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.

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.

• Inappropriate forum shopping There was no consensus at the last requested move, which was held at the actual article talk page, which is the right place for this discussion. This is not an RFC to determine a Wikipedia policy, the purpose of this page. This is not the right place for this. This is forum shopping plain and simple. oknazevad (talk) 04:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This RfC is not the norm. However, I think an exception is reasonable if it helps to break the continued "no consensus" regarding the NFL and its draft. —Bagumba (talk) 06:51, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, any time consensus fails to be reached, another method of reaching it needs to be tried. Perpetual "no consensus" is not a stable or desirable result.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Innapropriate forum, in good faith disagreement, this is an WP:RM issue. That's where name change requests go, including upper or lowercasing. There have been too many hard-argued discussions in the past to just up and change that. Wikipedia culture is in question here. You can do an RfC all you want but the result will be in dispute either way, and where do we go from there? RM is the only proper spot to decide this, Wikipedia culture-wise, and let that process play out as it always has. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:20, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It is a perfectly stable result. Any time there's an RM, the burden is on the proposer to convince enough other editors that there is consensus for a change. No consensus to change is perfectly stable because there's no change, which is the ultimate definition of stable! To say otherwise is silly. Just because the proposer can't accept that others don't agree with them doesn't make anything unstable. Maybe the proposer should learn to accept that they're not always right and learn to drop the stick. oknazevad (talk) 17:42, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Wrong forum. RM is the proper process for this; presumably the creator of this RfC understood this, or he wouldn't have initiated the last discussion as an RM in the first place. Not liking his chances of success at RM, though, because of "the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines", he asked village pump for advice on how to find a friendlier forum (WP:VPP#Over-capitalization of NFL Draft), the direct result of which is this RfC. This comes after having performed a series of undiscussed moves, [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16] (reverted afterward), despite knowing the precise issue was controversial when discussed less than a year ago, in violation of Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves. Centralized discussion isn't for something as parochial as capitalization of one word in one subtopic of one sport in one country. Imagine if every unsuccessful RM did this, unhappy that they didn't get the audience they hoped. Start another RM if you want. You might even be right. Sincerely. Adumbrativus (talk) 07:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Addendum to my earlier comment: First, to the extent that some editors complain that escalation was necessitated by an intractable stalemate and a systematically broken RM process, such complaints are a fantastical leap from reality: one self-contained RM reaching a no consensus result (followed by one editor's attempts at unilateral moves). Second, to the extent that some editors complain below about editing history and discussion from 2016 and earlier, those complaints are irrelevant. The thing that matters from so long ago is that titles have been stable for a long time (and not just a long time but on highly viewed articles too). Third, to the extent that some editors mean to suggest that the recent RM closure didn't weigh consensus properly under policy, they had the opportunity to raise their complaints with the closer (who is no stranger to entertaining such complaints). They didn't. Altogether, it's no wonder that people question whether the present RfC question was a matter warranting any escalation at all – let alone escalation all the way to WP:CENT. Adumbrativus (talk) 09:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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]

• Oppose, already at the common name and styling. I don't know exactly where to put this, discussions like this shouldn't have multiple sections and sideroads but be in one 'Oppose or Support' section like any RM. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Striking this because it is not applicable here, this is not an RM and is an inappropriate forum for a requested move. Take this to WP:RM if there is a concern (apparently past RM's have been done on this question and kept the uppercasing, and then it shows up here on a tangential page). How about an administrator step in and stop this, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:57, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Randy Kryn: Agree that these "sideroads" are confusing. Wehwalt re-factored to its currrent form here with the edit summary I'm dubious we should be refactoring what people have written, but if we are, the question of a bad forum is definitely preliminary to the question of whether this is a valid RfC and should come first It was dubious, esp. from an involved "forum" !voter, to refactor from the prior order within #Survey. Closers are competent, and don't need this extent of spoonfeeding, and the self-prioritized order is non-neutral. Consider self-reverting. Thanks. —Bagumba (talk) 02:35, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Dicklyon: You resegmented prior to Wehwalt's edit. Would you agree to self-revert too? —Bagumba (talk) 02:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Feel free to undo/repair whatever I did; sorry if I messed up. Dicklyon (talk) 03:04, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  With the subsequent comments, the window to revert this has probably closed, without an elegant process to re-position the new comments. It is what it is. We probably need a neutral comment at the top noting that the order of this section is not to be misunderstood that forum concerns were the first reactions to the RfC. —Bagumba (talk) 04:56, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I would have no objection. Wehwalt (talk) 12:49, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Perfectly good venue and process. See discussion a bit above this one. The fact that RM is being system-gamed by a handful of people from a single wikiproject, because it is a process actively watched and participated in by hardly anyone, and can be easily overwhelmed by a gaggle of single-topic-focused editors, is precisely why an RfC at a high-profile location for system-wide discussions is needed. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and the RfC process can be used to address virtually any issue. See also WP:Consensus policy: consensus is established through discussion, and can form anywhere. Trying to short-circuit a discussion for coming to a consensus that has failed to be reached by previous narrower discussions is not constructive and comes across as completely disingenuous. PS: This is by no means unusual; e.g. how to address names of standardized animal breeds (versus landraces and other varieties) at MOS:LIFE was settled right here in VPPOL after various inconclusive/inconsistent RMs and related disputes (again among a small number of editors) resulted in stalemates. And that's hardly the only such case. See, e.g., the ongoing discussion WT:Naming conventions (Ukrainian places)#Centralization re: decommunization of names, opened because RM did not seem to be a functional process for this, attracting insufficient input. Numerous failures to reach consensus on isolated pages with too much of a WP:CONLEVEL or "locals-only" WP:FALSECONSENSUS problem have been resolved at VPPOL, guideline talk pages, and other venues. A prominent example being extensive stonewalled debate about an |ethnicity= parameter in biographical infoboxes was resolved here (with a firm community consensus against the parameter) after discussions at Template talk:Infobox person, thinly attended only by template editors and some WP:BLP and MOS:BIO regulars, failed to resolve the question. There is nothing unusual about using a VPPOL RfC for this, especially since it's what some of us advised Dicklyon to do. The notion that this is somehow irregular is not supportable, and we do this all the time. One of innumerable examples: RfC on disambiguation of royalty articles, coming to a clear consensus, and moves enacted as a result.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC); examples added 20:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC); example added: 17:55, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• This sectioning appears to be another inappropriate attempt to sway this discussion. Sheesh. BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  BeanieFan11, it's good that you've joined the discussion, but you still haven't responded where I pinged you in the discussion above. It was hard to guess what your reasoning was. Sorry if the sectioning bothers you; attempting to keep organized isn't working so well. Dicklyon (talk) 03:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Please note that no notice of this fake RM (real RM's occur at WP:RM) has been put on the main articles being targeted or on any of the scores of related articles it would change. Again, an administrator should step in and stop this process and direct the nominator to take it to WP:RM and to put notices on all affected pages. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:03, 7 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]

• Nothing nefarious here The 2016 RM, which resulted in captialization to "Draft", had procedural oversights; the move review was closed with ...interested users may start a fresh RM with due notification on the talk pages of all articles that would be affected. Dicklyon opened a 2023 RM, closed with no consensus. Following up on "no consensus", not to be confused with a consensus of "Not moved" (see WP:THREEOUTCOMES), is not a case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. The spirit of WP:FORUMSHOP is to discourage simultaneous discussions in different venues on the same topic. There is no other current formal discussion on this. At the aformentioned move review, the RM closer, JFG, wrote: The way forward, if you and others feel strongly about caps, would be to file an RfC at the appropriate wikiproject or sports venue WP:VPP has a wider audience of ~3700 page watchers, and notification was given at WT:NFL.—Bagumba (talk) 07:51, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Excerpt from comment in section below: Escalation to a place where participation is more broad is a way to encourage consistency. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm confused. Why two discussions? Why are there two NFL D/draft sections on this page at the same time? Note Dicklyon has been moving pages such as 1984 USFL Draft to 1984 USFL draft while this discussion is taking place. That being said, sources I see say lowercase. I am officially neutral though.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Who knows, I don't care either way but I pity whoever closes this. lol. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 20:11, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It's actually an easy close. This is an opinion survey, a not very well attended opinion survey. It does not affect title names because that's what WP:RM is for. Closing would just acknowledge that a discussion has taken place in the wrong venue. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:00, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Questions - Why was this 'Forum' section moved to the bottom of this RFC? GoodDay (talk) 11:13, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  There are two because the first one asked what to do, and an answer was "open an RfC", which is the second thread you are in now. I'll close the earlier one to prevent any more confusion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I did, as uninvolved clerking; it was causing issues with the survey and generally preventing this RfC as functioning as an RfC - while this discussion is relevant for the closer, it shouldn't get in the way of the RfC itself. BilledMammal (talk) 04:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's the whole point. "Bad RfC" !votes are supposed to get in the way of the RfC, in the sense that they're as legitimate as any other !vote and deserve the same chance of gaining momentum as any other !vote, so it can bring about a null close. I don't know what impact it'll have, but I think this should be avoided. DFlhb (talk) 21:12, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Wrong Forum Use RM for this. Notify Village Pump for opinion, but don't have the discussion here. It's called canvassing for a reason and whatever annoyances the MOS people and Sports people have against each other should be discussed within the appropriate project space. Neutral, as always, on the stuff below this. Conyo14 (talk) 03:48, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Question- Who keeps moving this 'Forum issue' subsection? One moment its at the top of this RFC, then the bottom, then somewhere's in the middle. Put it back to its original position (the top) & leave it there. GoodDay (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Good forum. There is colorable evidence that RMs on this topic have resulted in a local consensus that might be contrary to AT and related guidelines (per Bagumba and SMcCandlish). Those concerns are reasonable, so requiring that this issue be punted back to that forum would be counterproductive. An RfC at a highly watched page on interpretation of PAGs is wholly appropriate. Additionally, neutrally asking for community input is not canvassing. voorts (talk/contributions) 05:45, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  There have been only two (2) RM's on the question, one in 2016 and one last year. There was no forum, no local consensus, just regular RMs which is how name changes occur on Wikipedia. It seems, since the result of the 2023 RM isn't acceptable to some, that an end-around is being tried. Please realize that this attempt to change scores of page titles has no input from readers of the pages. In an RM a notice of the requested change is put at the top of the pages in question, but with this RfC that has not and cannot be done - thus circumventing the basic history and long-time reliance on the RM process and removing Wikipedia readers from the discussion. Even the nominator has relied on, and vouches for, the RM process as the way Wikipedia handles these requests. Randy Kryn (talk) 06:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The 2016 RM was itself highly irregular. It was only nominated for 2016 NFL draft, not even the base NFL draft, with no other notifications, but the move was still made effective for all NFL draft pages. If people are being critical about "impropoer notification", it seems that move from lowercase should be unacceptable as well. At the subsequent move review, the RM closer said:

  The way forward, if you and others feel strongly about caps, would be to file an RfC at the appropriate wikiproject or sports venue.

