User:Tony1/Monthly updates of styleguide and policy changes

WP:UPDATES

Wikipedia has a daunting array of styleguides and policy pages. They come under very little central coordination and are subject to change without wide notice. This makes it hard for users to keep track of changes to rules and policies they need to be aware of, and to attain a sense of how the project is evolving.

This page displays the important changes in a central location, month by month; it enables all Wikipedians to keep abreast of what is happening, quickly and conveniently.

Contributors to styleguide and policy pages are asked to notify us of changes for each upcoming monthly summary by posting a brief note of substantive changes (with a diff) on the talk page.

Summary updates are posted here and at the talk pages of MOS, (main page), FAC and FAR shortly after the start of each calendar month. Copy-editing and relatively trivial changes are generally not included in these summaries.

May 2008

Manual of Style (main page)

Non-breaking spaces. The scope of the recommendation to use a non-breaking (i.e., "hard") space was narrowed from all instances where:

"numerical and non-numerical elements are separated by a space",

to:

"measurements in which values and units are separated by a space".

Compound items such as "20 chairs" are thus excluded from the recommendation.

En dashes vs. minus signs. Previously, en dashes were permitted as an alternative to minus signs. This is no longer the case:

"Do not use an en dash for negative signs and subtraction operators: use the correct unicode character for the minus sign (−) (see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics).)"

Foreign terms and italics. The second of these two sentences was struck out:

"Use italics for phrases in other languages and for isolated foreign words that are not current in English. However, in an article on a subject for which there is no English-language term, such terms do not require italics."

Spelling and transliteration of foreign terms. The use of anglicized versus native spellings was clarified:

"Names not originally in a Latin alphabet—such as Greek, Chinese or Russian scripts—must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to English-speakers. Do not use a systematically transliterated name if there is a common English form of the name, such as Tchaikovsky or Chiang Kai-shek. The use of diacritics (accent marks) on foreign words is neither encouraged nor discouraged; their usage depends on whether they appear in verifiable reliable sources and on the constraints imposed by specialized Wikipeda guidelines."

Identity. There was a change from:

"When there is no dispute, use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself", to:

"When there is no dispute, the name most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself, and the most common terms for a group will be those that the group most commonly uses for itself".

Alignment of images. The previous preference for the right-alignment of images, with exceptions, was simplified to:

"Images of faces should be placed so that the face or eyes look toward the text, because the reader's eyes will tend to follow their direction. Therefore, portraits of a face looking to the reader's right should be left-aligned, looking into the main text."

Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

Symbols for bits and bytes. The following sentence was added:

"By extension, the symbols for the units of data rate kilobit per second, megabit per second and so on, are "kbit/s" (not "kbps" or "Kbps") and "Mbit/s" (not "Mbps" or "mbps"). Similarly, kilobyte per second and megabyte per second are "kB/s" (not "kBps" or "KBps") and "MB/s" (not "Mbps" or "MBps")."

Binary prefixes. A dispute tag still hangs over this section.

Units of measurement. The section "Follow the literature" is still the subject of a dispute tag and has been unstable.

Minus signs. A similar change was made to that listed above under "En dashes vs. minus signs". [Editorial note: The wording of both points now needs to be made consistent.]

Geographical coordinates. This section was restored with an edit summary to see WP:GEO.

[Editorial note: MOSNUM and the main page of MOS are now in need of housecleaning to ensure consistency in duplicated sections.]

Merger of two supplementary MOS pages

Naming conventions (abbreviations) was merged into Manual of Style (abbreviations).

Manual of Style (capital letters)

Capitalization of names of deities, etc. This was removed:

"Pronouns referring to deities, or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, are not capitalized."

Capitalization of religious and mythical beings. This was clarified:

"Do not capitalize terms denoting types of religious or mythical beings such as angel, fairy or deva. The personal names of individual beings are capitalized as normal (the angel Gabriel). An exception is made when such terms are used in fantasy fiction and they also denote ethnicities, in which case they are capitalized."

Layout

A long and discursive guideline for the See also section was replaced by a shorter one, introducing a new requirement:

"Like links in other embedded lists, the links in the See also section should be worked into the text where possible, and usually removed from the See also list, unless that would make them hard to find."

The Further reading section may now be called "Books" if it contains only books; it is best to avoid the title "Bibliography", because it may mean different things to different readers.

