Talk:British narrow-gauge slate railways

British narrow gauge slate railways

This article should be moved back to its original and correct title "British narrow gauge slate railways". Even though the current list is mainly Welsh railways, there were significant slate railways in England and Scotland, which should be listed here, even if they aren't yet. The current title discourages people from adding legitimate non-Welsh railways and is inconsistent with the rest of the "British narrow gauge" articles. Railfan23 (talk) 17:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Strong oppose The Welsh systems are by far the dominant systems, in terms of both size and coverage since. They also had a consistency of approach within North Wales, which was at variance to practice through the rest of the UK. No form of mining or quarrying, elsewhere in the UK, resembled the slate mining systems of North and Mid Wales, for their combination of extensive use of cable-worked inclines and 2' gauge loco-haulage. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:07, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

As a counter-example, Delabole had both cable inclines and 2ft gauge loco-haulage, and was very much on the Welsh model of slate quarrying. Railfan23 (talk) 06:08, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

That was recently added, even though the article was about narrow-gauge railways in Wales. If it's on the Welsh model, it may be OK to include it, but not to use it as a reason to redefine the topic and title of the article. Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The article has been already redefined, I am arguing for it to go back to its original scope. Presumably Delabole wasn't included before because the article had been retitled to narrow its scope. It is still a valid example of a "Welsh style" slate quarry in England that has all he attributes that Andy Dingley mentioned. It even had quarry Hunslet locomotives. Railfan23 (talk) 06:53, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at the earliest version of the article, it included Delabole, so this has not been recently added. The lede of the article correctly described the majority of the ng slate railways as Welsh, but did not define the scope of the article to Wales only and the inclusion of non-Welsh railways makes it clear the intention was for the scope to be British ng railways. The Edit summary says the article was split from the "British narrow gauge railways" article. Railfan23 (talk) 07:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 30 December 2016

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus to keep this where it is, as some of the railways listed are elsewhere in Britain, and it is felt that there isn't enough content to write separate similar articles for Cornwall, Scotland, and England. (non-admin closure) Bradv 05:30, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

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British narrow gauge slate railways → Welsh narrow gauge slate railways – queried move. And see recent discussion hereinabove. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:27, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• @Andy Dingley, EdJohnston, Tiggerjay, and Railfan23:

Whichever way we decide, can we put the hyphen into "narrow-gauge" where the compound is used as a modifier, per normal usage, please? Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• Support with hyphen – Welsh narrow-gauge slate railways. Ever since its creation, the article's lede has indicated that it's about the railways in Wales. Dicklyon (talk) 03:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Also note that when Anthony moved it back to British in response to a "noncontroversial" move request by Railfan23, the rationale given by Railfan23 said "revert a change made by a now-banned user". But the fact that the user who moved it to the title about Wales is now banned is in no way relevant to this article's title issue (the reason he was banned was about copyright violations, not any argument related to titles here or elsewhere). Formally, I'd say that "uncontroversial" move should just be reverted, but since we've got a discussion going now, let's pick the best title. Previously it was Narrow gauge slate railways in Wales, which should really have a hyphen as Narrow-gauge slate railways in Wales, right? Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• Object I wasn't making a case that the move was incorrect because the user was banned, just noting that he was banned, so he isn't able to revert or discuss his move. With that out of the way, on to the meat of the discussion. The article was originally created as "British narrow gauge slate railways" and is part of a series of articles on the subject of British narrow gauge railways. There are a number of these articles that start "British narrow gauge...". For consistency, we should have this one be scoped to Braitain, not just Wales. The original intent appears for this to have been about British ng railways, per its original title. The move to "Welsh narrow gauge slate railways" was never discussed.

