Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SMcCandlish (talk | contribs) at 21:02, 22 December 2014 (→Some lurker comments: Those who refuse to acknowledge AT & LOCALCONSENSUS policies and MOS are the ones with the consensus problem here, even if playing politics with tone and approach may help a little.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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		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 Misplaced Pages are much richer for your work. Cheers! —jacobolus (t) 02:05, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

		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 Misplaced Pages'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)

		The Photographer's Barnstar
		For your great contribution to Misplaced Pages 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)

Do you have sources for name change for Lawrence Massacre?

I notice that you changed the name of the Lawrence Massacre article without discussion on the article's talk page. Your edit summary includes: "not a proper name; not usually capitalized in sources." In the modern secondary sources I have, it is given as "Lawrence Massacre" in the text, without lowercase. This includes Castel's book, Civil War Kansas: Reaping the Whirlwind. It also is listed that way in the American Battlefield Protection Program and the Civil War Battlefield Guide 2nd Ed. It is used as a proper name in quotes. Gerteis' Civil War St. Louis page has an article by George Rule calling it the Lawrence Massacre without quotes. Goodrich who published the modern study of it writes in his book: "Thus, word of what came to be known as the Lawrence Massacre, spread to the outside world." (p. 150 of Bloody Dawn: the Story of the Lawrence Massacre. Based on modern reliable sources the name change appears to be in error and should probably be moved back Red Harvest (talk) 09:42, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I did first check sources and found that capitalization of raid and massacre there are not consistent, so per MOS:CAPS we should avoid it. See n-grams and books: , , , , , , and many more. Dicklyon (talk) 16:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Based on that list it should be capitalized because it is the name of an historical event. When you examine books by modern historians specifically relating to the event it is written "Lawrence Massacre." Please move it back to the proper name.

It is very bad form to go moving pages with no discussion and no input from other editors on the relevant Talk page. It doesn't appear to me that your interpretation of the guidelines is correct. I'm going to ask for some input from other editors. Red Harvest (talk) 19:58, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I've been reading about these changes and I'm not sure what the right answer is at this time. I agree with Dicklyon about MOS and I agree with Red Harvest about common usage (to me, the n-grams presented by Dicklyon seem to indicate that, at least in the case of Lawrence Massacre, the far most common usage has been capitalized Massacre). Has this been discussed at MOS or at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Military history? BusterD (talk) 21:18, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

The n-grams graph is likely misleading (if not examined closely) because contemporary wording of the 19th century primary accounts was mostly lowercase. So direct quotations of primary sources by modern secondary sources will skew the result. This is something to be wary of as a systematic concern. Examining conventions of recent historians seems the wisest course.

MOS doesn't address this that I see. It seems to skip naming of historical events. Red Harvest (talk) 21:45, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

More typically the n-grams bias toward upper case, because so many of the usage in print are titles and headings and capitalized for that reason. Dicklyon (talk) 22:05, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

From what I've seen of this particular one, that is not the case here. Again, one needs to take a closer look at recent reliable sources. In doing that I reach the opposite conclusion. Red Harvest (talk) 23:27, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

See Talk:List of events named massacres where prior discussions are linked. There has been a consensus that avoid unnecessary capitalization applies here. Dicklyon (talk) 22:05, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

It is apparent that this should be done on a case by case basis, rather than blanket moves this way or that. And that requires taking it to Talk first. These were already capitalized and no objection had been raised. It makes little sense to me to adopt a name that is the reverse of that commonly used by current reliable sources. Red Harvest (talk) 23:27, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to disagree with Red Harvest. The normal practice is Bold, Revert, Discuss. If we chose to ask permission before ANY change, nothing would get done here. No, Dicklyon acted boldly, Red Harvest reverted, now we're discussing. This is the best practice for a necessarily adversarial editing environment. Dicklyon should expect to face talkpage discussion on some moves. BusterD (talk) 23:38, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Based on the discussions listed, I can see the merits of NOT considering many massacre article names as proper names. Tony1's arguments in favor of the lowercase are compelling. I'm especially impressed when attempts to disagree are as collegial as the Rock Springs discussion ended. For my part, I don't actually care who is right here, though I understand (and hope Dicklyon understands) loyalty to one's own good faith efforts, like those of User:Red Harvest. When editors disagree, it is wise practice to be respectful towards each other in disagreement and responsive in discussion not only to guideline and policy, but also empathetic to the positions of others. Lately pedia editors have been facing a lot of bad-faith accusations from rookie editors. It's especially useful now for those of us who have an investment in Misplaced Pages effort to work cooperatively. Again, kudos to your efforts to clean up the lowercase/uppercase inconsistency. I'd merely urge words of kindness in case-by-case discussions (as many of these will be decided). BusterD (talk) 23:33, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't see BRD applying well to article moves. This is the opposite of what I've seen work--BusterD and I recently worked to revert an egregious change that was made "boldly" this way years ago. Article name moves require more thorough checks and link updates, template updates, redirects, etc. Otherwise it leaves a mess for someone else to clean up with no explanation for the change. Consistency between Misplaced Pages articles suffers when this is not done. I've done/participated in some name changes and asked for input, so I have some appreciation of the number of cross links that should be examined--and I still find things I've missed.