  VPP seems like a more neutal and more trafficked venue. —Bagumba (talk) 06:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Hello Bagumba. Please also read, and maybe also quote from. the move review close at the link you provided, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Randy Kryn: You are free to choose your own quotes in writing your own comments. At the mentioned 2016 RM and move review, you didn't cite a policy or guideline at the time, nor did you seem bothered by the lack of process adherence back then. Can you explain why administrative process is now so important to you? Thanks. —Bagumba (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  True Bagumba, but I thought the description of the link you mention disregards the actual close of the move review, which mentioned taking the topic back to RM a couple of times. In this case process is important to me because Requested Moves (WP:RM) has been where Wikipedia editors decide major casing moves. Imagine if this discussion results in changing the titles of pages, that would mean anyone wanting to circumvent the RM process can take their request directly to this page instead. It would become another requested move page. This would be a major change in how editors have handled moves, too major for me to just have ignored it. My apologies if I'm one of the editors commenting multiple times within the discussion, it just seems important not to have such a major change occur without attempting to jump in. As for the question itself, it may pass as RM or may not, I'm not that invested in the final result although I'll likely come down on the pages remaining uppercase. But opening this avenue to create another RM page here, at Village Pump (policy), not a good idea. Hopefully I've explained to your satisfaction, thanks for asking and allowing me to opine a bit. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:20, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Randy Kryn: In hindsight, do you think there were procedural errors at the 2016 RM? —Bagumba (talk) 02:08, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (I see this is a wall of text, but please bear with it for a full answer to the above question, thanks) Per the timeline you graciously researched and provided Bagumba, the 2016 move just reversed a 2013 action that moved the NFL Draft to lowercase after someone made an "uncontroversial" request at RM. It should never have been moved as "uncontroversial", that was an obvious mistake. It seems to have been rectified back to the long-term uppercasing at the 2016 RM at which you mentioned that the RM would, if passed, have to apply to NFL Draft and all the sub-Draft pages. That made sense, because the 2013 move seemed incorrect. Then the RM was upheld as a valid result at the move review, which suggested that another RM be held. It wasn't until 2023 that the next RM occurred, which was a solid "no consensus". The two RM's and one move review upheld uppercasing. Now a third RM would be a good discussion, and everyone who commented here should be pinged when it occurs at, hopefully, the NFL Draft talk page. But, again, and the main point that I and many other editors are making, is that a request for a title change should roll-out as an RM and not as a decision made at Village pump (policy), effectively turning Village pump (policy) into a second requested moves destination. There is enough opposition to doing that, to not change the very nature of both WP:RM and Village pump (policy). As mentioned now by quite a few editors, this RfC should be closed. Letting the next step occur at an RM seems the way to go without this food fight. That RM would both answer the upper or lowercasing question and avoid creating a route of taking any and all future requested moves to one of two places: either to an RM or to Village pump (policy). Does that make sense? Randy Kryn (talk) 05:06, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Randy Kryn: My question was specifically regarding the 2016 RM. Do you consider it normal procedure to move almost 100 draft pages when there was only notification on one page, 2016 NFL draft, including none on the main page, NFL draft? —Bagumba (talk) 00:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I would hope that didn't set a precedent but it was your idea to do it. It seems that this RfC is designed to move pages without notices on any of them. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:50, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  ...but it was your idea to do it: @Randy Kryn, please kindly retract your false statement. I clearly !voted "Procedural oppose" at that RM, and never said "Support and do a covert move of the ~100 draft pages without any notification on the respective pages". —Bagumba (talk) 16:20, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  In opposition you said that the RM should include all draft pages. That's what occurred, so yes, Bagumba, in a roundabout way, it was your summarization of the RM that set that ball rolling. Looks like I seconded the motion, and the gate was apparently opened (notice I didn't move any of the Draft pages, so if I paid any attention to the actual moves, which I can't remember doing, I watched from the sidelines, to coin a phrase). Randy Kryn (talk) 16:45, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  in a roundabout way, it was your summarization of the RM that set that ball rolling: Sorry, take responsibility for your own actions. There is no logical reason to believe that my "procedural oppose" was advocating a non-procedural action. —Bagumba (talk) 17:04, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Bagumba, please read the 2016 RM again, you mentioned that all the draft articles should be notified to alert them to the RM, which was a good idea and an editor was going to do that. But you do realize that not one article has been alerted to this para-RM, right? And yet you seem fine with it. Please move away from questioning my 2016 comment on a real RM and make up your mind what constitutes procedure, either alerting all of the pages or alerting none of them (as is the present situation). Randy Kryn (talk) 13:47, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And yet you seem fine with it.: @Randy Kryn Please provide a direct quote. Otherwise, please retract, and kindly stop speaking for me and misrepresenting me. Answer for your own actions, please. Or just make no comment. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 18:06, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  "This RfC is not the norm. However, I think an exception is reasonable if it helps to break the continued "no consensus" regarding the NFL and its draft.", that's one direct quote from above. There have only been two RM's on the question, then this leap to an RfC with, I accent again, no notification at the NFL Draft pages - the exact thing you are saying was wrong with the 2016 RM. That's why I'm surprised that you haven't called for this RfC to end, you seem to be on the side of "notify all the pages" but still support the continuation of this opinion poll. Since you are asking me questions, which I've continued to answer, let me ask you the major one: if a closer finds that this RfC comes down in favor of lowercasing NFL Draft pages, would you be in favor of actually moving pages (Which at least one admin has said they'd revert) or oppose it because of the lack of notification? Randy Kryn (talk) 23:58, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I support having the RfC, to allow the discussion to take place. I'm still trying to understand the arguments to help decide what, if anything, should happen from this. I can't comment on a potential close action without understanding their rationale. That would be premature. What I am looking for is an explanation of why notification on every page is more important now than it was at the 2016 RM, when WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY was trumped. —Bagumba (talk) 00:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I think this RFC idea is going to end in disaster. Trying to force any change onto a sizable group of editors, is (figuratively) playing with fire. GoodDay (talk) 06:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Trying to force any change...: Nothing is forced. Wikipedia operates on consensus, and we leverage standard policies and guidelines, like MOS:CAPS.—Bagumba (talk) 06:28, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Bad forum. WP:RFCNOT is clear that renaming requests are handled via WP:Requested moves. Isn't it ironic the people trying to force their interpretation of the P&Gs on others are blatantly ignoring community norms? Jessintime (talk) 14:45, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The "forcing" that's happening here is editors participating in a particular wikiproject would like to force the community to not be able to broadly examine at VPPOL a WP:P&G-applicability question that has been put to multiple RMs and resulted in a "no consensus" stalemate, and force it back to RM yet again where it can be futher filibustered from reaching a conclusion that handful of editors don't prefer. They provably do not have either the sourcing or the P&G (AT, MOSCAPS, NCCAPS) basis to back up their preference, but only the ability to swamp RMs that virtually no one else on the system will pay attention to or care about. We have no divinely flawless processes on WP; all of them can be gamed with enough effort, and VPPOL is the hardest one to game that we have. When it comes to things like this, VPPOL is the best venue we have.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:22, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Speaking of the "at VPPOL" part, this RFC already has 254 comments in it. It's too big for this page, and still growing. @SMcCandlish, could you or someone else please split it off to its own proper WP:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles page? When you do that, the RFC template should be removed from this page (so the bot will correct its links), but the "question" itself can be kept, so that anyone looking at this page can see what's being discussed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @WhatamIdoing:  Done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Wrong forum RM is for page moves. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:29, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Wrong forum That's what RM is for. Kante4 (talk) 19:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - This RFC seems to be morphing into general discussion, of which has more authority - RFCs or RMs. GoodDay (talk) 17:05, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Good forum. When many pages need to be moved in the same way, all of them can be nominated in a mass-RM (recent example: Talk:Aquarius (drink)#Requested move 21 December 2023), or the proposal can be discussed via RfC (2020 example: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (video games)/Archive 1#RfC: "(gamer)" or "(video game player)"?), and the latter seems equally good or better when it's really quite a lot of pages. I don't agree that there's any problem with this RfC.—Alalch E. 13:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  If this is to be treated as a mass requested move, then every affected page needs to be tagged as they would be in a requested move. No pages are currently so tagged. Thryduulf (talk) 14:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I feel that the centrality of the venue makes that unnecessary. —Alalch E. 15:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And many of us feel that it's not. Does everyone who would want to comment know and read this page? Asking the Magic 8-ball, can this para-RM, created long after the last RM and move review, replace the standard WP:RM format? Randy Kryn (talk) 15:24, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Alalch E. Why do you think that? On what basis do you think that readers and editors of every article about an NFL draft will know that an RFC advertised on a noticeboard about policy will know that this might affect the title of an article they are interested in? If you don't think that, why do you think that it is acceptable to ignore their views?

