User talk:Dicklyon

Please add new talk topics in new sections, at the bottom of the page, and sign with ~~~~ (four tildes will expand into your signature).

I will reply here, and expect you to be watching my user talk page, even if you are Nyttend.

Random style tip

... Case and spelled-out abbreviations Just because capitals are used in an abbreviation doesn't mean initial capitals should be used in the expanded version. Incorrect (not a proper noun): We used Digital Scanning (DS) technology Correct: We used digital scanning (DS) technology Correct (a proper noun): The film was produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Read more ... Add this to your user page by typing in {{Styletips}}

Barnstars and such

		The Original Barnstar
		I'm not sure why you haven't picked up a bevy of these already, but thanks for all your effort, particularly in tracking down good sources with diagrams, etc., on the photography- and color-related articles (not to mention fighting vandalism). Those areas of Wikipedia are much richer for your work. Cheers! —jacobolus (t) 02:05, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Ivan

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		To Dicklyon on the occasion of your photograph of Ivan Sutherland and his birthday! What a great gift. -User:SusanLesch 04:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

		All Around Amazing Barnstar
		For your hard work in improving and watching over the Ohm's law article SpinningSpark 00:59, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

		The Original Barnstar
		For your improvements to the Centrifugal force articles. Your common sense approach of creating a summary-style article at the simplified title, explaining the broad concepts in a way that is accessible to the general reader and linking to the disambiguated articles, has provided Wikipedia's readership with a desperately needed place to explain in simple terms the basic concepts involved in understanding these related phenomena. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

		The Surreal Barnstar
		For your comment here which at once admits your own errors with humility yet focusses our attention upon the real villain Egg Centric (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Convict Lake

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		For your great contribution to Wikipedia in adding pictures and illustrations to articles improving the reader's experience by adding a visual idea to the written information.--Xaleman87 (talk) 05:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

	The Special Barnstar
	I could not find a barnstar for standing up to an outrageously unjust block so you get a special one. Hang in there. В²C ☎ 23:25, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

	The Resilient Barnstar
	For your work in standardising article titles in line with the now consistent MOS:JR guidance, I present you this accolade. Your continued work in this regard, and in others, has been appreciated. It may have taken years, but much was accomplished. RGloucester — ☎ 14:44, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For an eternity of super-gnoming at WP:Requested moves to rein in entire swathes of article-titling chaos and bring them into order. I'm sure it can seem thankless work at times, so thanks!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  19:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:Buster7 submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

It is said by many that A picture is worth a thousand words. Wikipedia articles are vastly improved and enhanced by the use of images. Dicklyon's user page displays just some of the over 500 images he has added to Wikipedia articles making the articles more enjoyable and interesting for our most important commodity, our reader. WP:Photography. He is a long-time veteran editor with over 137000 edits (58% in mainspace) who always uses the edit summary to clarify his edits and communicate his intentions to following editors. He also participates in various timely and important WP:Manual of Style discussions to improve what and how we do things around here. A trusted, productive and helpful editor that deserves recognition as an Editor of the Week.

The Original Barnstar

I've started to note the many scholarly contributions of this author, beginning with editing of the Wikipedia Cintel pages. For images and vision, I've had a lifelong career in color grading for feature films, tv commercials, videos, etc. with telecine and other systems worldwide; as a musician, 'Human and Machine Hearing' will certainly be fascinating. Thank you to Richard F. Lyon for providing the PDF of this work to all. Lingelbach (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

		Fighting the Good Fight Barnstar
		For resisting those who would like Wikipedia’s capitalization rules to resemble a corporate brochure or a government press release —Wallnot (talk) 02:49, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	This is for your really thorough clean up after the Armenian genocide move discussion. My watchlist is full of your edits since days. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:20, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

	The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
	Thank you! Biggerj1 (talk) 15:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

that's for these hacks:

• 
  Permutation test
• 
  Correlogram
• 
  Correlogram

	The Minor barnstar
	SO MANY MINOR EDITS! Thank you for your work. -ASHEIOU (THEY/THEM • TALK) 19:46, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

There we go again, commenting on the quantity of my edits instead of the quality. But minor thanks anyway. Dicklyon (talk) 00:23, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

New topics

Add new topics at the bottom please.

