Note that the revised page title says "article titles", while the RfC question is about "article text and titles".

RfC on capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc.[edit]

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This RfC comes in at a whopping 324kb, not even including the related discussions. Many arguments have been presented and questions raised, so I've taken the time to lay them all out here and determine what consensus has been reached.

Regarding the issue of whether an RfC can determine consensus on matters of article titles, a plurality (but not a majority) of editors believed that this was the wrong venue and WP:RM would be more suitable. Most of the “Bad Forum” !votes indicated that RM was the only legitimate venue for discussions that may require a page move. As far as policy-based rationales, this is supported by WP:RFCNOT. Looking at the discussion that added that section, it was a conversation among four editors regarding AfD pages being tagged with the RfC template as well, and page moves/article titles were not mentioned in the discussion. A few editors also raised questions regarding advertisement to editors who may be interested. Aside from the Village Pump being well publicized, notifications were sent to several related WikiProjects as well as several of the most recent/active NFL Draft talkpages.

For those supporting the use of an RfC to seek consensus on this issue, the most common argument raised was that using an RfC to determine article titles is something that does happen with some degree of regularity, especially when previous discussions through the usual channels have been especially contentious or failed to achieve a solid consensus. Several past precedents were cited, but the ones most similar to the current issue are [1][2][3]. The fact that WP:CONSENSUS#Consensus-building recommends RfC or the Village Pump was also raised, as well as WP:NOTBURO. Those opposing this forum did not have adequate policy-based rebuttals to these arguments.

Analyzing the relative strength of the arguments, those who sided with RfC being a valid venue for this issue have significantly stronger policy-based arguments. However, I would hesitate to call it a clear consensus given the length and breadth of discussion by editors who believe (with some policy backing) that RfC is not valid for this purpose. Taking this into account, there is no consensus that the RfC is invalid or inappropriate. Absent a consensus to overturn what is generally considered a valid process to handle contentious issues, this Request for Comment must be decided on the merits.

Moving on to the actual issue this RfC was created to discuss. Those advocating for lowercase “draft” were the majority of editors who weighed in on the merits of capitalization. However as this is not a vote, numbers are far less important than the relative strength of the arguments presented. Per MOS:CAPS, the default rule is only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. Among those advocating for uppercase, most arguments were that either “NFL Draft” is a proper noun, or that the NFL Draft is trademarked. For those who supported lowercase, there was disagreement that the event itself was trademarked and disagreement that the draft is a proper noun. A point was also raised that the draft event/process is not a ‘’sport or game’’ in itself, making that particular section of MOS:CAPS inapplicable.

As far as the sourcing, there was much analysis of a wide variety of different sources and how they capitalize. Many were inconsistent, but a large number of sources do capitalize the D. It is clear that there is not a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources that consistently capitalize.

Based on the arguments presented, there is consensus that “draft” should be lowercase in these NFL articles. The WordsmithTalk to me 06:24, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifying per request: there was consensus that the pages should be moved to the lowercase titles. That doesn't mean it has to happen all immediately in a mass pagemove; care should be taken to make sure we don't break templates, categories, transclusions, double redirects etc. The WordsmithTalk to me 16:28, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the capitalization in "NFL Draft"/"National Football League draft" etc., should it be capitalized "Draft", or lowercase "draft", in article text and titles? With what exceptions, if any? 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC) Dicklyon (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The order of the subsections below is the result of a refactor, and not to be misunderstood that forum concerns were the first reactions to the RfC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Forum question[edit]

Note: an editor felt that this subsection should come first, so rearranged it. The comments in the other subsections started earlier.
Note: Please 'stop' moving this subsection around & leave it above the 'survey' subsection.
Bad forum Even the proposer admits that this is here because "football-fan editors" at the last RM won't approve the move. This strikes me as pretty clearly forum shopping. I did see any indication there that the editors who participated are "football-fan editors", whatever those are. This has been brought up repeatedly by the same editor for years, and the answer to it is not to go in search of a friendlier forum. This is not an appeal court for failed RMs, the answer is a discussion and, if necessary, a further RM at the same forum. To the extent a vote is necessary, I vote for the current capitalization.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:19, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Forum-shopping seems to be what this is, to me. This user has proposed on numerous occasions to make this change, when rejected, for years, has repeatedly attempted to make the change to little-viewed pages to get it to pass by, and is now trying at a different forum to get this changed because "there's too many football fans at the normal routes to discuss this. I want it to be at a forum with non-experts because they're easier to convince to support me." I feel he should just WP:DROPTHESTICK. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Forum-shopping Agree with BeanieFan11. WP:DROPTHESTICK. Nemov (talk) 21:27, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Randy Kryn: You'd have to ping an administrator to this RFC, or contact the appropriate board, to get an administrator's attention. GoodDay (talk) 16:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's laughable that you still think that because a discussion is at some obscure Wikipedia namespace talk page (and all Wikipedia talk namespace pages are obscure) that it automatically represents broader consensus that what happens in the article talk space where there dozens of not hundreds more involved editors. The usual suspects of lockstep support !votes doesn't make this the proper forum, no matter how much it might reflect your desired outcome. oknazevad (talk) 17:46, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Balderdash. VPPOL has 3,736 watchers from all walks of wikilife, while National Football League Draft has 125 watchers, almost entirely people from one wikiproject, and 2024 NFL Draft has 91 of mostly or entirely the same people. The only "lockstep" that's ever in evidence at these things is single-topic-focused editors canvassed as a WP:FACTION from a wikiproject to battleground for "their" articles being treated as a magically special walled garden against any compliance with site-wide guidelines and policies. We have WP:CONLEVEL policy for a reason.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Watchers mean nothing. Participants do. And when the same three to five editors always comment on every capitalization discussion with little disagreement between them, it's obvious that those few editors have an outsize effect on interpretation of policy. It comes a point that people regardless of what they watch don't want to participate because they're drowned out of the discussion every time. oknazevad (talk) 21:19, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
VPPOL only has 319 watchers who are still active enough to have looked at their watchlist even once during the last 30 days. An interesting-sounding RFC could get that many eyes on it, no matter where it's located. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:18, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

I'll chime in on this more tomorrow, but there's a long history of this request by Dicklyon. It comes up every couple of years and, I believe, when I was looking the other day it even goes back as far as 10 years. In all that time there's never been a consensus to downcase the name. After all this time, and the failed requested moves, I think it's time to let it be. Additionally, if you choose not to, I hope that people do not falsely claim that it's a WikiProject cabal stopping the articles from being down cased. There are members of the project on both sides of the matter. Hey man im josh (talk) 05:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except it isn't based on a proper name. All involved were using the lower case for many, many years. It's a descriptive term. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The lead of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) cautions:

Outside Wikipedia, and within certain specific fields (such as medicine), the usage of all-capital terms may be a proper way to feature new or important items. However these cases are typically examples of buzzwords, which by capitalization are (improperly) given special emphasis.

The lead of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters states:

Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.

The NFL, not being independent, should not be a factor in this determination. —Bagumba (talk) 08:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's also never been a consensus that Wikipedia should capitalize Draft, even while most reliable sources use lowercase. That's why I opened the discussion above about what's a good process for trying to get to a consensus. The idea of an RFC was supported there. Dicklyon (talk) 17:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In discussions like there there are always lots of fallacious arguments that amount to "it must be a proper name because I have seen it capitalized in what I prefer to read, and/or based on how a party tied directly to the subject likes to write it". See Wikipedia:Proper names and proper nouns for a run-down on what these terms actually mean and how they actually pertain to Wikipedia titling and other writing practices.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Refactored to #Proper noun section
  • Collins defines proper noun as:

    a noun...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.[22]

    A reader seeing NFL Draft does not apply a different meaning to it than when they see NFL draft. It's purely a description in basic English, not any sort of proper noun like Super Bowl (vs a plain super bowl). —Bagumba (talk) 08:34, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether it is purely a description in basic English or something more significant than that seems to be the heart of this dispute, and there doesn't seem to me that the evidence is as clearly for either position as you make out. It is entirely possible (and not inconsistent with the evidence presented here) that the NfL have a draft (common noun) and that draft and surrounding media events, etc are called the NfL Draft (proper noun). Thryduulf (talk) 08:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good forum This RfC was opened after a discussion at VPP indicating that an RfC should be opened. While an RM might be the normal route for title changes, RMs have failed to reach a consensus on whether to capitalise or not. There is no consensus on this. There is nothing to say that RMs are the only way to build consensus on a matter affecting article titles (WP:NOTBURO). This question here is essentially a matter of the application of WP:P&G. VPP (where this RfC was opened) is an excellent forum to centralise such a discussion. Calling VPP an obscure project page is just BS. The more centralised the discussion, the more widely notified and the greater the participation, the stronger the consensus building process is. If individual editors believe that the discussion should be notified more widely, then any editor may make appropriate notifications. For myself, I see claims that this is a bad forum and attempts to shut down the consensus building process to be disingenuous and contrary to fundamental core policy. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

FWIW, as noted before Major League Baseball Draft was moved to Major League Baseball draft, without an RM & very little input. GoodDay (talk) 20:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, several times in each direction, including once by me. Dicklyon (talk) 22:42, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That probably should be brought back to uppercase, but I haven't checked common name etc. As for the NFL Draft, that's a capital "D" from the get-go. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From the get-go, the main article was at NFL draft, lowercase "d"; as in sources. It was changed without discussion, as I pointed out already. You have to pore through logs to find the move, but it was followed up by this lead edit. Dicklyon (talk) 01:54, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
By "From the get go" I meant that the ordinary fan or reader is acceptable of the uppercased "Draft". Didn't know it's been uppercased since 2005. That's a pretty good run, and it should take extraordinary reasons to change it, which past no-consensus decisions have yet to find and nothing has changed lately except for common usage in media solidifying its common name recognizability. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:41, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, not since 2005 exactly. It spent a couple of years lowercase in between, too (2014–2016), and should have just stayed that way, like it should have from the get-go. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And "the ordinary fan or reader is acceptable of" lower-case "draft", too, so Randy_Kryn's main point isn't making ... a point. His second one is outright invalid: that the sourcing demonstrates widespread usage, even in topical sources, of lower-case is automatically an "extraordinary reason to change it", per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:34, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
—Bagumba (talk) 07:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for filling in that history, Bagumba. My comment about it being lowercase 2014–2016 was not quite right; it was 2013–2016. What happened in 2016 was so gut-wrenchingly wrong that many of us complained loudly, but it stuck. As it happened it was your comment at the 2016 RM that was misinterpreted and wrongly applied to move all the articles even though the only article notified was a new one with no watchers. Sheesh. This is why I said there was never a consensus for capping all these articles. There just was not. Dicklyon (talk) 07:12, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For convenience, my !vote in 2016 was:

Procedural oppose It doesnt make sense to just change this to uppercase without including into this RM the parent article NFL draft, and every other year's draft at Category:National Football League draft.

At the subsequent move review, I wrote:

In hindsight, the basis for my procedural oppose are the exact reasons we are here at Move Review now: lack of proper notification at related pages.

—Bagumba (talk) 07:21, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: put survey responses above the #Discussion header, not here.

I certainly hope this long running uppercase vs lowercase content dispute (across Wikipedia), doesn't deteriorate into personal attacks on anyone. GoodDay (talk) 00:55, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Happens on a regular basis, especially to Dicklyon. His WP:GNOME shtick is cleanup of over-capitalization, and he does his "Is this really a proper name typically capitalized in sources?" research in most cases, but gets name-called and otherwise attacked for it very frequently. Nothing is ever done about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:20, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
He's continuing to 'move' grid-iron football Draft-related pages to 'lowercase', without going the RM route. Those kinda bold actions (during a related ongoing RFC), might be one of the reasons that some editors get annoyed with him. GoodDay (talk) 21:03, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This has stopped and I think been reverted; no one needs to go into alarm mode.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal[edit]

