- Greenbelt Station (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM)
The previous closer of the RM that capitalized Station suggested in move review that rather than do the work to move them back to lower case at that time, we should compromise and have another RM discussion, and that if it ended in no consensus then the pages should default to lowercase, which is what was originally supported in the first RM discussion. The new closer does not seem to think he can fix it as the original closer suggested, though he has closed as no consensus. Details to follow.
Note that the review was withdrawn after a long wait for a close there, and after starting the RM that we are now reviewing, which was on the advice of the previous closer, Dekimasu, who wrote in that review about his close (my bold):
Closer comments: I am not able to be very active at the moment, so it's good that so much discussion was able to be done here; I don't mind that this wasn't discussed with me beforehand. At any rate, I do not have particularly strong feelings about this. The proposal was changed with 5.5 days left in the request, and no one objected over those 5.5 days, but it does seem like it would have been helpful to ping the editors who had already expressed opinions. If a single page was involved, relisting would seem to have been an option, but moving all the pages back and reopening in this case seems like a lot of work for questionable benefit. I'd hope that a compromise position--e.g., opening a new move request to lowercase titles, and having "no consensus" default to moving the pages to lowercase titles--might be sufficient in this case. Dekimasuよ! 04:11, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
The new RM that we are reviewing had about 50% support for lowercasing station, but it was mixed up with other problems and distractions, so no consensus was apparent. BD2413 closed it saying: "Not moved. After nearly two months, we seem no closer to a clear consensus for any resolution."
Per Dekimasu, that "no consensus" should have resulted in a move back to the lowercase titles that were the original proposal of the first RM discussion, and which had unanimous support before that proposal was corrupted by its nominator BDD flipping the case in this edit.
I encourage reviewers to review the history, to assess the intent of Dekimasu, the original closer (who unfortunately went on vacation for a month at the critical time), and to review other related discussions; I'm sure someone will want to link to discussions of all the trouble I've gotten myself into in my attempts to get this fixed, but I'm trying to follow their advice and use the MRV process to get to the resolution that we mostly want.
The closer of this RM, BD2412, has declined my advice to follow Dekimasu's compromise; see his response in User_talk:BD2412#A potential resolution of the stations question. Hence this MRV is the next step.
I recommend endorse the "no consensus" part of the move, but overturn the "not moved" part and do what the compromise agreement from the last closer suggested.
Dicklyon (talk) 02:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- If I had been voting as a participant in this discussion, I probably would have supported moving to lowercase "station", because I'm a DC Metro area resident and I and my neighbors (and the local news stations and newspapers) tend to refer to the Metro stops by their short names, without using "station" at all. However, I came across this very-old RM as it was, and closed it as the discussion seemed to warrant. There was an even split of opinions by participants about whether the pages should be moved, and claims on both sides that would legitimize the preference stated. The issue raised in this MR is that the titles previously had an uncapitalized "station" and were moved to capitalized "Station" in the previous RM without there being a specific consensus for that move; therefore the current situation exists without there being a consensus for the pages to be moved to a capitalized "Station". That by itself does not render a consensus to change the status quo, but I will suffer no discomfiture if these pages are moved to lowercase "station" titles. bd2412 T 02:15, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Just to be clear, these pages did not previously exist at the lowercase titles, even though the first RM apparently had a consensus to do so before it was case switched. Thanks for your comments. You are one of many, who, like RGloucester, favor lower case but won't let us fix it. This really weirds me out. Dicklyon (talk) 03:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Return to RM – I don't think that the suggestion of Dekimasu can be implemented ex post facto. That would've needed to be made known to participants in the recent RM. Moving the pages now would clearly be seen as an oddity. Whilst I agree with the move to the lowercase "station", I simply do no think that such a thing can be done without returning this to RM, and gaining consensus. I believe that this can easily be done. As such, I am happy that Dicklyon has opened this move review. I think that the best way forward is to reopen the RM for fresh input. There is no other easy way forward. I would add that I think that the early closing of the fist move review was a grave mistake, now that I look back upon it. RGloucester — ☎ 02:37, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- How can this easily be done? Why would you expect a consensus to emerge next time, differing from what happened last time with all the "don't much care", "not broken", "go back to the previous conventions", etc noise? Why not support the easy resolution here and now? Anyway, I have previously asked you to do an RM if you think that will resolve anything; I think my name is poison on such things. Note that in the RFC at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (US stations)#RfC: some proper talkin' about station title conventions, it appears that a move back to the original names might enjoy more support than even a proper implementatin of WP:USSTATION, but that also probably won't get a consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 03:03, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- A return to the previous names would require a new RM. There was strong support for the USSTATION guidelines before this mess, so I imagine that any such change would fail. I'm no going to file an RM because I likewise feel as if my name might cast such a move in a certain light. The "easy resolution" you propose is even more of a procedural nightmare than the present nightmare, and I'm sure it would only take five minutes for some of the editors who opposed the move to raise a row on the matter. RGloucester — ☎ 03:10, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, it would require a new RM, if we didn't have this Move Review process that could do it and avoid that. Thanks for your consistent support of the move to lowercase and your consistent resistance to actually letting any resolution happen. This MRV can decide to re-close with revert to the previously supported lowercase, or to the previous names before the improper move; neither would be particulary problematic like the current corrupt state is. Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- If there is no consensus, the page should remain at the first non-stub version. Anything else encourages gaming. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:46, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- FYI, SmokeyJoe is one of those who contributed to lack of consensus on how best to follow WP:USSTATION, by his suggestion that "The titles should be made precise, as in Greenbelt railway station." His comments don't contribute to fixing the case issue that this mess is about, but rather confuse the question with added noise. And "first non-stub version" might be a big step back, not really relevant here. If we don't fix the case problem, we can go back to the recent stable titles with parenthetical disambiguator before the adoption of WP:USSTATION, but this kind of input only frustrates finding a resolution. Dicklyon (talk) 04:14, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm sorry, I find it really hard to get my head around this one. The first RM, a big group, found a consensus. The second didn't find a consensus to go back. The early versions didn't contain "station" at all. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:49, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- You're missing the late change to the first RM target, as mentioned above. The original target was for lowercased "station". After most people had already commented, this was changed to the uppercase. That act was the origin of this continuing debacle. RGloucester — ☎ 05:58, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Indeed, it's true that the first RM found a consensus, but that consensus was for lowercase, while the RM closed erroneously to uppercase. And second was not about going "back", but going toward what was supported in the first. Please do try to get your head around it and revise your comments. Dicklyon (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Restore status quo of parenthetical disambiguators (i.e. "(WMATA station)") – Dicklyon made two RMs in as many months, creating a huge mess out of the page titles. The articles need to be reverted to the last stable title, then another RM or RfC can be held. Epic Genius (talk) 17:14, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I made one RM, and you did a lot more moving than I did; at least my moves to lowercase station had majority support (as you can see the RFC, the first RM, and my RM), unlike the uppercase Station that you moved them back to. There's no need to rewrite history. Dicklyon (talk) 18:32, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- That's not a "status quo" at all. The articles have not been at those titles for months, and there was very strong support for the USSTATION guidelines. The articles need to go to lowercase, which was what the original move discussion should've done.RGloucester — ☎ 18:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- It was the status quo before the moves changed everything on the basis of an indecisive couple of RMs. The only reason why they have been at these titles for months is because no one thought that a second RM would be filed to rename the articles again. Epic Genius (talk) 19:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- By the way Dick, if you wanted to move a bunch of articles around, you could have moved directly from parenthetical disambiguators to lowercase "station" suffixes. Epic Genius (talk) 19:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- ??? What's that supposed to mean? I'm not looking for a bunch of articles to move around; just want to fix these ones that got mistakenly capitalized. Why is this even controversial? Dicklyon (talk) 19:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I mean, you could have stated at the December 2014 discussion at Talk:Greenbelt Station#Requested_move that you wanted to move "Greenbelt (WMATA station)" to "Greenbelt station" instead of to "Greenbelt Station". Why didn't you do that? Epic Genius (talk) 19:36, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I was not aware of that discussion at that time, or I would have been able to stop this before it happened. If I had a time machine, I certainly would take your advice. Dicklyon (talk) 20:46, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, that makes sense. You know what makes even more sense? Holding off on the RM until a solid decision has been made, so that your moves don't waste tons of time. Epic Genius (talk) 21:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I have no idea what you're talking about. Dicklyon (talk) 01:18, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Don't do "beta moves" until a firm consensus has been reached. It's clear that you were using WMATA stations as a testing ground for the new, but not fully formed, USSTATION convention. Epic Genius (talk) 02:16, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm with Epicgenius on this, I think. Regardless of the current state of WP:USSTATION, I think Epicgenius's suggestion should, in general, be the naming guideline for rapid transit and light rail stations in the United States – e.g. "{Station name} ({rail system})"... Failing that, definitely move back to lowercase Greenbelt station, as per Dicklyon's proposal. --IJBall (talk) 04:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Uphold no consensus. This is an extraordinary mess. My reading on the first RM is that there is no evidence that those supporting the move would have changed their minds had they known the move was to uppercase rather than lowercase. The only one complaining (correct me if I'm wrong) is Dicklyon. The others seem to be fine with uppercase. As to the RM we're actually reviewing here, clearly no consensus, so no basis to move back to parenthesized titles much less to lowercase titles. As to Dekimasu's "hope" that a "new move request to lower case titles, and having 'no consensus' default to moving the pages to lowercase titles", I see no basis for that. For any move we need to establish consensus. We clearly had consensus to move from parenthetic to either uppercase or lowercase. The issue that remains is whether there is consensus to move from uppercase to lowercase. I see no evidence that such consensus has been established.
