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?
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.
This is where editors come to exchange ideas, discuss what the entry should or shouldn't contain, and how it should be written. It also is where they come to argue.
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 tim