MarketTechnician

Case of indicators

As with Talk:Relative Strength Index, there's a similar argument going on with the same participants on Talk:True strength index (which was recently moved to lowercase, reverted, then reverted again before the discussion commenced). Admittedly this is more ambiguous, if you read the discussion there, but I'm curious to know how your technical analysis library uses the term.

Average directional index was also recently moved to lowercase, although it seems Welles Wilder himself referred to the full name only once in all caps and thereafter used ADX, and the sources I can find are mixed, so lowercase is probably appropriate for that.

I originally created both articles, by the way. I originally used title case because that's how most sources I found used the terms. I have no problem with making them lowercase if the reliable sources are ambiguous though. Sources may be ambiguous for the case of ADX but I'm not so sure for TSI. ~Amatulić (talk) 02:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Virtually all the references I can recall for Average Directional Movement Index spell it out with caps on the first citation and use ADX thereafter. Both Kirkpatrick and Kaufman follow this style. William Blau's True Strength Index is not nearly as widely adopted so examples of usage are harder to come by. I do not have a Blau book in my library, but the MTA library has a copy of "Momentum, Direction, and Divergence". A quick look at Google Books show that the author follows the commonly accepted True Strength Index and TSI style.

It seems perfectly clear to me that the proper name of an indicator and ought to be capitalized. I think that showing basic respect to the creators by capitalizing the topic headings, using the full proper name with capitalization on the first citation and the capitalized abbreviation thereafter is proper usage and is also by far the most common usage.

Bye-the-bye, thanks for your work on the TA articles. MarketTechnician (talk) 16:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

That's pretty what I've been arguing: that indicator names are proper names, that we should accord the same respect to the creator as we would to the author of a book or painting, that the majority of reputable sources use them that way, that mainstream press usage should not count if its usage differs from the population of experts who use these indicators every day, and most of all, Wikipedia's guidelines are called guidelines because they are not meant to be applied slavishly.

That said, Dicklyon did point out a source where Blau himself appears to use the name of his indicator in lowercase, but it's an HTML reproduction of a PDF reprint of an article in TASC, so it's uncertain how the original looked. Original articles in TASC (like the book compilation of TASC articles that Dicklyon also found) do seem to spell indicators in uppercase. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Frankly this is getting to be a ridiculous waste of time. Proper usage is absolute clear. Here is a link to Blau's book, which clearly demonstrates his preferred usage. http://books.google.com/books?id=OmkgfTUx9pMC&q=true+strength+index#v=snippet&q=true%20strength%20index&f=false Feel free to link this to the TSI discussion page. MarketTechnician (talk) 20:30, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree, it's silly. The opposing arguments on Talk:True strength index claim that it's irrelevant what Blau calls his invention due to our guidelines MOS:CAPS and WP:PRIMARYSOURCE. Anyway thanks for the conversation.

I'll drop in and see if I can't help this weekend. MarketTechnician (talk) 22:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

(And I kinda hope TSI doesn't get widely adopted. I'm making money with it. :) ~Amatulić (talk) 21:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that you need to fear that, I'm pretty much in the swim and almost never hear of it. MarketTechnician (talk) 22:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Finally, I'd like your help in moving ADX to its proper name, 'Average Direction Movement Index', as I'm not familiar with how to initiate a move. MarketTechnician (talk) 22:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I made the move. There's a "move page" option in one of the little pull down menus at the top of a page. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Followed that with a small cleanup. MarketTechnician (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

ADX, RSI, and TSI are but three articles of a slew of them that one editor converted to lowercase based on the MOS:CAPS guideline. For the most part he's doing a good job on this, although I've had to revert a few obvious errors. However, I think the part of that guideline abbreviated MOS:CT (applicable to creative works) most likely applies here. I see RSI has been resolved. If TSI is also determined by consensus to use the title case that appears in most sources, then that may justify moving some of these back to their original case:

• Ulcer index
• Vortex indicator (probably OK as lowercase)
• Range expansion index
• Smart money index (not sure, I don't come across this one)
• Rahul Mohindar oscillator (rather obscure, I think, may be OK as is)
• Commodity channel index
• Drummond geometry (obvious candidate for uppercase)
• Volume spread analysis (I have not seen this much either but when I have, it's a proper name)

Any opinions on the ones above you might be familiar with? ~Amatulić (talk) 01:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I mostly agree and plan to pick them off one by one to push towards correct usage as defined in the literature. Thanks for the trail head. Frankly I am curious as to why this guy wants to rewrite TA history... However, library at hand I will try to make what corrections I can. As I find potential corrections I'll add them to your list above if that is OK. MarketTechnician (talk) 16:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The changes are being made in good faith to comply with Wikipedia's Manual of Style guidelines without being aware of the TA history. That editor has renamed hundreds of articles, and in most cases his actions have been correct. The TA articles simply got caught in his net. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom case

It seems the TA articles got caught up as a small part of a much broader dispute involving the handful of lowercase proponents involved in the TA discussions. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Article titles/MOS. No need for you to comment (the ArbCom case has nothing to do with TA) unless you want to; I already left a comment as an interested party who has been affected by the edges of an apparently larger issue of which I was previously unaware.

One way or another, this will eventually get resolved, and I'm not going to obsess over a style convention. It would be best to focus on creating and improving TA articles. ~Amatulić (talk) 02:52, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Went there, read that, can't say the I understood even 10% of what is going on. I feel incapable of commenting intelligently due to lack of understanding. Is the campaign to alter the technical analysis articles by dicklyon, tony and noetica being addressed there? More than glad to help as I feel the TA articles are being damaged by their concerted action anchored with the combined weight of their prose, but... MarketTechnician (talk) 16:21, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm with you, I don't understand it all either. My understanding is that, apparently, there's a campaign to alter not just TA articles but every article on Wikipedia in strict conformance with these three editors' interpretation of a style guideline that they helped create. ArbCom generally doesn't try to resolve disputes, so the campaign involving TA articles would not be addressed. Instead ArbCom's function is to address disruptive behavior and impose penalties such as blocks, topic bans, 1RR restrictions on classes of articles, and so forth. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2012 (UTC)