Talk:Civil rights movement/Archive 9

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Archive 5

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Requested five pages be renamed and moved 27 December 2014

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. No consensus on the proposed moves, nor apparent agreement on any of the subsequent suggestions on removing the hyphen or the words "African-". Number 5 7 17:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC) Number 5 7 17:10, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

– Per MOS:CAPS, wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization; per WP:NCCAPS we use sentence case for titles. Caps are not needed for these, as they are not proper names, and "civil rights movement" is not a proper name, as evidenced by widespread lowercasing in reliable sources, as well as by guidance in common style guides such as Chicago Manual of Style that specifically use "civil right movement" as an example of what NOT to capitalize. The discussion above at Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68)#Capitalizing "Civil Rights Movement" in the name of this article did not reveal any new reasons to believe these are proper names, just that they are important and deserve respect, which I'm sure we all agree with; WP does not use caps for that purpose. Dicklyon (talk) 07:31, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Note: results may apply to other articles, such as the recently created African-American Civil Rights Movement in popular culture. Dicklyon (talk) 04:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Survey and discussion

Strongly oppose, my reasons are numerous and some some are outlined above. Just Google or Bing the term 'civil rights movement' (decapitalized for fairness), go page after page until 28 pages in (that's where I gave up the ghost), and you will see that the common name for even that term, let alone the more proper names used when calling it the 'African American Civil Rights Movement' or '1960s Civil Rights Movement', is capitalized. Using search engines to seek out the common name suggested in Wikipedia's policy on name moves (see WP:COMMONNAME and point number seven at WP:SET, thanks). And the common name is the name which has been in use on Wikipedia since day one, and used on this page which has been classed a level-4 vital article in History since it was created. The editor suggesting this has been on a roll rolling headlong into many of the social movement articles of the 20th Century, decapitalizing (thus deemphasizing) their importance. He wants to decapitalize the Pullman Strike and the Homestead Strike, the standard names of those very important union history events since soon after they took place, and presented selective evidence to convince others that he did deep research on them (all you have to do is Google or Bing them too to find their common names, go about 28 pages in as well and the common names still hold up). I have to assume good faith to not think he was out to give the social movements on Wikipedia a kick in the behind. In any case, as mentioned, the variations on 'African American Civil Rights Movement' and '1960s Civil Rights Movement' have been capitalized on Wikipedia since day one. It is the standard name of the movement, the movement is initialed CRM in the literature (not Crm, or crm), and capitalization of those names has a long history. This is a very controversial suggestion, and hopefully people will consider agreement to leave these page titles just as they are. Thanks. Randy Kryn 14:42 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

Here is my comment from the above section, where this question originally was being discussed and then for some reason was cut short and brought to a new section:

Dicklyon and I also had an interesting discussion on my talk page on this issue, which got me thinking. Glad you brought it here for more comments. To me the 1950s-1960s Civil Rights Movement is a proper name, akin to 'American Revolution', 'French Revolution', 'World War II', and the 'American Civil War'. Although each of these was made up of thousands of events, they can and are classified as one event, epic fights or epic transitions from one long-standing social agreement to another. The Civil Rights Movement from 1955 to 1968 was run, strategized, and organized by a small group of people. It was a culmination of both the hopes and work of people who came before it, and a melding with information brought forward by Mohandas Gandhi. It run fairly smoothly from one named and focused event and right to another - the legal desegregation of public transportation, of education, of the use of public businesses and space, of the voting booth, and of real estate transactions. It set out to do certain things, and did what it set out to do. It learned as it progressed, and the nonviolent tactics and strategies used were designed to create national dialogues, to change social agreements which had been in place for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and did so by putting forward a series of contexts in which people could express and confront their emotions, fears, and societal habits. It worked, and, for instance, segregated drinking fountains now look like an insanity where once they were accepted as "just the way it is" by blacks and whites. It took a very few years to change all of that . Hence the proper name, capitalized, and rightfully honored since that interesting and hopefully not unique era. Randy Kryn 12:44 17 December, 2014 (UTC)

p.s. After posting this request Dicklyon tried to remove this policy from the naming policy using false information that a consensus to remove it had been reached, and was quickly reversed: "Where the terms "COMMONNAME" and "common name" appear in this policy they mean a commonly or frequently used name, and not a common name as used in some disciplines in opposition to scientific name." The capitalization of Civil Rights Movement, especially when used with a prefix such as 'African-American' or '1960s' is undeniably commonly used, is frequently used. Randy Kryn 16:07 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

Removing that redundant footnote had no connection to policy or guidelines; it's only about redundantly clarifying distinction between our COMMONNAME concept and scientific versus common names questions, as in biology. Dicklyon (talk) 17:32, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

That's your claim/position but I submit that that line has valid applications far beyond the use of Latin names in biology...that phrase "in some disciplines" is not limited to science; COMMONNAME gets used as a bludgeon, but if it's read fully it also justifies the use of names that don't meet the statistical/mechanical-thinking "majority", but includes contexts where another name is more valid as a title even though cites don't support it; revising MOS in the course of a debate I've seen before, with some of the same players, per the hyphen-endash "war" over Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District#Requested move and Poland-Lithuania and similar, which involved weeks of argumentative oppositional RMs to fix and a lot of time was wasted proving the obvious (about the regional district titles) to overturn the MOS agenda that had made "typographical" arguments in opposition to legal names; finally it was the BC govt' own styleguide that put a sock in it and closed the RM, after disputatious uselessness; similarly a series of RMs to restore standalone native endonym titles was around the same time warred over by the perpetrator of the undiscussed and highly controversial moves, and part of the resolution of that per Talk:St'at'imc#Requested move involved COMMONNAME's exceptions and the statistical "bulk" of the archaic name's citation was overridden, also for other reasons. Those five RMs (Nlaka'pamux, Secwepemc, Ktunaxa, Tsilhqot'in were the others at that time, many more followed, again exchaustively fought) were not MOS issues, but serve as a case in point how narrowly applying one (mis-written) guideline, and one guideline only through a very narrow statistical machine-logic lens without due thought and some acumen, otherwise known as WP:COMMONSENSE (in the case of those RMs that was WP:NCL, which didn't conform to other guidelines and which its makers would spout off as if it was policy in their RM votes). The peremptory tone of the MOS zealots here is very recognizable (don't NPA me for that, since you used it on Randy Kryn and RGloucester on MOSTALK, you're the ones that term describes, not RK) and the attitude that it's OK to move the goalposts, as re that deletion, is typical of game-play in Wikipedia discussions. COMMONNAME is being used a bludgeon and being narrowly defined and interpreted and important bits of it ignored by the same people who patrol MOS to "control" Wikipedia.Skookum1 (talk) 04:08, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Wow. I'm going to have to read that over again, but it sounds like a summary of a very interesting period in Wikipedia history. Looking forward to more comment on this (there's also a request "on the table" for Dicklyon, not answered as yet). In my own instance I came into this decapitalization thing real late, just after Dicklyon had already made all the pages small-case, and I reversed him with more of a "huh?", never imagining such an attempt before. Then he wrote me on my talkpage, we talked, I suggested a move to this page, and we talked some more (along with other people joining in). During this I checked Dicklyon's recent edits, and saw an attempt on the 'Pullman Strike' talk page to decapitalize that one as well as others in a group, including the historic 'Homestead Strike'. That elicited another 'huh?' so I joined in on that one. I know almost nothing of what came before, just the things mentioned here. Will read that post over a couple of times later, to try to wrap my head around it. Thanks. Randy Kryn 18:34 1 January, 2015 (UTC) - aha, first time I wrote or typed '2015'.