• A simple talk page entry at the least should be made for each move, even if it is made immediately to conform to some new policy (such as this one.) This will prevent unnecessary reverts and confusion and might enlist other interested editors in searching for not-so-apparent updates that are needed to match the new name. Edit summaries are inadequate for the task--as we've seen in this example.
• In the move/revert process for name changes it looks like there is some risk of losing talk pages and such altogether depending on the nature of the move. That might not happen with an experienced editor, but we don't know how experienced or careful a reverter will be.
• The MOS needs to be updated to explain the naming changes for historical events. This is particularly so when common capitalization by RS is going to be overridden in common wiki practice. Red Harvest (talk) 01:03, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I can't disagree with any specific listed above by Red Harvest, but I contend that the BRD cycle is intended as a common method of reaching consensus, that is, a workable solution when good faith editors disagree on ANY change. We do have more formal processes like AfD and RM when BRD doesn't suffice. BRD helps us to avoid too much heat and focus our attention on improving pagespace, which everyone here tries to do. I think a talk page entry explaining an uncontested move is probably a good idea. I think looking at sources and previous consensus (which it is clear Dicklyon does) is also important. That the MOS might need updating is a good idea and should be taken thataway. My intended contribution to this discussion was to emphasize AGF and respect for healthy disagreement. BusterD (talk) 01:38, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

BRD works OK with moves; there is no risk of losing talk pages or histories. I've moved hundreds or perhaps thousands of pages, and I estimate that fewer than 1% of moves ever attract a comment. If I had to treat each one as potentially controversial, or follow up with a talk page comment to back up the edit summary, it would be much harder to do the kind of routine MOS-compliance improvements that I like to do. If you look at the various "massacre" articles, you'll find that many had the title in different cases even within the article before I cleaned them up. As you note, there is no specific exception in MOS:CAPS for specific historical events, and nor should there be, since most sources written for a general audience show that caps are not necessary.

In the case of the Lawrence massacre, books like this one have dozens of occurences in upper case, in titles and page headings, but in a sentence context use lower case. This is not unusual. And on average, it's still only about 50% upper in books, which is nowhere near the threshold of MOS:CAPS about being consistently capitalized in sources. This is not new stuff; pretty routine, really. Dicklyon (talk) 05:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's a convincing argument. When we disagree about issues, we discuss on talk to measure consensus as opposed to reverting back and forth. There is an ongoing discussion at Talk:Lawrence massacre. Others may choose to join the broader discussion. It also appears others disagree in various pagespaces. Please accept that you'll be required to make your case in multiple talk page discussions. BusterD (talk) 05:46, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I have joined those discussions; no problem. I'm saying that a priori, I don't assume that routine moves to improve compliance with WP:MOS will be seen by anyone as controversial. 99% of the time, they are not. Dicklyon (talk) 06:01, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Federal Express Flight 705

I reverted your renaming of Federal Express Flight 705. All aircraft accident articles with flight numbers are named with "Flight" capitalized. Please see the naming conventions at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Aviation/Aviation accident task force for more information. —Diiscool (talk) 14:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

How odd. I was not aware of that local project exception to MOS:CAPS. We should fix that, as the caps are not "necessary" (see this book. But it's not something I want to take on right now, so I'll leave it alone. Dicklyon (talk) 17:00, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Penn's Creek Massacre and Sugarloaf Massacre capitalization