On the subject of hypenation, the search isn't terribly helpful as it is international in scope, not restricted to British usage. If you look at the most respected texts on British narrow gauge railways, you will see that as far back as Spooner's treatise in 1879 and then through Boyd's definitive series and on to modern authors like Johnson the overwhelming usage is unhyphenated. Other modern examples: Wilson's book, Whitehouse and Snell who are two of the founders of the modern ng preservation movement, Robinson, the major "annual" in the industry. Note also that the major specialist magazine covering this subject is Narrow Gauge World, and the main society supporting interest in this area is the Narrow Gauge Railway Society. The overwhelming usage in British English is "narrow gauge" I see that the "top level" article has already been changed to the hypenated version. I suggest we again strive for consistency in naming conventions and move everything to "British narrow gauge XXX railways", as they were originally created. Railfan23 (talk) 06:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Those "specialist" styles would be the ones to avoid, per WP:SSF. The n-gram search limited to British English is here and shows the hyphen to be usually included. Dicklyon (talk) 06:31, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Can you persuade Google to show you the actual hits corresponding to each ngram line? When I tried a Google Books search for narrow-gauge railway it was showing everything in one list, both with and without the hyphen. EdJohnston (talk) 06:41, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know of a way to get Google search to sort things out or count things by different punctuation, capitalization, Br/Am English, etc. You can look at the hits and get an idea what't going on, if you ignore the capitalized ones that are much less likely to use hyphen but more likely to be ranked high because they look like titles, headings, proper names, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 06:49, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The two British narrow gauge railways that had the term in their name both use the unhypenated version: North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways and Derbyshire Dales Narrow Gauge Railway. The Ffestiniog Railway describes itself as a narrow gauge railway, as does the Corris, the Vale of Rheidol, the Bala Lake, the Welshpool and Llanfair, the Penrhyn Railway, the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum etc. A much smaller number use "narrow-gauge": the Talyllyn and Leighton Buzzard use both hyphenated and unhypenated, for example. This is not specialist literature, this is the actual subject matter of the articles. Railfan23 (talk) 06:50, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Hyphens are seldom used in proper names, and are more likely to be omitted in literature from the specialist publications than in general publications. Not sure what you mean by "this is not specialist literature" when talking about publications of narrow-gauge railways, railway museums, etc. It is specialist. Look at how the term is used in literature not from the railway industry to see the style that is more appropriate to a general audience. Why are you wanting to drop the hypens anyway? Do they bother you in some way? Dicklyon (talk) 06:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I was making a different point from the one about usage in the literature when I said "this is not specialist literature". I was talking about the railways themselves. The links I gave are to the websites of the railways, not to literature about them. The majority of the railways - the actual subject of these articles - describe themselves as "narrow gauge" and only a few use the form "narrow-gauge". This is not in their proper names, but in the text they use to describe themselves.. Railfan23 (talk) 07:25, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Hyphens are used for clarification of terms, right? Would anyone, including non-specialists, possibly be confused that this is about narrow-gauge slate (as opposed to thicker gauge slate)? Or that there is a type of slate called "gauge slate", and this article is about narrow gauge-slate, as opposed to wide gauge-slate? No, the meaning is perfectly obvious without the hyphen, thus it can safely be eliminated, though I'm ambivalent about this and have no strong objection to using a hyphen to clarify the obvious, in case one in a thousand readers might find it adds helpful clarity. wbm1058 (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the reason: clarification and ease of reading. The reader unfamiliar with narrow-gauge railways and slate railways has to puzzle out which words to group together, if the hyphen is missing, while he can read right through and parse it quickly and correctly if the hyphen is there to signify that the compound narrow gauge is being used as a modifier. That's why most sources, British and otherwise, use the hyphen when writing for a non-specialist audience. You find the same phenomena in other fields; for example, small-cell carcinoma is easy to read, but when the term became very familiar to doctors, the AMA's style guide changed their styling advice from writing it with the hyphen to writing it without the hyphen, since they don't give a fig about non-specialist readers, and doctors won't be slowed down because it's a familiar term to them. Dicklyon (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

So let's see how British newspapers - non-specialist publications to say the least - handle the hyphenation. I took the first 200 Google News results for "narrow gauge railway" and removed specialist rail publications and non-British publications. I did not count proper names. I got the following:

"Narrow gauge": The Grimsby Telegraph, Bournemouth Echo, Daily Post, Birmingham Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Derby Telegraph, Daily Post, Lynn News, The Guardian, BBC News, Bournemouth Echo, BBC News, South Tyne Chronicle, Daily Post, Daily Mail, Daily Mail, York Press, Southern Daily Echo, Southport Daily Visiter, Southern Daily Echo, Daily Mirror, Radio Times, Daily Telegraph, Bournemouth Echo, BBC News, Daily Telegraph, Daily Post, Petersfield Post, Chaster Chronicle

"Narrow-gauge": Daily Telegraph, Cambrian News, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Post, Radio Times, ITV News, Daily Telegraph, Cumbria Crack, The Guardian, BBC News.