I tried a Google search as suggested – I see a lot of lowercase. Is that what you intended? Decapitalizing in no way deemphasizes. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:26, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I oppose the present title. "African-American" should not be included, as it is anachronistic. I support the title American civil rights movement, which is used by the Britannica. It should be lowercased. However, including "African-American" is a non-starter for me. I don't know how that happened. RGloucester — ☎ 16:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

By the way, Mr Lyon's NGRAMS is a bit off, because it searches for "African-American civil rights", which is a much broader term. Not sure why he did that. This is a more appropriate search. 16:42, 27 December 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by RGloucester (talk • contribs)

Moved n-gram response to data section below (tl;dr: it's limited to 5-grams, but African-American Civil Rights Movement is a 6-gram). Dicklyon (talk) 17:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

As to other renaming questions, that's not really a reason to oppose the capitalization fix, and can be taken up separately; you'd have to consider what to do with such things as Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement. Dicklyon (talk) 16:59, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It isn't "separate". You are proposing an anachronistic title, so I'm opposing it. The only title I support is American civil rights movement, with the appropriate dates. "African-American" cannot be included, especially in the case of the "1896-1954" article. That just doesn't make any sense. It is a total kibosh. The proper way to do this is American civil rights movement (1896–1954), &c. I do support lowercasing, regardless of the title. However, I cannot support any title that includes "African-American". We don't have an article called "Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement", by the way. It is a redirect. RGloucester — ☎ 17:51, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd prefer '1960s Civil Rights Movement' myself. As for searching the book list you guys like, I tried 'Civil Rights Movement' and compared it to 'civil rights movement' and the other names. Here is the result. Seems conclusive too, although these, depending on what words are selectively kept and left out (I notice Dicklyon didn't include the one linked in this edit, although it's an obvious one, so I just did) are probably, maybe certainly, not as indicative of the common name as a search engine walkabout. And even Dicklyons pick and choose examples show the capitalized name is very common. Randy Kryn 17:28 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

The lowercase alternative is still much more common, as you'll see if you add it, as here. Dicklyon (talk) 17:48, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

"1960s Civil Rights Movement" is no good, as it doesn't specify where the movement took place, per WP:PRECISE. American civil rights movement is the proper way to describe these events. It is common, not anachronistic (unlike "African-American"), and WP:PRECISE. RGloucester — ☎ 17:51, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Support as nom. Routine maintenance moves per title policy and style guidance, as supported by data from reliable sources. See data section. Per WP:BRD, I had boldly moved these earlier, and Randy Kryn reverted my moves, and we discussed (at Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68)#Capitalizing "Civil Rights Movement" in the name of this article); but we need a wider discussion, as his desire to capitalize for importance is at odds with my desire to conform to wikipedia policy and guidelines – WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS – which say we only capitalize for proper names and such, and that we look to sources to see if the topic is generally treated as a proper name – which it most certainly is not in this case. Dicklyon (talk) 18:14, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

It isn't routine maintenance, because such a move would validate the existing title, which is an anachronistic failure. We must take this opportunity to correct this title, lest we validate rubbish. RGloucester — ☎ 18:18, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Comment My heart tells me to capitalise but my rationality slightly favours lower case and for me its too close to call and, in the context that the KKK won't be greatly advantaged either way, I am not convinced of the importance of the issue. The words are the same either way.

Suggestion drop the hyphen as per article African American. I went back through the history of the article and id doesn't seem to have had a hyphen (at least not since 2009). GregKaye ✍♪ 18:47, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Support—Again, pretty compelling evidence here that it's fine if not more common to write these in lowercase. Our style is to use lowercase when the term isn't normally capitalized in sources. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:26, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

COMMENT... regarding the capitalization issue... There are two factors to consider here... 1) is "African American Civil Rights Movement" a name or a description. 2) If it is a name, is the capitalization common enough that COMMONNAME would apply?

It is interesting that a strait google search favors capitalization (thus indicating that it is considered a name) while an N-grams search favors non-captializtion (and thus indicating that it is considered a desription). That in itself is telling me that this is a case where the sources are mixed in their opinion... the corpus of sources as a whole is not sure whether it is a name or not.

That said, let's (for the moment) assume that it is a name... and look at the second issue... is the capitalization commonly used enough that COMMONNAME would apply?... again the google search and the n-grams results are at odds.. the sources are mixed in their usage. The capitalized version is not significantly more commonly used than the non-captialized version, and so the answer has to be "No... this isn't a case where COMMONNAME applies). When there is no clear COMMONNAME, we need to look to other policy and guideline provisions to settle the the issue. I think MOS-CAPS seems to apply with much more weight in such cases.

So... I Support on the de-capitalization in this case... and am Open to suggestions on the wording (I find the current wording clunky, whether we captialize or not, and would love it if we could find an alternative). Blueboar (talk) 23:02, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Did you see my proposal for American civil rights movement (XXXX-XXXX)? That's more common in sources, and avoids using an anachronism. RGloucester — ☎ 23:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I would not oppose that... but would also consider Civil rights era in African-American history which would tie this article more directly into it's follow up article Post–Civil Rights era in African-American history (for now, let's ignore the issue of whether the term "Civil Rights" should be capitalized in that article or not). What I would really like is to find a descriptive title for the topic that didn't have any capitalization questions. Blueboar (talk) 01:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

My understanding is that the reason we have it the way we do is because we have a series of articles on the subject, starting with the 1896 article. The idea of a "civil rights era" is a bit off for a variety of reasons, as it could refer to a much longer stretch of time than that covered by this article. RGloucester — ☎ 01:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose. "Civil Rights Movement" should be considered important enough words to begin with capital letters. Any descriptors that go with them, whether before or after, do not alter their own importance. The hyphen in "African-American" is unnecessary, so I support a change to "African American", although the argument that this descriptor is an anachronism has much merit. "American Civil Rights Movement" or, similar to Blueboar's suggestion, "Civil rights in American history" (with dab dates where useful) would be better article titles. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 14:23, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
Is there any policy or guideline that supports capitalizing on the basis of "considered important enough", and when most reliable sources do not do so? Short answer: No! Dicklyon (talk) 17:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I suppose it would be the guideline that leads us to capitalize the important words of a proper noun phrase. I suppose I could have worded it better, but isn't your leaping upon my usage of "important words" here to be a bit like "the lady doth protest too much, methinks"?

Importance has nothing to do with capitalization in written English. I think certain other languages do this, perhaps that is the source of the confusion here? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
No offense, but what planet do you come from? Words are given importance (the guideline calls this "featured status") by the use of capitalized first letters in English writings, poems, titles and so on. Even if a writer does not do this her/himself, her or his readers may copy the work and capitalize where they see fit to enhance or emphasize a word or phrase. This phrase, Civil Rights Movement, has stood the test of time, as well – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 22:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I agree that caps are widely used for emphasis, showing what is important, etc. This was especially true in the planet of the typewriter, and is still somewhat true in the planet of the interweb, where amateurs don't understand that typography offers alternative ways to show importance and emphasis. In WP, we adopted a style of avoiding unnecessary capitalization. We use font size (e.g. for titles and headings), italics, quotation marks, bold, links, etc., as alternative ways of showing emphasis as needed. Some of the sources that capitalize "Civil Rights Movement" might be doing so because they think it's a proper name, but more likely they're doing it because, as with Randy and Paine, the term is important enough to them that they want to emphasize it with caps. That's fine for them, but it's specifically not what we do on WP. Dicklyon (talk) 00:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Ah, but it is what we do on WP for proper-names, which I believe "Civil Rights Movement" happens to be. And since this time-tested title is the status quo, isn't this why a consensus is needed to change it to lowercase? Why do you feel it's not a proper name? – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 09:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Dicklyon, I see you haven't answered Paine Ellsworth's question as yet, so I'll add to it if I may. "Why do you feel it's not a proper name and, at the same time, define for us, in a paragraph or longer (as I did below) your personal historically accurate definition of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (or whatever term you call it, 1960s civil rights movement - Jeez, it hurts the eyes even to write, let alone see that, it's so wrong - did you guys know most of the pages didn't even have a redirect with small capitals until last week?) without, I challenge, making it sound like a proper name or defining it without an overview. And, if a historically accurate overview exists, why can't it be characterized as one event, thus a proper name, and why do you think so many historians, historical societies, and other reliable sources are so wrong about it? Thank you. Randy Kryn 15:34 29 December, 2014 (UTC)
He's answered this a large number of times, I think, if not here: he looks at sources to see if they treat it as such. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:27, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

