. The section you have quoted only speaks of "Trademarks that officially begin with a lowercase letter [..] "because they break the normal capitalization rules of English that trademarks, as proper nouns, are written with initial capital letters wherever they occur in a sentence." [Emphasis added]. Zara1709 (talk) 07:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use standard English for titles even if trademarks encourage otherwise: "Convention: Follow standard English text formatting for article names that are trademarks. ... Rationale and specifics: See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks)." I don't think this section of naming policy could be much clearer; MOS:TM applies to titles. --Rogerb67 (talk) 14:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - for someone from Germany that would look really awkward. --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord² 12:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe so. But most English Wikipedia users are not from Germany and most German Wikipedia users would likely be using German Wikipedia so I'm not sure that's relevant here. — AjaxSmack 03:25, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Support This is precisely the kind of case intended to be covered by MOS:TM. This is the least appropriate argument for the application of WP:IAR I have yet to come across. --Rogerb67 (talk) 14:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. My understanding of the policy is that when an unusual case is merely a random marketing tic (like with Adidas), it should be in standard title case English. However when the unusual capitalization is important and relevant to the name (iPhone), it should be preserved, because, well, it's significant and leaving it out would be a distortion. I believe that the intentional lack of capitalization here satisfies the significance test - it's not just something marketing thought was cool.

I might be convinced otherwise, though. How do, say, other German newspapers or German academic sources refer to Die tageszeitung most commonly? Wikipedia should mimic whatever that style is. SnowFire (talk) 16:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This being the English Wikipedia, most of our naming conventions boil down to following the usual usage in English language sources. How do BBC and the New York Times refer to this paper?

I can address the iPhone case, as one who was present and working in Requested Moves during the time the current guideline was being worked out. We decided that cases such as eBay and iPhone were distinct in that the capitalization is a cue to pronunciation. These cases are more similar to CamelCase than they are to adidas, thirtysomething, k.d. lang or die tageszeitung, where the capitalization (or lack thereof) is not an aid to pronunciation, but rather a mark with which to distinguish a brand. The general agreement I remember many editors reaching was that it's not part of an encyclopedia's job to assist with brand management.

I hope this information is helpful. Now that I've commented here and betrayed a clear bias, I'm not going to close this request, so we'll see what someone else decides. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:01, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As noted by User:GTBacchus, iPhone is different because though the 1st letter isn't capitalized, the 2nd letter is capitalized. See WP:MOSTM again — "Trademarks beginning with a one-letter lowercase prefix pronounced as a separate letter do not need to be capitalized if the second letter is capitalized, but should otherwise follow normal capitalization rules" and iPhone is given as an example.

You can peruse these results to see that various capitalizations are used on the internet anyway. — AjaxSmack 01:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree that titles should go to their standard name in English - Confucius rather than Kong Fuzi - but for something like capitalization, this is a minor case where I wouldn't trust English sources to get it right at all. Indeed, I did check the New York Times for fun, and they're all over the place - sometimes capitalizing just the D, sometimes both, and sometimes neither. That doesn't mean that there's no standard, though, just that only really high-level and academic treatments of Germany in English probably are trustworthy enough on this if English really does have a different usage than standard German.

As for iPhone, fine, bad example, but the point is that the CamelCase style there is "significant" enough to preserve. It's not unreasonable to say that the lack of capitalization here is also significant.

Lastly. I'm not sure why tageszeitung is being suggested to be capitalized as well. I can see the argument that we shouldn't add the lowercase template just to make it look cool, but I don't see any reason as to why we should randomly capitalize later words in the title. As an example, say someone advertises themself as "bob the clown." To me, the Wikipedia article should be at "Bob the clown," as "Bob the Clown" is just erratic and Wikipedia making up its own capitalization that it thinks is cool. So... while again I disclaim too much knowledge over the common usage in Germany, if we do "move" it, the t at least should be left uncapitalized.

Also: Edit Conflicted! Well since I wrote this, I'll put it in anyway, but I wish there was more time to discuss whether the "t" needed capitalization. SnowFire (talk) 16:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. To me this example is in the same class as adidas etc and is in all lowercase to make the brand name stand out as advertizing. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:48, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• I support this move (and FWIW, I'm from Germany). This is precisely one of the cases described in WP:MOSTM and I agree with the style guideline.
  The "improvement" asked for in WP:IAR is defined by consensus, but consensus in this case already says to capitalise it. If you disagree with it then it should be discussed at WT:MOSTM. --Amalthea 13:09, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1) Applicability of style guidelines: I've previously pointed out that WP:MOSTM only discusses the capitalization of trademarks "wherever they occur in a sentence". Since we are discussing the capitalization of the article title, the applicable style guideline would not be WP:MOSTM, but Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles, which states: "The initial letter of a title is capitalized (except in very rare cases, such as eBay). Otherwise, capital letters are used only where implied by normal capitalization rules (Funding of UNESCO projects, not Funding of UNESCO Projects)." I hold that case of die tageszeitung is similar to that of eBay, however, guidelines can only make general suggestions and are often insufficient to deal with a particular case; and this is a very particular case. Therefore we also have such guidelines as Wikipedia:Ignore all rules and Wikipedia:Use common sense. We are not simply capitalizing the article title because some guideline mandates that. If you want to argue for this, you would have to make an argument that appeals to common sense.

2) Common sense To discuss, whether commons sense would argue in favour of capitalization in this case or not, at least a rudimentary knowledge of the German language is required. First, unlike craiglist or addidas, which are ONLY proper names, Tageszeitung is a regular noun in German. It simply means (daily) newspaper. Secondly, in German ALL nouns are capitalized, not only prober nouns. Therefore, the sentence: Die Tageszeitung berichtete, dass... would be translated as: The newspaper reported that.... The sentence: Wie die tageszeitung berichtete... would be translated: as As 'die tageszeitung' reported..." Of course, this might be confusing for an English reader who does not have a rudimentary knowledge of the German language. In English you would recognize a capitalized word as a proper noun. In German however, you would have to write tageszeitung uncapitalized, if you want to make it recognizable as a prober noun, since Tageszeitung also is a regular noun and in German regular nouns are capitalized. I think, I can be quite sure that such a particular case was not considered when the style guidelines were written.

If you do an internet search for "die tageszeitung" or "Die Tageszeitung", you will get some results that are about the TAZ, and some results that are about any other newspaper, simply because Tageszeitung means newspaper in German. On the German Wikipedia, you can find two articles about 'tageszeitung'. One, de:Tageszeitung corresponds to the English article Newspaper. The other, de:die tageszeitung corresponds to this article. There is an otheruses-template in the first article that links to the second. That said, I don't think that we need to differ from the German version of the article title here. Zara1709 (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re 1: "they occur in a sentence" is stated in WP:MOSTM as part of the problem, not part of the solution. WP:MOSTM describes the general formatting and capitalization guideline, and I see no reason why it wouldn't apply to titles. And even if, the "normal capitalization rules" for trademarks are laid out in WP:MOSTM anyway.
Also, I for one do not follow the guideline blindly. I welcome the consistency it brings, and it helps improve readability. And since my common sense is aware of the consensus found at WP:MOSTM for just this kind of article, and agrees with it in principle too, my common sense supports the move.

Re 2: I don't see how the ambiguity in German matters for the en-wiki article. --Amalthea 15:22, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.