Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Danah Boyd

Preliminary statements from parties

Statement from Dan Hoey

I am joining this mediation late, by permission of the moderator.  My
concern is that Wikipedia not appear to be partial to some persons
over others in the use of lower-case names.  There are three contexts
in which this impartiality must be manifest:

1.  Determination of whether the person actually has a lower-case name,
2.  Title of biography,
3.  Mention of unusual orthography in biography, and
4.  Use of name in article text, both in biography and in other articles.

I know of four examples of persons with lower-case whose biographies
appear in Wikipedia: danah boyd, bell hooks, k.d.  lang, and catherine
yronwode.  I do not know have the searching skills to find other
examples, but I would like to know about them.  Of particular interest
would be persons whose biographies were subject to renamings over the
lower-case issue, since the resolution of those renamings may be
instructive in refining our precedents (whichever way the conflict was
resolved).  Of course, no amount of mechanical searching will find
persons whose names are in lower case but who have not had that fact
mentioned in their biographies.  In the case of danah boyd, I see the
current state of the three contexts in the following ways.

1. The determination of whether danah boyd's name is lower case
   is in dispute, given the appearance of her name with standard
   capitalization in print media.  I believe this is overridden by
   reports of her name appearing in lower case in her publications
   and on her college diploma, and confirmed by statements on her
   web site.  In addition, I am uncertain of the extent to which
   upper-case appearances of her name in print media arise from those
   media's stylistic conventions, as in item 4, below.  Another issue
   in the identification of living persons with lower-case names is
   the length of time that their name has appeared in lower case,
   since we must distinguish between persons who have started using
   lower-case recently, since the change may be transient.  Ms. boyd's
   web page claims that she has written her name in lower case since
   her college years, some time in the 1990s.  My belief in the
   lower-case nature of Ms. boyd's name makes the remaining issues
   relevant.
2. Her biography is titled in upper case, while the others are in
   lower case.  This seems to be manifestly partial and misleading.
3. The mention of her orthography was added to her biography
   recently, though I believe it should include some mention of the
   period of time that she has used lower-case; the current mention,
   undifferentiated from prior, transient changes of name, tends to
   discredit Wikipedia users' acceptance of item 1.
4. Use of lower case in the text seems to be resolved by using
   standard capitalization for everyone.  I can accept the rationale,
   since the use of upper case to signal proper names makes text more
   readable (consider what we would do with a person named "with
   are").  However, I am concerned that this convention discredits
   acceptance of item 1, and I also believe it is discourteous to
   living persons with such names.  Therefore, I will refer to danah
   boyd in lower-case in this discussion.  I will not inflict my
   orthographic judgment of this matter on article text without a
   consensus change.

Finally, let me express my gratitude for being allowed to enter this
discussion.  -Dan Hoey 17:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)