Talk:2001 WUSA supplemental draft

Requested move 17 March 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. – robertsky (talk) 17:02, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

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• 2001 WUSA Supplemental Draft → 2001 WUSA supplemental draft
• 2013 NWSL Supplemental Draft → 2013 NWSL supplemental draft

– Per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, reserve caps for proper names. These are often lowercase in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 10:31, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Neutral - Either version (uppercase or lowercase) is acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 13:32, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  If "either version is acceptable", i.e. as found in sources, that means automatically that only one version is acceptable on Wikipedia, the lower-case one, because per MOS:CAPS: only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. (Emphasis in original.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:18, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support: Per MOS:CAPS (these are not "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources", but found in very mixed results across the sources with capitalization be frequently association with non-independendent publications (league and team websites, e.g. of Houston Dynamo, Washington Spirit, and Portland Timbers; fansites for leagues or teams; ticket sellers; city websites promoting events they are hosting; etc.), or are student publications, or otherwise unreliable. (This capitalization-as-promotion pattern turns out to be in play across pretty much all "sports over-capitalization" matters of this sort). Usage outside of sports news uniformly lower-case [1]. Let's go over the news results [2][3]: The Equalizer uses lower-case in running text, capitalizes (everything) in headings; The Washington Post and WUSA 9 (Washington DC affiliate of CBS) all use lower case consistently. But the student/fandom publications JMUsports.com and GoTerriers.com capitalize (not just this phrase but all sorts of things that are not proper names like "second team", "all-star", "college draft", etc. (very typical of amateur and promotional-leaning writing, though I also found it consistently at SoccerWire.com which appears to be a professionally staffed publication, just one that really, really loves to capitalize everything connected with sports). But even the first of those (JMU) uses lower-case "supplemental draft" in other articles, so it seems to have been a one-off overcapitalization by a particular writer. The amateur GeorgiaDogs.com fansite is inconsistent even within a single article. As noted in the related concurrent RM along the same lines (about expansion drafts), CBS Sports is consistent lower-case or upper-case within an article but not consistent across all articles. The Athletic has been pretty consistently lower case, though I found an exception (pertaining to the NFL, not soccer) in which which it was inconsistent within the same article; same with EqualizerSoccer.com, and student fansite RedAndBlack.com. Fox Sports was weird, and wanted to capitalize "WUSA Draft" (we already know from the NFL debate that they favor that style), but lower-case "supplemental draft", even in a phrase as specific as "the 2022 USFL supplemental draft" [4]. Yahoo!Sports was lower-case, but we know from NFL-debate sourcing that they are not entirely consistent on such matters because they often syndicate content from outside their editorial control.

  In short, it is not possible that this "is" a capitalized proper name that WP must capitalize, when the external sources mostly don't capitalize it except when they are writing promotional, fandom, or amateur material. No one writes "the himalayas" or "nigeria", because they are treated as capitalized proper names (in a "substantial majority" of sources and then some); meanwhile "[league name here] supplemental draft" is very often given with "supplemental draft" lower-case, especially in the work of independent and professional writers. So the capitalization fails MOS:CAPS / WP:NCCAPS.

  PS: There is such a tiny amount of actual independent coverage of the NWSL supplemental draft (at all, not just that particular year) that I strongly suspect this is a good WP:AFD candidate on notability grounds; what salvageable material there is can simply be merged in summary form into the league article (or maybe it has some per-year side articles).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:18, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.