The point I'm making is that lowercasing in no way decreases importance; that is so far out in the weeds that it caused me to wonder if English is not your first language and you were confused about this. You're right, people do add caps to say something is Really Important or REALLY IMPORTANT. Good point. Removing those is in no way taken to mean the author doesn't think it was important, however. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:32, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Good point; however, it's been established that the importance of individual words is less an issue than the question of whether or not these titles represent proper names, which many of us say is supported by reliable sources. That fact and the fact that the proper-name titles are the status quo mean that the titles in their present form are appropriate and should stay just as they are. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 22:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Comment on hyphen – two editors have opposed the hyphen, citing African American. The reason for the hyphen is explained in the first paragraph of that article, and is standard in English for such compound constructs when used as modifiers: As a compound adjective, the term is usually hyphenated as African-American. Dicklyon (talk) 17:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

That's true, Mr Lyon. Whilst I favour eliminating "African-American" from the title as an anachronism, traditional style guides do favour a hyphen in adjectival form. I tend to favour that style. However, there are style guides that favour no hyphen in adjectival form, such as the Chicago. RGloucester — ☎ 17:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Comment on anachronism – While the term American civil rights movement is much more common, that's partly because it is a much broader topic, including rights for Hispanics, gays, women, etc. The usage stats over time do not show any relative decline of the "African", which is a major component of the whole usage of American civil rights movement. Another big component is Mexican American civil rights movement. See n-grams. In any case, this is a topic for another RM, not for this one of fixing the capitalization per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 17:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It is not a broader topic, as one can see in the Britannica article, and various books. When "American civil rights movement" is used, it is used to refer to the civil rights movement for black people. I agree that this is odd, from an academic perspective, however, in context and in common use, it means that specific movement. Other movements involving "civil rights" only are used with a qualifier. When "civil rights movement" is used, it always means "Black civil rights". Britannica provides this definition "American civil rights movement, mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s". We do not have an article called "Mexican American civil rights movement", and neither the women's rights or LGBT rights movements are ever called "civil rights" by anyone. RMs are freeform. Once you open one, you need to be prepared to defend the title you are proposing. As it is indefensible, I cannot support it. RGloucester — ☎ 18:00, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I would not oppose dropping "African-" if others prefer that, but it's a complete red herring in this discussion, and would have been much more easily addressed separately. Dicklyon (talk) 18:29, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it is a red herring. I support you in removing the capital letters from this title. I simply cannot support a re-affirmation of a crap anachronistic title, which is what you proposed to do. We need to solve the problems we have, and this is the time to do it. RGloucester — ☎ 18:32, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Usage in books over time shows that it is not anachronistic. And not sure why you think or say it's "crap". It's pretty conventional. You're creating a red herring by even bringing it up. Dicklyon (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Must side with RG on this. You seem to say that "African American" and its adjectival "African-American" were terms in use during the date span in question, 1954–1968. If I'm not mistaken, those terms did not come into common usage until the early seventies at best. In this context, therefore, those terms are not associated with the date span, which makes them anachronisms. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 23:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Mr Ellsworth. And they certainly were not in any use during the "1896–" time slot. It is "crap" because there was no such thing as an "African-American" during the time periods that these articles cover. It also makes the title longer than it needs to be, per WP:CONCISE. It isn't as common as the more usual "American civil rights movement", either. RGloucester — ☎ 23:57, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Oh, we were completely misunderstanding each other. I thought by anachronistic you meant the term is no longer appropriate. Ellsworth says I think the terms were in use in the date span in question. This is not what I think. We agree these terms are more modern than the periods in question. I don't see this as a problem for the title, per WP:COMMONNAME; historical names are often "anachronistic" in this sense. Dicklyon (talk) 00:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It isn't the common name, so "common name" is not a defence. "American civil rights movement" is much more common. It is both anachronistic and wrong, not common and not concise. RGloucester — ☎ 04:20, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the Civil Rights Movement as a single "event", like the American Revolution, French Revolution, and other shifts in major social agreements Here is, more or less, how I see the picture made by the events, and why I view it as a single picture. To me the pre-movement started when Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and the people got ready to create some kind of action. Colvin's mistake was she was too young - only 15 years old. Teenagers wouldn't change the world as a group until 1963, eight years later. So the organizers in Montgomery waited, for nine months, until Rosa Parks sat and wouldn't move. Then came a boycott, a withdrawal, still not a formal movement but close. Dr. King and others had studied Gandhi, and knew that something was afoot. Then King wrote a book, and made a great speech or two, but he didn't really know what to do next on the ground to achieve his goals. Yet he and others created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and eventually he and SCLC did know enough to educate James Lawson, who went to Nashville, Tennessee, gathered some students together, added to what they had learned at the Highlander Folk School under the tutelage of Myles Horton, and together they created what I consider the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. It started in 1960 when the Nashville activists learned how to put Mohandas Gandhi's principles and teachings into action. Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, and most importantly, James Bevel, were introduced to Gandhi's work by Lawson. And they decided to experiment. Long story longer, they did the first successful lunch counter sit-in, helped co-found SNCC, successfully organized the Nashville Open Theater Movement, continued the Freedom Rides after the riders had been attacked and the rides abandoned, and started the events or advanced much of the progress already in motion in the Mississippi Movement. In 1962 James Lawson suggested to Dr. King that he meet with James Bevel, who had become the main strategist and organizer of the student movement. King called Bevel to Atlanta for a meeting, they met, and instantly began talking movement. What emerged from that meeting was a partnership - King and Bevel agreed they would work together, with neither of them having veto over the other's actions, to end segregation, obtain the right to vote, obtain fair housing, and achieve a level and fair educational system for students in the U.S. Their agreements made (others included that SCLC would not accept donations unless a real movement was taking place and that they would not compromise in their movement goals) Bevel then went back to Mississippi as SCLC's representative and no longer SNCC's. It took King and Bevel four years to obtain all that they had set out to do (if you count, as I do, that the wheels of the 1968 Fair Housing Act were going ahead full steam and just waiting for the chance to complete the journey upon the completion of the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. Five years to take the world from one place to another. Birmingham's 1963 Children's Crusade, brought about by the strategy and teaching of James Bevel and inspired and well brought along on the words of Dr. King, and legal segregation fell at the hands and feet and then a plan to literally march to Washington, all accomplished by innocent and well-prepared teenagers. The 1963 March on Washington allowed Dr. King to make the nation fall in love with itself, and to care about itself, fully and with forgiveness at what had gone before. Then soon came Selma, dear Selma, where it came together so well that when the time came all James Bevel had to do was stop the slaughter, hate, and instinct for revenge (due to the hateful shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson as he protected his mother and grandfather from an ongoing beating by a State Trooper) that some people were planning was invite them to walk with him to Montgomery, to talk with Governor George Wallace. And when Bevel took SCLC to Chicago for what would become, at the suggestion of Chicago activist Bill Moyer, an Open Housing Movement, King and Bevel made an agreement with Richard J. Daley, Chicago's mayor, to give him time to augment the changes needed both locally and encourage them nationally. Fair Housing soon became the law of the land. It took the students and Dr. King six years, from 1960, then to the King/Bevel agreement in 1962, then to the nonviolent movements created and worked to perfection, to achieve what they all had set out to achieve. The Civil Rights Movement under discussion in this vote, and to me it would be a tragedy to make this a lower-case non-event, had a plan, achieved that plan, and segregation as a social agreement in America effectively ended. The many many people on the web, the many historians and historical societies and museums, the journalists, poets and other writers, who capitalize this event as the 'Civil Rights Movement' in formal titles (such as 'African-American Civil Rights Movement', or '1960s Civil Rights Movement'), have gotten it right. And so, too, has Wikipedia, consistently and since its inception. Randy Kryn 22:42 28 December, 2014 (UTC)
Support Subjects not consistently capitalized in the articles' own reliable sources. Hugh (talk) 23:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
They are, if you look at just the sources which mention a proper name. A major historical organization, the Civil Rights Movement Veterans, is listed throughout as a source. And why are you taking Dicklyon's word for it, when his own 16 item list (out of almost 200 references) has errors which I quickly found and pointed out in the section of this multi-headed topic, has characterized - often inaccurately - Wikipedia rules which are actually guidelines, lists selective links as proof of his position, some of them, either here or elsewhere, I've already pointed out either are analyzed incorrectly or slanted in descriptive wording, and, for some reason, did not quickly ping people when he knew he was required to (and some have been left out, hopefully a mistake or a miscoding)? Because I'm not totally assuming good faith in this comment, if I don't get banned then, at some point when this vote is done, I'll take a self-imposed three-day ban. Randy Kryn 15:26 29 December, 2014 (UTC)
A few more words on my thinking on this. I take a more strict reading of MOS:CAPS than some here. I find MOS:CAPS sufficiently clear that it trumps WP:CONCENSUS and WP:IAR on capitalization issues when they seems to disagree with it. I tend to focus on an article's references over ngrams and Google searches, and I wish this was explicit in MOS:CAPS, but that suggestion is not for here. I am comfortable thinking, reading, and writing about things that do not have proper names. Of course I recognize that an established organization would tend to have a proper name. Many things that are very important to me do not have proper names. I don't think it detracts one iota from a thing that it does not have a proper name. I read WP:CAPS to exhort us to err on the side of resisting the temptation to give proper names to things in WP that do not have proper names already in common usage. For me an article's reliable sources, to the extent they have not been challenged by an article's editors, are a reasonable subset of common usage on which to form a judgement on the consistency of capitalization. "...why are you taking Dicklyon's word for it..." WP:AGF I guess. Do my own research is good advice, I would not worry about a ban for that. On your urging I find a mix of capitalized and not in the refs. For me that is determinative. Hugh (talk)
Oppose. The Civil Rights Movement is often treated as a proper noun. I believe in brevity, so forgive me for not wanting to rehash every argument presented by those opposing the move. There is just no real good reason for changing this title. -- Calidum 05:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It certainly is sometimes treated as a proper noun phrase... and perhaps even "often"... but if you look at the n-gram comparison that Dicklyon has provided, you will see that it is not treated as a proper noun by the majority of sources. The majority treat it as a simple descriptive phrase (in lower case).

