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Talk:Civil rights movement/Archive 13

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Latest comment: 6 years ago by Fish and karate in topic Requested move 18 February 2018
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Requested move 18 February 2018

Latest comment: 6 years ago180 comments16 people in discussion
Closing this RM/RFC. There is consensus that it is appropriate to move the article, as the great majority of references to 'civil rights movement' are referring to this period, and the point some editors made that the term currently redirects here is very persuasive. Although there are other movements around the world that are about civil rights, the arguments around WP:COMMONNAME are similarly persuasive. So, we have a consensus to move to the more concise name. It is pointed out that there is already a hatnote at the top of the article, pointing towards civil rights movements, which covers other such movements. In terms of the exact format of the name of the article I think the consensus is to move it to Civil rights movement (as opposed to Civil Rights Movement), as per WP:NCCAPS and particularly due to the recent discussion (here), which was very recent, proceeded properly, and there's nothing new provided here to make me think that should not be respected. The capitalization at the top of Template:African-American civil rights movement should be amended to match. A side note that some of the responses to others' comments in this RFC were perhaps a little over-exuberant. We're all trying to make the encyclopedia better here. Fish+Karate 12:21, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.


African-American civil rights movement (1954–1968) → Civil Rights Movement – This is seemingly the most proper term for the movement, and is also the most common way the movement is referred to/searched for. Seeing as Civil Rights Movement already redirects here, I don't see why this would be controversial. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 13:53, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Survey

That RM was for every page using the term, not for this page alone, which is arguably a proper noun. The RM close you mention did not indicate "very firm consensus", and addressed all of the older pages, which actually shouldn't be in upper-case while this one page should. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Well, it may seem like a proper noun, but in fact the majority of book sources treat it as a descriptive phrase rather than a proper noun. See my comment below with GBooks link. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 14:44, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
The "civil rights movement" can pertain to many movements, the Civil Rights Movement pertains only to one. Your argument about it being treated as a phrase or noun is irrelevant considering that fact. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 00:46, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - Per WP:COMMONNAME and it is no doubt the primary topic. Meatsgains(talk) 20:21, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Neutral - I'm really iffy on this one. The current title is descriptive enough to inform any reader exactly what the topic at hand is. Also, although it's often called the "Civil rights movement", there have been many other movements in world history with the same name (and the title of "Civil rights movement" in general is pretty vague in comparison to this one). "Civil rights movement" already redirects here, but a hatnote is able to easily redirect people already... Personally, I think it's fine the way it is. (But I sorta OPPOSE the capital letters per above). Paintspot Infez (talk) 21:14, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - I point everyone to how the term is used in the vast majority of these book titles, and in many of the books as well when referred to as the movement itself: Google Books search. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 13:37, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support since there will be a notice at the top as to where to find the longer list of Civil rights movements, and this one is so named in most of the English-speaking countries. Jzsj (talk) 14:38, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment. Well two comments really. One, to follow up on Coffee's point above, if we expand the GBooks search term to include the word "was",[2] to show how the term is used in running prose (rather than titles), it should be clear that those sources generally are talking about the specific movement of the 1960s, but it should also be clear that the term is *not* generally capitalized in running prose, which means per WP:NCCAPS we should also not capitalize it. And two, following a discussion on my talk page just now, I have realised that there is another article at Civil rights movements, which discusses movements of this type generally, and around the world. An RM there in 2015 specifically addressed in its close the fact that civil rights movement (singular) was a redirect to this one, so I think the status quo of "movement" meaning the 1960s one and "movements" meaning general movements is the correct one. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 14:42, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support Per nom. Mitchumch (talk) 02:43, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Meh To have a focus on 1954-1968 era is good; we should though have a series, actually for the years prior - perhaps this article will evolve to cover the whole Civil Rights Movement, which has its roots in the Reconstruction Era and got going in reaction to Jim Crow in the late 1800s (See, Wendt, Simon. Civil Rights Movement: in 1 Encyclopedia of African American History. Oxford University Press. 2009. p.411-419) - so I think the current proposal might be just rearranging deck chairs, and will not lead to better coverage (especially if after this move is made, the article is still as current). Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC) As to "African American" in the title, if there is a need to disambiguate from other CRM, I suppose I would suggest looking at Great Migration (African American). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment pinging all those involved in the previous discussion: Mahveotm Rjensen SMcCandlish Tony1 Dicklyon Randy Kryn James Allison SouthernNights GPRamirez5 Mitchumch Checkingfax  — Amakuru (talk) 14:18, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. This is getting ridiculous. We've been over this again and again and again. This is a WP:NTITLE, a descriptive and arbitrary title of WP's own devising, to cover this article's scope and to disambiguate from the many, many other civil rights movements (including other African-American ones). It is literally impossible for this to be a proper name; it is a common-noun phrase by definition. Even the date range we're using is arbitrary; RS sharply disagree on how many African-American civil rights movements there were and how to define them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:24, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Yes it's a special movement, but not so special that we should marginalize all the other civil rights movements in the world.-GPRamirez5 (talk) 15:06, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
    If that's the case, though, then Civil rights movement and Civil Rights Movement shouldn't redirect here. The issue of primary topic is already decided. Thnaks  — Amakuru (talk) 15:09, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
    Of course they should, this is the CRmovement that all others are based on and the long-term redirects are fine. Since you are pinging to good faithly expand the discussion, maybe you can ping editors involved in the major 2015 RM as well. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:15, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
    Or, from another view, the last consensus discussion about it concluded they they seem to qualify for WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT (which operates independently of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, WP:ATDAB, etc., etc.). I'm not sure that would actually stand if revisited, given the number of notable civil rights movements; a strong WP:SYSTEMICBIAS argument can be made against the idea, and to instead send those redirs to the disambiguation page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. We are not in the business of promoting terms to "Proper" status when sources don't do that. The descriptive title is fine. And we've been over this before and had a strong consensus to follow our usual title policy and style guidelines. Let's not step backwards here. Dicklyon (talk) 16:29, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose the movement was deeply rooted in history going back a century--and still underway. A narrow time frame seems to me to be misleading. Its success in 1964-65 caused other large minority groups to launch what they also called a "civil rights movement." Rjensen (talk) 03:40, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - I have just reverted two moves at African-American civil rights movement (1896–1954) and African-American civil rights movement (1865–1896), which were made without discussion. There may or may not be a case for moving those articles alongside the discussion on whether this is one movement or separate movements at different times. Given the above RM, though, which established names for all three articles two months ago, those moves were clearly not uncontroversial and will need an RM discussion to gain consensus. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 12:50, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
    • *sigh* - Apparently you've forgotten of WP:BOLD or how it is one of our five pillars on this encyclopedia. I didn't read any of the previous discussions and there is no policy requirement that I do so. @Amakuru: you're being very hard to deal with, what was wrong with those titles? They clearly state inside the articles that they are not about the actual Civil Rights Movement. This feels like bashing my head into a wall. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:35, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
      • They were moved and the move was objected to. As long as they aren't moved again, there's no problem. Again, WP:RMCM: "The discussion process is used for potentially controversial moves. The move is potentially controversial if any of the following apply: There is an existing article (not just a redirect) at the target title; there has been any past debate about the best title for the page; someone could reasonably disagree with the move." At this point, I think it should be assumed that any undiscussed moves will be controversial. Dekimasuよ! 22:48, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
        • But what, specifically, is controversial about the titles I used? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:53, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
          • The editing guideline WP:BOLD is cited twice at Wikipedia:Five pillars. The first one links to the top of the page, which includes the advice “Don't be upset if your bold edits get reverted” (bold in original). The second one links to WP:CAREFUL, further down the page, which states, “In many cases, the text as you find it has come into being after long and arduous negotiations between Wikipedians of diverse backgrounds and points of view.... If you would like to make a significant edit—not just a simple copyedit—to an article on a controversial subject, it is a useful idea to first read the article in its entirety and skim the comments on the talk page. On controversial articles, the safest course is to be cautious and find consensus before making changes, but there are situations when bold edits can safely be made to contentious articles. Always use your very best editorial judgment in these cases and be sure to read the talk page.” Your first move mentioned here was to the title Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, which assumes a construction of the title of this page that had already been objected to by multiple editors here, meaning it was foreseeable that the move was controversial even in the absence of reading previous extended discussions on this talk page. And WP:BOLD specifically indicates you should “be sure to read the talk page” and “find consensus before making changes” in such cases. Dekimasuよ! 01:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
            • I ask about the titles and you jump into a rant about WP:BOLD (a question I actually asked about below)... I don't find this very informative. And attempting to tell someone that they have to read the talk page before making a move (when there is no move protection nor editnotice against it) is really quite baffling. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 05:37, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
        • @Dekimasu: Also I'd asked to see the policy that stated I couldn't be WP:BOLD on those moves. I'm still waiting... — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 23:08, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
          • I didn't say you couldn't be bold. You were bold, it was reverted, and now we are back to discuss. Given the current discussion here, it was likely foreseeable that this would be controversial even without, perhaps, knowing of the sections directly above this on the talk page. In either event, Wikipedia:Article titles#Considering changes is the policy version of what I had stated above: "Changing one controversial title to another without a discussion that leads to consensus is strongly discouraged.... Consensus among editors determines if there does exist a good reason to change the title.... Any potentially controversial proposal to change a title should be advertised at Wikipedia:Requested moves, and consensus reached before any change is made." Dekimasuよ! 23:40, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
            • So you're telling me you decided to tell me that I shouldn't have moved something... yet I was also allowed to be bold and move it, but because you knew about something being controversial I should have also known and therefore not moved it? That makes a hell of a lot of sense. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 05:37, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Collapsed under Talk Page Guidelines. Off topic to discussion, see WP:NOT.