Dicklyon, regardless of where everyone stands, there appears to be too much concern regarding the location of this discussion and the lack of notification to every page. If you still would like to pursue this proposed move, would you be opposed to archiving this discussion and starting a WP:RM at Talk:National Football League Draft. I know it is daunting to develop the template necessary for the bot to notify all pages, but this appears necessary to ensure that notice is provided, process is followed and help make sure the discussion can hopefully come to some consensus. In that light, I have drafted (pun intended) the necessary template here: User:Gonzo fan2007/DraftRM. All you need to do is copy that text, fill out the "reason" section and substitute the template at the bottom of Talk:National Football League Draft. At the very least, disregarding every other concern, this will move the discussion to a more appropriate venue and allow all editors to focus on the policy and the merits of the proposed move. Cheers, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:59, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The point of this centralized discussion is to get more input from people who care about policies and guidelines, rather than more from editors who care more about football, which is what the usual RM process would attract. If this doesn't work out for whatever reason, maybe we'll try RM again. Dicklyon (talk) 23:20, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that motivation, and in some ways you have succeeded at getting others involved. However, in doing so, you seem to have rubbed a number of people the wrong way and have made it much harder to discern consensus. We have established processes for these types of things, and as you stated about people caring more about policies and guidelines, it seems that you have ignored said policies and guidelines to your benefit, while trying to chastise editors who have pointed out the established policy for requesting controversial moves. There are other ways to notify larger groups of editors of a discussion, including listing at WP:CENTRAL and unbiased notices at relevant pages. Right now, there appears to be no consensus, nor is any building, making this discussion fruitless. In trying to achieve your desired outcome, you have succeeded in the opposite. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 00:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I am entirely sympathetic to Dicklyon's thoughts and motives, I am also sympathetic to Gonzo fan's analysis of the subsequent events. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for mentioning WP:CENTRAL. I've just listed this RfC there. Dicklyon (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gonzo, I agree there's "too much concern regarding the location of this discussion and the lack of notification to every page". We should just stop that and discuss the issue. Dicklyon (talk) 02:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Did you just choose to ignore everything after that statement? He said right after, "If you still would like to pursue this proposed move, would you be opposed to archiving this discussion and starting a WP:RM at Talk:National Football League Draft." As in discuss at the appropriate place, i.e. not here. Conyo14 (talk) 03:58, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I answered that part first, see just above. Dicklyon (talk) 04:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had a comment to this, but it's a tad ABF. So, just like maybe don't cherry pick the conversation? Conyo14 (talk) 05:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dicklyon, I think my point, which may have been missed, is that at this point the discussion has shut down regarding the topic. If I was uninvolved, I would have archived this discussion as "wrong venue, no consensus". What I am trying to stress to you is that by choosing to post at WP:VP, you have succeeded at your goal of broadening the audience but at the cost of having canvassing, forum and other concerns that aren't central to the discussion you are trying to have pop up, muddying the water and making it almost impossible for any outcome other than another "no consensus". That said, I am just trying to help, and if that assistance is not well received, I can move on to other things. I'll leave User:Gonzo fan2007/DraftRM up for a while if it gets to that point. Best of luck, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:20, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see CANVAS as an issue, as VPP seems like a neutral venue. For an RfC that hasn't been opened for a week yet, no consensus also seems a bit premature.—Bagumba (talk) 16:14, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I don't see any venue issue. VPP is the broadest, most watched and neutral forum there is. I don't know why people are so against this RfC playing out and letting the consensus stand where it stands. Galobtter (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's pretty easy to see why. Dicklyon (talk) 00:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A bunch of completely invalid (per WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY) and dissembling "concern" about venue, geared toward just preventing the broader community examining something in a venue the wikiproject can't overwhelm, is not "too much concern", it's just noisy handwaving that no RfC closer who knows what they're doing would ever take seriously. "I don't want this to be decided where I can't control the outcome" is never, ever a valid rationale.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I maintain that it's disingenuous to state that this is a local consensus and casting such an asperation is inappropriate. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:48, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An increasing number of editors are directly/indirectly calling for this RFC to be shut down. Where would one go, to request such a shut down? GoodDay (talk) 19:42, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I guess you file a close request on those grounds. A closer can comment on the merits of that request. Nemov (talk) 19:55, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think by "shut down" he means how would you prevent a closer looking at the discussion and closing it. Dicklyon (talk) 20:06, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can't prevent someone closing a discussion if they feel there is consensus the discussion should be closed, equally you can't prevent someone evaluating a request to close and determining consensus is not in favour of closing. You can challenge the close after the fact if you want and have grounds to do so. Thryduulf (talk) 10:09, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll wait a few days & see if the trend has changed or not. If it hasn't changed, then I'll recommend closure & notify this RFC. GoodDay (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that RfCs usually stay open for 30 days, this one has been open 8. If you want a closure, drop me a line, but this is quite a long thread to go through, so it won't be a quick one. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll give it week ('til Jan 20) & if the trend continues to be 'shut it down', then I'll put in the request. GoodDay (talk) 10:43, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The number of people who suggest closing the RfC down because of the venue is not really relevant per WP:NOTAVOTE; what matters is whether there is an actual policy-based rationale for doing so, and there demonstrably is not.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
what matters is whether there is an actual policy-based rationale for doing so, and there demonstrably is not.[citation needed] It is clearly your opinion that there are no policy-based rationales for closing down a discussion that attempts to make an end-run around the lack of consensus for your preferred option at RM, but that doesn't make WP:FORUMSHOPPING any less relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 21:07, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is an asked-an-answered matter many times over already. VPPOL and other venues are routinely used to resolve RM and other matters that fail to come to a consensus (which is the case here with conflcting RM results both as to the same page and as to topically related pages). Consensus can form anywhere on anything; there is no requirement to only ever use one particular discussion-type template and one specific venue to discuss a matter of this sort, and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY policy tells us not to try to make such arguments. Forum-shopping does not apply to seeking a consensus again in a broader venue when consensus has failed at a narrower one; it applies to going venue-to-venue or admin-to-admin trying to overturn a previous consensus that you didn't like. That is not the case here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Going venue-to-venue to overturn a previous (lack of) consensus that you didn't like is exactly what is happening here. Thryduulf (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What does it mean to "overturn" a "lack of consensus"? It means to find a consensus. Seems like that would always be a good thing. Dicklyon (talk) 23:14, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Finding consensus is good, but there are ways of doing that which don't involve abusing processes to (attempt to) prejudice discussions. When an RM fails to achieve consensus, the correct way to do deal with that is to wait a reasonable amount of time then start a new RM with different arguments, not to run to VPP (or some other inappropriate venue) and make the same arguments again in the hope that asking the other parent will get a different result. The worst way to go about things is to ignore the lack of consensus and move the pages to your preferred title while the discussion is ongoing. Thryduulf (talk) 09:15, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The point here is that this is an attempt to add another layer to a requested move and its appeal process. WP:RM, then to WP:MOVEREVIEW, then to WP:Village pump (policy). This major change makes Village pump (policy) the Supreme WikiCourt for requested moves. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:55, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing is being "added". VPPOL has always existed as the broad venue in which to seek input on any WP:P&G matter that has turned thorny. That is the entire reason it exists. I have no idea what this pursuit of your is, for rigid legalism with regard to Wikpedia processes and venues, but it's directly contrary to WP:NOTBURO and WP:CONSENSUS policies and it needs to be give a rest.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:17, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But it's not generally been used for contesting the result of an RM that someone dislikes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A previous lack of / failure to reach consensus is abosolutely not the same as a previously reached consensus, and trying to apply FORUMSHOP to the former is against our actual practice, which routinely is to re-attempt finding consensus, with a revised proposal/question at the same venue, the same proposal/question at a broader venue, or a revised proposal/question at a broader venue, as the case seems to warrant. I do not believe it possible that you do not already understand this, Thryduulf. Re-RMing something later is one means of attempting to do that, but there is no policy that makes it the only possible such means, and we would not want one, since such a process is rather easily subject to false-consensus problems, as well as conflicting results when multiple pages are involved. RfC has been used numerous times to resolve multi-article titling questions when RM has failed to get to a clear result. There is no problem of any kind with that, and making it out to be some kind of policy/process abuse is disingenuous. So is trying to make it out to be "prejudic[ing] discussions", when the broader the venue the less possible it is to prejudice them. The only discussion-prejudicing happening here is pretense that RM is ungamable and required, denialism that VPPOL and RFC can be used for what they exist for, and editwarring to jam the "wrong venue" noise into the top of the RfC so that anyone looking at the thread is confused by a bunch of handwaving that tries desperately to suggest they are not even allowed to express an opinion here on the question, before they even get to see the question. This is the most shameful example of a topical special interest trying to thwart the operation of a community consensus process that might not go their preferred way that I've seen on WP since 2014, a full damn' decade.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:17, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Inconsistencies within American gridiron football[edit]

Jeez what a mess. We've got (for examples) National Football League Draft (uppercase), including related pages & American Football League draft (lowercase), including related pages. GoodDay (talk) 19:10, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Different organisations are under no obligation to be consistent with each other (or conform to the desires of Wikipedia editors). If the NFL Draft is a proper noun and the AFL draft a description then the articles should be capitalised differently. Thryduulf (talk) 20:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Still a inconsistent mess. GoodDay (talk)
The real world is inconsistent, deal with it. It is not, should not and cannot be Wikipedia's job to impose consistency where none exists (see WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Thryduulf (talk) 21:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Uppercase vs lowercase. Isn't this very RFC in of itself, based on RGW & pushing consistency? Go the RM route. GoodDay (talk) 01:49, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly this. Thryduulf (talk) 09:03, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, it's not up to the NFL either whether WP capitalizes. We look at independent sources. Per MOS:CAPS (emphasis added):

Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia

—Bagumba (talk) 00:45, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Been around this project for over 18 years. If there's a large enough number of editors who oppose something in any given area, that something more often then not, won't be adopted. Maybe that's not right or maybe that's not fair, etc. But it tends to be reality. GoodDay (talk) 01:55, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. But likewise, when there is concern about a potential WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, it's standard procedure to discuss the issue with a wider audience, where consensus can change. —Bagumba (talk) 02:37, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's funny how something is only ever a LOCALCONSENSUS when the consensus is something you (generic) disagree with, and that consensus among the small number of people who comment on MOS guidelines (without input from those working in affected topic areas) is never a LOCALCONSENSUS but consensuses arrived at with equal or greater participation at other specialised WikiProjects always are.
If a requested move needs to be more widely advertised, then advertise the requested move more widely, don't try and make and end-run around RM. Thryduulf (talk) 09:08, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting work of conspiracy-theory or alternative-universe fiction. In actual reality, of course, MoS and it major sub-guidelines have an enormous number of watchlisters and regular participation by editors of all interests from all across the 'pedia. No guideline or other processual page/system on the entire site is subject to more subject-specific "input from those working in affected topic areas", on a daily basis, both as to its wording and its application. And a great deal of MoS is subject-specific sub-guidelines written almost entirely by partipants in subject-specific wikiprojects. And all the MoS regulars are themselves focused on various specific encyclopedic topics just like everyone else is. This us-vs-them stuff you keep pushing is poisonous and indefensible. The entire notion of "input from those working in affected topic areas" is virtually never even applied to anything but MoS. No one ever goes to WT:RS or WT:CITE or WT:NFC or WT:DE or WT:COI or WT:DP or WP:TPG or any other guideline talk page of any kind and says "this guideline needs a special exception for the topic I'm most interested in", whether it be football or anything else. (Same with asking for topic-specific exceptions to them at RM, XfDs, noticeboards, or any other process.) Not only is MoS subject to this on a constant basis, we actually do adjust the guidlines quite often (or make an exception at RM) to account for such things, but if and only if it can be justified by overwhelming usage in independent reliable sources. And that usage is not demonstrated in this case. Strong source preference for just "the NFL draft" (but a spike in "the NFL Draft" after Wikipedia came about, strongly suggesting a WP:CIRCULAR influence): [32][33]. For specific-year drafts, usage is wildly mixed [34]. In both cases, this unmistakably fails our tests for whether this should be capitalized on Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The core of your misunderstanding is the insistence that people are asking for "special exemptions" (or similar) for their topic of interest. What they are actually doing is disagreeing with your opinion about how the guideline applies in a specific situation, in relation to capitalisation this is most commonly a disagreement about whether a given term is or is not a proper noun. Just because someone has a different opinion to you about whether "NFL Draft" is or is not a proper noun does not mean they are trying to exempt specific (classes of) articles from the Manual of Style guidelines. Thryduulf (talk) 15:00, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in that case, VPPOL would be the ideal venue for the discussion in the first place: "disagree[ment] ... about how [a] guideline applies in a specific situation" is exactly what this venue exists to resolve. But this specific disagreement is illusory to begin with; the "is or is not a proper name" discussion is essentially moot, because on WP (as in most places outside of philosophy journals) it has nothing to do with anyone's ideas rooted in philosophy of proper naming, which is completley unrelated to capitalization questions. The meaning of proper name/noun in linguistics is what applies to that question, and we need not debate it in the first place, because only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia (emphasis in original) completely sidesteps the tedious question. It simply does not matter whether editor A thinks something is a proper name and editor B doesn't; if it's consistently capitalized in the independent source material then it will be capitalized on Wikipedia, and if not then not, the end. This is a compromise that works for (and doesn't 100% satisfy) everyone across all topics and wikiprojects. If you think Dicklyon and various other people who are convinced something is not a proper name (under either or both definitional approaches) are happy with the term being capitalized on Wikipedia, you are mistaken. But the big difference is that they accept it and get on with their lives, while a few topically devoted people will not and will keep over-capitalizing no matter what to get their preference until the community shuts that tendentiousness down. It happens all time, across innumerable topics, and Dicklyon and a few other people get demonized the whole lot of the over-capitalizers simply for getting in their way. We have an across-all-topics guideline to default to lower-case on everything, and it should be followed unless the sourcing clearly proves there is cause to capitalize.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree with GoodDay that it's a mess, and that we should be moving toward consistency. The best (only?) way to do that, in my experience, is to move toward consistency with our own style guidlines, rather than be jerked around by the variety of styles that different organizations and publishers use. In all cases, as far as I can find, there's no "consistent capitalization" of any of these drafts in reliable sources. Hence my frustration that brought us here. Dicklyon (talk) 01:04, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There doesn't need to be consistency if sources describe one as a proper noun and another one as an informal noun. SportingFlyer T·C 01:52, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. But that's a counter-factual hypothetical. Nobody has shown reason to think sources are treating NFL Draft as more a proper name than other drafts. Dicklyon (talk) 04:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unilateral page moves, while RFC is ongoing[edit]