M40 Gun Motor Carriage

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=M40_gun_motor_carriage&diff=prev&oldid=1236303188

Are you about to start another campaign to remove all capitalisation, despite going directly against all sources? Andy Dingley (talk) 07:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Books tend to lowercase that one, though there's a recent move toward caps since Wikipedia starting capping them. Dicklyon (talk) 14:26, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Dicklyon, I'm going to request that you self-revert your moves of several load-bearing equipment-related articles. You're clearly aware from our discussion at Talk:All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment that there are editors out there who disagree with this change (me, for one). You should have started with a RM discussion, not unilaterally made what you should have known were going to be controversial moves. And now you're mass de-capitalizing what appears to be every single piece of military equipment on Wikipedia -- including several that are clearly proper names per MOS:MILTERMS? Where is the consensus for this change? Given your contentious history in this area, you should know better than this. Please self-revert before we have to take this further into dispute resolution. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 17:05, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

SJ, you seemed to have shut down discussion where we were talking before (you introduced analogous topics and then said not to discuss them any more, so I stopped). As for the "Interceptor" one you linked, that's clearly the proper name, while the varying descriptor terms that follow are not part of the proper name. I'm willing to discuss any for which you think there's a case for proper name status, but I don't think there's a reason for me to revert a bunch of well-motivated work at this point. In particular, I don't understand Andy's point that started this section. Also the ALICE thing; it's easy to find sources that use lowercase (in sentence contexts), so per the criteria in MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, we should not be treating it as a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 18:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I've not "shut down" discussion; I asked you to stay focused on the topic applicable to that page, to answer the direct question I repeatedly asked you (to justify your argument for why you believe the page is clearly not a proper name) and not veer off deeply into discussion of other articles simply because they were brought up as comparisons. And you know full well that MOS:MILTERMS states The general rule is that wherever a military term is an accepted proper name, as indicated by consistent capitalization in sources, it should be capitalized. Where there is uncertainty as to whether a term is generally accepted, consensus should be reached on the talk page. -- yet you've made no attempt whatsoever to reach that consensus in advance of your moves, in cases where there was actual uncertainty. If you don't believe there's a reason for you to revert what is clearly controversial work, simply because you were "well-motivated" for it, then I will simply have to revert it for you, and we can have the discussion like we should have had from the beginning. But that's a very disappointing result. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 18:28, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I will be happy to have an RM discussion on any that you revert. Dicklyon (talk) 18:33, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I've reverted the few ones that I'm intending to revert (and created talk page sections for them), so feel free to list away at this point. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 19:18, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

OK, I'll start a multi-RM on those few for now; we can discuss more later if needed. Dicklyon (talk) 22:25, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

• This should go to a topic ban. There is a long history of Dicklyon doing this (see Talk:Motor Gun Boat and many naval articles, and even Apollo Command Module) and they have absolutely no interest in doing it any other way, regardless of policy, sources or other editors. Andy Dingley (talk) 19:33, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

  What you're showing is the long history of my moves and move proposals being in agreement with the community consensus. This is always based on policies, guidelines, and sources, though I know there are some who interpret those differently sometimes (e.g. you, often). Dicklyon (talk) 21:47, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

• Two people shouting louder and more persistently is not consensus. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:49, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

On my moves

@Andy Dingley: since you're talking in various places about moves I've made without discussion, I thought I should clarify what I've been up to. You might note from my move log that I've moved about 500 titles so far this year, mostly from uppercase to lowercase. These are mostly without explicit discussion, though generally they follow patterns of previous discussions. At the same time, I've started many multi-RM discussions, resulting in over 1000 page moves for those where the discussion closed in favor of lowercasing (moves done by closers who declared the consensus to do so). In the case of the "gun motor carriage" and "howitzer motor carriage" and "mortar motor carriage" and such titles, those follow the consensus guideline at WP:MILCAPS, and follow the precedent of five multi-RM discussions (none of which were started by me) on letter/number light tank, medium tank, heavy tank, armored car, etc. (and several of which I did not even comment in, and all of which were unanimously in support of lowercase). In doing post-move cleanup on over-capitalized links to those, I found myself editting lists where various other letter/number military vehicle titles were unnecessarily capped. For each of them, I looked at sources and verified that lowercase is not unusual before do the moves. I've been at this (among other things) for about a month, starting with M1 Heavy Tractor on June 30, it appears, and got very little reaction or pushback; mostly just some thanks (18 in the last 30 days, on case fixes and case discussion comments). When you opened this section (with an obnoxious unconstructive question), I pointed out the source evidence for why I had done the move. You didn't push back with anything like a serious claim that "Gun Motor Carriage" is a proper name, or other reason why you came to comment on it. You didn't revert the move, either. When people revert or make a serious complaint, I stop and discuss. You haven't done that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:45, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Trout from Randy

