Talk:Copper Hoard culture

Indra iconography

how can scholars be so biased towards indian arts, there are still tons of iconographic statues from mauryan time, one of which already depicts indra, even going back as early as four hundred BC in one saurasthra coin and here in this article a delusional viewpoint that indra was depicted in the first century BC probably influenced by zeus iconography. The western arts scholars are hell bent on pushing indian artistic analysis towards dates which closely relates to their greek fathers to suit their agenda some how, the thunderbolt of zeus has nothing greek about him since they are shown in all mesopotamian thunder gods iconography, indra is depicted in india as early as indus valley civilization with the same thunderbolt throwing posture, the western/ western influenced indian scholars are just too blindfolded and too aryanistic and egoistic to honestly comment on indian arts. what has symbolism got anything to do with aniconism, its already assumed that symbolism means aniconic, why scholars refuse to use their brains and relate the indus and mauryan iconography to indian gods before putting all burden on the greeks?.115.135.118.112 (talk) 14:05, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 5 July 2022

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

The result of the move request was: Decapitalize "culture". There is a clear consensus that the "culture" should be in lowercase, and thus there are no good reasons to keep the article at the capital "Culture".

On the other hand, there is no consensus on whether "hoard" should be capitalized or not. Decapitalizers of "hoard" cited a lack of consistent capitalization in sources (a situation in which MOS:CAPS would recommend lowercasing), while opponents cited consistency and recognizability. It's apparent that there is a conflict between these policies/guidelines, and given that all three cited sections are high-level, it's not clear to me as to which trumps which.

Considering all this, I have moved to Copper Hoard culture to take only as much intrusive action as consensus supports. That does not mean I particularly endorse a capital H (I am neutral on this matter), but we have to get rid of the capital "Culture" by moving it somewhere. Another RM can be opened to decapitalize the H if proponents of such desire to do so.

The closure of the controversial Indus Valley civilisation move review might also clarify to us what to do next. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 06:02, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

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Copper Hoard Culture → Copper hoard culture – Not usually capped in sources. This reverts an undiscussed move to caps "for stylistic reasons". Dicklyon (talk) 23:00, 4 July 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 04:15, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anarchyte (talk) 08:41, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: Some sources do use "Copper Hoard". Worth discussing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anarchyte (talk • contribs)

• Comment: and others "Copper Hoard culture". Going to be tricky to decide and Dicklyon has given no evidence. Doug Weller talk 10:49, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
• For consistency with similar articles it should be Copper Hoard culture: Corded Ware culture, Bell Beaker culture, Square Mouthed Vases culture, etc. – Joe (talk) 13:19, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

  Agreed. Doug Weller talk 13:35, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

  "Bell beaker" and "Square Mouthed Vase" are specific enough terms, "corded ware" and copper hoard aren't, being found pretty much all over the world. The caps are needed, as with "Impressionist painting", to avoid ambiguity. Johnbod (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  It is understood that not every copper hoard is associated with the copper hoard culture. We don't need caps for that. Dicklyon (talk) 23:13, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  n-gram stats show pretty consistent capitaization of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker in this context. Not so much with Copper Hoard or Square Mouthed Vases (as far as I can find, no source capped Square Mouthed Vase before Wikipedia did in 2017). What's happening in the stats for the Copper Hoard culture becomes more clear if you reduce the smoothing and look into what's going on in the most-capped period of 1972–1984, which is full of title-case citations to a couple of 1972 paper titles, and a 1983 book with title-case running heads, jacking up the numbers. Look at the books for that period (or any period) and it doesn't look at all like caps dominate. Dicklyon (talk) 23:02, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

  In my experience, the people who actually produce these sources care much, much less about capitalisation than the average Wikipedia editor. So I'm not sure text mining what is ultimately a miniscule body of sources is worth much. I'm just saying, if we want to be consistent, pretty much every member of Category:Archaeological cultures follows the Noun Phrase culture convention. – Joe (talk) 10:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