******Coffee is spending far too much time in this discussion accusing others of multiple forms of bad faith, then trying WP:POINT / WP:WINNING activity like moving related articles out from under the ongoing RM/RfC, and against the consensus in the last one. If this doesn't stop immediately, I think it should be addressed administratively. No one wants to come into a discussion like this and find it to be a warzone.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:36, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support by proxy, editor BruceHartford agreed to allow me to bring this here from today's talk page discussion. Bruce Hartford is the founder of Civil Rights Movement Veterans, a group for activists who worked within the 1950s and 1960s movement. CRMV is one of the main sources for references used in this article. Bruce Hartford's statement: I and most others I know always capitalize "Civil Rights Movement" when we're referring to what we see as a distinct, named, historical event that occurred between 1951 and 1968. Same as "World War II" or "Great Depression." Yes, of course, there were and are other social movements for civil rights here and in other countries, so it's also a non-capitalized generic term. And when used as the generic not capitalized. For me, the purpose of words and language are for communication so they should be used as most people understand them. Thanks to Bruce for allowing me to copy this here. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:29, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Interesting, and nothing against BruceHartford at all, but clearly selective for you to post this here. I thought selective canvassing was supposed to be a bad thing. Dekimasuよ! 23:21, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
BruceHartford asked during our discussion "If there are specific questions you'd like me to offer an opinion on, I'd be happy to do so", and I mentioned this RM as a specific question I'd like his opinion on. No mystery as to wording, he asked, I answered. He then wrote his comment (see his talk page), and I asked him if he could bring his answer here or if I could do so, except for the first sentence which was a comment on process, and he agreed I could. Not an issue unless people don't like his comment, which is wholly in favor of upper-casing. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:56, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Obviously canvassed and obviously he knew which way Bruce would answer. Striking it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:05, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Take it to ANI if you'd like it, I've reverted your strike. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 06:31, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
It pains me that this looks like we're arguing over whether to silence Brucehartford. To make the circumstances clear: Randy Kryn had previous interactions with Brucehartford on his talk page last year in which Brucehartford wrote Civil Rights Movement in caps. And this time, Brucehartford never wrote "support," either here or on his own talk page. "Support" was an invention by Randy according to his interpretation of Brucehartford's quote, which actually makes no comment on how the title should be capitalized here. There are editors here who think canvassing and refactoring are all right when they agree, and not all right when they disagree; that withdrawing the RfC is "not going to happen" but it was all right to add the RfC tag out of normal process; and that it is all right to hat an editor's comment when they tell you to go to ANI, but also all right to tell you to go to ANI. That is exactly the type of attitude that Brucehartford noted in the sentence of his comment Randy Kryn decided not to copy and paste here: "I took a look at that discussion, but it's way too Wiki-wonky for me." Very pertinent analysis. This is not moving towards a healthy conclusion or revealing any new insights. I have not !voted here, but the case has not been made, and it appears that the goal is to wear down opponents, which is not how this is supposed to work. Wikipedia is not a battleground. Dekimasuよ! 07:07, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
I can honestly say I don't think I've seen a "proxy vote" in a WP discussion before... for one thing, how are we supposed to discuss Mr Hartford's !vote with him if he isn't here to defend it? But then again, this discussion has had just about everything in it so far, from alleged forum shopping to alleged canvassing, people assuming good faith, people assuming bad faith, and even that old time-honoured favourite, the threat to leave.[19] So I shouldn't be surprised any more.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:10, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
The attempted Support by Proxy, which is all about personal experience. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:08, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
We don't have to make a decision based on actual personal experience, but we can take the person's thoughts into consideration. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 21:49, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

There is a section in the encyclopedia article called, "The Roots of the Movement", but that is not the start date. The "Roots" are the antecedents of the movement. The academic consensus of late is to extend the CRM no earlier than 1930s (Do a Google Books/Scholar search for the term Long Civil Rights Movement to see some of this debate). I would be happy to provide a good list of books and journal articles to demonstrate what I'm talking about upon request. If your argument is the CRM started before 1930s, then I think you will need to substantiate that claim with a body of scholarly sources. I have not seen any such consensus for that claim. If your argument is there were antecedents of the CRM from the nineteenth century, then that argument reflects academic consensus. Those antecedents can be addressed within this existing article. However, the start date of the CRM and the antecedents of the CRM are not the same thing.
