Talk:K.D. Lang/Archive 1

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Budist Activism

Recently (April 10th 2008) a radio interview was played on ABC Local Radio (Australia) where her views on Tibbet and the Plympic tourch were recoded on the P.M. program. If the Australian national broadcaster finds this issue important enough, maybe it should be recorded on here?Mightymouseman (talk) 08:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The reasons for move copied from the entry on the WP:RM page

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support - Proper English spelling takes precedence over stylistic interpretation. DarrenBaker 15:53, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Wikipedia has precedent for using unconventional stage names as article titles (see Discussion below); it is harmless. Wasted Time R 16:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Support This really should be consistent. Gryffindor 17:55, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose - While the general style is to have product names begin with a capital letter, the iPod is referred to with (generally thought) incorrect capitalization. Only a software limitation keeps the page itself from beginning with a lowercase letter. I see no reason why we shouldn't apply similar thinking to this page. Ral315 WS 08:10, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Wasted Time R. Rd232 talk 12:29, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose k.d.lang is clear usage. Septentrionalis 23:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. That's her actual stage name. -Sean Curtin 05:39, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. She may capitalize her stage name as she wishes, but as with corporations and such I believe we should use standard English rules. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It's her name to capitalize or not as she sees fit. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:19, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
  • OPPOSE she spells it k.d. lang 132.205.45.148 19:53, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose — her spelling is supported in most print articles I've read, and thu their style manuals. --Gareth Hughes 14:08, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose — As someone said below, "the correct spelling of her stage name is "k.d. lang". The correct spelling of her legal name (when using initials) is K.D. Lang." The article is under the stage name, not her legal name. Quintusdecimus 18:05, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose obviously - we should use stage names where they are the common usage. sjorford #£@%&$?! 08:56, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - we must respect the english language

Discussion

Add any additional comments
k.d. lang is her stage name. Wikipedia already places articles under stage names instead of real names, such as John Wayne, Ringo Starr, countless others. And it does so even if the stage name is not a proper Western full name, such as Cher, Madonna, etc. And it also does so even for stage names that are not proper English, such as 50 Cent. So I see nothing wrong with k.d. lang (forced to K.d. lang by technical limitations) as the article name. Note also that DarrenBaker wants to change the casing of her name in the body of the article too. This seems even more unnecessary: the Prince article is happy to refer to him as File:Prince symbol.svg during the time that glyph was his name, surely k.d. lang is mild compared to that! Wasted Time R 16:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The choice of K.D. Lang to use lowercase letters is a purely stylistic choice. Her proper english name is spelled with capitals. I appreciate that you are great fans and all, but this is an Encyclopedia.

Regardless of how this is decided, you can't just copy-and-paste from one article to the other, losing all the history in the process. That's why I've reverted the main article to here again. Get an admin to approve and do the move, if it is really agreed upon as necessary. Wasted Time R 15:11, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
My bad, apologies everyone. I will get an admin to do it. DarrenBaker 15:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Result

The votes are 10-3 against the page move: page not moved. Eugene van der Pijll 18:41, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Various topics

While I appreciate that Ms. Lang's homosexuality is an important part of her life and personality, is it really necessary to have "and identifies as a homosexual" in the very first sentence of the article? Aside from being rather non-sequitur, other articles don't begin (for example): "Jackson Browne is a singer, songwriter, pianist, guitarist and identifies as a heterosexual." While I agree that Ms. Lang's sexual orientation deserves to appear somewhere in the article, isn't it a bit of a double-standard to highlight someone's sexual orientation so early, just because she's not straight? RiseAbove 19:41, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Someone wrote:

CAN ANYONE FIGURE OUT HOW TO NOT START THE WIKI TITLE WITH A CAPITAL "K"?

