Talk:2016 Canadian census

Requested move 9 November 2020

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. (non-admin closure) Vpab15 (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

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2016 Canadian Census → 2016 Canadian census – "Census" is a common noun and should be lowercase, consistent with census articles in most other countries. This should go for the rest of Category:Censuses in Canada. See also Talk:2020_United_States_Census#Requested_move_10_November_2020. Reywas92^Talk 21:15, 9 November 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. TheTVExpert (talk) 15:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support. Doesn't seem like this should be controversial; Library and Archives Canada doesn't capitalize it either. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 22:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose Canadian Census is the noun... a compound noun can more than one word. CaffeinAddict (talk) 02:55, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

  No it's a census that is Canadian. "Canadian Census" as a whole is not the proper noun and is at least not used on the Census Program website or Census in Canada. Rather, "Census of Population" is the correct proper noun so I suppose this could be 2016 Canadian Census of Population but that's not WP:CONCISE. Reywas92^Talk 09:43, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

  “Census of Population” is correct for contemporary Canadian censuses. There could be multiple countries that take censuses in the same years as Canada and they could also have the same official name of “Census of Population”. “Canadian Census of Population” is not the official name. An argument can be made to go the disambiguation route. That is, “2016 Census of Population (Canada)”. Hwy43 (talk) 03:29, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

  I see in Australia its 2016 census’ official name is 2016 Census or Census of Population and Housing. Hwy43 (talk) 03:35, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:06, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose unless some better evidence is presented. It is capitalized by StatCan as if it were a shortened title which I believe is valid.[1] BLAIXX 01:50, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
• Comment firstly I would like to know why the convention across all of Canada’s census articles changed Canada to Canadian in the first place (they were originally Canada YYYY Census). Down south it is the 2020 United States Census, not the 2020 American Census. What are the naming formats of the censuses in other countries? Do they use the country's name or the name of the country's people? Hwy43 (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
• Support – nobody has shown, or even argued, that "Canadian Census" is a proper name, or consistently capped in sources. So it should not be capped, per MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 05:26, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. StatCan is by far the strongest source as they actually run the census, and it capitalizes, as already noted above. After introduction, the Canadian Census is (of course) a census so will of course be referred to in lowercase then, but the actual event is the "2016 Canadian Census". SnowFire (talk) 00:30, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• StatCan does not use “Canadian Census” as an official name of the event so it is therefore not a proper noun. As mentioned above, it uses “Census of Population” as the official name of its census program event. That is the proper noun used to describe a Canadian census. Hwy43 (talk) 00:54, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose It's capitalized in reliable sources—blindlynx (talk) 18:40, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

  No, it is not near-consistently capitalized in RS, and that is our rule. See first rule of MOS:CAPS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:38, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, which state that Wikipedia only capitalizes words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources. Reliable sources do not consistently capitalize the term; in fact, the majority of occurrences in recent Google Ngrams for the 2011 version show that a slight majority favors no capitalization, even without correcting for titles/headers. CThomas³ (talk) 03:41, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
• Support per all of the above: MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS are clear on this, sources do not even come close to consistently capitalize this, and the govt. of Canada itself doesn't even use this as an official name (which is "Census of Population", not "Canadian Census"). It's simply a descriptive phrase. Every argument to capitalize this fails, and we have guidelines for a reason. Just follow them, and stop trying make up fake "proper names" (cf. WP:NOR). See also WP:PNPN for people confused in any way about what "proper name" means on Wikipedia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:38, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

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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.