User talk:Chicdat

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NCCAPS reform

I've been quietly observing the battle (pun intended) over strict invocation of WP:NCCAPS, especially in reference to <ordinal> battle of <place> articles. I agree the current guideline is too absolute and we should treat terms as proper nouns if a majority of reliable sources do so. It looks like Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_66#Overturning_NCCAPS got archived, probably due to overly frequent archiving at that busy page. I think if a well thought out proposal for a change is made via RfC at WT:NCCAPS it might lead to something happening. I believe consensus would align with our view; this does not come out in RM discussions given the current word choice at NCCAPS and like-minded users opting to stay out of individual RMs when faced with the current guideline. Thoughts? Mdewman6 (talk) 06:41, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, I am worried what's next: we have Battle of Fredericksburg but Second battle of Fredericksburg? Mdewman6 (talk) 06:42, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I absolutely agree. The reason the lowercasers hold sway over the NCCAPS move request is because the letter of the law, for the most part, supports them. (The constant bludgeoning from a few editors is also a factor.) Thus actual change in our practices on Wikipedia is the only real way to make common sense, at last, rule. Otherwise we will continue with A few weeks ago I attempted an RFC but it was badly malformed and went nowhere. If we could draft a decent RFC to change the guideline from "always" to "(substantial) majority", which was received favorably at the village pump, I think we can likely change the text of the guideline. Sammy D III's comment at Talk:War of the cities is telling: These are people on a MOS mission, part of which is de-capitalize military terms which do not follow grammar, instead are used as proper names or common terms. Commonly an article is moved without discussion, then if somebody objects there is already an alliance in place to support the move. Pinging Randy Kryn so we can all collaborate to make a draft. Thanks for your comment, I feel like we might at last be able to reform this nonsensical guideline that allows things like this. (By the way, I thought you might want to read WT:MOSCAPS#RfC on the meaning of "usually" as used in MOS:MILTERMS. Our RFC may have already begun.) 🐔 Chicdat ^{Bawk to me!} 11:06, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if you care but I just posted this. I'm not sure if I should notify about this post there, otherwise no reply needed. Sammy D III (talk) 11:25, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The word "usually" seems one obvious choice for choosing a proper name, and if a name is usually uppercased then Wikipedia should accept its status as an accepted proper name. Some proper names are also covered by MOS:CELESTIALOBJECTS, MOS:GEOCAPS, and, as of now, MOS:MILTERMS, which could be used as templates to finally bring common sense into the "naming of names" on Wikipedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:51, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personal opinion, I'll leave if you want: If I create content with a source that uses a proper name, I use the proper name. If that is changed to a generic phrase it is no longer supported by the source I used. The meaning of the source has been changed. If part of a source has been compromised then the whole source must be compromised, correct? You can't cherry-pick which facts you use, either the source is RS or it isn't. That reference and anything it supports has to be removed.

They hit the military hard, and it affects stuff that I've done. This can be important in titles. I can't go back and fix every one, ownership and all, and many don't matter anyway. But they were written as proper names, my meanings have been changed with no other sources contradicting them. Proper names! I think one editor has said that the organization that makes a proper name is Primary and can't be used to support it.

I'm RS over MOS and don't like having my facts being changed because of grammar. Sammy D III (talk) 12:35, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I checked out for a bit on other things. Yeah, I think we let the RfC at MILTERMS run its course, with the plan of starting a broader, well thought out RfC at NCCAPS. The absolutists there are just defending their turf, trying to make sure guidelines don't conflict with standards of evidence (which in general I agree with) so the only way for lasting and meaningful change is to show consensus for a change at NCCAPS itself. Then getting all of the other specific naming conventions and MOSs in line would follow as necessary. Mdewman6 (talk) 06:41, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I think that is the only route for change – an RFC to change NCCAPS. It must necessarily affect the capitalization of possible proper names in text as well, or the lowercasers will doubtless seize on that inconsistency and shut it down... been here, done that. There is a large body of potential arguments, many of which have been deployed at ANI; it would be nice if someone with more time than I could seize the gems from the cesspool. 🐔 Chicdat ^{Bawk to me!} 00:47, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't workable. "A majority" means even a fraction of a percent beyond 50.0%. But we have no means of assessing source material in this way; we cannot identify and gather them all and do a fine-grained statistical analysis. NCCAPS is simply a restatement of MOS:CAPS as applied to titles in particular. The rule (in different wording but with the same meaning) in both is that WP doesn't capitalize something unless an overwhelming majority of sources do so. This is something we can assess, given any statistically significant collection of sources on the topic: if lowercase for the term in question is virtually non-existent in them, then the standard is met, and we should capitalize. (In actual RM practice, this amounts to roughly a 90%+ capitalization rate.)

If we were to go with just a "majority" rule (or attempt at a rule) instead, it would not be practicable at all. What would obviously happen is dedicated cherrypicking by competing factions to drag the ball back and forth across a magical 50% goal line. An equally obvious upshot of this is that titles of all edge cases would be in a constant state of slow-motion movewarring. Every time someone found a new handful of sources that they could use the push the total back across that line in their favored direction they would do so. Again and again and again.