It's not possible, I'm afraid. --Camembert

I was annoyed by wiki limitation in this regard. I don't see any reason why someone can't use lower case if they want to. If you study the history of typography, you will find it is a matter of taste. HOWEVER, I am less annoyed because at least wiki is consistent. Looking up e.e. cummings sort of cooled my jets in this regard. Still, it is amzing in this day and age where we can clone sheep we can't find away of allowing a person known to mass-culture to use his/her preferred style of writing their name. I think this is another example of the way in which we as a culture have allowed ourselves to sucuumb to the inertia of binary (machine) thinking rather than embrace the human.

thus endith my sermon Jackbox1971 00:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Nothing on the Rolling Stones nicking the melody to "constant Craving" for their "Anybody Seen My Baby?" song? Or is that worth mentioning? Koyaanis Qatsi

I think it's certainly relevant info. Go ahead and add it. If I was more sure it was the exact same, I'd add that Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" uses the same riff as Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover" (obviously, I wouldn't add it to this article, but Velvet Underground). Tokerboy

Because of wiki-naming conventions, the e.e. cummings article title is E. E. Cummings. With that in mind, this article should be entitled K.D. Lang. Kingturtle 06:24 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

That is not the only reason. E.E. Cummings himself preferred to spell his name with capital letters as you will find out with a little research. It was his publishers and readers who preferred the small letter form. -- Derek Ross 06:33 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
What he said. In the present case, I think we should stick with "K.d. lang" - it's not perfect, but it's the best we can get. At least this way, it's possible to link to [[k.d. lang]] without any messing about - which is more than can be said for [[K.D. Lang|k.d. lang]].
-- Paul A 06:40 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
I accept that. With that said, shouldn't it be 'kd lang? sans periods? Kingturtle 06:53 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
kdlang.com uses "k.d. lang", for what it's worth. So do all the album covers I could find in a quick look around. (Some of the album covers actually say "k.d.lang", with no spaces, but I think that's just artistic license at work). -- Paul A 07:06 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Frankly,I find treating the capitalization of proper names as other than compulsory as obnoxious as others find my treatment of spacing after punctuation as other than compulsory.It is Miss Lang's preference that her initials not be capitalized,but it is taking her side rather than NPOV on an issue that should be seen as debatable to describe the non-capitalized version as "the correct" version rather than her preference.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 01:57, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The notice at the top of this article is POV. It states that the correct spelling is "k.d. lang". The correct spelling is clearly KD Lang by modern standards (K.D. Lang, K. D. Lang, etc are also fine). She is entitled to the POV that her pretentious lowercase name is "correct", but Wikipedia must not endorse this. If Wikipedia calls any form "incorrect", it should be the one without proper capitalisation. If we don't want to do that, we should work out a neutral wording. — Chameleon 29 June 2005 15:42 (UTC)

the correct spelling of her stage name is "k.d. lang". The correct spelling of her legal name (when using initials) is K.D. Lang.Rd232 talk 12:32, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

This is really quite ridiculous, seeing as the proper spelling is in fact K.D. Lang. There really is no argument here, that's English, folks. DarrenBaker 15:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Sigh, no, her proper name is Kathryn Dawn Lang, choosing to call herself "K.D." is already a stylistic/artistic choice. True, it's one that has precedent and is often used; but the same could be said of the nature of the case of her name. Maybe it's just the part of Canada I'm from, but seeing it spelt "K.D. Lang" doesn't even look like the same name. She is known by the screwy spelling. It just doesn't make much sense to change it based on vague notions of what is "proper" english. For the most part, proper can be defined as common usage that stands up to time to a degree (yeah, argue all you want, but we talk and write in ways that would give heart-attacks to Victorian-age english teachers), and I have never in my entire life seen her referred to as "K.D. Lang", save for in this discussion. Although yes, you can probably tell from my usage of comma-after-quotation-mark that I'm somewhat of a "rationalist" when it comes to the rules of language. My own POV is clear, then. But I think it's rather NPOV to refer to someone by the way that everyone else in the world refers to them, nicht wahr? Phil Urich 02:18, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Ain't technology grand? Jackbox1971 00:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe the article should be entitled "K.D. Lang". While her real name is Kathryn Dawn Lang, she is most widely know by her initials and family name. The article is about the woman, not only the performer. If she wants to brand herself as k. d. lang, that's between her and her publicists. Look at the article for Coca-Cola... the title is in a non-serif typeface and the logo displayed is the stylized script typeface. The K. D. Lang article should be the same. Maybe the lower case k.d. lang could be put under the logo heading in her infobox. CWPappas 05:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see. So an artist shouldn't be at an article named after their extremely well known pseudonym. So that's why the article about popular entertainer and writer Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie is at... Madonna (entertainer)? :P Stage names are official pseudonyms, and spelling is a key part of that. I almost could not care less about this person, actually (I've never even heard her music to the best of my knowledge), so you know I'm NPOV on this because I am absolutely not a fan of hers, I'm just familiar with her name (and to a lesser extent had heard she was a lesbian and a gay rights activist) basically. But the article - and I cannot believe people are bothering to argue against this, I really can't, it just boggles my mind - should use the name - and spelling - that she is known by and that her work is published under, which happens to be spelled awkwardly as k.d. lang. To spell it any other way is akin to calling Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, though to use a more modern and closer example, akin to calling the iPod an IPod; it may follow English grammar better, but it's NOT the real name of the product, which is registered with the U.S. government as a trademark... given that Ms. Lang publishes her work under k.d. lang, this probably means that it is spelled that way on any government copyright registrations as well, making it even more correct as that would then be her legal pseudonym. And if you don't think spelling of a name is that important? Ashlee Simpson. Would you spell her first name "Ashley", just because Ashlee seems like a pretentious variation on a traditional name? Would you change [{Britney Spears]]' first name's spelling to the traditional "Brittany"? Of course not! And what about the fact that many foreign names have portions in them that don't quite follow English spelling rules? English grammar normally states that all portions of a name should be capitalized, as y'all are noting quite fervently. However, I have a friend whose surname is da Costa. Not Da Costa or DaCosta - da Costa. That is the appropriate Portuguese spelling, and thus the proper spelling. No ifs , ands, or buts.
The fact of the matter is, as much as it may annoy you, her official pseudonym by which she is most famously known is k.d. lang; not K.D Lang or anything else, but k.d. lang. If you have a problem with this, take it up with Ms. Lang, not the Wikipedia article on her. 4.235.27.186 21:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

