Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy

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Why doesn't the Manual of Style always follow specialized practice?

Although Wikipedia contains some highly technical content, it is written for a general audience. While specialized publications in a field, such as academic journals, are excellent sources for facts, they are not always the best sources for or examples of how to present those facts to non-experts. When adopting style recommendations from external sources, the Manual of Style incorporates a substantial number of practices from technical standards and field-specific academic style guides; however, Wikipedia defaults to preferring general-audience sources on style, especially when a specialized preference may conflict with most readers' expectations, and when different disciplines use conflicting styles.

– Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/FAQ

The specialized-style fallacy (SSF) is a set of flawed arguments that are used in Wikipedia

"local consensus" of specializing editors, often a wikiproject
, for specialized-sourced article naming and styling that other editors and readers (often not unfamiliar with the field) find strange, impenetrable, inappropriate, and/or grammatically incorrect.

It is also called the reliable sources style fallacy (RSSF), since it is an argument sometimes made by editors who "over-defer" to specialized works on style matters that are beyond the specialization's scope. The argument does not always depend on explicit reliable sources, and may instead take the form of an

is a general-audience encyclopedia. The RSSF is the flip side, the other extreme, of the common-style fallacy about mimicking the style of journalistic writing
.

A secondary implication of either version of the fallacy, sometimes stated explicitly, is a

attack on the specialty
and editors who work in that particular field. This particular SSF variant is the specialist straw man (SSM).

Why the SSF's underlying assumption about reliability is wrong

Put the interests of readers before those of editors, and those of a general audience before those of specialists ...

[The] practice of using specialized names is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of common names ...

– Wikipedia:Article titles policy

The sources we use to

most commonly done in reliable general-audience publications like newspapers and non-specialized magazines and websites, and even in refereed academic journals that broadly cover multiple fields (e.g. Science and Nature
).

Typical SSF wording is "we are guided by the most reliable sources in our field", as if the Wikipedia community in writing the Manual of Style were relying on novels and blogs. The most reliable sources on how to capitalize, italicize, hyphenate, or otherwise style the name of a subject or its subtopics in a general-interest work like an encyclopedia are reliable works on style and grammar in English broadly, not just usage in the specialty at issue. Specialized works are notoriously unreliable for this purpose, because in a great many fields they tend to reflect conventions for specialized publications that widely depart from grammatical and style rules of

everyday English, for reasons usually specific to that sort of publication, tailored for that field's special internal needs, or simply aimed at very expedient communication between experts in the same speciality. There is also a natural tendency to capitalize, italicize, boldface, or otherwise emphasize things that are important in one's field of interest, to highlight their special importance in that context; this is a bad habit more of technical professionals than others.[1] That specialized context is not the encyclopedic context that Wikipedia presents to its users. Yet specialists may push for such stylization to extremes.[2]

The Wikipedia community supports specialized publications' stylistic recommendations when they do not conflict with widespread general spelling, grammar, and other expectations. We side with general, not specialized, practice when there is a conflict, because

rich in detail as we like, but the audience has not changed when we present specialized information
. The Manual of Style most often does defer to style preferences espoused in academia, when those preferences are shared across multiple disciplines. The SSF is distinct from this is being the advancement of a style preferred by a narrow subset of disciplines (often just one), conflicting with other disciplines and with general usage.

The SSF not only errs in considering specialized sources reliable for encyclopedic style, but also in assuming opponents of a specialized style to be "generalist" editors, with inadequate understanding of the specialty field, interested primarily in applying rigid, simplistic rules with no regard for specialists' rationales. In fact, many opponents of specialized styles are themselves specialists, who understand that idiosyncratic and conflicting stylistic "specialisms" are distracting to encyclopedia readers and diminish the general accessibility of articles covering any topic in any specialty. In short, if every speciality is permitted to apply unusual stylization to whatever it wants to, then eventually virtually everything would have weird stylization applied to it, and editors would spend much of their time fighting about which stylization to apply instead of actually working on producing an understandable encyclopedia.

