Talk:Great Molasses Flood

Petition for article name change

This article should be called The Boston Molassacre. Or at the very least the event's well-known nickname should get a mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strobelit (talk • contribs) 15:44, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Can you provide a list of some of the reliable sources that call it that? —C.Fred (talk) 15:46, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Oppose a name change. The nickname is, at best, a neologism, coined (according to heresay) by tour operators to sensationalize the event—not that it needs any further sensationalizing. The existing name is in countless documents and has served for a very long time. Let's not rewrite history. Hertz1888 (talk) 16:14, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

What Hertz1888 said. Herostratus (talk) 18:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Maybe. If it can be cited that "The Boston Molassacre" is a name used by the locals for tourism promotion, as stated in this revert, then it's worthy of a mention in the article, although I agree that the article title itself should not be changed. I see no reason to keep a neologism out completely if it is in fact being called "The Boston Molassacre" by a significant group of people close to the event (like the local tourism industry). Badon (talk) 08:51, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Mention only: There are 2420 Google hits for Boston Molassacre so at least some people call it that. However there are 20,300 hits for Boston "Molasses disaster", so the article certainly should not be renamed. —EncMstr (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Cleaning up

Initially, way back in August 2002, the article said, "It took over six months to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes." In December 2006 this changed to "It took 133 men months to remove the molasses...", and a citation (p. 98 in "Dark Tide") was added. In March 2007 the wording changed to "It took over a man-decade..." The statement continued to take on a life of its own. By the end of 2007 it said, "It took over 87,000 man-hours". Subsequently, a succession of editors have offered various interpretations of this figure, right up to the present time.

The only problem is that there is no such figure on p. 98 of Dark Tide, or on any other page of the Puleo book. I have searched the entire book repeatedly and am convinced that the information is not there. But then, how could anyone possibly know how many hours of effort were involved in cleaning up the countless molasses-soiled places throughout the city? Where the "133 men months" phrase came from is a mystery. The original "over six months" wording is equally unverifiable.

Apparently we have been publishing bogus, improperly-sourced information all these years. Widely republished and quoted, it has misinformed readers far too long. It is time to remedy that situation. I have edited the section accordingly, this time with ample verifiable sourcing, and no specific figure for the city-wide cleanup. Hertz1888 (talk) 16:21, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 January 2015

Change "James H. Kinneally" to "James H. Kenneally" -- source on correct spelling of the surname can be found on the Boston Post image that is also on this wiki page. Correct spelling is "Kenneally".

Second source: I am a great-great-grandchild of his and it'd be nice to see the name corrected. Kk02127 (talk) 18:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

 Done —EncMstr (talk) 18:30, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 4 April 2015

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: move to Great Molasses Flood. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:31, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

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Boston Molasses Disaster → Great Molasses Flood – Per WP:UCN, the way more common name is preferred as article title. --Relisted. Steel1943 (talk) 02:04, 13 May 2015 (UTC) Dicklyon (talk) 16:47, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've been in Boston for decades, and I've heard the latter term many times, but don't recall hearing the former term very much. Also, the latter term is more descriptive. Reify-tech (talk) 16:56, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Google Ngram seems to support nom... Herostratus (talk) 17:16, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Which is why I linked it in my rationale. Dicklyon (talk) 17:35, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Oops missed that... Herostratus (talk) 10:58, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

• From a news search on boston molasses (disaster OR flood), I'd suggest Boston Molasses Flood as a presentation of the three key words most relevant to the needs of WP:AT. Great Boston Molasses Flood or Great Boston molasses flood would also be descriptive while meeting WP:UCRN. We are not talking about Caffeine VS 1,3,7-Trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione here and there doesn't seem to be a set formula for the name. Ngrams

I'd suggest that titles like these would have descriptive advantage in : Category:1919 disasters

