Talk:The Motherfucker with the Hat

Plot

Can anyone who has seen the show please add a more detailed synopsis? --Bialytock&Bloom (talk) 21:49, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to The Motherfucker with the Hat. Favonian (talk) 10:47, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

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The Motherfucker With the Hat → The Motherfucker with the Hat – The article should be moved to the page title with the correct capitalization (lowercase with) per WP:CAPS. The editor who moved the page to the current capitalisation offered as a rationale that, "Wikipedia's conventions are irrelevant here, nearly every source uses a capital 'W'" A quick survey of the article's sources shows that "nearly every" is an exaggeration: Some sources capitalize (Playbill, New York Times), some do not (IBDb, New York Post). This suggests that each source is capitalizing according to its own style guidelines. We should do the same and adhere to WP:CAPS. ShelfSkewed Talk 05:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The title "The Motherfucker With the Hat" was intentional. Wikipedia seems to have fairly arbitrary standards of enforcement in this area. People seem to think that capitalization shifts based on personal preference are acceptable, but it would never be acceptable to engage in certain kinds of word extension ("Since U Been Gone" is a good example). Anyway, I think I lost this battle at I'm With You and I'll probably lose it here as well. I think the current standard is fairly silly and that when there's a discernible preference by the author, we should go with that, but oh well. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:43, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

We'd also never let the article of iPhone read "IPhone" to adhere to some personal preference. I'm fairly sure I've seen prominent newspapers do this in headlines occasionally. We take into account what the author wants. Looks like we forced E. E. Cummings to be at the capitalized form, though. Hmm. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Just picking up on the E. E. Cummings point, that's actually a common misconception. See E. E. Cummings#Name and capitalization; more often than not, Cummings himself used the capitalised form. Jenks24 (talk) 06:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's fair. We'll use danah boyd as an example instead. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:37, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support sentence case, per WP:TITLEFORMAT and WP:CAPS. — Bility (talk) 16:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It looks like there are all kinds of exceptions already. If the birds can get a pass and use title case (e.g., Peregrine Falcon), I don't see a reason why using the creator's intended case can't similarly be an exception. As I said, we already respect creator discretion in cases such as Since U Been Gone, U Remind Me, etc. And we respect creator discretion in cases such as iPod or eBay or whatever else. I'm not sure why creator discretion needs to be disregarded for prepositions. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
    • You have referred to "a discernible preference by the author", "what the author wants", and "creator discretion". What verifiable evidence do you have that the author does in fact prefer a particular capitalization? And even if such evidence exists, I'm not sure it would matter in this context unless the author's choice had to do with a specific artistic intent or an attempt at branding (as is certainly the case with iPhone, and could possibly be argued for non-standard usage in song titles). --ShelfSkewed Talk 05:12, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
      • Well, it isn't as though I have a decree from Mr. Guirgis himself (though it doesn't seem to matter if I did).

        I created the article at the current title based on the Times piece and based on the title being used on the official Web site of the production (site is no longer up, but you can see the title in Google search results). Strangely, the Web site's title is using "The MotherF**ker With the Hat". Brushing aside the issue of the capital F, the capitalized "with" is easy to see. Standard convention for newspapers and the like is to use lowercase for prepositions like this, isn't it? One has to wonder why so many publications went with the capitalized "With"....

        Anyway, I feel I'm coming quite close to beating a dead horse here. I've voiced my opinion, as have a few others. All that's left is to let the chips fall where they may, I suppose. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 18:55, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support, Wikipedia's capitalisation of work titles isn't "some personal preference", but was developed by consensus to deal with differing capitalisation among reliable sources, and is based on the suggestions of several style guides on how to capitalise work titles. The capitalisation of work titles is really a question of style, neither way is wrong, but we should be consistent in how we do it. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

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. No further edits should be made to this section.