Also, the term "Civil Rights Movement" is the most widely accepted term used by the academic community. The term "African American civil rights movement" has never been a widely accepted term for this movement. Not then, not now, or any time in between. If I misunderstood your argument, then I apologize. Mitchumch (talk) 08:38, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
You seem to be confusing "what is [treated as] a proper name off-Wikipedia" with "what is a Wikipedia article title". Most often, a WP article title for something that has a proper name will be that name, but when there's a great deal of ambiguity and the actual scope of the article is arbitrary and only agrees with some subset of how the RS approach the subject, we use a descriptive phrase (WP:NTITLE). Doing otherwise is essentially WP:OR, i.e. doing novel evaluation and synthesis to arrive at a conclusion "this, as we have defined it, has the following proper name", which is basically a falsification of the facts of real-world treatment of the subject. If it weren't for the fact that it would produce a too-long article, the other alternative would be merger, so that our definition of the AA CRM encompassed every definition of it, either as the limit or as a subset. But it's not practical due to length and detail-level of the material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
"Despite differing interpretations, the authors just noted all reinforce what has become the consensus view that the civil rights movement did not suddenly spring up in 1954 of 1955. The most common points of origin are located in the 1930s or 1940s. However, some historians have pushed back the chronology even further. Adam Faiclough, both in his study of Louisiana and his survey of the black freedom struggle, locates the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1890s with Ida B. Wells's militant campaign against lynching followed a decade later by the founding of the NAACP. Kevern Verney digs even deeper to discover the movement's origins. He begins his text on black civil rights in America with the introduction of slavery in the seventeenth century, but like Fairclough he focuses more on the turn-of-the-twentieth century. In contrast, Glenn Eskew views the early stirrings of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama immediately following World War II and finds that the movement led by the Reverencd Fred Shutlesworth ten years later "marked a clear departure from traditional black protest" in the city. Eskew's study raises a cautionary flag for those seeking to extend the traditional civil rights chronology too far back. First, campaigns for civil rights, even in the same locale, did not always proceed without interruption and often moved in fits and starts. Second, a useful distinction should be made between the black freedom struggle and the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement if it has any contextual meaning must be seen as a distinct and coherent part of the longer freedom struggle. It roughly coincides with the acceleration and upward climb of organized local and national black protest for equal treatment and first-class citizenship. There were obviously civil rights components to the black freedom struggle in earlier times — during Reconstruction and with the founding of the NAACP. Nevertheless, the modern phase of the movement, which absorbed so much attention during the 1950s and 1960s and achieved much of the protest agenda, needs to be identified for the characteristics that made it distinct from earlier efforts without forgetting the links that connected them.
Mitchumch (talk) 10:54, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
What's your question? You just repeated what I said, its roots are in reconstruction, the movement goes back to the turn of the century in the Jim Crow era, and there is a "modern phase" in the mid-20th century, I already said all those things. Separately, what's your question about "African-American", is that a question for someone else, because it responds to nothing I said. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
Alanscottwalker This quote was in response to GPRamirez5. Your part is above GPRamirez5. Mitchumch (talk) 12:10, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
So, then you do follow me now, Ida B. Wells and the NAACP, et al. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:24, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • The actual movement to end legalized segregation in the US used specific nonviolent strategies to do so, and occurred between 1960 and 1968 (the 1954 date can be included if the Supreme Court case, the Till publicity, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott are included). It was organized and run by the same core group of people. The top-tier consisted of Martin Luther King and James Bevel, as without either one the movement would probably not have been successful. Many others were inspired by and worked on the movements initiated, directed, and run by King or Bevel. The proper noun, Civil Rights Movement, is as much of a noun as 'World War II' and other labels for major events which had a clear purpose. The events before 1954 were attempts, but not successful attempts. The 'Civil Rights Movement' (or Civil rights movement) written about in this flawed article is the correct lone descriptor for the term. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:37, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
    But this is a case where, by analogy, there were 2 or 4 or 6 (whose analysis do you prefer?) back-to-back related wars over several generations, plus many other wars in many other places involving different people fighting for essentially the same cause, and they were each called "world war II" (sometimes with an additional qualifier, by some writers). Where's the proper name (or proper noun or proper-noun phrase, whatever term you prefer)? There's no rationale to capitalize all of them, or just some. People actually involved in, or deeply focused as schoarl on, any of them in particular might tend to capitalize those, while others do not. Nor is there a rationale for treating one of them in particular as somehow very different from the others, when the sources don't treat them that way, but as a series of conflicts, inter-related and in a continuum over time, with no agreed-upon dividing lines between them. There are even reputable writers who consider them all one thing going back centuries and continuing to the foreseeable future. In this and other RM discussions for a few years now, you assert something's a proper name while doing nothing to demonstrate it, and don't seem to be working from any particular definition of the idea. It's as if "is a proper name" and "matters to me" are synonymous in your reality tunnel. PS: the BPP wasn't limited to nonviolent strategies but was part of black power segment of this civil rights movement, so your conception of it doesn't agree with our article scope (nor is that defined by "the actual movement to end legalized segregation in the US").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:15, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
    Unless I'm misreading your text you say that World War II isn't a proper noun? That aside, it's a good example for this RM, as Wikipedia defines World War II as occurring between 1939-1945, with events before that listed as "Prelude". Yes, the Civil Rights Movement was limited to nonviolent strategies. Every success in the Civil Rights Movement was the result of continued, understood, and strategically applied nonviolence. Every legal barrier and judicial decision which upheld legal segregation that was removed in the era came about because of a continual dialogue, a dialogue which was purposely created by the top-tier of the Civil Rights Movement. They did this through study, field-testing, and refining the strategy. This culminated in seven intense years of thought and action which overturned legal status-quo segregation in the US. This seven-year peak, what some historians understand and define as the "Civil Rights Movement", added to humanity's knowledge of how and why nonviolence works, how it changed what seemed to be insurmountable social agreements and imaginary-but-agreed-upon "contracts" between identifiable groups of people, and how it purposely shed light on, and then removed, legal barriers which had been held in place through various civilizations and societies for thousands of years. In other words, by understanding and applying nonviolence, a definable small-set of individuals initiated, organized, and directed a definable series of events within a clearly definable timeline to move American society from set-in-stone legal constrictions to basic legal equality. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:52, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
    So much for analogy working, and yes you are misreading my point. I also don't see any reason to get into off-topic material, like whether the movement as you define it was entirely non-violent; that's a content dispute you can take up with the people writing the Black Panthers into this article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:28, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Re the accusation above that I WP:CANVASsed people into this discussion, I find that quite absurd. The editors pinged were all of those who participated in the previous RM, including those who supported it and those who opposed it. It is therefore in no way a selective canvas, just a courtesy to people who participated in a debate just *two months ago*, and may have thought the matter was settled, to notify them that another move on the same topic has been brought up all over again. Also, I'm not even "opposing the request" anyway, I'm mostly in agreement with Coffee on the case for a move, just not on reversing the decision to move to lower case.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:30, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
    Also, @Dekimasu: please could you undo your removal of this discussion from the RM list? That seems very irregular to me, RM is the place for move discussions, not RFC. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 09:54, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
