On the Capitalization of Common Names

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Upupa epops

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Jan 6, 2018, 8:33:54 PM1/6/18
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Hello everyone,


A recent discussion here about common names brought up the controversial issue of capitalization. I think this flag is in some way connected to that discussion: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/211075

I have not seen a post by Nutcracker yet, but I think there were enough posts about it on the previous discussion already to warrant a separate thread.

 

INaturalist’s current capitalization policy is described here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#names

As far as I can tell, this was arbitrarily determined based on the perceived consensus in the field guides for different groups of organisms.

 

I think common names should be capitalized on iNaturalist for three reasons.

They should be capitalized in general because:


1. Species names should be considered proper nouns, not common nouns. A Red Deer is different from other deer or mammals in general in a similar way to a Samsung Galaxy being different from cell phones in general or the Great Lakes being different from lakes in general. A species is a distinct, specific entity.

 

2.     2. Capitalization also provides clarity. Saying that you saw a greenish warbler is very little help to anybody, because many warblers in both Europe and North America come with green on them. But if you say that you saw a Greenish Warbler, it is fairly clear that you saw a bird from the distinct species Phylloscopus trochiloidesI.

 

Here are some articles which I think argue more convincingly than I did (in increasing length):

http://www.worldbirdnames.org/english-names/spelling-rules/capitalization/

http://www.thebirdist.com/2013/07/a-word-on-capitalization-of-bird-names.html

https://mostlybirds.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/should-common-names-of-species-be-capitalized/

 

3.     3. Specifically in iNaturalist, I think species names should be capitalized because in most instances in which they appear (as far as I can tell), they can be interpreted as titles. In titles, all the important words are capitalized.

 

Here, “Eastern poison ivy” is the title of the species page for this taxon.


 

Here, “clovers” is the ‘title’ of the observation. “white clover” is a suggestion for the title to be improved.

 


Having all the lowercase titles gives an impression more like a casual chatroom than a sleek professional website, in my opinion. Have lowercase species names may be fine in the middle of a paragraph, but in isolation like this they feel wrong.

 

However, I’m interested in reading other opinions!

 

Here are a few past threads about capitalization I was able to find:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/Z1vOjU8U5zo

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/sK6-2cfot3E

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/yyt6Y9R6Ot4

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/l0Xn4JKgfjM


Charlie Hohn

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Jan 7, 2018, 8:59:01 AM1/7/18
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Nutcracker doesn't want to use google products.


Anyhow it kind of seems like at least to some extent this is another regional issue, with people in the US mostly not capitalizing common names for plants, but in some other places, people do. so maybe we could also solve this one by adding emphasis to place based names and emphasizing default name.

FWIW i think it looks LESS professional when common names for plants are capitalized because that isn't the convention here. 

I don't care that much about this issue except i don't want plant stuff to get buried or overridden by stuff from other more 'flashy' taxa.  And iNat seems reluctant to treat different taxa differently in stuff like this an i disagree.  Different taxa have different data needs.

James Bailey

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Jan 8, 2018, 2:55:04 PM1/8/18
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I have never seen the use of "Humans", but "humans". Sometimes we say "Man" referring to the whole of mankind. 

I'm not sure I can agree that common names should be considered proper nouns in this sense. One of your examples refer to companies, and branded products, which are capitalized for other reasons. A bunk bed is a type of bed, but we don't capitalize that. A mansion is a type of house. I can't see a difference between a common name for a species, and a "common name" for anything else.

Note: I do agree that in display locations, for instance those you showed above, names should be capitalized automatically as if they were in a title or formal heading.

tony rebelo

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Jan 9, 2018, 5:47:44 AM1/9/18
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I strongly support the use of capital letters for common names in terms of treating them as proper nouns and not collective or adjectival nouns.

The big problem is that many descriptive words can be either an adjective or a proper noun,    For instance, there can be both green and cream green sugarbushes (which copy editors immediately change to sugar bushes).  vs There can be both green and cream Green Sugarbushes.

AfriBats

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Jan 10, 2018, 5:07:49 AM1/10/18
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I think that's a very consistent and convincing proposal, which I support.

Jakob

bouteloua

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Jan 10, 2018, 11:25:00 AM1/10/18
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Common names are for the common people. They can be vulgarimproper, and misleading. That's the purpose of scientific names and why it's better to keep them improper (lowercase) unless cited as part of a formal list. Languages spoken and personal preferences transcend country of residence or origin. Perhaps users should be able to choose their preferred Lexicon(s) or common names...

There is no existing, worldwide standard as to whether or not they should be capitalized. If organizations like BSBI, SANBI, IOC, etc. have official lists of names that they deem proper, maybe they could import that as a Lexicon that cannot be modified by anyone but an admin (e.g. BSBI calls this English Oak). Websites and field guides from different counties use different styles, even within the same country and sometimes even within the same domain name, e.g. SANBI 1SANBI 2SANBI 3SANBI 4

As another example, 9/10 of my physically-closest field guides use lowercase common names within the title and/or body of the text. Many field guides actually use all UPPERCASE for common names on the title for each entry, probably to avoid discussions like this, but all caps is a bit yelly for the internet.

Capitalization on iNat is currently a mix of "display as entered" and "force Sentence case." If we do move to "force Title Case" in titles on taxon pages, we should still retain "display as entered" in other sections of the website such as lists of spp (iNat is not an authority for "proper" common names), searches, and IDs, e.g.
"@bouteoua suggested an ID of yellow coneflower (Rabitida pinnata); bouteloua disagrees this is yellow coneflower (Echinacea paradoxa)"

cassi

P.S. i won't get upset if you choose to capitalize and/or misspell my name; the plants and animals don't care either ;)
P.P.S. If you really want to get into it, here's some fun reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SMcCandlish/Organism_names_on_Wikipedia

Reuven Martin

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Jan 10, 2018, 12:19:51 PM1/10/18
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I see pretty clear consensus in capitalizing names of animals. At a quick check, the following all use capitals:
  • Both major world bird lists
  • eBird
  • Observation.org
  • BugGuide
  • North American Butterfly Association
  • Dragonfly Society of the Americas
  • Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
I'm sure there are exceptions, but the general pattern is pretty clear. I don't know enough about trends in plants to comment, but not capitalizing animals seems impossible to justify to me.

megatherium

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Jan 10, 2018, 2:30:21 PM1/10/18
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Leaving aside any international/professional standards or lack thereof for a second, I'd like to make a plea for automatic title-case capitalization of common names on purely practical grounds.  (Also want to point out that this is just about how names are displayed in iNat, not about what any of us do in personal or professional writing, which sometimes seems to get a bit forgotten in any of the threads about this)

My opinion in short: 
--the way things are now is a bit of a mess, so there should be one standard
--there's never going to be 100% capitalization compliance & manually editing the names is a waste of time, so it should be automatic
--title case capitalization is the easiest to do automatically 

In slightly longer: 
In the original discussion about this years ago I'm pretty sure I was the one to bring up the idea of compromising by letting different taxonomic groups use their different standards, which I completely regret now since it just confuses people and makes it look like there isn't a standard at all, as evidenced by the numerous threads about this over the past few years and the tendency for people to just use whatever case they want when adding common names.  Usually using a "non-approved" case is due to simply forgetting or not finding that part of the FAQ, but there's at least one prolific curator who insists on editing names of all taxa into sentence case & de-capitalizing a word that non-controversially should be capitalized (ethnic group), and will not stop despite being politely asked not to with references to the FAQ/discussion group/official international standards.  Given human nature there probably are and will be more people doing similar things.  Cleaning up after that, and even just policing the innocent mistakes, is pretty much just a big waste of curator time.  I would like it a lot if there were one automatically-enforced standard, and then we could all stop having to edit cases or discuss this issue repeatedly.  

As for which case it should be, to avoid needing human copy-editing of all names I think it'd have to be title case.  Everything I've ever seen agrees that proper nouns should be capitalized even if the rest of the name isn't, and many common names have proper nouns in them, many words in people/place names are also just general descriptive words, and trying to program something that recognizes all of them sounds like a nightmare.  





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Tony Iwane

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Jan 10, 2018, 3:44:20 PM1/10/18
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Very well put, sea-kangaroo. 

