Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-16/Arbitration report

Arbitration report

Motions – hyphens and dashes dispute

Open cases

Racepacket (Week 3)

During the week, 40 kilobytes was submitted in on-wiki evidence before the evidence phase came to a close. Drafter PhilKnight submitted a complete proposed decision in the workshop, where comments were submitted by arbitrators, parties, and others.

Tree shaping (Week 3)

The evidence phase came to a close during the week. Further comments were submitted in the workshop.

Motions

A request for arbitration concerning a hyphens and dashes dispute was filed last week. In lieu of opening a case at this time, the Committee passed the following motions:

1RR, civility probation, and moratorium

All discussions on the subject of en dashes in article titles discussion are subject to civility and 1RR restrictions, broadly construed.
Administrators are urged to be proactive in monitoring and assertive in keeping debate civil. Actions requiring clarification can be raised with the Committee on the appropriate subpage.
A moratorium has also been imposed on article title changes concerning hyphen/endash exchange; the only edits allowed will be to create a redirect to the existing article title until the resolution of the debate below.

Discussion for obtaining consensus

With the goal of obtaining consensus, interested parties have been instructed to spend their time determining the structure of a discussion on en dashes in article titles. This may be the continuation of a current discussion or commencement anew. After May 2011, six weeks will be provided for gathering consensus on the issue. The discussion should be of sufficient structure to allow easy quantification of consensus rather than a large amount of poorly-framed debate.

Consequence of insufficient resolution

If a determination isn't realised by mid-July, the Committee warns that a case will be opened and conduct violations will be dealt with severely.

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I found it incredibly ironic that the title of this article does not comply with MOS:DASH. Jenks24 (talk) 02:06, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shhhhh!!! [Looks around nervously] -- llywrch (talk) 05:26, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to give the gist of what each arbitration is about? Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:38, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did that for a while last year because some people preferred reading it each week, but stopped it this year because some people did not. Can't always be sure about what readers more strongly prefer on this point, but at minimum, there should be a snapshot in week 1 of each case (example from two weeks ago) and/or the week in which the case is closed (example from one week ago). Still, noting the suggestion/request. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:31, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Like What Jenks said. Killiondude (talk) 05:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom be damned, I fixed the dash. /ƒETCH COMMS / 20:52, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

... Hyphens and dashes. Hyphens and dashes. This reached arbitration. My horrified empathy to the arbitrators. - David Gerard (talk) 07:28, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I previously thought that the biggest waste of arbitrator time went to a January 2008 request for arbitration about Sorcerer's Stone vs. Philosopher's Stone, but it certainly has a new contender in this Hyphens and dashes business. AGK [•] 11:08, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it is simple proof that the more De minimis a topic is, the more rabid become those pushing the issue. IMO, no one should care a whit about typographical "standards" on Wikipedia to this extent. Collect (talk) 12:04, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved" --The Law of Triviality, in C. Northcote Parkinson, "Parkinson's Law", 1958, Chapter 6. -- Alarics (talk) 19:37, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh crap. Really? This made it to arbitration? --Rockstonetalk to me! 13:19, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary to the end-of-the-world pronouncements above, maintaining a consistent style across the encyclopedia is a laudable goal, one which is complicated by trying to devise standards by consensus rather than by fiat. Such disagreements are inevitable. Powers ^T 20:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I feel like editors that paint with a wide brush and say this sort of thing is a waste of time really disrespect the editors that care about such things. The Wikipedia would be an ugly mess without people who care about consistency. If ultimately an issue is unimportant, it's perfectly okay for a guideline to say more than one way is acceptable. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:27, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The sky's not going to fall if we use wrong hyphen or dash. And I agree with AGK, this case clearly tops of biggest waste of time in arbitration case category OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:42, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I won't deny that the disagreement that led to the case was more heated than it ought to have been, but that doesn't mean the objective of maintaining our house style should fall by the wayside. Powers ^T 12:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These arguments might carry more weight if there were any serious attempt to maintain consistency (within each article, at least) over things that people might actually notice, such as the presentation of references in footnotes, which in the great majority of WP articles are a total mess. By comparison, the difference between a hyphen and a dash seems preposterously unimportant. -- Alarics (talk) 14:51, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone pays attention to different things. To some readers, using the correct punctuation mark greatly enhances readability (at least in certain cases), while the exact format of a reference is insignificant. Powers ^T 20:29, 19 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't read an article because it has the wrong kind of hyphen in it you need to seek professional help. I seriously doubt any of our actual readers are troubled by this, it's just a small group of editors who can't see how absurd this is and how foolish it seems to everyone else. This should have it's own special section at WP:LAME as the lamest dispute in the history of Wikipedia. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:25, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please try not to make straw man arguments. I merely said that using the correct punctuation enhances readability, which I had thought to be self-evident. No one has claimed that an article becomes unintelligible if a hyphen is used where a dash is more appropriate. But in many contexts, using the longer dashes instead of simple hyphens can make a passage easier and quicker to read. For example, many people would have to read this very sentence twice-over-I hope you can see why. Powers ^T 17:47, 23 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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