  You're suggesting substitute your opinion of a naming convention for what we find in reliable sources, just because the writers are not style experts? Personally, I think it's better to go with Wikipedia's manual of style than with your opinion about consistency. As for "the average Wikipedia editor", in my experience they don't give a fig about case or style, but tend to default to titling articles in title case because they're unfamiliar with WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, and because they are accustomed to seeing capped titles since the great majority of WP articles are about proper-names topics (people, places, titled works, bands, etc.). Hit the "Random article" button a few times and you'll see what I mean (I just tried that, and it took over 20 clicks to get to Pharmaceutical industry in Russia, the first title that was not a proper name). Dicklyon (talk) 23:13, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

• Evidence of inconsistent capping in book sources: n-gram stats. While the fully capped form was most common in a few years, that was from a few books that used it a lot. The various less-capitalized forms make it clear that the threshold of WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS are not approached. "Copper Hoard culture" is a possibility, but not a great one, since "Copper Hoard" is still not consistently capitalized in sources in this context. The article was originally created at Copper hoard culture, and was moved without discussion with a flawed reason (as I had noted in my technical request). Dicklyon (talk) 18:04, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support This is certainly not a true proper name but an intrinsically descriptive name phrase and more a term of art, in which capitalisation is sometimes applied to emphasise or distinguish the term as a term in running prose (per MOS:EMPHCAPS, we don't do this). There are four relevant permutations of capitalisation: CHC, CHc, Chc and chc. I have considered both the n-gram data presented and an overview of a search of google books. For the most, the Chc form appears to be the chc form in contexts where "Copper" is being capitalised because it is the start of a sentence or a heading written in sentence case. Zero smoothing of the ngram (per DL) shows that the various combinations are all over the place. Comparing the full capitalised form with the sum of the lesser capitalised forms here indicates (per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS) that a lesser capitalised form should be used. Comparing CHc with the sum of the lesser capitalised form here would lead to the same conclusion. Having already noted that Chc is commonly the chc form in specific sentence case uses we see this as a direct comparison of the two terms. I note that n-grams tend to over-report capitalisation compared with usage in prose. In Consequence of the evidence and prevailing WP:P&G, CHC is not supported as the capitalisation for the article title. MOS:CAPS would have us avoid unnecessary capitalisation. The evidence (both book and ngram) indicates that CHc is unnecessary capitalisation. Since WP uses sentence case for article titles, evidence and WP:P&G supports the proposed move (ie to Chc). Cinderella157 (talk) 02:27, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Cinderella157: As I understand it, Google Ngrams include every hit from Google Books indiscriminately. In this case that would include gems like page 461 of Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan, described as a "blook," a book based on a weblog (blog), and a must-read for those who think there is more to history than what we find in "mainstream" publications. Could you give some specific examples of reliable sources that put "copper hoard culture" in sentence case? – Joe (talk) 10:29, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Joe Roe, the corpus of ngrams is a subset of google books largely based on the collections of university libraries and some contributing publishers. Regardless, the book you cite actually supports your premise that we should use "XX culture". Per MOS:CAPS (given voice through WP:AT and WP:NCCAPS) there is a burden to show that caps are necessary. As it can be shown there is reasonable doubt to question the fully capitalised form. There is at least an equal burden to show what degree of capitalisation is necessary. Necessary caps at MOS:CAPS is related to WP:VER in that the need to cap can be verified - not just in one case but a substantial majority of cases. An over-riding principle of WP is to report and not change what we write about. This includes what are or not considered "proper names" (ie we should not unduly influence orthography). One might argue WP:CONSISTENT per: Category:Archaeological cultures follows the Noun Phrase culture convention. But as I drill into the category, I am not seeing the consistency you would assert (ie cap that before "culture" in a title). Cinderella157 (talk) 11:43, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Is that a no? How many members of Category:Archaeological cultures have you found that don't fit the pattern? – Joe (talk) 12:54, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