The brook trout is a resident of the Hudson River area, as were many artists of the Hudson River School. {{trout small}} — Preceding unsigned comment added by Randy Kryn (talk • contribs)

Randy, I modified your unsigned trout a bit, to make it look more like discussion. I had not looked at that one; it was added to the RM later, by another user. As for the decapitalizations at the template, that's what I was doing before the RM, when I noticed some red links that motivated the RM, not the other way around. I might have done more there later; don't recall. But it was not in support of the RM as you suggested in your broad revert. No matter, we can fix it again after the RM. Dicklyon (talk) 14:32, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I know another user added Hudson River School to your RM but you allowed it to stay, hence the trouting (I think that's the second trout I've ever given, a fine fish in but not out of water). The Hudson River School decapitalized! Appalling to say the yeast. As for the navbox, you gnu these lowercasings would be controversial, so another trout should have joined the first, which would have made the two fish a school. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:45, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I didn't actually know that a few of the schools might turn out to be controversial. I should have vetted that one (which I admit I had never heard of). Still, per our guidelines and the fair number of sources showing the caps to be unnecessary, I'd favor downcasing; I just wouldn't be confident that it would go that way. Dicklyon (talk) 14:47, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Reasonable, thanks. Maybe that one should be removed and BarrelProof can put up his own RM if he still feels strongly about such a fishy endeavor. I haven't checked n-grams on any of the other schools, as vetting is usually a good plan. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:54, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

At least now you've become aware of the Hudson River School. They are a major part of American art history, as well as the history of depicting nature. They moved that art genre to a new level. If some of your good photographs were paintings they'd be something like what these guys were doing, a way of addressing and communicating nature to viewers. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:03, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for filling that hole in my sorry education. Dicklyon (talk) 00:06, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

ANI Thread (Not against you)

Hi, I wanted to let you know that I mentioned you in an ANI thread at WP:ANI#User:Andy Dingley, regarding the behavior in the RM on Talk:All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment. I don't think you need to do anything, but I wanted to make sure you were aware. EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:44, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I left a comment there re his behavior on my talk page, too. Dicklyon (talk) 21:05, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Page move edit warring

Dicklyon, I have noticed that you have been mass moving pages to sentence case (e.g. M270 multiple launch rocket system. I request that you please stop this unilaterally moving pages that have stable titles. Schierbecker (talk) 14:51, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

It's been a week since I had a move reverted or objected to, so I don't see why you used the heading you did here. The group of 3 that were reverted are being discussed at an RM. Are you objecting to the M270 one now, or was that just an example from my 5 moves per day over the last couple of days? I wouldn't call that mass moves. Feel free to revert any that you think I got wrong, and we can discuss them. Dicklyon (talk) 15:07, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I do think it's problematic that you're systematically mass moving titles of military articles to sentence case without going through an RFC or RM first, given that you're aware there's been objections to several of them already based on the same underlying core arguments that are, based on the current trend, unlikely to result in a consensus to move. That seems like a remarkably poor decision for someone who's been so recently blocked for move warring -- I would object to essentially all of these moves, but I don't have the energy to fight the same battle over and over. In particular, a rapid cycle of editing these pages to reflect one's viewpoint, then discussing the changes is disruptive and should be avoided. Instead, parties are encouraged to establish consensus on the talk page first, and then make the changes. -- finding of the Arbitration Committee in the MOS case, to which you were a party. You've clearly got an objection here (from Schierbecker). You should have been aware of the likelihood that there would be objection to making additional moves based on the RM discussion as well. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 17:47, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