Myself & others have noticed that an editor has been making unilateral page moves from 'uppercase' to 'lowercase', without benefit of RMs & while this RFC is in progress. IMHO those bold moves should be 'reverted'. It's actions like that, that only creates more tension around this topic. Even more frustrating, 'uppercase' redirects are created, which makes reverting more difficult. Perhaps, one should contact an administrator to 'reverse' those page moves. GoodDay (talk) 20:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Reverting them's not really more difficult though, arguably easier: just list them at WP:Requested moves/Technical requests#Requests to revert undiscussed moves and it'll all be handled without you having to manually move any of them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:06, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Already done. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:08, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not clear why you reverted those, starting with 1974 WFL Pro Draft, which cites only two sources, one calling it the WFL pro draft (lowercase), and other not using that term at all, but about a draft of professional players. Similarly 2011 UFL Draft; the sources that use the term "UFL draft" all use lowercase. And the USFL draft had always been pretty uniformly lowercase in sources, back in its day; I see you thrashed around trying to move it via Draft: space instead of asking as Stanton suggested. I don't move things without checking to be sure that lowercase is clearly appropriate. Are you thinking that if there's no consensus around the NFL draft, that there's no consensus for MOS:CAPS in general? Or just not in gridiron football? None of that makes sense. Dicklyon (talk) 23:25, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But since you've chosen to create controversy around them, we'll need an RM (or wait and see if closing this RfC resolves the controversy). Dicklyon (talk) 23:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I moved them because this discussion is open, right now, on this very issue, and you do not get to unilaterally move titles to support your viewpoint during an ongoing contentious RFC; if this finds that the consensus is for the NFL Draft being titled "NFL Draft" - then the others should be uppercase as well (and vice versa). We need to be consistent in how we deal with a sport's articles. And if this finds consensus that opposes your viewpoint, you need to accept that and not continually re-try to enforce your views. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
GoodDay, I have moved articles unilaterally without RM literally almost every day for the last 10 years. Seldom is there a reason to challenge any of those as controversial. For example, I recently moved Ace–ten games to the singular Ace–ten game, which agrees with its longstanding lead (and I had previously downcased "Ten" there and changed the hyphen to en dash, as in others like it). And I moved Whaling Disaster of 1871 to Whaling disaster of 1871, since sources usually describe it that way, not treating it as a proper name. And I downcased a bunch of "XXX final" articles that had no reason for capitalization, Obviously, there's some allergy about gridiron football or draft or something going around here, but it doesn't really seem logical to apply that "lack of consensus" to cases that are so clear. But yes, if they get questioned or reverted, we discuss, and try to find consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 00:05, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But you wouldn't (I hope) have moved any of those pages if an RM had been in progress to discuss that very move. This RfC is like an RM for all the pages it affects and, although I don't see a specific policy against it, it would be polite to refrain from moving the pages under discussion until the RfC closes. Certes (talk) 00:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is not "like an RM for all the pages it affects", it is at most an opinion poll. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:49, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, not an RM going on, but an RfC going on, with no clarity on what it might affect. So far, nobody has expressed an opinion that any of these recent draft related moves are wrong, just that the timing looks bad. So if the RfC resolves, maybe they'll say go ahead, you were right, and we won't have to treat them as controversial after all. Or not. Dicklyon (talk) 01:00, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None of the recent moves were probably incorrect, minor drafts are not the NFL Draft, which is the elephant in the room. But the room happens to be the issue - an RfC at this page should not replace the WP:RM process and become another RM page alternative, and I don't know why you want to trash the purpose and scope of WP:RM for a stubborn one-issue controversial end-run. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did not, and would not, "trash the purpose and scope of RM...". I use it a lot, and it often works as intended, bringing in both biased and unbiased editors to figure out what's right. Usually the consensus becomes clear. Dicklyon (talk) 01:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting that at least one partcipant here, Thryduulf, has made completely the oppose argument to Randy Kryn's, suggesting that it may be that specific-year NFL draft events might be proper names ("2022 NFL Draft", etc.), but the main topic not be one ("NFL draft"). While I don't buy the first half of that argument because independent source usage comes nowhere near to supportting it, it just goes to show that RK's position on this is simply a subjective opinion, not a fact, and not even one shared by others who have some disagreement with Dicklyon's entirely normal use of VPPOL to get at the question with a broad audience. Just because somone like RK makes the same "it's a proper name" argument over and over again, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, does not magically make it true. And just because they like to accuse others of trashing process "for a stubborn one-issue controverial end-run" doesn't mean it's not obvious projection. It literally is not possible to do an "end-run" in a contrary-to-policy-and-guidelines manner in VPPOL, because the entire community of editors who care, across all topics, about P&G interpretation, application, and changes are in here. RM can be easily system-gamed by overrunning it by a single wikiproject's internal canvassing, but that can't really be pulled off in VPPOL. The idea that this venue, which exists to hear all P&G matters that have become thorny, is somehow prohibited from examining AT and MoS questions as they pertain to a particular topic, is a fantasy. There is no policy anywhere limiting VPPOL's scope in such a way, nor mandatorily requiring RM as the only possible process to arrive at consensus relating to page naming, nor invalidating RfC as a process for any kind of question. "The room happens to be the issue" is blatant wikilawyering againt CONSENSUS and NOTBURO policies and against the entire reason VPPOL (and other noticeboards, and RfC process) exist in the first place. There really is no way around that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
at least one partcipant here, Thryduulf, has made completely the oppose argument to Randy Kryn's, suggesting that it may be that specific-year NFL draft events might be proper names ("2022 NFL Draft", etc.), but the main topic not be one ("NFL draft"). I have not made that argument. The closest I have come (which is really not that close at all) is to state that it is possible that it is possible that the NFL Draft may be a proper noun at the same time as the AFL draft being a common noun (it is also possible that the reverse is true), and that Wikipedia should not attempt to impose consistency where none exists in the real world.
RM can be easily system-gamed by overrunning it by a single wikiproject's internal canvassing it is also equally possible for RM to be easily system-gamed by overrunning it by internal canvassing by manual of style editors. Unless you have any evidence that any canvassing has actually occurred then you are just casting aspersions (and being listed on article alerts or deletion sorting lists is not evidence of canvassing). Attempting to bias the discussion by including or excluding certain editors (e.g. I note that the initiator(s) of this RFC chose not to notify the talk pages of the articles concerned, and such notification was made only two days later) is at least equally inappropriate as explicit canvassing.
The only wikilawyering against consensus I'm seeing is this RFC attempting to wikilawyer against the consensus at RM. Thryduulf (talk) 14:46, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I misattributed the this vs that being a proper name point to you; someone did raise that somewhere, and I'll have to try to dig that up and attribute it properly. As for canvassing, sure, that's easy: Here's Jweiss11 [35] demanding an RM from Dicklyon yet simultaneously misusing (with "Dicklyon is beginning a campaign of ...", "This is inappropriate") the wikiproject to poison the well in advance of the RM he's demanding. Needless to say, the RM was dogpiled by opposers from the wikiproject, making invalid arguments (including claims about said trademark, which turned out to be applicable to just a clothing line). Here's RK falsely claiming that this discussion, which was initially neutrally announced at WT:NFL, is invalid and just "an opinion poll" and insisting that it be shut down [36][37][38][39]. Shortly thereafter, of course, a dogpile showed up to demand it be shut down. This is what canvassing is and does. There's surely more, but I have better things to do than trawl through 20+ pages of archived talk. Next, there is no consensus for "NFL Draft" (to wikilawyer about or otherwise): The result of the move request was: no consensus. No consensus is not a "consensus to not move" (WP:THREEOUTCOMES). Upheld as a good close at DRV. You repeating endlessly that Dicklyon is trying to shop/lawyer his way around a consensus is just false on its face and is what the actual aspersion-casting here is.

Update: There was actually more of this recent poisoning by RK of originally-neutral notice: [40][41][42]; it moved from just canvassing, to very pointed doubling down on canvassing, to a pseudo-retraction that states "two sides" that are really just both his side in different wording, so is more canvassing. Similar canvassing of an entire football wikiproject to gang up on a page mover attempting to comply with guidelines (in that case MOS:ABBR) goes all the way back to 2007 [43], and this doesn't represent looking very hard to find more examples. (Whether to use the long or short name is maybe more of a WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE matter, and still unresolved, with the main article at the long form and the annual ones at the short form. But the point is that trying to stir the entire wikiproject into opposing the changes was canvassing.) Contrast all that with the original neutral notices in those places and this additional one. A world of difference.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC); added more diffs: 18:03, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dicklyon, just don't move any more pages related to this RFC, while it's in progress. GoodDay (talk) 02:00, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I won't. I'll interpret "related" as anything about gridiron football and sports drafts. Is that broad enough for you? Can I still work on card games and whaling disasters and such? Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't implement the result of an RfC/RM prior to the RfC/RM having a result. It's common sense. -- GreenC 05:07, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since you've asked. You could help me complete implementing an RFC result, concerning each season's NHL playoffs. GoodDay (talk) 05:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for working on that mess of inconsistently over-capitalized finals, semifinals, etc. I'll help a bit here and there, but without JWB it's not something I can take on the bulk of. Maybe someone with AWB or JWB experience can be persuaded to help. Dicklyon (talk) 16:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gnoming is my life. BTW - Where & whenever this whole "Uppercase vs lowercase" American football dispute ends. I will abide by the final decision, whatever that is. GoodDay (talk) 16:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not football, but once again another sports-related unilateral page move, at NBA conference finals, recently NBA Conference Finals, ocurred. Bypassing the RM route, isn't the best way to go. GoodDay (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Update - I've gotten the page move reversed. Next time, please use RM, concerning these sports related pages & uppercase/lowecase. GoodDay (talk) 18:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think as a rule of thumb it is best to treat changing the capitalisation of any specific thing or event as potentially controversial unless and until there is a clear track record of RM discussions about such being uncontested. Thryduulf (talk) 18:32, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not stated at WP:BOLDMOVE. Is there an ArbCom ruling or something to that effect that I'm missing? —Bagumba (talk) 18:56, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, lowercasing is one of the most routine types of moves. "Change to sentence case (WP:AT)" is one of the default selectable reasons for moving a page. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:09, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The third bullet at WP:BOLDMOVE says It seems unlikely that anyone would reasonably disagree with the move. Based on discussions like this one it seems very likely that there will be reasonable disagreement about moves of such pages, hence my suggestion.
I am not suggesting that all lower-casing be treated as controversial, indeed I listed Top-shelf Liquor → Top-shelf liquor at WP:RM/T earlier today. Thryduulf (talk) 19:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The divide might be that some don't see the disagreement as "reasonable". Then someone thinks its reasonable to disagree, and reverts per WP:RMUM. —Bagumba (talk) 19:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There has been a depressing lack of treating opinions other than one's own as reasonable, which is another point in favour of asking people to treat these moves as potentially controversial. Thryduulf (talk) 20:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Uppercase v lowercase on Wikipedia[edit]

