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A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil.
Because the title is obviously fine and uppercasing is greatly predominate? Changing the casings of Good articles maybe shouldn't be done lightly, which this example seems to be doing to a proven uppercased proper name. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:02, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is no policy principle on which that idea is based, and it is actually directly against several of them (especially WP:EDITING, WP:OWN, and WP:CONLEVEL. Having a GA (or FA) sticker does not magically make any article immune from routine guideline and policy compliance changes. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 19:12, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That argument might make sense if it was moved without consensus, but this is exactly the correct way to go about this, showing that the idea is not being done lightly. TiggerJay(talk)05:56, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note – lowercase is not unusual for civil wars. See for example these articles (none of these are redirects):
None of those have any bearing on the long-term uppercasing of the topic being discussed. Uppercasing is obvious in this case, probably not in the ones you list above (checked a few and the n-grams that exist - many of the topics have no n-grams to plot - seem about equal, not the case for North Yemen Civil War). Randy Kryn (talk) 09:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Even if a particular case were "about equal" that means "lower-case on Wikipedia" because it fails our "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources" test. And you know this. We've been over this many, many, many times. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 19:12, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Totally irrelevant. "More prevalent" (i.e. a bit of a majority of usage) is not WP's standard, it is only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia (emphasis in original). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 19:12, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Not consistently capitalized in independent, reliable sources. And to the extent there is some capitalization the evidence strongly suggests it was picked up from WP itself; i.e. this is is WP:CITOGENESIS. See also GScholar results [1], which are better than both Ngrams and GBooks searches (we have more certainty with regard to both source quality and context of usage, e.g. running text versus a title-case title/heading/caption/table header). The usage swings wildly from "North Yemen Civil War" to "North Yemen civil war", with even some weird "North Yemen Civil war" in the middle. It is literally disproven that independent RS consistently treat this a proper name by capitalizing it. Contrast this with results for Vietnam War [2], American Civil War [3], and World War II [4], terms for which lower-case usage in quality sources is virtually non-existent (other than "American civil war" occurred in a handful of sentence-case article titles, probably the result of an automated script, as the running text in each of these cases had "American Civil War"). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 19:12, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The g-scholar results you link to support uppercasing, as do the n-grams. Citogenesis has nothing to do with this RM, and referring to Wikipedia influence is always OR and not applicable in RM discussions (maybe Wikipedia influenced the n-gram results, maybe not, no way to know for sure and just a guess). Randy Kryn (talk) 23:38, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support The sample set in ngrams is relatively low (see also google books). Consequently, google scholar, with a much larger sample size is a more reliable indicator of usage. Looking across multiple search pages (eg here) the term is not consistently capped in sources and should not be capped here per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:46, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Randy, I think this is a case of IDIDN'THEARTHAT. I was not selectively picking pages but taking an overall view across multiple pages. I don't know what part of that is so hard to understand. I have said it now three times. Secondly, I explained why ngrams are not the best source of data in this case. Thirdly, you are using an ngram that is not representing usage in prose. I know that you are fully aware that raw ngram data does not exclude uses such as citations and headings where titlecase is expected. One gets a significantly different result when context is added to an ngram by searching the North Yemen civil war (as DL did here) and a very different result if one just looks at the most recent data here. But there is a pretty small sample set and large fluctuations (eg signal to noise) which is why I am not relying on the ngram here. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:02, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Simple Randy, a very different result if one just looks at the most recent data here - ie I was wanting to look at the raw data to see what it was doing on a year to year basis and more specifically what it looked like in the most recent year. Consequently, I applied a smoothing of zero whereas, you have used the default smoothing of three. But again, I am not relying on the ngtam data. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:32, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per nominator's n-grams. A clear majority use capitalized forms. To head off the obligatory objections, yes, I do not use the strict standard of "any mixed use = lowercase", so "merely" having 80%+ capitalized usage is sufficient for me. Additionally, it is very possible that many of the lower cased forms are not the proper name form in the ngrams results. There needs to be a stronger case to break the status quo. SnowFire (talk) 00:07, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You guys should take another look. What the n-grams show, if you look carefully, is that it was uniformly lowercase "civil war" when the article was titled with uppercase "Civil War" back in 2005, and that even with WP's strong influence it's still not near consistently capitalized in sources, which is what MOS:CAPS guidance tells us to look for. Dicklyon (talk) 06:51, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, showing exactly what I said: all lowercase until after WP titled it uppercase, and not consistently capped since then. There's no way those n-grams support uppercase per MOS:CAPS.
Support as per evidence given above and the n-gram suggests that the capitalisation is just circular reporting from the wikipedia related move. Theofunny (talk) 10:32, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Uppercasing prevails to such an extent that this should have been withdrawn long ago. Original research and original theorizing about why uppercase is the common name has nothing to do with this RM. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:17, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your language is what is OR. Attributing anything to Wikipedia is pure guesswork, there could be hundreds of reasons why this has now become a full-uppercased proper name and should, of course, be treated as an uppercased proper name per sources and n-grams. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:41, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When someone makes such an incorrect statement, clarification seems in order and to the point. Many of my posts are in response to direct questions. Lowercase editors come in a team to almost all of the strongly debated RM's, nothing wrong in pointing out that they sway from side to side depending on the quality of the n-grams. Sometimes obvious n-grams are accepted and at other times, when the n-grams go the other way, they find "reasons" like this often-used "Wikipedia based" OR which Theofunny then uses as a valid point when it is not. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:37, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are bludgeoning when you use the term n-grams in almost every response to a support !vote - I believe you've used that term 17 times alone. There is no need to continue bringing up the same argument to every single other person who disagrees with your assessment (effectively stating I am reading n-grams correctly, you are not -- and it is the only authoritative rational for article titles). Rather there are conflicting viewpoints on this discussion, as an attempt at finding consensus. Now what would possibly be helpful is a side discussion between both you and @Dicklyon as you both clearly cite n-grams with clear disagreement on what data to select and how to interpret that data. TiggerJay(talk) 16:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC) (Struck "every single" term to satisfy Randy TiggerJay(talk)07:33, 22 December 2024 (UTC))[reply]
I will agree to "almost every" as initially stated, but was not removed from the third sentence, you also did not reply to me since I brought up actual policies and not n-grams. TiggerJay(talk)07:31, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