We've had at least 5 RM discussions on military vehicle capitalizations, which closed unanimously for lowercase (mostly on tanks), and I haven't heard a specific complaint here from Schierbecker yet. I asked if he objected to that one, or just used it as an example of the fact that I'm doing moves to sentence case. Generally, I'm sensing some unease with the quantity of my work, but little or no specific complaints that I got something wrong. If you have a complaint, let's hear it, so we can discuss. As for "unilaterally moving pages that have stable titles", as FFF notes below, that's how article titles that get created in title case generally get fixed when someone gets around to it. Move warring would be moving titles that are not stable. Dicklyon (talk) 21:15, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Schierbecker, "page move edit warring" doesn't seem like an applicable title here. Your request that DL "stop this unilaterally moving pages that have stable titles" is too broad. Most page moves are unilateral and uncontentious. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:08, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

FactGrid redirect

Hi Dicklyon. You have redirected the page I created for [Wikidata Q90405608] to University of Erfurt, where the information is basically lost. The important thing is not that FactGrid is hosted in Erfurt (it will move anyway). The important thing is that it is part of Germany's National Research Data Initiative NFDI, and I assume it fulfils the notability criteria in this range.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FactGrid&direction=next&oldid=1209715004

As your redirect is basically a deletion I assume there is a deletion debate on it. Can you give me the link, so that I can see the rationale? --Olaf Simons (talk) 07:04, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Just realise you did not delete the page - it was User:Alpha3031 - I'll ask him, thanks for the case fix. --Olaf Simons (talk) 07:32, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

No problem. Case fixes I do. The rest I have no idea what you're talking about. Dicklyon (talk) 14:46, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

Well the entire article is deleted - not the way this is usually done. (I was an admin for a decade, but I do not feel like intervening). --Olaf Simons (talk) 20:33, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

I reverted that, since I found no discussion about deleting or merging FactGrid. We'll see. It looks like it needs work. Maybe some of the "Further Reading" items can serve as sources. Dicklyon (talk) 00:35, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

ZThank you - I will supply some more references, no problem. --Olaf Simons (talk) 10:08, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Possible Error of capitalization of Light and Medium Tanks

Hello Dicklyon. I often read through the US armored vehicle pages, and I have seen your recent capitalization changes to some of them, but I think there might be an error to them. I have this source, Catalog of Standard Ordnance Items from Office of the Chief of Ordnance Technical Division, and for every single one (Light, Medium, Heavy, and Gun Motor Carriage), it capitalizes what it is, such as for the M4 Sherman, it is "Medium Tank, M4", and for the M3 Stuart, it is "Light Tank, M3". I might also be wrong, but shouldn't they stay capitalized? Also, shouldn't they stay full capitalized as they are a proper noun, and again, I might be wrong on this. CloneCommanderFordo (talk) 20:21, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, there are books that capitalize these, especially in "listings" and "catalogs" and such. But our criterion is about "consistently capitalized in sources". See User:Dicklyon/MIL precedents. Dicklyon (talk) 21:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Alright, thank you. CloneCommanderFordo (talk) 21:58, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Single word casings

Hello. Quick question, how do you find casings for single words. I recall you mentioned there were 800 lowercased uses of 'Impressionism', and I couldn't figure out how to link to those. Sometimes I run across one, or the incorrectly lowercased 'neolithic', but it would be nice to have a list to work from. One of my latest is chipping away at uppercasing 'Iberian Peninsula', it was one of those over 800 uses incorrect casings (I've got it down to well under 500, Arabian Peninsula was another over-600 now trimmed to under 100). Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Probably what you need in regular expression search, which is case sensitive. E.g. this. The first insource:impressionsim uses the fast dictionary based search to narrow down to pages that contain that term, so the slow regex search won't chew up a lot of compute and time out before it's finished. then in "insource:/impressionism/", the stuff between slashes is treated as a regular expression, which is case sensitive and has all sorts of fancy matching features that I wont' try to describe, except to say that is you want to include a special character, such as a hyphen, you need to escaped it with a backslash, for if you want to look for "well-formed" hyphenated, you'd use insource:/well\-formed/. You can also use intitle: and other things. There's a page somewhere about WP search features. Dicklyon (talk) 15:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

A long and detailed response which I'll little understand, but that's a great link to well over 1,500 lowercased examples on English Wikipedia. I'll save your response somewhere to figure it out when things like 'neolithic' come up. Thanks for the education and assistance. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

