Forum:Dragonflight and Capitalization

I have noticed in the wiki article for Blue Dragonflight, that the name has been set to lowercase. This was reflected in several other wiki articles on WOWWiki. However because Blue Dragonflight is talking about a specific group, it is considered a proper noun, thus the name should be capitalized. Instead of just changing everything I decided to (and on the advice of A'noob) decided to ask here to see what the general consensus thinks. --Lightmuse (talk) 17:06, January 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * This conclusion was reached by me and Baggins a while back, it's just now that I've had time to go through and make the nessesary corrections. Dragonflight is not a proper noun and the color is just that: the color, an adjective, a distinguishing word, not part of a proper title nessesarly. Theres multitudes of quests where blizzard uses dragonflightt names completely in undercase. See I could link hundreds. Blizzard has been rather inconsistant much like capitalization of mortal races (night elf, Night Elf, Night elf, etc...) so this was agreed upon to be in line with what we did with those races. 17:24, January 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * There are rare times when it is definitvely a proper noun (the same words can actualy sometimes be nouns and sometimes proper nouns). In this case I do Blue Dragonflight . But these cases are far from the norm. 17:32, January 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * I understand where you are coming from on this, and I do see now that Blizzard uses this as a common noun rather then a proper noun. I have also seen several instance where they are referred to as the blue dragonflight (being very specific) as opposed to simply blue dragonflight.  There are several instances in Warcraft lore where, for example the Kin'Tor caused the blue dragonflight to go insane, which begs the question why the blue specifically?  This makes me think that the blue dragonflight are not just a group of blue dragonflight but THE group of blue dragonflight.  But I think this is more of an inconsistency with WOW and not really WOWWiki.  I appreciate the clarification on that.--Lightmuse (talk) 19:51, January 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * Glad i could help. Yes it is rather annoying and I've been in your position too where i was thinking "Wait maybe this isn't quite right". It can be frustrating, we just have to make due and i think the current outcome is the most logical though i'm open to other opinions. 19:55, January 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with using lower case, too. It's just like with clans, tribes and the other organizations. We aren't sure if the type of organization is included in the name, so we leave them all in lower case.
 * As for lower casing the first word... I'm not sue about that. The dragonflights are organizations on their own, but then we use them as the global term for the specific color of the group of dragonkin... I'd say leave that one as the context asks for it, adding "the" before blue dragonflight for specification if you want. The best option for the subrace name would be "Blue dragonkin", but both pages would be nearly identical... or perhaps not.--Lon-ami (talk) 21:45, January 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * It will likely stay lower case. Though the points Lightmuse made are valid, they have come up before, and he is asking to overturn a much larger decision. Should I dig it back up? It seems Lightmuse has been swayed, so I am sorry if I missed the window of relevance.-- 21:55, January 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Given the scope of work to be done should the current policy be reversed, as SWM pointed out, I would say keep it as is. It wouldn't be just the pages for dragonflights, but indeed all of the pages where this "problem" comes up (orcish clans, death knights, things of that nature). That said, however, I agree with Lightmuse - the fault is not the editors of WoWWiki, but the people at Blizzard who can't make up their minds about spelling, capitalization, so on. There have probably been more retcons in the last five years than there were in the ten before WoW...that should be an indicator of Blizzard's constantly wandering brains.


 * As for whether it should be changed or not: It seems clear enough to me that, for the most part, the names of the dragonflights - and indeed of the term "dragonflight" itself - are not capitalized, with one possible exception. --Joshmaul (talk) 22:35, January 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think keeping lowercase for both words makes more sense. The sources are just as inconsistent as usual. -- Ragestorm (talk &middot; contr) 04:26, January 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no particularly strong urge either way on this, as long as we are consistent. (Color) dragonflight is most like one of the races (or a venery term for them), I think, as 'members' are born that way, not inducted.  --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 20:23, January 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * As things are currently with the inconsistency of Blizzards spelling and the clans, tribes and the other organizations case/issue, I think lowercase should be used. As Eirik says, of course, it have to be consistent on wowwiki atleast. TherasTaneel (talk) 20:48, January 12, 2010 (UTC)

Grammatical tangent, since I don't have a specific opinion, only a general one. Here's the definition of a proper noun:
 * "Grammar. a noun that is not normally preceded by an article or other limiting modifier, as any or some, and that is arbitrarily used to denote a particular person, place, or thing without regard to any descriptive meaning the word or phrase may have, as Lincoln, Beth, Pittsburgh.

To me that clearly places "the blue dragonflight" as a regular "article + adjective + noun" deconstruction, not a pronoun, thus not in need of special capitalization. My two cents! 7:01 PM, 1 Feb 2010 (EDT)


 * And yet, one also says "the Blue Angels" to refer to the US Navy's Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron. "The" can refer to a unique individual (or collective); "any" or "some" clearly describe limits.  Would you say "some blue dragonflight (do....)"?  --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:43, February 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * It seems I may have opened a can of worms on this one. As I mentioned before, It seems more grammatically correct to have (color) dragonflight as being capitalized (Eirik Ratcatcher as one example) but, IMHO it is more important to stay consistent with Blizard.  However with Blizard's inconsistency, that may make it nearly impossible.  I would suggest keeping the policy as is until (or if) we get better info from Blizard as to how it should be set up, especially with the sizable task it would create. --Lightmuse (talk) 23:15, February 6, 2010 (UTC)