Several publications (and even a few individual articles!) use both. But there were 32 articles containing "narrow gauge" and 11 containing "narrow-gauge". The majority, non-specialist British usage is "narrow gauge". Railfan23 (talk) 03:22, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

That's called AP style; read about it. Most book editors wouldn't do that, and Wikipedia mostly doesn't do that. Dicklyon (talk) 06:49, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Funny how, as soon as you are presented with evidence that general usage is "narrow gauge", you move the goalposts. Even the Associated Press doesn't always hyphenate. Could you explain why newspaper editors are not a useful guide to general usage, but book editors are, in your opinion? Especially when your own WP:SSF guidelines say Wikipedia should be guided by "...observation of what is most commonly done in reliable general-audience publications like newspapers and non-specialized magazines and websites". Plenty of books use "narrow gauge" - your claim that "most book editors wouldn't do that" is tenuous at best. Railfan23 (talk) 19:46, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

AP (newspaper) style is to minimize use of hyphens. I don't know why. But that's not the style usually used in books, nor in Wikipedia. I acknowledge your search that indicates the newspapers hyphenate less than books do. Dicklyon (talk) 21:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• Moving this back to Welsh narrow gauge slate railways should not be a reason to remove Delabole from the article. There is insufficient content for an article titled English narrow gauge slate railways. Thus, the decision on which title to use should be based on how the article is constructed. A single table in which Delabole is lost in a sea of Welsh railways (the current construction) is fine. However, to emphasize that the vast majority, but not all, British narrow gauge slate railways are in Wales, the article's lead sentence could be rewritten:

In Great Britain, narrow-gauge railways were used extensively in the slate industry of Wales, and also in Delabole, Cornwall. The slate industry of North Wales was the largest user of narrow-gauge railways in the whole of the United Kingdom.

Then if a section titled Cornwall were added at the bottom, and the Delabole item was moved to a single-item table in this section, then I could support this move. Under the current construction, the title should be kept the same, though. wbm1058 (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I added a second sentence to the lead here; if this is accurate, why was this removed by a recent edit? Emphasize that even in Wales, the industry was concentrated in North Wales. wbm1058 (talk) 16:42, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

It's not just Delabole. There were several slate railways in the Lake District - for example the loco worked lines at Honister and Burlington - and others in Scotland such as Ballachulish and Easdale. These should be included in this article, but only if it retains the British scope. Railfan23 (talk) 16:29, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Fine. Title the bottom section Elsewhere in Great Britain and add the Lake District and Scottish slate railways. We should have the content settled before discussing titles. Can you add this additional content while this RM is in progress? That should help to settle the debates on both article construction and titles. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:42, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense. Railfan23 (talk) 17:40, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

If most are in North Wales, and if it's easy to determine which are not, you might even want to have sections for North Wales, Elsewhere in Wales, and Elsewhere in Britain. Dicklyon (talk) 17:50, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