There are quite a few with capped Culture or Complex where sources are pretty mixed; we should fix. As to whether other words should be capped, again, let's look to see if sources support capitalization per our criteria. Dicklyon (talk) 16:23, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

1,2,3 & 4 Can you show that any of the capitalised forms are used in a substantial majority (of the total) of reliable sources on the subject? As for inconsistencies, I wasn't counting. I set out to confirm your statement and it was sufficient to find that it failed confirmation. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:27, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I haven't claimed there is a majority; just that Copper Hoard culture would be consistent with our usual convention for archaeological cultures on enwiki (still waiting for evidence that isn't the case), and that Copper Hoard Culture or Copper Hoard culture (but not copper hoard culture) would be consistent with the general convention in archaeological literature. I'd only call two of those sources reliable, so I don't see that as a persuasive counter-argument. When we're talking about such a small body of literature, I think actually looking at the sources is the way to go, not ngrams. – Joe (talk) 09:39, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Book n-gram stats are just one way to look at sources. If you do a scholar search and examine individual papers you don't see many, but again find mixed usage including fully lowercase. E.g. this paper never caps except sentence initial and in the title. Others like this one caps even "Copper Hoards", but not "culture" even in the title; this one caps in "the Culture" (go figure!). Books are all over, too; this one uses sentence-medial "Copper hoard culture" (why?); and this book and this one and this one and this one all use fully lowercase "copper hoard culture". This book has different capitalizations within a few pages. There's clearly no consistent capitalization, and the n-gram stats do a fair job of summarizing that. The books with caps are often in citations like here or Dicklyon (talk) 23:23, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I said as much at the beginning of this discussion. So if we agree that the sources are all over the place, why are we putting so much weight on ngrams in choosing a title for this page? – Joe (talk) 08:29, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

We're putting so much weight because of what WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS say. If there's not consistent capitalization in sources, WP uses lowercase. Here, we've shown that sources are "all over the map", so lowercase is clearly indicated. Dicklyon (talk) 23:16, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

One more point. You mentioned "the general convention in archaeological literature". For WP purposes, we prefer sources written for a general audience over such specialist sources, which tend to capitalize stuff important to their field or topic. See the essay WP:SSF about that. Dicklyon (talk) 23:33, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

That would be relevant if the convention in popular literature was different. I don't think it is. – Joe (talk) 08:31, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

