Talk:Eurasian plate

Request for clarification

I think that whoever wrote this needs to do a better job on explaining because this is not clear at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.163.252.70 (talk) 03:13, 26 April 2004 (UTC)

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Requested move 6 October 2024

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

The result of the move request was: moved. Polling is not a substitute for discussion. What we have here is that there is a large numerical majority in favour of the status quo, but when you drill down to it, I have to agree that the majority of these are what can best be described as "vibes-based".

Our naming conventions on capitalisation state that, unless a proper name, we should not capitalise subsequent words in article titles. For the word "X Plate" to be considered a proper name, then it would be reflected in secondary sources through capitalisation; for example, "Usain Bolt is a former 100 meters world champion" (lowercase) vs. "Usain Bolt won gold at the World Championships" (uppercase).

The data, alongside the AGU style guide, indicate that "X Plate" is not a proper name. From there, the naming conventions apply. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 23:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

---

• Eurasian Plate → Eurasian plate
• North American Plate → North American plate
• Juan de Fuca Plate → Juan de Fuca plate
• Farallon Plate → Farallon plate
• South American Plate → South American plate
• Gorda Plate → Gorda plate
• Nazca Plate → Nazca plate
• Antarctic Plate → Antarctic plate
• Pacific Plate → Pacific plate
• Cocos Plate → Cocos plate
• Philippine Sea Plate → Philippine Sea plate
• African Plate → African plate
• Arabian Plate → Arabian plate
• Indo-Australian Plate → Indo-Australian plate
• Explorer Plate → Explorer plate
• Anatolian Sub-Plate → Anatolian sub-plate
• Australian Plate → Australian plate
• Burma Plate → Burma plate
• Indian Plate → Indian plate
• Scotia Plate → Scotia plate
• Caribbean Plate → Caribbean plate
• Somali Plate → Somali plate
• Kula Plate → Kula plate
• Sunda Plate → Sunda plate
• Tonga Plate → Tonga plate
• Adriatic Plate → Adriatic plate
• Izanagi Plate → Izanagi plate
• Phoenix Plate → Phoenix plate
• Intermontane Plate → Intermontane plate
• Bellingshausen Plate → Bellingshausen plate
• Insular Plate → Insular plate
• Baltic Plate → Baltic plate
• Charcot Plate → Charcot plate
• Rivera Plate → Rivera plate
• South Sandwich Plate → South Sandwich plate
• Solomon Sea Plate → Solomon Sea plate
• New Hebrides Plate → New Hebrides plate
• Banda Sea Plate → Banda Sea plate
• Timor Plate → Timor plate
• Aegean Sea Plate → Aegean Sea plate
• Balmoral Reef Plate → Balmoral Reef plate
• Caroline Plate → Caroline plate
• Conway Reef Plate → Conway Reef plate
• Futuna Plate → Futuna plate
• Juan Fernández Plate → Juan Fernández plate
• Kermadec Plate → Kermadec plate
• Manus Plate → Manus plate
• Maoke Plate → Maoke plate
• Mariana Plate → Mariana plate
• Molucca Sea Plate → Molucca Sea plate
• Niuafo'ou Plate → Niuafo'ou plate
• North Andes Plate → North Andes plate
• North Bismarck Plate → North Bismarck plate
• Okinawa Plate → Okinawa plate
• Panama Plate → Panama plate
• Shetland Plate → Shetland plate
• South Bismarck Plate → South Bismarck plate
• Halmahera Plate → Halmahera plate
• Woodlark Plate → Woodlark plate
• Yangtze Plate → Yangtze plate
• Madagascar Plate → Madagascar plate
• Greenland Plate → Greenland plate
• Moa Plate → Moa plate
• Pelso Plate → Pelso plate
• Tisza Plate → Tisza plate
• Sangihe Plate → Sangihe plate
• Lwandle Plate → Lwandle plate
• Capricorn Plate → Capricorn plate
• Rovuma Plate → Rovuma plate
• Malpelo Plate → Malpelo plate
• Coiba Plate → Coiba plate
• Moesian Plate → Moesian plate
• Trobriand Plate → Trobriand plate
• Kshiroda Plate → Kshiroda plate

– Sources usually use lowercase plate for these (I have checked many, including all the major plates, e.g. using books n-grams, but not yet all 74). I think the minor and micro plates should just follow for consistency, unless someone finds one or more that are consistently capped in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 22:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC) — Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:29, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I believe "Plate" should remain capitalized in the article titles, such as "Eurasian Plate" or "North American Plate," in accordance with Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Proper names versus generic terms. These terms refer to specific, formal names of geological entities, where capitalization is standard practice. Their names are proper nouns, much like how we capitalize the word "ocean" in "Atlantic Ocean". The word "Plate" is an integral part of these names, not a generic descriptor, and therefore warrants capitalization.