What's the overall situation on the topic-in-general, concerning page titles? Are sports pages the only area, where lowercasing is opposed? GoodDay (talk) 19:34, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although it's been quiet recently, there was a lot of opposition to the routine downcasing of railway lines a while back. In some cases the issue was, in part, that the downcasing arguments didn't account for situations where a given set of words is used as a common noun in some contexts and a proper noun in other contexts (e.g. things like ngrams for "Island Line"/"Island line"/"island line" are actively unhelpful), and that some railway lines have clear names and others have just descriptions (c.f. Bristol-Exeter line, Great Western Main Line). There were also disagreements about whether what mattered was prevalence in all sources or prevalence in sources that are reliable and/or authoritative in the given context. I believe other topic areas have seen similar issues when the attention of those keen on downcasing focused on them. Thryduulf (talk) 19:44, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We have a somewhat ridiculous situation where the Sunbury Line is in the United States and the Sunbury line is in Australia. Who knew that these two countries had different capitalization conventions for their rail lines, and that disambiguation by capitalization was sufficient to distinguish them? wbm1058 (talk) 21:03, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a little odd. Do sources actually capitalize one and not the other? ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 21:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know. Neither article's capitalisation has been discussed on the article talk page, the Australian article has been through several discussed moves all to and from titles ending in lowercase "line", including a batch move of articles from "railway line" to "line" in August last year. The American line had consensus that same month to be moved to Sunbury Line (Norfolk Southern) (and that the Australian line was the primary topic of the two based on page views), but in November Keystone18 unilaterally removed the disambiguator as "unnecessary". Wbm1058 reverted that move two days later (which I'm guessing is how they're aware of this example), but on 3 January Keystone18 reverted again. In all the RMs affecting both titles, the existing capitalisation was retained without discussion. In both cases this capitalisation was the one the article was created at, although the Australian one did spend 6 days at Railway Line in 2007 before being reverted "per naming conventions for Australian railway lines" (neither user involved has edited in over a decade). I have not found where these naming conventions are documented (ideally they should be in Category:Wikipedia naming conventions (transportation) if anyone does know where they are). Thryduulf (talk) 22:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DIFFCAPS states that Ambiguity may arise when typographically near-identical expressions have distinct meanings, e.g. iron maiden vs. Iron Maiden [...] The general approach is that whatever readers might type in the search box, they are guided as swiftly as possible to the topic they might reasonably be expected to be looking for, by such disambiguation techniques as hatnotes and/or disambiguation pages. When such navigation aids are in place, small details are often sufficient to distinguish topics [...]. This is an issue that comes up every so often at RfD, and the general principle there is that DIFFCAPS are appropriate only when it is clear that someone searching with one capitalisation is looking for a different topic than someone using a different capitalisation. Without having looked at the evidence, my gut feeling is that this is not the case here and one or both articles should take disambiguation. Thryduulf (talk) 22:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That rationale is local-dependent right? Since American-English differs only slightly, are there other uses of over-capitalization (not sports) in the States and Canada in comparison to Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, etc.? Conyo14 (talk) 22:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean by "local-dependent"? Whether a difference in capitalisation is sufficient to distinguish two topics can only be determined on a case-by-case basis. Whether a given article having an uppercase title is "over-capitalisation" or not also depends on context and is not something that can be declared in the abstract. Thryduulf (talk) 23:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, that helps clear up my confusion a bit, but also doesn't help out the people above us yelling at each other. Conyo14 (talk) 23:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not an ENGVAR matter. It's simply that transit/transport-enthusiast editors in the early days of Wikipedia over-capitalized a large number of things to do with the subject. (Same thing happened in dance, many sports, traditional games, spirtuality/esotericism, certain science sub-disciplines, theatre, various media-franchise fandoms, domesticated animals, etc., etc.). In the 2000s to early 2010s, over-capitalization really ran wild on Wikipedia, with little in the way of cleanup beginning until the mid-2010s, and resisted tooth and nail by topically focused editors who keep trying to write Wikipedia to match the style of their preferred specialist literature instead of how general-audience sources write. Any attempt to lower-case something that was capitalized through the specialized-style fallacy usually produces angry pushback from a wikiproject, so the cleanup is a thankless as well as tedious task. It is slow-going and doesn't immediately result in consistency. There are also sometimes proper names that are uniformly capitalized in independent sources, mixed in with things that have names in a similar form but which are usually not capitalized, so there's a lot of case-by-case examination to do.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that the Wikipedia:Specialized-style fallacy is an essay that has little to no support among the wider editing community (I've seen it described as the "Specialized-style fallacy fallacy" at least once). Thryduulf (talk) 14:48, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[citation needed] A systemic search of the entire site (as of last indexing) would seem to contradict this weasel-worded claim [44][45] But of course the essay isn't "the issue" at all; it not even an issue of any kind, since you could remove any mention of the essay from this entire page (and every page), and delete the essay itself, and all the other reasoning still stands. And you've addressed none of it. Like all essays, when someone mentions one, what they are doing is pointing to an argument that has already been laid out, so they don't have to repeat it. "It's just an essay" is meaningless, since it is not being cited "per", as if it's a policy or guideline. Everyone already knows its an essay. It's a frequent argument that has been written and saved to avoid re-typing, not a rule to follow. SSF is an argument you have not refuted. The existence of such an essay and its having a talk page is a wide-open invitation for anyone to refute it. No one has. Good luck with that. "little to no support among the wider editing community" is obviously not the case, since it accurately describes what the community does and why. It doesn't get brought up a lot, because what it addresses is an issue confined to fortunately few subjects any longer, and the disputations regarding them are largely confined to short-lived MoS talk pages and RM discussions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:28, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations[edit]

I may be the only editor who's put significant, sustained time into working the Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations backlog. One year ago, I had worked it down to just 20 redirect-links. But now, as more and more title-case alternative capitalizations have been declared to be flat-out miscapitalizations, the list has been snowed over with an avalanche of demanded work: over 500 redirect-links as of today many requiring hundreds of edits to fix. You have to sift through this haystack to find the legitimate obvious, non-title-case miscapitalizations. It's rather maddening and demoralizing; I've pretty much abandoned working this as my plate is too full so I have to let go of some things. – wbm1058 (talk) 01:27, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, it would be useful if there was some sort of severity of miscapitalisation parameter. Bell Hooks (correct: bell hooks) would be a BLP vio if the subject were still alive (I'll fix this one momentarily), Air new zealand is very obviously incorrect and needs correcting but isn't actively harmful (I'd fix but I'm about to flag the series of edits that added it for examination by those with subject matter knowledge), Amsterdam, The Netherlands is harmless and isn't something that anybody should go out of their way to fix before FAC. Coding something like this would (I presume) be easy for someone with the relevant skills, but deciding on categories and the criteria for them could be hard and applying the category to each one very time consuming. There may also be dispute about the severity of individual miscapitalisations. Thryduulf (talk) 01:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I could build that into the template easily, if there was a desire for it, but I'm skeptical anyone's willing to go through and apply it to hundreds of instances of ((R from miscapitalisation)) and various alternative names of that template, plus there are innumerable instances of ((R from other capitalisation)) and ((R from alternative name)) and ((R from modification)) and so on that are really miscapitalizations that were created as redirects before ((R from miscapitalisation)) existed, and which have not been switched to the more specific rcat template. I don't think it would be difficult to figure out which severity levels should exist and based on what policy, guideline, and other critiera, though there could be pushback against the entire enterprise on productivity grounds. I'm "processy" enough to not raise that objection myself, and am not into telling people how to spend their volunteer time, so I'm willing to do the template work if someone wants to open a discussion (I guess at Template talk:R from miscapitalisation about such an implementation. There's already a conceptually related thread over there from 2019–2020.)

I do agree that there would be dispute about which level to label particular cases with and even whether the template qualified for a specific case sometimes. E.g, in your examples, I don't agree that Amsterdam, The Netherlands appearing in our article text is harmless and something to ingore until FAC; that's only taking acount of whether it's problematic for a particular article's overall quality and understandablity. It's problematic for other reasons, including wrongly telling readers that this is how to write the Netherlands (to the extent that the prepended the is still in use), and it is likely to inspire editors (especially new ones) to assume this is "Wikipedia style" and to go around "correcting" other instances to read The, and even doing it to other placenames with a leading the ("the Camargue", "the Levant", "the Scottish Highlands", etc.; the only two I know of for which The is conventional are The Hague and The Gambia, and even the latter is very dubious [46][47]). We had this problem with the overcapitalization of bird vernacular names that was permitted by a consensus stalemate for 8 years; the capitalization crept into mammals and other non-bird subjects, despite a strong consensus to not do that and there existing in some of those topics explicit international standards within particular disciplines to never capitalize in that manner. PS: Having a consensus stalemate just sit around and fester like that with negative consequences is why the RfC on this page is a good idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let's analyze the move-related and closure quasi-guidelines, and relevant policies, in detail[edit]

There's an obvious tension between A) treating a move (or set of moves) as controversial on the basis that someone is controverting it (and especially on the basis of there being an ongoing RfC or RM about the matter), assuming the good faith that there is a legitimate issue as the basis of the disagreement (e.g. someone can prove that RS do uniformly treat a particular case or class of such terms as capitalized proper names, or prove that some other WP:P&G line item pertains to the subject and the mover did not account for it), versus B) system-gaming by throwing up manufactured, stalling "controversy" that ultimately has no basis but WP:ILIKEIT and WP:SSF fallacies. The latter turns rapidly into long-term WP:POINTy stonewalling that wastes lots of community time re-re-re-arguing over something which obviously only has one eventual outcome: if it's not capitalized in the vast majority of independent sources, it won't be capitalized here. We should not continue to entertain the latter sort of "controversy", including for policy reasons covered below. It drains not only volunteer time and attention, but is a vampire on the neck of editorial goodwill. The longer a little topical "rebellion" against any guidleline or policy continues, the more invested in the revolt and its defense at all costs particular editors will become. The last thing we ever need is another years-long fiasco like the species over-capitalization drama cesspool, the outcome of which was entirely predictable but which fomented an unbelievable amount of disruption (which I need not lay out in detail here; better to just let it flow under the bridge).

WP:BOLDMOVE:

See also WP:MOVE#Reasons for moving a page:

Next, WP:RM#CM:

When Dicklyon began lower-casing these pages ("to correct obvious typographical errors"), they had not previously been subject to naming dispute. And there was (and still is!) not a basis on which to reasonably disagree with the moves. Later this turned into two RMs and an MRV (covered below), resulting in (sequentially) a WP:FALSECONSENSUS to capitalize (violates various guidelines and a policy, based on false claims about proper-name treatment in sources), then a failure to reach consensus when examined more broadly (largely on the basis of factually wrong claims pertaining to trademark), then an endorsement of the no-consensus closure, leaving us with a long-term unresolved issue, for which a VPPOL RfC is the ideal solution because it is too broad for anyone to game it with false claims, and won't have too narrow a range of editorial input. See below for WP:CONSENSUS policy explicitly recommending RfC and VPPOL to settle such matters.

Neither of the pages quoted above are actually guidelines or policies; one is a procedural-instructions information page and the other a help information page, both with the authority level of essays (per WP:CONLEVEL policy). Hyperbolic claims above that Dicklyon did something "in violation of" WP:BOLDMOVE or WP:RM#CM is wrongheaded at best, a combination of WP:WIKILAWYERING and ad hominem). But taken together this material seems to have general community buy-in, kind of along the acceptance lines of the essays WP:AADD and WP:BRD; we should take them to at least be best practices even if they are not grounds for bureaucratic foot-stomping or trying to punish someone. The manual moves by Dicklyon that started this brouhaha clearly qualify as valid reasons for moving and as (at the time) non-controversial, even if doing more of them while this discussion is open was a poor idea. They are also reasons for the RMs to have concluded in favor of lower-case, reasons which have been controverted by precisely zero P&G arguments or sourcing facts, if only the RMs had not been overrun by people from a wikiproject unreasonably determined to get over-capitalization against NC and MoS guidelines (and in one case misrepresenting a clothing trademark has having something to do with the player-drafting subject; though that was probably an innocent error, it still contributed powerfully to a blatant WP:FALSECONSENSUS).

Back to WP:MOVE:

Note carefully that a) this is optional, b) nothing in this can be taken to suggest that broader community input via RfC or other means is somehow forbidden, and c) controversy is tied to the terms "appears unlikely" and "reasonably" and "you [the mover] believe". This cannot in any way be read to require full RM process on the basis that someone else retroactively claims it was controversial, to permit someone to be punished on the basis of a mind-reading exercise claiming the mover "should have realized" something "would be" controversial, or to give license to the manufacturing of a fake "controversy" that cannot be supported by sources or P&G.

WP:NOT#FORUM and WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND and even WP:NOT#SOAPBOX policies all also have a role to play here: neither WP nor any of its processes exist for the purpose of "Someone is wrong on the Internet" debate-for-sport about whether something philosophically "is" a proper name and "should" in an ideal world be capitalized. We have a really simple rule: capitalize (or do anything else stylistically divergent) only if almost all the sources do it for that specific subject, but don't do it otherwise, even if some of the sources do it. These same WP:NOT policies frequently come up in other style disputes, especially ahead-of-the-curve advocacy for language-change movements that usually pertain to identity politics but also some other subjects such as how to write about suicide, etc. I don't think these policies need to be quoted here; the gist of them is short, and I think everyone remembers what they are.

We also need to consider the WP:DISCARD part of WP:CLOSE in some detail (another information-page essay with high community acceptance):

This did not happen in the most recent RM: the arguments in favor of capitalization were clearly contrary to both P&G (in spirit and wording alike) and to the sourcing; the capitalization was based on preferences (and sometimes on false "facts"); no argument was ever presented (or in this case could be) that one P&G page contradicted another on the matter; and making fans of a topic happy with over-capitalization or other excessive stylization variances is in no way a project goal of Wikipedia. It should have been closed with consensus for lower-case. An earlier RM (2016) was attended by nearly no one but people from the NFL and American football wikiprojects, as it had (craftily or otherwise) been opened as effectively a mass-move, but not formatted as one, which necessarily failed to attract the attention a mass-move normally would, on the talk page of a brand new article no one but them could be watchlisting. There was nearly no input other than unchallenged claims that it was a proper name capitalized in sources, so the closer really had little choice but to close it in favor of "Draft". WP:MRV upheld the decision (MRV only exists to determine whether the closer screwed up, not to re-examine pro/con arguments or entertain any new ones. Interestingly, that MRV concluded with endorse closure but allow fresh RM. I.e., it was recognized that the issue was not settled. So, trying to pillory Dicklyon for trying again much later to achieve a clear consensus based on evidence and P&G, and trying again through RfC when the new RM resulted in consensus failure, is wrongheaded. Failures to reach consensus should be resolved, and MRV actually encouraged doing so. Somewhat similar situation with regard to NHL [d|D]raft: RM failed to come to a consensus according to the closer, despite the policy and sourcing argument overwhelmingly supporting lowercase; canvassing in the wikiproject [48], including personalized venting against Dicklyon by the partisan-on-this-subject admin who recently blocked him (WP:INVOLVED failure). a MRV on this one itself came to no consensus, largely because the wording of MOS:SPORTCAPS was being editwarred in the interim. (It has long since been stable, and has returned to not supporting such capitalization.)

WP:CONSENSUS policy of course also matters, and in a lot of ways that are a bit lengthy to cover:

Someone in the above discussion (maybe more than one) has made further impassioned and bureaucratic claims that we cannot decide on any of this without first RMing the main subject (presently at National Football League Draft, though it has been moved multiple times, and without an RM about it). But there is no policy, guideline, or even loose community procedural basis for this assertion. There is no magical limit on what community consensus can decide, about what, at what location, through what discussion format, or with regard to what template (or none) is at the top of the discussion, and consensus ultimately exists and is determinable whether or not the discussion was structured a particular way or formally closed by anyone.