To answer Joe Roe. Yes, entries in Category:Archaeological cultures consistently lowercase culture. In most cases, the word or words that precede culture are intrinsically proper names and are normally capitalised. To make an argument of consistency, we would need to look at cases where the preceding words alone and separate are not normally capitalise so a comparison can be made of like against like. There are not so many cases that are comparable but drilling down to Category:Bronze Age cultures of Asia, there are these articles: Liaoning bronze dagger culture and Gandhara grave culture. So, the argument of consistency is certainly questionable. You might question two of the four book sources I provided but all four appear to meet the requirement of editorial oversight necessary to be considered a WP:RS. Capitalisation is, after all an editorial decision. There is sufficient evidence to question whether capitalisation is necessary in this case. MOS:CAPS creates a burden to demonstrate whether caps are necessary in a particular case and whether a term is conventionally capitalised. It also establishes criteria by which this can be demonstrated - usage in a substantial majority of sources. To establish this, one needs to consider at statistically significant representative sample (ie randomly selected) of the corpus of sources that use the term. The use of ngrams does this. Google books would indicate a corpus in the thousands. Being able to present a dozen sources that would favour one form or the other is neither statistically significant nor random. Ultimately, such an approach would come down to who has the greater access to sources or who gives up first. It is not an objective course. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:00, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Do we though? Do we need to launch a major research project to determine exactly which case to use for the title of an article on a minor archaeological culture? Couldn't we just, you know, leave it up to the discretion of people who actually write articles about archaeology? – Joe (talk) 08:34, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I note your comment: That would be relevant if the convention in popular literature was different. I don't think it is. No, we don't have to launch a major research project if there is reasonable objective evidence that would resolve the matter - even if we might disagree with what it shows. I did seriously consider your proposition to only down-case culture but upon reviewing the evidence, I could not find an objective basis to support the proposition. Your proposition (immediate post above) has elements of WP:OWN and is contrary to WP:CONLEVEL. In any RW writing endeavour, there is a contract to comply with editorial style. WP is no different. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 11:48, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support—this is a very obvious one. Tony (talk) 03:59, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• Comment for closer. I was curious about the number of editors who don't usually edit archaeology topics taking an interest in this RM on a rather obscure article, and found that it has been linked from pinned sections on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization), and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. To me this is rather blatant canvassing: notifying editors who are interested in (of all things) the use of capital letters in article titles, an area which is subject to ArbCom DS sanctions, rather than the subject of the article. – Joe (talk) 08:46, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Joe Roe and not to Wikiproject Archaeology. I think this invalidates this whole RFC and raises more questions about Dicklyon's behavior. Doug Weller talk 10:13, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  This has been standard practice for years. Without such a central notification system for people who care about style issues, RM discussions would be dominated by people who are notified by project alerts, and lots of topic areas would have their own style per the preferences of their topic editors instead of guided by the MOS. Re canvassing vs appropriate notifications, see WP:APPNOTE and the green row of the table at WP:INAPPNOTE which describes these notifications. Dicklyon (talk) 14:26, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  Indeed, the entire purpose of having site-wide guidelines and site-wide processes like WP:RM is to prevent topical wikiprojects from "balkanzing" the content. Joe Roe's complaint is entirely without merit. It's like complaining that a WP:RFC tag brought in editors who aren't part of his pet topical project, when bring in fresh eyes and minds is the whole point of RfC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:43, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  I see "An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following: The talk page or noticeboard of one or more WikiProjects or other Wikipedia collaborations which may have interest in the topic under discussion." So that is not prohibited and out of courtesy at the very least should have been done. Doug Weller talk 15:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  The India and Archeology wikiprojects were alerted. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_India/Article_alerts#RM and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Archaeology/Monitoring#RM. These are done automatically, while the MOS notifications are done by hand, since there's no automatic mechanism for noticing what issue an RM is about. Dicklyon (talk) 21:57, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Dicklyon Yes, you actually notified those the projects you are most involved with by hand to their talk pages. But you didn't do that for the projects most involved with the article's subject. Do you really think that everyone who watches those projects talk pages also watches the monitoring alerts? Those just aren't good enough. Doug Weller talk 07:38, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  The two topic-relevant projects are the ones tagged at the top of this talk page, which as I mentioned get automatically alerted to Requested Move discussions on their projects' articles. I notified people who watch for style and capitalization issues, not a project or topic area, since there's no automatic way to do that; that was a single by-hand note, which shows up at both WT:MOSCAPS and WT:MOS. The notice was brief and neutral and consistent with how we handle such things. Is there a problem? Dicklyon (talk) 14:54, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Earlier you claimed that because certain projects hadn't been alerted, the RFC should be invalidated (and cast some light aspersions regarding Dicklyon). Then, when you are shown that they were, in fact, alerted, you shift the goal to some fantastical demand. I wonder how many people you've warned/blocked for exactly this kind of bad faith behaviour. Primergrey (talk) 01:10, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support since sources are wildly inconsistent in treatment of this phrase. I don't buy the Noun Phrase culture "consistency" argument, since as DL points out this is really mostly Proper Name culture cases, and "copper hoard" is not a proper name. To the extent there are any other Common Noun Phrase culture cases in the category, they need to be renamed to lower-case also.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:43, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose to avoid the ambiguity, as copper hoards are characteristic of many archaeological cultures, and per usage in the best sources. I see the usual rent-a-mob has turned up. I could live with "CHc". Johnbod (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Is there any suggestion anywhere in P&G that we use caps "to avoid ambiguity" when sources don't consistently cap? I'm not seeing it. Quite the opposite. (only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia). Dicklyon (talk) 16:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any evidence that would suggest there is ambiguity in the name of this article ("Copper Hoard Culture") regardless of capitalisation nor is it clear how relying purely on distinctions in capitalisation is actually of service to our readers. Per usage in the best sources isn't the criteria set by MOS:CAPS but it stands as unsubstantiated opinion. On the other hand MOS:EMPHCAPS would explicitly guide against capitalisation for emphasis or significance. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support (at the risk of being labelled part of a "rent-a-mob"). Sources appear mixed in their styles. Good prose can get rid of any ambiguity. Primergrey (talk) 09:16, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
• Relister comment There seems to be a consensus to decapitalize the C in "culture", but not a consensus to also decapitalize the H in "Hoard". — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 04:16, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