Furthermore, scientific literature and authoritative sources in geology overwhelmingly capitalize the word "plate" when referring to specific tectonic plates (see this book for example). Lowercasing it would not only depart from Wikipedia's style guidelines but also from widely accepted conventions in academic and educational contexts. AstrooKai (Talk • Contributions) 04:33, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Astroo, I don't know where you're getting your impression of "overwhelmingly capitalize", but it's amusing that the one book you cite consistently uses lowercase "plate" in the figure labels, but uppercase in the caption. Like what GeoWriter is worried about, but in the other direction. I don't think it ruins the book, but does call into question their assessment of what's a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 06:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Since you brought up Atlantic Ocean, look at n-gram stats for that. That's how sources treat proper names. Compare with any of the plate names, and you'll see they are not at all like that. Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose these proposed renames/moves. I agree with the 04:33, 8 October comments of User:AstrooKai. The Google Books ngram analysis does not consider enough context. I could write factually correct statements such as "The Eurasian Plate is one of Earth's largest plates" (in which "Plate" is part of a proper noun and therefore capitalised) but I could also write factually correct statements such as "Eurasian plate boundaries are divergent, convergent or transform" (in which "plate" is an adjective describing boundaries; it is not a part of a proper noun and not capitalised). Also, many images of plates in Wikimedia Commons/Wikipedia have the plate name as e.g. "African Plate" not "African plate" so I think that an unnecessary and difficult-to-fix inconsistency would be created if plate names were changed from e.g. "African Plate" to "African plate" in article text. GeoWriter (talk) 12:35, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

  True, the n-grams don't tell the whole story. It's always a good idea to search and see what uses you can find of the identified phrase. Doing that, I didn't see any uses of "Eurasian plate" referring to anything but the Eurasian plate. I'm not saying that none exist, just that there aren't enough to have much effect on the n-gram stats. The thing about over-capitalization in figure labels is widespread in Wikipedia, but is not really a problem; we fix what we can and don't bother so much about what we can't fix. Currently, the worst inconsistency is that certain things are presented in title and text as proper names when reliable sources don't really support that interpretation. You can see what I mean by taking an n-gram link like this one and putting different plate names in. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

For a specified search term, an Ngram search gives a count of all found sources but it does not differentiate between reliable sources, unreliable sources, contextually relevant and contextually irrelevant. For example, a search result for "African plate" that could have been found in a book about African culture or art such as a text fragment stating "... the exquisitely painted African plate, made of clay, from the 17th century ..." would be a false positive that is irrelevant to the context of plate tectonics. You seem to think that such false positives would be so few and far between that they can be dismissed because they would not affect the overall result. I disagree because I think that we do not know how many false positives are found by Ngram. This suggests to me that Ngram search results are of unknown quality, which does not seem to be a good basis to make such a wide ranging change to Wikipedia. Also, in the course of this discussion, your assertion seems to have moved from most sources use "plate" not "Plate" - when you wrote "Sources usually use lowercase plate" (for which you have shared Ngram search results) to claiming that most reliable sources use "plate" not "Plate", (which I doubt can be proved by Ngram) when you later wrote "certain things are presented in title and text as proper names when reliable sources don't really support that interpretation" . I am not aware of any way to evaluate the reliability of large quantities of books in Google Books. I do not regard the likes of e.g. a travel book written by an expert on Italian tourist sights that mentions the "Eurasian plate" [1], that will have been included in the "plate" count by Ngram, as a reliable source for influencing whether or not Wikipedia should use "Eurasian Plate" or "Eurasian plate". Ngram analysis can be useful in some ways but it cannot tell us if "plate" or "Plate" is used more frequently in reliable sources.

For comparison, Ngrams show "sun" is more frequent than "Sun" [2], "moon" is more frequent than "Moon" [3], "earth" is more frequent than "Earth" [4], but Wikipedia uses Sun, Moon and Earth.

Moving on to another problem that affects attempts to assess the reliability of allegedly reliable sources: in my experience, the grammatical awareness and vocabulary of many earth scientists are not as consistent as they should be. I have often found that some authors, including some experts, will use "plate" and "Plate" (as well as uppercase/lowercase versions of many other technical terms) interchangeably in the same book, article, paragraph or sentence, i.e. these authors either don't know or don't care about consistency or accuracy. They are entitled to do this but it does not help us to resolve this issue in Wikipedia. There is an argument for "if some experts don't know or don't care, why should Wikipedia care?", in which case I think the simplest solution is to retain the current uppercase versions of plate names. GeoWriter (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

• Leaning oppose, in agreement with comments by AstrooKai and GeoWriter above. I would want to a see a lot more evidence in context to support this big of a change. BD2412 T 15:59, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

  I can work on that. Hold on... Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  See if the subsection I added below helps. Maybe I should have started proposing just the major ones, for a simpler discussion. But the evidence seems pretty clear, or at least I'm unable to find any that look like they should are treated as proper names, per the criterion in MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 06:04, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose, I suppose geographical features have always been Proper Nouns unlike say... sports tournaments or government ministries and offices. Howard the Duck (talk) 02:41, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  But source stats don't align with your supposition. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  Howard the Duck quacks wisdom here. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:41, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I am reserving my decision pending more complete evidence - even a somewhat random sample. But the arguments made so far to oppose the move are not particularly convincig. While specificity is a property of a proper noun|name, it is not a defining property since specificity can be achieved by use of the definite article (the), with or without the addition of modifiers (such as Eurasian). Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Proper names versus generic terms is telling us not to cap school and university in the example the high school is near the university, even though we are referring to a specific school and university. The question here is whether these plates are proper names that are consistently capped in sources in the same way as Pacific Ocean (here) or Stanford University (here). If the ngram for Eurasian plate is indicative, then clearly not. Whether the example phrase given above Eurasian plate boundaries are divergent ... is parsed as Eurasian plate-boundaries or Eurasian-plate boundaries is debatable. If the former is intended, it should probably be written as the Eurasia plate boundaries. Ngrams can be contexturalised (eg here). It is clearly indicating that the term is far from being consistently capitalised. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  This is a bit long but it addresses several arguments.