How the SSF works

The core tactic of the specialized-style fallacy is to claim that any disagreement with the specialist's very strongly held and argued preference with regard to their specialty, or disagreement with the underlying premise that reliable sources on specialized facts are the most reliable sources on style when the specialized topic is involved at all, is [cue dramatic music here] necessarily also an accusation that the specialized sources are faulty, inconsistent, don't exist, or don't say what they say. Alternatively, the claim may be that those who disagree with the specialized-source preference are criticizing the specialty itself and/or editors who come from that field. Next comes an attempt to shift debate into a long-winded proof against arguments no one actually made about the value of these sources or of this specialty. This will sometimes be done using emotive, even insulting language that generates heated responses and tends to derail discussions; the likelihood of this increases with the frequency of disagreements about the specialized practice under scrutiny, and with the rise in general consensus against it.

Every reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that material is presented in the most widely understandable manner possible.

– Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable

Many specialists make this

too much of a rube to care. A few of them will even say so
dismissively.

Specialists may be anything from academics in a particular field, to devoted fans of a particular fiction or gaming franchise, to adherents of a particular religious or political point of view, to hobbyists of any kind, to students steeped in a particular pedagogical camp, to employees of a certain company or agency/ministry, to players of a particular sport or devotees of a specific team. If it has its own body of insider publications/sites and jargon, it is a specialty, and will have specialists. Fortunately, most of them do not engage in the SSF. Most specialists don't have any stylistic agenda to push, consciously or otherwise. Most Wikipedians are specialists of one or more kinds, and we always need to keep this in mind. There is no such thing as a conflict between "generalists" and specialists here, only between the Wikipedia community as a diverse, broad population, and specialists on a particular topic who are going a little too far. It's a "can't see the forest for the trees" problem of priorities and focus, not a mental disorder or (inherently) a bad attitude.

Specialists even unintentionally engaging in the SSF have a tendency to attempt to repetitively re-explain their belief that their specialty's preferences are absolutely paramount in Wikipedia articles in that field, simply because that's how the specialists write off-Wikipedia. They may thus dismiss or ignore, without fully engaging or addressing, any arguments by others that what is appropriate and standardized in specialized literature often has nothing at all to do with how Wikipedia should be written for a general audience. This argument may be lost on them for some time, even indefinitely, drowned out by sheer disbelief at the stupidity of anyone who cannot see that the only way to possibly write about "their" topic is their way. They may exhibit what can seem like signs of fanaticism about or rampaging obsession with the style issue, especially when debates become protracted and their opponents become less patient and more judgmental. When pushed to frustration themselves, specialists on a style mission may actually resort to psychodrama and debate-skewing histrionics, even appeal to pity like threatening to quit Wikipedia, if their preference is not upheld as that of Wikipedia itself, or proclaiming that Wikipedia is going down the tubes and should be replaced by something "more reliable" (i.e., friendlier to unreasonable demands made by some members of their specialty).

Close-up of a gorilla's face
Chest-beating to drive away the opposition is very effective – if you're a gorilla.

Collections of specialists, typically in wikiprojects, may attempt to

acting as defenders of the faith against any disagreement with their specialized practice, however reasoned, or criticism of their behavior in their attempts to maintain and justify that practice, through obstinate filibustering or outright advocacy against what they see as a rising tide of mean-spirited hostility. Many SSF cases begin as such attempts at protectionism and simply go off the deep end
, alienating more and more other editors.

A formerly common result of group action of this sort is a

not a bureaucracy
, and not itself descriptivist, much less based primarily on specialized sources. MOS is an internal style manual for mooting style disputes and getting on with content writing; it is not style advice for the world, and it cannot possibly agree with all of the world's style advice since a large amount of it conflicts from source to source and audience to audience.