  Other than Johnbod's I could live with "CHc" comment, I don't see any opposition. Johnbod didn't say why he thinks Hoard should be capitalized, in terms of sources or guidelines, did he? Similarly, Joe Roe and Doug Weller made some remarks about capping for consistency, but that doesn't really work, since there's no such consistency, and no such guideline. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

  I was also referring to Doug Weller and Joe Roe early on, who favoured CHc. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 07:06, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

  Surely the guideline is MOS:CAPS " consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." Doug Weller talk 09:14, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• The word "Hoard" uppercased, per discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:06, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

  Agreed. Doug Weller talk 18:03, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

  It's unclear what bits of discussion you guys find to agree with. Doug, you asked for evidence and I provided it. Here is a clearer view of how lowercase "hoard" dominates when "culture" is lowercase. There's really no contest. Dicklyon (talk) 20:12, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm arguing for Copper Hoard culture. The C needs to be upper case. Doug Weller talk 09:07, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

  You're expressing a preference that title, I understand; but you haven't make any argument, just "agree"; with what point? And the initial C is of course automatic as titles are in sentence case; finding "copper hoard culture" in source sentences is support for title "Copper hoard culture". Dicklyon (talk) 15:29, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

  @Dicklyon agh, I meant the H. Doug Weller talk 15:34, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

  Got it. But have you given a reason? Dicklyon (talk) 02:49, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

• Support. Sources do not consistently capitalize the term, as Dicklyon has showed. That's the end of the conversation as far as MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS are concerned. If Joe Roe et al. want to change the guideline, they're welcome to start an RFC at the relevant MOS talk page, but until they do, this is what it says, whether they like it or not. Wallnot (talk) 17:28, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

  That's a misrepresentation of MOS:CAPS which says "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia." And of WP:NCCAPS doesn't mention consistency at all. Doug Weller talk 09:13, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

  I'm afraid I don't see how an exact quotation of the guideline is any more sympathetic to your argument than my paraphrase is. Wallnot (talk) 12:21, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

  I see significant difference. Doug Weller talk 13:34, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

  And WP:NCCAPS uses "always" instead of "consistently", in "...leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence." Dicklyon (talk) 23:05, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm seeing some familiar arguments here:

A) Ngram being used to defend the position. When it comes to capitalisation Ngram are not an effective or reliable means of establishing usage in the literature. [1],[2], [3] Not only are they ineffective but can be easily manipulated. You see if you use my Ngram [4] it shows Copper Head Culture as the predominant term.

B) The only reliable means of establishing usage is a literature review.