Tony

Tim. Reichard

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Jan 13, 2018, 1:39:36 PM1/13/18
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I spent the past year fixing wrong-case English common names whenever I saw them appear on my dashboard.  I have noticed many names I had to correct many times each. A single user undid much of this work on the plant common name cases at the end of December 2017 by re-capitalizing them.   The case toggling never ends.  Leaving case enforcement to curators/users has been a failed experiment.

I never contacted the folks who were actively mass-applying the wrong case.  It would seem futile to do so. The reply I would expect is "Why should I follow the curator guidelines when the web page developers do not?" or "But this is what the newer web pages have."  Many newly revamped site pages always capitalize the first letter of a common name even when it overrides and violates the curator guidelines.

So I'm with sea-kangaroo (or should I say Sea-Kangaroo): Please just set the common name letter case using code, overriding each curator's/user's personal whims, and save us from spending time on this.  Let our exported taxon lists finally have beautifully consistent common name casing.

Tim

bouteloua

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Jan 13, 2018, 6:33:34 PM1/13/18
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sea-kangaroo & Tim, always feel free of course to reach out to he...@inaturalist.org directly in these or other cases where folks are purposefully not following the Curator Guide.
"If you cannot abide by our policies, we will start by warning you, but if you continue to reject our policies, we will remove your curator status."

iNat is amazing for taking into consideration individual and collective requests for changes to current protocol, but we need to have some sort of structure between those changes.
(And understanding that the case of capitalization is a relatively minuscule issue compared to other problems that have/can arise.)

cassi

megatherium

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Jan 15, 2018, 11:56:23 AM1/15/18
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My point was not the bad behavior of any particular individual/s, but that there is always going to be an unending supply of names that don't fit the guidelines*, that the capacity for displaying name capitalization automatically clearly exists as seen by the sentence-case bug in taxon pages, and that there is a simple way to remove the need for infinite curator intervention & avoid having 5 discussion threads/year about the issue.  

*due to a number of reasons-- innocently forgetting or not knowing (nearly all of the discussion threads are started by people who had no idea there was a standard at all), bullheadedness, "legacy" names from before the guidelines (e.g. nearly all fungi, the hundreds of plants I put in capitalized in earlier years), auto-import from external sources, etc.

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James Bailey

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Jan 15, 2018, 4:21:32 PM1/15/18
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Although I'm happy to start using capital names, is it not better to use lowercase to please both parties?

Here's why: if code can automatically capitalize any name, that part is already taken care of. What can't be done automatically is lower case, because of place names, named people, or regions that force a capital letter (i.e. Savannah sparrow, Australian pelican).

Tim, most of our users are more than happy to explain, or justify, their actions. If they do reply as you imagine, then no harm done. At least you tried.

Tony Iwane

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Feb 13, 2018, 7:23:45 PM2/13/18
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sea-kangaroo and Tim make good points about using title case. Just to get into specifics, by "title case" you mean you'd like to see the significant words capitalized, aside from prepositions, conjunctions and articles (eg http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_title_case.htm). Would seeing Red-Breasted Merganser or Cock-of-the-Rock be acceptable, rather than Red-breasted Merganser and Cock-of-the-rock?

Tony Iwane

megatherium

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Feb 14, 2018, 1:14:09 AM2/14/18
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I wouldn't lose sleep over a Cock-of-the-Rock or a Cock-of-the-rock et al, but from what I've read:  

--US bird name standards are definitely Red-breasted Merganser over Red-Breasted and Whip-poor-will over Whip-Poor-Will.  I have seen other standards elsewhere, such as Australia writing Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo with the justification that the Red-tailed part is an adjective and the Black-Cockatoo part is a specific category of cockatoo (which I personally think is needless and an invitation to pedantic discussions).  

--manuals of style disagree on hyphenation capitalization, and many use a hodgepodge of First-Second & First-second depending on the meanings of the words and their relation to each other, which I also think is unnecessary & in any case seems beyond the scope of an iNat rule-- I would definitely rather have things either all Red-breasted or Red-Breasted without having to determine whether something is a compound word or Tree-Kangaroo!

(Cock-Of-The-Rock *would* make me lose sleep, though. Just look at that monstrosity. :) )

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Susan Hewitt

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Feb 14, 2018, 11:05:10 AM2/14/18
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I would also like to say that I fully support the idea of iNaturalist capitalizing all common names, regardless of what the standard usually is within one particular taxon. The American Fisheries Society chose this system in recent years, a reversal from their previous usage, and the American Fisheries Society guidelines apply to all marine organisms, including marine mammals, submersed flowering plants etc. 

I am not too concerned about how exactly the capitalization is applied to compound common names, as long as it is standardized.

I spent many years editing Wikipedia, and we chose to not capitalize, but now I feel that was a less than helpful choice. I agree that common names of species should be considered to be proper nouns, and I also feel that capitalizing them makes for less ambiguity for the reader.

This is my first post on this group, so I hope I have done this correctly.

On Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 8:33:54 PM UTC-5, Upupa epops wrote:

Tony Iwane

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Feb 14, 2018, 11:58:50 AM2/14/18
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Thanks For The Input Folks. We'll Try To Programmatically Display Names In A Consistent Manner That's Not Like This. 

Tony Iwane

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tony rebelo

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Feb 19, 2018, 3:36:09 PM2/19/18
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To my dismay, I see that whenever I raise a taxonomic issue, the curators are changing our southern African plant names to lower case.  When queried we are told that it is iNat policy that plant names are lower case.
To the extent that I am reluctant to post taxonomic errors on iNat because our southern African common names - which we want as proper nouns, will be adulterated.

Is there a way to have regional differences in this regard on iNat.  Why does the entire earth have to follow the US botanists in their decision?

Having fought for proper nouns for several years and getting this accepted on iSpot, it is a bit of a comedown to come to iNat and be told to simply accept the iNat standards:  "You can have your proper nouns for animals, but not plants".

Any chance that a community or country within iNat can choose which "standard" to follow?
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bouteloua

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Feb 21, 2018, 1:13:23 AM2/21/18
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Tony (R.), you mentioned to me you've had this same argument within SANBI. Similarly, some Americans choose to capitalize common names. Some don't. Almost no one capitalizes non-bird names of any sort within narrative texts, scientific or otherwise, including the only African field guide I own, Kingdon's Field Guide to African Mammals...so please stop with the "U.S. vs the rest of the world" narrative when it's totally irrelevant. It's a continuing trend.

I have standardized names per iNat guidelines as I see them because it looks far better when all species in a list display one way or the other. I obviously prefer lowercase and that's how the site has been since I joined six years ago, but looks like we're headed toward title case, so don't let that stop you from flagging actual taxonomic issues...

thank you,
cassi

Julien Renoult

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Feb 21, 2018, 3:32:26 AM2/21/18
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Hi all, 

I wish that changing common names into title capitalized named using programming could be extended at least to the french language. I (and a few other french-speaking iNaturalisters) actually spend of lot of time changing common names into sentence capitalization format, not so much because we have nomenclatural rules for common names (which only apply to France and which are anyway not followed by a number of field guides, databases etc...), but because currently 70-80% (I am not sure of the figure but for sure a large majority) of common names are in this format (both plants and animals) so we are aiming homogeneity.

Given that there does not seem to be geographically fixed variations in nomenclatural choices for common names, homogeneity should be a priority (I confirm Bouteloua that this is not a South-Africa versus the rest of english-spoken world - field guides and databases do not follow a unique rule in Africa even for a given taxonomic group within a given country).

The arguments from see-kangaroo, Upupa epops et al. that Title capitalization would be the easiest way to achieve homogeneity sound good, so let's go for this format. For english language, this change would imply a few programming rules (all words capitalized except articles a, the, an, but, and, for, from, at, etc...); the same would apply for french language. I could provide a list of such words that should not be capitalized.

My best
Julien 



On Sunday, 7 January 2018 02:33:54 UTC+1, Upupa epops wrote:

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 21, 2018, 9:06:58 AM2/21/18
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i see it less as a 'US vs the world' thing for reasons cassi mentioned, but instead an 'animal vs plant' thing where animals always win out despite plants being both more important and more suitable for iNat. Same with how we track spatial accuracy, we can't eliminate plant records with poor precision from Research Grade or filter them out..... because some animals move around a lot. Doesn't make sense to me but it is what it is. That's how it is in the conservation field in general too. A vast majority of the effort spent on animals (usually vertebrates, insects do no better than plants, sometimes worse)... and plants only noticed as 'habitat' for the animals. It would be nice if iNat didn't follow that trend, even if it's mostly a meaningless gesture this time. But... oh well. 