When the SSF is most disruptive

Rarely, but very disruptively, the specialized-style fallacy is deployed intentionally, as a strategic form of ideological and debatory

"TL;DR" situation that could derail the discussion, make it too difficult for incoming editors to figure out what the issues are, and confuse many of the extant participants, making it difficult to restart the consensus-building. When done by a group of like-minded specialized-style advocates, the SSF can even be used in an attempt to create a false consensus through vote-stacking
.

On freewheeling Web forums and Internet mailing lists, such a tactic would rarely work, because it would be recognized as an obvious form of

disruptive
.)

Worse yet, some may attempt to repeatedly exploit Wikipedia's "assume good faith" default; this is a form of

meatpuppetry
", and so on.

This can happen in more than one place – anywhere the topic comes up, or in new threads anywhere the specialist

editing bloc or faction
, which they may figure cannot be stopped in time to make a difference, the combination may be intended to flatline even a major site-wide debate. Fortunately, steps can be taken to anticipate and curtail this effect.

Disruptive SSF is a cyclic process of smoke-bombing the targeted debate by raising the bogus "issue" of a supposed attack on specialized sources and specialists themselves – a straw man to beat with sticks to

repeat this pattern as often as necessary, to inspire enough paragraphs of objectors re-re-re-explaining that this is not the real debate topic and has already been addressed, thus generating a confusing, drowning pile of noise, screenful after screenful. This effect is often enhanced by incivility
, to raise the tempers of other participants and increase the verbosity and heat of their output.

indefinite editing blocks
. Consequently, in today's Wikipedia, the goading of other editors into civility lapses over SSF matters has serious anti-collaborative ramifications that may drive some editors away permanently, and undermine the processes of Wikipedia self-governance that rely on genuine consensus building and dispute resolution.

Intentional use of the specialized-style fallacy in anything akin to this manner is one of the clearest examples of tendentious editing in Wikipedia, and it is certainly a form of bad-faith conduct.

What to do about the SSF

even if the party raising it has previously engaged in an SSF
. It's almost always the former; specialists may feel strongly about specialized matters and fall into SSFs, but most of them really are here to help write an encyclopedia and are not single-mindedly obsessed with nomenclatural and style debates about a pet topic.

If the same issue is re-raised, point the specialist to the previous discussion where the issue was already addressed, and/or quote from it, and ask the specialist to please explain what they feel was not addressed the first time around; it is very likely that the person simply wasn't aware the issue has already been discussed, or that they were, but haven't yet articulated their own argument fully or understood those of others well enough, so some further discussion should clarify.

If it comes up a third time you may well be dealing with an SSFer. Continue to assume good faith, but cite this essay, in gentle terms, e.g. "This is starting to look like the

specialized-style fallacy
to me. Why do you keep re-raising the idea that your journals trump basic style guides on this issue, after it has already been addressed, here and here?"

A fourth time is almost certainly SSFing, and

giving them precisely what they want
and helping derail the very debate or other process you want to protect.

While SSFing can sometimes raise specific policy issues, usually in combination with forbidden behaviors like

WP:AN/I
, the SSF tactic itself is simply disruptive and a pain. There's not much to do against it systematically, other than decline to enable it.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ McMurrey, David. "Highlighting and Emphasis: Cue Readers About What to Do, What's Important". Online Technical Writing. "Capitalization" section. Retrieved 13 January 2018.

    In technical publishing, there seems to be a running battle between technical writers and technical experts over capitalization. Technical experts like to use initial caps for practically every component and process in a system. Also, technical experts (and management) typically use all caps for text they consider important and want readers to attend to. Meanwhile, technical writers and editors (rightly) insist on using caps for proper names only. ... As a technical writer, hold the line against capitalization. Capital letters are distracting .... Capital letters create a busy text, which sends lots of unnecessary signals. Capital letters are traditionally intended for proper names ...
  2. ^ For an example of extreme "specialist capitalization" at work, since how much of it had to be cleaned up at a single article, see Glossary of power generation, in this version.
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