I actually haven't seen a single source that has "Massacre" in lowercase. Battles, in general, are also titled in title case. --Jakob (talk) 01:32, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Here are some. Penn's Creek: , , , , etc. Sugarloaf: , , , . Dicklyon (talk) 06:10, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Every source that is actually used on the article uses the original capitalization. Battles, in general, are also titled in title case. --Jakob (talk) 19:27, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

That's certainly not true. On each of those articls, the first ref that I could actually access has lower case: , . Dicklyon (talk) 19:45, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, they are used interchangeably in a couple of refs. That doesn't change my main point. --Jakob (talk) 20:55, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I only see what you said above; what is your main point? Dicklyon (talk) 21:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Ha, ha! If you thought you were going to get away with that, you were being naive

I can't believe you thought you were going to get away with a mass decapitalisation of article titles without gaining consensus first. Your poor interpretation of WP:MOSCAPS aside, you showed a complete disregard for sources. Regardless, all of your moves of articles that were not at WP:NDESC titles have been reverted. If you want a mass decapitalisation, I suggest you propose one large move request with all of them, so that everyone can see in the open what you're doing. Trying to hide in articles that have few watchers whilst you violate Misplaced Pages policy, guidelines, and English-language sense unilaterally is not a viable route whilst I'm around. RGloucester — ☎ 04:26, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

The consensus for this kind of cleanup was clear in previous multi-move discussions; I have linked them on the Talk:Watts Riots#Requested moves discussion that I just opened and you already responded to. Dicklyon (talk) 04:59, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

No such "general consensus" exists. You've imagined a folly, and a folly you've got. Let the subaltern speak! RGloucester — ☎ 05:02, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Mr Lyon, given the significance of this sprawling request, I presume you won't mind if I list it at Template:Centralized discussion? RGloucester — ☎ 04:54, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. Dicklyon (talk) 04:59, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

 Done RGloucester — ☎ 05:02, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that lowercasing, by the way. It is correct, and I made a mistake. See all others in category Category:Indian union ministries. RGloucester — ☎ 07:28, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

'Often' vs 'sometimes'

Hi Dick: In this edit you changed 'often' to 'sometimes' commenting That's one source; unilateral is most commonl used and often adequate. This is your opinion. Is it in fact "most commonly used"? Is it "often adequate".

As far as common use, it is "commonly used" as an illustration when modeling simple cases where the amplifier can be set up in terms of two-ports. But this doesn't work even for all the simple cases treated in text books. That is why the return ratio and asymptotic gain approaches were developed. That is why Chen says this idealization "is not an adequate representation". Adding the word "often" already backs off a bit from his opinion on this matter.

For some simple textbook examples where the unilateral approach fails, see RC Jaeger Microelectronic Circuit Design §18.7 Common errors in applying feedback theory, p. 1005. "Great care must be exercised in applying the two-port theory to ensure that the amplifier and feedback circuits can actually be represented as two-ports".

It's pretty clear that there is a great deal of practical amplifier design and simulation that is done where the unilateral block idealization has no bearing. In numerical simulation of real amplifiers, it is almost impossible to use. Changing the emphasis to suggest this failure is a rare occurrence is misleading. Using the word 'often' comes closer to the real balance. Brews ohare (talk) 00:27, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I offered my opinion in an edit summary. If you look at your source, it's a book on feedback amplifiers, where this common problem doesn't come up until chapter 13, and the expert who wrote that chapter wants his readers to think that this is real important stuff that they can't do without. Yet most of us engineers know that for many practical purposes we can get along without that, and have done so during our long and prosperous careers (let SPICE handle the deviations when they matter). Or is your experience different? Dicklyon (talk) 00:33, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

My experience is that the two-port approach works for illustrative purposes and leads one astray in real world cases because one taught by the traditional approach fails to check if the port conditions hold and is misled into using incorrect equations. Brews ohare (talk) 00:52, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, the reason the "indefensible" approach appears in introductory circuit texts before the exposition of "practical" methods is simply to have students crawl before they learn to walk. It may also be due to a misjudgment of the best pedagogy, based upon the very slow adaptation of methods well adapted to computers, and fuddy-duddy reliance upon ancient approaches. Brews ohare (talk) 16:07, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd add that the convolutions involved in casting the amplifier as a two-port problem often simply aren't worth the trouble as the more general methods prove easier to use. Brews ohare (talk) 01:34, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

'Sometimes' should be enough to alert one to check for validity of assumptions, if that's what you're worried about. Dicklyon (talk) 06:25, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I think what worries me is that I'd like a better relationship with you. This change of wording is based upon your gut feeling, and not evidence. The evidence besides a blank sourced statement of inadequacy is the development of better methods widely used and widely sourced. I find you remarkably able to produce sources when you want to go that way. But discussing them is not your thing - their use is mainly to support your views where that is possible.