One other brief note, those of you not family with the USA.... there's a lot of 'blind patriotism' and isolationism here right now, but while the iNat user base is diverse in political views and worldviews (which is good)... the USA users here on iNat aren't a representative sample of US citizens in general... i think you'd find a disproportionate number here are NOT of the 'US FIRST!! OUTHER COUNTREYS SUCKS!' mentality at all. Which is why the whole thing is getting tired as a talking point here. We know we've got a lot of work to do to make our country work better... but so do a lot of other places. Let's gather biodiversity together on a global platform instead of getting caught up in nation state conflicts that already exist everywhere else.

Alison Sheehey

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Feb 21, 2018, 2:48:36 PM2/21/18
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Hi All,

I do appreciate this thread. Title case please! All species with a common name that are described as unique should be proper nouns. A red fir is not a Red Fir, Abies magnifica. When describing especially rare or endangered plants or animals we need some consistency. As for colloquial names or common names in other countries, the regional filters seem a magnificent work around, but I appreciate for instance knowing the a Mew Gull in North America is a Common Gull in Europe. CalFlora for years had the default common name followed by several colloquial names for a species. (Maybe a subtitle with other regional names would help keep those who believe they are being ignored would help).

It made it so much nicer to know that not all common names are shared, but common names are for the majority of non-science minded folk are not only preferred but the only substantive way of describing a species. Sadly, I have been yelled at while leading trips because some participants felt demeaned by using scientific nomenclature. The word Phainopepla is rejected until explained that, that is its common name. Those who are just learning may turn off if they feel demoralized by use of words they have zero clue even exist.

Anyway, my two-cents that isn't worth much.

Ali

Tony Iwane

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Feb 23, 2018, 5:31:47 PM2/23/18
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Hey folks,

We're currently working on this. Can anyone provide some examples of "tricky" common names, like my Red-breasted merganser and Andean Cock-of-the-rock from a few emails ago?

Whatever we end up with inevitably won't please all, but we do want to try and make it work as well as possible for most situations.

Julien, I hear you about French. We're going to see how this works in English first and then see about implementing for other languages.

Tony

jdmo...@gmail.com

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:00:37 PM2/23/18
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Hi folks,

Just another thought from a botanist's viewpoint:  title case for a common name implies a certain formal recognition, that that name corresponds 1:1 with the associated scientific name.  For taxonomic groups (many animals) or regions that have formally standardized their common names, I have no quarrel with title case.  But at least in the US, there is no formal standard for plant common names.  Plants can have several different common names, and the same common name can apply to multiple taxa.  To use title case in these instances implies a formality and acceptance that just does not exist for some groups.

Thanks for your ear,

--Jim



On Wednesday, February 21, 2018 at 11:48:36 AM UTC-8, Alison Sheehey wrote:

megatherium

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:09:50 PM2/23/18
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Some of these are I think the same "issue" as your two examples, but not sure if more examples of the same are useful?

Portuguese Man o' War
The Lackey (who actually calls a moth that I have no idea)
The Sickener
Tree of Heaven
By-the-wind-sailor
Go-away-birds (genus and all descendant species)
Lozenge-marked Bicycle-dragon
Ta Ta Lizard
Neglected Eighty-eight
Flax Window-maker
Pie-dish Beetles
Youth on Age


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megatherium

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:21:02 PM2/23/18
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Oh and Euonymus americanus, which has variations on "hearts a-bustin'" for its common name.  

And I don't know myself of any common names featuring a particular type of Irish surname (O'Malley's Toad-in-the-Hole?), but that would be a possible conflict with a capitalization exception to accommodate Portuguese Man o' War.

I have a list which has more odd names I've found, though only with the same issues/patterns as names I've already mentioned: 


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Chris Cheatle

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:23:19 PM2/23/18
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Just to add to complexity, these all show all post hyphen in lower case, but accepted bird names also include things like Black-crowned Night-Heron or Grey-crowned Rosy-Finch.

jdmo...@gmail.com

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:23:57 PM2/23/18
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Good arguments for eliminating internal punctuation from common names!  More copy-editing nightmares...

--Jim Morefield

megatherium

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:36:24 PM2/23/18
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I think some of the hyphenation is a US vs The Commonwealth thing, with Brits/Aussies/etc. more prone to sprinkle hyphens everywhere and then capitalize post-hyphen.  Black Cockatoo vs. Black-Cockatoo, Tree Kangaroo vs. Tree-Kangaroo, and I guess I'm behind the times or something but I learned North American birds in Zoology 2 as Black-crowned Night Heron, Western Scrub Jay, etc.  

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Upupa epops

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Feb 23, 2018, 6:39:08 PM2/23/18
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A couple that mess me up personally regularly are Black-and-white Warbler and Eastern Whip-poor-will. It looks like they follow the same rules as for the cock-of-the-rock though.
Another one, as Chris mentioned, is Black-crowned Night-Heron. The first modifier is lowercase but the second is capitalized. That is explained here: http://www.worldbirdnames.org/english-names/spelling-rules/hyphens/ 
Right now it's Black-crowned Night Heron (with a space) on iNaturalist, possibly because Clements checklist is used instead of IOC? Or more likely just because it's all confusing. I feel like probably nobody cares which of the 3 options this one is.

Jim made an interesting point about the standardized names. I've never heard that one before, but it makes sense. And great list sea-kangaroo!

jdmo...@gmail.com

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Feb 23, 2018, 7:25:41 PM2/23/18
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In botany we have four-o'clocks.  --Jim M.
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James Bailey

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Feb 23, 2018, 9:55:07 PM2/23/18
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As I see it here is the solution that helps both sides, as far as I can tell:

1. Lower case all names, preserving capitals for certain special words (i.e. named after places, or people).
2. Add an account setting that capitalizes all common names, if the user desires.

Then we make the rule, always lower-case the common names when entering on iNat, and everyone is happy, no?

James Bailey

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Feb 23, 2018, 9:57:22 PM2/23/18
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There is absolutely no consensus with hyphens which makes an endless debate, unless we all decide to follow the IOC treatment (but that is only for birds, not so applicable to plants, etc.). I would argue that hyphens are covered in another topic.

Capitalization in hyphens: it seems most sources support the lower case of the second word in a hyphenated phrase, such as "Night-heron", never "Night-Heron", and "Whip-poor-will" not "Whip-poor-Will" or "Whip-Poor-Will".

I will add another thing: in a title sense, common names should always have at least the first letter capitalized, regardless of what decision is made.

jdmo...@gmail.com

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Feb 24, 2018, 1:16:13 AM2/24/18
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And while we're on the topic, I have to wax a little more philosophical and opinionated for a moment:

To me the idea of a set of standardized common names is an oxymoron.  If they are standardized, then they are no longer common.  By bearing a mandated 1:1 relationship to a scientific name, they just become scientific names in a different language.  True common names come from the popular vernacular, not from being regulated top-down.

That said, I certainly see the utility of standardized names in many scenarios.  And on the other side, we are far from having true common names for many species, even in unregulated groups like plants.  Let's just not confuse standardized names with common names, and be clear about which we are trying to achieve in specific circumstances.

My own bias: I always try for true common names when I can find them or, if I can't, at least for names that seem most likely to become accepted in popular vernacular.  Otherwise, I don't really see the purpose of having them in the first place.  Some of the mechanical Latin translations found among plant "common names" are truly atrocious.

OK, off soapbox, back to work!

--Jim Morefield

jdmo...@gmail.com

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Feb 24, 2018, 1:49:04 AM2/24/18
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I would certainly endorse this solution.  On-demand capitalization is easy to implement; but selective de-capitalization is not.  --Jim Morefield

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 24, 2018, 8:26:10 AM2/24/18
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"To me the idea of a set of standardized common names is an oxymoron.  If they are standardized, then they are no longer common.  By bearing a mandated 1:1 relationship to a scientific name, they just become scientific names in a different language.  True common names come from the popular vernacular, not from being regulated top-down."

Yes, this. A few people have been making it a point to try to make the scientific names match Linnaean taxonomy and i think it's ludicrous. That's what we have linnaean taxonomy for. I think there are times to change common names, if they have a racial slur or something, or at least mark them as no longer acceptable so people know. But aside from that... it's really a for of cultural erasure to remove and change common names and I also think it's contrary with iNat's mission. They are what they are. If some people really feel strongly about it they could create a different 'language' for their flawed altered fake common names but they don't belong forced on everything else.

