Talk:Briggs Plan

Article title

Surely the name should be Briggs plan, without the apostrophe. That is the normal style for such names.

The apostrophe has led to another issue, i.e. references to "the Briggs' plan" are ungrammatical. (They might be grammatical if they referred to an organisation or person commonly known as "The Briggs", but this is not the case.) Personally, I dislike the use of "-s'" as a possessive for individuals whose names end in s, as opposed to "-s's" (i.e. Briggs's), but that battle has probably been lost. Again, there is an elegant solution, and that is removing all of the apostrophes. 58.162.241.149 (talk) 06:46, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I understand what you are trying to say but all of the most reputable historians of the Malayan Emergency keep the apostrophie so it must have some importance, even though neither of us know what it is. Even so, keeping the spelling the way it is will help people who are reading books on Malaya or examining historical documents which mention the Briggs' Plan, will have an easier time finding the wiki page the way it is. BulgeUwU (talk) 15:55, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I find this unconvincing. The apostrophe does not have some unknown importance; it is just a relict. The "finding the page" argument can be summarily dismissed: redirects are a thing, and search engines disregard punctuation. "The Briggs' Plan" is simply ungrammatical, regardless of possessive style (which the first editor above might be relieved to learn is "Briggs's" at WP; see MOS:'S). At this moment, the page is "Briggs' Plan", and the text refers to "the Briggs' Plan". The title of the page is at odds on the one hand with WP's possessive style, which would have us write "Briggs's Plan", and on the other with the prevailing use of the definite article, which by undisputed grammatical rule calls for "the Briggs Plan".

The right solution is to remove the apostrophe, throughout. The page should be "Briggs Plan" and the text should refer to "the Briggs Plan", after the model of the Schlieffen Plan, the Manstein Plan, the Dyle Plan, &c. The apostrophe is ugly, confusing, and conveys no information; it is simply a mistake. That specialists use it is an argument of some weight in its favour, to the extent it is true, but considerably weakened by the limited currency the phrase has in common use. Is this just a matter of a small number of military scholars persistently reproducing some original error? It is not too late! The correction can begin here!

I know we follow the sources; but we also correct trivial errors and typos, even in the quite strict case of direct quotation—which this is not. See MOS:CONFORM, in particular the note, which advises: "things like 'Mexican-American War' are routinely corrected to 'Mexican–American War' on Wikipedia, including in titles of cited sources." My argument is that the apostrophe does not rise to the status of a formal name, which status would exempt the phrase from correction (see "St Thomas' Hospital" at MOS:'S); it is at most a convention among a relatively small group of users, and can still be normalized in wider use. The justification is readability. The apostrophe is uncontroversially wrong, and will trip up almost every reader, again and again; what is more, the proposal to fix it will recur on this talk page from now to the end of time, because the Malayan Emergency will never achieve the universal familiarity it would take for the apostrophe to stop provoking double takes. Regulov (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Do "all of the most reputable historians of the Malayan Emergency" spell it this way, BulgeUwU? Have you confirmed that with your own eyes, looking at the actual books? Looking at the history of the page, I find that the early drafts feature some pretty spotty spelling: "stiffle", "sympatizers", "coersion". Isn't it possible this is just Earth's typo, preserved in amber? The page was moved to "Briggs Plan", and in fact stayed that way for five years, before somebody (in my opinion wrongheadedly) moved it back to bring it into conformity with the text, which retained the error. I think we're just chasing our own tail, here, and I think maybe you're just assuming the historians spell it that way because they are cited, and you're assuming someone has checked it, just like all the other editors before you have assumed. At Malayan Emergency, it's mainly written "Briggs Plan", with the notable exception of when someone intends to link to this page, and they scrupulously add the apostrophe. Regulov (talk) 02:50, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm just going to be bold. Regulov (talk) 02:55, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Per the second point of WP:RMUM, this move should not have been made. I'll be reverting it requesting it be reverted so the discussion can continue with the stable version in place. --Pinchme123 (talk) 12:27, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I've put in the request. --Pinchme123 (talk) 12:36, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I moved it back, procedurally. Regulov, please use the procedure at WP:RM. No such user (talk) 13:31, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I understand the procedure, but I really think this is just a giant waste of time. It's "Briggs Plan".

I am not in a position to thoroughly check all of the sources.