  I have considered the further evidence provided by DL. The ngrams, which also contexturalise these terms, show that the terms are not consistently capitalised in sources. The corpus for ngrams is a subset of Google books. Context can be checked against searches of Google books ( see Eurasian plate and African plate). While it is reasonable to postulate that plate might also refer to tableware, I had to go through 160 hits from google books before I found three that referred to African tableware. The ngram searches are more than sufficiently specific for tectonic plates with no significant number of false hits for other meanings of plate.

  WP style is to capitalise Sun, Moon and Earth when used in an astronomical sense. This is the result of broad community consensus. What ngrams show for these terms (or whether ngrams can be contexturalised to show consistent capitalisation in that context) is immaterial. It is a red herring fallacious comparison. We can and have shown that ngrams are sufficiently context specific to resolve the issue at hand.

  Capitalisation is an editorial decision. MOS:CAPS tells us to consider capitalisation in reliable sources, where a reliable source is one that has editorial oversight. It does not tell us to confine ourselves to subject specific content which may/would be subject to WP:SSF. While GeoWriter would dismiss this source as unreliable, it nonetheless evidences the requisite editorial oversight for determining capitalisation.

  GeoWriter observes: There is an argument for "if some experts don't know or don't care, why should Wikipedia care?", in which case I think the simplest solution is to retain the current uppercase versions of plate names. This is acknowledgement that the term is not consistently capped in sources. If experts don't care or don't know, then obviously the capitalisation is not necessary and MOS:CAPS defaults to lowercase.

  In my searches, I came across the style guide of the American Geophysical Union which says, for capitalisation of plate: follow author within paper for capitalization - further evidence of inconsistency and that capitalisation is not considered necessary. SnowFire, the opinion of your geologist friend does not appear to reflect the consensus of experts in the field.

  As stated above, specificity is a property of a proper noun|name but not a defining property and, though writers may apply capitalisation for significance or importance, this is not our style (per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS). It is a misperception that anything that might be capitalised is a proper noun|name. Because of these various perceptions, WP defines a proper noun|name based on empirical evidence of consistent capitalisation in sources. While the names of mountains, oceans, rivers and seas (eg Pacific Ocean, Mount Everest and Mississippi River) are consistently capitalised (see Pacific Ocean, Mount Everest and Mississippi River) in WP articles and considered proper names, this is because they are consistently capitalised in sources. Other descriptors in geographical names are not so consistently capitalised. Consequently, we have article names for various plateaus and other features where the descriptor in the name is not always capitalised. Whether we should capitalise San Andreas Fault is debatable. These other stuff arguments lack credibility when they are neither directly comparable nor a reflection of best practice.

  Invoking WP:CONSISTENT for capitalisation across a range of articles using a common term|word is contrary to the spirit and intent of that guidance and has been thoroughly refuted in this discussion. However, in this case, it is shown that the term plate is not consistently capitalised across the titles presented. Consistency in titling would arises because of consistency of evidence. WP:COMMONSENSE would tell us: Citing concrete policies and guidelines is likely to be more effective than simply citing "common sense" and leaving it at that. Invoking WP:IAR (indirectly) is not a get out of jail free card. Per WP:5P5, we must consider the spirit and intent of the relevant WP:P&G. Saying it is big, saying it is important, saying it is encyclopedic, saying it is commonsense are circular pettifogging arguments that do not address the spirit and intent of the relevant WP:P&G and, do not address why this would be an improvement to the article. On the otherhand, excessive capitalisation reduces readability and only using necessary capitalisation does go to the spirit and intent of the relevant WP:P&G. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:08, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support per my comments above. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:08, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose, in accordance with proper names of major Earth-structures per WP:CONSISTENCY and WP:COMMONSENSE. For example, the North American Plate is obviously a "thing", a stand-alone single object, like the Moon and the Sun. Wikipedia uppercases proper names of oceans, rivers, canyons, seas, mountain ranges, and structures such as the San Andreas Fault. All the n-grams in the world can't deny the fact that the Earth's plates have been located, defined, and mapped as distinctive properly named features of the planet. Having recently completed a large uppercase run of these plates I can attest that they are real, solid, and encyclopedically covered as stand-alone extremely large objects (the very definition of something with a proper name). Do we need to ignore the n-grams in order to maintain encyclopedic commonsense? Certainly. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:37, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Volcanoguy 15:28, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose: Per above. The below section of ngrams are not useful, as ngrams for names with common nouns are typically, time and time again, quite inaccurate and lack meaningful context. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:13, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  Josh, the n-grams I provided below have considerable context, and if you click through to sources and look for uses other than we mean here, in sentences, it's hard to find any. The stats are clearly much more meaningful here than in cases like "Sun/sun" where we distinguish by different uses. We don't have any such different uses here – or nobody has been able to find and show us such. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: Per above. Also, I completely agree about ngrams being useless as evidence in this case . Paul H. (talk) 16:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. There are plenty of legitimate phrasings that will undercase "plate" next to one of these words. More importantly, I checked with a geologist friend of mine, and he says that "Plate" is capitalized. We should trust the authorities on the matter. SnowFire (talk) 21:45, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

  Your anecdote about a personal conversation is not an authority. A geology and geophysics style guide would be an authority (though not necessarily one we would follow, since WP is written in a style for a general readership and frequently eschews stylistic preferences of specialist publications).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:11, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

  @SMcCandlish: Why exactly you dismiss a genuine, useful inquiry into the matter as an "anecdote" is a mystery to me, but sure, I'll grant that "somebody said this" is not, strictly speaking, the argument itself. However, where do you think said geologist got his information from? Perhaps an overview of the relevant sources and authorities? The "anecdote" is a suggestion that yes, the relevant sources capitalize.