Also what James said, I agree 100%. Instead of forcing capitalism on all the plant names, let people turn it on and off  Unless it's a huge pain. 

AfriBats

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Feb 24, 2018, 8:29:53 AM2/24/18
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Instead of forcing capitalism on all the plant names, let people turn it on and off  Unless it's a huge pain

I strongly support that forcing capitalism on plant names should be an individual choice. Otherwise it easily turns into communism ;-)

Chris Cheatle

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Feb 24, 2018, 8:43:00 AM2/24/18
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Just another vote for it being a user option. 2 additional rationale (note below is based in taxa areas I have best knowledge in - birds and insects, I freely confess my botany knowledge far too often is that'a a tree or that's a flower):
  • as a programmer myself, writing a rule that covers all the exceptions is going to be virtually impossible. The word "the" would be capitalized in The Neighbour (a moth) but not Cock-of-the-rock. Red-breasted Merganser vs Black-crowned Night-Heron (inconsistent hyphen rules).
  • just a reminder it is a multilingual site. For example, I speak 3 languages.

Simply applying a blanket rule wont work across all languages.

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 24, 2018, 11:08:22 AM2/24/18
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hahaha capitalism... sorry

tony rebelo

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Feb 24, 2018, 11:10:49 AM2/24/18
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"I wouldn't lose sleep over a Cock-of-the-Rock or a Cock-of-the-rock et al, but "   -- I wont even blink an eye with Cock-Of-The-Rock or Portuguese Man O'War  ...

I guess having Afrikaans as another language allows one to easily accept concatenated words (like Danish) in preference to hyphenated words, such as Robinchat, Redbreast Merganser, Redtail Blackcocatoo, although when vowels are involved it does look weird (e.g. Eagleowl must be Eagle-Owl)
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to inaturalist...@googlegroups.com.

tony rebelo

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Feb 24, 2018, 11:12:20 AM2/24/18
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Except, it should have been Capitalism ..

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 24, 2018, 11:54:48 AM2/24/18
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haha.

I always thought the hyphens were another way of people dealing with common names that weren't scientifically 'correct': For example, Douglas-fir because it isn't a fir, it is Pseudotsuga, white fir rather than white-fir because it is a fir, in genus Abies. But i don't know if that is a real convention or not.

James Bailey

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Feb 25, 2018, 2:43:15 PM2/25/18
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Hi Jim,

I generally disagree with this. Reason being, common names are used because they are in English, and used in presentations/advertising/etc. for non-biologists. So by being English, they are, by definition, already serving their purpose as common names.

The downside to not having standardized names is that there is confusion. People who rely on common names are likely not the same people who take the time to check the scientific name, to see if their "field pansy" is the same as the "field pansy" they are referencing. Confusion dilutes the simplicity and actual application of common names, leaving some of us to just resort to scientific names and ignore them entirely (which is probably for the best, but let's not ignore all the people who will only use common names, for better or for worse).

So for me, standardizing should be an absolute goal. Let's at least limit the number of common names per species to 2 or 3, no more!

Regards,
James B.

Michael Rosenberg

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Feb 25, 2018, 2:50:58 PM2/25/18
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There's also a legal reason why taxonomists have been "inventing" common names for species (e.g., some of the Latin translations). A loophole in the Endangered Species Act does not allow species without common names to be listed as threatened or endangered. Other, similar laws often follow suit. This has encouraged taxonomists to create common names (vernacular names would be a better term) for species such that they'll be available in the future if legal actions are required for protection and the like.



--

Chris Cheatle

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Feb 25, 2018, 3:05:38 PM2/25/18
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I hope by this you mean 2-3 per language (even that I'm not sure I see a reason for that - but it is at least a different discussion). I would certainly not support removing the multi-lingual nature of the site. There are English language common names, but common names are not "in English", all languages have them.

 
I generally disagree with this. Reason being, common names are used because they are in English, and used in presentations/advertising/etc. for non-biologists. So by being English, they are, by definition, already serving their purpose as common names.


Charlie Hohn

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Feb 25, 2018, 3:07:23 PM2/25/18
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i don't see any reason to discard centuries of history of various common names for convenience

jdmo...@gmail.com

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Feb 25, 2018, 6:33:17 PM2/25/18
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With my day job being in the conservation field, and working with the Endangered Species Act regularly, I definitely recognize the communication value of a common name (especially a good and catchy one! ;-).  I have been guilty of "inventing" a few myself, when no other viable options existed -- but like I suggested in an earlier post, always trying for something that made sense, and sounded more like popular vernacular than a Latin-English dictionary.

That said, however, there is no requirement in the ESA for common names.  The Act itself requires that "Each list shall refer to the species contained therein by scientific and common name or names, if any, ...".  The implementing regulations for listing Petitions require "The scientific name and any common name of a species of fish or wildlife or plants that is the subject of the petition."

So, just wanted to clarify that common names are optional under the ESA, though definitely highly advisable in my opinion.

--Jim Morefield

James Bailey

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Feb 26, 2018, 2:29:17 PM2/26/18
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Hi Chris,

I have no experience here but I am making an overt assumption that common names are not as problematic in other languages. The issue of "too many common names" seems to be limited to English? That's speculation though, based on what I've seen.

My numbers are only referring to English, so other languages would still be "valid" over the 2-3 limit.

Really it would be best if we only had 1 per species though, at least in each country.

James

tony rebelo

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Feb 26, 2018, 5:10:52 PM2/26/18
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Why not also suggest that we only have one species in each country at the same time.  That will greatly simplify identification and conservation. Then we will also need only one name for it. 

The problem of restricting the number of common names is simply: whose common names  do we leave out?  So long as it is not mine I wont mind, but leave out mine and you have made a very poor choice.

The problem with "many" common names is surely a question of area over which the language is spoken, local dialects in the language, countries involved, variation within the species, uses for the species, extent of the species, the degree of trade in the species, other economic costs (e.g. weeds), the popularity of the species. 
As a matter of interest - does anyone know which plant qualifies for the most common names (in English - Am I being naive in assuming it wont be French, Spanish, Russian or Mandarin?)?  How many names are we talking about?  (I guess this will be bedevilled by name variants and spellings (like Beard Sugarbush and Bearded Sugarbush).  (I looked at our database and there was one with 76 names- but at least 50 of these were duplicates that had crept in, and a few were probably typing errors rather than actual used spellings)
The converse is also true: local, indistinct, small, unused (by humans or livestock), species tend not to have any names (sometimes not even scientific ones).

megatherium

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Feb 26, 2018, 5:49:22 PM2/26/18
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Which species is the 76-name one?

tony rebelo

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Feb 26, 2018, 6:16:06 PM2/26/18
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Abrus precatorius subsp. africanus but it was 264 names in all languages - but something went wrong with it: I suspect a few subspecies with identical names were synonomized and the duplicate names were not cleaned up. 

James Bailey

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Feb 26, 2018, 10:20:09 PM2/26/18
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I'm ok with multiple English names if they are kept to one per country or region.

We in the US, and Australia, are still arguing over ladybirds from ladybugs from ladybeetles (and to go further, ladybeetle vs. lady beetle, seven-spot, vs seven-spotted, 7-spotted, sevenspot...).

tony rebelo

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Feb 27, 2018, 1:01:40 AM2/27/18
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One per country - and who decides whose name is allowed to be used and whose are ignored?

I dont see what the discussion is?   What rights do you have to decide if one region uses Sevenspotted Ladybeetle and the next town calls it Sevenspot Ladybug and the next Sevenspotty Lady Beetle?   These names need to be documented and compiled not evaluated and discussed.  These are names that people are using, not that some censor or autocrat should be vetting to decide if they are too riske, inappropriate, inaccurate, duplicate or convoluted! 
Real people use common names: it is not for anyone else to tell them that it is wrong that they must call it what some committee or standardization group want it to be called.  
Why do they need to be rationalized and minimized: that is why we have scientific names!

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 27, 2018, 8:14:20 AM2/27/18
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I'm with Tony on this one! One per country is a horrible idea especially for large countries. At least for plants. Maybe it's different with other taxa? but good luck with California bay vs Oregon myrtle or whatever. You're gonna start a war :)

James Bailey

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Feb 27, 2018, 12:07:13 PM2/27/18
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IOU did it with bird names and now bird names are practically uniform globally (with some regional exceptions, i.e. US vs UK).