    This is now an RFC. I'm not a fool enough to think that your pings weren't intended to swing the request. This is rather ridiculous. It is a very, very simple and obvious name change that needs to be made. Why some of you are fighting it so hard is beyond me. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 10:33, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Well, now we have a bunch of administrators in disagreement on issues about process, which is never a fun thing. I certainly don't want to create a precedent whereby an RfC supersedes an RM. But I don't think readding the RM tag will help, and since all I've done here is remove the broken RM tag, I want to clarify the situation. 1) As an RM, this was almost certainly going to be closed as "no consensus" on Sunday afternoon. I say that as someone who is not really a fan of how NCCAPS is employed. 2) Pinging users from previous discussions is not an uncommon thing to do in a move request. Requested moves are not part of the dispute resolution process. They are meant to be amicable discussions, and pinging users from previous discussions is something that happens from time to time. I do not believe that Amakuru was trying to swing the request, and we skipped past assuming good faith pretty quickly when it started to appear that the move request wouldn't succeed. A lot of move requests don't succeed. We're never done making move requests. It's not a big deal whether a change is made today or in another request next month, or both. I'm not sure why the temperature level had to get so high. 3) It is not sufficient to say that this is a simple and obvious change that needs to be made based upon a selection of sources presented by the nominator. The standard for capitalizing titles according to the current naming conventions and MOS (which, again, I am not a fan of; I would write Civil Rights Movement in my academic prose) is much higher than that. Perhaps some of the dissatisfaction here is related to not being acclimated to the standards that are usually employed in RM discussions. I hope both sides can take that into consideration. Each side has an argument here. 4) As I noted in my edit summary, the RfC tag broke the RM listing, on top of which it effectively extends discussion for another 4 weeks and makes it impossible to close the RM as an RM. There wouldn't have been a listing on RM even with the tag. It might have been preferable to have taken off the RfC tag, let the RM close, and then start an RfC. However, I erred on the side of the longer period for comment that is specifically related to dispute resolution, because once the RfC tag went up, it was a sign that a normal, neutral RM discussion was unlikely to progress in any productive direction. In either event, I'd suggest a post at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves would be the best way to keep this on the radar over there. Dekimasuよ! 21:45, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
An index of some archived move/title discussions shows this is a perennial and complex issue:
This doesn't mean I have confidence in the ability of an RfC to solve the problem, but it can be given a try. Dekimasuよ! 22:05, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
This list is misleading in at least two ways. These are not RM's, some are simply a single comment. And when these comments were written, almost the entire time the page was upper-cased (the list makes it look, at least subconsciously, as if the page were always lower-cased). This was a stable upper-cased page for a long long time. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:43, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
1) Some of these are requested moves, and even requested moves you participated in. 2) The links were not used to advocate a specific position. They were precisely denoting the locations of previous discussions that show the title "is a perennial and complex issue." 3) The most recent move request established the most recent consensus title. Dekimasuよ! 22:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I still think this should all be toned down; the likely response would be that adding an RfC tag on top of the RM is another form of forum shopping. It would be great to concentrate on the merits of the move proposal. Otherwise I'm not sure what the RfC is going to accomplish. Dekimasuよ! 23:42, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
  • 1. It might be your likely response, but that doesn't mean it would be everyone's actual response. 2. If you wanted to focus on the move you wouldn't have found it necessary to reply to a comment I'm fully entitled/permitted to make. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 05:26, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
  • As I've mentioned, the ironic thing is that I'm inclined to agree with you that "Civil Rights Movement" is a better title. Unfortunately, the case has not been made to this point. It is important to understand that the editors who are opposing your request are not doing so out of spite. For example, you mentioned how the term is used in book titles, but book titles use obligatory caps in a way that is not relevant to the capitalization of the title here, which has to do with how the term is used in running text. You mentioned a good number of specific books that use the term "Civil Rights Movement," but not with any reference to the total proportion of reliable sources that use the term in caps or otherwise. You assert, in your revised intro to the RfC, that "Civil Rights Movement" is the WP:COMMONNAME, but that has not been established by your evidence. And even if it is the most common name, your argument does not account for the fact that WP:COMMONNAME states that "ambiguous names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." It has been argued here that the proposed title is ambiguous or does not reflect worldwide usage of the term. Without dealing with these weaknesses in the proposal, the request is unlikely to gain consensus. Instead you are citing Wikipedia:Casting aspersions while accusing other editors of acting in bad faith. Note: Wikipedia:Canvassing says that it is appropriate to ping "editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics)." User:Amakuru pinged everyone, both supporters and opposers, of the previous request, and he also said he was inclined to support much of your request—why would he be trying to WP:GAME anything? And if your case is good on the merits, the !vote shouldn't matter. Please consider the possibility that it wasn't necessary to react so strongly to the pings, and if you feel strongly about the proposal, consider presenting more supporting evidence. Dekimasuよ! 06:34, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
@Dekimasu Is this the type of evidence you are seeking to demonstrate the WP:COMMONNAME for this article topic. The following terms are some of the terms used to denote the movement in the 20th century based on Google N-gram. The following is only from Google Books:
Civil Rights Movement - 667,000 hits
American civil rights movement - 58,900 hits
Second Reconstruction - 43,100 hits
Civil Rights Revolution - 50,700 hits
Modern Civil Rights Movement - 21,700 hits
Black Freedom Movement - 22,600 hits
Black Freedom Struggle - 31,700 hits (This term is different from the others. This term has emerged within the scholarly community to denote the history of struggle for the African American community from colonial era to present time in the United States.)
Black civil rights movement - 26,300 hits
U.S. Civil Rights Movement - 17,300 hits
1960s Civil Rights Movement - 11,100 hits
Negro Revolution - 25,200 hits
African American civil rights movement - 20,200 hits
Southern Freedom Movement - 4,810 hits
Black rights movement - 5,200 hits
United Sta:tes civil rights movement - 4,530 hits
Negro Freedom Movement - 3,140 hits
Classic civil rights movement - 669 hits
Classical civil rights movement - 411 hits
As is apparent, the term "African American civil rights movement" isn't the common term for this article topic. It has never been a common name for this article topic. However, WP:Reliable sources was never used to make this determination. Mitchumch (talk) 12:04, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
This research by Mitchumch should convince editors, even those who oppose this move, that "Civil Rights Movement", upper-cased and per the nomination, is the primary and common name for this topic. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:33, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, you're mostly right, but it should not upper cased. Google searches like those above don't filter for case, unlike the ngram and eyeball search I presented earlier, showing that the term is mostly lower case in sources. You seem to be completely ignoring that, Randy. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 16:08, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this is helpful. I'd rather not play devil's advocate, but "Foo Civil Rights Movement" is always sure to get fewer hits than "Civil Rights Movement" by virtue of the addition of the term. The capitalization issue remains, and the question of ambiguity might remain as well, although it seems clear to me that the American version is the primary use of the term in cases where it is capitalized. The capped version is arguably the most concise and precise title for this particular movement, whereas uncapped versions may not be precise enough. Dekimasuよ! 22:23, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
I fully agree with @Randy Kryn: this research by Mitchumch (talk · contribs) makes the arguments for keeping the current title and opposing this move very weak. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:41, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
Dekimasu Could you elaborate what you mean by the "question of ambiguity"? I don't know what you're talking about. Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 03:36, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
When you are in a context where it is perfectly clear what you are talking about, you need no adjective, or you need only use the adjective once, not over and over. Or to put it another way "American civil rights movement" is an encyclopedic title but it obviously uses an adjective.[22] (Compare American Civil War and Civil War). Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure where the "question of ambiguity" is. With the exception of this article topic, I'm not aware of any movement, within the United States or outside the United States, that has a WP:COMMONNAME of the Civil Rights Movement. Please list them so that I can see it. Here's what I found on Wikipedia:

Articles with the term "civil rights movement" within their titles are:

Mitchumch (talk) 15:56, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

What's your question? You just presented links for civil rights movements outside America. I think we all realize there are many/(majority of?) Americans, who speak/write/publish in, English, and that our editor base skews American. Besides which, what don't you get about a first sentence or first paragraph "American" or "black" or African-American" or "1950s-1960s", etc as an adjective with 'civil rights movement', and never having to write that entire adjective/subject phrase again, because the context is already established. It's not at all hard to understand what Dekimasuよ said, for example, if one tries to understand a sentence: "During this civil rights movement people were injured." Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:57, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
Please list any movement, within the United States or outside the United States, that has a WP:COMMONNAME of the Civil Rights Movement. Mitchumch (talk) 23:13, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
But you have shown nothing about a common name, you have shown that the phrase 'civil rights movement' is used variously, and to you, it does not matter in what context. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:21, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Solid evidence

Evidence that capitalization is not necessary or even very common is found in books usage: SEE HERE. This has been gone over several times, and there really is no reason for WP to promote this term to proper name status, when sources mostly don't do so. Dicklyon (talk) 19:33, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Randy's reference to "evidence presented by Mitchumch" is vacuous, and Mitchumch only show case-insensitive hit counts. Dicklyon (talk) 16:08, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

A proposal