It's entirely reasonable for the RfC (or a later mass-RM) to bundle that article up with the others. If someone were to go open an RM on that or a related page right now, while this RfC is running, it would likely be regarded as at least mildly disruptive (WP:TALKFORK at least).

PS: For my part, I make guideline/policy compliant moves, manually or through RM/TR all the time. (I'm a PageMover and do not have to use RM/TR but I tend to do it, since it gives opportunity for someone to request a full RM if they think it's warranted.) As soon as I encounter resistance – even if that resistance cannot be justified on P&G or sources bases – I stop and switch to full RM discussions. If that process ultimately fails to produce results that are consistent with policy and with each other from move to move within a set of related RMs, then I'll RfC it. The latter is rare, but the idea that it's somehow procedurally impermissible cannot be defended.

PPS: Wikipedia:Our social policies are not a suicide pact has a bit of pertinence as well:

All the good faith assumption in the world has been and always is extended to people who want to over-capitalize things or engage in other stylization shenanigans on Wikipedia. The desire for stylisitic variance accounts for much of why MoS pages have so much churn and why there are so many RMs that again and again argue for capital letters and such, against the guidelines and without sufficient sourcing, for the same reasons, and do not conclude in favor of such requests. Nearly every subject has specialized or primary-source materials that over-capitalize things (often for signification as "important"), so such requests are never going to stop and just have to be taken in stride and handled as part of our routine. But such desires are also a big part of why MoS discussions are often so awful; everyone wants an exception for something, and when these demands turn tendentious they need to be gently but firmly shut down. When people try to prevent and invalidate the community's own ability to examine these demands and the bases for them, a line has been crossed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Off-topic (about monarchs); personalized discussion that belongs in user talk
An RFC at WP:NCROY was held (late 2023) with the result basically being that it's desirable to drop "of country" from monarch bio pages, where possible. So far, it's mostly being implement via RMs on monarch bio pages & some via Bold moves. Overall the end result has left monarch page bios in more inconsistencies now, then ever before. So.. if part of the lower-case push, is to bring consistency to sports page titles? It's quite likely, the result will be more inconsistencies. GoodDay (talk) 18:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are always short-term inconsistencies between pages after such a decision; e.g. cleaning up the over-capitalization of species articles took over a year. There is no "flip the case" button to push; it's all work that editors have to do, and isn't instantaneous. This doesn't mean the decision or the process to implement it is somehow broken. WP:THEREISNODEADLINE and all 'at.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the example I've given. There's zero chance of consistency being restored, particularly as inconsistency is preferred. GoodDay (talk) 20:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what that even means, but it sounds like a discussion for another place. Care to fill me in on the details in user talk?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:40, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So is this RfC for all sport drafts or just NFL? I don't think there is any league's draft that would be special enough to be excluded here. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 18:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just NFL in the particulars, since whether something is or not a proper name consistently capitalized in independent reliable sources could vary case-by-case, determined by analysis of source material. But the general thrust of this, that a wikiproject or a particular topic is not somehow exempt from guidelines just because fans of or specialists in the topic say so, is generally applicable (though not truly at issue, due to WP:CONLEVEL policy).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:46, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: It's quite frustrating that you repeatedly continue to cast aspersions towards the NFL WikiProject when members of the project exist on both sides of the subject. You've replied to this topic more than anybody else I believe (looks like 43 comments), badgering everybody who has supported uppercasing. I think you need to stop casting aspersions, take a step back, and let conversations actually play out instead of trying to convince each and every comment that is not immediately supportive of your point of view. This type of behaviour dissuades others from actually contributing to the conversation. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What aspersions am I casting? I complained of canvassing and posted diffs to prove it. Maybe it's an over-simplification to use "the wikiproject" as a shorthand for "topically-focused editors, who are mostly found in the American football project and NFL side project (though there are a few who are not paticipating in the projects), who are seeking capitalization of something that doesn't follow our standards, but by the way there may remain a handful of people also in those wikiprojects who don't feel the same way". But it's not aspersion-casting. There is nothing uncivil or false or unfair about stating the fact that wikiproject or other editors focused on a particular topic are not exempt from a guideline, per CONLEVEL. That's entirely true and correct. I also did not badger everyone; I responded to several for making unclear or not-exactly-defensible statments, but I've already left off that. Instead of picking at me for aspersions I'm not casting, how about addressing the substance of the material I laboriously put together? You know, that focus on contribution not contributor principle you are advocating.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You've repeatedly framed this discussion as a local/false consensus caused by one WikiProject instead of editors, as a whole, disagreeing on the proper capitalization. Uninvolved and involved editors exist on both sides of this debate and while I could go either way, I'm more frustrated and worn down by the constant bludgeoning that has taken place in this discussion. Frankly I don't have the energy to participate in this opinion poll to the extent that you'd like for me to. This RfC has gotten to the point that we're not going to see more uninvolved editors chime in because of how long it's gotten and the replies they'll receive once they do chime in. I've voiced my opinion and I'm willing to leave it at that, as you should be. I'll be there at the RM discussion when it takes place. Hey man im josh (talk) 21:01, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, right back to focusing on editor instead of edits, I see. I have described this in terms of local and false consensus, and the description is easily defended (and I've already defended it, so I'm not going to do that again here), and is not aspersion-casting, but a simple observation. I've already conceded that using "the wikiproject" as a shorthand is an oversimplification. There is no "editors, as a whole, disagreeing", or WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS would not say what they do and maybe not even exist. Editors as a whole actually very broadly agree not to capitalize in this manner, and it's why there are multiple guidelines saying not to do it. All of this is a few editors interested in a particular topic trying to undo, or seek an exception from, a consensus that already exists and is long-established and very solid, and general across all topics. This sport subject is not somehow special and different compared to other subjects. This (and VPPOL before it) is a good venue for settling the question, since RM failed to do so. This RfC was editwarred to have jammed into the front of it a bunch of counter-to-policy pretense that an RfC isn't legitimate. That is what is confusing editors and dissuading their participation. That may well have trainwrecked the RfC completely, but we'll see. I could have reverted that nonsense like others did, but chose not to. Instead I've focused on what the policies and guidelines and not-quite-guidelines actually say. Wish others would do the same instead of making more personalized comments, pretending the WP community can't examine whatever it wants to examine, making false claims about trademarks and "proper names" that are disprovable with mere minutes of source reading, and trying to force WP to "obey" primary-source preferences.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this stuff in your talk pages or take it to Dispute Resolutions. Closer will not care about this. Conyo14 (talk) 21:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We probably do need some dispute resolution regarding capitalisation discussions at some point, given how many of them that turn contentious. This is not that discussion though. Thryduulf (talk) 22:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is the "Let's analyze the move-related and closure quasi-guidelines, and relevant policies, in detail" sub-thread. What "controversy" is there about any of this analysis, and what did you want to contribute to the analysis? Just repeating over and over and over again in WP:IDHT fashion, everywhere you can think to do so, that you don't like VPPOL process, after your arguments about it have been completely refuted by policy at every turn, is not constructive.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General observation about capitalization disputes like this one[edit]

Creating a subsection here to continue a discussion above, because I was away for a few days and if I respond way up there at this point, it will be invisible.

I commented above: The parade of decapitalization crusades in various subject-matter areas, against the longstanding preferences of the editors who work in those subject areas, has had a consistently demoralizing effect for a very long time, and should be strongly discouraged. I stand by that view.

(The suggestion above that by using the word "crusade" I analogized editors who disagree with me to "violent religious imperialists," and conjured up "historical atrocities," is just frivolous.)

I recognize that deferring to subject-matter specialists on style or formatting issues is not Wikipedia's usual approach. In many areas, where project-wide uniformity is important, it is understandable why it should not be. But if the only issue, as here, is whether a given word in an article title or a phrase should be capitalized or not, the approach of a handful of editors, of moving from one topic-area within the encyclopedia to another and insisting on decapitalizing words that have been up-styled for years, has been proven by years of history to be unhelpful and demoralizing. I have seen this in a number of subject areas; as just one prominent example, the enforced down-styling some time ago of the second words of bird names still sticks in our knowledgeable bird-editors' craws.