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 27, 2018, 1:53:21 PM2/27/18
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plants seem to have a much larger number of regional common names than birds. And birders are just like that. I don't think it can, or should, be done for plants.

Tony Iwane

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Feb 27, 2018, 2:03:33 PM2/27/18
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Alright, we have a preview version of capitalization available on our Gorilla testing server, gorilla.inaturalist.org If you go there you'll be prompted to enter login info for gorilla, which is username: preview password: 313phant Once you've done that you can login to your account with your normal username/password combo. Note that Gorilla's observations are a bit out of date, and that anything you do there (like adding an ID) won't affect the actual iNaturalist site that's in production. 

Regardless of how a common name is entered, it will be displayed consistently. The style is basically title case with some tweaks:

All words aside from articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are capitalized, with these exceptions:
   - If the first word is an article, conjunction, or preposition, it will be capitalized 
   - If the word directly follows a hyphen, it is not capitalized

We're pretty sure we're close to having all English articles, prepositions, and conjunctions listed, but there may be some mistakes. We're almost certainly missing some in other languages, so if you find that some are missing, please let us know.

Explanation:

This was in response to Upupa-epops' original post for this thread, calling for a programmatic way to consistently display common names on iNaturalist, and I think both sea-kangaroo and Tim Reichard made a strong case for that as well. To quote sea-kangaroo:

"--the way things are now is a bit of a mess, so there should be one standard
--there's never going to be 100% capitalization compliance & manually editing the names is a waste of time, so it should be automatic
--title case capitalization is the easiest to do automatically"

As has been pointed out, iNaturalist is not an authority on taxonomy, so the way things are displayed here should not be taken as authoritative, and anyone using the data is under no obligation to use this style in their own work. This is simply an in-house style that can be used to consistently display common names on iNaturalist, so that we can hopefully move on to other topics and Curators won't have to go through and re-edit common names and spend their time doing something more productive. Personally I think it's vastly preferable to trying to accommodate conflicting styles and endlessly rehashing this debate.

So please check it out and cogitate on it a bit before responding with your feedback. 

Tony Iwane

Upupa epops

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Feb 27, 2018, 3:07:29 PM2/27/18
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Bird names are standardized as you guys said, but I see 'alternative' names used pretty regularly. If someone enters the birding hobby and doesn't know any names beforehand, they will learn the standardized names because that is what eBird, banding stations, and most birders use. But many people who interact with birds outside of the birding hobby still use different names. They use "chickadee" and "cardinal" instead of the 'proper' "Black-capped Chickadee" and "Northern Cardinal". I'm not super familiar with hunting terms, but my impression is that the hunter slang for many ducks is different from the standardized names. Alle alle is officially Dovekie in North America, and officially Little Auk in the UK, but as far as I know it is traditionally called bull-bird in Newfoundland. Many people up north where Gray Jays live instead call them Canada Jays or Whiskey Jacks (or just Grey Jay to avoid being American), and these names might be becoming more popular for political and taxonomic reasons. Having a standardized list (which can still change as the language use changes) hasn't prevented people from using and/or remembering traditional names.

Tony, that looks awesome, thank you! It's great to see the title of my observation as "Wild Carrot" instead of "wild carrot" (although I have always called it Queen Anne's Lace...). :)
I'm not sure if it's counterproductive to bring up, but I'm wondering if in names for taxa above species level it should all be capitalized this way. For example, should it be "Tree Frogs and Allies" and "Mint Family" or "Tree frogs and allies" (or Tree Frogs and allies) and "Mint family" (or just Mints, in this case)? I'm conflicted on this one because having "allies" and "family" capitalized looks funny to me, but having them lowercase would contradict them being title case which I argued for above. Either way it isn't a big deal.

tony rebelo

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Feb 27, 2018, 3:31:26 PM2/27/18
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Thanks.  I am ecstatic!!!!

OK on observations, observation page, species page, checklists, 

Now you said "there should be one standard".   But: 
Taxon Page > Taxonomy Tab > Names ::  the list of common names displays as they were entered.
Guides ::  the list of common names displays as they were entered.  (nor do the scientific and common names settings in the account work here)
The Project export displays common names as they were entered.
The Checklist Download (both plain and taxonomic) displays common names as they were entered.

I trust that these will be considered for standardization.  But I remain Ecstatic!

tony rebelo

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Feb 27, 2018, 3:42:41 PM2/27/18
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I dont have your problem, because I use Order and Family and Tribe and Genus to distinguish them from alternative meanings and to emphasize that that they are formal categories and not just general.  So"  "The families of the Order Proteales are the Protea Family and the Plane Family."  I just always have done so.
But might a better way be to try and leave out terms like "allies and Families" whenever possible.   So the Protea Family is  usually called "Proteas", and in southern Africa it is distinguished from the Genus Protea which are called "Sugarbushes".   Does the Order Proteales require a common name - will not "Proteas, Planes, Lotus and Cedrills" be good enough - although I grant if there are 20 families it might look rather contrived.

Colin Purrington

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Feb 27, 2018, 6:29:07 PM2/27/18
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Some reasons why I prefer lowercase common names:

1. Pure comfort level: I was raised with lowercase common names. Both my parents (and sister) all use lowercase common names, plus during college, graduate school, etc. I *never* encountered a situation where title case was recommended or even discussed as an option — all journals, books, etc. displayed lowercase. Indeed, I only learned of capitalization of bird names in 2017 after I kept noticing the practice on certain Instagram feeds (I Googled "why do some people capitalize bird names?"). Common names in title case just look wrong to me, like typos.

2. I think iNaturalist should be a model for new naturalists and use the format that is accepted by vast majority of naturalists, journals, and publishers. Many new users are students. There *are* journals and websites that use title case but they are in the minority.

3. Lowercase common names allow names of places and people to stand out. E.g., when I see "Cooper's hawk" in a sentence, my brain instantly knows that Cooper probably refers to a particular person named Cooper, not a reference to somebody who repairs barrels (a cooper). Cooper's Hawk (title case) obscures that information, though I can figure it out with a few more nanoseconds of processing. It's a small thing, but can add up when reading a book.

4. Similarly, when common names are all in lowercase, proper names and place names elsewhere on the page can be easily scanned and interpreted. I.e., "It had been years since Beth had seen a Cooper's hawk in Swarthmore" (the presence of "Hawk" would be jarring, at least to many). When a book or article has common names in title case, the proper nouns and places simply don't stand out as much. The brain can certainly deal with title case common names in these situations, but it slows down a tad and is thus not ideal. On iNaturalist (which doesn't sentences except when in Comments), the issue is that so many other fields might have a true need for capitalization. E.g., Neuroptera is capitalized (and should be). When all common names are in title case, it's hard for those instances to stand out on the page ... and impossible for new users to understand which taxonomic names truly need to be capitalized.

5. Reasons 3 and 4 combine to affect readability of text. Between 1500 and 1900(ish), people loved to capitalize all nouns, like German. It was a fad, and abandoned in most disciplines to improve readability and, I gather, because printers had fewer capital letters in their letter drawers. When capitalization is reserved for proper nouns and places, text is more readable. I understand the reasons why bird people prefer otherwise in their journals, but I think for the general public lowercase is more approachable. E.g., in the recent book, The Genius of Birds, common names are in lowercase. 

6. Bird specialists/enthusiasts often invoke "clarity" as the reason why common names have to be in title case in prose (sentences), but on iNaturalist there is no ambiguity. I.e., iNaturalist has an identification field and the content of this field *is* the identification. So a "bald eagle" is a "bald eagle," not some description of an eagle that happens to be bald. Also, I think that in ornithology journals, common names for non-bird organisms are in lowercase, which sort of undermines the clarity argument. I think the dictate for title case is more to indicate that an official committee has, indeed, certified that a bird's common name is truly the one and only official name.

7. iNaturalist starts with an "i", like Apple products, so it sort of makes sense that it would emulate Apple's fondness for capitalization in its user interface. Although I happily own an iPhone and a Mac, I tend to dislike Apple's UI style. I'd prefer, for example, a button that said "your content" or "Your content" over "Your Content" (why is the "c" in "content" capitalized?). Advertisers love title case (look at a cereal box when you're next at the store), and I also gather it's popular on Stackexchange (at least for programmers in the United States), but I think lowercase is just friendlier and thus more appropriate for attracting new users.