What makes these sorts of discussions difficult is that descriptive phrases like this do sometimes morph into proper nouns (Boston Massacre is a good example of one that has)... but they don't automatically do so. To know whether a descriptive phrase has morphed into a proper noun, you need to examine source usage... not one or two sources... but hundreds or even thousands of sources. In some cases it will be obvious that the phrase has become a proper name (an overwhelming majority capitalize)... in other cases it will be clear that it is still descriptive (an overwhelming majority do not capitalize)... often the results are somewhat mixed (the phrase may be in the process of transition between description and proper name)... however, our COMMONNAME policy errs on the side of needing a fairly substantial majority... which we do not have in this specific case. Blueboar (talk) 14:53, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I dispute, as I have elsewhere, that COMMONNAME requires a majority ONLY; there are passages both in it and TITLE which address exceptions where a majority of sources need not be followed.Skookum1 (talk) 04:16, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually COMMONNAME requires more than a simple majority... the phrase that is often used when explaining WP:COMMONNAME at WT:AT is "significant majority". As for exceptions... yes, there are exceptions stated at WP:TITLES. But the next question is: why should this case be an exception... and which exception do you think applies in this case? Blueboar (talk) 20:20, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Strongly oppose. Downcasing this makes no historical sense, and I agree with Randy Kryn that there seems to be some effort to downgrade these events from full status as historical events/movements, though the rationales of those who think in narrow interpretations of guidelines just don't seem to get that. The result is POV, which should be kept in mind (and rarely is), and obviously controversial....as to be expected with political titles. Guidelines should not be used so blindly and narrowly, other considerations should be taken into account, including a resulting POV/degraded title. There is no adequate reason to downcase this, given the result, and I submit that the MOS zealots drop their groups of bulk moves of titles they have nothing to do with, and actually write articles instead of revising guidelines to win RMs.Skookum1 (talk) 04:16, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Um... how does changing the capitalization "downgrade" the "historical status" of the event? A movement is no less a movement if it is not capitalized. Blueboar (talk) 20:20, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

By downplaying their status to "descriptive words" rather than treating them with the status in history they hold; the effect is similar to WP:NEWSPEAK, where the retooling of the language by playing with words and characters used is political in effect, even when not in intent. RK feels that the intent is there; to downgrade labour history to less-consequential; what I see is guidelines being used monomaniacally with no WP:COMMONSENSE or political awareness resulting in titles that (a) look odd and (b) have the effect of "de-importantizing" the subject. If you can't see that, I'm sorry; but it's a reality. Not a guideline concocted in isolation from reality using only numbers as a framework, by people obsessed with writing and enforcing rules, and then weighing in with their guideline-hammer on titles they either disregard as serious events, or which they just don't know anything about at all, as per about 200 RMs out there I could list where ignorance was backed by the abuse of statistics or subjective comments about e.g. populations re notability when they didn't know or care about the context, only the guideline. Wikipedia has a responsibility to the past, and what's going on here is the rewriting of the future wordings/spellings about the past; its influence on English is too strong for this statistical game and monolithic-rule-mongering approach is not producing good results; and is winding up with RM after RM that are cleaerly controversial in effect, but where guideline-tossers just don't care, or refuse to see, the impact of their decisions - as here, downplaying and event by de-capitalizing it, to me, a common propaganda tool, even if it's unintentional here; I refer you to the Chinese practice of changing "spelling" (which character is used) for political reasons.Skookum1 (talk) 02:04, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

"Wikipedia has a responsibility to the past..." Our responsibility is to accurately summarize reliable sources. Reliable sources are not consistent in capitalization. Hugh (talk) 22:14, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

"what's going on here is the rewriting of the future wordings...[Wikipedia's] influence on English is too strong" Arguments of the form WP must capitalize so that future generations are not lead astray as to the importance of this subject seem to me to run into WP:NOR. On WP the lede demonstrates the subject's historical significance, not the style of the title. On WP there is no past independent of RS, and RS here is mixed. Hugh (talk) 23:56, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Regarding arguments for upper-case based on WP:NPOV, it seems to me that lower case is more neutral. "There is no adequate reason to downcase this..." MOS:CAPS. Hugh (talk) 22:00, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Support removing the hyphen in African–American but oppose every other suggestion Wikipedia guidelines are not policies. Also, these are proper names so these need to be capitalized. Your use of statistics to strengthen your position on English grammar usage here on Wikipedia should not be considered because the majority of those who speak English as their first language cannot speak it properly and therefore even professionals often make mistakes. You need more evidence that the case should be lower case. Look at a dictionary or two. Statistics alone are horrid research and rarely apply to situations as these. Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 20:31, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
Support The very fact that we're having this prolonged debate, extending even to the wording, is indication that capitals aren't appropriate. Capitalization calls for consensus on wording to the point where it becomes a de facto proper noun.