There are plenty of editors on WP who don't use sources at all and they jeopardize the WP project. So I cling to the hope that we can collaborate better, and that could happen if we focussed on sources. Brews ohare (talk) 16:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Ping test

Dicklyon, RGloucester. Dicklyon (talk) 00:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Didn't get it. RGloucester — ☎ 01:02, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Me neither. Can't blame the template then. Dicklyon (talk) 01:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Debate on the relevance of mayors to Texas city history timelines

Hello Dicklyon. To widen our debate on the relevance of mayors to Texas city history timelines, I think we should solicit opinions of others via the main article talk pages for the cities in question: Austin, El Paso, and San Antonio. OK with you? -- M2545 (talk) 06:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I suggested that already. Dicklyon (talk) 06:48, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Great suggestion. Thanks. The question is now on each main article talk page. -- M2545 (talk) 07:14, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Maybe you can explain how a mayor's name is relevant in a timeline, if that mayor isn't known for anything. Dicklyon (talk) 07:01, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

In the Deletionism and inclusionism in Misplaced Pages debate, I am an inclusionist when it comes to crowdsourced history. Texas city mayors are elected and therefore of historical interest. Some mayors have a lot of impact, others less so, but they are all notable for being designated city leaders. -- M2545 (talk) 07:25, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I can see that you are inclusionist. But why? In fact, "notable" is a WP concept distinct from the significance I'm talking about, and some of them are likely not even notable. Dicklyon (talk) 07:29, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

The digital, web-based, open access, participatory Misplaced Pages platform affords new space for representing histories of cities. In the print era it was not practical to include lots of marginal events in timelines. Not anymore. Concise, heavily edited city timelines are valuable in some contexts, and so are longer detailed lists like Timeline of Paris or Timeline of Baltimore. -- M2545 (talk) 07:52, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I looked at the Paris one. It's a good example of not mentioning mayors except when they're known for something other than having been mayor. Dicklyon (talk) 22:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Reversion on Golden Ratio Addition

I don't see why something like this should be "sourced". All I was trying to do is note something about the golden ratio that anyone would be interested in, which is buried in all of the mathematical formulas, viz. (from the section within the article entitled 'Other Properties' that, by the way, has no footnote):

The sequence of powers of φ contains these values 0.618..., 1.0, 1.618..., 2.618...; more generally, any power of φ is equal to the sum of the two immediately preceding powers:

I sure have a hard time keeping anything that I add to Misplaced Pages from being reverted right away, so there is more behind this comment than just this item. Put another way, Misplaced Pages seems less like a collaborative effort than it did 5 or 6 years ago. Shocking Blue (talk) 19:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

That article may not be a good one to judge by, as it has an exceptional history of newcomers adding random factoids and us old timers trying to defend it from bloat and nonsense. It would be fine if you want to remove or tag {{citation needed}} any unsourced passage you see there; it will prompt others who think it belongs to put it back with a source. You can do that with yours, too, but if can't find a book or something that mentions the observation that you find interesting, then don't. Dicklyon (talk) 22:36, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Disengage

I shall be unilaterally disengaging from matters of capitalisation, &c. All such matters shall therefore cease to be discussed at my talk page. No further mention should be made of my username, unless it is necessary to convey some point. I will appreciate your co-operation in this regard. However, don't think that means you can avoid the processes that have already started on this matter. Please do the best that you can to give each decapitalisation due process. RGloucester — ☎ 00:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Enjoy!