  @Randy Kryn in my opinion, no. Thryduulf (talk) 16:42, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  First reason is that an RfC lasts much longer than an RM so if someone didn't log in during the RM period, they might have still missed the discussion, and with an RfC they might notice it even if the move proposal isn't advertised via tag on the article itself. That's a partial reason. Second partial reason is that the WikiProject was notified, and it's quite an active WikiProject, so the number of editors interested in these pages that are able to participate in a discussion about this, is, for both mentioned reasons, probably roughly similar in both scenarios. The two scenarios will not attract the same editors individually, but aggregately, there will be a similar group of editors: editors interested in NFL articles. —Alalch E. 17:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - this isn't really the forum to decide on article name changes, but what does need to happen is for RM closers and MRV participants to actually follow the policies and guidelines as written and per 23 years of established practice, rather than endorsing opposition to move requests that clearly and unambiguously fail to follow evidence and policy. WP:CONSENSUS on Wikipedia isn't about who shouts the loudest, who achieves a majority of votes, or who happens to WP:OWN an article (clue: that's nobody), it's about who presents actual evidenced policy arguments. To be clear, there is no room for doubt here - NFL draft and similar phrases are NOT treated as proper names in sources, as a simple ngram [17] and other appeals to sources clearly demonstrate. And that's bearing in the mind that the bar for capitalising per MOS:CAPS is not a simple majority, but that the term is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources". This argument has been held over and over, at pages including Syrian civil war, civil rights movement, FA Cup final and many others, and despite there always being initial opposition, we usually get over the hump in the end and when we do, those titles become stable and unchanging. Frankly, I'm a little shocked that editors and seasoned admins that I respect greatly such as Newyorkbrad and Thryduulf have nailed their colours to the uppercasing mast here, based on little more than a bad-faith assertion that some editors are engaged in a "parade of decapitalization crusades" and that other editors who regularly edit NFL topics are allowed to impose their WP:OWNership on those articles despite Wikipedia policy being established contrary to that... Brad and Thryduulf, as admins your job is to wield the fabled mop, which means you strive to uphold our policies and not to support those who fail to follow them. If you really don't MOS:CAPS then the place to change that is by gaining consensus at the relevant policy pages, not to override it unilaterally in one subject area. Anyway, all that being said I'm not going to cast a !vote here, because I don't think an RFC in a venue like this is binding on article title decisions one way or the other. But I do hope that next time the draft issue is debated at an actual RM, we finally get the result that policy clearly dictates rather than the WP:ILIKEIT approach we have right now. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 15:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Amakuru, I am shocked that you have managed to make so many factual errors in a single comment. I have no opinion about whether the title of this article should be "Draft" or "draft", I have not nailed my colours to any mast. I have objected to people who are casting aspersions such as OWNership, canvassing and other actions without evidence attempting to engage in a requested move discussion without the presence of the editors of the articles concerned because they think this will give them a greater chance of getting the outcome they want. Policy on Wikipedia is descriptive - i.e. it follows rather than controls practice, if the outcome of discussions do not match policy then it is the policy that is wrong. In this case though, the opposition isn't to the policy - nobody is arguing (that I've seen) that the policy about capitalisation is wrong, the argument is about what the evidence shows in this specific situation (see also elsewhere in this discussion for the fallibility of ngrams). As admins, our job in closing discussion is not to blindly apply policies, but to determine the consensus of the discussion. This is especially true in discussions where, like here, the disagreement is not one where one set of arguments is policy-based and the other set isn't, but about differing interpretations of policy. Finally it is not true that there is no room for doubt here - NFL draft and similar phrases are NOT treated as proper names in sources because at least three discussions now have come to the consensus outcome that there very much is room for doubt. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Thryduulf: Thanks for your response, I think we're on the same side in terms of the forum question then... and as for the other parts, perhaps we're talkign at cross-purposes. The notion that localised discussions can simply ignore policy that doesn't suit them, or that "regulars" get to control what happens in debates, has never been the case in all the years that I've been editing Wikipedia. Sure, we have WP:IAR and that can be invoked when the circumstances are correct, but in no way shape or form can a localised group of participants just decide to toss out a policy or guideline they don't agree with just because they say so. Particularly so in move discussions, where WP:AT is tightly binding and rarely deviated from. So as far as the meta/policy/guideline-point goes, I still maintain that the rationales given above, saying regulars can tell those who understand and follow the capitalisation guidelines to eff off, is false. On the issue itself, I may have to eat a bit of humble pie and concede that the current form is correct, given the sound evidence that Hey man Im josh has introduced, but that's a bit by-the-by. The discussion should at all times be driven by evidence, not by entrenched opinions.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  FWIW (as I mentioned earlier in this RFC), enforcing policies and/or guidelines in one direction or another, tends to be messy. GoodDay (talk) 17:37, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  You are correct to say that regulars can tell those who understand and follow the capitalisation guidelines to eff off, is false but it is equally false to say that those who understand and follow the capitalisation guidelines can tell [article] regulars to eff off. Those with subject area knowledge are best placed to understand the context of sources written about that subject, which sources are reliable, etc. And once again, this is not a situation where anybody is trying to toss out a policy or guideline they don't agree because they aren't disagreeing with the policy or guideline. What they are disagreeing with is what evidence is relevant to consider. For comparison, in one discussion about a railway line in the UK (I can't remember which one) there were sources using the exact same three or four words to refer to two different concepts, one of which is a proper noun and one of which is not, but the capitalisation experts did not understand that there were two concepts and so saw only an inconsistency in capitalisation. Thryduulf (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Indeed, and that's why I'm saying evidence is key. In the situation you're referring to, I'd hope that those experts who've understood the different usages would explain the nuances of the railway capitalisation in such a way that it's obvious to all what the situation is. If someone continues to argue for lower case beyond that point, then that person is the one not following the sources. But all too often there's none of that, we just get people asserting "this is a proper name" while actual evidence seems to point the other way. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 18:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Form memory, a lot of the attempts to explain were dismissed with comments about independence and specialised sources, and pointers back to things like ngrams other statistics devoid of context - there was (and from some in this discussion still is) a lack of willingness to listen to arguments that arrive at a conclusion other than "downcase". Thryduulf (talk) 19:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And once again, this is not a situation where anybody is trying to toss out a policy or guideline they don't agree... I am not convinced yet. MOS:CAPS advises capitalization for terms that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. Caps-supporters are listing some sources that capitalize the term, perhaps a majority of the sources—at best—but I don't see anyone acknowledging why there should be an exception for the "substantial majority" restriction.—Bagumba (talk) 02:07, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Supporters of capitalisation are arguing that the "substantial majority" requirement is met. This argument may or may not be one you agree with, and it may or may not be correct, but it is clearly not an argument against the guideline (there are no policies at issue here). Thryduulf (talk) 11:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Supporters of capitalisation are arguing that the "substantial majority" requirement is met: Can you quote examples? At #Survey, I see arguments for forum shopping, proper name, stick with status quo because instances are evenly split, leave it to local consensus, and trademark. I dont see anything resembling a claim of a substantial majority. At #An incomplete list of sources, there's an incomplete sampling, excluding books, which conflicts with ngrams data. —Bagumba (talk) 13:07, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I've given it some thought, while watching the increasing input in this sub-section. I won't be seeking advice at WP:CR for whether or not this RFC should be closed. That's for others to decide. I just don't want this content dispute to spill over into the WP:CR page. GoodDay (talk) 01:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

• Follow what the main page is titled, which (at least for the moment) is National Football League Draft. -- GoodDay (talk) 03:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I think the question is as much "what is the proper case for that main page?" So why should that page have capital "Draft"? —Bagumba (talk) 06:47, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I can't go along with 'lowercase' usage, as long as the main page is uppercased. GoodDay (talk) 17:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Nobody is suggesting that. Dicklyon (talk) 17:52, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I know what's being suggested & I'll oppose it, as long as the main page is capitalized. Get NFL Draft moved to NFL draft & let the rest trickle down to all the related pages. GoodDay (talk) 17:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This RfC includes the potential renaming of the page National Football League Draft. What is your opinion on that page's title? —Bagumba (talk) 18:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'll leave others to decide on whether that page should be moved or not. Concerning American football, the last time I proposed anything at WP:NFL, the proposal was 'figuratively' shot down. GoodDay (talk) 18:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's a very deeply indented "don't care". Thanks. Dicklyon (talk) 05:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Don't start annoying me, please. GoodDay (talk) 06:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This RfC would not move any page, it is an opinion survey. Case moves are done at WP:RM not at WP:Village pump (policy). Avoiding putting a tag of National Football League Draft through a Statue of Liberty play such as this calls for a 15-yard grabbing-the-facemask penalty. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Lowercase draft in article text and titles except where it's an obvious trademark (e.g. "He wore his trademarked NFL Draft tee shirt."), or where it's in a reference title that has it capped. Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase. Dicklyon's proposal is commendable, and his ngram surveys below win the day. GoodDay, what a main page uses has nothing to do with the question, in my view. Tony (talk) 04:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lower case in titles and text, with the notable exception of where it is being used as part of a title of a broadcast or published piece (i.e., "Juanita Sportsexpert was the host of ESPN's NFL Draft 2037", "Manaheim Duffer wrote The NFL Draft: Secrets Behind the Selections.") -- Nat Gertler (talk) 07:44, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Upper case My !vote to retain the current title was refactored into a "Forum" section, and I restate it here.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  If you'd like to go ahead and refactor it to here, I don't think anyone would have reason to complain. Dicklyon (talk) 03:54, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I read Wehwalt's original comment (which is now in the subsection above), and it provides no rationle for or against capitalization; it's WP:JUSTAVOTE. His reponse is otherwise process-related.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree. It seems that they have an issue with another editor's conduct. But the focus here should be about the merits of the draft article titles. There's relevant noticeboards for their other concern.—Bagumba (talk) 08:12, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I am also convinced by hey man im josh's arguments that capitalization is appropriate and do adopt them.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:46, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  If you are referring to Hey man im josh's !vote below at 05:00, 6 January 2024, they were rebutted and not countered. A WP:PERX wave to a rebutted argument does not enhance the discussion to find broad principles of agreement between different viewpoints.—Bagumba (talk) 05:58, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Lower case. It is unquestionably demonstrated that "NFL draft" and similar terms are not consistently treated as proper names in independent reliable sources, and frequently appear lower-case. "As long as the main page [on the subject] is capitalized" is in no way a sensible or meaningful opposition rationale; this RfC is about renaming that one as well. The entire problem here is that WP:RM has failed to come to a consensus about the entire set of such articles, because RM process has too few participants, and is easily overrun on any particular move discussion by even a small handful of wikiproject editors intent on defying WP:AT policy and WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS and MOS:TM and other guidelines.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:59, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase. This doesn't look complicated. Wikipedia has clear policies and guidelines saying to use lowercase when the sources are mixed or predominantly lowercase. Independent reliable sources are preferred over "official" ones, and there is no shortage of independent sources for this topic. Escalation to a place where participation is more broad is a way to encourage consistency. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:03, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase. Wikipedia policy should always trump a WikiProject, and here WP:NCCAPS and WP:MOSCAPS appear to apply. Let'srun (talk) 22:23, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep it uppercase based on being a proper name and based on the NFL using this capitalization as well. Basically for all the same reasons we can't just move every article with "Final" in it's title to "final".