Since much of the objection is about the over-capitalization, and since Civil rights movement already redirects here, it would seem that a discussion focused on that alternative might have a chance. I suggest withdrawing the current doomed proposal and starting over clean to see. Dicklyon (talk) 19:41, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm fine with that, over the current title. But my first preference remains as "Civil Rights Movement" referring to the formal noun, instead of the informal Civil rights movement. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 00:21, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I've commented on your preference also at User talk:Coffee#Project and category page moves. Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
You said at the outset "I don't see why this would be controversial." Now that you see, would you withdrawn the proposal as I suggested? Dicklyon (talk) 05:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
The term "Civil Rights Movement" is the proper name for an historical event. Per WP:NCCAPS, "Do not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name. Mitchumch (talk) 06:10, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
The next sentence at NCCAPS says "For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence." The argument being made by Dicklyon and several others here is that this is not the case for the topic of the current article. Although (for the third time?) I dislike NCCAPS, this is not really helping the argument here. Again, I think it might be useful to attempt a more nuanced argument: that the capitalized title "Civil Rights Movement" is WP:PRECISE, while "civil rights movement" is ambiguous. Dekimasuよ! 06:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Dekimasu What make the term "the civil rights movement" ambiguous? Mitchumch (talk) 06:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
That there are many civil rights movements, any of which may be referred to as "the civil rights movement" in a given context. I think this has been covered already. Dekimasuよ! 06:34, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
“The civil rights movement” without “Northern Ireland” attached in each instance is relatively common in running text on that topic, just as it is common not to attach something related to the USA in each instance in which the American movement is referenced: PBS, BBC, UK National Archives, Yale/Pluto Press. Again, the counter-argument here is that Civil rights movement already redirects to this topic. But the argument I presented is the only one I can see that gives a reason to reject the guidance of NCCAPS. Dekimasuよ! 06:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Dekimasu Is it the WP:Common name? Mitchumch (talk) 06:59, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME states, "Ambiguous... names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. Neutrality is also considered.... When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." I feel like we are going in circles here. Maybe you would have more luck asking these questions of someone else. Dekimasuよ! 07:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Are you asking me if "Civil Rights Movement" is the common name for this subject? I am suggesting that the capitalized form may be the most common name that is not ambiguous. If you are asking me whether the capitalized form is the most common name, period, that is not clear from the discussion, nor does that seem to be sufficient based on the style guide. Dekimasuよ! 07:09, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Dekimasu I was asking if "Civil Rights Movement" is the common name for this subject.
I'm not trying to antagonize you. I think there are misconceptions surrounding the term and social movement on Wikipedia about the Civil Rights Movement. The current naming of this article title is a reflection of these misconceptions.
WP:COMMONNAME states, "Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit the criteria listed above." The section on "Ambiguous ... names" was intended for terms like "Civil War". Mitchumch (talk) 07:41, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I made the same proposal to amend the RM as Dicklyon some days ago, but maybe not as eloquently  . This is already the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, because the redirect from civil rights movement comes here, and I think that's absolutely correct. This topic dwarfs the Northern Ireland and other American ones in terms of common usage. I think there's little chance of "Civil Rights Movement" gaining consensus, since all the evidence say it's not generally a proper noun per the definition in WP:NCCAPS. But I think we could gain common ground with "civil rights movement", given the usage of that term in reliable sources.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
The evidence presented by Mitchumch shows that it is accepted as a proper noun throughout much of society. Even though this is not universal, and it doesn't have to be, this large acceptance seems to imply a good case for an exception. I, like Coffee, don't understand why some editors are so against this, and would ask them to consider endorsing an exception. And I don't think it's been mentioned that the upper casing of the present full but awkward title was stable for many years, and was just recently changed. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
It doesn't, though, and I don't know what gives you that impression. Mitchumch has given Google Books searches, but you were advised above that those don't control for capitalization. In running text, the first page of the Google Books search for "Civil Rights Movement" yields 6 instances of "civil rights movement," 2 instances of "Civil Rights movement," and 0 instances of "Civil Rights Movement." Is there other evidence that has been presented? Where is the evidence that it is generally accepted as a proper noun? I'm not convinced, so I definitely don't think the NCCAPS supporters will be convinced. Dekimasuよ! 10:13, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Dekimasu What evidence would you be satisfied with to demonstrate that it is a proper noun? The CRM is the proper name for a unique historical event. You have not demonstrated there is any other movement with that term as its common name. Mitchumch (talk) 11:05, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
The evidence you need to present is that in reliable sources the term "would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence", which is the clearly defined definition of what constitutes a proper name at WP:NCCAPS. I have already presented evidence through an ngram and Google books search, that suggests most sources *do not* capitalize the phrase in the middle of a sentence, even when clearly talking about the very subject of this article (which is the primary topic for "civil rights movement"). Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:15, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Your proposed form "Civil rights movement" on ngram is the least dominant form used in books. The irony. Mitchumch (talk) 12:24, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Article names always start with a capital letter though, that's our general style. Like Institutional review board, Civil defense siren etc. In running text, they would not be capitalised at all, but in a Wikipedia title, they have the first letter of the first word capitalised.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:14, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Mitchumch either doesn't understand capitalization in WP article titles, or doesn't understand capitalization in Google web and ngram search, or is playing dumb. His arguments make no sense to one who has read and understood WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. If the most common form in use is civil rights movement then the article title must be Civil rights movement, and the fully lowercase version will still work as a link as shown here. It's not that complicated. Dicklyon (talk) 16:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Please look at page one of Google's results for 'civil rights movement' lower-cased (search engines are allowed to be a factor in determining the result of an RM). Then go to page two, then page three, then page four and onwards. Dozens of reputable organizations, encyclopedias, sources, and much more upper-case the term to Civil Rights Movement. It goes on and on. Lower-case is there too, but certainly not as often and not from as important and reputable sources. The movement veterans organization, which is used as a major source for the page, upper-cases Civil Rights Movement. There is little argument except for "consistency", which is not the standard on Wikipedia - the standard is the most common name, a name that is used 51% of the time. Please consider asking for an exception in this case, if an exception is even needed. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:18, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I followed your link, Randy, and these were the results on page 1: [23][24][25]. The prose attached to the entries, and in many case the titles too, seem to more often be using lower case, as indeed I suspected before. Admittedly I am in the UK, so the results may be different, but many of those sources shown are American.  — Amakuru (talk) 18:10, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Mocking in good faith is a form of debate, I guess. This major era and very condensed carefully planned and organized series of events in human history took the social fabric of a nation, and then of the world, from one place and set it down in another. Separating white and black drinking fountains, for example, was common and accepted practice as late as 1963. Five years later it was seen as a form of institutional and societal insanity. That's what the Civil Rights Movement did, that's why a focused nonviolent movement which accomplished that deed is important to history and essential to encyclopedic knowledge, and that's why the upper-case capitalization of this unprecedented event in human history is important to some of us. Trivia is quoting one line of some rock lyric and listing that on its Wikipedia page. This, to some of us, is not trivia, but something much more than that, and to America is as important as its American Revolution, its Declaration of Independence, its American Civil War, and the horrors and honors of World War I and World War II. Trivia encapsulates things which are trivial. The history and effects of this movement were not. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:26, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Calm down Dicklyon, it was a thought typed out loud. I understand how it works. DuncanHill, you're not a rogue editor, you're an antagonizer lol. Anyways, if Coffee and Randy Kryn are okay with civil rights movement in lowercase as the new article title, then I guess I'll go along with it. Mitchumch (talk) 16:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
The talk page is meant to be used for discussions about improving the article, not style-guide wars. Sorry if that antagonises everybody. DuncanHill (talk) 16:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm only one editor, so my thoughts on this come from just my position. But no, I would not personally be okay with lower-case, and would be just as not-okay if Wikipedia wanted to lower-case, as I say above, the Declaration of Independence. The era and condensed event (it took a handful of people a handful of years to experiment, get it right, and then teach other people what to do to overturn legal segregation, and then accomplish that exact goal) is, per google search and other evidence, an upper-cased event. It should be recognized by the most comprehensive encyclopedia in human history as such. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:39, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