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Event name RMs

Being WP:POINTy can be DISRUPTIVE

Dick... I hope you know that I do respect you as an editor... and it is because I do respect you that I must leave you this comment... Your current behavior is causing me concern. Your crusade regarding the use of upper case vs lower case is getting to the point of being disruptive. You may well be correct that most of these titles should use lower case ... but... if so, that fact is being lost in the shear volume of moves you are making and move requests that you are proposing. More importantly, that volume is beginning to piss other editors off. It is coming across as being WP:POINTy. When an editor starts to get POINTY, others stop paying any attention to the merits of the proposal... the discussion devolves into a debate about the behavior of the editor making the proposal.

I strongly suggest that you back off for a while, and then approach the issue at a much slower pace. Make your proposals one at a time, and space them out. Take a long term approach... you will probably get much better results. As it is, I am beginning to see knee jerk opposition, and growing anger. Blueboar (talk) 17:03, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I did slow down after RGloucester reverted a bunch and made us waste a few weeks discussing obvious mainenance cases. When he withdrew, I thought back to normal would be OK. My thousands of maintenance moves were mostly (99%) unchallenged and uncommented until that bunch of 30. These are not moves that need to be discussed. They are moves where WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS are so clear. But now you are stirred to oppose. Why? All of the RM discussions have closed in favor of WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. Are you thinking to change that? And what editors are getting pissed off by this? I'm not seeing it. Randy Kryn just followed me because he doesn't want "Civil Rights Movement" to be lowercased; it's not about volume. Dicklyon (talk) 17:13, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I am one editor who is concerned about the same issues Blueboar mentions above. We know RGloucester was unhappy, and User:Red Harvest also disagreed strongly. I'm also concerned that you consider a RM process in order to gather consensus a "waste". In the Watts Riots RM, you withdrew a process you wouldn't win when you accepted the closer's suggestion you ping involved editors on both subsequent discussions and new nominations, a condition you have failed to honor, by and large, given the sheer number of your moves. This willingness to ignore the large number of contributors' disagreement with your position makes your recent actions in this regard look pointy to me. I believe a centralized discussion which goes the full distance is the best solution for obtaining consensus. I believe the pace at which you have been pursuing this moves has become disruptive. I echo Blueboar's suggestions above. BusterD (talk) 19:46, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I completely disagree with your characterization. It was RGloucester who was disruptive of normal editing progress. Every RM discussion and the suggested centralized discussion at MOS and TITLE support these moves. There is nothing controversial here, and nobody angry as far as I can tell. I have followed the suggestion to withdraw the RM and break it up, and I have pinged all involved editors on each RM I have opened. Are there any moves I've made that you think don't meet the guidelines? Or that raise questions different from the ones already settled by consensus in favor of following the guidelines? Most editors seem to think guidelines, and following them, are good things. Dicklyon (talk) 20:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Again... Dick, it's not about the merits of the individual moves. It's about the volume of moves and move requests happening all at once. It seems as if you are out to prove a POINT... and that is disruptive. Even if we consider every one of your moves as an improvement... it can still be disruptive to make so many requests all at once. Blueboar (talk) 02:01, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

An RM every few days, for small groups, mostly provoked by a mass revert of uncontroversial maintenance moves by one who says he no longer cares, is hardly excessive, and is not about proving anything except that I work as policies and guidelines suggest. I've moved 100 or more in a day before, without comment, because anyone who looked would have agreed. I could understand, if I had a history of overturned or non-consensual moves, I might understand someone feeling like they need to check every one of my moves carefully; but I don't; no Requested Move discussion has gone against any of my capitalization moves, and I don't do the more controversial stuff (like primary topic issues). Dicklyon (talk) 02:05, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Sigh... OK... I have tried giving friendly advice... if you don't want to hear it I can't force you to. Blueboar (talk) 02:26, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

The point I'm hearing is that you're trying to slow me down. Got it. Dicklyon (talk) 02:30, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the point Blueboar and I are making is that we encourage you, for the sake of your own contributions, to slow yourself down. You aren't exactly covering yourself over with glory with disagreement here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. I left out most of the RGloucester back and forth. Again, for the sake of your good faith efforts, I encourage you to slow this mass moving down, or at least take the few seconds it would take to paste a brief explanation in the talk page of those pages you're moving without discussion. Such a talk page addition might stem the reaction of those who might be open to such moves if explained outside of edit summary. The move war at Lawrence Massacre was unnecessary. BusterD (talk) 05:54, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Got it. But we did discuss it at Talk:Lawrence_Massacre#Article_name_changed_without_discussion_.22Lawrence_Massacre.22_to_.22Lawrence_massacre.22 after the first move. Red Harvest and RGloucester insisted that guidelines are irrelevant, so it's still not at the style recommended by MOS:CAPS. We'll get back to it eventually. I've been going slow. Dicklyon (talk) 06:06, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