It's been argued that Brucehartford's vote has special standing due to his role as crmvet.org administrator, but we should note that crmvet.org is a collective project, and the collective introduction states:

The mass media calls it the "Civil Rights Movement," but many of us prefer the term "Freedom Movement" because it was about so much more than just a few narrowly-defined civil rights. The essence of the Freedom Movement was first to defy, and then to overthrow, a century of systemic racial oppression and exploitation across all aspects of society. At heart, the Freedom Movement was a demand for social and political equality, an end to economic injustice, and a fair share of political power for Blacks and other non-whites.

There's nothing esoteric about the term Freedom Movement either-it was even the term that Martin Luther King used most often. If we are going to speak of "anachronisms" then "civil rights movement" itself would actually be objectionable. Furthermore, it is on its way out as an academic term, being replaced with Black Freedom Movement. The latter is also on the rise as the overall publishing term, as shown here. If there is any wording changed, then I would propose Black freedom movement as the new title.GPRamirez5 (talk) 19:31, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

While I agree that "freedom movement" is more accurate than "civil rights movement," the problem is that "civil rights movement" is so strongly embedded in our culture that that's the term students and others search on. I see this every day in my capacity as webspinner for the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website, most people find our site by searching for "civil rights movement" rather than "freedom movement." If we change the title of the Wikipedia article from "civil rights movement" to "freedom movement" it might result in much reduced traffic. Brucehartford (talk) 22:30, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Support, without hyphen, per MOS:CAPS, MOS:HYPHEN, and others' above-iterated arguments based on them, and the proof that sources frequently use lower case. The oppose !votes on the capitalisation question mostly seem to consist of argument to emotion variations ("should be considered important enough words to begin with capital letters", "downgrade these events from full status", etc.) that imply some kind of nefarious motive or effect, and/or a failure to understand what actually constitutes a proper name. On the side issue, not hyphenating ethnonyms like "X American" on Wikipedia is a long-settled issue (though I personally disagree vehemently with the outcome, it is actually the consensus here to not hyphenate them). I'm open to the idea of dropping the "African" part entirely, if article scope includes women's liberation, Hispanic issues, etc. Not open to neologistic, revisionist alternatives like "Freedom Movement", capitalised or not. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 03:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
The fact that you are "open to the idea of dropping the 'African' part entirely, if article scope includes the woman's liberation, Hispanic issues, etc." shows that you do not even know or fully understand what the article is about. This thinking, that exact sentence, shows why the name should of course remain capitalized. Ít's about a specific movement, a specific event, a specific proper noun. The African-American Civil Rights Movement. It is not about the women's movement, or the Hispanic movement. And "The sources frequently use lower-case" is certainly not a reason to change the name of an iconic event and a page which has been named the same thing since it started, even though some editors try to convince others that that is Wikipedia policy. It may be a loose guideline, but is not policy, and the only stated guidelines that editors should use on this is that one section of "titles" which is linked in the template calling people to this discussion, a section which seems to me to strongly support the continued capitalization of the page. Randy Kryn 9:27 18 January, 2015 (UTC)
Note Dicklyon told me he's reporting me for a 3RR for changing back the name St. Augustine Movement in the body of the page (I'd change the title again, but a redirect has been made), even though I asked him to take it to the talk page in my edit comments. So now Dicklyon is going after individual Civil Rights Movements, which are surely proper names (have you ever seen 'Selma voting rights movement' anywhere?), so I may be gone for awhile (how long is a 3RR ban?). Please, keep up the good fight on this one. Randy Kryn 18:34 18 January, 2015 (UTC)
p.s. And the vaunted Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't even have a page on the St. Augustine Movement, or mention it in their article on the city (so much for EB, whose Movement page has only nine edits - what kind of outfit are they running over there?), and the [ World Heritage Encyclopedia capitalizes it, as do the usual suspects on search engines. By the way, the World Heritage Encyclopedia capitalizes the overall Civil Rights Movement. Dicklyon says books don't capitalize it, so here we go again. I ask again that he take it to the articles talk page, and put back the capitalization ahead of doing so. Randy Kryn 18:47 18 January, 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing "vaunted" about EB. It's just that your bud RGloucester, who favor caps as much as you do, had been holding it up just a step below God among his reasons for capitalizing on some other pages. I agree it should get no particular attention; it can be counted among all the other sources. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

p.s.s. And now he's decapitalizing the Birmingham Movement. Dicklyon says on my talk page that the Chicago Freedom Movement is a proper name, so why would he go after the proper names of other movements? Randy Kryn 19:15 18 January, 2015 (UTC)

If Dicklyon is changing proper names to lowercase indiscriminately and edit warring with you, then perhaps it is the other editor who should reconsider before s/he gets blocked? And to answer your question, I've seen 3RR first offenders, excellent contributors, who were blocked for a month. Many of them didn't come back. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 16:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Paine, take a look at the conversation at User talk:Randy Kryn#Not vandalism. As you can see, I have been patiently trying to get Randy to understand the applicability of MOS:CAPS. Hardly indiscriminate, as I'm trying to explain how to discriminate a proper name from a descriptive name, by looking at sources. Is some part of this difficult to understand? Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

By your own admission you have edit warred with Randy Kryn. That's what got both you and Randy blocked from editing for several hours. None of that nor anything on Kryn's talk page is of concern to me. My only concern is THIS discussion about THIS move request to move THIS set of articles. You have been unable to show that there is overwhelming support in reliable sources or in this discussion to treat the titles of these articles as anything but proper names. The sources are mixed in this regard. So the bottom line is that these article titles' status quo should be retained and maintained. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 03:52, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I edit warred with Randy. That's not nearly as relevant here as the fact that sources show that capitalization of "civil rights movement" is not necessary, and not in a majority. Per MOS:CAPS, then, the conclusion should be clear. Have you even read the opening paragraph at MOS:CAPS? And if you're so concerned about THIS set of articles, why are you taking Randy's twisted word for what transpired elsewhere, and concluding that I am "changing proper names to lowercase indiscriminately"? This is bullshit. Dicklyon (talk) 05:34, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

"The sources are mixed..." Exactly. Thank you! Now, applying MOS:CAPS "...words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia," will you support lower case? What am I missing here? Hugh (talk) 17:21, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, as you say, you "take a more strict reading of MOS:CAPS than some here". The sources have been shown to be mixed on the proper-name issue. MOS:CAPS says "words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources". It could mean what you think it means, or it could cover the times when a proper name is consistently capitalized in some sources but not in others. In the latter case, both status quo and consensus (or lack thereof) must be the deciding factors. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 00:37, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't recall ever hearing that interpretation before this RM discussion where people are desperate for a rationale to capitalize. The plain reading seems to be the usual consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 00:45, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