This seems just too specialized or too limited a POV of this encyclopedic subject -- if one reads, Britannica (Clyborne 2018) or Oxford (Wendt 2009) encyclopedias -- encyclopedically, one can't write out of the M(m)ovement article: the African American office holder's of Reconstruction, the campaigners against lynching, the NAACP, the NUL, the 20/30s labor movement, the NNC, the MOWM, the FeC, the WWII CORE sitdowners, deseg of the armed forces, etc. . . . . in short, from the 13th Amendment to the death of King and beyond. So we need to have any article, called CRM or Crm or ACRM or . . . , into an overview article - it can't be as limited as your POV suggests. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
@Alanscottwalker: I have thought about and am indeed open to your suggestion to expand the scope of this article to include the two "previous" articles (and beyond as needed) and then spring forks from there... but we need to change the title of this article to the main formal Civil Rights Movement, first, to do that. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 18:54, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
But not so, actually, and probably unwise, because it requires multiple upheavals. Simply start American Civil Rights movement outline or Civil rights movement overview , or something like that and build from the existing parts up, or to be a little less bold do it in a sandbox first - and worry about the final title (like the least important part) once you actually have the substance. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:09, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
The evidence presented does not really say that. Unless we are going to discuss fundamental flaws in Google Ngrams, there is no getting around this distribution. This is the definition of going around in circles. If you want my support for weakening the guidance of WP:NCCAPS, you have it. Otherwise, this remains a bare assertion. Dekimasuよ! 19:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
I might support such an amendment myself too, but it would need some careful thought as to which circumstances merit capitalisation of topics that are generally not capped in sources. It comes up often enough that there may be a case for tweaking something. My own pet article of Rwandan Genocide was summarily downcased a few years ago, and like Randy on this article, the change *felt wrong. But the sources spoke, and the guideline is clear, and there wasn't much I could argue about that. Anyway, with that in mind, I don't think it's right to make an exception just for this one article, when the guidelines are similarly very clear, in lieu of a more thorough debate and guideline being formulated.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:18, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
That's argumentum ad ignorantiam... we are having the debate right now. Also, from argumentum ad antiquitatem your appeal to tradition is fallacious logic: if the argument is not developed further, for example by pointing out that the widespread acceptance of the practice means that there would be significant implications/disruption/cost involved in abandoning the tradition. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 23:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Adherence to policy (WP:TITLEFORMAT) in the absence of a compelling reason not to is sound logic. Several editors have refuted the idea that the move to a capitalized form would be consistent with the current policies and guidelines that have been outlined here. Of course, we can also ignore all rules, but these editors have also thus far rejected the argument that the presented reasons to ignore the article title policy are particularly compelling in this case (ad populum? special pleading?). Beyond that you are simply asking for WP:CONLIMITED, which again, conflicts with both policy (WP:CON) and the ArbCom decision linked at CONLIMITED. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, no matter how many fallacies you think you've discovered. After all, the NCCAPS defenders are specifically attempting to avoid the propagation of logical inconsistencies. Dekimasuよ! 23:55, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Saying we should do something because we have because there isn't any proof that doing something else might be better (regardless that it obviously won't do any actual harm, considering Civil Rights Movement is a redirect to here) is sound reasoning to you? On an encyclopedia that claims to be WP:BOLD no less? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 01:16, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
This is a non sequitur; your analysis mischaracterizes the argument that was presented (ignoratio elenchi), which was not "no proof something else might be better." The argument was, roughly, "consistency is better." As for WP:BOLD, I do not think it means what you think it means. Dekimasuよ! 03:22, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
@Coffee: you said yesterday that you were fine with Dicklyon's compromise at the top of this section, but we still seem to be arguing over the capitalisation issue, and you've been reverting changes to portal and project names elsewhere as well. Are you happy with the compromise move to Civil rights movement, or aren't you? I get that Civil Rights Movement is your first choice, that's fine, but it doesn't look like that is likely to get consensus at the moment. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 12:10, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
For the portal and project that I myself created after this site's existence for nearly two decades, no I am not willing to change the name. For this particular article I give a secondary preference for "Civil rights movement" and a first preference still to "Civil Rights Movement". — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 13:48, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Your "secondary preference" fits en.wp style, as described at MOS:CAPS. Drop the WP:OWN issues, and let's move forward. By the way, there were a lot more style fixes in what you reverted than just the portal title caps. Dicklyon (talk) 15:32, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
This RM is moving forward, and I just read some good evidence for upper-casing on an editor's talk page that I hope they bring here (EDIT: editor Bruce Hartford, the founder of Civil Rights Movement Veterans, allowed me to being his comment here. See 'Support by proxy' above for his statement in support of upper-casing). As for own, the term "Civil Rights Movement" was in the title of this page for most of its existence, and had been stable for a long time until the November RM which incorrectly lumped all of the upper-cased titles together as if they were equally the Civil Rights Movement. The reason it is a proper noun is because of the difference between this page and the others. This page shows what occurred when a relatively very small group of people studied Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You, went to Myles Horton's classes, many then studied with James Lawson, and then they all learned about Gandhi's nonviolent movements and the basis of his nonviolent strategies. The best of them took all of this knowledge, practiced it, then refined it, and, in purposely stating their objective of ending legal segregation in the United States, they carried that ever-expanding-with-experience nonviolent knowledge across the South and then brought it to Chicago, and between 1960 and 1968, attained their objective. That's why it is a proper noun and the other named civil rights movement pages are not - it was an unprecedentedly quick attainment of large-scale societal change in a nation's legal system accomplished by the people in leadership by working on known-and-new techniques of nonviolence to which thousands of other people then responded. That's why upper-case Civil Rights Movement directs here, why a Google search shows us the name that the movement is best known under, and why the people arguing for it believe that it should be moved to the reasonably truncated form of the very stable upper-casing of the name that the article had before a couple of months ago. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:11, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Randy Kryn, I'm been at arm's length from this because style issues just aren't my thing, but you are getting way over the line—and corrupting your own argument—with this blatant WP:SOAPBOX and non-NPOV. I find it very alarming.-GPRamirez5 (talk) 00:20, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
As it stands, this discussion is not an RM. In either event, your argument for the importance of the movement is repetitive (everyone agrees, I hope, that the movement was incredibly important). If the sources don't say to capitalize (how many times will you say that Google searches show this, when it's been shown they do not?), then we are not here to right great wrongs. I'll just start copying and pasting from above. Unless we are going to discuss fundamental flaws in Google Ngrams, there is no getting around this distribution. This is the definition of going around in circles. Dekimasuよ! 22:22, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Correction: This is an RFC regarding a RM. And the result will decide whether the article name is changed or not. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:50, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Call it a discussion about naming, then. It ceased to be an RM when the RfC tag went up. We can go to WT:RM and ask someone to close this as an RM, if you like. If it had remained an RM it would already be closed as no consensus to move. But as has been mentioned here by a few editors, the best way to move this forward would be to withdraw the RfC and initiate a normal WP:RM with a request to move to the uncapitalized title. As an RfC, it certainly hasn't attracted a lot of outside editors to the discussion, and it's not been very collaborative in tone, either. Dekimasuよ! 23:14, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
I'm sure whatever admin closes this will be able to discern that there is at least a consensus for changing the title to a form of "civil rights movement", rights now we're attempting to hammer out the reasoning for not capitalizing what appears to be a proper noun/term, for a specific movement. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 23:17, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
Also this Ngram shows a much different picture than the one you are using. I would also like to point out a simplistic reason for the increase of non-capitalization of the term: it is sometimes referred to informally. Just as we wouldn't decapitalize I Have a Dream because of this Ngram either. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 23:11, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
No, it doesn't show a much different picture. In each case, "civil rights movement" is at the top at .000180, and "Civil Rights Movement" is down at .000060 (the fourth line on your ngram). That's exactly the same for both graphs. The second link is not relevant. Dekimasuよ! 23:18, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
The second graph is very relevant. How is it not, when it shows the fatal flaw in your search: civil rights movement can refer to many movements, while Civil Rights Movement refers to one thing. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 23:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