The gory details are at Help:Searching (shortcut H:S). Dicklyon (talk) 04:29, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

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Info-gap decision theory

Hi, you were by far the most experienced editor that participated during Info-gap dispute in 2007, yesterday another editor removed 100K unsourced materials, and today I stumbled upon it and explained the original dispute. Feel free to take a walk down the memory lane and see if it is worth revisiting, the state of the article is awful. Sir Kenneth Kho (talk) 17:39, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't even remember anything about that. But yes, it's a mess. I see there are some sources in Google scholar if you search for "information gap" and "theory". I'd say many of these are good secondary sources compared to the primary sources of the COI editors. But I don't know that I want to work on that, as I'm in the midst of some work projects, and just edit WP on easy stuff. Dicklyon (talk) 02:12, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Personal attack by Sammy D III. Thank you. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:45, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

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RM discussion at Talk:Siege of Gerona (disambiguation)

An editor has requested that Siege of Gerona (disambiguation) be moved to another page, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. Mdewman6 (talk) 04:18, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

+ −

Concerning this, please see this. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm a bit bummed and surprise to see that I did that wrong. Dicklyon (talk) 23:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia's search function seems to encourage the confusion. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:47, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Plates

I know you think these are uncontroversial (and I'm not saying they're wrong), but please at least do a mass-RM for these plates rather than uniformly moving 70+ pages, and consult the relevant WikiProjects. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 22:44, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

For sure. After I moved Iberian Plate I noticed there are a whole bunch more, so I used quarry to make me a list, pruned it to the ones that are tectonic plates, and massaged the list into the RM. Thanks for caring. Dicklyon (talk) 22:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Please use appropriate edit summaries

Note that these ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]) are not case fixes. Please use appropriate edit summaries, as the general edit summary of "case fix" on all of these is incorrect and misleading. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:27, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

When I'm on a spree of fixing links to over-capitalized redirects such as Bicycle Motocross, I sometimes do the case fix by changing the link instead. In this case, the case-fixed Bicycle motocross is a redirect, too, to BMX, and it was piped to BMX, so the best fix was to just not pipe through a redirect. Sorry my short-form edit summary didn't capture that. I'll try to think of a better one. Dicklyon (talk) 06:17, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cleaning up after a move

Hi Dicklyon, could you please update the links in navboxes after page moves, as detailed in Wikipedia:Cleaning up after a move? I have done so in Template:Railway lines in Western Australia for the three Western Australian railway line articles you recently moved but it's not guranteed that somebody else will always do this so the better option would be for the page mover to do so. Calistemon (talk) 15:11, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I spend my editing hours doing, cleaning up miscapitalization, mostly after moves. Not always immediately though, as Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations helps me keep track of what needs fixing. Thanks for helping. Dicklyon (talk) 22:12, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the fixing the ocean of the miscapitalisations of the western australian railway set of articles, much appreciate your work, embarrassing to see how many were created on my shift... JarrahTree 02:48, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Calistemon and JarrahTree: Probably my work case fixing only scratches the surface. I appreciate your interest and help. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The consistency, persistence and leaving no point unturned, is much more appreciated than you can imagine! JarrahTree 05:57, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

it is embarrassing to see how embedded/pervasive the capitalization issue had become - thank you for your persistence! JarrahTree 00:55, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

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BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Please stop changing these and revert back to "other capitalization" templates for tectonic plates

These were correctly labeled as 'other capitalization (i.e. North American Plate, Eurasian Plate, and you have changed these and other redirects to 'mis-capitalization', which is inaccurate). Glad this has been caught early, and it would save other editors time if you did the reverts yourself. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Should ping SilverLocust who made the correct template edits to 'other capitalization'. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:45, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The RM closer concluded "X Plate" is not a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 05:28, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, then the closer, Sceptre, made a good faith mistake. Their close seemed to rely on the AGU style guide for its reasoning (ignoring Britannica and the many other sources which cap, including Wikipedia uppercasing for well over 20 years). The AGU style guide specifically states: "The following may be either capitalized or lowercase except as indicated below: anticline, arc, bank, basin, butte, channel, crater (e.g., on Earth, the Moon, or Mars), fault, fold, formation, geyser, glacier, mount, plate, plateau, ridge, rill, strait, syncline, trench, trough, volcano. Be consistent throughout the paper. (...) plate (follow author within paper for capitalization)". AGU upper or lowercases, dependent on the author's use in their paper. In other words, a proper name is fine, just that the caps be consistent within the published paper. Aside for a formal request to overturn the close, which will be made at the author's talk page, this discussion and ping focus on you changing SilverLocust's correct "from other capitalization" templates to mis-capitalization templates, and my request to change those back. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