Category:1919 in Massachusetts, Category:20th century in Boston, Massachusetts, Category:Disasters in Massachusetts, Category:Engineering failures, Category:Environmental disasters in the United States, Category:Floods in the United States, Category:History of Boston, Massachusetts, Category:Industrial accidents and incidents, Category:North End, Boston GregKaye 03:26, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Am I missing your point? Your n-gram link appears to pretty much support the proposed "Great Molasses Flood". Though I'd be OK if people want to include Boston and make it a descriptive title. I don't see much support in sources for "Great Boston Molasses Flood" as a proper name; most uses are in citations to the book title Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Dicklyon (talk) 03:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support as proposed by Dicklyon – More common in RS, and a better title overall. I disagree with the proposals by Gregkaye, which are unnecessarily wordy and contrary to WP:CONCISE. RGloucester — ☎ 03:40, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Boston Molasses Flood uses relevant words. Titles have words and news and other encyclopaedia titles tend to use more of them. RGloucester The other options were mentioned in case editors wanted to retain ref to "Great". GregKaye 03:50, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

    We don't normally make up our own proper names that way, do we? Dicklyon (talk) 03:53, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

  • RGloucester If we a to chose between WP:CONCISE and the more highly ranked issue of WP:PRECISE, surely precession has to every time as WP:Encyclopedia GregKaye 04:49, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
• Dicklyon In this case, many titles might work but there have been many instances in which we have made up less than recognisable titles. In this case:

"great boston molasses flood" 1919 gets "About 5,660 results" in books

"great molasses flood" 1919 gets "About 2,210 results" in books

However, given the intention expressed with examples in the guideline, I'd say that WP:UCRN was of secondary importance. The important thing is that titles meet AT.

GregKaye 04:18, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

And "Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919" gets about 1,800. But these "about" numbers are notoriously meaningless. If you click through and see how many hits you can get, "great molasses flood" actually gets more. The only way to get meaningful counts is via n-grams, and even there it's tricky to interpret. But I see no evidence that anything else comes close to "Great Molasses Flood", which I think is the only name that would qualify as having been accepted as a proper name. If you want to go descriptive, as I said, then I won't object; something like "Boston molasses flood of 1910" would be OK. Not sure you mean about "meet AT". Dicklyon (talk) 04:38, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Dicklyon I take your point but would say that meaningless is pretty harsh especially when my argument has been about recognisability and not just commonality and the stats were primarily presented to confirm that my proposed title wasn't made up. If you are going to present the Ngrams then I think that a variety of options of representational contents are best considered. In the Boston this case the results are close. WP:AT guides so as to say that, "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles" and I take this to be of first and fundamental importance. Ngrams for "the Great Fire" and "the Great Fire of London" are extremely suggestive that, but for the existence of other articles, that we might prefer titles such as "The Great Fire" over "Great Fire of London". I honestly do not see a problem in helpfully giving mention to the relevant place name in a title of this type. GregKaye 05:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, I agree. We make up titles all the time. My only objection was in capitalizing, or treating as a proper name, a title made up by putting common words together as you described it. And the book hits are not case sensitive, so don't provide any support for proper name proposals. I like Hertz's suggestion below, thoough (essentially just decap the present title instead of trying to find a proper name for the thing). Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support partially decapped version of GregKaye proposal – This event will forever be associated with Boston (and molasses). Readers will search WP first under those two terms. Essential to keep Boston in the title. Using a mix of u&lc, Boston molasses flood is not a "proper name" (grammatically speaking), so by adopting it we would not be "making up" a name. Per Reify-tech, "flood" is more descriptive than "disaster". I propose Boston molasses flood. Hertz1888 (talk) 05:27, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support either Boston Molasses Flood or Boston molasses flood. Both are supported although many names have been used. I guess that's journalism. GregKaye 06:06, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose constructed names with "Boston" in them – Let's use the actual proper name for this event, which is used in RS. There is no need for "Boston". There were no other "molasses floods" in the world as far as I know, and redirects can be provided. RGloucester — ☎ 12:22, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support as nommed by Dicklyon, and, come to think of it, I would hate to be caught in any kind of molasses flood. Randy Kryn 13:44 5 April, 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's fine the way it is. See following section for how I came to this conclusion. Dropping to sentence case ("Boston molasses disaster") might well be called for, though. Herostratus (talk) 13:51, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Why I oppose this proposal

Well, here's my take on this. The operative policy is WP:AT which offers two entirely contradictory rules. The first section Wikipedia:Article titles#Deciding on an article title summarizes this.