No matter how obnoxious it is, Wikipedia's naming conventions clearly allow for stage names and virtually every journalistic style guide I can find specifies k.d. lang. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.103.71.159 (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Lesbian

"In addition to her musical talents, k.d. lang has championed lesbian causes"

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought she was a lesbian, pubically declared by her self? If so, I believe the article should mention that she is a lesbian. Hiding/censoring this aspect of her personality seems POV. If she is a lesbian perhaps we can incorporate it into the article? --ShaunMacPherson 00:44, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If it's "POV",doesn't it cut both ways?(To those who think it glorious that she's a lesbian,she is denied credit,to those who think it shameful,she is spared scandalous exposure).Not actually taking a side on mentioning it,just observing...L.E/12.144.5.2 04:34, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gay Icon Project

In my effort to merge the now-deleted list from the article Gay icon to the Gay icons category, I have added this page to the category. I engaged in this effort as a "human script", adding everyone from the list to the category, bypassing the fact-checking stage. That is what I am relying on you to do. Please check the article Gay icon and make a judgment as to whether this person or group fits the category. By distributing this task from the regular editors of one article to the regular editors of several articles, I believe that the task of fact-checking this information can be expedited. Thank you very much. Philwelch 21:36, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Concort

Remark recieved at the contactpoint of Wikipedia EN; --Walter 22:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I read somewhere that k.d. lang was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and her family moved to Consort, Alberta, when she was nine months old. Wikipedia states that she was born in Concort. Maybe someone could check this out.

Meat stinks controversy

Should her "meat stinks" ad controversy be mentioned? Between that and her lesbianism, it prompted the residents of Consort to publicly denounce her and basically disowned her from anything to do with their community. It was a fairly significant campaign in Alberta at the time —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.148.42.175 (talk • contribs) 10:23, January 17, 2006.

It's already mentioned, but I think that the campaign as a whole really should have an article of its own; it was a huge deal and I remember reading about it, and I'm not even from Canada or the US. --Qirex 09:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Images