In any discussion of the I Have a Dream speech, it is likely that the text of the speech will be cited, and in the text of the speech it will be capped as part of a quotation: "I have a dream that...." Whereas this ngram shows that "I Have a Dream speech" is more common than "I have a dream speech." In fact, ngrams show that things like this are the reason "I have a dream" gets more results than "I Have a Dream": see this ngram. As for what you call the fatal flaw in my argument, it is precisely something I said above that was never taken up meaningfully by anyone who supports a move to the capped title, when I wrote: Again, I think it might be useful to attempt a more nuanced argument: that the capitalized title "Civil Rights Movement" is WP:PRECISE, while "civil rights movement" is ambiguous. Dekimasuよ! 23:47, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
The question of ambiguity is precisely my point. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 00:43, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
In my view, we should probably close this RFC now and restart it as a new normal RM for the lower case version Civil rights movement, see if we can get consensus for that, as right now this conversation is going nowhere, the above survey shows no consensus, and following the out-of-process change from an RM to an RFC, it's not even clear how it will be resolved. And this shouldn't be an RFC, because we're not discussing any substantive issues, or changing any guidelines, we're just discussing the title of the article, which belongs in a normal RM discussion.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:35, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
That is entirely irrelevant to the comment I made, and it's simply not going to happen. Additionally, this is actually the graph I intended on pointing out... it shows that the use of the term (we can assume Civil proceeds Rights Movement, based on this search) changed drastically in capitalization only after the 90s. Which means for most of the Movement's actual living history it was referred to as "Civil Rights Movement". You can't argue with those facts no matter how hard you try: civil rights movement may refer to many movements, but Civil Rights Movement refers to this article's subject specifically. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 23:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)
[Reinstating comment which was accidentally removed by Coffee ] Fine, consider it a new comment rather than a reply then, but my point still stands. We're wasting our time, because the conversation is going nowhere, the argument is going round in circles, and we would do well to try to agree on Dicklyon's compromise, to overcome the objections above saying this article shouldn't be moved at all.
Just to address the ngram above though, it doesn't look to me like it backs up your theory that this is the Civil Rights Movement while others are civil rights movements - "rights movement" is ahead of "Rights Movement" for every different variant shown, except for "in the South", and even then the two are basically neck-and-neck recently. Meanwhile, the two entries for rights movement in the Soviet also show them neck-and-neck. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 00:40, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
And again you're missing the point. Also, just because you and I are seemingly going in circles, it doesn't mean everyone is or will. This conversation is bigger than me and you. So no, this remains the RFC that it is. Stop repeating that you think we should close this ad nauseum. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 00:59, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Any outcome that allows this article title to remain as is will be in violation of WP:Common name. It has been demonstrated which term is the common name for this event here. African-American civil rights movement is ranked ninth by the number of hits on Google Books. All hits on Google Books equal 1,014,560 hits. The term Civil Rights Movement (lower and upper case combined) is ranked first and accounts for 65.7% of all hits. Mitchumch (talk) 07:23, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
This, too, has been covered already (e.g., adding another word to a search will automatically get fewer results; conversely, "civil rights" is not a better title for this article just because it gets more hits than "civil rights movement"). When they are found to be beneficial for precision, descriptive titles are not deprecated (WP:NDESC, on the same policy page you cited). WP:COMMONNAME actually states that "[Ambiguous] names for the article subject... are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." The current title is a descriptive title, in use in order to be precise enough to identify the subject and scope of the article. Whatever else this may be, it is not a "violation" of WP:COMMONNAME. If and when the page is moved somewhere, it is next to inevitable that the scope of the article will become less clear. Dekimasuよ! 07:50, 28 February 2018 (UTC)
Dekimasu The term "Civil Rights Movement" on Google Books has 667,000 hits. While the term "the Civil Rights Movement" on Google Books has 632,000 hits. That term remains the most prevalent term used to denote this historical event. Again, you claim it is an "[Ambiguous] name" without identifying other social and/or political movements that use the WP:Common name of "the Civil Rights Movement". You've used the Northern Ireland civil rights movement as an example. That term has 4,540 hits on Google Books. You need to demonstrate that the term "the Civil Rights Movement" is used more frequently than "Northern Ireland civil rights movement" to be the "Common name" for that movement. You told Coffee, "You mentioned a good number of specific books that use the term "Civil Rights Movement," but not with any reference to the total proportion of reliable sources that use the term in caps or otherwise." I need you to provide proof from WP:Reliable sources for your claim. Mitchumch (talk) 09:54, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
This has already been adequately satisfied above. There is an attempt to turn this around to ask for my evidence, but I am not particularly making a claim nor trying to make a change to the current title. You say that I'm making a claim that the term is ambiguous; I am not, in particular, although it seems that Coffee is. What I said was, if a change to the status quo is to be made, the burden is on those supporting the change to provide proof; and if the most common name is to be used, it should be unambiguous. Your evidence does not show that anything is unambiguous, but rather that the term "the civil rights movement" is used in a variety of contexts. This has been pointed out to you by Alanscottwalker and others. As far as the capitalized term goes, I have to cite myself above again: "WP:NCCAPS says 'For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence.' The argument being made by Dicklyon and several others here is that this is not the case for the topic of the current article. Although (for the third time? [fourth now? fifth?]) I dislike NCCAPS, this is not really helping the argument here. Again, I think it might be useful to attempt a more nuanced argument: that the capitalized title 'Civil Rights Movement' is WP:PRECISE, while 'civil rights movement' is ambiguous." Mitchumch, you seem invested in the idea that "civil rights movement" is not ambiguous (since you have mixed the two throughout, or have relied on Google searches that are not case-sensitive). If that's the case, there is no rationale for using the capitalized form that is also a rationale in line with the naming conventions. By the way, since this page is on my watchlist, I will see responses; I would rather not be pinged to reply to each new response. Dekimasuよ! 19:06, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Requested a close

I asked for a close at WP:Requests for closure. But a formal close does not actually seem unnecessary, since this is no longer a listed RM, and since there's obviously no consensus result here. If someone wants to propose the alternative as suggested above, go ahead and open a new RM. Otherwise, this is done, yes? Dicklyon (talk) 05:22, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

RFCs last for up to 30 days. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 11:56, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
And I'll disagree about a no consensus result. At a minimum the consensus has settled on one of the two forms of CRM, either upper-cased or lower-cased. The amount of evidence provided for upper-case, by Mitch and others, seems adequate. As for participation and keeping this open, has anyone pinged the participants of the late 2014 RM as yet, which was the RM which kept the stable upper-casing before the late-2017 change? Randy Kryn (talk) 13:24, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
At the risk of reopening this can of worms, where has Mitchumch presented any case-sensitive evidence at all? Dekimasuよ! 17:13, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
There is no Wikipedia article with the WP:Common name of "Civil Rights Movement". And no editor has presented any social or political movement, either in the United States or around the world, that uses the term "Civil Rights Movement" as a common name. Therefore, the term denotes a unique historical event. By definition the term "Civil Rights Movement" is a proper noun. Proper nouns are capitalized as a rule. Mitchumch (talk) 20:40, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
By that logic, all non-disambiguated titles on Wikipedia should be capitalized. Setting aside whether or not the case that it's unique has been proven, being precise enough to denote a unique topic (historical or otherwise) does not constitute something becoming a proper name. Dekimasuよ! 21:09, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
There's no need to set aside the fact the term is a unique term for an historical event. I'm still waiting for a list of Wikipedia articles or a list of social or political movements that has a WP:Common name of the "Civil Rights Movement". I don't know the source for your definition of a proper noun. Here are some Google Book hits with definitions in them here. The capitalization was only conditional upon the term being a proper noun. Not "all non-disambiguated titles on Wikipedia should be capitalized" as you stated. Mitchumch (talk) 23:34, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
That's not what I said to set aside, nor is that what being capitalized as a title is contingent upon, as has been explained at length. Let me know when there is evidence that the capitalized title is consistently used in reliable sources, because that's the standard. WP: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." WP:NCCAPS: "For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence." Otherwise, there is no community consensus to capitalize based upon the naming conventions and manual of style; there is no local consensus to capitalize; and the RfC has not drawn anyone here who supports capitalization in the face of either of these. Dekimasuよ! 00:07, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I cannot refute that the lower case form is the most prevalent in reliable sources. However, I am not aware of any other proper noun for an historical event that is normally written in lower case in reliable sources. Do you know of any such terms? I think a case can be made that this term is an exception that warrants special attention in how the WP:MOS-CAPS is applied.