"Desperate..."? Desperation would only enter in if those of us who oppose your move request did not have both status quo and the lack of consensus to move these articles as measuring sticks. Sounds to me as if you might be a victim of projection? – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 01:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Your read of "consistently capitalized in sources" at MOS:CAPS is "consistently capitalized in some sources"? Seriously? So an article with 100 RS, if a couple few consistently capitalized, and the rest were consistently lowercase, you would say MOS:CAPS is satisfied, and argue for capitalization? Hugh (talk) 07:16, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

It's vague and ambiguous at best, HughD. Here is an extreme (and facetious) example that will illustrate why your reasoning is faulty. Imagine a move request that goes Barack Obama → Barack obama. Someone has found one RS out of 100 that failed to capitalize the president's surname, and an editor, who takes a strict reading of MOS:CAPS, takes this as inconsistent capitalization in the sources so the title must be renamed. When it comes to "consistency", where do we draw the line? Does it mean "always"? Most of the time? 80% of the time? 51% of the time? It's vague and ambiguous at best. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 14:59, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

No need to stretch to extremes and test the limits at this time. Even a 50% threshold would settle the current case in favor of lowercase, so whether people prefer 50% or 80% or something else is not the issue here. Dicklyon (talk) 22:36, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. I oppose removing the capitalization of "Civil Rights Movement." Language is always in flux, that's reality. Words and terms and their meanings and usage are often in contention as is the case here. Therefore, simply counting how many publications do or don't capitalize "Civil Rights Movement" is, for me, of little use. I believe "Civil Rights Movement" should be capitalized because it denotes a specific, coordinated series of related events during a specific period of time -- the same as "Civil War" or the New Deal. People think of that phrase as the proper name of something discreet and identifiable. Brucehartford (talk) 18:14, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. American Civil Rights Movement is a name so I vote to keep as such. Cheers--Rickbrown9 (talk) 09:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

This sums it up well. It's a name. People who see it as a name and who feel it as a name have a mental map of the movement. They know this movement as an event, an event with a beginning and an end (to some it's Rosa Parks' bus incident to Dr. King's assassination, to others it exists mentally from Brown v. Board of Education to the passing of the Fair Housing Act, or from the Sit-ins to the Poor People's Campaign). It usually does not go past 1968, so this article defines it as from 1954 to 1968. As Rickbrown9 says, "is a name so I vote to keep it as such". This isn't supposed to be a vote, as I understand these things, but that's as close to a perfect 'vote' as I can imagine. Cheers yourself, Rickbrown9. Randy Kryn 11:07 24 January, 2015 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia discussions like this are not strictly determined by counting the "yeas and nays", which is why they are usually referred to as !votes, with a leading exclamation point. The rationale of each !voter is crucial to help the closer determine the right thing to do. Rickbrown9's rationale pretty much says it all. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 18:06, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

"This sums it up well...that's as close to a perfect 'vote' as I can imagine." The above is a far from perfect contribution to this discussion. In WP discussions your reasons are as important as your position. A perfect contribution would cite WP policy or guideline. Hugh (talk) 22:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

OK. When I typed those words, "This sums it up well...that's as close to a perfect 'vote' as I can imagine", I was thinking of common sense, defined on Wikipedia WP:COMMONSENSE at that link, a section which contains rationale which sanctions and accepts statements such as Rickbrown9's accurate and simple logic: "it's a name". WP:COMMONSENSE states the question "Why isn't "use common sense" an official policy?" and answers itself: "It doesn't need to be; as a fundamental principle, it is above any policy." I've never read that before. It's Wikipedia policy for common sense to be above any policy. So when Rickbrown9's words "it's a name" summarize what many of us feel about this page, to us it's obviously "a name" (and not only to us, to millions of people and many many sources), and thinking it's a name is to us common sense. That's what I meant. Randy Kryn 3:44 25 January, 2015 (UTC)

OK, it's a name. But lots ot things have names. For example, this article is about something and that something has a name. That's not the issue here. Here the issue is, is it a proper name, in common usage, as evidenced by, and operationally defined as, consistent capitalized in sources MOS:CAPS. Hugh (talk) 07:29, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Good question, Hugh. It's not always easy to draw the boundary between proper and descriptive names, although sometimes, as here, it is. And clearly, a large proportion of the "sources" get it wrong, or there wouldn't be such inconsistency. Some of them are inconsistent even within a single work; but stylists are well used to that. One test for proper vs descriptive name is whether the item can be substituted by a synonym in the run of the prose. Civil rights movement ... The movement ... The campaign arose gradually ... The civil rights lobby more recently ... The civil rights camp was set for collision with those on the ... (Just off the top of my head.) Who wants to cap "the Movement" every time it appears in the main text, anyway? Tony (talk) 09:45, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

How often do I and others have to repeat that the words 'civil rights' or 'civil rights movement' don't have to be capitalized wherever the appear. It's like 'the president' - without the full proper name the lower-case is often optional (like I've seen many references to the Cuban Missile Crisis say, for example, 'the crisis'). Civil rights is a term which encompasses basic rights that all citizens have or should have. Many civil rights movements might call themselves that, but...and here is what we are talking about...the page 'African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)' is mainly about a core group of people who purposely went from place to place to put into place events which, when done properly (and in the 1960s they were) then created a national dialogue which changed laws and brought the results that they set out to get. That's 'Movement', those exist as facts for people, like Bruce Hartford, who experienced this movement, and who know or knew people who actually organized it. To those people there is no question that it's a proper name, which is why Hartford's opposition to this question is important (even though experts are given no weight here - but experience should be given weight on the reasoning behind these comments. Randy Kryn 22:30 26 January, 2015 (UTC)

