Talk:Mexican Plateau

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Requested move 13 February 2022

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: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 14:33, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

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Mexican Plateau → Mexican plateau – Not usually capitalized in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 06:43, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support per ngram evidence, WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. It is capped only a little more than half the time in sources and historically, it was substantially not capped. It is not capped in a substantial majority of sources per guidelines. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:27, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support per above.  — SMcCandlish ☏¢ 😼  08:51, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. This isn't done per WP:PLACE. I've noticed people have a tendency to skim over "Ngram evidence" and not focus on the details; not only is that link showing a more common usage of Mexican Plateau in modern literature, but even in the 1906-1959 interval where the uncapitalized plateau, well...plateaus, you see the capitalized Plateau in sources that are actually part of its relevant academic sources. We also can't rule out instances of people uncapitalizing it as part of a more archaic style or simply forgetting to do so. Ngram isn't a perfect science. TangoFett (talk) 21:53, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

The link given (Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Names of classes) states: If a place belongs to a class, and the class is conventionally capitalized as part of the proper name of the place, then Wikipedia capitalizes that class name (conversely, lowercase otherwise) ... [emphasis added] The link does not create an exception to MOS:CAPS, WP:NCCAPS or WP:AT but is quite consistent with the advise at these places. MOS:CAPS would define what "conventionally capitalised" means: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. The n-grams do not distinguish running text from headings or captions and like, where we would expect to see title case. Consequently, the tend is to over-report capitalisation. Considering this, the term is only being capitalised about half of the time in sources since about 1950 up to the present and is almost predominantly lowercase as we go back further in time. The n-gram evidence shows that the threshold for capitalisation in WP (per MOS:CAPS, "a substantial majority") is not being met. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:27, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

The pre-1950 sources aren't exactly relevant; naming conventions as well as the paradigms of academia itself changes significantly through that time. Were we to consider naming conventions as a whole in the academic literature, then Wikipedia would be using the "E-word" in place of Inuit, for example. Back to the ngrams, again, I'd advise looking at the actual sources listed in the post-1959 intervals where most of the big sources pertaining to physical and cultural geography/landscape are capitalizing "plateau" and are not used in the context of titles. The ones failing to capitalize are sources not immediately involved in geographical conventions where you can reasonably expect they may not care about the distinction. We can consider them to fall outside the purview of "reliable" per their topics. This is also true even in the 06-59 interval. When, instead of Ngram, you opt for Google Scholar and view only the scientific literature, the capitalization of Plateau becomes even more pronounced, and to be clear this is ignoring titles. And it shouldn't be surprising; capitalizing the generic landform type when part of a proper noun is the status quo in most manuals of style, including Wikipedia's own.

Interestingly enough, Spanish Wikipedia doesn't seem to use "Altiplanicie Mexicana" at all, claiming it's formerly used in place of "Mesa del Centro", but doesn't really elaborate and a quick look suggests the two aren't exactly the same regions. I think someone acquainted with the Spanish literature should look into that and see if our Spanish translation for the region is being accurately reflected. TangoFett (talk) 12:37, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I looked at your link. On the first page of ten results, five were using "Mexican plateau"? Cinderella157 (talk) 12:55, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd be interested in seeing if we were looking at different results, but in mine six capitalized Plateau, five did not, and of those two used it interchangeably. Over the next three pages, 27 capitalized, 9 did not, and of those 6 used the two interchangeably. Again, capitalization changes the semantics. In the proper noun of a geographic area, you capitalize the generic element of the region (e.g. Mississippi River), with the exception of if another generic follows it (e.g. Mississippi River valley). Not doing so allows the word to become more informal and common, so "the Mexican plateau" becomes "the plateau that is in Mexico" while "Mexican Plateau" is a more clearly defined and indexed geographical area. It seems reasonable to say that most people not capitalizing either did so by mistake or are using it in this form (and there's many ways for that to go through peer review). Mexican Plateau is a proper noun and therefore is very much in line with MOS:CAPS. The bits in there and in WP:PLACE about conventional use also seem to lean slightly more towards consensus in general conventions rather than specific words; even then, there is sufficient convention here to keep the title and not so much its replacement. Since capitalization for place names is even more clearly defined in both and so supersedes the given rule of thumb, I don't see much room here.

Considering that both the Ngram and Google Scholar evidence shows more support of capitalization, with the non-capitalized version having less substantiality, the more clearly defined capitalization style in MOS:CAPS and WP:PLACE, as well as even more general grammatical conventions (which is part of the consensus that Wikipedia defers to), my position to oppose the move remains. TangoFett (talk) 23:23, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support. As Cinderella157 has noted, ngrams tends to overestimate capitalization rates since it indexes not just running text but also titles, section headings, etc. So I think the threshold for MOS:CAPS is clearly not met here. Colin M (talk) 18:42, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Have you taken a look at any of the counter-evidence I posted? That over-representation in capitalized titles and headings does not exist in a significant frequency. TangoFett (talk) 19:08, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I read your discussion above with Cinderlla157 and from that did not get the impression that the term is "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority" of RS. But since you asked, I did my own inspection of recent Google Scholar results. Of the first 10 I looked at, 4 capitalized, 3 used lowercase, 1 used a mix, and 2 were irrelevant (e.g. a paper about the "Mexican Plateau Horned Lizard", which does not refer to the plateau per se, at least not in the publicly accessible abstract). Capitalization may be more common in scientific writing, but it doesn't seem like it's done by a "substantial majority". Colin M (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per Category:Plateaus of Mexico, there is more than one plateau in Mexico, so Mexican Plateau is a proper name and needs to be capitalised. Vpab15 (talk) 23:15, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Capitalized in Geonames.org, Geonames.nga.mil including all alternate names. Also all geographic plateau names are capitalized in Geonames.org Mike Cline (talk) 13:20, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Geonames is a volunteer edited site like WP. Consequently, it is not a WP:RS. Further, its style guide states to use "proper case", which is a synonym for title case. It is therefore not useful to determine how the text would be rendered in prose and therefore, how it would be titled in WP. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2022 (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.