THe images on the page were recently removed and have now been re-added to the article. they were remobved as it was said they constituted an infringment to the fair use policy of wikipedia. I would like input as to what people think on the issue and if the images do constitue a fair use copywright infringment the suiitable replacement need finding before the removal of the current images.--134.225.235.13 18:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Please look at the licence tags for album cover, and for magazine cover on the image description pages of the two images I removed. The tags clearly state what constitute fair use. Album covers are to be used to provide critical commentary for the album - "solely to illustrate the audio recording in question". Here it was used to illustrate the person - not fair use. Same with the magazine cover - "to illustrate the publication of the issue of the magazine in question" and "It is not acceptable to use images with this tag in the article of the person or persons depicted on the cover, unless used directly in connection with the publication of this image. Such usages will be removed." There was no direct connection except for a one line reference under the heading of trivia that did not discuss the magazine or the image in any way. This is not up for debate as this has been Wikipedia policy for a long time. There are so many incorrectly used images that it takes time to identify them all, so you'll probably notice there are a lot of articles which use album covers or magazine (or book) covers in this way. But they're wrong and eventually they'll get fixed too. It's not our policy to keep offending images in articles until we find a replacement, as this offers no incentive for anyone to actually find a free image, so please do not revert. Rossrs 21:04, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


How to source something like this?

Regarding the nature of lang's role in "Eye of the Beholder": all you have to do is watch the freaking movie and it's self-evident, so what kind of source can one put there? If she wears a blue dress in the movie and I write she wore a blue dress do I have to source it??? What are the standards for self-evidence in the Wiki?thanks--Tednor 21:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I think something visual like a "blue dress" is self-evident while something such as emotiveness of performances is not. I would simply find a review which mentions lang's performance and cite that. This is what I've read in some reviews of the film, so I'm not positive you're going to find what you're looking for:
    • "Crooner k.d. lang, cast as McGregor's contact at his unnamed government agency, borders on obnoxious while trying to exude affectionate moxie." [1]
    • "Folksinger k.d. lang plays Eye's colleague, a role in which she does nothing but appear on a laptop screen or talk into one. Mainly, her role consists of cursing about how Eye wants her to run a computer check that could get her fired. Then she runs it." [2]
    • "singer/songwriter k.d. Lang is even in the movie, cast as a fellow investigator who helps the "Eye" with all of his troubles, although the screenplay gives her nothing to do but to sit behind a computer screen." [3]

- Zepheus <ツィフィアス> 20:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

You are missing the fundamental element of what I wrote and also the note I attached to what I wrote, which specifically state that the part as written required Lang to emote more than Judd, NOT that her performance was as such. It's quite obvious that lang's character is contrasted to the emotionally stifled and sociopathic character played by Judd. Furthermore, I couldn't disagree more with the "reviewers", having actually watched the movie and attempted to absorb it's storyline ( i never read a single review but those guys are so off the mark it's not even funny!) At any rate, I'm NOT nor do I want to, judge lang's performance in this article, Merely i want to point out that the role is a choice morsel for the reason I've stated. If you are calling into question on factual basis, then I'm going to have to ask WHICH fact you are questioning, as you seem to have confused the literal intent of the statement.--4.159.8.165 19:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup template.

I added the cleanup tag because this page needs to be organized into paragraphs as opposed to being a list of things that happened to her or that she did. - Zepheus <ツィフィアス> 04:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Why the strange capitalization?

I understand that she spells her name in all lower-case as "artistic expression", but shouldn't the article make mention of it, or have at least ONE sentence describing her thinking or the reasons behind her choosing to be billed this way? --Schmendrick 20:07, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

sometimes uses her androgenous aperance?

excuse me? this is what is wrong with wikipedia. the statement she sometimes utilieses her androgenous aperance is sombodys way of trying to say she looks like a man in this encyclopedia without getting deleted. It is 100% inapropriate for this article and 100% inapropriate for wikipedia. keep your personal opinions to yourself if you havent got the guts to say them properly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.1.194 (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