So oppose move as proposed, weak support to decapitalise culture. WCM_email 13:29, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

If one compares the fully capped form with the lesser capped forms per here (your last ngram), the fully capped form is about equal to the sum of the rest. That is not a substantial majority (per MOS:CAPS) even before allowing that the fully capped form is over-represented because of normal title case uses such at in captions and titles of works. The conclusion to be drawn doesn't change when you change the smoothing (as you have done). The results still indicate that the threshold set by MOS:CAPS isn't being met. Cinderella157 (talk) 08:39, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

I've noticed that there seems to be a number of editors acting together who are going round articles challenging capitalisation. I've further noticed that they are basing their argument on Ngram analysis. I've already stated that Ngram analysis is not an effective means of establishing the burden of evidence and am not arguing for their use. I am bemused why you think quibbling about the result of a Ngram analysis is any sort of argument when I did it to show that fundamentally its a flawed means of demonstrating capitalisation when it is so very vulnerable to being manipulated and false positives. The only acceptable way to establish this is by looking at the literature and making a value judgement based upon that. You have here a number of copy editors acting together having no domain knowledge but lecturing other editors who do. This is way beyond the scope of what copy editing should cover. WCM_email 09:41, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. But I'm not sure how to stop this group of editors. Doug Weller talk 11:00, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

The burden of evidence per MOS:CAPS is to show that caps are necessary and conventionally capitalised per the criteria therein. I'm not seeing any evidence that meets the burden. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:26, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Could you please indicate your source of expertise on this topic. Subject matter experts are giving you the benefit of their expertise and are basing their comments on domain knowledge. That's evidence. I don't claim to be an expert but did my own review of the literature. I quickly established that the people commenting knew their stuff and gave my support. I am increasingly convinced a group of editors is out of control here and reaking havoc. One of whom has already been indeffed for disruption on page moves. I fear this is likely to end up at WP:ANI if you don't desist from this path. WCM_email 12:24, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

What a ridiculous threat. "I've got a fired-up admin who agrees with me, so watch me flex!" ANI indeed. Primergrey (talk) 17:10, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

I can see it now: "Several editors with long experience in capitalization issues are concurrently suggesting, in RM discussions, that we follow MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, even in articles on archeology." Scary. Dicklyon (talk) 23:03, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

The n-grams are very imperfect tools, especially as they are not limited to uses in sentence context, which is what WP:NCCAPS says we look to. By including stats from titles, heading, citations to works, etc., the n-grams tend to over-count capitalized uses; this is well established. Where they show capitalization is not "consistent" or "always" in books, they suggest WP should use lowercase. The exception is when the lowercase phrase means something different from the capped phase, which is why I looked into that early in the discussion. Every use of "copper hoard culture" that I found refers to exactly the same thing as "Copper Hoard Culture" and "Copper Hoard culture". I don't think anyone has tried to refute that. And the stats are very clear that when "culture" is lowercase, "hoard" is also more often lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 23:13, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

So you acknowledge the tools aren't perfect and don't look at sentence context but try to argue they over estimate capitalisation so that's OK. Cobblers, they also look at examples where a phrase isn't being used as a proper name and count that too. They're also vulnerable to manipulation e.g. by removing smoothing, which I have noticed being done. Fundamentally Ngram are useless for establishing capitalisation and are no substitute for doing research. You've already been indeffed once for disruptive page moves.

And now you claim to be "experts" in capitalisation, which apparently equips you to lecture editors with domain knowledge. Your copy editors, nothing more, that doesn't equip you to decide content. WCM_email 07:28, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

• Comment Worth noting for the closer see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization),Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. If you look at other move discussions you see the same editors acting in concert to support one another. They've never contributed to the articles in question, have no domain knowledge and act as group based on the flawed notion that Ngram can be used instead. Noticeably they acknowledge one aspect of Ngram is flawed but refuse to recognise others that contradict their position. WCM_email 07:47, 21 July 2022 (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.