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]

• Uppercase per Josh. I don’t even consider this a legitimate RfC per the many arguments made under the first section that this should be an RM, but I suppose something is needed to show there’s opposition to the votes above. Ironically, considering what is claimed about the “football-fan editors,” this is yet again a user forum-shopping to source a favorable crowd to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. The claims of a “false consensus” being created by some ignorant gaggle of sports editors comes off as WP:IDHT in response to simply not liking the outcome. The Kip 07:15, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Um, supporting uppercase against the guidelines and the sourcing simply to take a wiki-political stance with a particular faction, without any rationale that proves the guidelines are somehow not applicable and the sourcing somehow wrong, is the epitome of how we don't do things here. You're essentially accusing everyone in favor of lowercase to be engaging in WP:ILIKEIT, while your own !vote just that (sprinkled with a topping of vengeful factionalism), while the lowercase respondents have provided solid rationales for their position.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Uppercase per Josh. Also with neither the lowercase "draft" nor the uppercase "Draft" having an overwhelming majority of usage in secondary sources, the NFL's usage of "Draft" should prevail. Frank Anchor 14:10, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  So, you haven't read MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS? Or just don't want to abide by such guidance? And you're also willing to ignore, or misrepresent, the data? Dicklyon (talk) 17:29, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This is counter to MOS:CAPS guidance to capitalize when they are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. No "overwhelming majority" of capitalization does not equate to the status quo "prevailing".—Bagumba (talk) 08:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural close and move discussion to RM, all of the votes can be moved along with to a new discussion. voters can move their votes to a new discussion if they so choose. An RM discussion with appropriate notices on the affected pages is the best way to determine if consensus has changed, particularly among people with an editing interest in these topics, who are presumably the people who have more knowledge in the usage of the term. Frank Anchor 14:10, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  If the nominator wants any change to occur then of course it should be an RM, but these "votes" should not be moved. There was just a discussion last April (perennial?), and when an RM is started notices are placed at the top of the articles which will be affected. Since that hasn't been done, then editors and readers have missed this discussion when they could have been commenting, so a fully new RM would be the only adequate format. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:18, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY. If you think particular pages should have such a notice, go put notices on them pointing to this discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:56, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural close per Frank Anchor and the various "bad forum"-type !votes above. XOR'easter (talk) 22:32, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase, per arguments made above, mostly swayed by SMcCandlish, and if the forum is wrong please move my comment there or ping me so I can do it myself, but honestly can't see what the location of the debate matters as much as the debate itself; the strength of the consensus matters, not the place it formed. Hiding T 11:43, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Procedural close, per several others above. This should go to WP:RM, the appropriate place for such a discussion (though, to be honest, I think Dicklyon should just WP:DROPTHESTICK and stop with his constant attempts to make this change, which includes doing changes to many pages right now even though a consensus has not been decided). Also note that relevant pages have not been notified. But otherwise, uppercase per Josh. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The last 5 years of NFL Draft articles were notified by Frank Anchor on Jan. 10. Feel free to notify more if you think that's relevant. Dicklyon (talk) 01:16, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I really can't believe that a simple issue is opposed by so many people. This encyclopedia is written in English. In English only proper names are capitalised mid-sentence, not something that a vociferous group of editors thinks is Very Important. "Draft" is obviously not being used as a proper name here, so lower case. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Upper case per status quo. 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. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Detailed response to this in the discussion section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @Newyorkbrad: MOS:CAPS reads:

  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.

  Is there a conflicting guideline that leaves it to the longstanding preferences of the editors who work in those subject areas? —Bagumba (talk) 02:47, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Lowercase Looks like ESPN is consistently using lowercase,[18] and a scan of newspapers.com for the past few years shows either consistent lowercase or a mix (in the same story, where are the copy editors?) of upper and lower. What seems to be common usage (lowercase) in reliable media also aligns with the general guidance in MOS:CAPS. Schazjmd (talk) 21:09, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase the fact that even a sports-centric source like ESPN uses lowercase draft suggests that we can reasonably do so too (and the new york times and many other news sources also seem to do so). The ngrams data is also pretty convincingly in favor of lowercase. I have seen some decapitalization attempts that make us use a very odd style, but this does not appear to be one of those cases. (And I don't see any issues with the venue - many pages are affected, and VPP certainly produces a broader consensus than an RM.) Galobtter (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Uppercase or more accurately "whatever the editors in that topic area want is fine", exactly per Newyorkbrad above. Ajpolino (talk) 21:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC) This is a case where our policies/guidelines don't give a single clear answer. WP:CONSISTENT preaches consistency, which would leave us at "NFL draft". MOS:SPORTCAPS recommends Trademarked sports and games are capitalized like any other trademarks which would leave us using "NFL Draft" [19] [20]. Either title is fine, valid, and harmless. What I strongly object to is the "us vs. them" hostility from Dicklyon (the OP of the first thread) (due to the large number of football-fan editors compared to the editors who want to respect our style guidelines and SMcCandlish A gaggle of [football-interested] editors will stonewall any attempt to move any of these articles. RM process has too few uninvolved participants to overrule their false-consensus and the second half of [21]. The idea that they represent the true community against some mixed loyalty special interest fraction is a self-important delusion that seeds toxic discussions. The community is a mixed bag; sometimes we agree on case-by-case variances from our guidelines; sometimes we don't agree. No need to act so surprised and outraged. It's the nature of the thing here. Ajpolino (talk) 13:34, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Adding for clarity that SMcCandlish, et al. are replying to my original (reactive, unhelpful) rationale, which I've struck to better flesh out my thoughts. Ajpolino (talk) 13:34, 13 January 2024 (UTC) [reply]

  Noted, but your new rationale is not correct, either. There is absolutely no lack of a single clear answer on this question; details here. The "nature of the thing" is that every topically focused group of editors want variances from the guidelines, and once in a blue moon they actually get, if and only if the sourcing overwhelmingly demonstrates that such a variance is justified, never just by being defiant. The idea that an exception is justified in this case already proven not true, either by WP:P&G rationales or by near-consistency of capitalization in sources. The only difference between this case and hundreds of previous ones is that the NFL fans are unusually, tendentiously insistent on getting their capital D no matter what, and all policy/guideline and sourcing facts simply go in one in and out the other.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:35, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  In response to Ajpolino's [original] !vote: That's completely counter to all the applicable guidelines, and much more importantly it's directly against all applicable policy, including WP:CONLEVEL, WP:OWN, WP:AT, and more besides. This comment is no longer pertinent, since Ajpolino changed their !vote considerably.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC); struck 21:35, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It would be quite messy to report (possibly) 100+ editors to WP:ANI for breaching WP:CONLEVEL, WP:OWN, WP:AT, etc. I'm not suggesting that any editor would make such a report. Only, that a (figurative) MoS editors vs Sports editors at WP:ANI, would be extremely messy. GoodDay (talk) 21:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Response in discussion section to keep this tidy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It it was really that dysfuctional at that large of a large scale, and the community exhausted all options to police itself, the proper venue would be Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee.—Bagumba (talk) 06:41, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's where I'm foreseeing this all heading eventually later this year - Arbcom. I'm hoping to be wrong about that. GoodDay (talk) 06:46, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Trademarked sports and games are capitalized like any other trademarks...: Except "NFL Draft" is neither a sport nor a game. See also my 09:28, 6 January 2024 comment at #Discussion (below)—the only trademark of "NFL Draft" anyway is for clothing and the logo, not for the event itself nor its broadcast.—Bagumba (talk) 15:56, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  He did also link a more recent trademark (filed 2019, first use in 2004), which says:

  IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S Education and entertainment services in the nature of professional football games and exhibitions; providing sports and entertainment information via a global computer network or a commercial on-line computer service, or by cable, satellite, television or radio; arranging and conducting athletic competitions, namely, professional football games and exhibitions; Entertainment services, namely, live musical and dance performances provided during intervals at sports events; educational services, namely, conducting physical education programs; production of radio and television programs; presentation of live shows featuring football games, exhibitions, competitions, and musical and dance performances; entertainment services, namely, an on-going series featuring football provided through cable television, satellite television, and television and radio broadcasts. FIRST USE: 20040000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20040000.

  So I think it would be consistent with this and the exception I noted above, to cap when specifically referring to the broadcast spectacle in those more recent years. But the main article, and all the articles that talk about the draft as a player selection process, not so much as an entertainment event, would still not be covered by that trademark, so would use lowercase draft, just as we find in most reliable sources. Dicklyon (talk) 18:36, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Actually, I was wrong. That 2019 filing was for the logo/illustration mark, not just the term "NFL Draft". This is more clear at the Justia listing:

  Description of Mark
  The mark consists of a shield design containing the stylized letters "NFL" within the bottom portion of the shield, and eight stars and a football contained within the top portion of the shield design; and the word "DRAFT" in a rectangular box design under the shield design; and another larger shield design behind both the smaller shield design and rectangular box design.