"North Wales" is a slightly fuzzy concept, but following the definition in the North Wales article, all but the two railways at Porthgain are in North Wales. I'm not aware of any more in Wales but outside North Wales, though there may be a few minor quarries with tramways to the south and east of the Dyfi. If it really is only two, I tend to think it isn't worth splitting them out into a separate table, but am not particularly fussed either way. Railfan23 (talk) 22:22, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose proposed move, but do hyphenate it, and then have a scope discussion, and fix the titling consistency and precision problem. In detail:
  1. Welsh vs. British: I don't see any actual rationale to move this to "Welsh", other than someone doesn't like that the scope expanded beyond Wales. That's a scope discussion not a title discussion, and I don't see any good rationale to re-narrow the scope, either.
  2. Hyphenation: Compound adjectives are hyphenated as a matter of standard English grammar, regardless of dialect, nationality, genre, etc., other than some specialists don't like to do it in specialist publications (hint: WP is not a specialist publication, but the most general one in history). The punctuation laxity can be found in some medical and other specialist literature, not just transit/transport stuff, and it happens because in the context of a specialist publication (like those cited above), specialists already recognize terms of art and don't "need" the hyphenation to rapidly parse something as a compound adjective here, a compound noun there, when the compounds are terms of art in that specialty. This rationale does not apply to Wikipedia, which is written for people who have never heard of the subject before, not for specialists. All of the numerous reasons that "write like specialists do" is wrong on Wikipedia are explained in detail at WP:Specialized-style fallacy. Some news publishers also drop hyphenation whenever they think they can, a habit they picked up in the days of movable type for the expediency of a several-editions-per-day publication schedule. This is news style, and WP is not written in news style, as a matter of policy; WP follows its own style manual.
  3. Scope: A scope discussion should begin with the possibility of merging the present article into British quarrying and mining narrow-gauge railways, of which this is a (perhaps overly narrow) fork. I suppose a scope discussion might conclude to keep them separate and move the non-Welsh material into that other article, or an England-specific one, if there is a consensus to separate this topic along British subnational lines, into England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, etc. That doesn't seem to be the case. The WP:SUMMARY-style material at the main article British narrow-gauge railways indicates that separating the subtopics has already been done on an intended-use not regional basis, with articles on public, estate/private, museum/tourist, industrial, and mining NG railways, not Welsh, English, etc. If it is desirable to also have regional articles, I would suggest that this goal is best served by concise stand-alone list articles, not be re-developing the purpose-based articles, which for most readers will be more useful because they answer "why" not just "where".
  4. Consistency and precision: Regardless of scope, the title inconsistency and lack of WP:PRECISION need to be resolved. The present title suggests that the railway (perhaps its bed) is made of slate. What the topic actually is, however, is British slate-quarrying narrow-gauge railways, which would be consistent with the title of the more general article British quarrying and mining narrow-gauge railways, and make more sense to readers who are not already British train experts. Should the scope narrow to Wales, then use Welsh slate-quarrying narrow-gauge railways.
      — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:48, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm OK with these various suggestions, though still also OK with Welsh narrow-gauge slate railways, Narrow-gauge slate railways in Wales, or British narrow-gauge slate railways. Dicklyon (talk) 23:57, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• The hyphen is essential unless it's an in-house groupy newsletter where all of the readers see that long noun-group regularly—and thus have no need to specially parse it. WP writes for a broad range of readers, not elite specialists alone. Tony (talk) 01:44, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not only used in Wales. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:22, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Page move after close

The closer ignored the clear consensus for the hyphen, so I went ahead and did that. I think maybe some of SMcCandlish's ideas are worth further discussion to get to a better name and scope. Dicklyon (talk) 06:09, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

There is no consensus above for the hyphen. You argued for its inclusion throughout the discussion, but most others disagreed with you. Your page move immediately after my close was wildly inappropriate. Bradv 15:53, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

I've moved the article back. If someone feels strongly about the hyphen, please open a new RM discussion. Bradv 16:31, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

If anyone other than Railfan23 objected to the hyphen, show me. At least 3 of us supported it explicitly, and another used the hyphen in his proposed new lede sentence, and others seemed to not care. But we can do another RM since you didn't read this one carefully. Dicklyon (talk) 01:11, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't even part of the nomination statement, it was something you tacked on to the discussion. It would have been unfair to move it as part of this discussion, so I intentionally ignored it in my close.