You have stated on a few occasions that you would use upper case if it was up to you here, "the ironic thing is that I'm inclined to agree with you that "Civil Rights Movement" is a better title." and here"The standard for capitalizing titles according to the current naming conventions and MOS (which, again, I am not a fan of; I would write Civil Rights Movement in my academic prose) is much higher than that"'.
I doubt you are alone in those sentiments. Mitchumch (talk) 00:42, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Here are a short list of some I might capitalize differently, but that follow guidelines: Stonewall riots, Dreyfus affair, Occupy movement, Hindenburg disaster, Gulf of Tonkin incident, September 11 attacks, Kent State shootings, Birmingham campaign, Arts and Crafts movement, Oklahoma City bombing. Dekimasuよ! 01:23, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
At descriptive titles: 1992 Los Angeles riots, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, etc. Dekimasuよ! 01:32, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't capitalize any of those. They are descriptors of actions or incidents, and in fact the upper-case Birmingham Children's Crusade is a better title for the Birmingham campaign. That's what makes the Civil Rights Movement different, it was a "thing", a one-of-a-kind planned and carried out long-term project to remove legal segregation in America. When it became well organized it took about eight years for the movement to create enough of a national dialogue so Congress could put new laws in place which ended legal segregation. I'm going to link a YouTube video here that someone recently sent me, an extraordinary 31-minute 1968 NBC television news interview with Dr. King in which he discusses and defines the event quite well. The reporter calls it the Civil Rights Movement right at the start, and that became more and more the common name of the project as the years and decades went by. And to mention again, the upper-cased "Civil Rights Movement" was stable in this title for a long long time, until a multiple-page RM was held last November which swept this one up in it. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:47, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
The nice thing about having guidelines, of course, is that we don't have to rely upon personal opinions like the one you express here. There are a substantial number of "movements" on Wikipedia that have lowercase titles, and I'm sure the proponents of many of them made concerted efforts to expand their influence as part of long-term projects. In addition to the Occupy movement I linked above, here's what I found in two minutes: Illyrian movement, Woman's club movement, Free school movement, Chicano art movement, Goddess movement, Black Power movement, Objectivist movement, 9/11 Truth movement, Rastafari movement in the United States, History of the hippie movement. I'm not saying these were all as well organized or influential as this one. But that's not the standard they are being evaluated under. Dekimasuよ! 03:28, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
All of the terms that you listed have Google Ngrams that demonstrate that they are normally capitalized within a sentence. The point I'm trying to make is the "Civil Rights Movement" is not treated like other proper nouns despite functioning like other proper nouns in reliable sources. My position is not a baseless position that only reflects a personal desire.
On a side note, the term "Dreyfus affair" is not the dominate form for that term. Both words are capitalized in Ngram. Here and here are the only page moves I found for that article. "Occupy movement" and "2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami" don't have a Ngram history due to the dataset ending in 2008 and those events occurring after 2008.
  • Stonewall riots [26] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Dreyfus affair [27] - not the dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Occupy movement [28] - no data on Google Ngram
  • Hindenburg disaster [29] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Gulf of Tonkin incident [30] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • September 11 attacks [31] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Kent State shootings [32] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Birmingham campaign [33] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Arts and Crafts movement [34] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • Oklahoma City bombing [35] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • 1992 Los Angeles riots [36] - dominant form on Google Ngram
  • 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami [37] - no data on Google Ngram
Mitchumch (talk) 02:36, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
You asked about unique historical events with "specific" names that do not qualify for capitalization under Wikipedia's standards, so I named some. The Ngrams you've listed show that many people do capitalize these titles (≈consider them proper names), but we still go with the preponderance of sources. The Google Ngrams for the civil rights movement and civil rights movement show the same thing: some sources treat this as a proper name, but it seems that is not true of most sources (and you stated as much above: I cannot refute that the lower case form is the most prevalent in reliable sources). So I am afraid I don't understand what you are saying when you write The point I'm trying to make is the "Civil Rights Movement" is not treated like other proper nouns despite functioning like other proper nouns in reliable sources. I don't believe you're trying to get the title to reflect a personal desire, but I don't understand the rationale for ignoring the guideline and the data doesn't appear to show that this article is being treated differently from others. Dekimasuよ! 03:15, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
The list of terms you gave are nothing like "civil rights movement". All of the words in the term must be in lower case and used as a proper noun. That is what I meant when I said "the "Civil Rights Movement" is not treated like other proper nouns despite functioning like other proper nouns in reliable sources. Mitchumch (talk) 04:39, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Sources that do not capitalize "civil rights movement" are indicating that they don't see it as a weak proper name. Perhaps you are interested in WP:SMALLDETAILS, which would suggest any number of common name/proper name pairs. But that is only relevant if you are arguing that the same source may be referring to one subject as "the Civil Rights Movement" and another as "the civil rights movement," and I thought you'd rejected the notion that the phrase was ambiguous. Dekimasuよ! 05:18, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
WP:SMALLDETAILS implies the upper case and lower case forms have two separate meanings. Within the preponderance of reliable sources, both forms are used to denote one meaning - a unique historical event. Therefore, that Wikipedia policy doesn't apply here.
Your assertion regarding weak proper names implies the possible use of the article "the". Do you think the article should be titled "The Civil Rights Movement" or "The civil rights movement"? Mitchumch (talk) 05:54, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly with Randy Kryn: there is no way this can possibly be seen as a "no consensus" close, there is an almost unanimous consensus that the current title does not work, and likewise high consensus for a name that is either "Civil rights movement" or "Civil Rights Movement". The closer will have to decide which of the two titles (caps or no caps) is closest fitting to sitewide consensus and compare that to the arguments laid out here. But, a "no consensus" close this most certainly is not. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 07:53, 10 March 2018 (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.
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