name revisited

I don't understand. The clear majority of talk page is in favor of using her stage name, the name she is most famous for, and the name she chooses for herself, which is k.d. lang. A request to move it to K.D. Lang apparently failed in 2005, judging by the comments in the votes, and yet the page is at K.D. Lang, and the introduction and page uses capitalization which is not consistent with her stage name. The fact that it's initialized actually makes less sense. Either use her birth name, Kathryn Dawn Lang, throughout (in clear violation of wikipedia styleguides) or use her stage name, k.d. lang, in conformance with wikipedia style guides. For the record I was referred here by an AV Club (The Onion) article. I anticipate a flood of people from there soon. It's already started to trickle. --Charles (Kznf) (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It should be changed. How do we go about doing that without getting anyone upset? Manderr (talk) 00:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've fixed it. No one minds I hope? If someone wishes to change it back they should discuss things here first. Manderr (talk) 01:00, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Now now, it's takes a little time to sit down and write an answer to Charles' post that's not just a blunt read-the-guidelines!-rebuttal but a comprehensive explanation of why things are done this way. And asking how to resolve an issue on a talk page and then just going ahead with an obviously controversial edit about ten minutes later is not really the best practice for consensus building, especially since the change introduces inconsistency with the article name - no offense.
Anyway, Charles, you are referring to this article, I presume? Incidentally, it touches on a matter I have always considered particularly unnerving, namely how a lot of energy goes into debating stylistic bits while matters of actual content fall short. In that context, the AV Club article mentions a few topics that are supposedly synonymous with Lang's public life and I'd like to add that the article is still rather poorly referenced.
That being said, one underlying rationale for normalizing capitalization, besides others, such as optimizing readability and striving for a consistent appearance (obviously desirable for a general purpose publication like this one) is to avoid drawing undue attention to certain subjects through stylized typography.
And when it comes to matters of neutrality, one obviously has to look beyond the stage name of a single musician and consider names of all kinds of subjects, people, companies, brands and so forth, on a Wikipedia-wide level. It would also be a neutral approach of sorts to generally follow a subject's preferred typographic style. But by and large, for fears that such a practice would still make the encyclopedia they are working one look like everyone's billboard, I suspect, editors have chosen to rather go with standard English. That's how guidelines such as WP:MOSTM came to be, which by the way is also referred to in WikiProject Music's collected guidelines in connection with the formatting of the names of bands and individual musicians. – Cyrus XIII (talk) 10:53, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Good Lord, people. I also found this page because of the Onion's AV Club article, and I think it's ridiculous that her stage name is mischaracterized here. If you "correct" her name here, you would also need to "correct" Jon Stewart's name since he was born "Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz" (which that webpage correctly notes, though the page is listed under "Jon Stewart"). You would also need to "correct" pages for iPod, Michael Jackson's HIStory album, eHarmony, and the list goes on and on. Don't you people see that "k.d. lang" is clearly a stylish stage name the singer has given herself? "K.D. Lang" refers to nothing--certainly not what's on her birth certificate, and you won't find that capitalized spelling on any of her albums, concert programs, or in any major newspaper reviews. I think this should give the primary editors here pause. I don't even listen to k.d. lang's music much, but I had to voice my opinion here--an opinion that is basically fact. Steverino (talk) 02:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I just checked, and we have the article: E. E. Cummings, not e.e. cummings. Aleta Sing 02:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, although that's not a very comparable case, because Cummings himself never approved of the lower-case rendering of his name. See the article for details. Brian D. Foy and Bell Hooks are probably better examples. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the Cummings example is not relevant here, since it was a printing decision thrust upon the author. k.d. lang has chosen the lowercase spelling as her stage name, and we should reflect that here. Here's an extreme example of my point: The band "!!!". They chose a wild and crazy stage name, and Wiki correctly reprints it in their listing. Wiki should not be in the business of "correcting" stage names because there's no such thing as an "incorrect" stage name if the artist has approved it.Steverino (talk) 16:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I would encourage you to find out why we choose standard typography over unconventional choices made by artists, trademark holders, etc. It's not about "correcting" the name; it's about not giving some names special attention. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I posted this on the bell hooks page as well: I think it is inconsistent to only apply this "attention-grabbing" rule to punctuation and capitalization; If a writer made a brand for herself with the name !!!bellhooks!!! (one word) that would be permissable by Wiki standards, am I right?Steverino (talk) 00:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm... some brand names do get their fancy punctuation removed as a rule around here. For example, the musician Pink often renders her name as P!nk, the television show Thirtysomething always billed itself as thirtysomething, and We Love Katamari always refers to itself as We ♥ Katamari. With that last example, you start running into accessibility problems, because not every browser will properly display the heart character.