Citing sources

Reference qualification in article text. This new section was added, opening with:

"An incontrovertible statement requires no qualification in the article apart from its reference."

Examples were provided.

Featured article criteria

The criteria were reformatted to reduce redundant repetition; bolded titles were inserted for easier comprehension. The numbering and substantive meaning of the criteria are unaltered. The word count was reduced by about 11%.

Featured article candidate instructions

The instructions now clarify and reinforce the proscription, in the lead, of dual nominations, with the addition of the underlined words:

"Before nominating an article, ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria and that peer reviews are closed and archived."

Featured list criteria

The criteria underwent a major overhaul to produce a set of clearer, more concise tools for nominators and reviewers, reduced from 420 to 220 words. The major substantive changes involve the requirements that the writing be of "professional standard" and the lead "engaging", and the clarification of "scope" and "comprehensiveness". The need to take particular care in sourcing claims about living people was made explicit.

Featured list candidate instructions

There were significant changes to the FLC instructions to legitimise the identity and roles of the first two Wikipedians to be appointed as FL directors. Some of the wording and new procedures were borrowed from the FAC instructions. Two important changes were (1) the abolition of the rule that a nomination must have a minimum of four declarations of support to be eligible for promotion, and (2) the way consensus is judged and the weight of "support" declarations compared with the resolution of critical comments, as embodied in the following insertion:

"Consensus is built among reviewers and nominators, as determined by the FL directors, Scorpion0422 and The Rambling Man. A nomination will be removed from the list and archived if, in the judgment of the director who considers a nomination and its reviews:

actionable objections have not been resolved; or
consensus for promotion has not been reached; or
insufficient information has been provided by reviewers to judge whether the criteria have been met.

It is assumed that all nominations have good qualities; this is why the main thrust of the process is to generate and resolve critical comments in relation to the criteria, and why such resolution is given considerably more weight than declarations of support.

Featured portal criteria

The criteria were amended in two ways. Added this sentence: "Article and biography summaries should not significantly exceed 200 words in length." Added these underlined words: "images where appropriate, with good captions, linked credits, and acceptable copyright status.

Non-free content

Non-free content policy statement. The following sentence was inserted: :"There is no automatic entitlement to use non-free content in an article".

WP:NFCC#3a. The criterion was amended from:

"As few non-free content uses as possible are included in each article and in Wikipedia as a whole. Multiple items are not used if one will suffice; one is used only if necessary." to:

"Multiple items of non-free content are not used if one item can convey equivalent significant information."

WP:NFCC#3b. The scope was broadened (italics replacing struck-through text):

"Low- rather than high-resolution/fidelity/bit rate is used (especially where the original could be used for ~~piracy~~ deliberate copyright infringement)."

April 2008

Manual of Style (main page)

Titles. Clarification that common nouns denoting deities or religious figures are not capitalized.

Acronyms and abbreviations. The terms "abbreviation", "acronym" and "initialism" were clarified.

Quotation marks. Clarification that (block-quoted) multiparagraph quotations "must be precise and exactly as in the source. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question." Instead of HTML tags, {{quotation}} or {{quote}} can be used to render block quotes.

SI symbols and unit abbreviations. This was added:

"A lowercase s is the SI for seconds; thus, kgs means "kilogram-seconds"."

SI symbols and unit abbreviations. This was added:

"Exponentiation is indicated using a superscript, aⁿ; do not use a caret, a^n" and "Do not use E notation".

Disputes over people's proper names. The previous statement:

"Use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification) whenever this is possible"

was replaced with:

"Disputes over the proper name of a person or group are addressed by policies such as Verifiability, Neutral point of view, and Naming conventions where the name appears in an article name. When there is no dispute, use terms that a person uses for himself or herself, or terms that a group most commonly uses for itself.

Alignment of images. The last four words were added to the statement:

"Right-alignment is preferred to left- or center-alignment for the lead image."

An exception was added:

"Wherever possible, images of faces should be placed so that the face or eyes look toward the text, because the reader's eye will tend to follow their direction."

This was added:

Where the lead image is a portrait with the face looking to the reader's right, it should be left-aligned, looking into the text of the article. Where this is the lead image, it may be appropriate to move the Table of Contents to the right by using {{TOCright}}."

Pronunciation. The last three words were added:

"For ease of understanding across dialects, fairly broad IPA transcriptions are usually provided for English pronunciations."