That is a baldfaced LIE and you know it. I have not insisted that guidelines are irrelevant. Instead I've said the guideline is unclear and doesn't address this directly. North Shoreman has commented on the problems as well. Your steamrolling disruptive style is a major part of the problem. As for recommended style, the Lawrence Massacre is in the correct form even by your fabricated guidelines. Red Harvest (talk) 19:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

A mischaracterization of your position, perhaps. You seemed to explicitly reject the criterion in MOS:CAPS that Misplaced Pages relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Misplaced Pages. and I remembered that as insisting that the guideline is irrelevant. Yes, you had a rationale for why my data from sources might be misleading, but that was a real stretch, not supported by looking at the books. Dicklyon (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

It appears a "mischaracterization" with the intent to deceive. That is lying. As a result I (and others) do not find you a credible source for evaluating the aforementioned criteria. Your tactics have been and remain underhanded and disreputable. Red Harvest (talk) 04:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

If you find any actual mistake in my evaluations relative to criteria, let me know. I'm still trying to figure out what you mean by underhanded, or disreputable. Sure, I'm not perfect, but I'm not playing games here, just working in a normal way toward improving wikipedia, per guidelines and policies. Dicklyon (talk) 05:14, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Several shortcomings have been found in both, and the problems have been brought to your attention by me and others. Unfortunately, you don't listen and instead arrogantly dismiss everyone and read things as you would prefer (circular logic.) Your course is reckless and disruptive. As I've said before, I'm neutral on the MOSCAPS part, except that it is NOT properly addressed in the referenced guideline and other editors don't read it the way you do, particularly your add on criteria. That's a problem with you, not the community. Red Harvest (talk) 19:17, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Shortcomings, yes, perhaps. Yet the community consensus has been in favor of the moves in each case that has been looked at carefully (with the exception of Lager Beer Riot that I withdrew after agreeing that it is often enough uppercase in sources to maybe be considered a proper name). If you know of any open case in which my conclusions from studying sources is not what the community consensus will support, due to an error in interpreting data from sources perhaps, please mention at least which title you mean. Dicklyon (talk) 19:40, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Some lurker comments

@BusterD: Your suggestion that this be turned into a centralized discussion is precisely the opposite of what Dicklyon was administratively directed to do by the closer. The original mass RM was the centralized discussion, and it failed to come to consensus and generated a lot of heat. The only consensus that emerged from that was that the cases should be discussed individually or in small more-alike groups, so having some big RFC or CENT on this would just cause more strife.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Another part of the close was the suggestion that subsequent discussions and new nominations cause lots of pinging; this was not honored, by and large. This choice might cause users like Randy Kryn at to feel alone in his position at AA Civil Rights Movement, and he certainly was not alone, judging from the reaction to the discussion at Talk:Watts Riots. This could have been handled in a manner more respectful of others. BusterD (talk) 18:33, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes it has occurred. I spent a lot of time in experiments to work out with RGloucester exactly what sequence of edits would cause the pinging of multiple people to work. I went to village pump technical and asked for help and got good info that led to the process that finally worked (that is, RGloucester said he finally got my ping when I followed up these suggestions). I have used the same method since then, and the same people seem to be showing up, so I'm assuming it is still working. If you think it's not, help me do more experiments until we get it to work more reliably. Dicklyon (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I have to take Dick in good faith on this. I got pinged, and I see clearly posted attempt to ping people, so I'm not sure what evidence Buster has of a failure to ping people. Pinging specific individuals any more specifically than has already been done would be tantamount to canvassing, anyway. These are supposed to be community discussions, not the same 5 people arguing the same points in forum after form (see also WP:FORUMSHOP, WP:PARENT). Based on those aspects of WP:CONSENSUS policy, I believe the requirement to ping people was actually a demonstrable error by the closer. Our discussions are supposed to engage a diversity of opinion among the editorship at large, not re-engender ongoing bitchfights between parties that are already overheated (as evidenced by this talk page and the RM discussions themselves).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  20:53, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