  So what Bagumba said above is more true than I realized, if applied to the words, not the logo: the only trademark of "NFL Draft" anyway is for clothing and the logo, not for the event itself nor its broadcast. Sorry for this being in the survey section; if someone wants to factor it out to trademark discussion place, that would be OK. Dicklyon (talk) 20:26, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I think one of us is misunderstanding trademarks (possibly me). I thought trademarks are issued for things you actually sell. Hence the trademark for the things sold around the event (clothes, etc.). The Super Bowl trademark is more or less the same. I don't think one could trademark an event. If you could, I'm sure the NFL would. Ajpolino (talk) 23:54, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm no lawyer, but the field of use can apparently be "Education and entertainment services". So yes, it's possible, but here we have that only for the logo. If they tried to trademark "NFL Draft" for the spectacle, they might have gotten pushback that it's too generic, or maybe not the kind of thing one can trademark. Don't know. Dicklyon (talk) 00:21, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The Super Bowl is different—its trademarks include those for the word itself in entertainment events and broadcasting and teleommunications. Just using plain English, "Super Bowl" has a completely different meaning from lowercase "super bowl", while a reader can ascertain what an "NFL draft" is without it needing to be distinguished with caps as "NFL Draft"; it's clearly fine as a common noun. —Bagumba (talk) 00:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  From Trademark, "A trademark ... consist[s] of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies a product or service from a particular source and distinguishes it from others." You can't trademark an event, but you can register trademarks for recognizable identifiers for an event to distinguish it from others (such as the Olympic rings). But this relates just to branding; it doesn't mean the NFL style guide will mandate "NFL Draft" to be used even in generic contexts. isaacl (talk) 01:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Lowercase per SMcCandlish. I don't care if this is a "crusade". I don't care if this is the wrong forum. I don't care about "preferences of the editors who work in those subject areas". What I care about is doing the "right thing". The "right thing" being to present information as accurately as possible consistent with what reliable sources do and say. Paul August ☎ 21:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Procedural close - There's too much potential for disaster, in attempting to force lower-casing, into areas where there's a sizable opposition. GoodDay (talk) 06:07, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Closers are competent to decide if there is consensus or not, or if there were any improprieties. No need to procedurally save closers. I would think if it was that egregious, it would have already been shut down on day 1. Trust the process. —Bagumba (talk) 06:32, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Upper case. Proper nouns are capitalized in English. My name is Jessica Smith not Jessica smith. (Note that's not actually my name, but you get the point) Jessintime (talk) 14:49, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Interesting choice of example, since the proper name Smith comes from the regular word smith. If "Jessica" were some manufactured product, and there were specific licensing requirements for its producers, there could be an article on the "2024 Jessica smith licensing requirements". A generic use of the word is lowercased. isaacl (talk) 17:22, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, but the only part of this that is a proper noun is "NFL", which of course should remain capitalized. The NFL has a draft, it is the NFL draft, just as the Toyota Prius is a car, but we don't call it a Toyota Car. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (after edit conflicts) Er, yes. Proper nouns, such as the "Smith" in your fictional name are capitalised. Common nouns, such as the "draft" in "NFL draft", meaning the draft (common noun) for the NFL, are not. I still can't believe that we're arguing about primary school level English here. The people writing this encyclopedia are supposed to be capable of writing English. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural close. The correct place to discuss the capitalisation of an article is WP:RM. Subject matter experts having a different opinion to style guideline experts does not make the former's opinion wrong and there is no benefit to the encyclopaedia in allowing the latter to enforce a guideline as though it were a policy without permitted exception. Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Subject matter experts having a different opinion to style guideline experts does not make the former's opinion wrong...: The SMEs would need to establish a community consensus, not just a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to ignore a guideline.—Bagumba (talk) 16:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Subject matter experts have demonstrated that they are far from experts in how English is written, or, in this case, following the sources. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:30, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  An RM and a move review established that the community consensus was for uppercase, the most recent RM found no consensus to change that. Those are the correct venues to determine what community consensus is in matters of the titling of a single article (or related set of articles). I have not looked at the sources, because what they do or do not say is irrelevant to anything other than an RM discussion. However, from skimreading the last RM it seems that there are different, equally valid, interpretations of what capitalisation is used by sources (and differing opinions on the relevance of different evidence). There is, and should be, no policy or guideline that state that the opinion of either style guideline experts or subject matter experts (who frequently had no input at all into the style guideline, despite usually being best place to know what is and isn't a proper noun in the context of that subject) are more right than the other. Thryduulf (talk) 10:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I am neither a style guideline expert nor a subject matter expert. I would simply prefer the English Wikipedia to be written in English. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:32, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  On what basis are you asserting that your opinion of what (correct) English is in this case is more correct than the opinion of other commenters? If that is not what you are asserting, then you have failed to write your comments on the English Wikipedia in English. Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Correctness is not decided by popular vote. I do not have the time, the patience or the ability to teach people basic English writing. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:06, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  If you are not an authority on what is and isn't correct, why should we listen to your opinion about what is correct over the opinion of people who disagree with you? Nobody is disputing (afaics) that proper nouns should be capitalised and common nouns not capitalised, what is disputed is whether the word "(D|d)raft" in the term "NFL (D|d)raft" is or is not a proper noun. Wikipedia does work on consensus, and evidence in favour of both points of view has been presented in multiple discussions, none of which have resulted in a consensus that it is a common noun (one found consensus it wasn't, one found that consensus was correctly determined, and another found no consensus either way). You are asking that your opinion be given greater weight than the opposing opinion (and whether this word in this context is a proper or common noun is a matter of opinion, because both would be correct English), but you have consistently failed to advance any reasonable explanation why we should do that. Thryduulf (talk) 13:59, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  True, it's not about authority, nor about opinions, nor votes. It's about guidelines and evidence. Some independent reliable sources treat NFL Draft as a proper name, and some don't. The evidence shows that most don't (historically, in books and magazines through 2019 at least; in currrent news it's closer to half and half). The guidelines tell us to not treat it as a proper name in that case. No guideline-based or evidence-based reason to treat it as a proper name has been presented, as far as I can find. A number of editors are supporting uppercase "per Josh", whose rationale was "based on being a proper name and based on the NFL using this capitalization as well." But there's nothing there that's supportable by evidence or guidelines. And some "per Newyorkbrad" whose rationale "against the longstanding preferences of the editors who work in those subject areas" is similarly unsupported by guidelines. Ajpolino, Wehwalt, and GoodDay give no discernible rationale. You claimed "An RM and a move review established that the community consensus was for uppercase", which is the opposite of what was concluded; the most recently RM and MR both clearly came down on the side of "no consensus", which is why we're here trying to establish a consensus, by keeping the focus on P&G and evidence. Nemov says "there are sources that capitalize it. I would capitalize it" which is fine, there are, and they and he can capitalize it all they want, but that's not reason that Wikipedia should. So why not look at the guidelines, look at the evidence, and support fixing it? So many of the opposing responses here are about disrupting the process, thwarting the attempt to resolve this lack of consensus, instead of participating with meaningful comments; like "if we lose, it's because the process was corrupt" BS. Dicklyon (talk) 18:49, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I and others have repeatedly explained why VPP should not be in the business of overruling RM. Your arguments in the RM discussion failed to convince a consensus of editors. That doesn't mean you get to come to VPP to try and overrule the RM, it means that you need to either accept that consensus is not on your side or present better arguments in a new RM. What the sources do or do not say is irrelevant here. Thryduulf (talk) 20:17, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I certainly didn't mean to say that my opinion should count for any more that anyone else's. Can you tell me where I said that, because I can't find it? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  You have not said it explicitly, but it is what the entire set of your comments mean. You want to overrule a consensus in RM, consensus in MR and no consensus in RM because, in your opinion, weighing the opinions of those who disagree with you the same as the opinions expressed by those who agree with you is incorrect. Thryduulf (talk) 20:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Upper case per Josh, Newyorkbrad, and especially Ajpolino. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:36, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Upper case The "MLB Draft" and the "NFL Draft" are proper nouns and there are sources that capitalize it. I would capitalize it. The English language isn't a math equation. Color can be spelled two different ways. This should be decided on a case by case basis instead of imposing some draconian standard. Nemov (talk) 20:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  What you personally like is irrelevant, and so is the fact that you can find some sources that capitalize it. You can find sources that capitalize anything. "Someone somewhere capitalized it" is not our standard. Here is our standard:

  • In general: 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. (Emphasis in original.) And: Initial capitals or all capitals should not be used for emphasis. ... This includes over-capitalization for signification, i.e. to try to impress upon the reader the importance or specialness of something in a particular context. From MOS:CAPS and its subsection MOS:SIGCAPS.
  • On the page title: leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence. Outside Wikipedia, and within certain specific fields ... 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. ... Note that all style guides conflict on some points; the Wikipedia MoS and naming conventions are a consensus-based balance between them, drawing primarily upon academic style, not journalistic or marketing/business styles, and taking into account Wikipedia-specific concerns. From WP:NCCAPS. To the extent a style matter like this could ever be considered a "different names" matter (which is extremely dubious) Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit the five criteria. From WP:COMMONNAME policy.
  • On trademarks and anything like them: examine styles already in use by independent reliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. Exceptions may apply, but Wikipedia relies on sources to determine when an unusual name format has become conventional for a particular trademark; only names that are consistently styled a particular way by a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are styled that way in Wikipedia. (Emphasis in original.) From MOS:TM.

  Capitalized "Draft" provably and completely fails these tests [23]. There is no WP:P&G or sourcing rationale of any kind for "Draft", and overwhelming rationales (on both counts) for "draft".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That argument did not gain consensus at the most recent RM. Repeating the argument ad nauseum at VPP does not change that. Thryduulf (talk) 21:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  We got a no consensus result because RM can be vote-stacked with trivial ease by a wikiproject. We've been over this several times already. Repeating your argument to the contrary ad nauseam neither changes neither that fact nor the fact that VPPOL can community-examine any P&G-pertinent matter, and exists for doign so.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:29, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  RM can be vote-stacked with trivial ease by a wikiproject you keep repeating this claim, but you have never provided any evidence that it is true either in general, that it happened in this particular instance, or that the opinions of members of a WikiProject are less relevant or deserve less weight that the opinions of other editors. Repeating the argument does not make it true. Thryduulf (talk) 17:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's a really long response to a topic that's not complicated. It's not about what I personally like. A proper noun is a noun that serves as the name for a specific place, person, or thing. The NFL Draft and the MLB Draft are the names of a thing and they are proper nouns. If you don't know that those are events that are proper nouns then leave it up to people who know. That's why a one size fits all approach is unwise. Nemov (talk) 22:37, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  See WP:PNPN. You're trying the apply a philosophy definition of proper name, which has no relevance to capitalization or to how our articles are titled and our other text is styled. Only the linguistics definition is of any pertinence to those matters (or even has a consistent treatment in academic sources about the nature of proper names to begin with; the philosophy notions have been debated non-stop for centuries).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:29, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't need to read an essay to know that the NFL Draft is a proper noun. Please WP:DROPTHESTICK. So much valuable editor resources is being wasted on these silly "one size fits all" capitalization discussions. Nemov (talk) 17:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Procedural close, this para-RM isn't a real WP:RM, which is the appropriate place for suggested moves such as this. That way the NFL Draft pages would all receive notice-tags on top alerting readers and editors to the proposed moves. As it stands now not one of them has been, or can be per standard notification procedure, properly alerted. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Both? It appears based on some internet sleuthing "NFL Draft" is occasionally a proper noun, and occasionally it is not a proper noun, but in all other contexts, including "National Football League draft" or where draft is an adjective such as "NFL draft order" it is not a proper noun. Hence the confusion? SportingFlyer T·C 16:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And this is why things like ngrams, which are often presented as evidence in proposed moves like this, do not actually provide evidence of anything relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 16:09, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Exactly why this discussion is just going to be another no-consensus. Conyo14 (talk) 16:32, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Interesting observation. In such circumstances, can't we look to examples in specific independent reliable sources (e.g. BBC, ESPN, The Guardian, Associated Press, New York Times article body text, USA Today) and customized Ngram searches that avoid such problems, like "NFL draft is" and "the NFL draft" and "in the NFL draft"? The signs I see from this do not indicate consistent use of uppercase, to put it mildly. When sources are mixed and especially when they lean toward lowercase, Wikipedia uses lowercase. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Ngrams are devoid of all context, not just the context that is easy to determine. We can't tell whether an instance of "NFL draft" is within a text that is written by someone who has any idea whether that is or isn't correct, whether the source has been proof read, a headline, an OCR error (e.g. the Ngram viewer finds results for both capitalisations circa 1900, the article tells me the first draft was in 1936). They also explicitly tell us nothing about any changes since 2019. Thryduulf (talk) 18:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Re "... any idea whether that is or isn't correct"? Correct is whatever people commonly do, not what some unidentified authority tells them to do. English is primarily a descriptive language, not a prescriptive one. There is no Académie Anglais. The inclusion of headlines would tend toward overcapped measurements, not undercapped ones, since headlines are often written in title case. The Google Books Ngram database is published books, not low-quality chat room commentary. Published books have generally been proofread – often professionally. OCR errors seem unlikely to frequently turn a 'D' into a 'd'. Context is provided by searching for "NFL Draft is", which will avoid instances of phrases like "NFL draft order". Spelling out the abbreviation doesn't seem to matter, shown here. The blip for 1900 seems obviously too small to worry about. I really doubt there has been a dramatic shift in statistics since 2019, especially without some newsworthy initiative to cause such a change, and Wikipedia shouldn't try to follow the latest fashion even if some shift exists (which it probably doesn't). Did you notice I also linked to various specific independent reliable sources? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:20, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Correct is whatever people commonly do, not what some unidentified authority tells them to do. yes and no. Common words, phrases, grammatical constructions, etc. are determined by popular usage (although occasional exceptions may exist). However, many specific names can be correct or incorrect - determined by the person or organisation that owns (for want of a better term) the thing referred to. For example my username is "Thryduulf", if you are referring to me any other form ("thryduulf", "Thrydulf", etc) is incorrect. The same is true of brands - the owners of a brand get to determine what the correct form of that brand's name is and how much they care about that.