Our guidelines have been stable on this stuff for about two decades now and they have served us well. They only reason there is recurrent dispute about this stuff is really, really insistent over-capitalization habits on the part of a handful of editors, most of them tied to specific topics, and engaging in invincible ignorance: it doesn't matter how many times you prove to them that capitalization rate of what they want to capitalize comes nowhere near "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources"; they will insist that their version is "correct" anyway, and refuse to drop the stick – even after multiple RMs, and MR, and RfC, AN/ANI, and all else.

PS: MOS:CAPS/NCCAPS, like all the rest of MoS and all the NC guidelines that touch on style matters, are geared in a single consistent direction, by long-standing and very well-tested consensus: WP does not apply any unnecessary stylization, of any kind. Your "majority" idea is completely contrary to that. Basically, it's "Try to get away with unnecessary stylization at every possible opportunity, by crossing a 50.000000001% line." It's just inimical the purpose of us having a style guide, especially one geared toward simple and readable text instead of marketing- and blog-style bombastic messes.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:20, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is that WP:NCCAPS does not currently align with MOS:CAPS, especially its various subject-specific subsections. NCCAPS uses the word "always" which is quite different from a substantial majority. This "always" absolutism is being employed by some users to move articles away from their long-standing proper noun titles, leading to an overall decrease in WP:CONSISTENT titles. The guidelines need to have the same standard, and that standard should align with WP:COMMONNAME- we use the title (and capitalization) used my a majority of reliable sources. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:35, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As silly as it may sound, I think these issues arise because editors think (incorrectly) that "proper noun" and "proper name" mean different things, with the latter defined as "accepted name (in majority of sources)". I went ahead and replaced every instance (six) of "proper name" with "proper noun" in WP:NCCAPS. The two are synonymous, so I believe my edit should be uncontroversial. At MOS:CAPS "proper name" appears 41(!) times. I can't help but think "proper name" introduces confusion and allows for these capitalisation wars to occur. Even on Wikipedia proper name is a redirect to proper noun so clearly the latter is the COMMONNAME for the term. Should the same substitution be done at MOS:CAPS? TurboSuperA+_(connect) 04:24, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That was reverted. To some people, there is a difference. See the proper noun article: "A distinction is normally made in current linguistics between proper nouns and proper names. By this strict distinction, because the term noun is used for a class of single words (tree, beauty), only single-word proper names are proper nouns ..." —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:22, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also from the article: but this distinction is not universally observed. Why should we observe it? TurboSuperA+_(connect) 18:18, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing. I think some editors want to turn the issue into a philosophical debate over proper name (philosophy), and I don't think that helps us build an encyclopaedia. It muddies the water and introduces "uncertainty" over what proper noun "really means". There is no debate over what a proper noun is. [1] TurboSuperA+_(connect) 08:56, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That source seems very well aligned with Wikipedia, such as "The 16th president of the United States was President Lincoln." There is also the behavioral observation perspective – that the way to tell whether something is a proper noun or not is primarily to just observe whether people typically capitalize it or not, rather than to try to identify what role a proper noun plays grammatically. I think that question arises for schools of painting that are not the names of institutions, for example. This could bring us back to the "Second battle of Fredericksburg" question, as there's a parallel there with "16th president of the United States". There's also a current church ritual question – to me it seems like if there are tens of thousands of these ceremonies being conducted every week, then the term for that type of ceremony is not a proper noun, but some people seem to have a different opinion. Some cases seem more difficult than others. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:37, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

primarily to just observe whether people typically capitalize it or not One of the problems is that editors don't agree what "typically", "consistently", "usually" mean. Personally, I think that if it is capitalised more than 50% in the last few decades then we should capitalise it also, other editors disagree and believe it should be 80%+ in the last ~170 years, while some think that we should rely only on recent, relevant (preferably academic) RS. That is something we'll have to decide as a community. I have no idea if that should be done at VPP or MOS, but I do hope it eventually happens.

This could bring us back to the "Second battle of Fredericksburg" question I know this isn't a policy-based argument but lowercasing only the middle word just looks weird to me, it looks like a typo. In prose "second battle of Fredericksburg" would only make sense if Fredericksburg is the name of the conflict, i.e. second battle of WWII. But Fredericksburg isn't the name of the conflict (as far as I know), "Battle of Fredericksburg" is. Then the question becomes whether "second" is a description of the battle or if it is part of the name, like First World War and Second World War. In this case I would ignore Google Ngrams and look at the relevant, recent academic literature and see whether the majority treats "second" as a name or as a description. This goes back to "what standard should we use?" and again, that is something we'll have to decide with community consensus. TurboSuperA+_(connect) 20:31, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like it presumes that there is a name for the second notable battle that happened in or around Fredericksburg rather than just having a descriptive identification of such an event (like, e.g., Second presidency of Grover Cleveland and the other eleven "Second presidency" articles). Just in case you have the impression you're dealing with a dogmatist about such matters, I am also reminded of Talk:First battle of Öland (1564)#Requested move 13 November 2024, which I initiated. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:50, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]