WP style is to avoid unnecessary capitalization – to cap only if sources do so consistently. The AGU guide you're quoting makes it clear that caps are not necessary, so we use lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 23:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The question here is about using the "other capitalization" template, as SilverLocust did in good faith, or the "miscapitalization" template, as you did by changing SilverLocust's edits, on the North American Plate for example. Uppercasing is the style of, among many other sources, Britannica, Encylopedia.com,The Free Dictionary and, importantly, Geology.com. Uppercasing the names of tectonic plates is not miscapitalization. It is a normal casing for these topics, which have been uppercased on Wikipedia for well over 20 years. Please revert your edits (the closer, Sceptre, may want to comment when they get back onsite). Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:46, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Hey. For the avoidance of doubt, the AGU style guide was helpful in pointing me down a certain path in the close, but it doesn't hinge on that fact. What was more compelling was the other evidence (such as ngrams) that there was a roughly even split between capitalisation and non-capitalisation. With it being that even, I don't think the use of title case really counts as a "miscapitalisation" but rather an "alternate capitalisation" (which our style guides discourage the use of in article titles, at least). For the sake of consistency between article title and running text, I would decapitalise the word "plate" in running text, but in the grand scheme of things, it isn't that important.

FWIW, when it comes to the issue of other geologic features, I would like to say that this RM closure could be persuasive in future RMs, but shouldn't really be seen as carte blanche either.

Remember, though, in the grand scheme of things, capitalisation of article titles isn't something you should lose sleep over. Just keep a little perspective, that's all. :) Sceptre (talk) 11:52, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Sceptre. Not something to lose sleep over, but the casing of titles does affect how civilization views a topic, and uppercasing adds its importance as a proper name. Since tectonic plates are proper names in much of society, the "miscapitalization" casing templates are inaccurate and should be changed back to "other capitalization". Randy Kryn (talk) 12:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, WP is unreasonably effective in influencing whether writers treat topic names as proper names or not. I've collected tons of example of where WP has been the leader in capitalizing, rather than the follower. I use the tagging as miscapitalization to help me track and fix capitalizations in running text, via the report Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations, though it's pretty much impossible to keep up with the load of fixing needed. Is there any other known use for the miscapitalization tag? Dicklyon (talk) 15:06, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I've received the pings, Randy Kryn, I just didn't really want to rehash here the discussion from earlier this year about the purpose of each of these two redirect categories. In any event, I'd suggest requesting another database report for "other capitalisation", which should be straightforward to modify from the existing report. SilverLocust 💬 17:08, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

The list of links to redirects with "other capitalization" would not be very useful, as there are many thousands of them, and many of them don't need to be fixed, so the list could never be whittled down to where it's useful for maintenance. Dicklyon (talk) 17:11, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Note that I've gone through and added the alternative capitalization tag to all the relevant plate pages from the RM. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Is that indicating that you don't think I should be fixing them where they occur capitalized in articles? Or is there some other reason why having them tagged as miscapitalization is a problem that you wanted to fix? Dicklyon (talk) 15:05, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

We never really resolved the discussion about appropriate use of the templates (as best as I can recall). If we need to restart the conversation, this would not be the best place to do so. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

True, but Randy and Josh came here to tell me things, so I'm asking what's behind that. Dicklyon (talk) 15:46, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@Firefangledfeathers: maybe you'd be a good one to start such a conversation in an appropriate place? Dicklyon (talk) 02:33, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Possibly, but it's so hard to care about something that will probably never affect a reader. Maybe there's a workaround that respects people's view that "miscapitalization" is erroneous while still allowing you to use database reports to fix style issues? Can we create a new hidden category expressly for this purpose?