On the other hand, eBay and iPod keep their initial lowercase letter, and Yahoo! and Jeopardy! keep their punctuation. These agreements were mostly forged in discussions on particular pages, and also at WT:MOSTM and WT:MOSCL. I'm not sure just how we would handle someone who bills herself as "!!!bellhooks!!!". -GTBacchus(talk) 02:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to make the title of the k.d. lang page lowercase. I edited the page and added "lowercase|title=k.d. lang" with brackets but that doesn't seem to work.Steverino (talk) 16:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that template will make the 'k' lower-case, but to get the 'd' as well, you'd have to move the page. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Along with eBay and iPod, another example of a Wikipedia article that permits non-standard capitalization is BedZED. I believe it's time to reconsider moving the K.D. Lang article to a page with an all-lower-case title, with the necessary redirects (if that's what it takes to achieve the change). Let's have another vote! Russ London (talk) 17:52, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

According to the article, "BedZED" stands for "Beddington Zero Energy Development"; capitalizing acronyms and initialisms is standard English. In regard to the lowercasing of separable prefixes found in eBay and iPod, other editors have argued that this form has in fact become a part of standard English orthography. While I remain more or less neutral towards that assessment (English not being my first language and all), I support the application of the respective rule in our Manual of Style while it is in effect. – Cyrus XIII (talk) 18:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This is absolutely ridiculous. Her name is k.d. lang in lower case. She can write it any way she wants. I have the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll in front of me - heaven forbid, a proper published reviewed piece of literature - and they have k.d. lang. Goes to show how completely useless and pathetic Wikipedia is when it can't even get something basic as someone's name right. Give up, amateurs.

Cut-and-paste

Please do not try to change the title of this page with a "cut-and-paste" move. Page moves must be carried out properly per WP:MOVE, in order to preserve the contributor history of the page per our GFDL. If you want to rename the page, you'll have to build consensus for the change, and that happens here, on this talk page. Maybe somewhere at WP:MOS, too. -GTBacchus(talk) 23:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Oops, I'm the one who tried the cut-and-paste move. I'm not trying to sabotage this page; I truly believe it is incorrect as is and that keeping it uppercase is not a stylistic choice. It is simply incorrect. But I will not change the page if I am violating rules and need a consensus as noted above. Can one of the moderators please advise how to build this consensus so we can properly change the title? Can we have a revote? What are the rules of this consensus-building process, and how many "yays" do I need in my favor before we can change? Thanks. Steverino (talk) 23:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Don't worry, I didn't figure you were trying to sabotage anything. Consensus here (see Wikipedia:Consensus) is a bit more complicated than a certain number of "yeas" versus "nays". Voting like that works when there's a group of fixed size participating, but here it would be trivial to round up 100 people to get accounts and "vote". The only thing we would really learn from such a vote is who has more friends.

Instead, we build consensus through discussion. In the discussion, we try to take into account policies and guidelines that were established through previous consensus agreements, because those earlier decisions, while they can change at any time, still carry weight until it becomes clear that they've changed.

In the case of this particular article, the conversation has happened at least once in the past - see the top of this page, where it appears that the conversation was treated a bit too much like a vote. The idea is to not do it that way, but to let arguments, rather than people, make the decision. That means that a good argument can win against greater numbers.

Here's the short direct answer: Start a talk page section here, raising the question, and see what people think. When you seem to have a bit of support, go to Wikipedia:Requested moves and file a request, following the instructions there.

If you run into much static, which you will, you might want to hold the discussion in a more general light, which would happen at the talk page(s) of WP:MOSTM or WP:MOSCL or both. (Those are style guidelines, the shortcuts (like "MOSTM") are just for convenient linking.) I hope that helps. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that does help. You people are so quick with the responses! I'm impressed. I'll try to start some kind of dialogue here and possibly on the WP style pages and see what happens. Steverino (talk) 00:26, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Surely a joke

Please tell me this:

Also in 1983, she presented a performance art piece, a seven-hour re-enactment of the transplantation of an artificial heart for Barney Clark, a retired American dentist.

is someone's idea of a joke. It has a ref, but not an Internet ref (it's a book, maybe a fictitious one). So unless someone has the book, it can't be checked. What do others say? A creative piece of vandalism? Should we just remove it? — Frecklefσσt | Talk 16:58, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I found another source that says the same thing. [4] Aleta Sing 17:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, you can read the relevant page of the book in the Google books preview. [5] So, no, apparently this is not a joke or vandalism. Aleta Sing 17:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
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