Finally, there is no clear policy reason to change these titles again, and I suggest that any RM that does so constitutes a clear violation of WP:TITLECHANGES and is disruptive. --В²C ☎ 17:40, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Wow, that's amazing. Not only are you the only one so far to claim that the current titles that came from a corrupted RM are acceptable, but you go so far as to preemptively say that any attempt to fix them is disruptive! Dicklyon (talk) 03:37, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh, please stop with the drama. Somebody made such an innocent an innocuous change to the original RM proposal from station to Station that either nobody noticed or nobody cared. I can't believe you're making such a big deal out of Station vs station. Why does this matter to you so much? --В²C ☎ 07:28, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- It matters so much because the flawed Greenbelt RM was used a precedent on 4 other RMs, and completely derailed the process of getting started on implementing what seemed like a sensible new set of station naming conventions. We should implement them, or change them, or roll them back, but not semi-ignore them and propagate error across a wide swath of articles. Dicklyon (talk) 22:27, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Uphold no consensus and revert to lowercase, as Dekimasu acknowledges was the case supported by the first RM discussion. Alternatively, cancel and revert the whole set of moves and go back to the original (pre-December 2014) titles (the Epic Genius and SmokeyJoe suggestion, essentially), since there is evidently no support for the uppercase and little support for the new station naming conventions. Thanks for the note on my talk page; my dynamic IP with Comcast seems fairly stable for a while. 73.222.28.191 (talk) 06:04, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn close and revert to lowercase RMs are not just decided by number of votes, but the arguments provided. While there was no consensus looking at the votes alone, the arguments to lowercase "station" are much stronger than the few arguments to leave "Station" capitalized. This RM had the intent of fixing the first RM where there was consensus to move from "Greenbelt (WMATA station)" to "Greenbelt station". The original consensus was clear. Unfortunately, the capitalization in the middle of the first RM muddied the waters. While the closer of this RM identified no consensus, I an disappointed that the rationale was simply "Not moved. After nearly two months, we seem no closer to a clear consensus for any resolution." This RM has become a complex issue and requires analysis of the entire situation of both RMs and MRVs to come to a conclusion - not just looking at this one RM in a vacuum. Weighing all of the arguments needs to be performed, and the closing user needs to explain the rationale for the decision point by point. Many arguments at this RM did not address the current question being asked. The arguments for "I don't like the current naming scheme, so lets go back to parenthetical disambiguation on all articles" should not be entertained, as the previous RM already showed support for the new naming scheme. Discussion at WT:USSTATION has some people that don't like the guidelines at all, and that spilled over into this RM to fix capitalization. The guidelines were established through years of consensus building, and there are still some very vocal people that do not accept them. (Look through the archives of WT:USSTATION to see how the current guidelines were generated. All of this has been discussed ad nauseam already, and now it is being battled out again scattered over several pages. The people against the new guidelines are just going to bring up the same arguments over and over again at every RM adhering to the new guidelines, which are in line with WP:AT - unlike the old unwritten conventions. So while I agree that guidelines are recommendations, and it is up to local consensus to see if it should be applied to individual articles, if the detractors from the guidelines show up at every RM, nothing will get done and there is no point to having guidelines.) Arguments of "the guidelines do not reflect actual practice" should also be thrown out - as these are new guidelines and these RMs are attempting to implement guidelines (which the first RM had unanimous support for). Arguments for "it's not broken, so don't do anything" should be weeded out as well. These long and arduous discussions prove that it is broken, and needs to be fixed. So getting down to simply uppercase "Station" versus lowercase "station", lowercase station has clearly supported arguments that uppercase Station is lacking. --Scott Alter (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with you that strong arguments and consensus matters. I disagree that the arguments are obviously stronger in favor of lowercase, or that a few people working