The first sentence is Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. It then goes on to strongly infer (although not state directly) that if and only if it is not clearly established "how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject", we go on to look at the Five Virtues.

But why? As a thought experiment, image a case where the great preponderance of English-language sources refer to an entity as "XYZ", and yet most readers wanting to learn about this entity will not be familiar with that name, will not know to search on that name, and if they do find the article with that title will not have any idea (from just the title) what it's about.

Very unlikely, but it's a thought experiment. Should we still go with "XYZ" as the title? I would say not. So why does WP:AT tell us to?

Two reasons I think. One, it's just a reflexive holdover from our (quite proper) dependence on and valorization of reliable sources for article material. This tends to carry over into a general "reliable sources good" mindset even when it's not appropriate. (For instance, it bedevils discussions on typography (whether or not entities should be given as "Pink" or "P!nk", "Macy's" or "Macy*s" and so forth) where we are jerked around by trying to read the tea leaves of reliable sources, which devolves to trying to follow the majority vote of other publications' stylebooks, rather than using the brains God gave us to try to figure out, and then do, what's best for our readers. (I think that is why it says "reliable" sources when reliability is germane only for statements of fact, not what we should title things; it should say "notable" or "popular" or "widely-read" sources or something, or else "scholarly" or "academic" if they had wanted to roll that way.)

But the real reason is contained in WP:AT itself, where it says "Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural." (emphasis added.) To stretch that out and informalize it a bit, the passage could be restated like this: "Remember when we said 'article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources'? Well, we mainly did that because what we really want is the 'most recognizable and most natural' titles, and reliable sources almost by definition provide that. (After all, it's practically impossible to image a case where a clear preponderance of many reliable sources called a place by a certain name, yet most readers did not recognize that name.)" This makes sense, and it explains an important reason why we go by preponderance of sources, I think.

So my reading of WP:AT is that the Five Virtues are the ruling authority for article titles, and that reference to reliable sources is more on the order of reflexive hand waving, in the same sense that "Good night, and God bless you all" is not really a theological statement of belief.

(Even if you don't believe that, in this case you are only going to be able to go with reliable sources if "how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject" is established. To do that, you have to interpret "how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject". Does "English-language sources" refer to all English-language sources with no exception (that would be silly), or to 51% or more of such sources, or some supermajority of such sources (67%, 75%, 90%, whatever), or perhaps just a plurality of such sources (40% or even less if no other single phrase is more common), or what? If you can satisfy yourself that some standard is met and can convince others, AND if you don't buy my argument re valorizing the Five Virtues, then you're all set to look at reliable sources first.)

If you're with me on the Five Virtues being in play, let's move forward. To summarize them, they are:

1. Recognizability – Person reading the article title will know what the article is about.
2. Naturalness – Most likely search term. (IMO redirects make this matter a bit less.)
3. Precision – Will not be confused with other subjects.
4. Conciseness.
5. Consistency with titles of articles about similar things.

So then looking at three options that seem to be in play, we have:

• Boston molasses disaster (or Boston Molasses Disaster)
• Great molasses flood (or Great Molasses Flood)
• Boston molasses flood (or Boston Molasses Flood)

They're equally concise. They're maybe equal in consistency (although I would hazard that we tend to title articles like "Ohio train disaster (1903)" rather than "Great train disaster (1903). Naturalness, I dunno -- possibly "Great molasses flood" is the winner here. Precision and Recognizability, though, anything with "Boston" in it is going to have the whip hand.

Consider readers who are flipping through article titles at speed, looking for this subject, based on a vague and half-remembered account. "Boston" is better than "Great" for fixing the subject, IMO. It's almost by definition "great" or there wouldn't be an article on it. Similarly, readers flipping through article titles at speed looking for a different event, a molasses tanker sinking or a water flood somewhere etc. are better served by the "Boston" in the title as a basis for rejecting the article than by "Great", a rather vague term.

