Forum:CT Archive/Capitalizing "galaxy" - arguments against, and request for revote

When this question was brought up for the first time, I thought voting was pointless and the winner would be obvious. It didn't happen that way. Since then I tried to put up with this outcome, and obediently followed the now-established rule, changing "galaxy" to "Galaxy" when it was due, even if I heavily disagreed with it. Spending more time and effort making these changes, I was gradually getting tired of it, and eventually saw some user comments, disapproving with this rule. They did not voice their opinion so loudly that others could have noticed it, but I was beginning to see that it is not only me who does not approve this.For a time, I was discouraged to bring this up when discussion about merging Anakin Skywalker with Darth Vader were at their boiling point. I thought that bringing up yet another issue that had been decided would not be wise. For long I have been considering to bring this up again, and let the community revise this rule. As a Wookieepedian who mostly changes language-related stuff, I think my duty is not only following rules, but trying to persuade people to change ones that are questionable or wrong. I would like Wookieepedia to decide if this rule should exist or be abolished. Here are my arguments against our former decision:

1. Canonicity. I have never seen a canonical source&mdash;in English&mdash;that ever capitalized the word. I have a couple of novels in English, and none of them ever capitalized the word. My argument here is that novels must follow what is "proper English," and encyclopedias - online or printed - are also such. I don't want to offend some of our contributors here, but I think professional writers like James Luceno or Matthew Stover know twice as much about proper English than most of us combined. As much as non-SW fans should heed our knowledge about certain in-universe issues (SSD size, starfighter capabilities, etc.) we should consider that writers who use their knowledge of written English for a living are expected to know a lot more about the written part of our common language than us. We are, after all, just a group of Star Wars fans, and anyone can become the member of this group regardless of linguistic capabilities. All online sources I know also spell galaxy in the lower case, except for Wookiee and Wikipedia. I am suspicious that before our deciding the "galaxy/Galaxy" issue for the first time, Wikipedia also wrote "galaxy" in the lower case. Then those who advocated the change did the change at Wikipedia, too, and Wikipedians did not even consider reverting. Wikipedia is not the most reliable source for science fiction, anyway. We all remember removing some fan misconceptions from Wikipedia, ranging from Jedi characters' alleged preferred lightsaber styles to putting "Dark Side" into lower case. The only other instance that capitalized "galaxy" was the back cover of my Return of the Jedi VHS, and that is the Hungarian, dubbed version that apparently can't be canon as an outsider (non-Lucasfilm staffer).edited it.

2. A nameless proper noun. By capitalizing a noun, we shift it from a common noun to a proper noun. As we know, the Star Wars galaxy has no canonical name. Using a proper noun (may it be as plain as the "Star Wars Galaxy" or a completely random name such as "Kha-na-gatur Galaxy") suggests it does. But this is conjectural at best and fanon at worst. Fanon is the worst case because it is prohibited on Wookieepedia. Conjectural would be confusing, and require a big tag be put to the top of our The Galaxy article. I remember an argument that we write the "Milky Way Galaxy" instead of "Milky Way galaxy" in proper English, and thus we should capitalize galaxy. That is an acceptable point, but "Milky Way Galaxy" is an official name of a celestial entity. The SW galaxy has no official name, even if most fans simply call it as the "Star Wars galaxy."

3. Direct quotes. We have a rule that prohibits changing a written quote from its original form into our preferred form. Our "capitalize 'Human'" rule is no exception of this, and in my experience, it is more effectively followed than our current rule about "galaxy/Galaxy." By following a rule that we made up, we would end up with an article - or only section - with a quotation that writes lower-case "galaxy" and the rest of the article or section that capitalizes it. It does not look so good, and if I didn't know the deal, it would confuse me. See point 4.

4) Confusing and conveys wrong message. For an outsider, who may not know SW any well, this conveys a wrong message that capitalizing galaxy is a custom or even a rule when talking about the Star Wars galaxy. Using my argument in point 1, it is obviously false. I could even imagine a real Star Wars fan being confused by this. New users who come by not knowing this very Wookieepedia-specific rule would not capitalize galaxy and their work will have to be changed, supposing that this is the only "mistake" in their edits.

5) Adjectives and other derived terms would require further words like "galaxywide" or "extragalactic" be capitalized. Neither "a Galaxywide conflict" nor "extra-Galactic" would look very good.

6) A long time ago... if this rule remains, we would have to change the very essential and most commonly recognized SW line from "a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away" to "...a Galaxy far far away." It would be sacriledge. - TopAce (Talk) 23:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Stop capitalizing

 * 1) First vote - read my arguments above - TopAce (Talk) 23:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)