Talk:Potato riots

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Requested moves[edit]

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: pages moved. Arbitrarily0 (talk) 01:38, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

– See previous discussion here, where it was clear that the technical moves to undo moves designed to align these titles with guidelines at MOS:CAPS needed discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 02:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support as nom. Examination of sources does not support the claim that these are proper names; they are descriptive. See for example books on the potato riots, on Rabaa massacre, on Worli riots, Halloween massacre Angola, Flying Foam massacre, etc. Unless a big majority of good sources use upper case, it is clearly not necessary to treat the descriptive term as a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 02:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. As Dicklyon pointed out, the capitalization of most of these terms seems mixed in the wild (for example, "Wiyot massacre" on Google Books), so we should default to using Wikipedia's standard style. In addition, titles that include the year tend to our own descriptions rather than fixed terms, which would also give us the discretion to use Wikipedia style.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 05:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—per Dick and Neil; particularly descriptive titles vs proper names. Tony (talk) 08:08, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I'm not a native English speaker, but "massacre" is not a precise descriptive term (neither valid in forensic/juristic usage nor in general scientific one). It's more used for "names" and "descriptions" in terms of public use as in media and popular scientific literature. We are even using this term for WP lemmata, dealing with events, whose "names" are not the result of thorough investigation (see for example Račak massacre, from which we don't know what exactly happened at all). We should not suggest a descriptive meaning which creates an illusion, that it is supported by scientific authorities. I think, the capital letter "M" would help using it more accurate and less suggestive (Račak massacre > Račak Massacre; but not: Rabaa Massacre > Rabaa massacre) If we state to use a descriptive term, and the same time we use a political term such as "massacre", it means, in fact we go political. And this shouldn't be our business here. --Anglo-Araneophilus (talk) 10:42, 20 November 2014 (UTC) + -- Anglo-Araneophilus (talk) 10:50, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is an astute addition to the discussion, and its value needs to be acknowledged. But capitalisation also gives a certain imprimatur and cachet, reinforcing the very judgement that AA wants washed away. If capitalising in these titles only ever made them proper names, and were seen to do that alone, it would be like Craig henceforth wanting to be called "Trevor". But these titles will never be simple proper names like "Craig" and "Trevor": they have their descriptive impact regardless of capping or non-capping.

    Indulge me for a moment: "potato riot" functions descriptively no matter how we apply it in a normal sentence, retaining that function whether capped or uncapped. Furthermore, anyone taking it as a proper name (through acquiring caps?!) must allow that it still functions that way. We would still read "Riot" as indicating a riot, quite unlike "Craig" and "Trevor", which are pure proper names (because they can be nothing else but names—they do not describe).

    If AA's point were about pure proper names, it would have weight; but it's not the case here. Capping here would affirm an entrenched and judgemental description, rather than one that was merely provisional by being uncapped. Tony (talk) 01:34, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree with Anglo-Araneophilus that "massacre" is dubious term for descriptive titles. But I don't think that really affects whether we should use uppercase or lowercase letters; instead, it demands case-by-case discussion of whether the title is supported by sources and, if not, what better descriptive title we should use.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 01:56, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of these events are described as "riot" by one side and as "massacre" by the other. Each would typically like their term to be enshrined as an official name, but in most cases that has not happened. There are a few where all sources agree on an capitalized name; these are typically not the ones that are named for a place and time though. Dicklyon (talk) 02:12, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting point, Dick. The fact that either term could be subsituted does rather prove the point that neither is a proper name. Tony (talk) 09:54, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
None of them provides a uncontroversial name, nor they do provide a proper description. That's the point. For my both examples ("Račak Massacre" and "Raba massacre") "mass killings" would be a proper and neutral description, but media and political usage sometimes differ from proper descriptions and gets impact on what we call "names". Just one last word at Tony1: I don't want to wash anything away. All known reliable sources show very clear, that what happened at Rabaa massacre even can be called "mass executions" (as German HRW report's translation does), but once again: we should use the common terms used in media and literature for our lemma, but we shouldn't state, that those terms are proper descriptions of what happened. Often they are not. That's what I wanted to note here. You'll decide whether capitalisation helps or prevent us reaching a neutral position. Greetings, --Anglo-Araneophilus (talk) 13:35, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have no problem considering more neutral descriptive terms where appropriate. But sources show that Račak massacre is not treated as a proper name. To User:Anglo-Araneophilus's specific suggestion: No; per MOS:CAPS we do not use caps that way in WP, to emphasize terms that we think are important; put quotation marks or italics or "so-called" if you need to emphasize that it's just what someone calls it. Dicklyon (talk) 20:59, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per WP:COMMONNAME and MOS:CAPS: These phrases are not near-universally capitalized in sources (unlike, say, Boxer Rebellion and Vietnam War, which have established use as proper names). These phrases are not even the only ones typically used for these events, they're simply descriptive (and often biased) phrases, and this is part of a long series of misguided attempts to treat every journalistic turn of phrase referring to an event as if it were a proper name for the event. After this and other RMs put these names back to lower case (except where they contain proper names like geonyms and ethnonyms), then on a case-by-case basis some individual articles for which a proper name argument can be made on the basis of reliable sources should perhaps be re-examined in separate RMs. It's completely impractical and misleading to treat these as mass RMs, though I strongly favor mass RMs when the cases are actually effectively indistinguishable (e.g. all bird species common names). These are not indistinguishable at all, but vary in their treatment in sources, for multiple reasons, including the POV-pushing ones Dicklyon already pointed out. PS: After this, we need to examine alleged nicknames of sports and other figures, which suffer the same "some journalist used this phrase, so I think it must be a proper name" problem. I've noted this particularly in snooker and association football biographies. E.g. some sportswriter refers to some player as the "Wizard from Warwick" in a headline, and then a Wikipedian sports fan adds this to the player's article as their nickname, and sometimes there are half a dozen of them added. It's unencyclopedic nonsense.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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