  As for your invocation of specialist style, non-geologists aren't exactly talking about these plates very often, so it's a moot point. Specialist style only comes up when there's one term in, say, newspapers, and another term used by academics in journal publications with 0.01% of the readership. Not the case here, nor is it even clear that ngrams actually supports the idea of a split as I already stated. SnowFire (talk) 17:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support since actual usage in sources is overwhelmingly lowercase, and that is really the entire and only question before us. While the N-gram results below have raised some (poorly founded, from what I can determine) skepticism, mostly from the typical "oppose every lower-casing move no matter what" gallery, an actual examination of the usage of these terms - as geological/geographical ones, not as false positives in reference to anything else (which are rare to non-existent for most of these terms anyway) - shows that they are near-consistently lowercase in the source material, with only about a 0-25% capitalization rate (outside title-case headings), depending on term. I plugged them one after another into Google Scholar, and this does not take long. Start with this as an example and just paste in different names.

  The vast majority of the "oppose" !votes here are simply invalid; when they offer a rationale at all instead of "me too" just-a-vote, they are arguments that ignore P&G, badly misinterpret P&G to mean what the respondent wishes they meant, or are expressions of anger at the P&G and/or at Dicklyon. If someone wants to change the rules to require capitalization of every sort of geographical/geological terminology regardless of dominant usage in sources, then the place to make that proposition is WT:MOS (and good luck with that). PS: The idea that MOS:PN in particular somehow supports capitalizing this is absurd. See the top of 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. (Emphasis in original.) "Proper name" for WP purposes explicitly means that which is consistently capitalized in English-language RS as one. Pretending that "whatever I like to personally conceive of as something that should be a proper name, in the way I like to think of proper names, is something WP must capitalize" is nonsensical circular reasoning, abusing MOS:PN, which derives its definition of "proper name" from the lead of MOS:CAPS (which contains MOS:PN), as if it's license to declare anything a proper name for any subjective reason, to subvert the clear instructions and intent of MOS:CAPS.

  It's silly, tedious and habitual among a certain crowd of RM participants, and it needs to stop. It's a massive drain on editorial time and goodwill, the source of nearly all capitalization-related conflict here. And it's also obnoxiously hypocritical. These same RM trawlers go on and on about "following the sources" any time it suits their desires (but by which they generally mean following a very slight majority of sources in favor of capitalization – a slight majority which is not our substantial-majority standard - from among a highly selective set of sources they prefer, while doing everything they can to pooh-pooh evidence from other sources), then about-face and argue over and over again to ignore source usage and capitalize something simply because they've personally decided it "is" a "proper name". The general source of this cognitive dissonance is covered at WP:PNPN in considerable detail. In short, there are conflicting definitions of "proper name", and these gadflies are wholly enamoured of one from philosophy, but it has no connection of any kind to capitalization norms; only the linguistics meaning of proper name/proper noun does. The lack of any agreement (for several centuries now) about what "proper name" even means is the very reason that MOS:CAPS explicity defines a "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources" standard, so this definitional question is avoided. But some just will not abide its avoidance because they are huge fans of capitalization, and they badly need to drop that damned stick. You're welcome to capitalize everything in the world, at your own blog.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:45, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

  • "because they are huge fans of capitalization" - This is simply false, as has been expressed to you before. And infantalizing, the idea that everyone who ever opposes you does it out of some childish love of capital letters. If my geologist friend had said that "plate" was lowercased in sources, I'd have !voted support. They didn't, so I !voted oppose. It's really as simple as that. Is it so hard to believe that you might be wrong here? About others motivations, if nothing else? SnowFire (talk) 17:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

    I don't think any editor in the entire history of Wikipedia comes anywhere near your track record of tooth-and-nail resistance against lowercase. Virtually any time Dicklyon or anyone else proposes a lowercasing at RM, you are there to oppose, always trotting out the same contrary-to-policies-and-guidelines arguments grounded in your personal sense of how things should be instead of how they are. The times you have supported lowercasing can probably be counted on fingers, and have been cases that were so obvious an RM probably shouldn't have been used, versus just manually moving the page, because the matter was so obvious. Any time there's a whiff of doubt, you are on reliably on the side of capitalization, guidelines and sourcing be damned.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:37, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

  "The vast majority of the "oppose" !votes here are simply invalid" — not necessarily true since tectonic plates are particular things rather than a class of entities. Proper nouns are supposed to be fully capitalized rather than lowercased, therefore lowercasing the names of tectonic plates makes no sense. I'm using WP:COMMONSENSE here. Volcanoguy 16:30, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Wikipedia is not consistent in our use of capitalisation as a marking, and our articles on proper nouns etc do not give any useful information. Our article titles are not content, their function is just to identify the article to the reader. In English, the main function of capitalisation is to mark a term that refers to a specific instance (in Mathematics it tends to be the other way around). Thus in Eastern Australia a brown snake may refer to any snake that is brown, but a Brown snake or better Brown Snake means a member of the genus Pseudonaja.

Andrewa (talk) 02:35, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying you disagree with the MOS:COMMONNAMECAPS / WP:NCFAUNACAPS convention of using lowercase for the vernacular names of animal species? On Wikipedia, "brown snake", as an identification of a member of Pseudonaja, is definitely lowercased, and it has been that way for many Wikiyears. ("bacteria, zebra, bottlenose dolphin, mountain maple, bald eagle", "slime molds, rove beetles, great apes, mountain dogs". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. The current policy appears to be based on the sort of prescriptive grammar which has been obsolete for a century or more so far as linguists are concerned, but was still taught in primary schools when I attended. And I'm guessing it is the sort of grammar that the vast majority of Wikipedians learned too.