Similar logic applies to the reader immediately understanding what the article is about once she does get to it. (Obviously, once the reader reads the first sentence all confusion is cleared up, but the point of titles is for reader not to have to do that to find the article they want.)

So: two of the Five Virtues a draw (maybe), one of them favoring "Great..." (maybe), two of them favoring "Boston...". Q.E.D., for my part it's got to be either Boston molasses disaster (or Boston Molasses Disaster) or Boston molasses flood (or Boston Molasses Flood). On the principle of inertia -- WP:TITLECHANGES which says "Changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed", I'm voting for just keeping the existing title. That's my story and I'm sticken to it. Herostratus (talk) 13:51, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that analysis and explanation of your thinking. I'd agree that the 5 WP:CRITERIA are in play, because they always are. While I don't agree that "Great Molasses Flood" is unfamiliar (who hasn't heard of it?). I would say that "Great Boston Molasses Flood" does a better job of recognizability and precision; but "Boston Molasses Flood" is certainly not a term you will find in sources without "Great" in front of it, except when lower case, so can't really be treated as a proper name; and "Great Molasses Disaster" (whether upper or lower case) is even more rare. We have enough descriptive and possibly proper-name titles to choose from, so let's choose one of them:

• Great Molasses Flood
• Great Boston Molasses Flood
• Boston molasses flood
• Boston molasses flood of 1919

I'm OK with any of these, but no disaster; no other case variations make sense (see all the other responses so far). Dicklyon (talk) 15:06, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

And I took the "Tragedy" variation out, which was added here without comment or source. Dicklyon (talk) 15:15, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Discussion continued

• Oppose Proposed because a title that includes "Great" seems out of place and does not receive the most hits. Support Boston Molasses Flood based on google book kits being twice that of proposed. 2.6K hits for "Great Molasses Flood" -wikipedia [1], 6.5K hits for "Boston Molasses Flood" -wikipedia.[2].--Labattblueboy (talk) 23:31, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

  Boston Molasses Flood, upper-cased, seems like a good name for the page, via data and identification purposes. But this nom was for one name, and now things are twisting to a naming poll. Well, BMF works. Randy Kryn 1:42 6 April, 2015 (UTC)

  Someone's not listening. The trouble with "Boston Molasses Flood" is that it's just a part of the common proper name "Great Boston Molasses Flood". See n-grams. The book count estimates aren't nearly as reliable or meaningful at estimating such things as the actual n-gram counts are; "The Boston Molasses Flood" doesn't occur enough to even be counted. The inclusion of "Great" in a proper name is not really a choice we get to make; it's in there; if we prefer a title without that, then it's a descriptive title. Boston molasses flood is OK, as concise descriptive titles go, but calling it by one of its two common proper names is probably more appropriate; omitting Great from those proper names makes about as much sense as omitting Great from Great Fire of London. Dicklyon (talk) 01:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

  Great Caesar's ghost! I stand corrected, and metaphorically covered in molasses. Randy Kryn 2:36 6 April, 2015 (UTC)

  @Labattblueboy and Herostratus:, please take another look in consideration of this. Dicklyon (talk) 03:33, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Erm, I put a lot thought into this already. However, if this RM fails and there's another one to change the case from "Boston Molasses Disaster" to "Boston molasses disaster" I'll be all ears and inclined to favor. "Boston molasses flood" would be OK too, provided there's sufficient data and argument to overcome inertia (WP:TITLECHANGES). Herostratus (talk) 11:45, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, we do list "Boston molasses flood" as among the most likely descriptive titles above; thanks for nothing that you're OK with that. I'd still like to hear what you think are the "proper" name possibilities, based on what's been pointed out about sources. Ini particular, where do you find support in sources for "Boston Molasses Disaster"? Or for "Boston Molasses Flood" without "Great" as part of it? Dicklyon (talk) 14:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I did take this into consideration. "Great Boston Molasses Flood" -wikipedia is 6.2K hit[3], so less than the 6.7K of my proposed, and comes with the added baggage of "great" being questionable neutral point of view. --Labattblueboy (talk) 15:47, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As pure description, Dicklyon. It was in Boston, it was made of molasses, and it was a disaster and/or a flood (whichever you prefer). Greatness can kind of be assumed -- we don't have articles like "Tiny little Memphis flood of 1903" and so on. "List of trivial, meaningless events in American history", whatever. Some things are capital-G Great (Great Depression, Great War, etc.) but really nothing here should be lowercase-g great: that's editorializing. Herostratus (talk) 15:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