• The Siver source is available online, and does not mention Briggs or the Briggs Plan.
• The Irrawaddy Magazine link fails to resolve.
• Most of the text of the Historical Dictionary of Malaysia is available through Google Books. A search turns up seven mentions. The entry for New Villages has "the Briggs Plan". The entry for Malayan Communist Party has "the Briggs Plan". The entry for (wait for it) Briggs Plan has "the Briggs Plan", twice. There are two typos: the Chronology refers to "the Briggs's Plan"; this usage recurs once in the Introduction. "The Briggs's Plan" is, of course, no more wrong than "the Briggs' Plan"—in fact, it is arguably less wrong, since the formation "it was Briggs's plan" would be in line with WP's house possessive style, and the obviously wrong "the Briggs's Plan" does not invite the misreading that the plan was the brainchild of the Brigg family—but I'm going to go ahead and guess nobody thinks that should be the title of the page. I submit the theory that the introductory matter just didn't get edited as closely as the entries, which were finished first. In my experience this happens a lot.
• A search of those pages of Newsinger's British Counterinsurgency available on Google Books yields eight instances of "the Briggs Plan", one of them in the form of a subheading. I found no other spellings.
• Two references to "the Briggs Plan" in Newsinger's The Blood Never Dried. No exceptions.
• Burnleigh's Small Wars, Faraway Places has "the Briggs Plan", and, incidentally, also "the Briggs strategy".
• A Google Books search yields two mentions of "the Briggs Plan" in Chen Ping's autobiography.
• John Leary's Violence and the Dream People has "the Briggs Plan" at least twice; it has a "Briggs Plan" index entry.

Need I go on? The objecting editor above, in referring to the practice of "all of the most reputable historians", was in fact referring, unhelpfully, only to the very page under discussion, never having actually encountered any of the most reputable historians, meaning this move is "controversial" in only the most nugatory sense. But by all means let the "discussion" continue! Who will discuss with me? Regulov (talk) 05:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, you had one person start a discussion with you, which you ignored for more than a month, then you came back to post a wall of text that begins with some questionable tone, which suggests you weren't here to WP:AGF. Then five minutes later you declared your intention to make an improper request for an uncontested page move when clearly it was contested (and you made that request 15 minutes after that). I'm not surprised you're having difficulty finding a substantive discussion. No one claimed the move was "controversial", so I don't know where that quotation comes from, but it certainly was "contested" and I see no evidence here of even a feigned attempted at a good-faith discussion.

For the record, since I'm involved now, I'll Comment for others reading along that so far I see a lot more evidence in support of "Briggs Plan" (with or without "The") than for "Briggs' Plan" in reliable sources, with a quick cursory look. A quick search with another search engine turns up mostly the former at sources like this and this, whereas most of the examples of the latter are wikis (I wouldn't be surprised if they're mirrors).

--Pinchme123 (talk) 07:37, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Excuse me? I am not the anonymous user at the top of this thread. That is a different person, and I don't take the implication kindly. As often happens, that person was correct, but couldn't be bothered to fix the mistake, because someone officious stepped in to contest them on no grounds whatsoever. It often takes a certain amount of bullheadedness to push even very straightforward improvements through WP's jungle of hurt feelings. Don't "wall of text" or "questionable tone" me, or accuse me of failing to assume good faith. You know perfectly well that this move is going to go ahead, that the objection at the top of the page has not the slightest merit, that the mistake we are correcting is pretty embarrassing, and that if you hadn't objected on technical grounds no one and nothing would have been harmed. You are quite right that I didn't follow the procedure to the letter, and there's no harm done this way, either, sure; but don't expect me to thank you, and don't think you can turn it around and make me out to be uncivil or destructive. Regulov (talk) 07:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

"More evidence", Pinchme123? "Mostly the former"? Be honest. Have you found a single instance of "the Briggs' Plan"? Even one? Regulov (talk) 08:01, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

But seriously, Pinchme123, if you have no substantial objection to the page title, invoking RMUM is just a big waste of time for everyone. If you don't disagree, just let it go. We are not bureaucracy, and we do not have to vote about every detail. I only procedurally moved it back because I thought there might be a substantial objection, but just a casual look at the search results and the ngram confirms that the apostrophe is of the superflouous kind. No such user (talk) 08:11, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Seriously @No such user:, at the time I made that request it legitimately looked like there was evidence and it legitimately looked like someone came to force a one-sided decision without any attempt of discussion. So yes, I too thought there was a substantial objection. You can do what you like here, but don't come after me for making the same exact assumption as you. I didn't object as a matter of bureaucracy, I objected because one user who seemed to ignore an attempted conversation for a month, then came back to impose their position in the face of objection. --Pinchme123 (talk) 08:18, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Regulov: you are absolutely right my implication was wrong and I apologize for it. I saw your argument supporting the possessive "s's" and made a wrong mental (unconscious) leap. I stand by my statements about your tone and the swiftness with which you put in a request for an uncontested move when it was contested. No such user is right this isn't a bureaucracy, but that doesn't give any user carte blanche to steamroll. --Pinchme123 (talk) 08:26, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. Let's move on... No such user (talk) 08:27, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Regulov and everyone else for your contributions. I wasn't expecting anything to happen quickly, so I forgot to check this. 58.162.241.149 (talk) 15:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 27 August 2021

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved per request. Favonian (talk) 10:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

---

Briggs' Plan → Briggs Plan – See above. Regulov (talk) 05:55, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nomination, as discussed in detail under section header "Article title" above. Using the form "Briggs' Plan" instead of Briggs Plan is akin to using "Marshall's Plan" instead of Marshall Plan. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 07:15, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support. I will be impressed, though not converted, if anyone can find even one instance of "the Briggs' Plan" in a reliable source. Regulov (talk) 08:02, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support per ngram, showing dominance in books. No such user (talk) 08:03, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.