But if we were to drop these ideas of proper nouns etc and instead look at how English grammar can mark whether for example the term brown snake refers to a specific species, or alternatively to any snake that is brown, we'd get a different result.

That distinction is marked by capitalisation. Now not all English speakers follow this convention obviously, but there is no harm in our doing so. It would not confuse any English speaker, native or otherwise, and would be helpful to others.

So in this case I would invoke IAR and work towards consensus not to move (unlikely but we must always work towards consensus) then that is a small but significant step towards changing the rest.

Wikipedia moves surprisingly slowly on some things, even when consensus is clear. WP:NYRM is probably the most spectacular example that I have yet seen. We had consensus to move eleven years before we actually managed to move it, with many discussions along the way. Andrewa (talk) 07:46, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Your rants against other editors aside, can you name any definitive structures larger than these that have lowercased proper names? Earth's tectonic plates are not some abstract thought-game, they are real, massive, and, most importantly for this discussion, properly named. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:28, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Randy, the book that AstrooKai cited shows a picture like that, too, but will all the labels using lowercase "plate". Since sources don't make the use of caps appear to be necessary, our guideline says we should use lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 14:41, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

The book switches back and forth, a poorly edited volume. The point is that the structures are so prominent and well documented that they have been properly uppercased on Wikipedia as names of separate and important geological formations and features, such as oceans and mountain ranges, and that WP:COMMONSENSE overrides the guideline that sought-for undercasing relies upon. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:16, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

For about the 100th time, Randy, an argument that something must be capitalized here because the subject is "important" is not how WP operates. There is a rule specifically against this bad and entirely subjective habit, MOS:SIGCAPS. That is common sense. Random editors capitalizing things to signify their own personal sense of what should be emphasized as "important" is not, and is why we don't do it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:33, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

All guuidelines say "occasional exceptions may apply", by way of common sense. The only argument you and others have to change these accepted and acceptable long-term titles is a rigid guideline without taking into account the basic commonsense truth: "Mountains, mountain ranges, rivers, canyons, islands and the like, all parts of Earth's tectonic plates, are uppercased on Wikipedia." Given that fact, lowercasing the plates themselves makes no sense (thus, "commonsense"). Even oceans and seas are uppercased, being nothing more than water trapped atop plates. Wikipedia correctly uppercases Eurasian Plate (since 2003), North American Plate (2004), etc., the massive real-world things that the other named uppercased features are just small parts. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

What are you quoting there? WP:COMMONSENSE does say you should be careful not to imply that other editors are lacking in common sense, which may be seen as uncivil. ... Citing concrete policies and guidelines is likely to be more effective than simply citing "common sense" and leaving it at that. Dicklyon (talk) 23:30, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Too complicated for a wholesale move. Lorstaking (talk) 15:30, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

The multi-page approach is absolutely appropriate here. Having a mixture of capitalization outcomes for named tectonic plates would be undesirable. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 15:56, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

If someone finds a plate that's consistently capitalized in sources, then it will be complicated. Until then, it seems pretty simple. Dicklyon (talk) 23:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Dicklyon, SMcCandlish and others, please consider what the word 'plate' means in this context. The North American Plate seems a metaphor for the everyday word 'plate'. A dish that holds things. Uppercased North American Plate is tied in google-gathered usage, but I'm guessing that uppercase is probably more familiar to the general public and am sure it is very familiar to those familar with geology and related fields, such as plate tectonics. Uppercased on Wikipedia since 2004, editors have consistently made a choice, by not making a fuss about it, to uppercase. Why? Let's actually discuss, if you would, the commonsense exception. The commonsense exception is highlighted in the opening-description of every guideline. I must ask, have you ever seen a tie and went the way of uppercasing as a commonsense exception? If not, maybe I can convince you to start with this one. Maybe not, but I'd like to read your reasoning for not using it here.

All of the features of the North American Plate which are accepted as being of great scope and depth are uppercased. The Rocky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Mississippi River, MacKenzie River, the Colorado Plateau and Great Lakes. On and on, these are but things which are features of the plate. Very tiny things when compared to the size of the plate itself. To uppercase the thing that is the actual object that is holding all these other stuff just seems normal to Wikipedians and readers, and has since 2003. Even this discussion trends to what seems normal to us.

The word "normal" above can be translated as "commonsense". It just makes sense to us to uppercase the plate since all of its obvious parts are uppercased on Wikiopedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I am considering what "plate" means here; it is not even faintly plausible that someone thinks that dishes that happen to have been made in North America are an encyclopedic topic. Even if it were conceivably one, we do not title our articles on the basis of what someone somewhere might have in their head. We have very clear instructions to use the most common names in reliable sources, and to avoid special stylization of that name unless a particular stylization is near-universal in that source material.

Next, your ingrained habit of trying to use capital letters to imply "importance" or "majorness" is a form of idiolect; your attempts to signify greatness in this manner do not translate magically into the brains of our readership (rather, it just confuses them about why were are capitalizing this thing but not that other similar thing, especially when the sources usually aren't capitalizing), and doing this is such a bad idea that we have an entire guideline section explicitly against doing it (MOS:SIGCAPS), with a great deal of the topical drill-down sections (from job titles to religious concepts) reiterating it in more topically specific terms.

There is nothing "commonsense" about trying to abuse capitalization in this manner. It is not encyclopedic writing, it is a dreadful habit of marketing materials and of bureaucratese.

