IS IT 'the" OR 'The" ?

The Beatles once sang, "Have you heard the word is love?" In a Wikipedia war raging around the group, the word is "the."

For some eight years, editors at the online encyclopedia have been debating whether the article "the" should be uppercased when referring to the band. Is it "the" Beatles or "The" Beatles? (click below to read more)


The lowercase faction says the Wikipedia manual of style and external style guides are on its side.

The uppercase faction says that trademarks should be capitalized and that the official Beatles website uses an uppercase definite article.

The dispute has become so contentious that some Wikipedia editors have been banned from participating. "Discussions on this page may escalate into heated debate," warns the internal "Talk" page where editors discuss changes to the Beatles entry.

"Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here."

Now, Wikipedia is trying to settle the question with a community poll, where readers will get to decide which case will prevail. The poll is expected to close Monday. Currently, the Beatles entry mainly sidesteps the issue by avoiding the name of the group in mid-sentence. Still, there are a couple of instances where "the" is lowercased.

The two surviving Beatles aren't singing out on the question. Paul McCartney's agent said the former Beatle wouldn't be available for an interview. Ringo Starr's agent said she doubted she could reach her client quickly enough.

Lowercase advocates point to a handwritten 1970 letter from Beatle John Lennon, who was murdered a decade later, that uses a small "t."

If Mr. Lennon were alive today, "he would have a good laugh at all the 'fans' who think that a lowercase 't' is somehow a disgrace to the band," says Gabriel McFadden, an editor who calls himself "the leader of the lowercase faction." He won't reveal his location because he says he has been "cyberstalked" over the dispute.

Different publications have different capitalization rules. The Wall Street Journal uppercases the "the" in its own name but lowercases it for other publications. As for the musical group, it is "the" Beatles.

At Wikipedia, the debate is playing out behind the scenes—invisible to most of the millions who turn to the free encyclopedia each day for answers. Wikipedia has some 85,000 active editors, defined as those who record at least five edits per months. Wikipedia articles have a talk page, accessible by a tab at the top of the entry.

Tina Vozick, who has been editing Wikipedia entries for six years, says disputes have become more frequent over the years. She blames "an overabundance of testosterone running around the pages."

A Wikimedia Foundation 2011 survey found about 90% of Wikipedia's editors are male.

More than half of respondents reported arguments with other editors over the past three months.

Go to the talk page on cow tipping, the "purported activity of sneaking up on a sleeping, upright cow and pushing it over," and you will find conflicting views about how a photograph illustrating the phenomenon should be captioned.

One contributor protests that the caption "presumes to understand the thoughts of the cow; this is unencyclopedic speculation."

Disagreements often arise over what readers should find when they enter a search term. The page on Caesar salad argues over whether users who search for the term should be given the option between the food and the Pokémon character. Contributors involved in the entry titled "List of fictional ducks" have argued over whether Jemima Puddle-Duck, the Beatrix Potter character, is notable enough to make the cut.

Jonathan Clemens, who has been a Wikipedia arbitrator for two years, says issues like the Beatles capitalization debate can go on for years and devolve into acrimonious exchanges.

The Wikipedia archives show the Beatles capitalization battle already under way in 2004. At the time, one optimist suggested: "Let's get a consensus now to avoid wasting everyone's time with these trivial changes."

The dispute has since flared up almost every year.

"It's their NAME and 'The' needs to be capitalised wherever and whenever it appears in a sentence—I was taught that shortly after we'd stopped writing with crayons!" wrote one user in June 2006.

"Sorry, I never wrote with crayons... I coloured with mine, and wrote with a pen, or pencil as needed," replied another.

Austria-based Andrew Edge, a leading voice in the uppercase faction, began working on Beatles entries in 2007. This July, Mr. Edge accused Mr. McFadden of setting up a "fake" poll about the matter in order to "demolish" an existing poll residing on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band talk page. "It really is a sorry state of affairs when an editor has to stoop to such tactics," Mr. Edge wrote.

In July, a Wikipedia administrator "indefinitely banned" Mr. McFadden and Mr. Edge from interacting with each other following a weeklong community discussion that ran more than 11,500 words.

Mr. Edge sees it differently. He says the encyclopedia has increasingly become home to groups of editors "that gather together to agree with each other, and revert or block anybody who is not a member."