I would be very sad if iNaturalist adopted title case for common names. If it did, I think it should also change its name to Inaturalist. Just to be consistent.

bouteloua

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Feb 28, 2018, 7:07:06 AM2/28/18
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I agree, title cased common names feel branded, like advertisements, not nature...the creatures I encounter on an everyday basis going about my life. Special offer: Burr Oak® and Black Oak™, secure your order today!

Susan Hewitt

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Feb 28, 2018, 7:57:01 AM2/28/18
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I understand that people enjoy stating their own personal sets of associations, and their own individual emotional reaction to this suggested change --  the use of title case in common names. And of course people often react badly to change of any kind in their daily life, because it feels disruptive, at least in the short term. 

But whatever system is chosen, it is of course going to require a lot of us to compromise. Can we all try to concentrate on what might work the best for the site and for users overall, especially new readers, going forward from here? The approach we have been using so far, which is really that there is no overall system whatsoever, looks amateurish and random -- I feel that it compromises the seriousness of the site.

It is easy to criticize. It is harder to accept change and make compromise, but I believe we need to try to come to a decision rather than all just digging in our heels and vigorously defending our own individual stance on this question.

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 28, 2018, 8:15:37 AM2/28/18
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it's a little of a bummer to me that we rushed into the bird-style capitalization rather than finding some middle ground. Not the end of the world but to me it definitely feels like another Birds Over Plants thing. I agree with cassi on the branding too. Definitely not feeling the compromise thing  this time. Compromise is hard in systems like this, and there have been other times in the past I felt like the 'compromise' just meant my concerns (and my perception of plant 'concerns)' got ditched for someone else's bird type concerns, (for instance having very loose cutoffs for location data quality because birds move around) but maybe it's necessarily always going to be that way. Some things don't HAVE a middle ground and birds always get the most attention. Personal feelings aside I do think it is REALLY important not to prioritize flashy animal taxa over plants, plants are so important in understanding ecosystems and actually more suited to the iNat format than animals, since they don't move around and you can map them in detail quickly. To me being able to quickly generate plant range and phenology data is probably the biggest strength of iNat, datawise, and I don't want people to come to see the site as 'for birds' (in which it will never surpass ebird anyway) becuase we use bird guidelines for tracking common names, bird spatial data quality, etc. Even the logo is a bird! (i like the logo, but it's a bird. Maybe it's a bird made of a leaf?).

So yeah if we are stuck with this... on to the next thing i guess. i'll try not to keep railing on about it as i sometimes do 

Susan Hewitt

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Feb 28, 2018, 9:01:26 AM2/28/18
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I want to interject here that it is not really a question of "Birds versus Plants". When you add up all the various phyla of invertebrate animals, not to mention other vertebrates such as fish, it represent a massive number of species. For Mollusca alone there are 100,000 named species, and most likely another 100,000 that are still to be named or are in the process of being named. As I mentioned once before, the American Fisheries Society now strongly recommends the use of title case for ALL marine organisms, not just fish and shellfish, but everything from marine mammals to marine flowering plants such as the seagrasses. It appears that the prevailing convention on this question is starting to switch over.

In any case, we are not recommending that everyone use title case in their professional work (which is what the AFS is recommending), instead we are just trying to standardize the way common names are shown on iNaturalist, because we definitely need to clean that up in some way, as it is currently a mess.

Chris Vynbos

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Feb 28, 2018, 10:03:48 AM2/28/18
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>I agree, title cased common names feel branded, like advertisements, not nature...the creatures I encounter on an everyday basis going about my life. Special offer: Burr Oak® and Black Oak™, secure your order today!


Cassi, you've given me an insight into what capitalisation looks like to those not use to it. But I don't think it offers a solution. A German capitalises every noun. Are you going to tell a German that his writing looks like a bunch of trademarks? You’d be right though, it is how it looks … but only to you. To me, a “Spotted Owl” is the name of an owl species, but a “spotted owl” is an owl with measles. And a “bald eagle” is missing feathers on its head!
So as a solution can’t capitalisation, erm, capitaliZation like common names, be a regional option? 

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 28, 2018, 10:20:28 AM2/28/18
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With all due respect of course, i don't see why we should be using a fishery society guideline for plant common names. Any more than we use the Jepson Manual of California plants to dictate fish nomenclature policy. Broadly across the field, in most places I am aware of or have heard from (except South Africa?), no one capitalizes plant common names, and everyone capitalizes bird common names. I don't know the internal preferences of everyone who has an opinion on this of course but yes it is very much the 'bird way not the plant way' that is being adopted! perhaps this is (again) a trend across the whole field, and if so, it is what it is and we may be stuck with it! But it's worth a discussion at least. See also http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2016/08/plant-blindness/

And yeah an actual compromise would be that plants aren't capitalized, or that they aren't capitalized in the places no one does that, and birds Are Capitalized. But, in the past there has been reluctance to treat taxa differently in that sort of way so I kind of don't expect it to happen.

Millie Basden

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Feb 28, 2018, 11:26:27 AM2/28/18
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Hi, all.

I agree with the sentiments expressed by Susan Hewitt. This is about adopting a style that looks and works best for iNaturalist. I like the plan to use capitals even though in my personal writing I typically use lower case for common names of plants. I often write for a nature newsletter and when I discuss both birds and plants in the same article, I do not use caps for one and lower case for the other.  

Millie

On Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 5:33:54 PM UTC-8, Upupa epops wrote:

Hello everyone,


A recent discussion here about common names brought up the controversial issue of capitalization. I think this flag is in some way connected to that discussion: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/211075

I have not seen a post by Nutcracker yet, but I think there were enough posts about it on the previous discussion already to warrant a separate thread.

 

INaturalist’s current capitalization policy is described here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#names

As far as I can tell, this was arbitrarily determined based on the perceived consensus in the field guides for different groups of organisms.

 

I think common names should be capitalized on iNaturalist for three reasons.

They should be capitalized in general because:


1. Species names should be considered proper nouns, not common nouns. A Red Deer is different from other deer or mammals in general in a similar way to a Samsung Galaxy being different from cell phones in general or the Great Lakes being different from lakes in general. A species is a distinct, specific entity.

 

2.     2. Capitalization also provides clarity. Saying that you saw a greenish warbler is very little help to anybody, because many warblers in both Europe and North America come with green on them. But if you say that you saw a Greenish Warbler, it is fairly clear that you saw a bird from the distinct species Phylloscopus trochiloidesI.

 

Here are some articles which I think argue more convincingly than I did (in increasing length):

http://www.worldbirdnames.org/english-names/spelling-rules/capitalization/

http://www.thebirdist.com/2013/07/a-word-on-capitalization-of-bird-names.html

https://mostlybirds.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/should-common-names-of-species-be-capitalized/

 

3.     3. Specifically in iNaturalist, I think species names should be capitalized because in most instances in which they appear (as far as I can tell), they can be interpreted as titles. In titles, all the important words are capitalized.

 

Here, “Eastern poison ivy” is the title of the species page for this taxon.


 

Here, “clovers” is the ‘title’ of the observation. “white clover” is a suggestion for the title to be improved.

 


Having all the lowercase titles gives an impression more like a casual chatroom than a sleek professional website, in my opinion. Have lowercase species names may be fine in the middle of a paragraph, but in isolation like this they feel wrong.

 

However, I’m interested in reading other opinions!

 

Here are a few past threads about capitalization I was able to find:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/Z1vOjU8U5zo

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/sK6-2cfot3E

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/yyt6Y9R6Ot4

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/l0Xn4JKgfjM


Colin Purrington

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Feb 28, 2018, 12:09:51 PM2/28/18
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In re: conforming, it would be ideal if all instances of a species' common name in iNaturalist's About tab matched. I understand that the information is pulled from Wikipedia, but most users probably don't care and many might see the mismatch as sloppiness. 




 

James Bailey

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Feb 28, 2018, 12:21:39 PM2/28/18
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Yes, Wikipedia supports lower case for common names. And honestly, I still think I prefer lower case for general usage, except in display (titles and so on).

I'm happy that we are moving forward with a consistency, but I would suggest two more changes:

1. When you enter a name, it should prevent duplicate on a case-insensitive level. For instance if "snowy egret" is added, it will not let you add "Snowy Egret". This'll give the message to curators to stop correcting common names by adding differently cased ones.
2. When editing a name, if the submission is the same but changed in case (a curator edits "snowy egret" and changes it to "Snowy egret"), it will refuse to change it and maybe even explain that casing does not matter.