There is no principle on Wikipedia that issues that should have been fixed a long time ago but we just didn't get around to it yet are mystically exempt from ever being fixed. This is a classic "argument to avoid". Cf. WP:BEENHERE, WP:CONTENTAGE, WP:NOWORK, WP:NOEFFORT.

The fact is that most editors really don't care much about typographical nit-picks. This leaves it to editors who do to periodically make guideline and title-policy cleanup sweeps. Unfortunately, these efforts also attract pushback from a handful of editors who waste amazing amounts of time (mostly not their own) trying desperately to stop articles from complying with the P&G, for subjective reasons that have been rejected over and over and over again at hundreds, by now surely thousands of RM and related discussions.

Finally, no amount of special pleading is going to avail here. There is nothing nebulously "special" about this topic that makes it somehow immune to the same standards applied every other topic: use lowercase unless capitalization overwhelmingly dominates in the sources. (Because that capitalization does not dominate in the sources on this topic, your supposition that our readers somehow expect it to be capitalized is completely baseless.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I note that China Plate and Chinese Plate redirect to Amurian microplate (no caps!) while China plate redirects to Porcelain. Dekimasuよ! 05:11, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

(replying to Randy Kryn 12:28, 10 October 2024) Very well said. Andrewa (talk) 08:01, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• Relisting comment - there are a lot of "oppose" comments here, citing various rationales, but when you cut down to the detail of the conversation it is clear and present from the evidence presented that the opposers' case is simply not borne out by either Wikipedia's guidelines or real-world usage. "These are big and important" is not a valid reason to capitalise something, and those who think it should be need to argue that case at a site-wide level rather than here. On the other hand, detailed analyses such as those done by Dicklyon and Cinderella give convincing reasons as to why the move is justified. It has long been established that Wikipedia discussions are WP:NOTAVOTE and that consensus is something viewed through the lens of policy and guideline. So I'm relisting this in the hope discussion can continue towards a consensus, but if the oppose voters wish to have their case considered seriously then they need to come back with some actual policy-backed evidence in the next week. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 13:29, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

  Amakuru, remember that WP:IAR is policy and overrides guidelines. The oppose editors here, some active in the geological articles and Wikiproject, are testifying that uppercased Plate is a normal use of the word in their field, and all of the 'opposed' comments are, in some way or other, aligned with IAR. Your good faith assertion that policy has not been stated here is incorrect, and has been explained by myself and other editors. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:53, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support: Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization, and good reasons and sources have been provided to show that capitalization is not necessary here. If the opposing argument comes down to suggesting that these are really important, so we could invoke WP:IAR to convey that importance, then please count me among those who think these aren't a special topic that needs such an exception. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 14:36, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• BarrelProof, as I asked those above, how do you explain that all of the prominent features of the various plates are uppercased (oceans, rivers, mountain, on and on) yet you think that the plates themselves should be lowercased. How do you reason this contradiction? Randy Kryn (talk) 15:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• Maybe that's because oceans, rivers and mountains are things that are obvious to the average person that they can see and need to deal with every day. There's no avoiding paying attention to them. Most people have no awareness of tectonic plates, so the subject is more in the realm of academics, who might tend more toward lowercase. That's mere speculation, of course. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:00, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks for the response. Further pertinent things come to mind. Not only are the mountain parts of the Eurasian Plate uppercased, but the literal and poetic term Roof of the World is uppercased as a descriptor of the plate's highest section (yet still one of its miniscule features). The oceans, lakes, and other waters that sit upon it are uppercased, as are the human cities, towns, and villages which were created from substances mined and gathered from the plate. The Eurasian Plate is a giant of a thing, and almost every large-structured named thing that is literally either a part of it or formed from it is uppercased. If there is any place to allow an exception from the casing guideline, this is it. Let's apply the basic commonsense suggested by the policy "ignore all rules" to maintain the Eurasian Plate's uppercasing on Wikipedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:04, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I question your "most people have no awareness of tectonic plates" claim since I learned about tectonic plates in public school. Volcanoguy 14:34, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support: I've looked for relevant journal style guides but only found AGU's, which says:

"The following may be either capitalized or lowercase except as indicated below: anticline, arc, bank, basin, butte, channel, crater (e.g., on Earth, the Moon, or Mars), fault, fold, formation, geyser, glacier, mount, plate, plateau, ridge, rill, strait, syncline, trench, trough, volcano. Be consistent throughout the paper. (...) plate (follow author within paper for capitalization)"

So, AGU puts "plate" and other geological features as not necessarily capitalized. Then, I focused on searching for "Pacific plate" (or "Pacific Plate") because it's exemplary: it's the largest tectonic plate and it doesn't have secondary names. I've searched for it in Google Scholar (which seems to ignore capitalization of the search expression) [5] and results were of mixed used, leaning towards lowercase in review articles [6]. Then I searched for the same expression in Google Books [7] and also found mixed use, this time leaning towards capitalization (even ignoring the titles, in headline case). So, there was no overwhelming evidence justifying the adoption of capitalization for tectonic plates. fgnievinski (talk) 02:31, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose because capitalizing proper nouns is good, relying upon Google ngrams is silly, and "I asked a geologist and this is what they said" is the best reason I've heard on Wikipedia in months. XOR'easter (talk) 03:00, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose.--2600:1700:6180:6290:ED8E:28D7:94A9:E4AD (talk) 02:38, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
• Along with the many common name points presented above, and the many short and long opposing views which can all be labeled forms of "common sense":

• Britannica uppercases
• Encyclopedia.com uppercases
• The Free Dictionary uppercases
• Geology.com uppercases