Support—"Civil rights movement was never the name of a specific organisation, right? It therefore can’t possibly be capped: it's not a proper name. We decided against capping "Communism" a long time ago on en.WP; no one ever seriously suggested capping "capitalism" or "socialism" or "freedom movements" or "colonial resistance movements" (unless they were names of specific organisations, of course). If the "Oklahoma Civil Rights Movement" was an organisation, with members and a committee, then we're starting to look at a proper name and caps. Tony (talk) 06:28, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
- reply Cuban Missile Crisis was not a "single organization", nor was Winnipeg General Strike or On-to-Ottawa Trek and lots of others. Where in the (doctored) guidelines does it say that caps must be for "single organizations" in order to be considered proper names.Skookum1 (talk) 06:41, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
  - Tony, of course the words 'civil rights movement', by themselves or their variants, need not be capitalized, that surely doesn't make sense (which is where much of the discussion on this thread, up to and including your Support comment, has gone way off track: the discussion itself is built on a faulty premise, we should not be arguing that the words 'civil rights movement' by themselves should be upper or lower case). Particular civil rights movements, however, which have a labeling name such as Wikipedia's choice to name this series of events 'African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968), fit both a proper name designation and the overall concept of WP:COMMONSENSE. When I said that "it's a name" above, quoting another editor, it's obvious that the editor and I both meant that "it's a proper name". Many things which are capitalized do not have to have organizations and committees named with an exact title, that's a red herring (I've never known the origin of that term) swimming reddened in the Red Sea. Skookum1's example of 'Cuban Missile Crisis' fits, nobody in the Kennedy White House or the Kremlin (or in Cuba for that matter) was calling it that at the time, it gained that name when journalists, historians, and commentators capsulized it. In the event being discussed here the end result, the overall 1954-1968 Civil Rights Movement, has gained several names, all of which can be seen as proper names if they describe the same thing. Wikipedia calls it the 'African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)'. This long-term series of events, which was called a movement by its participants at the time (even though their movement located from one place to another throughout the several years it took to gain the civil rights that it sought) began the overall scope and arc of the event which was called a movement then and elaborated on ever since. The event has easily gained proper name status as its historical importance has been seen and calculated over the span of time and its impact on American society and worldwide culture. To argue now, in 2015, that 'African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)' should be decapitalized into 'African-American civil rights movement (1954-1968)' (look how weak and wrong that looks) because some sources don't capitalize the dangling term 'civil rights movement' goes against the logic of WP:COMMONSENSE, a fundamental principal which rightly, by its own definition, stands above all other guidelines or policy. Randy Kryn 13:16 25 January, 2015 (UTC)
    - Thank you for explicitly stating that your argument for capitalization is based on WP:COMMONSENSE rather than more directly applicable guidelines such as MOS:CAPS. Of course, things earn proper names over time. MOS:CAPS clearly and explicitly exhorts Wikipedians to not accelerate the process. I agree that in forming our judgement of proper name-ness we should give more weight to more recent sources than contemporaneous sources, but we are supposed to be favoring secondary sources anyway. In the case of the current subject, even looking at the more recent sources, capitalization is mixed. 'African-American civil rights movement (1954-1968)' does not look weak or wrong to me- it looks MOS:CAP compliant. Hugh (talk) 01:37, 26 January 2015 (UTC) We are talking in circles now, but of course you recognize MOS:CAPS took these sorts of arguments from historical importance away from us by explicitly asking us not to use caps for emphasis. Hugh (talk) 05:33, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
      - I think Randy's sense is rather uncommon; when most sources, including the overwhelming majority of secondary sources cited in the article, use lower case, it's common sense that we should not declare "it's a proper name" as an excuse to capitalize it. Dicklyon (talk) 01:46, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
        Of course WP:COMMONSENSE it's not my only reason, far from it. It's another reason. What recent sources? On another talk page you listed a large list of "recent sources" and it turned out that almost all of them were old textbooks and other books being reissued. The data which you yourself provided shows that back in 2008 the capitalization of a proper name for the movement was rising quickly and had overcome the lower-case (even with the old textbooks mixed in). Anyway, why you guys are so intent on downgrading the civil rights movement (and yes, that's what it is) on the barest of evidence (if 51 percent of sources lower case then this should be lower-cased? old textbooks mixed in? no Ngrams since 2007 or 2008?) is beyond my comprehension. Downgrading maybe the most shining example of American greatness in the 20th Century? Making sure the example which changed the world and the entire course of civilization is lessened in importance? Can't type any more now, Sons of Liberty is premiering on the History Channel in a couple of minutes, been waiting for this one for months. Randy Kryn 1:58 26 January, 2015 (UTC)
        "...why you guys are so intent on downgrading the civil rights movement (and yes, that's what it is)..." May I comment I resent this speculation as to the motives of your fellow editors AGF. There is no basis whatsoever for such speculation in this discussion. No one is intent on anything other than guideline compliance. Conflating compliance with some imagined ulterior motive is not helpful. Clearly this is something you are very passionate about. Hugh (talk) 05:43, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Your emotional resentment is noted; yet, it is just as off-topic as the sometimes heated words of other editors here, to include speculations on ulterior motives and other patronizing posts. In the first place guidelines are not "policy", and in the second place to treat obvious proper names as something other than what they are does in no way comply with any Wikipedia guideline. This discussion continues to deteriorate deeper and deeper into negativity and should be closed in accordance with Wikipedia:NOCONSENSUS (a policy). – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 06:47, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Summary of positions

Favoring lowercase "civil rights movement": Dicklyon, Blueboar, ErikHaugen, RGloucester, Hugh, GPRamirez5, SMcCandlish, Tony1
Favoring uppercase "Civil Rights Movement": Randy Kryn, Paine Ellsworth, Calidum, Skookum1, Kamek98, Brucehartford, Rickbrown9
Suggest dropping the hyphen: Greg Kaye, Kamek98, SMcCandlish
Favor dropping "African-": RGloucester, Paine Ellsworth, SMcCandlish to an extent
Open to alternative wordings: RGloucester, Blueboar, GPRamirez5, Paine Ellsworth
Oppose discussing alternative wordings in this decapitalization discussion: Dicklyon, Randy Kryn, Hugh, Paine Ellsworth

Please keep this updated. Not as important as the reasons discussed above, but useful as an index and summary. Dicklyon (talk) 23:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Just remember that this is not a simple vote... why each of us holds the positions we do is more important than a raw count how many people hold each view.

The template that's out there about how votes should not be blindly "counted" numerically, but judged on the merits of the points made.Skookum1 (talk) 04:18, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I added in editor Brucehartford's vote above. The merit of Brucehartford's statement is that he is also the main person at Civil Rights Movement Veterans, an organization which is sourced in many of the references on this page. Randy Kryn 18:44 1 January, 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not operate on credentialism. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼ 03:25, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but where exactly does it say that? When we look for RS's we are largely looking for credentialed sources, aren't we? We look for notable sources of information, and one thing we must look for is if those sources have the credentials to be reliable. So why is a credentialed person's opinion on an article's discussion page any less significant? – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 18:19, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Don't confuse reliable sources with opinions of editors. We can appreciate Brucehartford's credentials as an author of reliable sources, while giving him no particular weight in style discussion. The "merit" of his statement about style, based on his credentials, is also the "bias" of his opinion. Experts usually like to capitalize the stuff that's important or dear to them; and it's fine that they do so, in their own publications. But WP style is to see if that position is consistently adopted; if not, we conclude that such caps are not necessary, and default to lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 01:51, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Please don't patronize me, Dicklyon – I'm not confusing anything. I just asked a question – of another editor besides yourself. It is painfully obvious that you have not made your case, and you seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel with your recent posts. "American Civil Rights Movement" is a proper name. No amount of your desperate patronizations will change that. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 03:38, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

You are saying that no amount of data will convince you that sources do not treat "American civil rights movement" as a proper name. And you want to turn that decision over to one author who does. Seems to me like maybe patronizing is exactly what you need. As for your question of where exactly does it say that "Wikipedia does not operate on credentialism", I think it does not say that exactly. But the policies WP:V and WP:RS certainly imply it. You can also look as some of things that WP is not to get an idea: WP:NOTSOAPBOX and thereabouts. Oh, wait, I find that Wikipedia:About says "Wikipedia is written largely by amateurs. Those with expert credentials are given no additional weight." (my bold). And here is a failed proposal to change that: Wikipedia:Credentials (proposal). See also Wikipedia:Expert editors, which makes it clear that we value expert editors for their knowledge, but that we don't let them trump other editors, guidelines, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 21:32, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I could be swayed by data – if I trusted it. Seems to me like your patronizing posts are just more desperate attempts to run, hands flailing, Smack! into your opposition. I won't be bullied, Dicklyon. You try to make me think that a mole hill is a mountain. And then you actually make mountains out of mole hills with your in-depth treatment of credentialism above. Where soapboxes are concerned, you should practice what you preach. Have a nice life and many Joys! – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 05:54, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Call to close