@Blueboar: This has not actually been a large volume of moves, and it's completely normal to do similar and related moves in series and in groups. There is no point is re-re-re-discussing that which has already been discussed. We should not be deciding in 2016 whether to capitalize or lower case the Foo insurrection of 2015; we should already know what to do, because previous RMs have told us what the consensus is. All of this "magical exceptionalism", the belief that there's something essentially "special" about this particular case or that is a bunch of nonsense. It's pure favoritism, based on subjective familiarity and interest. The recent "I'm from Chicago, and we capitalize that here" post demonstrates this most clearly. It's a subtle form of the WP:Specialist style fallacy, in which the specialization is simply personal or micro-cultural impact. As an example, lots of San Francisco Bay Area people, perhaps even a majority of them, capitalize 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake as "the Loma Prieta Earthquake" or "the Loma Prieta Quake" (forgetting or too young to know that it wasn't the first such quake, BTW). People everywhere do this with events of local/regional significance. But that is not an encyclopedic register, it's an informal or journalistic one at best. At any rate, from my viewpoint, Dicklyon has actually been slowing down already, so you seem to be demanding that he do what he's already done.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: The above said, I actually agree with the suggestion that slower is better when this kind of confused, knee-jerk resistance is met. My Misplaced Pages life became difficult for a while, over precisely the same situation and pattern, just with regard to animal breed instead of conflict/event article names. I had years of around a 99% success rate with manual, non-RM moves of all sorts, and it turned almost overnight into a witch-hunt, with some proposing to permanently move-ban me, and even indef block me entirely. After backing off a month (again – it was the third time), letting the angry fist-shakers wander off, and taking moves one at a time, I'm meeting almost no resistance. I really suck at politics, but this a clear lesson. Consensus here on Pickyweedia is tricky; we clearly do already have consensus for these sorts of moves, in the form of AT policy and MOS guidelines, but that doesn't matter much when a mob or even a tagteam decides you are The Unholy Enemy. Various observers on and critics of Misplaced Pages have intuited that WP is really run by, and its rules-in-effect, regardless what the written ones say, determined by whoever happens to be paying the most attention and whoever cares enough at any given time. If you piss people off, you make them care and pay attention with far more intent than they do about things that make them happy here, which they take for granted. For every person willing to give you a barnstar, there are 10 who'll give you shit. It's the restaurant review principle: Most reviews are negative because happy people are content and go on about their lives, while unhappy ones want to get back at you. (I hope I've internalized this lesson well enough myself, frankly. I'm a WP:BOLD type of editor.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I have noticed them hounding you. Thanks for pointing out the parallels. Dicklyon (talk) 06:54, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Lots of wisdom in what User:SMcCandlish says above. The mere appearance of battleground behavior doesn't help anyone. I remember an amazing epic edit war of vast scale a few years ago over the very minor subject of dashes and en-dashes. It ended in a huge RFC. What I couldn't understand then was the need to rush, to make the changes immediately, causing a troubling amount of back and forth in live pagespace. I for one appreciate User:Dicklyon's dedication to pursuing a uniform style and basing that pursuit on BOLD, MOS and RS. This is a laudable approach to enacting a large number of indicated changes. What I'm not seeing is a healthy respect for CONSENSUS, which is how we deal with disagreements without getting too adversarial. Consensus allows wikipedians to feel their views matter and are considered in the process, allowing them to feel validated even when consensus goes against them. Addressing the feelings of wikipedians is not minor thing. I'd appreciate it if in the future Dicklyon doesn't characterize discussions attempting to settle disagreement negatively ("primarytopic grab", "waste a few weeks discussing", "you're trying to slow me down"). Such displayed attitudes seem to invalidate others' opinions when they disagree with yours. Stating the "rightness" (my word) of your positions without validating others' concerns just raises the temperature, as friction often does. Please understand this feedback is intended to assist your work, not hinder it. MOS advocates do difficult, essential and sometimes unappreciated work on the pedia. Let's all agree to appreciate page watchers' efforts and opinions as well. Let's find a way to work together with as little friction as possible. This, I believe, is what Blueboar was trying to express in creating this thread. BusterD (talk) 18:33, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

All the related RM discussions that have closed so far have closed with a consensus to continue to respect the provisions of MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. I think some of the capitalizers keep pushing to try to get a precedence that local consensus can override the MOS, but so far I'm not seeing that. Dicklyon (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