Randy Kryn (talk) 15:15, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

More source n-gram stats

• Here's a comparison of some of the most commonly occurring plate names in books, according to n-grams.
• I made up this bunch of n-gram URLs in a text editor, and haven't visited many of them yet, but in the process I noticed that sometimes it's instructive to have the context of "the" in front and/or "*" after, and sometimes the minor ones don't have enough book hits to show up with context (and some even not enough to show up with no context). Anyway, help me look at these and see if there's any hint of "consistently capitalized" as MOS:CAPS asks. Dicklyon (talk) 05:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

1. Eurasian Plate/plate – Eurasian Plate/plate * – the Eurasian Plate/plate – the Eurasian Plate/plate *
2. North+American Plate/plate – North+American Plate/plate * – the North+American Plate/plate – the North+American Plate/plate *
3. Juan+de+Fuca Plate/plate – Juan+de+Fuca Plate/plate * – the Juan+de+Fuca Plate/plate – the Juan+de+Fuca Plate/plate *
4. Farallon Plate/plate – Farallon Plate/plate * – the Farallon Plate/plate – the Farallon Plate/plate *
5. South+American Plate/plate – South+American Plate/plate * – the South+American Plate/plate – the South+American Plate/plate *
6. Gorda Plate/plate – Gorda Plate/plate * – the Gorda Plate/plate – the Gorda Plate/plate *
7. Nazca Plate/plate – Nazca Plate/plate * – the Nazca Plate/plate – the Nazca Plate/plate *
8. Antarctic Plate/plate – Antarctic Plate/plate * – the Antarctic Plate/plate – the Antarctic Plate/plate *
9. Pacific Plate/plate – Pacific Plate/plate * – the Pacific Plate/plate – the Pacific Plate/plate *
10. Cocos Plate/plate – Cocos Plate/plate * – the Cocos Plate/plate – the Cocos Plate/plate *
11. Philippine+Sea Plate/plate – Philippine+Sea Plate/plate * – the Philippine+Sea Plate/plate – the Philippine+Sea Plate/plate *
12. African Plate/plate – African Plate/plate * – the African Plate/plate – the African Plate/plate *
13. Arabian Plate/plate – Arabian Plate/plate * – the Arabian Plate/plate – the Arabian Plate/plate *
14. Indo-Australian Plate/plate – Indo-Australian Plate/plate * – the Indo-Australian Plate/plate – the Indo-Australian Plate/plate *
15. Explorer Plate/plate – Explorer Plate/plate * – the Explorer Plate/plate – the Explorer Plate/plate *
16. Anatolian Sub-Plate/sub-plate – Anatolian Sub-Plate/sub-plate * – the Anatolian Sub-Plate/sub-plate – the Anatolian+Sub-Plate/sub-plate *
17. Australian Plate/plate – Australian Plate/plate * – the Australian Plate/plate – the Australian Plate/plate *
18. Burma Plate/plate – Burma Plate/plate * – the Burma Plate/plate – the Burma Plate/plate *
19. Indian Plate/plate – Indian Plate/plate * – the Indian Plate/plate – the Indian Plate/plate *
20. Scotia Plate/plate – Scotia Plate/plate * – the Scotia Plate/plate – the Scotia Plate/plate *
21. Caribbean Plate/plate – Caribbean Plate/plate * – the Caribbean Plate/plate – the Caribbean Plate/plate *
22. Somali Plate/plate – Somali Plate/plate * – the Somali Plate/plate – the Somali Plate/plate *
23. Kula Plate/plate – Kula Plate/plate * – the Kula Plate/plate – the Kula Plate/plate *
24. Sunda Plate/plate – Sunda Plate/plate * – the Sunda Plate/plate – the Sunda Plate/plate *
25. Tonga Plate/plate – Tonga Plate/plate * – the Tonga Plate/plate – the Tonga Plate/plate *
26. Adriatic Plate/plate – Adriatic Plate/plate * – the Adriatic Plate/plate – the Adriatic Plate/plate *
27. Izanagi Plate/plate – Izanagi Plate/plate * – the Izanagi Plate/plate – the Izanagi Plate/plate *
28. Phoenix Plate/plate – Phoenix Plate/plate * – the Phoenix Plate/plate – the Phoenix Plate/plate *
29. Intermontane Plate/plate – Intermontane Plate/plate * – the Intermontane Plate/plate – the Intermontane Plate/plate *
30. Bellingshausen Plate/plate – Bellingshausen Plate/plate * – the Bellingshausen Plate/plate – the Bellingshausen Plate/plate *
31. Insular Plate/plate – Insular Plate/plate * – the Insular Plate/plate – the Insular Plate/plate *
32. Baltic Plate/plate – Baltic Plate/plate * – the Baltic Plate/plate – the Baltic Plate/plate *
33. Charcot Plate/plate – Charcot Plate/plate * – the Charcot Plate/plate – the Charcot Plate/plate *
34. Rivera Plate/plate – Rivera Plate/plate * – the Rivera Plate/plate – the Rivera Plate/plate *
35. South+Sandwich Plate/plate – South+Sandwich Plate/plate * – the South+Sandwich Plate/plate – the South+Sandwich Plate/plate *
36. Solomon+Sea Plate/plate – Solomon+Sea Plate/plate * – the Solomon+Sea Plate/plate – the Solomon+Sea Plate/plate *
37. New+Hebrides Plate/plate – New+Hebrides Plate/plate * – the New+Hebrides Plate/plate – the New+Hebrides Plate/plate *
38. Banda+Sea Plate/plate – Banda+Sea Plate/plate * – the Banda+Sea Plate/plate – the Banda+Sea Plate/plate *