So you're good with "Boston molasses flood", but not any of the commonly used "proper" names for the event, which have "Great" in them. So noted. Dicklyon (talk) 20:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support as proposed - honestly, redirects are cheap and can include Boston. But we use WP:COMMONNAME for a reason Red Slash 20:03, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support Great Molasses Flood or Great Boston Molasses Flood, the two most common proper names; there is no need to fall back to a descriptive title when we have these to choose from. 216.239.45.83 (talk) 21:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support it is not just the largest of many molasses floods in various places
• Support the nominator's proposal of Great Molasses Flood or something else with "flood" if others agree. I prefer a proper name to a descriptive. —  AjaxSmack  03:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support - Not sure where we are with this one - But I agree with Red Slash that redirects are cheap and we use WP:COMMONNAME for a reason. I support Great Molasses Flood - although we don't want to confuse it with the "small" or "medium" molasses floods... Garchy (talk) 18:50, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Regardless of my previous preferences to the contrary, I too now support the original proposal, on account of "commonname" and other reasonable arguments made. (Isn't it time this discussion wrapped up? There seems to be a strong consensus for Great Molasses Flood, with appropriate redirects to it.) Hertz1888 (talk) 19:07, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Search data

Here is a straight breakdown of search results for a number of the names being floated around.--Labattblueboy (talk) 10:47, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Title	Google	Google Scholar	Google books	Links
Boston Molasses Disaster	15,200	17	369	Google:"Boston Molasses Disaster" -wikipedia Google scholar:"Boston Molasses Disaster" -wikipedia Google books:[4]
Boston Molasses Flood	21,900	36	6,500	Google:"Boston Molasses Flood" -wikipedia Google scholar:"Boston Molasses Flood" -wikipedia Google books:[5]
Great Molasses Flood	22,000	71	2,800	Google:"Great Molasses Flood" -wikipedia Google scholar:"Great Molasses Flood" -wikipedia Google books: [6]
Great Boston Molasses Flood	16,400	27	6,230	Google:"Great Boston Molasses Flood" -wikipedia Google scholar:"Great Boston Molasses Flood" -wikipedia Google books:[7]
Boston Molasses Flood of 1919	12,400	23	5,740	Google:"Boston Molasses Flood of 1919" -wikipedia Google scholar:"Boston Molasses Flood of 1919" -wikipedia Google books:[8]

Thanks, good work. A graphic rendition of the above, in miniature.

Randy Kryn 12:00 12 April, 2015 (UTC)

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Exclamation point

In the passage

"Witnesses variously reported... a tremendous crashing, a deep growling, or a thunderclap-like bang!, and as the rivets shot out of the tank, a machine gun-like sound

does the exclamation point belong? It's unusual to have exclamation points in the middle of sentences. It's not a quotation. Editors are disagreeing about this. Herostratus (talk) 15:23, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Source checked. Phrase with exclamation point is indeed a direct quote. I've given it quotation marks in our article, and italicized "bang!" as in the source. Hertz1888 (talk) 19:46, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh OK that's different. Didn't realize it was a quote. Herostratus (talk) 03:49, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

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Temperatures

Hi, the temperatures in the sections "Flood" and "Causes" do not match. Which is correct: 40F/4C or 41F/5C? T 85.166.160.249 (talk) 21:57, 11 August 2019 (UTC)