  You can doubt all you want about what statistical shifts have or have not happened and how significant they have or have not been, but that's just your opinion and no more or less right or wrong than my opinion. The evidence free assertion is also directly contrary to the factual evidence-based approach you claim to care about. Where Wikipedia uses the common name as it's article title, it should use the current common name rather than the common name at some other arbitrary point in time just because that matches what some editors think the common name should be. Thryduulf (talk) 22:36, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I linked a whole bunch of news sites using lowercase for the 2024 NFL draft, so it's pretty clear it hasn't suddenly become consistently capitalized in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 23:19, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  (edit conflict) Oh. I see. I hope you understand that your thinking that some particular person or organization should "own" the right to determine how we will refer to them and their activities and products on Wikipedia, including whether or not letters should be capitalized, seems contrary to a lot of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. It would result in a lot of overcapping, all-lowercasing, inconsistencies, and strange promotional stylings that we actively try to avoid as described by WP:AT (including WP:TITLETM and WP:LOWERCASE), MOS:CAPS (including MOS:ALLCAPS, MOS:GAMECAPS, MOS:THECAPS and MOS:THEINST), MOS:CT, MOS:TM, etc. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:33, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  @SportingFlyer: The possibility that NFL Draft is a proper name in some contexts was acknowledged at the outset, when I asked for exceptions to lowercasing. So please say more about what your sleuthing found. The n-gram stats are limited to 5 words in the contexts that they provide stats for, which is useful but admittedly not always enough. If there are distinct usage patterns that we can identify via n-grams or otherwise, we should try to be explicit about that those, so that when we lowercase most uses, we don't go too far. Thanks for checking and reporting. Dicklyon (talk) 21:52, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks, but I legitimately do not care beyond what I've already researched. SportingFlyer T·C 22:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  No problem. If anyone else cares enough to say what contexts they've found where the term is treated as a proper name, please do tell us. I care. Dicklyon (talk) 23:19, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The NFL uses it as a proper noun, non-American newspapers use it as a proper noun, and it's often capitalised in headlines but not in prose. Helpful? SportingFlyer T·C 14:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  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.

  It's no surprise that some domains capitalize for emphasis. Is there any difference in meaning between "NFL draft" and "NFL Draft" that would suggest an actual proper noun? In any event per MOS:CAPS, Wikipedia simply goes by what is consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. —Bagumba (talk) 06:43, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Lowercase. MOS:TM addresses this very directly: When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should examine styles already in use by independent reliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. Upon examination, there is evidence, already brought up in this RfC, that two different styles are used. We should the lowercase variant, because it most closely resembles standard English.—Alalch E. 13:54, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase. There's reasonable evidence that this is the more common way to write it. I can't see any problems with the switch. Harper J. Cole (talk) 19:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase Through WP:AT, WP:NCCAPS and then MOS:CAPS, these are the prevailing guidance for capitalisation of article titles. The evidence presented herein does not show that this is consistently capitalised in independent reliable sources (see MOS:CAPS particularly). Consequently, it should not be capped for these article titles. The argument that this falls to MOS:TM is a red herring. It is shown that the TM only applies to merchandise and not to the event more broadly. The argument that we should follow the NFL fails because it is not independent (per the requirement of MOS:CAPS). There is an assertion that capitalisation is context specific and in this context, it should be capitalised. There is no analysis of usage presented to substantiate this assertion. There is plenty of evidence herein that would refute such an assertion. There is an assertion that this is ipso facto a proper name that should be capitalised because it is a particular thing. As quoted elsewhere herein from the Collins dictionary, a proper noun|name is arbitrary and not descriptive. The NFL D|draft is intrinsically descriptive. It is a draft conducted by the NFL. The assertion also fails because it is not a particular thing but a series or group of things. Ipso facto, this is not a proper name. Per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS, we do not cap because the event is significant or important. The prevailing P&G and evidence clearly indicates this should be lowercase. The arguments made in opposition are inconsistent with the prevailing P&G and evidence. They lack substance and are unsubstantiated.

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]

• Lowercase Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters begins with

  Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization.

  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.[24]

  A reader seeing NFL Draft does not attach 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) or White House (vs white house). Capitalization is not necessary for a reader to understand the meaning here. !Voters saying that "it’s a proper noun" seem to be parroting that only because some sources are capitalizing it. However, MOS:CAPS advises:

  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.

  This is not the case with “NFL Draft”—there is not the "substantial majority" recommended by the MOS, even if there are sources that do capitalize. Note the MOS relies on the frequency of capitalization in sources, not merely that some !voters call it a “proper noun”. Arguments about it being a trademark were countered in detail elsewhere already in this RfC—the trademark is specifically for use on clothing, not for the event or its broadcast. One !voter (and by extension the numerous WP:PERX waves) argued to capitalize based on being a proper name and based on the NFL using this capitalization as well, but that ignores its usage as seen in independent, reliable sources, and the NFL's usage is not even an independent source, and should be ignored. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) warns:

  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.

  Calls for deferring to the preferences of football editors to capitalize is counter to the existing MOS:CAPS guideline and the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy:

  For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.

  WP:BATTLEGROUND recommends that

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

  However, I don't think I've seen capitalization proponents acknowledge the relevant guidance at MOS and provide rationalizations of how Wikipedia is improved by ignoring its advice in this case. Per the WP:CONSENSUS policy:

  Responses indicating individual explanations of positions using Wikipedia policies and guidelines are given the highest weight.

  —Bagumba (talk) 17:26, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Lowercase not a proper noun per MOS:CAPS, WP:TITLETM, n-gram, etc. Graham (talk) 15:36, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

• Some recent history – It's a bit complicated; maybe I'll go further back later. Most sports settled on lowercase many years ago, but the NFL editors are a notable holdout. The most recent RM discussion at Talk:2024 NFL Draft#Requested move 27 April 2023 closed as "no consensus", with a few editors claiming that NFL Draft is a registered trademark, and others pointing out that that trademark (registered in 2019) is only registered as a marking on clothing items (e.g. hats and tee shirts) and that the player selection meeting does not have a trademarked name. Editors in favor of lowercase pointed out the overwhelming majority lowercase use of "draft" in sources (while one editor claimed, citing another who didn't, that "The vast majority of reliable sources capitalize the 'D' in draft"). Dicklyon (talk) 03:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Regarding trademarks, MOS:TRADEMARK reads:

  When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should examine styles already in use by independent reliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner.

  Moreover, the trademarks for NFL Draft are unrelated to the actual event written about on WP: one trademark is applicable only for clothing, the other is for a specific drawing (which includes a shield, football, stars, and the words). This is in contrast to valid WP capitalization for trademarks, like the Super Bowl game's trademarks for the word itself in entertainment events and broadcasting and teleommunications. —Bagumba (talk) 09:28, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  An organization specifying the trademarks it is protecting is about preventing branding confusion, and not a naming decision by the organization, thus I don't think they should play a role in this discussion. A generic term can't be trademarked, because if, for example, I write a guide to the NFL draft, that's literally what it is and so I'm allowed to call it that. (If I make it clear my guide has no association with the NFL, the NFL doesn't have a case against me for trademark infringement.) So trademarks of that type will inevitably capitalize words. Even so, I'm not bound to use an uppercase "D" when writing "NFL draft" in my guide (or forced to use a lowercase "d", for that matter), just because it was trademarked with an uppercase "D". On the other hand, if I'm the office supplier to the location of the draft, and I try to claim that I'm the "Official paper clip supplier for the NFL draft", I'm fairly certain the use of a lowercase "d" won't save me. isaacl (talk) 03:30, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Some usage stats from books and magazines
  • NFL Draft variations
  • National Football League Draft variations

  Note the overwhelming majority lowercase "draft" in books and magazines. Dicklyon (talk) 04:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Article titles potentially affected (besides the already mentioned National Football League Draft):
  • About 400 articles and redirects with "NFL Draft" in title – Look them over for patterns or exceptions if you wish. Dicklyon (talk) 04:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• To avoid further 'discussion' in the survey section. I will change my position on this topic - only if/when National Football League Draft is moved to National Football League draft. GoodDay (talk) 18:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  That's circular and missing the point. This discussion is about moving that and all associated pages (and other things like them in other sports); it is not about moving all pages except that one. It is opened as an RfC because it is not possible to get anything other than a WP:FALSECONSENSUS in an RM on this question, because virtually no one will show up other than people canvassed from a wikiproject with has PoV to push with regard to capitalizing this as if it is "magically special". What part of this is not clear?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:17, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm well aware of what this RFC is about. GoodDay (talk) 19:02, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Some older history – The main article was moved in April 2005, without discussion, from NFL draft to NFL Draft, after being stable at lowercase for about a year since creation; the lead was changed from draft to Draft at that time, too. Interestingly, lowercase was even more prevalent in sources at that time, and this change in WP may have influenced an uptick in capitalization in books in the years that followed; see graph. Still, lowecase dominates. Dicklyon (talk) 20:34, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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]

• Question: What is the article actually about - is it about which players were chosen by the various NFL teams? Or is it about the gala televised spectacular (with its interviews, and background clips) that contains the announcement? The TV program should probably be capitalized… the picking of players should not. Blueboar (talk) 00:59, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I see relatively little discussion of the gala, though typically the leads on the annual meetings (e.g. at 2010 NFL Draft) mention the venue, dates, and who televised it. They're mostly about the draft process, and which teams selected which players, and what deals went on, and such. E.g. a whole bunch of college team articles about who got drafted, such as List of Colorado State Rams in the NFL Draft and others like it that I moved a dozen of recently, but got reverted. Dicklyon (talk) 01:23, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  And thanks for your sensible comments; I agree, as I spelled out under my exception to lowercase above. Here's how ESPN covered that 2010 gala at Radio City Music Hall that they televised: search hits. Dicklyon (talk) 03:02, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  This is actually a great question regarding this. However, if it were to be about the spectacle and not in fact the business transactions, then article would be italicized and also capitalized depending on the common usage. That being said, the article would never have the depth to be sustainable without the notable transactions. Conyo14 (talk) 19:25, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• 2024 NFL draft in the news, enough lowercase draft to show it's not consistently capped in sources (current news, plus already shown books and magazines):
  • draftwire.usatoday.com
  • seattletimes.com
  • espn.com
  • usatoday.com
  • dawgnation.com
  • sbnation.com
  • heavy.com
  • nbcsports.com
  • freep.com
  • mlive.com
  • sports.yahoo.com