Or, is there any mechanism by which you could keep a list of redirects that are miscapitalized according to the MOS in your userspace or as a MOS subpage? It seems like it's mostly you tagging the redirects, and adding redirect titles to your list would probably not be more work. Presumably we could get a database report of which articles on the list have been linked to. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:58, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

What is the benefit to Wikipedia to track "other" capitalizations that WP itself considers a miscapitalization? —Bagumba (talk) 13:27, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

So editors can review incoming links to those redirects and fix miscapitalizations in article text. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:41, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

{{R from miscapitalisation}} would do that. But it seems like some people want the equivalent of an additional {{R from other capitalisation that needs fixing}}. How would that improve WP for readers?—Bagumba (talk) 13:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it would, compared to just letting the miscap cat be applied to pages that WP itself considers a miscapitalization. There are others who disagree with the idea of labeling pages miscapitalizations when so many sources consider them correct. I presume the thought is that readers who come across these redirects (rare) and view the categories (rarer) will think it odd/weird/wrong/offensive that a miscapitalization category is being applied to something they think is correct. I'm speculating. Maybe they'll chime in. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:05, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

As previously discussed, you're well aware that that's not what I'm doing by fixing mistagged pages. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

That's not really an explanation of why you don't want these labels used as they seem to be intended to be used. Dicklyon (talk) 15:31, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Rehash it at the relevant venue because we obviously, still, disagree on the purpose of these. I stand by the fact that words have meaning and classifying these as "errors" is not as accurate as the text from Template:R from alternative capitalization, which states It leads to the title in accordance with the Wikipedia naming conventions for capitalisation. If it's a capitalization used in the real world, which is acceptable in contexts, which these appear to be based on scientific sources which capitalize the term, then classifying them as errors is incorrect. Yes yes, you're going to mention the maintenance report, but a single maintenance report that you focus on and utilize does not mean we should improperly categorize these. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:38, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Dick, you probably know this search pathway, but if not, just use things like this. It's how I do case runs (and do so by sight not with a tool, that way other things on the page often pop out). Randy Kryn (talk) 16:00, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I know how to do "what links here". But that requires another method to manually come up with redirect titles to check, one by one. Dicklyon (talk) 16:03, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean (a bot does something?). The method I mentioned is what I use to find linked casing mistakes (in this edit-run, uppercasing of 'Atacama_desert'). One by one, and I'll get back to that now and do a few more. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, every day a bot updates the maintenance report at Wikipedia:Database reports/Linked miscapitalizations. Dicklyon (talk) 04:32, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Casing of faults

Is there a reason why you moved these two articles (Philippine fault system, Marikina Valley fault system) without RM for all other fault-related articles? Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 05:48, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I moved them because I saw they were over-capitalized relative to reliable sources. Dicklyon (talk) 16:49, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, here's our list of fault zones (List of fault zones). Can you please go through a requested move with these as well, so we can maintain uniformity throughout? Dawnseeker2000 23:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm preparing to do an RM on "* Fault System", as these are pretty much more often lowercase in sources (and about half capped on WP), whereas there are a lot of proper-named faults. Consistency may not be achievable. Dicklyon (talk) 00:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I looked at a few more of the 13 with capped Fault System, and several are consisently capitalized in sources (e.g. North Island Fault System), while others are clearly descriptive and appear in sources lowercase if at all (e.g. Valeriano Fault System). I'll have to study them all and decide what RM to do. Consistency will definitely not be achievable (and there were already a bunch with lowercase "fault system" before my recent moves). Dicklyon (talk) 15:10, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Universal Carrier

Like the recent move as to the Austin Armoured Car n/k/a Austin armoured car article title, don't you think the UC article title should be changed, as well. The article is related to "a family of light armoured tracked vehicles", therefore, a group and not one specific armoured tracked vehicle. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 03:24, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Except that you're as wrong on that as you are on the capitalisation. The Universal Carrier was not another name for the Bren Carrier, it was a different vehicle. It was not a group, they were specific and different vehicles; although the Universal Carrier was intended to replace all of the earlier more-specific types with a single one. Andy Dingley (talk) 04:23, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I found the article and sources on that one rather confusing. From some, it seemed that "carrier" was generic and "Universal" was the name. But I see that idea was found wanting. Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Andy, I was not “wrong”, I only quoted the article language in my query and was working under the premise that the article was written correctly by the regular editors of same. At any rate, I am leave it up to you gentlemen to handle this matter. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 08:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)