This sentence was added:

"For English pronunciations, pronunciation respellings may be used in addition to the IPA."

Manual of Style (dates and numbers)

Decade abbreviations. Two-digit abbreviations for decades may have a preceding apostrophe only in reference to a social era or cultural phenomenon as a stock phrase that roughly corresponds to or defines a decade (the Roaring '20s, the Gay '90s), or where there is a notable connection between the period and the immediate topic (a sense of social justice informed by '60s counterculture, but grew up in 1960s Boston, moving to Dallas in 1971). [This is now inconsistent with the main page of the MoS.]

Units of measurement. A new section was inserted:

"Use terminology and symbols commonly employed in the current literature for that subject and level of technicality. When in doubt, use the units of measure, prefixes, unit symbols, number notation, and methods of disambiguation most often employed in reliable periodicals directed to a similar readership.

This was marked with a dispute tag and has been the subject of an edit war and page protection.

Units of measurement. The recommendation to use "sq" and "cu" with US-unit abbreviations was removed; now superscript exponents may be used in that system.

Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)

The piping of disambiguation pages. Clarification: piping may be used to add italics to the part of an article name inside parenthetical clarifiers (for instance [[Neo (The Matrix)|Neo (''The Matrix'')]]); until now the guideline only allowed italics and quotation marks for the part outside the parentheses.

Featured article candidate instructions

The third bullet was added to the instructions (underlined here):

"A nomination will be removed from the list and archived if, in the judgment of the director or his delegate:

actionable objections have not been resolved; or
consensus for promotion has not been reached; or
insufficient information has been provided by reviewers to judge whether the criteria have been met."

Featured portal criteria

The following sentence was added to the Featured portal criteria:

"It should include links to other Wikimedia Foundation projects when applicable. Portals that focus on a specific group of life-forms (other than humans) should contain a link to Wikispecies project."

Non-free content

The phrase that was removed from Non-free content Criterion 8 last month (underlined here) was reinstated and is currently under discussion:

"Significance.' Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding.

March 2008

Manual of style, main page

Multiplication symbols. Inserted: Do not use an asterisk to represent multiplication between numbers in non-technical articles. The multiplication sign in exponential notation (2.1 × 10⁸) may now be unspaced, depending on circumstances (2.1×10⁸); previously, spacing was always required in exponential notation.
Punctuation in quotations. "Punctuation" was added to the requirement that "Wherever reasonable, preserve the original style, spelling and punctuation".
Em dashes. "Em dashes are normally unspaced" was strengthened to "should not be spaced".
Instructional and presumptuous language. "Clearly" and "actually" were added to the list of words that are usually avoided in an encyclopedic register.
'"Pull" and block quotes. Removed: Pull quotes are generally not appropriate in Wikipedia articles. Added: Block quotes can be enclosed using {{quotation}} or {{quote}} (as well as the existing specification, i.e., between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags).
Numbers as figures or words. The lead statement expressing the default was reverted to the wording that pertained until it was changed last month: "In the body of an article, single-digit whole numbers (from zero to nine) are given as words; numbers of more than one digit are generally rendered as figures, and alternatively as words if they are expressed in one or two words."

WP:Layout

"See also" sections. It was clarified that links should be presented in a bulleted list, and that rather than grouping them by subject area, it is helpful to alphabetize them.

FAC instructions

Added: "Nominators must be sufficiently familiar with the subject matter and sources to deal with objections during the FAC process. Nominators who are not significant contributors to the article should consult regular editors of the article prior to nomination."
As an alternative to striking out their "objection", reviewers may "cap off their resolved comments; the cap should include the reviewer's signature, and editors [not nominators] should cap only their own commentary.

WP:Non-free content policy

Criterion 8. The second clause was removed: "Non-free content is used only if its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic~~, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding~~."
Enforcement. Inserted: An image with a valid non-free-use rationale for some (but not all) articles it is used in will not be deleted. Instead, the image will be removed from the articles for which it lacks a non-free-use rationale.