One editor prominent in these decapitalization debates writes above that another such editor gets name-called and otherwise attacked for [raising capitalization disputes] very frequently. Name-calling should be avoided, but: if I found myself consistently being criticized for my approach to editing Wikipedia, then I would carefully reevaluate the desirability and value of what I was doing; and I would do that even if I thought my position to be justified by a style-guide pages. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:19, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for recognizing "that deferring to subject-matter specialists on style or formatting issues is not Wikipedia's usual approach". Not in birds, and not in football. And not in the hundreds of other topic areas that I've worked on for many years, where fixes to conform with WP style typically go unremarked. Review some my last few thousand edits with summary "case fix" that are outside of football and drafts, and see if can find any controversy or upsetness or demoralization; seems unlikely. Dicklyon (talk) 00:37, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: What about the issue of "playoffs" and "finals" in titles? How do you view this as different from those discussions? I ask because I know you've tried to downcase all titles that contain these and you've hit resistance in doing so. If the matter were as simple as implied, then why aren't all titles with "Playoffs" moved to "playoffs" and "Final" moved to "final"? There are instances where you were unable to gain consensus to downcase all of those. I do believe that those instances were considered proper names, and that that is why they weren't downcased, You're obviously more familiar with those discussions than I am, so please do correct me if I'm misremembering. I'm wondering if you consider those situations settled or whether they were simply no consensus. I'm trying to see the difference between this and those situations. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:18, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I may. I doubt a consensus would be reached to lowercase NHL Conference Finals. I know that a consensus wasn't obtained in the baseball area, for lowercasing ALCS, NLCS, ALDS, NLDS, ALWC or NLWC. -- GoodDay (talk) 01:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How is "I doubt that a consensus would be reached" relevant to the conversation here? Did I poke at those Series articles at some point? I don't see it. Or was there a no-consensus discussion in the past, so I left them alone? Remind me. Dicklyon (talk) 04:16, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I found Talk:Division Series#Requested move 11 September 2022 (auspicious date) where it was decided to leave Series capped in general. I don't think I've touched any of those since then, have I? Dicklyon (talk) 04:23, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Concerning the NHL, RM in Feb 2023 for NHL Conferences Finals & the RM in September 2022 concerning MLB playoff rounds, which likely would've lower-cased ALCS, NLCS, ALDS, NLDS, ALWC & NLWC, if it had passed. I'm just pointing out some places where it's likely, 'lower-casing' doesn't have a chance of being adopted. GoodDay (talk) 04:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think, without relitigating the past discussions, it's helpful to consider why those instances of downcasing do not happen when considering whether this one should. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There were a few cases where finals lowercase were objected to, and others where these was consensus to lowercase. Look up some of these at WT:MOSCAPS#Concluded. I don't think any concluded with a consensus for uppercase, but a few had no consensus (like the NHL Conference Finals that GoodDay mentions above). Nothing there about playoffs; I don't recall any objections there, but maybe I've forgotten. Dicklyon (talk) 04:05, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was some controversy about some of these back then. No "upsetness or demoralization" that I can detect though. Dicklyon (talk) 04:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I've said before, what it is actually demoralizing is isolated WP:TAGTEAMs of editors trying to make up their own "rule" about a particular topic and force all other editors to "obey" it, and then fight tooth and nail tendentiously against all the applicable WP:P&G and overwhelming sourcing that do not agree with their preference. It happens again and again, and really it only ever turns out one way, but the amount of community goodwill and editorial time and attention eroded in the course of such subject-specific "rebellions" is highly costly. They only ever involve a small fraction of people interested in a topic (even at the wikiproject level), acting like they speak for everyone. If they choose to demoralize themselves in becoming over-invested in pushing a promotional capitalization, I suppose that's their own business, but its demoralizing to everyone else involved, too, and it needs to come to an end. We have WP:CONLEVEL for a reason.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:49, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please can you provide evidence that there is (one or more) WP:TAGTEAMs of editors. It's worth noting that I'm seeing tendentious, sometimes personalised, arguments against anybody that doesn't agree with downcasing far more than I'm seeing tendentious arguments in the opposite direction. I'm also not seeing anybody claiming they speak for everyone, nor am I seeing anything relevant to CONLEVEL - there is no attempt to undermine the policies and guidelines, just disagreement about what the correct application of the guidelines are in this instance. Thryduulf (talk) 13:15, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alleged tag teams or the lack thereof are best handled per WP:CONDUCTDISPUTE—at the relevant user talk page(s) or noticeboard. Let's focus on the specific title and capitalization issues here. Thanks. —Bagumba (talk) 14:04, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's fair enough. I've already diffed various canvassing and such, but this really isn't the venue for it. I'm really not inclined to ever drag people to ANI or thereabouts unless they're clearly WP:NOTHERE, which doesn't pertain to anyone in this dicussion (including the repeat canvasser). Even if I may think some antics are outright disruptive, the end result usually comes out the way it should when there's a broad venue, and the disruption dissipates on its own afterward. PS: There doesn't seem to be any actual dispute "about what the correct application of the guidelines are in this instance"; rather, there's an assertion that NFL Draft "is a proper name", followed by a large amount of evidence disproving the notion that independent sources predominantly choose to actually capitalize it as one. Frankly, most of us already knew this before any of the RMs started and long before this RfC; the tendentiousness has been entirely in the ignoring of this and demanding the capitalization anyway, no matter what the sourcing shows or what multiple guidelines say to do.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:20, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...but: if I found myself consistently being criticized for my approach to editing Wikipedia, then I would carefully reevaluate the desirability and value of what I was doing @Newyorkbrad, does "carefully reevaluate" imply that Dicklyon should stop? Otherwise, who's to say they he hasn't already carefully reevaluated and decided that it's best to continue? —Bagumba (talk) 06:59, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That was in the context of "another such editor gets name-called and otherwise attacked for [raising capitalization disputes] very frequently", presumably about me. But the premise is false, if "very frequently" has to do with how often I get attacked for my work. The great bulk of my work goes unremarked. Every now and then, in some corner of WP that wants to ignore guidelines and have their own style of capitalization, and typically involving the same small set of editors, I do get name-called and attacked. And yes I've reflected on why and how this happens, and how important it might be for me to keep on or change how I approach capitalization fixes. Over the last couple of years, I ramped up the rate of fixing, a lot, through the use of JWB, but focused on areas where the consensus was very clearly established by RM and other discussions. If you look at the range of things I've fixed in the sports area, football even, you'll see that the great bulk of it got no pushback, as it was so obviously right (e.g. lowercasing the second word in "Defensive Back", "Assistant Coach", and such). There was a big kerfluffle when I fixed things like "Men's Singles" in tennis (and other sports), but it was driven almost entirely by a single editor. Much discussion ensued before we documented the longstanding consensus to not do such things. It's not "very frequent" that we have to have such big discussions to yet again agree to follow our usual guidelines; sometimes a few per year, and sometimes I get complained about at ANI in the process, which further complicates and slows down getting to a resolution. Why is all this important for me to continue? Because in some of these over-capitalized areas one can observe in the n-gram stats that capitalization has been increasing since Wikipedia started articles with capitalized titles. That is, Wikipedia is so unreasonably effective at influencing the English language, that we need to be careful. Since our style is to only capitalize proper names, readers and writers interpret what we capitalize as proper names. I think we see that in the "NFL Draft" usage, with caps increasing over the last 15 years (still nowhere close to consistently capped in sources, but increasing, as some have noted). It's not right that WP should be promoting this to a proper name. We should follow the language and usage, tempered by our own house style, yet we inevitably lead whether we want to or not. So getting it right is important. I'm not trying to right a great wrong, just trying to avoid some small wrongs. Maybe I need to write an essay... Dicklyon (talk) 15:55, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it would be impossible to calculate. But, I wonder (in terms of page titles) what the percentage is for how many (currently) are in uppercase style & how many (currently) are in lowercase style. GoodDay (talk) 16:06, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since the great majority of articles are on subjects with proper names, you'll mostly see those. If you look at all titles with all words capitalized, the great majority of those will be correct, as proper names. If you look at all titles with some words lowercase, the great majority of those will be correct, too, per our policies and guidelines like WP:NCCAPS. You have to click through hundreds of random articles, typically, to find one that's not right. That is, the miscapitalization rate is much less than 1%, thanks to the diligent efforts of many thousands of editors. On other hand, if you look at titles of new articles, they're much more often over-capitalized, because a lot of editors haven't noticed that our style is to use sentence cases in titles, not title case. Those usually get caught and fixed before long, but some persist for a long time. Not clear is that addresses what you're pondering. Dicklyon (talk) 16:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah that about answers it. BTW - concerning the 'lower-casing' in section headings/sub-headings of pages? I've come to accept them. GoodDay (talk) 16:19, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Titles, headings, sub-headings, table headings, list headings, etc. are all in sentence case in WP style. Good that you accept that. Dicklyon (talk) 16:24, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't have to click through many random articles to find a questionable one this time: Container City, an old but unsourced article, with title capped because of two named installations Container City I and Container City II. Does that make Container City a proper name? The article later says it's a trademark, so maybe that's why it's capped. But maybe the article should be re-written to cover container cities generically instead. Anyway, that's a weird one-off. Dicklyon (talk) 16:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure on that. FWIW - Years ago, I helped get Commonwealth Realm moved to Commonwealth realm. Wasn't easy, but consensus remains to keep it there, to this day. GoodDay (talk) 16:44, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess there was no MOS:CAPS or WP:NCCAPS back in 2007? At Talk:Commonwealth realm/Archive 10 no body referred to any capitalization or titling guidelines or policies as far as I can find. But they did invoke WP:IAR so there must have been some kind of rules in play. Too bad there was no n-gram viewer yet, as it makes it an open-and-shut case. And some of the uppercase fans were arguing that there's no difference in meaning between Commonwealth realm and Commonwealth Realm, as if that point was on their side. Some of these ancient discussions are pretty peculiar. Dicklyon (talk) 20:21, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I found it in the discussion: Wikipedia's Naming conventions (Capitalization) state: "For page titles, always use lowercase after the first word, and do not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless: the title is a proper noun. For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper noun that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence." It's good to see that that bit of naming convention is essentially unchanged today. We should follow it. Dicklyon (talk) 20:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're off on that one because the Container City constructions aren't cities, so it falls into the category of not merely descriptive, much as we will not capitalize "planet' when referring to the planet Venus but we will when referring to Planet Hollywood. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 19:43, 21 January 2024 (UTC) [reply]
Perhaps so. Or maybe they're mini cities. In any case, the article lead starting with "Container City is the name..." should be rewritten to be about the subject, not about the name. Dicklyon (talk) 20:11, 21 January 2024 (UTC) [reply]

An incomplete list of sources[edit]

I took some time this morning to try to put together a table of what major nationwide sports sites do what. I acknowledge and understand that I may have missed some, but I wanted to show that there's a number of sources that consistently uppercase while also acknowledging that others do not.

Consistently upcase
Link Source Description Note
[49] National Football League Operations The history of the draft Upcases "NFL Draft" and downcases exactly where appropriate.
[50] National Football League Operations The rules of the draft Upcases "NFL Draft" and downcases exactly where appropriate.
[51] The Athletic Draft hub / landing page News stories listed use either title case or sentence case and capitalize "NFL Draft".
[52] CBS Sports Draft hub / landing page Consistent usage of "NFL Draft" in articles.
[53] Deadspin Search for "NFL Draft" Mostly consistent capitalization of "NFL Draft". Some titles have "draft" lowercased, but then the content of the article will have "Draft" uppercased.
[54] Fox Sports Draft hub / landing page Treats "NFL Draft" as a proper name, not utilizing title case, though sometimes uses all caps.
[55] Pro Football Focus Draft hub / landing page Stories are consistently capitalizing "2024 NFL Draft".

[56][57][58][59][60][61]

Sporting News No search available on-site, list of recent articles. Consistent downcasing. Their draft hub isn't updated for 2024 yet and I couldn't utilize a search function on the site. I found 6 articles published in the past week by 4 different authors in their NFL news section. Of those, only the third link contained any downcasing, which was only a single instance of the 6 mentions of "NFL Draft", the other 5 were upcased. The remaining 5 articles were all uppercased consistently.
[62] Sports Illustrated Draft hub / landing page Consistent usage of "NFL Draft" in articles.
[63] Sportsnet Search for "NFL Draft" I had to wade through a little bit, but I want to assess them as capitalizing to "Draft". I'm finding that the instances of downcasing are showing the Associated Press or another outlet as the author. I searched for "NFL Draft" and the 6 most recent articles I could find by Sportsnet writers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) all upcase to "Draft"
[64] Spotrac Draft tracker with salary values The various years in the tracker use "NFL Draft".
[65] TSN Search for "NFL Draft" Content that was authored by TSN is showing uppercased "Draft" but content that is written by others and shared on their website (commonly ESPN and The Canadian Press) use the downcased "draft". I found 7 articles since December 29th that credit TSN staff and they all upcase to "Draft" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), so I want to assess TSN as consistently using "Draft".
[66] Yardbarker Draft hub / landing page Consistent usage of "NFL Draft" in articles.
Mixed
Link Source Description Note
[67] ABC News Search for "NFL Draft" Inconsistent capitalizations.
[68] NBC Sports Draft hub / landing page Leans towards capitalization, especially when using "2024 NFL Draft", but has inconsistencies (even varies between the same writer).
[69] SB Nation Search for "NFL Draft" Capitalizes YYYY NFL Draft, such as "2023 NFL Draft", but will downcase to "NFL draft" when a year is not included. Seems to treat it as a proper name when a year is included but downcases when simply "NFL draft" or "NFL draft picks".
[70] USA Today Draft hub / landing page Inconsistent capitalization, even for drafts in the same year.
[71] Yahoo Sports Landing page for NFL news Inconsistent, seems to weigh a bit more towards capitalization though. Found a lot of sources on site showing capitalization (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) but I also found several that did not (1, 2, 3).
Consistently downcase
Link Source Title Note
[72] AP News Draft hub / landing page Consistently downcasing.
[73] Bleacher Report Draft hub / landing page Consistently downcasing.
[74] ESPN Draft hub / landing page Consistently downcasing.
NFL media guides
Link Source Title Note
[75] Arizona Cardinals 2023 Media Guide Largely corrupted, which is weird for a company as big as the NFL, but the part of it that's not corrupted is consistently capitalizing "NFL Draft".
[76] Atlanta Falcons Atlanta Falcons 2023 Media Guide Consistently and frequently uses "NFL Draft".
[77] Baltimore Ravens 2023 Baltimore Ravens Media Guide Consistently and frequently uses "NFL Draft".
[78] Buffalo Bills Bills 2023 Media Guide Doesn't use "NFL Draft" anywhere, but uses "NHL Draft" twice... not really relevant, just amusing.
[79] Carolina Panthers Media Guide 2023 Consistently and frequently uses "NFL Draft".
[80] Cincinnati Bengals Media Guide 2023 Cincinnati Bengals Coaching section is at the beginning of the PDF when searching for "NFL Draft", and it has a few instances of being downcased but then the rest of the media guide has 100+ instances of "NFL Draft". Seeming to imply that the intention is to use "NFL Draft" as opposed to the downcased version.

I didn't get through all of the media guides because, frankly, I'm getting worn out by doing all of this at once and I want a break from it. However, I wanted to share the findings that I have so far. I skewed heavily towards evaluating website's recent usage of "NFL Draft" vs "NFL draft", as opposed to historical, and made general notes (which may need a bit of CE). Hey man im josh (talk) 17:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Hey man im josh, do you care if I add to the sources? Conyo14 (talk) 17:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Conyo14, I think that depends. My focus of this list was to center in on the types of media and websites that would be focused on sports as opposed to general sites that may casually mention the draft and may not have a style guide for these events. At this point, I kind of want to manage this table myself until there's more feedback. I'm definitely open to expanding this though if you have suggestions. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, then I would recommend TSN, Sportsnet, and NESN to add. Conyo14 (talk) 17:59, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Conyo14, I'm going through these now, but couple of questions.
  • NESN – I'm not familiar with them, are they a local media, or are they nationwide? I ask because of the name "New England".
  • Sportsnet – I had to wade through a little bit, but I want to assess them as capitalizing to "Draft". I'm finding that the instances of downcasing are showing the Associated Press or another outlet as the author. I searched for "NFL Draft" and the 6 most recent articles I could find by Sportsnet writers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) all upcase to "Draft"
  • TSN – I searched "NFL Draft" and found a similar issue to Sportsnet, in that, content that was authored by TSN is showing uppercased "Draft" but content that is written by others but shared on their website (commonly ESPN and The Canadian Press) uses the downcased "draft". I found 7 articles since December 29th that credit TSN staff and they all upcase to "Draft" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), so I want to assess TSN as consistently using "Draft".
Any thoughts on these assessments Conyo14? Hey man im josh (talk) 18:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
NESN is localized to the New England area, so probably some Boston bias. The Sportsnet and TSN assessments are accurate. I'll try to find some more sports media outlets. It shouldn't matter if it's local. Conyo14 (talk) 18:59, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we could find tons of variances for local networks so I think I'd like to keep this list focused on the larger nationalized sources @Conyo14. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:13, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only one you might be missing then is Yahoo Sports, and maybe Bleacher Report. Conyo14 (talk) 21:20, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At this point, I kind of want to manage this table myself until there's more feedback. @Hey man im josh: Please add The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian as lowercase sources. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 06:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:CAPS considers only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. That would exclude non-indy sources like the NFL and its teams' media guides. —Bagumba (talk) 18:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's more or less why I didn't finish going through assessing the media guides. Never the less, I did think the inclusion was at least semi-relevant since these are the guides that the NFL encourages media to rely on. It doesn't mean the media needs to or does follow the same capitalization that the NFL seems to push. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A great deal of the stuff tableized above is primary-source promotional and internal material from the league itself or teams within it, so completely irrelevant (Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. They are obviously not independent sources.

The claim above that USA Today is inconsistent can't really be sustained. I tediously went through the entire first page of Google News search results for "NFL Draft" constrained to that site [81], and the usage is overwhelmingly lowercase except in some headlines/headings/headers. There were only a handful of exceptions, mostly confined to a small minority of articles in their DraftWire department, and articles outside it by a couple of particular writers including Demetrius Harvey (not consistent even within the same article), Jordan Mendoza (lowercase most of the time but inconsistent in one article), and Jack McKessy (ditto). USA Today usage, outside of article titles and headings in them, plus links to their own article titles, and a few direct quotations, is at least 99% lowercase; the fraction of 1% of instances that are not are basically just typos.