39. Timor Plate/plate – Timor Plate/plate * – the Timor Plate/plate – the Timor Plate/plate *
40. Aegean+Sea Plate/plate – Aegean+Sea Plate/plate * – the Aegean+Sea Plate/plate – the Aegean+Sea Plate/plate *
41. Balmoral+Reef Plate/plate – Balmoral+Reef Plate/plate * – the Balmoral+Reef Plate/plate – the Balmoral+Reef Plate/plate *
42. Caroline Plate/plate – Caroline Plate/plate * – the Caroline Plate/plate – the Caroline Plate/plate *
43. Conway+Reef Plate/plate – Conway+Reef Plate/plate * – the Conway+Reef Plate/plate – the Conway+Reef Plate/plate *
44. Futuna Plate/plate – Futuna Plate/plate * – the Futuna Plate/plate – the Futuna Plate/plate *
45. Juan+Fernández Plate/plate – Juan+Fernández Plate/plate * – the Juan+Fernández Plate/plate – the Juan+Fernández Plate/plate *
46. Kermadec Plate/plate – Kermadec Plate/plate * – the Kermadec Plate/plate – the Kermadec Plate/plate *
47. Manus Plate/plate – Manus Plate/plate * – the Manus Plate/plate – the Manus Plate/plate *
48. Maoke Plate/plate – Maoke Plate/plate * – the Maoke Plate/plate – the Maoke Plate/plate *
49. Mariana Plate/plate – Mariana Plate/plate * – the Mariana Plate/plate – the Mariana Plate/plate *
50. Molucca+Sea Plate/plate – Molucca+Sea Plate/plate * – the Molucca+Sea Plate/plate – the Molucca+Sea Plate/plate *
51. Niuafo'ou Plate/plate – Niuafo'ou Plate/plate * – the Niuafo'ou Plate/plate – the Niuafo'ou Plate/plate *
52. North+Andes Plate/plate – North+Andes Plate/plate * – the North+Andes Plate/plate – the North+Andes Plate/plate *
53. North+Bismarck Plate/plate – North+Bismarck Plate/plate * – the North+Bismarck Plate/plate – the North+Bismarck Plate/plate *
54. Okinawa Plate/plate – Okinawa Plate/plate * – the Okinawa Plate/plate – the Okinawa Plate/plate *
55. Panama Plate/plate – Panama Plate/plate * – the Panama Plate/plate – the Panama Plate/plate *
56. Shetland Plate/plate – Shetland Plate/plate * – the Shetland Plate/plate – the Shetland Plate/plate *
57. South+Bismarck Plate/plate – South+Bismarck Plate/plate * – the South+Bismarck Plate/plate – the South+Bismarck Plate/plate *
58. Halmahera Plate/plate – Halmahera Plate/plate * – the Halmahera Plate/plate – the Halmahera Plate/plate *
59. Woodlark Plate/plate – Woodlark Plate/plate * – the Woodlark Plate/plate – the Woodlark Plate/plate *
60. Yangtze Plate/plate – Yangtze Plate/plate * – the Yangtze Plate/plate – the Yangtze Plate/plate *
61. Madagascar Plate/plate – Madagascar Plate/plate * – the Madagascar Plate/plate – the Madagascar Plate/plate *
62. Greenland Plate/plate – Greenland Plate/plate * – the Greenland Plate/plate – the Greenland Plate/plate *
63. Moa Plate/plate – Moa Plate/plate * – the Moa Plate/plate – the Moa Plate/plate *
64. Pelso Plate/plate – Pelso Plate/plate * – the Pelso Plate/plate – the Pelso Plate/plate *
65. Tisza Plate/plate – Tisza Plate/plate * – the Tisza Plate/plate – the Tisza Plate/plate *
66. Sangihe Plate/plate – Sangihe Plate/plate * – the Sangihe Plate/plate – the Sangihe Plate/plate *
67. Lwandle Plate/plate – Lwandle Plate/plate * – the Lwandle Plate/plate – the Lwandle Plate/plate *
68. Capricorn Plate/plate – Capricorn Plate/plate * – the Capricorn Plate/plate – the Capricorn Plate/plate *
69. Rovuma Plate/plate – Rovuma Plate/plate * – the Rovuma Plate/plate – the Rovuma Plate/plate *
70. Malpelo Plate/plate – Malpelo Plate/plate * – the Malpelo Plate/plate – the Malpelo Plate/plate *
71. Coiba Plate/plate – Coiba Plate/plate * – the Coiba Plate/plate – the Coiba Plate/plate *
72. Moesian Plate/plate – Moesian Plate/plate * – the Moesian Plate/plate – the Moesian Plate/plate *
73. Trobriand Plate/plate – Trobriand Plate/plate * – the Trobriand Plate/plate – the Trobriand Plate/plate *
74. Kshiroda Plate/plate – Kshiroda Plate/plate * – the Kshiroda Plate/plate – the Kshiroda Plate/plate *

The best and required response to all of the above: WP:IAR. Maintaining the proper and encyclopedic names of the largest structures on the planet (aside from the core and the mantle)? A classic "case" of why the policy exists. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Randy, your plea to "ignore all rules" at least acknowledges that that rules say to use lowercase here. Dicklyon (talk) 14:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Policy is not a plea, as guidelines and essays take a backseat when policy applies, as it does in this discussion. See a more complete answer above in a response to a plea, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:22, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I suggest to keep the argumentation in the previous section rather than down here in a different subsection. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 14:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.