February 2008

Manual of style, main page

Numbers as figures or words. In the body of an article, whole numbers from zero to ten (rather than the previous zero to nine) are spelled out in words. [Now inconsistent with MOSNUM] The previous insistence that ordinals for centuries be expressed in figures (the 5th century) has been made optional (the 5th century or the fifth century).
Avoid first-person pronouns. It is now acceptable to use we in historical articles to mean the modern world as a whole (The text of De re publica has come down to us with substantial sections missing).
Foreign terms. "Unitalicized" was added to this point: "A rule of thumb is: do not italicize words that appear unitalicized in an English language dictionary."
Spelling and transliteration. [Additions underlined, removals struck through] ~~For terms in common usage,~~ use anglicized spellings; native spellings are an optional alternative if they use the ~~Latin~~ English alphabet. The choice between anglicized and native spellings should follow English usage (e.g., Besançon, Edvard Beneš and Göttingen, but Nuremburg, role, and Florence). Article titles follow our naming conventions. Diacritics are optional, except where ~~they are required for disambiguation~~ English overwhelmingly uses them, whether for disambiguation or for accurate pronunciation (résumé, café). Where native spellings in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek and Cyrillic) are given, they normally appear in parentheses ~~(except where the sense requires otherwise),~~ and are not italicized, even where this is technically feasible.

WP:Layout

"See also" sections. Slight rewording: Links already included in the body of the text are generally not repeated in "See also"; however whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense.
End sections. Greater flexibility is now permitted in the order of these sections: although the preferred order [of the sections is "See also", "Notes" (or "Footnotes"), "References" (or a combined Notes and references), "Bibliography" (or Books or Further reading), and "External links", it is permissible to change the sequence of these ending sections if there is good reason to do so. However, if an article has both "Notes" and "References" sections, "Notes" should immediately precede "References".

WP:Footnotes

Op. cit. was added to Ibid as an abbreviation that should not be used in footnotes.
Addition (underlined): "Unsourced or poorly sourced material may be removed from any article, and if it is, the burden of proof is on the editor who wishes to restore it."

FAC instructions

Phrase added (underlined): Before nominating an article, nominators may wish to receive feedback by listing it at Wikipedia:Peer review or the League of Copyeditors.
Phrase added (underlined): Nominators are expected to respond positively to constructive criticism and to make an effort to address objections promptly.
Minor changes to the mechanics of adding a nomination.
Addition: "[Stating at the top of the page] a reason for nominating, and a declaration of "Support" are not necessary."

January 2008

Manual of style, main page

Non-breaking spaces. Added: "In compound items in which numerical and non-numerical elements are separated by a space, a non-breaking space (or hard space) is recommended to avoid the displacement of those elements at the end of a line." A caveat was inserted concerning disadvantages of using the {{nowrap}} template.
Captions. Added: If a caption contains a complete sentence, any other sentence fragments in the caption should themselves end with a period.

FAC instructions

Added: "If a nominator feels that an Oppose has been addressed, they should say so after the reviewer's signature rather than striking out or splitting up the reviewer's text.... nominators should not alter, strike, break up, or add graphics to comments from other editors; replies are added below the signature on the reviewer's commentary."

Non-free content policy

Criterion 3. Removed: "If your image is greater than 500–600px add {{non-free reduce}} to the Image: namespace and someone from Wikipedia will shrink the image to comply with this guideline."

Post notifications for May 2008 on [[User_talk:Tony1/Monthly_updates_of_styleguide_and_policy_changes#May_2008_notifications}the talk page]], please, not here.

Guidelines for preparing the summaries

General principles

Be as succinct as possible; the primary purpose is to create a useful report for editors at large, not to overwhelm them with detail.
Do not allow your own POV to intrude. You're merely reporting.
Consider noting [in square brackets] any inconsistencies with other manuals that you know have been created by a change, and if a guideline or policy has reverted to a previous month's version.

Process

Start by displaying the whole-month diff; do it from the last edit in the previous month to the last edit in the current month.
Ignore copy-edits, mere changes of terminology that won't impact on users at large, and reverts, of course.
Insert a piped link to start each point; diffs would be problematic, though.
If a change is complicated, consider reproducing the whole point, underlining insertions and striking through deletions. Try to minimise this option.
If a change is subtle or minor, but you still think it's worth flagging here, write something like "Minor changes to the rule on ..." without specifying the actual wording. Try to minimise this option.
Insert meta-comments in square brackets, such as [Now inconsistent with MOSNUM].

Location

Each summary is located at a subpage of this page named by month and year, such as March 2008.
These are transcluded in the sections above, and may be transcluded elsewhere.