The argument put forward in this post has a fatal flaw: the assumption that
there is a direct relationship between the volume of discussion, and the
degree of importance attaching itself to a particular topic. A simple
recourse to any news media outlet on any given day, whether it be "old
media", the purveyors of the "24-hour news cycle" or [gag] Twitter, should
quickly disavow one of such a misapprehension.
In other words, just because some people are happy to crap on about
grammatical pedantries, it doesn't follow that they would be more interested
in that than a living, breathing Night Parrot...
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Inglis
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 4:31 PM
To: Birding-Aus
Subject: [Birding-Aus] Capitals and common names
Andrew Stafford said:
“I believe the original point of discussion, before this thread was
thoroughly hijacked by the resident pedants of birding-aus, was Night
Parrots. I find it interesting to say the least that the issue of
capitalisation is apparently of so much more interest than Australia's most
enigmatic species...”
As one of the resident pedants of birding-aus I feel compelled to reply.
Surprisingly, I agree with Andrew. At least, I agree with some of what he
said. There was a discussion prior to this “Capitalisation” thread which was
about Night Parrots and, for some reason I could not entirely understand
(probably because I didn’t read every posting in that thread – such threads
do become repetitive) the discussion degenerated into one about
capitalisation of common names.
However, Steve Whathisname created a completely new thread entitled
“Capitalisation of bird common names” in which there appears to be no
mention of Night Parrots, capitalised or otherwise.
And, up until now, Night Parrots remained unrepresented in the discussion.
No doubt Steve’s motivation for creating that new thread came out of
something in the Night Parrot thread but it was a new and dedicated thread
about “Capitalisation of bird common names”.
Top marks to Steve for creating a new thread rather than hi-jacking an old
thread to discuss a new topic.
As to whether issues concerning capitalisation are of more interest to
Birding-aus members than issues concerning Night Parrots it does appear that
is the case which, I agree, is a sad state of affairs. As is the lack of
discussion about the issues concerning Orange-bellied Parrots, Regent
Honeyeaters, Swift Parrots, shorebirds in general and a myriad of other bird
species.
But that fact doesn’t intrinsically mean that issues concerning
capitalisation are not important and should not be discussed until the
discussion about issues with Night Parrots is totally and thoroughly
exhausted. The matter of capitalisation of common names appears to be one of
great interest to a significant number of Birding-aus members as
non-capitalisation can often lead to confusion as to what bird is being
written about. Possibly, in the previous thread, there was a question as to
whether certain sighting claimants were talking about parrots of the night
(aka night parrots) or Night Parrots.
As to what constitutes an issue of interest to Birding-aus members in
general, I have yet to work that one out. I do know that some individual
members have their own, and often esoteric, interests which they try to
bring to the front of the discussion queue and sometimes they succeed.
In the case of the Night Parrot thread, it appeared to me that it had run
its course. The same will happen to the capitalisation thread. Which one was
of more value will probably never be known.
Bob Inglis
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