Post close

Hi mellohi!, thankyou for your close. I appreciate the need to reconcile the conflicting advice between MOS:CAPS and WP:CONSISTENCY. However, WP:CONSISTENCY is only valid if consistency can be evidenced. You may have missed these two post - 1 and particularly 2 (and that thread overall). From the second: Yes, entries in Category:Archaeological cultures consistently lowercase culture. In most cases, the word or words that precede culture are intrinsically proper names and are normally capitalised. To make an argument of consistency, we would need to look at cases where the preceding words alone and separate are not normally capitalise so a comparison can be made of like against like. There is then evidence of Liaoning bronze dagger culture and Gandhara grave culture that shows the argument of consistency (per the initial assertion by Joe Roe) is flawed. While I see opinions to follow the initial assertion by Joe, I am not seeing any case that would address this flaw. On the other hand, I can see that closure of the controversial Indus Valley civilisation move review might also clarify to us what to do next. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:02, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

@Cinderella157 I'm not convinced that Liaoning is generally accepted as a culture. The first source doesn't mention it, this CUP book <nowiki>Liaonining just says "joseon Culture | Bronze Daggers

During the seventh-fourth centuries BCE, ]oseon developed its own bronze culture which is characterized by the mandolin-shaped (Liaoning-style) bronze dagger." As for Gandhara, I think most sources capitalise the G although our article doesn't (which I don't think means more than that the article creator decided to use lower case for some unknown reason and doesn't affect the decision). Doug Weller talk 10:33, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Doug Weller, the point is that there is not the consistency claimed and that that argument of WP:CONSISTENT is flawed. It is consequently immaterial to assert that these examples are somehow wrong. They are nevertheless inconsistent. I only searched through the main category and its many sub-categories to an extent that would show the flaw in the argument. Incidentally, I didn't have to dig too deep. Perhaps I was lucky. More importantly though, I am not relitigating the MR but pointing to a pertinent matter that may have been missed. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:04, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

That will be the guideline that says "Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles" and "These should be seen as goals, not as rules." How does that back your argument? Doug Weller talk 11:24, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

WP:CONSISTENCY would specifically link to: Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above. I don't see any topic-specific naming conventions on these article titles (per the link). On the other hand, those editors referring to MOS:CAPS have referred to key phrases of the guidance that make plain the case such as: necessary caps, consistency of capitalisation and "a substantial majority". There is no doubt as to the guidance cited. Where you cite, These should be seen as goals, not as rules, this actually applies to all five title criteria at WP:CRITERIA and not just consistency. My argument was that there is no evidence of consistency of like with like (ie where for X culture, X is not intrinsically a "proper name") and therefore an argument of consistency fails. When I search for "consis" to capture all instances, I see no mentions (broadly construed) that are affirmative statements to WP:CONSISTENT except those of Joe - and those have been shown to be flawed. Again though, I am not relitigating the MR but pointing to a pertinent matter that may have been missed. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:17, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

"Interpretations of the artefacts" section quite disordered

This section appears to be disordered to an extent where it actively contradicts its own sourcing. An excerpt reads as follows:

> Considering the find circumstances and constituent hoard patterns, Yule found no evidence for a functional use, but interprets them as ritualistic objects. Interpretations by D.P. Agrawal of the anthropomorphs as throwing weapons ignore the find circumstances of associated hoard objects, not to mention the weight (up to 7 kg) of certain examples.[citation needed]

> The anthropomorphs have been explained by Das Gupta as a vajra, a divine weapon with Indo-European origins, fashioned for the Vedic and later Hindu deity Indra. P. Kuznetsov also associates this artefact with the vajra of Indra, noting similarities with a symbolic cudgel-scepter found in a burial of the Yamnaya culture of the Eurasian steppes. Harry Falk associated the bar celts with the vajra.

The first sentence comes in with zero context, giving a reader no idea that the work cited here concerns the anthropomorphs. The next sentence also mentions them, but is also clearly out of the order. The first sentence of the next paragraph further discusses them, but the next sentence makes it seem as if Kuznetsov's work relates to those anthropomorphs. In fact, the paper doesn't mention them once and equates the find of interest to Falk's bar-celts.

The section has been revised accordingly. WynnAurelium (talk) 20:28, 27 April 2024 (UTC)