Talk:South Humberside Main Line

Requested move 17 April 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. Editors are encouraged to develop a guideline for naming these kind of articles. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:34, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

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South Humberside Main Line → South Humberside main line – I think that this will be more suitable, unless anyone disagrees otherwise, as per the renaming policy on the WikiProject Trains section Nathan A RF (talk) 19:06, 17 April 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 01:52, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

• Could we get a link to that? I doubt it's an actual policy, probably more of a guideline. At least one source capitalizes it. Mackensen (talk) 02:21, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Moving forward on Line case Nathan A RF (talk) 09:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:AT is the policy. Primergrey (talk) 12:50, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:AT does not get down to that level of detail. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Titles and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization) would be the operative rules I guess. But they don't really tell us what to do. They don't because they can't. We are on our own. Herostratus (talk) 03:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

• Well, jeez. There isn't really a right answer to this question. It's like "20th century" -- it both the proper noun, the proper name of a century (the century which is named "Twentieth Century") and also not a proper noun, a numbering of something (third door on the left, sixteenth birthday, twentieth century, etc.). FWIW I think we go with "20th century" here.

Well same with this. If you squint one way, it's the proper name of the line -- the South Humberside Main Line. If you squint the other way, that string just describes the main line which runs from Doncaster to Thorne and is named or described as South Humberside.

Complicating that is that 1) we don't really use outside sources to answer our manual-of-style questions, and 2) even if "South Humberside Main Line" is the actual legal name of the entity, this may not matter per WP:OFFICIALNAME.

Can't we get a clear rule on this and just move everything? There is no right or wrong answer here. Go formulate a rule (which, since there's no right or wrong, will be based on random whim really) and just do a mass move. On the proximate question I don't have an opinion. Herostratus (talk) 03:16, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@Herostratus: You're obviously unfamiliar with the recent history here. Mass moves of railway line articles have been repeatedly and vehemently rejected because one size really does not fit all. The consensus is that if the title of the article is a name for the line, e.g. Robin Hood Line, then "Line" should be capitalised because it is not a railway line being described as e.g. "Robin Hood". However, if the article title is purely descriptive, such as Thornbury branch line, then "line" should not be capitalised. Which applies in any particular case can only be determined through looking at sources because some things that appear descriptive on the surface are actually proper names (e.g. Looe Valley Line) and probably vice versa to (but I can't immediately think of any examples). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways/Archive 37 for most of the background to this. Thryduulf (talk) 12:07, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, [[User:Thryduulf, right -- I'm not familiar with larger history; can't know everything. RMs are going to pull from the larger community and we're not going be familiar with the background, we will work from the arguments on the page and from first principles.

I understand what you're saying. It is sensible. At the same time, it doesn't seem to work, or at least isn't here.

Like take this RM right here. The entire nomination is "I think that this will be more suitable, unless anyone disagrees otherwise, as per the renaming policy on the WikiProject Trains section". Well heck, "more suitable". How I am supposed to know? Either there's a "Topic-specific naming conventions for article titles" guideline or there isn't (nominator did not point to one and there's nothing listed at WP:AT in the "Science · Technology · Transport" section). If there isn't, I'm on my own.

It would very defensible to have a rule "Let's just name everything with Line capitalized" or conversely a rule "Let's not capitalize line". That would mean you'd end up sometimes with "Robin Hood line" or "Looe Valley line" or conversely "Line" capitalize in cases where its arguably not part of a proper name.

So what? If it is not covered by WP:AT (and it's not) it is not that important. Either way is fine. It's not as if readers are going to be like "Oh my God --what is this???' I am looking for information on the Looe Valley Line, but have been mistakenly taken to some article titled 'Looe Valley line'. I know of no such entity, and this is no more use than taking me to Lithuania women's national football team. Back to Britannica for me!"

Since it doesn't much matter, I'd recommend the people at the operative project having a discussion and picking or the other (take a vote, or get everyone to agree to flip a coin if you like), write it up as guideline, list it on WP:AT as "Topic-specific naming convention for article titles", and everything will be all Sir Garnet.

If you don't want to do that or can't...I dunno. I can't really tell if "South Humberside Main Line" is a proper noun or not because it's not that simple. And if the Daily Blather uses "South Humberside Main Line" and Evening Twaddle has "South Humberside main line", that's just their style guide and does not answer the question "is 'main line' part of a proper noun' because it is, at the end of the day, a matter of personal opinion. Editor Mackensen above points to one source where its capitalized. Have the editors of that source gathered round and come to "after due consideration, we have decide that in this case the entire entity is a proper noun"? Of course not. Their style guide is to do it that way, or possibly they don't even have a style guide and the person writing it did it that way because that's how she rolls.

So here's what I'll do. I'll generate a random number (you'll have to take my word for it), and evens="Main Line", odds="main line". Here goes... Huh, "random number generator" in Google brings one up... click on Generate... it is... 6! So Bob's your uncle. Now I can vote. Herostratus (talk) 16:24, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't expecting you to know the history, it's just that as there has been a lot of it and it has been rather contentious at times that educating you felt important but obviously I didn't get the tone quite right. There used to be a defacto consensus for capitalisation as almost all articles were capitalised. Then along came 1 or 2 users making multiple undiscussed moves to lower case (based on their interpretation of WP:AT and related guidelines and essays, sometimes all claimed as policies). This continued despite objections, reversions, and accusations of refusing to listen from all sides and ended up at ANI at least once and was not far from arbcom at times. Personally my preference is for uppercase when it's unclear as I regard that as less wrong the incorrectly making a proper noun lowercase, but other people hold precisely the opposite view. Thryduulf (talk) 16:44, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

OK I see. Well if its just one or two editors then maybe we can get a actual guideline made that says to use uppercase. I'd vote for it. Ping me you start a discussion to that end. Herostratus (talk) 20:03, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• Opppose per "6", above. on the merits. Herostratus (talk) 16:24, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:South Western main line which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 11:47, 20 July 2021 (UTC)