I take it there will be no solution for us lower-case fanatics, then? I don't think we are in that much of a minority.

megatherium

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Feb 28, 2018, 1:15:19 PM2/28/18
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Looks great!  

I found what I think is a display bug with common names that start with a straight quote (') or okina (ʻ).  (This is common names that are the same in both Hawaiian and English).  In the taxonomy tab they show up with their initial capitals (or mostly so), but in the "title" of the page (and in the "Mamo and ʻiʻiwi Genus Drepanis" part) they're not capitalized.  Examples with both style of '/ʻ:

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Charlie Hohn

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Feb 28, 2018, 1:20:30 PM2/28/18
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me neither :(

megatherium

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Feb 28, 2018, 1:43:16 PM2/28/18
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One more bug:  looks like "on" isn't accounted for as a preposition or whatever it is: 

And I fiddled around with the order of which common names are displayed and get results that seem to conflict with the rules Tony I. said.  Euonymus americanus becomes:
Bursting-Heart
Hearts-a-Bustin'

Likewise Tolmiea menziesii becomes:
Pick-a-Back-Plant
Piggyback-Plant

By-the-wind Sailor fits the rules, and names I added to it came out as "Test-Name-Test-Name" & "Test Name-test-name Test," so I guess it's an error when the name is just one hyphenated word.



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Colin Purrington

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Feb 28, 2018, 1:43:58 PM2/28/18
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I suspect fans of lower-case common names are probably in the majority on iNaturalist, but not proportionately active on forums. 

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 12:21:39 PM UTC-5, James Bailey wrote:

Tony Iwane

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Feb 28, 2018, 1:55:01 PM2/28/18
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I think some may have misunderstood my previous post. It was a *preview* of what we are thinking of doing, not "this is how it will be". That is why I asked for feedback. 

I also want to re-emphasize that this is just the way they would be displayed as titles on the tops of pages (eg the taxon page and observation details page) and in IDs. It is iNaturalist displaying common names in a prescribed way in certain situations so that they are uniformly displayed. In these situations we are treating them as titles rather than prose, so they are distinct uses. That's it. Feel free to use the capitalization scheme you want in any comments you make on iNat, and in any other writing you do.

I do appreciate everyone's feedback, however, thanks for chiming in. And thanks for the bug reports as well.

Tony Iwane

Colin Purrington

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Feb 28, 2018, 5:37:36 PM2/28/18
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If anyone is curious why Wikipedia eliminated title-case common names, here's the link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_156#Bird_common_name_decapitalisation

I think somebody else on this forum already posted it, but it might have been in one of the previous incarnations of the issue. It's a tad hard to read due to Wikipedia-specific links, but it's informative and often entertaining. And highly relevant. Posters make really good arguments both in support of and against title case. There seemed to be some sort of voting going on but I'm not sure ... I've edited a few Wikipedia pages but I don't know specifics about how they reached consensus on the issue. 

Susan Hewitt

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Feb 28, 2018, 5:54:40 PM2/28/18
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That Wikipedia discussion dates from four years ago. People's opinions on this have changed somewhat since then.

Colin Purrington

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Feb 28, 2018, 6:00:19 PM2/28/18
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Any chance you could post a link to a more recent discussion? Wikipedia talk pages are hard to find, and I'd enjoy reading something more current.

bobby23

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Feb 28, 2018, 7:43:49 PM2/28/18
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Hi, y'all.
Not sure how much I can contribute here, but I strong support standardization. It creates a sense of unity I would expect in any guide book or biologic reference. As for whether it is enforced capitalization or lowercase, I am indifferent. I never understood why animals had to be capitalized while plants et al. had to be lowercase, but I do not mind too much. I am primarily involved with mammalian taxa anyways.

However, I feel like it is an animal-bias to give them uppercase vernacular names, and this is inappropriate. Animals are not more important than plants or fungi or microbes. However, I do not think there is something inherently bothersome about capitalization in itself. Unlike Cassi (B.), I think it makes the organisms more personable, not like products: an eastern hemlock is some tree, while an Eastern Hemlock is an individual.

Tony, the preview on Gorilla looks great, but I am still confused about how hyphenation will be addressed. You stated here that words following hyphens would automatically be lowercased, but that does not seem to be the case on Gorilla.

Some here suggested giving people the option to "turn-off" automatic capitalization for selected taxa. I think that would be a great compromise, if possible.

Cheers.
- Bobby

Charlie Hohn

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Feb 28, 2018, 9:27:19 PM2/28/18
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hey Colin that Wikipedia link is great (though i didn't read it all!) and also backs up what i am saying about bird stuff being creeped into everything else. 


On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 5:37:36 PM UTC-5, Colin Purrington wrote:

James Bailey

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Mar 1, 2018, 1:05:44 AM3/1/18
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The opinions from there date back to 2008 and this guideline still remains in place today for Wikipedia. I'm not sure I could agree that opinions have changed since then. I think there are still just as many people supporting either side. What I do find important here is that Wikipedia actually has the closest thing that has ever existed to a consensus on this topic. If that many editors, a portion quite well-versed, came to a conclusion to lower case common names, then we should think about that.

I still don't see a good reason to consider common names different to any other typical noun i.e. "window", "table", and so on. Imagine if we all said that we owned a Bed in our house.

bobby23

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Mar 1, 2018, 2:21:55 AM3/1/18
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I don't think this is purely a linguistic disagreement on what constitutes a proper noun. I think this ultimately boils down to how we as individuals conceptualize taxa - is the order Rodentia like a familial clan of people ("the Rodents") or more like an ethnic group ("rodents")? Alternatively, it is personable and definite (like a location, person, or song title) or more abtract (like any inorganic object - a bed or table)?
I'm not sure there will ever be an agreement on such matters (but kudos to Wikipedia).

I do feel inclined to share that my zoology professor personally prefers not to capitalize because organisms are not individualistic, so she feels that capitalizing them as if surnames or titles is inappropriate. There isn't just one Lion - there are many lions.

- Bobby

Chris Vynbos

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Mar 1, 2018, 3:36:04 AM3/1/18
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> Imagine if we all said that we owned a Bed in our house.

I don't know what You mean by that Statement James, it's not hard to imagine at all. Germans capitalize every Noun, as I am in this Reply. Why is the fact that other People do things in a Way that is different to Your Way so baffling to You? Try not to be so insular. And anyway, to revert to UK English punctuation: you find a bug in your bed, it gets identified by an expert as a Bed Bug. Proper noun vs common noun. It's hardly illogical, even if it isn't the way you have are used to. 

Charlie Hohn

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Mar 1, 2018, 8:21:44 AM3/1/18
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by definition, going with the less common thing (capitals for plants) would be More Insular.

I think sugar maples are not like a small family, more like a huge population, because there are a billion sugar maples.  You might have the Sugar maples of Maple Corner or the Sugar Maple behind our garage that has excellent sap for boiling. But we don't have climate change harming Sugar Maples. That seems off. 

Since we will never get consensus on this, here is my request: that tiwane or one of the other admins comes in here and explicitly if briefly explains why they  chose what they did, so that it is laid to rest and we can move on. So I at least don't have to feel like we are standardizing trees to bird nomenclature, which that wikipedia article proves is indeed what was going on at least with some of this stuff. A nonbinding vote would also be really interesting.  Or a vote by a couple of people from each area, so one area doesn't dominate.

bouteloua

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Mar 1, 2018, 8:36:09 AM3/1/18
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Charlie, the answer is because it is easier to programmatically display in a modified title case. Tony has explained it above:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/Pn5ZJqFMtjM/Zlat8j4BAwAJ

cassi

Charlie Hohn

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Mar 1, 2018, 9:11:52 AM3/1/18
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Hmm. Well, thanks. 

James Bailey

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Mar 1, 2018, 1:09:00 PM3/1/18
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I'm happy to leave this now but I guess I owe a response to Chris.

Chris, the objective is to create a unity, and being English-speaking myself I (and perhaps a few others here?) are a little biased towards our own language. In English we do not capitalize every noun. The English language is weird and we don't follow a lot of traditions well-founded in other languages. But this is what we have as our language, and that is what we have to abide by. 

James Bailey

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Mar 1, 2018, 1:09:47 PM3/1/18
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Note: of course, as we try to be a global resource, I would not go on to say that we should treat all languages as we treat English. That would not be fair.