If you would like to propose a new name with a hyphen in it, go right ahead. But when you override someone's close without so much as a hello on their talk page, you can only expect the situation to escalate. Bradv 01:20, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Right, you ignored it in your close, as I noted at the start of this section in reporting my move, so based on the consensus I took that move to be non-controversial. Then you reversed direction and said "most others disagreed with you", which is just flat wrong. With only Railfan23 caring, and using bogus arguments because he doesn't understand hyphens, and with support of several other editors, I felt the move to be uncontroversial. Your revert was needless and disruptive, and now requires an RM discussion to fix. You could have waited to see if anyone actually objected instead of acting like a dissed bureaucrat. I didn't override your close; I accepted your close and made a move quite unrelated to it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:35, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Then take it to move review. And next time, please leave a message on a talk page first. Bradv 03:44, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

MRV is a barren wasteland, and I really had no issue with your close ignoring the hyphen question. That was all done, and then I did what I thought was an uncontroversial move quite orthogonal to your close. That didn't work. I have no reason to argue with you about it. We can do an RM later if it looks to be worth fixing, or we can just forget it. Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 14 January 2017

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. I don't see a consensus to justify moving to hyphenated form in the discussion above, and MRV wouldn't really have been the place to determine that, so this fresh move request was properly justified to clarify the matter. And there is a consensus to include a hyphen here.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:59, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

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British narrow gauge slate railways → British narrow-gauge slate railways – In the previous RM, there was no consensus about British vs. Welsh as the closer noted, and there were other title ideas discussed, but there seemed to be a general consensus in favor of hyphenating the compound "narrow gauge" when used as a modifier, as has now been done on most other articles about narrow-gauge railways. I tried to fix it here, but the closer of the previous RM thought this was in disagreement with his close, so reverted that fix. So let's fix it here now, and keep it consistent. Please hold other title improvements as separate ideas to be done after the close of this one. Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Nominator's extended statement – Hyphenate "narrow-gauge slate railways" exactly as in this book and this book, and so many others that hyphenate the compound narrow gauge even without slate making it such a long complicated phrase to parse. Dicklyon (talk) 04:48, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

See n-grams for how often the hyphen is used.

For the record, here are some of the ways that the current title might be parsed:

• British narrow-gauge-slate railways – British railways for carrying narrow-gauge slate
• British narrow gauge-slate railways – narrow British railways for carrying gauge slate
• British narrow-gauge slate railways – slate railways that are narrow gauge and British
• British-narrow-gauge slate railways – slate railways of a British narrow gauge
• British narrow gauge slate railways – could mean any of the above or something else

The typical reader will have not a lot of trouble puzzling out which one is intended, though it may slow him down for a second or two. The hyphen is to help the rest of the readers, those not familiar with slate and gauges and such. It makes the reading quick and obvious for all readers. Dicklyon (talk) 00:19, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose. Per the previous discussion, this should have gone to move review (which is not a barren wasteland, thank you very much). But on the topic at hand, hyphens in compound adjectives are used to prevent confusion (as in man-eating shark). In this case, the hyphen should not be used as there is nothing ambiguous about the term and nothing to be gained by adding it. Bradv 15:29, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Move review is for challenging closes. This is a new proposal, independent of the proposal you closed, and indepenent of your close, which I have no problem with, as I noted before. As for confusion, I have elsewhere pointed out some of the many possible wrong parses of this long noun phrase; using the hyphen to help the reader get directly to the correct parse is a good thing. Plus sources usually do hyphenate narrow gauge when it's used a modifier, as this n-grams link shows. Dicklyon (talk) 02:19, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support British narrow-gauge slate railways. They are British, slate[-bedded] railways with narrow gauges, so the other hyphenations don't work, though narrow-gauge should clearly be hyphenated as a compound adjective, per MOS:HYPHEN.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:32, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I think it's not that they're slate-bedded, but rather for carrying quarried slate. Could be both... Dicklyon (talk) 18:01, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Either way, the "slate" part doesn't relate to the gauge, so it's still British narrow-gauge slate railways.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:54, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Correct English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:57, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
• Support narrow-gauge Took a look at previous discussion and there does appear to be a consensus for the hyphenation though no consensus for the issue of geography. The use of the hyphen is poorly understood and poorly practised. Following a lot of poor examples is not a good practice. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:25, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
• Note: There was further discussion of this at WT:RM#Controversial technical requests?. It was suggested there than the present title accurately reflects the article scope, but that if it was desirable to have the title be "Welsh narrow-gauge slate railways" [perhaps because this is a term of art in sources?], then the non-Welsh one(s) could be moved to a separate section called, e.g., "Other UK narrow-gauge slate railways". I don't propose or oppose this, just noting that the idea was floated.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:07, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.