Talk:American Football League draft

Requested move 18 January 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: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 17:24, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

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American Football League draft → American Football League Draft - Years ago, this page was moved from American Football League Draft to its current title, without benefit of an RM. This unilateral page move should be undone. GoodDay (talk) 15:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I should also point out that the 1960 American Football League draft to 1966 American Football League draft pages, were also moved to lowercase without going the RM route, several years ago. GoodDay (talk) 15:19, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

• This RM should probably have no effect on the NFL Draft pages, as they were pre-merger events which occurred at a far lesser level of national focus. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

It only concerns the AFL. I just contacted WP:NFL, as the AFL's WikiProject is inactive. GoodDay (talk) 16:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. An Ngram search doesn't even seem to have results for the proposed version, and a simple Google search reveals that although some sources (including some of those at the time it was extant, which have less weight in the present) do capitalise it, significant numbers do not, and therefore the MOS:CAPS benchmark of consistently capitalised in a signifcant majority of sources is not met. Also, the assertion that it was moved "without benefit of an RM" is a bit irrelevant here as that was ten years ago, well beyond the statute of limitations for such things.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:12, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I did mention that the previous page move occurred 'several years' ago. That's why I opened an RM, rather then just get an administrator to reverse the move. GoodDay (talk) 17:29, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

An administrator shouldn't automatically revert the undiscussed move anyways, as it doesn't meet the new title has not been in place for a long time restriction of WP:RMUM. —Bagumba (talk) 02:18, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - nowhere near consistently capped in sources. And there's nothing wrong with page moves being "unilateral" when they're so clearly non-controversial. So did you have some actual reason to want them changed to uppercase? Dicklyon (talk) 18:33, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

  The motivation seems to be to determine whether the result of an undiscussed move that would probably be controversial if performed today actually does have community consensus by examining the evidence that should (and might) have been examined when the move was performed and evidence that exists now which didn't back then. Given that consensus can change, this is not an unreasonable thing to do - especially if approached with an open mind. It wouldn't have been the time or method I would have used, but neither are unreasonable. Thryduulf (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

• Comment Some relevant guidelines are MOS:CAPS:

  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.

  Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization):

  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.

  —Bagumba (talk) 18:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS (especially MOS:SPORTCAPS and MOS:SIGCAPS). This term is not consistently capitalized in independent, secondary, reliable sources; in fact, lower-case strongly dominates [1] (that all-English search will also net some references to the Australian AFL; if constrained to the American English corpus, capitalized "Draft" actually just falls off the chart as so uncommon [2]). This is a WP:TALKFORK at best and should be procedurally closed, since there is an ongoing RfC about this very question (moved from WP:VPPOL to its own page due to length of input): Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Capitalization of NFL draft article titles (not limited to NFL). WP:EDITCON and WP:TITLECHANGES policies also apply: page names this stable for this long should not be moved absent a compelling P&G and RS basis for doing so. This topic is not magically exempt from guidelines and sourcing. PS: Google Scholar also has significant results for this topic [3]; as expected, "draft" in the (American) AFL context is strongly lowercased in running text, with "Draft" occurring almost exclusively in title-case headings (only about 1 source out of 10 is an exception, though a few of the search results don't actually show the text in question and so can't really be examined without hunting them down individually).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:44, 19 January 2024 (UTC); GScholar added: 18:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose and Snow close, the AFL draft was a process, not a pageant event that is known to many millions as a proper name. Occurring pre-merge with the much better-known NFL in the 1960s, the AFL, an upstart league, made the big time with that merge and became part of the NFL (which it was not before). Some editors may conflate the two, not knowing better, similar to conflating a para-RM with a real RM. Joe Namath is turning over in his endzone. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

  Given how controversial matters are over at the NFL and how things changed there when evidence began to be looked at in detail rather than just summary statistics, it's probably best not to snow close this discussion either way. Thryduulf (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

  The nomination seems solely because it was moved without a formal RM years before, which is counter to the principles of the be bold guideline and WP:BOLDMOVE. No problem if a specific issue is raised in the current title. Otherwise, it seems bureaucratic to just kick the tires because it was a bold move. —Bagumba (talk) 02:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

• Speedy close analogous to Wikipedia:Speedy keep#1. The nominator has not advanced an argument for why the title should be changed. The title has been stable for a long time, so the fact that the 2014 move was unilateral, by itself, is not a reason to move. Adumbrativus (talk) 05:06, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
• Speedy close by analogy with Wikipedia:Speedy keep#1 and considering also WP:WHENCLOSE that recommends rapid closure in the case of misguided nominations, and this is a misguided nomination because there is no substantive move rationale. This is not a reasonable move request. Bold moves are allowed, they become backed by implicit consensus per WP:EDITCON, there is consensus behind the current name due to the passage of time, and it is uneconomical to challenge every bold move like this.—Alalch E. 16:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
• Comment - Rational? Uppercase to "Draft", to bring this page in-line with National Football League Draft. -- GoodDay (talk) 16:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  That's the subject of the ongoing RfC, all of the P&G and sourcing in which point to lower-case.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:03, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

  The RfC is an opinion poll, nothing to do with actually changing its name. There are way too many editors calling for its procedural close for it to hold the importance other editors place on it. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:08, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

  There are way too many editors calling for its procedural close...: Seems best to leave an independent closer to assess that RfC. —Bagumba (talk) 01:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

  A closer is almost the luck of the draw. For a fundamental change in the Requested Move process such as some editors are hoping for probably a team of three-to-five closers should assess the RfC (who should actually close it after just reading the 'Forum' section). Randy Kryn (talk) 02:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose It appears pretty clear the draft was a process and not a formal title per above. SportingFlyer T·C 00:48, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This doesn't appear to be a proper name and the nomination doesn't argue otherwise. On the question of unilateral--most uncontroversial edits and page moves are. A user does something, and no one has a problem with it. A page move from nine years ago isn't controversial, by definition. Mackensen (talk) 01:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS and evidence by Amakuru and others. WP:CONSISTENT (WP:TITLECON) deals with naming patterns and topic-specific conventions on article titles - not capitalisation. Capitalisation is a distinctly separate issue in respect to WP:AT. If the rationale is to bring this page in-line with National Football League Draft, it cites no supporting topic convention. It would ignore MOS:SPORTCAPS (and more generally MOS:CAPS). It ignores that capitalisation of draft wrt the NFL is being discussed in a current RfC. WP:OTHERTHINGS arguments only carry weight if it is also shown that the otherthings represent best practice. This has not happened. No sound reason nor solid evidence has been presented that would reasonably lead us to capitalise this per the nom. I also find this RM very pottish, given comments about making moves somehow related to the question of the RfC. If there is an issue, whether the move is discussed or undiscussed is immaterial. Cinderella157 (talk) 07:24, 21 January 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.