To my reading, the statement above says "since I seem to be right, based on policy and previous discussion to date, why should I value what local pagewatchers think?" This is certainly a valid point of view, but not a particularly considerate or respectful one, IMHO. Those of us who don't work often in the MOS world are a bit loyal to our page work and our investments in time and see local consensus as being a very important determining factor, based on experience. BusterD (talk) 18:49, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I do very much want to know what other local pagewatchers think. See for example the query I initiated after Randy Kryn reverted my move, at Talk:African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_(1954–68)#Capitalizing_.22Civil_Rights_Movement.22_in_the_name_of_this_article. But the extent to which I value their thoughts depends on what they have to say. Dicklyon (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Aye. It's not fair to expect you to be especially conscious of others "feelings of being validated" (why do I feel like I'm in a gender studies class at a liberal arts community college all of a sudden?) when the opposition will do no such thing in return, and will not respect the site-wide consensuses already established at WP:AT and WP:MOS? I agree that some approach and wording changes can make things work more smoothly, as I've been learning the hard way, but Dick, you're on to something serious here: It's not you that's failing to respect or allow for the formation of consensus. You're operating on the basis of a consensus already established, and certain parties are trying very hard to not only ignore that consensus, but undo the policy basis for it, by treating WP:LOCALCONSENSUS as if it did not apply to them. This problem is widespread (it's at the root of the earlier witch-hunt against me), and not at all limited to this spate of RMs or their topic.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  21:01, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Insults

Continue with your gratuitous insults against me posted at various locations throughout WP and you will be reported. Hmains (talk) 19:31, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

• Specifically, your latest comment being posted on DagoNavy talk page, where you denigrate anyone/everyone who does not agree with you: "... When I started working case fixes in the area of labor strikes, riots, massacres, etc., I didn't realize that DagosNavy had already done some of the same ones, and had been reverted by a guy claiming to be sent by God, which stirred up a mess, attracted a couple of nuts and couple of anti-WP:MOS types, so it's being discussed. So far, all that have closed have held up the usual consensus that we follow MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, but as you can see, even though there is "nothing to discuss here", they keep at it...." You appear to take these discussions personally and it seems you are out to prove the point that 'you' are correct and anyone who might not agree with you cannot possibly have a valid view and are just in your way. Hmains (talk) 20:09, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I got my chronology wrong. The "guy sent by God" refers to RGloucester, who characterized himself that way; he's the guy who reverted me, and you are guy who reverted DagosNavy. I apologize for the confusion and incorrect implication. Dicklyon (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

This behavior seems to relate somewhat to the lack of empathy described by me in the section above. BusterD (talk) 20:26, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Dick, like me, does not have an empathy problem, simply limited patience for foolish, irrational arguments. It's a WP:COMPETENCE matter. Not everyone who wants to work on WP in a particular capacity is actually in a good mental position to do so (whether that be because of preconceived notions, over-emotional involvement, lack of knowledge, etc. – I'm not implying stupidity or insanity; people with those problems are easily identifiable and usually don't last long here). People who think that God (or their political party, or whatever) sent them to correct our terrible ways, and those who cannot believe that their local (or house-organ, specialist), idiosyncratic preferences do not represent a global, encyclopedic register of English language usage, are toward the top of the list of people least helpful to the project, at least when they are engaging in style and naming debates instead of working on article content in the areas at which they are actually competent. While, like me again, Dick can be a bit "short" with people, when pushed, it's important to note that WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA and WP:AGF do not require sweetness and excessive levels of tolerance and deference. We're supposed to have and foster a collegial environment, and anyone familiar with academe or any professional field knows and understands that colleagues are necessarily constructively critical of one another sometimes. Arriving on someone's talk page to accuse them of being insulting and to make threats of "reporting" is precisely the kind of "taking these discussions personally" of which the complainant is complaining. While I agree that these naming and style discussions sometimes become heated, "it takes two to argue", and the surest sign of someone failing the WP:WINNING test is venting about the alleged behavior and motives of their opposition (when it falls far short of transgressing the policies just mentioned) in a disagreement in which they themselves are clearly emotionally (or politically, religiously, or otherwise POV) invested.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  16:45, 22 December 2014 (UTC)