Here're some additional mainstream news and sports news data points:
Don't have all day to do this; the real point is that usage varies widely, lowercase predominates outside of promotional material and the house-styles of some particular publishers, this is obviously and desmonstrably just a variable style matter not a "proper name" matter (like whether to capitalize "the Pacific Ocean" or "Canada" or "the Corporation for Public Broadcasting"), and consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources is provably not met, nowhere even close.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very incomplete indeed[edit]

You ignored the 11 news sites that I linked above where I found lowercase. Maybe some of them are consistent and some mixed, but most were ignored in favor of the ones you found with uppercase. In any case, usage is mixed. Caps are clearly optional. Dicklyon (talk) 22:01, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very good example of the style of comment that creates the pushback against your arguments. Above we have detailed evidence of sources with explained relevance to the topic area, context of usage and preparation for careful open-minded analysis before coming to a conclusion, that you (Dicklyon) appear to simply reject out of hand in favour of 11 examples (of undiscussed quality, relevance, or selection bias) that support your very clear personal preference. Thryduulf (talk) 22:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So by ignoring everything "independent" of the topic, and focusing on NFL insider sources, you think you can convince people that this meets the criterion at MOS:CAPS? No, it says look to sources independent of the subject. Dicklyon (talk) 22:41, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Three of those sources are localized (Seattle Times, freep.com, mlive.com), two are tied to the same outlet (usatoday and draftwire.usatoday), two are unreliable (dawgnation and heavy.com), then finally espn, usatoday, nbcsports, and sbnation are covered above. Conyo14 (talk) 22:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon If you want to try and convince people of your opinion is correct then you need to do better than to respond to feedback with nothing but strawmen. I'm not trying to convince anybody that either upper or lowercase is correct or incorrect, and all the sources mentioned in the section I reference are independent of the subject. Thryduulf (talk) 00:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that neither case is "incorrect". It's just a matter of which conforms to WP style, and that's lowercase due to the mix in sources, in light of guidelines and policies. Dicklyon (talk) 03:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I've spent multiple comments attempting to explain to you and others, the evidence is currently not clear and needs actual open-minded consideration and discussion rather than your kneejerk "lowercase it" reaction. Thryduulf (talk) 08:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, individuals on both sides are kneejerking it. While we have WP:NOTVOTE, its unfortunately rarely the case. Ideally, it'd be better to workshop the issue, and have a true discussion, searching for a common broad understanding, before taking votes. —Bagumba (talk) 09:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: I did not ignore your sources, as @Conyo14 pointed out. I focused my list on nationwide sports sites that are heavily involved in or dedicated sports news sites.
  • draftwire.usatoday.com – Included in the mixed table under USA Today, I was not going to add this one twice.
  • seattletimes.com – Localized focus, thus not included.
  • espn.com – Included in the consistently downcased table.
  • usatoday.com – Included in the mixed table.
  • dawgnation.com – Localized sports site, mostly focused on the Georgia Bulldogs football, thus did not fit inclusion criteria.
  • sbnation.com – Included under mixed, though was originally included under consistently capitalized. After re-analyzing, I found a pattern that they seem to follow consistently.
  • heavy.com – Unfamiliar with this site and when I searched for sites that report on NFL news it did not come up. I also had not come across it before, which is why I did not include it. I'm willing to re-evaluate it but I'm not sure just how big or relevant it is.
  • nbcsports.com – Included in mixed table.
  • freep.com – Detroit Free Press did not fit inclusion criteria.
  • mlive.com – Michigan focused, thus did not fit inclusion criteria.
  • sports.yahoo.com – Will include, not intentionally excluded.
We could find hundreds of independent newspapers and sources to support the idea that there's inconstancy, and then point to that as a reason to downcase in just about any discussion, but I think it'd be more valuable and reasonable to evaluate sources that have more familiarity and focus with the topic. I'm open to it, and I think I'm making that very clear since I've added to my table above and continue to make changes (I'm going to go evaluate Yahoo Sports now). I'd also appreciate if you find any sources that support capitalization if you'd mention them, as I have with situations that support downcasing. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:13, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks for explaining about "heavily involved in or dedicated sports news sites". I think that aligns with my point that you're not respecting the "independent" part of what the lead at MOS:CAPS tells us is the main guideline. And yes, I find plenty of sources capitalizing, but mentioning those is rather beside the point when the guideline is about "consistent capitalization". It's not a vote. Dicklyon (talk) 15:49, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: To my point though, you could find a hundred different sources during downcasing discussions because there will always be inconsistencies. Those could then be used to essentially "win" every discussion by means of "downcase due to lack of consistency". That doesn't make those publications that were originally downcasing inherently. Would it not be more relevant to apply the idea of MOS:CAPS to a subset of subject matter related sources when evaluating the capitalization of something that is, in a sense, somewhat "niche"? Hey man im josh (talk) 15:55, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's why my main tool is usually statistics from books, over recent decades. I cited the news sources to show that at the current time, lowercase is still in wide use; it is the house style of some major publishers such as ESPN, so there's no reason to think that WP's similar house style is not OK. Go back and look at the n-gram stats. There's no way you can hallucinate consistent capitalization in independent sources there in the case of the NFL draft, and saying that the stats only go through 2019 is just an distraction of desperation. Dicklyon (talk) 16:08, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Distraction of desperation...? Alright now, let's reign it in. There's no way you can hallucinate consistent capitalization in independent sources – You guys have been begging for sources, I provided contextually relevant sources to counter those generic references provided, I'm just trying to have a discussion about the sources that we have both provided. This isn't an RM, this is a discussion where we're trying to workshop things, right? As for .. it is the house style of some major publishers such as ESPN, are you able to find any other sources that are nationwide and focus on sports that consistently downcase? At what point should we chalk up variances in capitalization as just being mistakes or "miscapitalizations" from those unfamiliar with the subject? Obviously with ESPN that's not the case, as they are very much focused on sports and clearly have a style guide that downcases. I don't think we should rely on the capitalization of those unfamiliar with the subject matter what evaluating whether capitalization is proper or not, and I think that's an entirely reasonable point to make which I'm open to discussing. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AGF. But also, yeah I think that josh has a point in that the sources used to reliably cover the draft are sports-centric, but independent. Reviewing newspapers and books show they are consistently lowercased. Reviewing sports media shows mostly upper case, with a few mixed bags. However, generalizing the case-message ought to show sources that directly counter the above. Conyo14 (talk) 17:24, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing to suggest that non-national sources are less capable of capitalizing "correctly". There's no regional bias regarding capitalization. —Bagumba (talk) 06:20, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proper noun[edit]

(I'm centralizing this comment instead of repeating this at multiple !votes) It's been proposed that "NFL Draft" is a proper noun. However, Collins defines proper noun as:

a noun...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.[84]

A reader seeing NFL Draft does not apply a different meaning to it than when they see NFL draft. It's purely a description in basic English, not any sort of proper noun like Super Bowl (vs a plain super bowl).—Bagumba (talk) 08:45, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
and so I shall centre my reply to you for the same reasons: Whether it is purely a description in basic English or something more significant than that seems to be the heart of this dispute, and there doesn't seem to me that the evidence is as clearly for either position as you make out. It is entirely possible (and not inconsistent with the evidence presented here) that the NfL have a draft (common noun) and that draft and surrounding media events, etc are called the NfL Draft (proper noun). Thryduulf (talk) 09:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...and there doesn't seem to me that the evidence is as clearly for either position as you make out: There might be reasons to capitalize it. It's just not the traditional proper noun case, where the captialized phrase has a completely different meaning than the lowercase basic English description. —Bagumba (talk) 09:17, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there are sources that consistently use different capitalisations (and the evidence is unarguable that there are) it is worth taking the time to understand why they do that and if they are using the term in different ways and/or to mean different things. It could be that they aren't, in which case that's fine and we don't need to worry. However if they are we need to analyse whether our article is about one or both of those things, if it's only about one of the meanings and there is a consistent capitalisation of that meaning then there can be no argument that this is the capitalisation we should use for our article (whichever it is). If our article is about both then we need to decide which is primary - this could go either way. The meanings don't have to be "completely different" just distinct. I don't know what the outcome of all this will because I've not looked at the evidence in enough detail to say anything other than it's not clear either way. Thryduulf (talk) 18:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give an example of one of those "sources that consistently use different capitalisations". Sorry if I missed this. Dicklyon (talk) 22:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Read the "an incomplete list of sources" section, both the tables and the prose. Thryduulf (talk) 23:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The only one I find in reading through is the SB Nation one, where it says Capitalizes YYYY NFL Draft, such as "2023 NFL Draft", but will downcase to "NFL draft" when a year is not included. Seems to treat it as a proper name when a year is included but downcases when simply "NFL draft" or "NFL draft picks". But in the linked page, it's just headlines, though some of them read as sentences and a few have periods. I see "23 future NFL Draft picks to watch in the College Football Playoff" which has draft capped where the notes say it doesn't. Similarly "Michael Penix Jr.’s NFL Draft stock is up, but valid questions remain". The ones with years are like "NFL Draft 2024: Updated order after Wild Card Weekend", in a title prefix, not sentence context. Clicking through to a bunch of articles, very few refer to the NFL draft without the year, and of the ones that do, they are not consistent, e.g. ...to No. 1 in the NFL Draft because of..., ...can now begin the NFL Draft circuit., but ...at least from an NFL draft standpoint (lowercase as it says, in some). Are there other sources that might better make your point of treating the year events differently from the more generic uses of NFL draft? You said it's unarguable, but I'm not seeing it. Dicklyon (talk) 00:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If there are sources that consistently use different capitalisations (and the evidence is unarguable that there are) it is worth taking the time to understand why they do that and if they are using the term in different ways and/or to mean different things. It could be that they aren't, in which case that's fine and we don't need to worry. I took a glance. It seems the mixed-use sources just capitalize arbitrarily. I'm not noticing any pattern suggesting some distinct meeaning (e.g. broadcast vs process). Does anyone see any distinction? —Bagumba (talk) 11:04, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems rather clear that the term came into existence as purely descriptive. Doing a newspaper.com search for the phrase "NFL Draft" from 1936 (when the draft began) through 1946, I find a fair number of examples of lower-case, the earliest being this 1939 example in the New York Daily News. Here's a 1941 AP story from the same paper... in fact, the Daily News is the primary user of the term in this earlist period, and the only capitalized "Draft" I find is where it's blatantly part of Title Case. Usage becomes much more common at the end of 1945 and in 1946, when activity is resuming after the war, and it gets used a fair amount in titles, such as this 1944 example, where it is capitalized as part of Title Case, but "draft" is never capitalized in the article, in dozens and dozens of examples, such as this 1945 UP article with N.F.L. draft or NFL draft depending on the paper you find it in. Here's another 1945 UP article, and another paper, 1945, and another. Oft times, the phrase only appears in the title, and the event is described in other ways ("the National Football League draft", "NFL's annual draft", etc.), but in none of the formulations I found while dong that search was "draft" capitalized in the article body.
This was being used as a descriptive term well before the NFL tried to capitalize it (or at least before that attempt had any visible impact.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Related ongoing copyediting and page-moving[edit]

There are several hundred incorrect links to the lowercase NFL draft, as well as several thousand to National Football League draft (many are templates, maybe they have a shortcut) if someone has the tools to fix these it's a job needing to be done, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In relation to those, an RM should be opened at American Football League draft, to see if it should be uppercased. Not to mention any 'Year AFL draft' pages & links. GoodDay (talk) 14:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do believe it's mostly because of templates within Category:National Football League draft navigational boxes. I may run AWB through them today or tomorrow to fix this because I really want things to be more consistent. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:31, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the case of "NFL Draft" is being contested, seem like case changes to that specific term should not take place while this RfC is active.—Bagumba (talk) 09:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BTW - I've opened an RM for the AFL, in relation to this RFC topic. GoodDay (talk) 15:41, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's better to find possible common ground on NFL Draft here first, instead of a lot of parallel—potentially overlapping—discussions. —Bagumba (talk) 09:13, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RM is the way to go for requested moves such as these, and the AFL draft has nothing to do with the NFL Draft nor does the RM for the AFL draft have anything to do with this opinion poll. Two different leagues (please read the history of the successful but still upstart AFL, and please don't conflate the two). Randy Kryn (talk) 11:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...please don't conflate the two: So the why the uproar at #Unilateral page moves, while RFC is ongoing? Or RMs are fine, even for de-captitalization? —Bagumba (talk) 12:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The uproar is justified because some editors disagree on the results of this opinion poll, which is about the NFL Draft and not the AFL pages. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:28, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That thread was criticizing NBA conference finals, implying there should be a moratorium on changing the case of all sports-related titles. —Bagumba (talk) 16:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would anyone want to change the NBA Conference Finals? In any "case", this much-ado-about-opinion survey is solely about the NFL extravaganza. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would anyone want to change the NBA Conference Finals?: The rhetoric isn't helpful. There's clearly a potentially conflicting MOS, even if you disagree with it. —Bagumba (talk) 01:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
GoodDay reverted my move to correct the overcapping of NBA Conference Finals, even though he has declined to state any reason to prefer caps. He just wants to provoke more discussion. We could do that, but if nobody pipes in there with an actual objection to lowercase, I might just move it again. He has also started a couple of RM discussions to capitalize some longstanding lowercase "draft" articles (that I had downcased 10 years ago, about the same time I had done so on the NFL ones). It's great that these discussions show snow for lowercase, but not obvious that it's worth a ton of editor discussion time just to re-affirm one or two more applications of MOS:CAPS. It's just not practical to expect every case fix to require a conversation. When there are objections, sure, let's talk. When there are not, let's just move on. Dicklyon (talk) 04:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I objected. We shall discuss there. Conyo14 (talk) 05:12, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion is at Talk:NBA Conference Finals#Requested move 20 January 2024. Dicklyon (talk) 19:10, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Request for a panel of closers[edit]