  Dicklyon (talk) 01:38, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Page title timeline There have been comments and innuendo about National Football League Draft's page title history. Here is a more specific timeline (due to lack of centralized history information on Wikipedia titles and moves, this might not be comprehensive. Feel free to update):
  1. 8 June 2004 Page created[25]
  2. 13 April 2005 User:Zellin NFL draft moved to NFL Draft [26]
  3. 2 July 2007 User:Koavf moved page NFL Draft to National Football League Draft (Full name) [27]
  4. 7 July 2007 User:Moe Epsilon moved page National Football League Draft to NFL Draft over redirect (revert; controversial page move without consensus by User:Koavf[28]
  5. 26 June 2010 User:MatthewGoodfan101 moved page NFL Draft to National Football League Draft over redirect (The entire name of the league should be shown in the title.)[29]
  6. 12 July 2013 User:Anthony Appleyard moved page National Football League Draft to National Football League draft (Requested at WP:RM as uncontroversial (permalink))[30]
  7. 18 May 2016 User:JFG moved page National Football League draft to National Football League Draft over redirect (Moved per consensus on Talk:2016_NFL_draft#Requested_move_30_April_2016 [31]
     • RM Nominator: User:BU Rob13
     • Move review: Wikipedia:Move review/Log/2016 July#2016 NFL Draft
  8. Talk:2024_NFL_Draft#Requested_move_27_April_2023
     • RM Nominator: User:Dicklyon
     • Result: No consensus

—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]

• Comment - In future (and somewhat related to this RFC) may we have an RM at WP:SPORTS (for example), concerning whether or not all draft pages should have an uppercase "Draft" or lowercase "draft" in their titles? This would maintain consistency. GoodDay (talk) 18:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Except MOS:CAPS says:

  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

  Hypothetically, "XYZ Draft" might mostly be capitalized in sources, even if "ABC draft" is not.—Bagumba (talk) 00:11, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The real question is what constitutes "a substantial majority". I've seen people say they think that threshold is about 90%. That's absolutely ridiculous. If two thirds of sources capitalize something, that should be enough to capitalize the Wikipedia article, let alone rations like 7/10, 3/4 or 8/10. Intentionally not capitalizing something even if two out of every three sources does just makes us look stupid. There's no other word for it. We need to set a firmer guidance than the current vague wording, and make it clear that the threshold is not some ridiculous level that puts our formatting firmly in the minority of real-world usage. Two-thirds is not too low of a threshold.

  This is the discussion to actually have, and the only one that actually affects the writing or interpretation of policy. This back-door move discussion (which still doesn't have a pointer on the article itself) is not a policy discussion. oknazevad (talk) 02:44, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, that's worthy of a serious discussion. But if we don't even follow guidelines when the data clearly show a majority lowercase, do you think that kind of splitting hairs is going to help anything? Dicklyon (talk) 03:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Question - Does this RFC include pages being 'moved' & likewise related links being changed? Examples - 2023 NFL Draft to 2023 NFL draft, AFC Championship Game to AFC Championship game? GoodDay (talk) 04:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Of course not, it affects no pages. See the 'Wrong forum' section above. This was brought to this page in an end-around of WP:RM and has been tackled for a loss. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:04, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• FWIW - I've made WP:SPORTS & WP:HOCKEY aware of this RFC. GoodDay (talk) 19:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Question What is the domino effect of this? Conyo14 (talk) 19:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  The effect of a lower-casing decision would be that National Football League Draft would move to "draft" spelling along with side articles like 2024 NFL Draft; possibly also that other, unrelated "FOO Draft" articles that are improperly capitalized (because they are not overwhelmingly capitalized in independent sources per WP:NCCAPS the MOS:CAPS lead and MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:SIGCAPS and MOS:TM) would eventually be lower-cased. The effect of an upper-casing decision would be to keep these articles at the "Draft" spelling, and it probably would encourage trying to move various unrelated "FOO draft" articles to "Draft" spellings whether supportable by the sourcing or not, just because people devoted to sport "A" will demand any capitalization they see permitted for sport "B". Further fallout of the latter would likely be an attempt to over-capitalize other football and other sports terms against MOS:SPORTCAPS simply because "they got away with it once". Never underestimate the lengths to which a special interest will go to over-capitalize things they think are important/special in their pet topic regardless of what is actually source-supportable. The specialized-style fallacy runs rampant and is reponsible for about 90% of time-wasting capitalization disputes on Wikipedia. We have a rule to not capitalize anything unless it's treated that way in almost all the source material, and we just need to follow it without entertaining constant special pleading about this topic or that one. None of them are magically special.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Lots of salt in the reply, but thank you. Conyo14 (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Conyo14, actually nothing at all will happen because of this RfC. It is an opinion poll, and a not very well organized one at that. Moves and title changes such as this occur at WP:RM, not at a Village pump subpage. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Factually wrong, and just repeating this nonsense over and over again is not going to make it true or change any minds. Any time an RfC like this concludes with a consensus, it translates into page moves, most of them done manually or through WP:RM/TR without pushback, and a few with pushback but being moved to conform anyway. RfCs exactly like this (many right here in VPPOL, others at WT:MOS or WT:MOSCAPS) concluded to de-capitalize common/vernacular names of species, to remove the comma from "Sammy Davis[,] Jr." names, to normalize breed capitalization (standardized breeds follow the capitalization of their published breed standard, while everything else that people sometimes call a "breed", like a cross-breed, a landrace, etc. is lower-cased, as codified in MOS:LIFE), and so on. The result is the same in every case. No amount of wishing that WP consensus decisions don't work the way the work is going to change how they do in fact work.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:29, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  In this case the nonsense would be in thinking that an RfC at this page could change scores of article titles, especially without alerting the readers of those articles. Even the editor who started this RfC, Dicklyon, agrees that lowercasing or uppercasing of 'Draft' has to be taken to WP:RM. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:50, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Did I say something that made you think that? I mean, sure an RfC close doesn't move pages, and maybe we need WP:RMTR to do that once there's a clear consensus. Why does the exact process excite you so much? Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Aside from your long-time support of the WP:RM process, your January 9 reply when addressing opposition to your undiscussed moves upholds the important and historical role of WP:RM in title changes. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It seems reasonable to have someone with page mover permissions close the RfC, in the event they are needed. At Wikipedia:Closure requests, it says:

  You may not close discussions as an unregistered user, or where implementing the closure would call to use tools or edit permissions you do not have access to.

  —Bagumba (talk) 04:29, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I've also contacted WP:CFL about this RFC. Though with Canadian football now in off-season mode, interest may be limited. GoodDay (talk) 17:45, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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

• @Newyorkbrad: "Per status quo" isn't a rationale, except when consensus can't be reached. What actually has a consistently demoralizing effect for a very long time is people trying to follow our guidelines being name-called "crusaders" and the like by either people who aren't getting their way on a style peccadillo that can't be supported by the preponderance of independent sources, or by people who just don't like style disputes and wish they would simply all go away. You generally seem to be in the latter category, and frankly I'm certain that you know better than to miscast guideline-compliant editors as comparable to violent religious imperialists, shades of the point of Godwin's law: don't trivialize historical atrocities just to demonize someone you don't agree with in a "someone is wrong on the Internet" argument. Style disputes will never go away, for human-nature reasons I've detailed at WP:MOSAWFUL. And the tension and occasionally even disruption they generate are entirely caused by "give me an exception or else" battlegrounding antics by those in favor of treating their favorite topic as somehow exempt from site-wide consensuses. Just have a look at this discussion, which is mired in disingenuous nonsense that is directly against WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY policies, trying desperately to invalidate the community's own abilility to have a discussion, all because it has "RfC" instead of "RM" on it and isn't in a venue the anti-guideline crowd can overwhelm with their noise and hand-waving. This stuff is almost always over trivia that means nothing to the average reader, but is treated irrationally like a life-or-death struggle by certain people in certain topics, for no defensible reason, just personal preference and a desire to abuse capital letters and other style as promotional signifiers of subjective importance. Giving them their way on this for no good reason will simply inspire every special topical interest to defy every guideline and policy they don't like. If you think MOS:CAPS should be saying something different, you know where WT:MOSCAPS is. If you think WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONSISTENT policies should be invalidated, you know where WT:AT is. The way to change extant P&G is to propose changes to them, never to sneak in an unjustifiable exception and then try to use it as wedge to get more. That's WP:FAITACCOMPLI at its worst and exactly what WP:CONLEVEL policy was implemented to bring to an end.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• @GoodDay: Your "mass ANI" scenario would be SNOW closed as a content dispute; ANI is for behavioral problems. If, on some crazy lark, ANI wanted to examine it that way, the necessary conclusion would be that defying policies and guidelines on a "my topic is different and exempt just because I say so" basis, not defensible with sources, is not okay (and a bunch of readily diffable uncivil actions would also probably result in specific remedies against particular battlegrounding editors who keep personally attacking Dicklyon and have been doing it with impunity for years). But ANI would never take on such a mass report itself, but refer it to ArbCom if it collectively thought there was a behavioral issue to address. In reality, this kind of disputation has been going on for the entire history of the project, and it only ends one way, with three possible outcomes: either the guideline is applied to the topic like to all others because no exception is justified, the guideline is modified to codify a justifiable type of exception that might come up again, or a one-topic exception is justified and the guideline doesn't bother annotating it because it won't come up again. What doesn't ever happen is that a campaign of defiance results in "victory" for those who can't justify an exception. And this really has nothing to do with MoS in particular; every P&G matter is the same in this regard; it's just more common with MoS because MoS is detailed, and everyone thinks they have an informed opinion on English usage norms and statistics, and that topics they like most are somehow different (neither of which are usually true).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:23, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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]

• Comment - I've changed my position on this RFC & recommend it be closed. IMHO, the RFC appears to be an attempt to force something into areas of the project, where that something has already been rejected. In other words, a potential for disaster. GoodDay (talk) 06:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  How is opening a dicussion to the broadest audience we have for such matters "forcing" anything? Rather the diametric opposite. This is the least viable venue on the system for trying to get one's way against what the community consensus is or will be. Kinda the point.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:36, 13 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:

• may move a page without discussion if ... It seems unlikely that anyone would reasonably disagree with the move. The key word here is reasonably. If the rationale for the push-back is demonstrably faulty and not defensible with sources or P&G then the "reasonably" standard is not met.
• The other relevant criterion there is There has been no previous discussion about the title of the page that expressed any objection to a new title; that is no longer the case now, but it was the case when pages of this sort were originally manually moved back in 2016.

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

• you may request a page move at Wikipedia:Requested moves ... if the retitling is expected to be controversial – this is optional and the key word is "expected"; controversy about making a move compliant with NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS is by definition not "expected" and is contrary to already-established consensus. In case there's somehow any doubt about that, WP:MOVE continues explicitly:
• Reasons for moving a page .... The title does not follow Wikipedia's naming conventions .... The title has been misspelled, does not contain standard capitalization or punctuation, or [stuff not pertinent here]. The original moves certainly qualified.

