Talk:South African cricketer AB de Villiers announces international retirement

pre-review comment

(Don't know why this went missing)

@Green Giant: 'D' of "de Villiers" in the beginning of the sentence should be in lowercase -- like how "van Gaal"'s 'v' was in lowercase. See Manchester United sacks van Gaal after winning FA Cup -- but if there is a reason to keep it in uppercase, go ahead, leave it in uppercase, we can discuss the case later, after the review.
•–• 00:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

@Green Giant: yeah, so what should we do?
•–• 01:57, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

At the start of sentences it is bad grammar to leave "de" or "van" as lowercase. If you look in the the two main sources for this article, they use uppercase if it starts a sentence. Green Giant (talk) 01:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

But aren't those characters in lowercase in the original name -- and going against it is possibly violating the way Dutch of South African names are written? I have seen multiple British sources keeping them in uppercaseeven if they are in the middle of the sentence. /me considers asking a Dutch native about it more more insight (however their decision is not going to affect what English Wikinewsies decide).
•–• 02:30, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

It’s because you should almost never start a sentence in English with a lowercase letter - the uppercase is mean't to show that a new sentence has commenced. I understand it happens in some languages like French or German but not in English. The English language has a tendency to capitalise lowercase names over time. For example, the 19th century British politician Benjamin Disraeli was descended from an Italian Jewish family whose original name was D'Israeli i.e. "de Israeli". I don’t recall the source offhand but essentially it took about a generation for the apostrophe to disappear. Green Giant (talk) 02:46, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it something we are told at a very young age. But then, those are the names -- we don't capitalise "i" in iPad, or "m" in macOS or "e" in eBay.
•–• 03:01, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Hello, I am a native speaker of Dutch from the Netherlands. I can explain the correct casing for family names in Dutch. A tussenvoegsel is a word between a first name and a last name (the name "Abraham Benjamin de Villiers" has 1: "de", my name "Robin van der Vliet" has 2: "van" and "der"). If there is no initial letter, first name, last name or other tussenvoegsel before a tussenvoegsel, only then it gets a capital letter. The word "de" in the title should receive a capital letter. I corrected all occurrences in the text with this edit. Robin van der Vliet (talk) 14:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Change has been made. I verified with other sites, just in case Wikipedia was wrong. --SVTCobra 14:35, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

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Re checking other websites, I saw multiple British news sites writing "Louis van Gaal" and "Louis Van Gaal" in the same article. We need these things sorted out in SG.
•–• 14:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

@SVTCobra, Acagastya: This is, btw, imo too low-level-detailed for the style guide. But that's for after we figure out what we're doing.

I submit that in this instance the usage described in the Wikipedia article may be wrong. The change to the headline does not appear to be wrong, although I'm not convinced it was wrong before (and post-publish renames cause problems). This cricketer is not Dutch or Belgian, but South African; and the usage that was already in place in this article is supported by source usage. --Pi zero (talk) 14:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Poking around some, the sense I'm getting is that usage for this sort of thing in English is dominated by preference of the named individual. Which doesn't resolve the question, but does increase the likelihood that usage by a sports news site may be correct (ESPN, in this case; yes they can make mistakes, but it's also quite possible they knew what they were doing on this point). --Pi zero (talk) 15:15, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I did say I checked with other sources than Wikipedia. Here is Stellenbosch University of South Africa's article "Capitalisation of titles and proper names in Afrikaans and English: How does it work?" about the subject. It is, unsurprisingly, the same rules as for Dutch names. --SVTCobra 15:21, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

After all, Dutch colonisers colonised South Africa.
•–• 15:28, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Aware of the history, yes. I'm still leery of general rules on this. Absolutely ideal would be usage by the player themself but, since that might be hard to come by (for the particular case of last name in the middle of a sentence not preceded by first name), next best would seem to be an example from a reputable English-language South African newspaper. --Pi zero (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Better than the oldest university in South Africa? Did you read my comment? Well, if you insist, here's South Africa's largest newspaper: "At last‚ AB de Villiers' dream comes true". --SVTCobra 15:45, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

That's reassuring. Yes, on names individual preference generally takes priority over general rules. --Pi zero (talk) 16:05, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't think we are going to find AB de Villiers writing about himself in the third-person and there's nothing to suggest he doesn't want his name to follow the standard rules. Should I reject your last edit, Pi? I think Acagastya is on-board. --SVTCobra 16:15, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

That was my point about 'hard to come by', yes; there are theoretically situations where it might arise but it'd be extraordinary luck to find them in practice. No real objection at this point. --Pi zero (talk) 16:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

BTW, even though we have closed this issue, I just wanted to clarify, I wasn't saying that the university was of higher priority over a personal preference, I was taking exception to your suggestion a newspaper was a better reference for the rule than the university. But maybe you were trying to say a local paper might know his personal preferences. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:26, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

That is what I had in mind, yes. If he had preferences that differed from the local norm, there's actually a pretty decent chance a local paper would know about it; and if he hadn't, there's a good chance they'd know the local norm. --Pi zero (talk) 23:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

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BTW, Pi, I don't think this or the Korean naming conventions should be considered too low level for WN:SG. In fact, it would be very useful to have so we don't have to go through this again in the future. Perhaps, it should be a sub-page. I can think of loads of idiosyncrasies it could cover. We could add to it as we encounter them. --SVTCobra 17:03, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Review of revision 4408972 [Passed]

