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Frequently asked questions  To view an answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question. To view references used by an answer, you must also click the [show] for references at the bottom of the FAQ.Q1: Why is this article titled in lowercase, as opposed to Syrian Civil War (which redirects to this article)?
A1: Wikipedia policy on article titles is to use sentence case unless a preponderance of reliable sources treats the subject as a proper name. While this policy can lead to inconsistent titles (e.g. compare this article's title with Russian Civil War), community consensus (confirmed most recently here for this article) is that following the treatment by reliable sources takes precedence over in-Wikipedia title consistency. |
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| On 17 July 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved to Syrian Civil War. The result of the discussion was not moved. |
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Issues
The whole article needs a rewrite, it for example lists allied forces as bellingerents. And it's locked so that nobody can actually do anything to deal with its problems.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.78.207.102 (talk) 07:02, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
- I suppose that just as consensus can change, so can allies change. Feel free to use ((Edit semi-protected)) here to suggest specific edits. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:13, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
- Indeed, needs to be re-written. Starting with the title that reads "CIVIL" war. When foreign forces unlawfully invade and annihilate your country, it is not a civil war. It is a hostile and aggressive attack we call today terror. Calling it a "civil" war is a misleading political statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.70.29.185 (talk) 09:22, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
- I would support the notion that this was not a civil war but a proxy war. Mercenaries, foreign or national, fighting a proxy war for foreign powers, paid, armed and guided by those foreign powers, among which the CIA, do not qualify as a local uprising and part of a civil war. Mregelsberger (talk) 17:04, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
- For the people who are defending USA and NATO, USA with the help of turkey, they posioned syrian civillians by dropping posion gas from airplanes. If that is not a war crime then I do not know what is. 155.4.141.62 (talk) 21:09, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
- I would support the notion that this was not a civil war but a proxy war. Mercenaries, foreign or national, fighting a proxy war for foreign powers, paid, armed and guided by those foreign powers, among which the CIA, do not qualify as a local uprising and part of a civil war. Mregelsberger (talk) 17:04, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
Infobox size
The infobox of this article is way too large compared to the prose. The new default skin Vector 2022 limits text width, which exacerbates the issue. My suggestion is to have it collapsible so that readers can stop looking at needle-like paragraphs. Carpimaps (talk) 01:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- Agreed, and tagged. I have altered the formatting of the template to reduce the width a bit, but the main problem is that it has far too much information in it, contrary to WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE. (Hohum @) 20:32, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
Name of Article
I think "Syrian civil war" should not be used as long as the war is ongoing and independent verifications are more or less impossible. Only historians can decide whether this truly is a civil war or rather a proxy war against Syria or something even wider. I don't necessarily want to suggest an alternative. This could be found in a discussion of the issue.
Using such names - other examples would be "terrorist attack" or "suicide" for respective events even before any meaningful and independent investigation - is significant because they shape the perception of things and events before the issue is really settled. It is like calling somebody a criminal before the conclusion of a trial. Mregelsberger (talk) 13:56, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
- While you make good points, most civil wars, especially due to the political context of the last century, have seen substantial foreign support for belligerents. Probably, by my own count, most recent civil wars have been exploited as proxy wars by stronger powers in order to further their geopolitical aims. Thus, civil war is an apt descriptor for this conflict. 2601:85:C100:46C0:C51A:2566:AF10:9013 (talk) 05:00, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:2011 Syrian Revolution which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:17, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Requested move 17 July 2023
- The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: not moved. No new evidence to suggest that things have changed since the last RM. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks 17:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Syrian civil war → Syrian Civil War – The war has been going about for 12 years. Now we can capitalize the C and the W because it can be used for historical context. WikipedianRevolutionary (talk) 19:19, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support as proposed Red Slash 21:29, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Strong support RS have been capitalizing it for ages and ages. How did it take this long for us to follow suit? RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 07:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per nom 〜 Festucalex • talk 13:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support the proposal ~~Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 17:11, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose Nothing has shown to have changed since the 2021 Requested move. Ngrams evidence shows that the uncapitalized form is twice as popular as the capitalized form and in a Google Scholar search, twenty-seven out of the first thirty results use the uncapitalized form.[1] This change would therefore go against MOS:MILTERMS which states that
Accepted names of wars... are capitalized if they are usually capitalized in sources
. :3 F4U (they/it) 18:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC) - Support I think MOS:MILTERMS pertains more to historical conflicts with an established academic literature as opposed to recent or ongoing conflicts for which the best available information comes from news reports. For the latter type of conflict, it seems fair to capitalize the title if it's agreed upon that historians of the future will very likely refer to the conflict using the capitalized title, lest they draw an arbitrary line in time between historical conflicts and "recent" ones. ErrorDestroyer (talk) 06:51, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. This page has been stable after years of acrimonious debate, and sleeping dogs should be left to lie. There is zero policy basis for making this move, and the supports above don't attempt to provide one or address any of the reasons why this was moved in the first place... Per MOS:CAPS, we only treat terms as capitalised proper names if a substantial majority of sources do so. And as F4U says, in this case it's quite the opposite - the ngram shows the sentence case variant significantly ahead of the capitalised version in sources. — Amakuru (talk) 07:16, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose – Still doesn't seem to be proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 16:01, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - AFAIK, it's Syria's only civil war & has been ongoing, for twelve years. For example, we have the American Civil War page. GoodDay (talk) 16:14, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - It's Syria's only real civil war as of now. Ebraali444 (talk) 15:23, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. Nothing has changed since the last time. "Now we can capitalize the C and the W because it can be used for historical context" isn't a rationale but essentially meaningless word-salad, and to the extent any sense can be made of it, it's clearly against MOS:SIGCAPS. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:01, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose As SMcC says, the rationale given by the OP is meaningless word salad. That it is Syria's only civil war and/or it has been going on for 12 years are not substantive reasons. If anything, they fall to WP:SIGCAPS and we don't do that. We capitalise American Civil War because it is near universally capitalised in sources per here. This is no where near the case for Syrian civil war. Per the evidence of F4U and as observed by Amakuru, there is zero policy based argument to change the casing of the title. Per WP:NHC:
those [arguments] that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue
carry no weight and should be discarded. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:16, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
References
- ^ Even in a search for articles post-2021, fifty percent of the first thirty results use the uncapitalized form.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.