I disagree. I think it was more clear when it was succinct. As far as I can tell, the only part that confused @Stargaz3r was that the Dutch section lacked the " Use normal Dutch capitalization rules for the rest of the title." part. If that is the case, this is the only part that needs amending IMO.
I think it needs some polishing in its current form. Two typos were introduced: “milioen” should be “miljoen” and “algemeene” should be “algemene”. Further the phrase “namen van steden, landen en dergelijke” (names of cities, countries and such things) lacks precision. Also, the sentence “The rest of the title should be in lower case” becomes redundant after the “Capitalize only […]” (in both languages). Finally, as has been stated by others the “regardless of artist intent” part is wrong.
The text you cite was only in the English paragraph but was not in the Dutch paragraph (I had initially only read that one and thus assumed it was ok to use capitalization on more than one word like seen in English titles)
It did not say anything about when artist intent comes into play, while clearly at some point artist intent should weight heavier than common Dutch spelling. Some consideration about that could be added.
I agree with all of this, but would like to add some kind of reference to when there is a case of artist intent. Also something the inte syle guide for error correction about whether it is ok to mass edit titles into lower case, and how to check if there was artist intent. I see Tiske editing a lot of titles with the best intentions, and I have no reason to think that those edits are wrong, but I wonder if there could be a few cases where those titles did have artist intent and how that should be checked for in the future. It would be a crazy amount of work to check if all the releases and realse groups use the same capitalization or not and derive artist intent that way.
Artist intent is more than just some consistent spelling across multiple sources. It means there was some very specific artistic reason for the chosen spelling. And yes, that’s often not easy to show.
Well, artist intent does take precedence over the language rules and this too is neatly documented in the guidelines. But this is an exception case and has no place in the language specific rules, which should remain succinct. It doesn’t get mentioned in the English language style guidelines either, for example.
In any case, I really don’t understand why you get so hung up on this. You claim to know the artist of the release that set off this kerfuffle. So just get them to send you an e-mail stating that they really would like to have the titles capitalized as printed on the cover, then slap that message in the annotation and nobody will have a problem with that.
@stargaz3r > I see Tiske editing a lot of titles with the best intentions, and I have no reason to think that those edits are wrong, but I wonder if there could be a few cases where those titles did have artist intent and how that should be checked for in the future.
Give me an example, of a wrong edit and artist intent and I will change them. Give me prove of artist intent.
@stargaz3r >The only upload I can find is Vanaf Nu - song and lyrics by Tim Oling | Spotify
It is spelled “Vanaf Nu”
“A seeming error may be considered evidence of artist intent if it is consistently found on all of an artist’s official releases.”
This appears to he artist intent. Do we all agree to revert this to “Vanaf Nu”?
When we check Spotify and Marco Borsato all titles are spelled with Capitals. Is that artist intent?
When we check spotify and Astrid Nijgh all titles are spelled with Capital. Is that artist intent?
I can go on and on and on
And when we check all other Dutch titles on Spotify they are written in Capitals. I dont think this is artist intent but the way how Spotify does it’
Isn’t it time to close this discussion? I think the rules are clear and everything has now been said.
The reason I discuss it was because I came in as a new user doing my best, but wasted a little time on researching capitals which were then reverted by others. Not a big deal, but I think I can solve this by refining the wiki a bit. Yesterday I rewrote the wiki again with the changes that peeps on this discussion mentioned, and I hope this will help others like me (I know, almost no one is like me lol) will not fall for the same ambiguity as I did.
It’s a bit of a process to find rules and phrasing everyone agrees on
The new wiki page looks pretty good to me, and I’d say it is indeed an improvement from the one we had before this whole discussion. I don’t see any errors.
“de officele regels” should be “de officiële regels”
“wat betekend dat” should be “wat betekent dat”
Moreover, I think the prose in both language sections reads rather awkward. That should be tidied up.
And to reiterate my previous point: I think the text has been bloated for no particular gain in clarity. I preferred the original succinct text </old man mode>
Ah you’re right, there are some typo’s. “zoals de artiest die aanvoerd”
And I do suppose this sentence is a bit long: “Er zijn echter veel uitzonderingen binnen de Nederlandse taal, waardoor sommige woorden alsnog een hoofdletter moeten krijgen en anderen juist niet ook al zijn ze het eerste woord.”
No, sorry. I do not agree. The text still reads awkward in both languages. I can tidy that up, if you agree (I am not looking for an editing war).
I also think you have been imposing your own view on the guidelines, especially regarding “artist intent”. Changes should be backed up by community consensus and I haven’t seen anyone agreeing with your gripes.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the thing that got this started is that you misread the Dutch language style guide because it neglected to say that MB guidelines override the capitalization standard from other platforms (e.g. Spotify). You also mentioned that you thought that the English guidelines were clear about this. @Jim_DeLaHunt supported you on that, so this should be fixed. In my opinion, adding a single sentence to the guidelines would have sufficed.
But you have added a ton of other changes. That might be OK, even though I disapprove, but several of those have been actively opposed in this thread, most notably your take on artist intent:
Alleen als de artiest aantoonbaar de intentie had om in de titel af te wijken van de Nederlandse spellingsregels, dan moet de spellingswijze zoals de artiest die aanvoert worden gevolgd. Meer daarover in Style/Principle/Error correction and artist intent
This, as I have clearly stated upthread, should not go in the Dutch language section. It bloats the guidelines and is bound to cause confusion among beginner editors. Consider that your appeal to artist intent down the edit notes from the OP have been dismissed by @Tiske_Tisja, @outsidecontext and me. Let’s not have that in every Dutch entry that gets added to MB, please.
In general, I think you have added too much detail. I suspect beginning editors will take a look at this swathe of text and just get confused. For comparison, here are the German guidelines, in full:
Das erste Wort sollte groß geschrieben werden. Für den Rest gilt die übliche Groß- und Kleinschreibung.
I think of the sentance as guidance, showing in what case you need to revisit the artist intent page. I don’t think it really bloats a lot.
I think this phrasing does meet the critique they had? It raises the bar to ‘only if prooven intent of the artist’ maybe the second part if that sentence should be omitted in favor of the guidelines on the referenced page, I’ll do that.
It really aint much, there is a small intro which was already there, than some explanation, than a whole lot of examples which for all I care can ne deleted in favor of the referenced sources, than a mention of artist intent and the whole thing in english.
We could delete the Dutch version, the intro, the examples…
Done. My suggestion for the Dutch language guidelines can be found here. The diff page is here.
I tried to improve the flow of the text, removed repetitive parts and have omitted the references to the artist style and artist intent pages. I have retained the extended list of exceptions, which I quite like. The “general” rule still explicitly states that only the first letter of the title should be capitalized and all subsequent words should start with lower case letters. Finally, I made sure the Dutch and English version have the same content.
All remaining typos and ambiguities are my fault. I hope that everybody is happy-ish with this compromise. I think it is an overall improvement, so thank you @Stargaz3r for instigating this.
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