Talk:Huddersfield line

Requested move 6 January 2017

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

The result of the move request was: moved. The survey of reliable secondary sources provided below suggests that the capitalisation of the word 'line' is not necessary. WP:NCCAPS is clear that capitalisation should only be used if a construction is nearly always capitalised in the middle of a sentence in the preponderance of reliable secondary sources. While editors opposing them move have suggested that the official rendering of this line's name is relevant, WP:AT and WP:NCCAPS suggest that this is not the right approach. WP:PRIMARY sources are usually not suitable for determining how to render a name. Regardless of that, no evidence has been provided that 'Huddersfield Line' is an official rendering, so this argument has no legs to stand on in either policy or RS. No evidence has been provided of any potential 'ambiguity' or 'broken links'. Because the opposition has not been able to make an argument rooted in policy and RS, and because there is a clear consensus below for following the suggestions of our policies and guidelines, this article will be moved in accordance with the proposal. (non-admin closure) RGloucester — ☎ 16:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

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Huddersfield Line → Huddersfield line – Per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS, reserve capitalization for proper names. This line name is not a proper name, per overwhelming supermajority of lowercase usage in books and news. Most modern caps are for things like titles and headings of timetables where the style is title case for all; our articles use sentence case for titles. Dicklyon (talk) 15:58, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Edivence

• News – about 80% lowercase line
• Books – about 90% lowercase line
  • 20th century books – only one with cap Line
  • 21st century books – all lowercase line

Survey

• Support per evidence of widespread treatment as generic, like most other lines. Dicklyon (talk) 16:04, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
• Wait for the reply from West Yorkshire Metro (whom I have asked) who have coined the line names. Personally, against, as I have seen the line names treated as proper names in the area. Evidence is doubtful: Most books found by Google refer to a time before these names came into use for the WY Metro train services, and news sources are not consistent. Even BBC uses both variants. --Schlosser67 (talk) 16:18, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

A couple of points about that:

• I link modern books so you can see modern usage.
• We don't defer to expert or official sources for Wikipedia style.
• The Huddersfield Examiner always uses lowercase.
• I can't find any mention of it in the BBC; what are you seeing? If they're inconsistent, that argues for lowercase, per MOS:CAPS.

Dicklyon (talk) 16:31, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

• There are more named railway lines in the area, and in England as a whole. As for your books, they often mention something like the "A to B line" for which this question does not apply. See also the discussion on the project page. Lastly, not deferring to expert or official sources if in doubt would IMHO leave no reliable sources at all, but that can of worms I'd rather leave alone. I've said my piece. --Schlosser67 (talk) 16:48, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible I overcounted because of some of those other descriptive terms for lines, some of which might be the same line and some not. Still, the lowercase way dominates, and the point that lines are named descriptively is reinforced. Dicklyon (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support—Indeed, this is the problem in giving some special privilege to outside sources: they usually sing from a number of songsheets. So where there's inconsistency, we should go with our house style, which—like CMOS and Oxford—prefers downcasing. Tony (talk) 05:00, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Ambiguity over named status prefers the status quo. Would create lots of broken links. G-13114 (talk) 16:10, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Moves leave redirects, so that links are not broken in general. Dicklyon (talk) 04:47, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

• Support per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. This is a routine guideline compliance move. G-13114's rationale is simply incorrect; when the source usage is ambiguous/mixed, we use lower case. Our guidelines have recommended this for over a decade, and it's the same standard applied by other mainstream style guides, as Tony1 notes (and MoS is based on them to begin with). But modern source usage isn't significantly mixed, anyway – it's overwhelmingly in favor of lower case. Schlosser67's attempt to try to get an off-WP party with a direct connection to the subject to weigh in is way, way out-of-process (see WP:MEATPUPPET, WP:INDY, WP:OFFICIALNAME, etc., etc.). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Extended discussion

Comment by SMcCandlish on the nature of these discussions:

At some point, RM admins need to start proactively closing these as speedy moves. The problem here is that some individuals who don't like DickLyon for one reason or another (it mostly seems to be ire over not getting their way in RfC about MOS:JR) are trying to arm-twist him (on the bogus theory that moves proposed by DickLyon are controversial no matter what) into always using long-form RM process instead of just making the move or using WP:RM#TR. This is WP:GAMING (and also personalization of style disputes, which is against WP:ARBATC). Worse, it is a waste of time and editorial energy. The community should not be forced into tiresome rehash discussions like this over trivial guideline compliance matters.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Comment by G-13114 on SMcCandish's !vote:

No there is considerable ambiguity over whether or not this is an official name or not, therefore your [SMcCandlish's] above argument is invalid. G-13114 (talk) 02:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I think you missed the point of SMcCandlish's argument, which is that the official name does not really matter much, and therefore that ambiguity about the official name matter even less. And for the record, I don't think anyone wanting to keep the caps here has any relationship to the problem that SMcCandlish is referring to, which has been in play at some other rail articles and other MOS-related moves. I assume you guys are acting in good faith, but happen to be in a corner of WP that hasn't had much awareness of these kinds of style guidelines. Read the links, read the sources, and assume good faith of us, too, please. Dicklyon (talk) 03:11, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Definitely; not a single point I made is dependent on OFFICIALNAME, but what it says overrules some oppose reasoning here. And see Talk:Sunderland station's ongoing RM. No one should take seriously any longer this "It must be Line" nonsense, when most people from the UK rail wikiproject clearly have no objection to the lower-case, even when citing their precious WP:NCUKSTATION (which is just a WP:PROJPAGE anyway). It's become abundantly clear that a handful of people – not the majority – from the UK rail project are on an overcapitalising WP:GREATWRONGS campaign, and that not only does the rest of Wikipedia DGaF, even the rest of that wikiproject don't care. It doesn't take bad faith to be disruptive, and I have no doubt that they consider this capitalisation to somehow be in the best interests of the encyclopedia. It just isn't, and they need to give it a rest.

The unmistakeable facts are a) our transit articles are using inconsistent style from article to article (e.g. Van Ness Station and Fruitvale station, only a few miles apart), not for any real reasons, but just as a factor of whether or not some particular tendentious parties show up to rattle sabres that week; and b) the overcapitalising variants of these pages clearly conflict with site-wide guidelines (multiple of them, including WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS), making this a clear-cut WP:CONLEVEL matter. Not only is there no site-wide consensus that railway lines and stations should be a "special exception", even the projects most likely to arrive at a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to argue for such an exception cannot agree amongst themselves or each other. So, this necessarily auto-defaults to doing what the guidelines already say. Consensus has not changed just because a railfan here and railfan there want it to, especially if their fellows are having none of it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:01, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

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