Next, WP:RM#CM:

• The discussion process is used for potentially controversial moves. A move is potentially controversial if either of the following applies: * there has been any past debate about the best title for the page; * someone could reasonably disagree with the move. Use this process if there is any reason to believe a move would be contested. For technical move requests, such as to correct obvious typographical errors ....

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:

• On Wikipedia, a page can usually be renamed if the already existing title is incorrect or needs to be changed; this is called moving a page. .... you may request a page move at Wikipedia:Requested moves. ... Consider listing pages that you want to have renamed/moved at Wikipedia:Requested moves. List them at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests if it appears unlikely that anyone would reasonably disagree with the move, and ... You are unable to move the page .... For other cases, follow the instructions for controversial and potentially controversial moves: If you believe the move might be controversial ....

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):

• closers are expected and required to exercise their judgment to ensure that any decision reached is within compliance of the spirit of Wikipedia policy, and complies with the project's goals. ... Consensus is not determined by counting heads or counting votes, nor is it determined by the closer's own views about what action or outcome is most appropriate. The closer is there to judge the consensus of the community, after discarding irrelevant arguments: those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue. If the discussion shows that some people think one policy is controlling, and some another, the closer is expected to close by judging which view has the predominant number of responsible Wikipedians supporting it, not personally select which is the better policy. The closer is not expected to decide the issue, just to judge the result of the debate, and is expected to know policy sufficiently to know what arguments are to be excluded as irrelevant.

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:

• Editors usually reach consensus as a natural process .... A consensus decision takes into account all of the proper concerns raised. Key word: "proper".
• try to work out the dispute through discussion, using reasons based in policy, sources, and common sense. Over-capitalizing "NFL draft" satisfies none of those criteria.
• [Edidtors] may still occasionally find themselves at an impasse, either because they cannot find rational grounds to settle a dispute or because one or both sides of the discussion become emotionally or ideologically invested in winning an argument Our P&G are rational grounds; demanding capitalization of "Draft" despite P&G and despite its common lower-case use even in sports- and football-specific sources, is not rational grounds and is clearly heading in the direction of emotional over-investment in "winning". (There's also an ideological component; not only are NFL fans pushing for capitalization to agree with a primary-source preference, there are a handful of editors who go around topic-to-topic "wikipolitically" supporting subject-specific demands for exceptions from naming conventions, MoS, and title policy, even when they are not defensible).
• In determining consensus, consider the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing policies and guidelines. The quality of an argument is more important than whether it represents a minority or a majority view. The arguments "I just don't like it" and "I just like it" usually carry no weight whatsoever. Pretty much every clause of that is relevant here.
• Limit article talk page discussions to discussion of sources, article focus, and policy. Pretty much never happens any time topical over-capitalization or other style pecadillo is being addressed; the proponent of the change to comply with the P&G is very likely to be personally attacked, and Dicklyon in particular is frequently subjected to this.
• Consensus can be assumed if no editors object to a change. Most moves to correct over-capitalization go unchallenged, even in sports (the P&G and sourcing basis for them is generally sound, so they are not controversial). Editors who ignore talk page discussions yet continue to edit in or revert disputed material, or who stonewall discussions, may be guilty of disruptive editing and incur sanctions. This had implications for Dicklyon's recent moves and CENT editwarring (he's presently blocked), but what seems to be missed by many of the above commenters is that this also defines their attempts to stonewall the community even being able to discuss this matter at a VPPOL (and now stand-alone) RfC is also disruptive.
• The goal of a consensus-building discussion is to resolve disputes in a way that reflects Wikipedia's goals and policies while angering as few editors as possible. That does not mean making everyone perfectly happy. See also, higher up the policy page, an agreement that may not satisfy everyone completely, but indicates the overall concurrence of the group. What's important here is that there is already a community agreement that we do not capitalize that which is not overwhelmingly capitalized in (treated as a proper name by) independent reliable sources. The "Draft" stuff is an attempt to override a consensus that already exists, but the "Draft" arguments have no actual basis to do that.
• Editors with good social skills and good negotiation skills are more likely to be successful than those who are less than civil to others. Both sides of debates of this sort frequently fail at this, but much more often it is the "give me a topic-specific style variance" side. They generally have neither a sourcing nor P&G basis for what they want, and turn to stridency, demonization, threats to quit, doomsaying about WP failing to be good enough, and other WP:HIGHMAINT behavior.
• When talk page discussions fail—generally because two editors (or two groups of editors) simply cannot see eye to eye on an issue—Wikipedia has several established processes to attract outside editors to offer opinions. This is often useful to break simple, good-faith deadlocks, because editors uninvolved in the discussion can bring in fresh perspectives, and can help involved editors see middle ground that they cannot see for themselves. The main resources for this are as follows: ... The list includes VPPOL and RfC, by name. It does not include RM, much less any suggestion that it is mandatory.
• Many of these discussions will involve polls of one sort or another; but as consensus is determined by the quality of arguments (not by a simple counted majority), polls should be regarded as structured discussions rather than voting. Responses indicating individual explanations of positions using Wikipedia policies and guidelines are given the highest weight. See if you can guess where this leans with regard to this RfC, which has P&G+sources arguments against ILIKEIT and false claims about trademarks and proper names, and a bunch of indefensible claims that VPPOL and now a stand-alone RfC someone cannot address this question.
• In some cases, disputes are personal or ideological rather than mere disagreements about content, and these may require the intervention of administrators or the community as a whole. Sysops will not rule on content, but may intervene to enforce policy ... or to impose sanctions on editors who are disrupting the consensus process. Some of that needs to happen. As CONSENSUS suggests later in the same passage, if problems continue they may be a WP:ANI or WP:RFARB matter. We really don't need to have an other MoS/AT-related ArbCom case; we need this topic like all other topics to simply follow the cross-topic style and naming conventions guidelines and article title policy. There is no magical exception to be found here.
• At the WP:CONLEVEL section: Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. This is a rather cut-and-dry case.

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.

• WP:CLOSE: Most discussions don't need closure at all, but when they do, any uninvolved editor may close most of them ... most contentious discussions benefit from a formal closing statement – recommended, not required.

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).

• Also at WP:CONSENSUS: When editors have a particularly difficult time reaching a consensus, several processes are available for consensus-building, followed by a list of some of them, which doesn't mention RM at all, and makes zero of them mandatory.

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:

• We need to take due process seriously, but we also need to remember: this is not a democracy, this is not an experiment in anarchy

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]

• Way too much controversy, so please just open an RM and ping everyone who posted here. This would allow readers to join in, since all NFL:Draft pages would include a top-template notice (as is the case with all RMs - one of its strengths). This attempt to expand the "WP:RM to WP:MOVEREVIEW" process to a "WP:RM to WP:MOVEREVIEW to WP:Village pump (policy)" pathway, if successful, means that anytime someone doesn't like a move review upholding a no-consensus RM there will be another standard step added to an RM appeal. If this is what the community wants to do, fine, let's find out, but that should be a separate RfC and not revolve around one topic, the NFL Draft/draft. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:27, 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.

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:

• Lowercase except in headlines/headings: The Washington Post. Los Angeles Times. Chicago Tribune. Yahoo! Sports (about 90% of the time in running text; given that they aggregate some content from off-site, some variance is to be expected, and exceptions are often inconsistent within the same article). The New York Times (but with their antique house style "N.F.L. draft"). Dallas Morning News. Houston Chronicle (a few exceptions, but on examination most are in headings, captions, list items, links to other article titles, etc., not regular running text). The Cincinnati Enquirer (ditto). The Seattle Times. The Tampa Bay Times. Newsday. Star Tribune
• Inconsistent treatment: Boston Globe. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, sometimes inconsistent even within the same article [82]. 247Sports, sometimes also inconsistent in same article [83], Last Word on Sports (seems to actually favor the uppercase, but there are many exceptions, so it may just be left up to the individual writer). The Wall Street Journal (they make heavy use of sub-headings and inter-headlines, and most of their material is paywalled, but it's clear that they predominantly use lowercase, with some exceptions in running prose, perhaps the proclivities of particular writers/editors). HuffPost (all over the place; I seem to recall that this site does little in the way of normalizing style from different writers). The Daily Beast (mostly lowercase, a few exceptions; probably another site that as part of its "lean, mean, digital machine" business model does not care to editorially impose style standards across submissions). SFGate (ditto). San Francisco Examiner (about 50/50). San Francisco Chronicle (there's variance, but it's about 80% or more lowercase). The News-Herald (ditto). Metro Philadelphia (about 50/50). Michigan Daily (ditto). Atlanta Journal Constitution (about 70% lowercase). The Columbus Dispatch (ditto). The Cleveland Plain Dealer (one of the only major newspapers to prefer caps, at about an 85% rate).
• One thing that stands out: sources like Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, and New York Post that lean heavily toward capitalization also capitalize other terminology like "NFL mock drafts" that are clearly not proper names under any definition of that notion; it's pure MOS:SIGCAPS, a rather bombastic house style they prefer but which WP does not use.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 Wordsmith^{Talk 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 Wordsmith^{Talk 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 Wordsmith^{Talk 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 Wordsmith^{Talk 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]

• People are in serious need of WP:TROUT I really don't want to come off as uncivil, but come on. This whole conversation has had textbook amounts of WP:BLUDGEONING from people on both sides of the issue and they should be troutslapped (I don't know if the phrase really applies but it is the best I got.) I am officially neutral as my interest is in updating and making NFL [D]/[d]raft articles consistent in formatting (look at a draft in the 1950s vs 2023), and I don't really care as long as we are consistent among all sports. I think that saying editors on one side of the WikiProject are adamant about the capitalization is bunk as there are plenty of WP:NFL editors that are in-fact arguing for lower-case. On both sides, it is if several editors are afraid a closer WON'T HEAR WHAT THEY ARE SAYING. No amount of arguing will change anyone's mind of those who have already commented. Let new editors give their comments and let the clock run out. Why should someone give their comments if people just argue with what they have to say? We have editors arguing caps/lower/wrong venue. I think it boils down to just saying it over and over doesn't make it so.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 05:33, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Well put UCO2009bluejay, although I'd disagree that 'draft' has to be consistent throughout Wikipedia. The NFL Draft is a looked-forward-to yearly extravaganza event, uppercased by the NFL and reputable sources, and over the years has achieved proper-noun status. Randy Kryn (talk) 05:51, 23 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]

• This might be the most ridiculous, bludgeoned-to-death, disastrous, plain stupid discussion I have ever seen. I mean, at least the WP:NSPORTS2022 discussion (the other worst discussion I've ever seen) had major implications; this is 300,000+ bytes of discussion about a single letter, and not even in the proper forum... BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:26, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It's called passion :) Conyo14 (talk) 18:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah, just too much like this sort.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:35, 4 February 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]

• It's 2 a.m. somewhere Randy Kryn (talk) 03:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Why couldn't we have this kind of camaraderie earlier ;D hahaha Conyo14 (talk) 03:33, 5 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 Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 22:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]