on a guideline, even for years, establishes a consensus that the community has an obligation to follow. At best that's merely a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. --В²C ☎ 19:02, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse close - While I see the arguments for using lowercase and had I !voted, I probably would have supported such. In some ways this could be looked at as a local consensus ( or local non-consensus ) at the RM vs a wider consensus at WP:USSTATION. But there is some leeway in WP:USSTATION on if the name is part of the proper-name, and many of the arguments show a lack of consensus on if the name is proper or not and thus the close of a no-consensus reasonable. The result of a no-consensus RM close is to move to the long standing name, though in this case it seems reasonable per IAR to use Greenbelt Station or Greenbelt station. While it might have been nice if BD2412 have used Dekimasu's suggestion, I don't see that brought up directly in new RM itself and going the other way is also reasonable. @BD2412: For no consensus closes, could you consider closing as something like "No consensus (not moved)" to make it clearer that it is distinct from "Not moved" i.e. consensus was against the move in the future. See WP:NOTMOVED. PaleAqua (talk) 04:55, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I believe that my close clearly conveyed that there was an absence of consensus. The wording is different, but the sentiment is the same. bd2412 T 15:15, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah was very clear and it's a minor detail at best. Just sometimes makes it easier to explain when this might be the wrong venue and that a new RM perhaps after a delay be better, vs. suggesting when the it is time leave the poor horse alone at least for quite a while. PaleAqua (talk) 18:45, 20 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Uphold no consensus, and revert to lowercase per previous RM: I have to concur with Dicklyon, who summarizes it best: "'no consensus' should have resulted in a move back to the lowercase titles that were the original proposal of the first RM discussion, and which had unanimous support before that proposal was corrupted by its nominator ... flipping the case". Now that we've had the second RM, and it has concluded with no consensus, as most of us expected, there really can be no other result. I don't necessarily question the finding of "no consensus", but cannot agree with the later RM's closer not abiding by the earlier one. The argument that it's some kind of ex post facto gaming is nonsense; the discussions are linked and few participants in the latter did not participate in the former. All that said, if the close itself were to be questioned, I would agree with Scottalter that the arguments to lowercase are much stronger than the arguments to capitalize, so we end up at the same result: Lower case. And even aside from this uphold/overturn review, there is clearly doubt (thus the question of whether consensus was reached or not), and we still have the MOS:CAPS default: When in doubt, do not capitalize. That's three RM procedural reasons to use lower case here, versus zero to capitalize. MOS says lower case, the earlier RM said lower case, and this later RM did not come to a consensus to overturn it and capitalize (of that much there is no doubt). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 14:10, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Ping group 1
@Secondarywaltz, BDD, Scottalter, Jmchuff, Kamek98, Calidum, and Tony1: Since you commented in the recent RM... Dicklyon (talk) 02:22, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Ping group 2
@SnowFire, DanTD, Epicgenius, Born2cycle, SmokeyJoe, Omnedon, and Amakuru: Since you commented in the recent RM... Dicklyon (talk) 02:27, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Ping group 3
@66.235.50.168, Cuchullain, and 73.222.28.191: Since you commented in the recent RM... Dicklyon (talk) 02:28, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Do pings of IPs work? Maybe we'll find out. Dicklyon (talk) 02:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- No, they do not. Epic Genius (talk) 02:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Would a note on their talk pages be in order then? Dicklyon (talk) 04:01, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, that would give them a big orange notification bar. Epic Genius (talk) 12:36, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Ping for those only in original RM
@Golbez, Thryduulf, and AjaxSmack: Since you participated in the first RM... Dicklyon (talk) 02:31, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Ping those in the related RFC at USSTATION
@Robert McClenon, Ansh666, Bkonrad, and IJBall: Since you participated in the linked RFC... Dicklyon (talk) 04:05, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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