Would like to request that a panel of from three-to-five experienced closers close this poll. Should have been already shut down, but hopefully closers can just read the 'Forum' section and end it there. If this RfC results in a fundamental change to the RM and move review process by overruling an RM and move review outcome after nine months (only the second RM on the topic) then there are other closes I'd like to bring to "Village pump (policy)" from a long time ago. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Given the size of this RFC (which will likely be twice as long by the end of four weeks), a panel would definitely be required to close it. Preferably 'five'. GoodDay (talk) 03:32, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If those volunteering to evaluating the outcome of this discussion feel more comfortable doing so in a group, then they should be free to do so. However I disagree with mandating that multiple users must be involved in evaluating the result. isaacl (talk) 04:03, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So this section is for closing arguments to the closers, Randy? Dicklyon (talk) 04:00, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I entered a neutral request at Wikipedia:Closure requests#Capitalization of NFL Draft in text and titles. Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would've waited until the RFC tag expired, but ok. GoodDay (talk) 04:25, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The instructions for RFCs generally suggest not waiting that long. Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The advice at WP:BATTLEGROUND is:

Editors in large disputes should work in good faith to find broad principles of agreement between different viewpoints

There's still 10+ posts/day, and some are trying to reach that common understanding. There's ones that seem to only bludgeon their point. Given that page titles and MOS are contentious topics, those individuals should ideally be dealt with without shutting down constructive discussion completely.—Bagumba (talk) 05:11, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My comment above was not meant to close this prematurely, as an opinion poll has some value and RfC's generally run for 30 days. Was asking that when it is closed that a panel do so, and gave the unsolicited but common sense advice that they just need to read the 'Forum' section to realize that too many editors are saying that this is the wrong forum and close it accordingly. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:52, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would tend to agree with that. I don't think this RFC can or should reach any binding conclusions, either in favour of upper case or lower case, and as per my comment above I hope that's what will happen. This page has generated far more heat than light, and seems to be a lesson in how not to do things... And I say that with no bad feelings towards the originator, it was opened in good faith, but I don't think it's turned out well at all. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 17:24, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So true. That's why I started out, before the RfC, in asking for ideas on how best to work on this issue. The RfC might still be OK, if the closer(s) can see past the obstructionist noise and just look at the actual underlying questions. Dicklyon (talk) 18:22, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Being pro-consistency. I've given up on all sports pages being consistently upper-cased or lower-cased. Ironically, they're all consistently inconsistent. GoodDay (talk) 18:42, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They should be consistent with WP guidelines, which doesnt necessarily guarantee that all draft-related articles will be all uppercase or lowercase. The consistency that you are seeking requires consensus to change the MOS to adopt house capitalization rules that are independent of usage in reliable sources. —Bagumba (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll volunteer to close this one after the 30 days have expired. I've kept an eye on this RfC for a while and read the entire thing (plus many of the other linked discussions), but completely WP:UNINVOLVED for the topic areas and issues discussed. As far as a panel, I'd welcome any other uninvolved admins who want to volunteer. If none materialize I can handle it myself. The WordsmithTalk to me 22:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Dicklyon (talk) 22:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@The Wordsmith: A rm discussion needs to take place and nothing in this discussion is binding in any sense. Plenty of folks didn't participate for that reason and because it's been bludgeoned to death. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:05, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty of folks didn't participate...: Plenty of folks don't attend most any discussions. But consensus is judged by those who participate. And repeating the "there must be an RM" here is ironically a form of bludgeoning (and patronizing). —Bagumba (talk) 01:17, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Closers are unnecessary as nothing about this conversation has been binding. Users have avoided getting involved because it's not a move discussion, just an open RfC. This whole conversation has been incredibly demoralizing and frankly I'm done with it until the move discussion takes place. There are several editors who want the pages down cased and pretend as if there's some type of cabal that's been fighting the effort this entire time. They create some type of Boogeyman and throw around unfair accusations of LOCALCON when that just simply doesn't exist, and I think that's an incredibly stupid way to argue. I think it's pretty clear that it's a proper name of an event, but that there's inconsistencies in how the media capitalizes it. Yet, there are some that argue without even the slightest consideration that it's a possibility that uppercase is the proper way to go. I approached this with an open mind, but there are definitely others that did not that have bludgeoned this topic to death. The amount of time I've wasted on this discussion is just ridiculous. I've not been having a discussion with people that are willing to budge from their original stance on the issue or even consider it whatsoever. I'd be willing to downcase if I felt like some individuals had actually had a discussion in good faith, which I don't feel like happened. This has been an unhealthy discussion that I regret getting involved in and trying to play devil's advocate in. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:09, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've made a note of your opinion, as well as all the others expressed regarding whether an RfC is an appropriate forum for this type of proposal. I'm also looking into past discussions on RfC scopes, page moves, MoS, and article titles to help me determine how to weight those arguments. If anybody has avoided participation based on that, I would encourage them to weigh in on both the forum legitimacy (including any precedents they believe are relevant) and the actual merits of the proposal in their respective sections. I can promise that either way, the forum question will be addressed in the close. Regarding the conduct of participants both here and at other spill-over discussions, I empathize and agree that there have been accusations, aspersions, and assumptions of bath faith being tossed around far too often. Anyone participating here should remind themselves that WP:CIVIL applies everywhere, and that treating your fellow editors poorly because they disagree on process or capitalization is not the standard we expect. The WordsmithTalk to me 01:43, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've listed various precedents already in the material above; could add more if you think that's helpful, but the "venue/format" question really comes down to whether partisans on either side of a topic get to decide that the community is not permitted to use its own VPPOL and RfC processes for what they are for: examining matters like this more broadly than the involved editors who are at loggerheads. I don't really see how what can have but one answer, most especially when the typical process for this sort of question (RM) resulted in a no-consensus stalemate (despite both P&G and sourcing again pointing to a clear answer). As for the tone problems, I have to point out that There are several editors who want [an option] and pretend as if there's some type of cabal that's been fighting the effort this entire time. They create some type of Boogeyman is precisely the kind of pretense of a cabal and a bogeyman that it complains of. This one-sided "attack while playing victim" stuff is what is actually demoralizing, and its use as a walled-garden defense tactic for some particular topic against P&G and sourcing expectations that apply to all other topics is what is the source of the entire problem. An RfC like this should never have been needed in the first place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen the links you posted above; my comment was a very broad one encouraging anyone who had policy- or precedent-based arguments and had not already listed them to do so. This process isn't entirely unprecedented but is definitely not the norm, so having more information is better than having less. Anyone who has counter-examples aside from WP:RFCNOT, such as RfCs that were closed with a consensus that they couldn't be used for article titles/moves should also post them in the Forum section. The WordsmithTalk to me 01:25, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RfC's are not used for title moves because the place to do that is understood by editors to be WP:RM. If some have gotten by as RfCs they are outliers, unlike this one which is widely known, appropriately questioned as a venue, and at which many editors are not voicing an opinion other than this is the "wrong venue". I understand and agree with the discussion above that this doesn't actually need to be closed, as it is just an opinion poll (The Wordsmith, please read the original question - it is phrased in such a way as to be an opinion poll and not, as Al Gore would say, a "deciding legal authority". Randy Kryn (talk) 05:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The reason there is various questioning of the venue/process is because Randy Kryn has been intensively canvassing for weeks to engineer it, and there's much more evidence than what I posted last week. This seems to have started as early as Jan. 7 [85] (plus a series of edits making his alarmist call to action more strident [86], desperately trying to convince everyone some trick is being played); he was called out as canvassing immediately [87], and his canvassing denial excuse is simply that he thinks an RfC on a naming question is "irregular" (plus false claims about what the RfC says)[88]. Instead of stopping the canvassing, he ramped it up over a long period: [89][90][91][92], a sequence of canvassing [93], then intesified [94], then more canvassing that poses as presenting "two sides" that are really both RK's side in different wording [95]; and more here [96][97][98], including individual recruitment to his cause [99], activism against VPPOL and RfC as a "fake RM" [100][101], more in this vein plus defense of gaming the system at RM as long as it agrees with his own preferences [102], plus tagteaming to put the "forum" disputation ahead of the RfC question itself to dissuade anyone else from participating [103] (done by him after this tactic was already objected to [104]), plus more canvassing to spin a VPPOL RfC as a "backwater" when it is our broadest-input community venue [105]. This is just a smattering of diffs I've run into without looking hard, and it's all an intense effort to convince anyone who will listen that they must come immediately to this RfC and try to either shut it down or have it declared just an "opinion poll" with no actual effect. His stated viewpoint is that it is not possible for the community as a whole to review something after WP:MRV has done its thing, but there is no policy basis for such a belief, and multiple policies against it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:18, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You've sure got a bee in your bonnet about me. Your assumptions about my 'intents or motives' are, as they have been over the years, incorrect or just made up out of thin air. As for my comments, please note how many of those were answers to direct questions, were engagements in discussions at the NFL Wikiproject page (I don't think 'canvassing' can be the word used about a discussion at NFL Wikiproject concerning the venue where casing of NFL Draft should be made), and giving my opinion on this page, both unsolicited and in answer to many direct questions, about this opinion poll. Did you even read the opening question? It's asking for opinions, not an applying decision, yet you and others act as if this poll will directly result in changing scores of long-term titles. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:32, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Enough, both of you. Take this to your respective talk pages. This is not a shouting match. Conyo14 (talk) 06:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, the point of this is just making the closer[s] aware of the canvassing level; the "shut it down" stuff at the top of this page is not a natural community response of any kind, but an on-site version of WP:MEAT. If I wanted to make any further point about this, we'd be at ANI instead (like two weeks ago). PS: RK's claim of "assumptions about [his] 'intents or motives'" is baseless; I said nothing about either and am not a mind reader; I addressed what RK did and said (the intent of and motivation for which are actually quite mysterious). But I have no further point to make about this in this venue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Confirming that I am aware of the discussions on related pages; many of the diffs you shared were already purple for me. I agree with Conyo14 that this section seems to have run its course, and I don't think continuing to circle the drain is likely to be productive. Let's all chill, take a step back, and remember that on the other side of the screen is a real person who wants to improve the encyclopedia as much as you (not you specifically, I mean everyone here) do. The WordsmithTalk to me 17:04, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another thing for consideration in this context is that those seeking to capitalize something against MOS:SIGCAPS, based on higher (but still insufficient) rates of capitalization in primary-source, non-general-audience, local, anecdotal, or obsolete material, may argue in some cases, as here, that it is not possible for WP to arrive at an article titling decision through any means but RM (already disproved), but more of them will also argue that RM itself cannot be used if a "no consensus" was previously reached, even after the closer of the previous RM that reached no consensus on two pages specifically recommended a followup RM about those two to reach consensus [106]! Here, three "shut it down" commenters make bogus arguments, one to use WP:MRV even though the judgment of the closer is not questioned (the only thing MRV examines), another on the grounds of "per previous discussion" and the idea that the RM opener wants to move the article (?!), and a third simply repeating their previous arguments (already dispelled) while complaining that others are repeating their arguments. All their claims (both procedural and factual) have been refuted by later commenters there. The fact is that those hell-bent on over-capitalizing things to signify subjective importance will use every argument they can think of to get their way, including both "this has to be shut down and moved to RM" and "this RM has to be shut down". This is not tenable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:52, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, just adding my opinion that a panel of closers is unnecessary. Single closers are able to handle anything but the most contentious whole-site-impacting discussions. Ajpolino (talk) 03:13, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would tend to agree, since there is just a trivial pair of questions: the actual RfC matter of whether a particular string is written "NFL Draft" in the requisite "substantial majority of independent reliable sources"; and whether the community is somehow prohibited from examining this kind of question via RfC (first at VPPOL, now stand-alone) after RM and MRV fail to resolve it. This is really quite open-and-shut.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:18, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to drop it but thanks for proving my point.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:54, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No point to prove, the thoughts in my second sentence above are new to this discussion/opinion poll. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I will come out and say it. YOU were one of the two editors I had in mind. Stop Bludgening! Multiple editors have said so.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 04:41, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Leave this at your talk pages please. Conyo14 (talk) 05:11, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"I'll give you the last word ... Nice try!"- SNL skit of Bill O'Reilly circa 2007.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 17:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We're getting close to closing time. GoodDay (talk) 17:54, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Closing time Cinderella157 (talk) 23:59, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just notating here that I'm working on the closure, I expect to have it finished tonight. I would have had it done yesterday, but when I checked the RfC opening date I forgot that January has 31 days. The WordsmithTalk to me 22:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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