Colin Purrington

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Mar 1, 2018, 1:31:04 PM3/1/18
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Another big reason to preserve proper format for common names is because iNaturalist uses proper format for Latin binomials. That's relevant because most species on the planet have no common name and thus the scientific name is displayed in the page title and in the ID field (e.g., screenshot below). Thus new users (perhaps new to nature and how taxa are named and formatted) are surely absorbing and internalizing conventions they see on iNaturalist (which is great!). These same users, when confronted with information on pages of species *with* common names, are probably going to make an assumption that the displayed format is also the format most widely accepted for common names. If, however, the user is given title case common names, a typical user might infer that title case is the preferred format for common names. I *fully* get why inputing and editing and re-editing common names in lowercase is a thankless job that iNaturalist wants out of, but for the same reasons that Latin binomial format is important, common name format is, too. [continued below image]


I'd also like to note that some people still like to capitalize the species name (in addition to genus), and indeed that used to be the standard back in the day for at least species that referred to a person (e.g., Acmaeodera hepburnii was often Acmaeodera Hepburnii). Screenshot below if you doubt me. That format changed over time, obviously, but it's another reason why it's great to display the proper format of Latin names, just as a reminder to really, really old people. Similarly, almost all common names *used* to be in title case in the 1700s and 1800s, but not anymore (birds being a Relict Population of that format, of course, and Fish evolving the trait in 1970s, I gather). If iNaturalist decide to use title case common names, it's inescapable that the decision would start bleeding out into other realms of the written world. That doesn't mean people are going to die or that the ice caps will melt, but it will probably mean that fewer iNaturalist users will know how to properly format a common name, and some will even use iNaturalist later in life as proof that title case is the best format.

Tony Iwane

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Mar 1, 2018, 8:23:51 PM3/1/18
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A few notes:

- As many have pointed out my description of the style on Gorilla wasn't correct, sorry about that. The hyphen rule was tweaked to: "For each hyphenated word, capitalize the first letter. If the hyphenated word is the last word, capitalize the first letter of all hyphenated parts (excepting prepositions, conjunctions, and articles)." Is that looking OK, or weird?

- This seems to me as something of a Gordion knot problem: we can try to disentangle a world of styles, and curators can constantly be going back and forth about this, or we can cleave the knot with a simple, uniform style and move on to issues of greater import. This is not to say capitalization lacks importance (I think Colin makes a good point that what iNat does will have some degree of osmotic influence, and I agree common names are crucial for outreach), but I think in the scheme of things it's a cosmetic choice, and everyone's incredible expertise and passion can be better-directed to other nuts-and-bolts aspects of iNaturalist. In that regard, Carrie Seltzer started a thread for suggestions here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/zD9MSTSO4Tc Definitely chime in if you haven't already!

- Charlie, aside from my previous responses, the consistency issue is the one motivating us. This has nothing to do with any bias against plants (both Scott and Ken-ichi are very into plants, and I'm a fan as well). 

- For those concerned that a newcomer to iNat will get the wrong impression about capitalization style for certain taxa (eg plants), I would imagine anyone who eventually got into botany would quickly adapt.

- sea-kangaroo and others who reported bugs with what's on Gorilla, I'll pass those on to Ken-chi to integrate and let you know when it's been updated.

- Tony Rebelo, the proposal is to use code to consistently display common names regardless of how they've been entered into our database. So if iNat's database has the name "common dandelion" the browser will change it to Common Dandelion in the page's title and in the ID listings. When you're exporting data via a CSV,  the common name is taken from the database, so whatever's entered there will be in your CSV. Guides at this point are not a priority although we can look into it. Most of the other things you listed are from our database, so again I don't think this would affect this, although I can double check.

- If non-English speakers have feedback, please let us know.

Tony Iwane

Colin Purrington

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Mar 2, 2018, 8:23:05 AM3/2/18
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Would rendering common names in all caps be a solution to some of these issues? I.e., far fewer people would mistake that format as a suggestion for how to format a common name for prose. Plus all caps is probably the easiest to code. You could retain (pretty please) the lowercase for common names in the Taxonomy tab for those who might want to know how to format the common name for a laboratory report, prose book, etc. And thus the format for those names would match the format of text (prose) pulled in from Wikipedia. Also, when people export names to lists and such, they could still have the more readable, more accepted lowercase format (except when proper names and place names appear, of course). There's also the opportunity in the About Names box to highlight that although lowercase is most widely accepted, some journals and societies prefer title case. I know everyone on this forum has library of guidebooks, but just in case I'm attaching pic of three of mine that show use of all caps.


[ *Gordian* knot ]

Donald Hobern

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Mar 2, 2018, 8:57:03 AM3/2/18
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I hadn't realised how nice the Common Spiders of North America looked ...

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Tim. Reichard

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Mar 2, 2018, 1:47:55 PM3/2/18
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Tony Iwane,

The new captialization looks great on a taxon list like
http://gorilla.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa?place_id=39
but doesn't seem to be implemented on the associated csv file generated by clicking the Download CSV link.

I also tried to export a set of observation data to see how that exported file looks, but it seems to fail on the gorilla site.  Specifically, I clicked on Observations in the top nav bar, entered some search parameters, and clicked on Download in the Filters box. Then I tried to export the data.  When the Download link appeared under the Recent Exports section and I clicked the link, I got a 404 error page. So I can't see if the new letter casing worked in the exported file.

Those two exported csv files (taxon list and observation data) are the important ones for sharing data with interested parties, so having letter case consistency is helpful there as it is on the web site.

Tim

Tony Iwane

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Mar 2, 2018, 2:18:16 PM3/2/18
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Hi Tim,

As I said in my last email, this proposed change would be only for how common names are displayed in certain places on the website, and would not affect the actual entries in our taxonomic database. So when you export a CSV, that would be taking data directly (like names) from the database and however the name is entered there would be how it is exported. As for your other export issue, the Export page on gorilla is likely not working, as we use this server more for previewing changes on the site. 

I'm curious about your saying that "having letter case consistency is helpful there" I would have thought (and I'm inexperienced in this department) that using scientific names would be the preferred way when sharing data? Anyway, that seems a bit off topic so I started a separate thread here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/KJoDud-aXl8

Tony Iwane


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Tim. Reichard

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Mar 4, 2018, 11:51:34 PM3/4/18
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Tony I., thanks. I'll split my reply to both places, according to topic. 

I found your post upthread and read it (sorry I missed it before), and it seems that the exported taxon list over on gorilla is working as you described and as intended.

I'm curious why it's intended that way. I was expecting that the only place left to see the as-entered database name would be the Edit Taxon page.  Thinking about how curating common names would work in the future, don't we need all other views to have the Title Case style in order to achieve the two goals of consistency and eliminating curator work? Or is there another way?

Thanks,
Tim

Tony Iwane

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Mar 13, 2018, 8:11:37 PM3/13/18
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Alright folks, as you might have noticed and, to the consternation of some and delight of others, we have implemented the title style described earlier for common names on iNat's website. Again, this is just a way for the website to display common names in a consistent manner. It does not affect common names they way they are entered in the database, so CSV exports will still show whatever is entered there. And this is not iNaturalist making a sweeping statement about capitalization, it's just a style we (spurred by Caleb, sea-kangaroo, Tim's and others' arguments) have chosen to use for "titles" of pages and IDs. 

Happy to hear comments, but please try and wait a bit until any very strong emotions have had a chance to calm down. 

sea-kangaroo, I think we've fixed the "'I'iwi" problem but holler if you find mistakes.

Tim, we feel that when a user is downloading a CSV, they can edit the common names (if they're using them) to any style they want. Here's a quick way to change text to title case in Excel: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-the-case-of-text-01481046-0fa7-4f3b-a693-496795a7a44d

Tony Iwane

megatherium

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Mar 15, 2018, 6:37:51 PM3/15/18
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Looks great!  Only error/inconsistencies I've found so far are: 


--an obscure one: the list of search results for adding things to a List returns with whatever case was entered into iNat: 






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megatherium

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Mar 15, 2018, 9:08:27 PM3/15/18
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Oh, one more place where display rules don't exist:  Life List Firsts: 

​​
Message has been deleted

Chris Cheatle

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Mar 15, 2018, 9:31:37 PM3/15/18
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One other minor bug, if the first letter in a name is non-English, and accented, then the 1st and 2nd letters get capitalized




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