Revision 4408972 of this article has been reviewed by Green Giant (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 01:08, 26 May 2018 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: All issues resolved satisfactorily. There was a little over-reliance on ESPN but it was mainly for statistics. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 4408972 of this article has been reviewed by Green Giant (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 01:08, 26 May 2018 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: All issues resolved satisfactorily. There was a little over-reliance on ESPN but it was mainly for statistics. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

In all fairness, two ESPN sources for fastest 100s and 50s were just to confirm that the previous record was not broken.
•–• 01:33, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Linking to national teams

I think we should wikilink to national teams like the Proteas because it helps readers who might not be familiar with the sport. It also provides an incentive to create Wikinews categories if possible so links will be Internal. Green Giant (talk) 01:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Flagged the discussion, which is part of the bigger picture. Since the links can be added after archiving, it should not be a problem -- let's stick to (what I believe is) the current practice till we reach to a conclusion.
•–• 01:37, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikilinks

{{flag}} This is a topic I have been trying to avoid for ages, but now it can not be ignored -- when we say South African cricketer -- we link to South Africa, and that seems reasonable. But when we say South Africa vs West Indies or let's say "Portugal defeated France 1–0" (in football), should we link to the POR and FRA men's national team (with a certain level of preciseness, yet a dash of encyclopedic approach). One of the personal reasons I was reluctant: it becomes tedious to write for authors, and there is a certain level of thinking required which is the best link in any case. Also, we have enough number of articles to create many categories for national teams. There are more than 700 articles in Football (soccer) category alone. That would require at least one day for a very dedicated and focused admin + reviewer to do it -- which by the way will be boring. Two reviewers + admin managing ten articles each day would still require over a month, and FWC18 starts in about three weeks time. Thoughts? CC @Green Giant, Pi zero, SVTCobra:
•–• 01:31, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I would support creating categories for all the national sports teams that have three or more relevant articles. I can imagine there will be a frenzy of articles in June.

Similarly, with a sports event, it will inevitably be referred to as having happened in a particular city or town but in this case, an international test match would not have taken place anywhere except the Wanderers Stadium. Unlike London, most cities don’t have more than one test-class stadium. A comparable scenario would be us referring to an England international football match taking place in London, but neglecting to at least link to Wembley Stadium, which is the most common location for such matches. Certainly for the World Cup, we should be prepared for the possibility of several stadiums gaining enough articles to warrant separate categories. Green Giant (talk) 01:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

It is going to be a very tedious task, and do we have enough admins + reviewers to do this? One of the reasons to apply for mop and bucket in 2016 was for this purpose -- before the Euros, but this is going to be a very challenging task. And before we decide anything, we need to decide when to make links to countries and when to go for national teams. Consider this: "Argentine manager Pochettino joined the Spurs". "Argentina's captain Leo Messi", "Spanish footballer Andreas Iniesta" -- It is type two in Chomsky hierarchy. (I wish I knew it 24 hours ago so what I would have known type 1 and type 2 grammar)
•–• 01:53, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Let’s link to the national team where it is obviously the case; otherwise let it just be the country name:

• "Argentine manager Pochettino joined the Spurs" - suggests Argentina, the country, but more relevant is the Spurs category;
• "Argentina's captain Leo Messi" - Argentina, the team;
• "Spanish footballer Andreas Iniesta" - depends on the context of the article i.e. if it is about the national team then include in the national team category, if not then include in Category:Spain if it’s relevant.

Green Giant (talk) 02:13, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

If the category to the national team (NT, from now onwards) is added as the category, the country category will be added by default. I would still suggest we consider all of our options to minimise extra unnecessary labour. It is a one time investment, but the asking price is really high.
•–• 02:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I think Laura Hale's legacy on Wikinews includes some national team categories. Good reason to link these: if we don't link them, we'd be likely to miss the ones that exist locally. --Pi zero (talk) 02:59, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree that it is a good idea to {{w}} the national teams. I disagree that it is urgent to go through the entire archive before the upcoming World Cup. --SVTCobra 23:18, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

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The World Cup has 64 matches, and that will increase the task.
•–• 23:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Not if our World Cup articles and match reports have the appropriate {{w}} to the national teams. If we have full coverage, categories will be able to be created during the group stages. --SVTCobra 23:46, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

A lot of them can have category right now, and doing it differently, now is going against the standard practice -- I think I can do something about it, by modifying a template.
•–• 23:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I am not talking about doing it differently. As the group stages near the end, there ought to be three articles for each team, thus justifying the category, if one does not already exist. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:58, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

I can list at least five articles of Portugal which should qualify for the NT category, right now. So, I don't understand your point, why not finish the task before FWC18 starts? (Though it would be close to impossible to do it)
•–• 00:05, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

There's no reason not to. I am just saying it is not radically urgent as you suggested above. Also, at this point, every minute I spend here is time which I ought spend doing other things. But that's just a personal issue for me. After tomorrow, I won't be here for up to two months. I'd rather spend my remaining time on content, not archives. Green Giant seems to have an interest in category work. Maybe if you change your vote, Pi can finally close the RfP. Cheers, --SVTCobra 00:13, 27 May 2018 (UTC)