This discussion appears to continue to deteriorate deeper and deeper into negativity; therefore, I call for this discussion to be closed, because there is obviously no consensus to rename these article titles. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 07:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Agreed and endorsed; and noted/recommended that Dicklyon and other MOSites desist from further RMs, bulk (meaning 4-5 unconnected items lumped together, over repeated multiple RMs all advancing the same very questionable lower-casing agenda without regard to NPOV issues arising from their title-tinkering.Skookum1 (talk) 08:09, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Much or most of the page, and many of the "votes" (see Tony's reasoning for 'Support'), center on the stand-alone words 'civil rights movement', which of course could be lower-cased or upper-cased depending on context - that's like making it Wikipedia policy that 'civil war' should always be lower cased even if included in a full name. So this discussion has been broken since its premise. Aside from even that, the event we are discussing is seen by millions of people, sources, and by at least half of the editors commenting on this page as a proper name, an era in 20th century history in which a very small group of people had a defined set of goals and then, by working together (using, refining, and adding to the knowledge, principles, and techniques of nonviolence brought forward by Mohandas Gandhi in South Africa and India), accomplished all of those goals at an accelerating pace between 1954 and 1968. Hence the name of this article, which has stood as a proper name on Wikipedia since its creation in 2002. There is certainly no clear consensus to change that. Randy Kryn 10:48 26 January, 2015 (UTC)

worth adding that in some guidline page or in WP:TITLE which is policy is that in the event of a protracted dispute, the original author's preference should hold sway.Skookum1 (talk) 11:19, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Sure, and while we are at it also worth noting is that WP:TITLE reminds us that "the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is "right" in a moral or political sense." Hugh (talk) 21:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

We can hope that the closer will weigh the comments with guidelines and sources in mind; and maybe even precedents. Yes, we had consensus to re-capitalize Cuban Missile Crisis, on the argument that sources suggest it may have gotten up close to 50% caps in sources. That argument does not apply to any variants of African-American or American civil rights movement, which are generally below 25% caps in books, well below that in our cited sources, and even well below half in Google and Bing searches if you look past titles for whether they treat it as proper name. That's why we laid out the data; many editors are convinced by it, and many ohters want to ignore MOS:CAPS and capitalize anyway, which seems wrong to many of us.

In other precedents, the community has upheld MOS:CAPS at the majority of all the movements, strikes, riots, massacres, and other social-issue articles where it has been tested, over the objections of some of those here. See for example Talk:St. Augustine movement ‎, Talk:Houston Riot (1917)#Requested move 14 December 2014, Talk:Carnation Massacre#Requested move 13 December 2014, Talk:Chicago race riot of 1919#Requested move 2, Talk:Potato riots#Requested moves, Talk:Rock Springs massacre#Requested moves, most of which involved 3 to 6 articles. In the order direction, besides Cuban Missile Crisis, it looks like Talk:Watts Riots#Move discussion in progress is the only one that resembles the current case, in that it was left uppercase even though sources are overwhelmingly lower case. So, precedents are only slightly mixed; the community usually supports MOS:CAPS, but in this case the RM discussion in overrun by people with a keen interest in promoting the title as proper name. Is that a reason we should give much weight to? Dicklyon (talk) 22:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

No, a search engine look gives capitalization at least half (within the text). The main lower-case entry is from Britannica, where the article has nine edits - edits which list capitalized sources. Aside from 22 references from the Civil Rights Movement Veterans organization, which capitalizes the CRM, the Wikipedia references include many articles from the era itself, when CRM names weren't usually used, lower-case 'civil rights movement' which is fine to lower-case when not preceded by one of several variations in use now (African-American Civil Rights Movement being one), and many references which do not mention any name. I've looked at enough sources to know that the movement is commonly - although not always - capitalized, and is becoming more capitalized as the years go by (and no, don't list 'recent' books again which, when researched as to publication date, many are reprintings of old textbooks - textbook editors don't do line-by-line revisions, I know textbook editors and those who work with textbook editors). Aside from these sources, the template which starts off this discussion cites the section of the 'Titles' page we should use and discuss (which we haven't) in which the capitalized title fits perfectly. WP:COMMONSENSE fits retaining the present name (in place since 2002). As for the decision at St. Augustine movement, I tend to agree with that one which is why I didn't present much reasoning there outside of pointing to the template directions - shouldn't we use those? - because it wasn't a full movement, but an action which did not address and seek to change a major national civil rights desegregation violation - all of those had already been handled in the Birmingham results (the pending Civil Rights Act, etc.). It has been effectively argued that St. Augustine was a way for many in SCLC to avoid doing the Voting Rights Movement, which everyone knew was coming but the overall group was hesitant to join the Alabama Project which was already in place. So St. Augustine has no bearing on the decision to close this discussion. As for the Ngrams which are used, they are from 2005 or 2008, and many cite 'civil rights movement' which is of course often lower-cased. The devil, in this case, is not in the details. With the overall data and observable trends taken into consideration, upper-case is not only appropriate for this article but, with clearly no consensus on changing a title in use since 2002, puts the common sense edict well into play. Randy Kryn 12:58 27 January, 2015 (UTC)

We agree, sources are mixed. If the trend is toward capitalization we may need to leave it to a future generation of WP editors to open a new RM and capitalize WP:IMPERFECT. Hugh (talk) 15:51, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Nothing in WP:IMPERFECT pertains to this question, although the article itself could use improvement (personally haven't edited much of it). The page was written and capitalized in 2002, so we are a future generation of WP editors! The data since 2002 just confirms the trend, and the correctness of the original title. Randy Kryn 12:28 28 January, 2015 (UTC)

MOS:CAPS makes no mention of trends. We are not asked to anticipate the way capitalzation is going WP:CRYSTAL. We are very simply and very clearly asked to come to consensus on a dispassionate judgement of the consistency of capitalzation in sources. Regardless of any trend, even in more recent, say post-millennial, sources capitalization is not consistent. The test given us in MOS:CAPS fails. We are done. Someday the bulk of the secondary sources of this article may be different, but sorry we're not there yet WP:NORUSH. In the mean time, if you could swap out most or all of the 180-some references in this article for solid secondary sources that consistently capitalize, and tell the story as well or better, I would support capitalization. It's not that big of a deal. This is hardly the only guideline non-compliant article in WP. After all this is not the civil rights movement itself, this is an article about the civil rights movement on a website. I will continue to participate in WP regardless of the outcome of this RM. Hugh (talk) 16:32, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

The Mos guidelines (not policies, see the template on top of the page) that you adhere to specifically say that proper names are capitalized. The people who think that the words 'African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)' is a proper name know that it's a proper name. There is no doubt of it. The 'Civil Rights Movement Veterans', such as Mr. Hartford, and other people active in the history-making events of the era, lived it and now testify about it using, even if not spelled out, WP:COMMONSENSE. I asked Dicklyon somewhere above, maybe at the 100 meter mark?, and will ask Hugh now, to accurately summarize into one or two paragraphs the term "African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)" in a way that doesn't make it into a proper noun. The other two 'African-American Civil Rights Movement' pages (one is 1896-1953) (I forget the other one, never edited it that I can recall) have much less of a case for capitalization. I'd be hard pressed to define those as proper names. They were a hope, an aspiration, and a lot of activity occurred and advancement went on. But they probably weren't movements in the way the '1954-1968 African-American Civil Rights Movement' (that could be a better name for the page) was. That movement can easily be defined as a proper name. I've given my definition of it in several posts above (somewhere above, don't know exactly where, expeditions have been sent). Now, please, would you share your personal definition and summary of the events, to completely and as historically accurate as possible, define them while still making the case for this page to be lower-cased? The sources (in reality just individuals making a conscious or unconscious decision to capitalize of lower-case) who capitalize it likely just know the history better. On that point I again reference the 'Civil Rights Movement Veterans' organization, who are themselves referenced over 22 times within the article. Randy Kryn 21:33 28 January, 2015 (UTC)

If only I understood the subject of this article better, I would understand its title needs to be capitalized? No, sorry. What I know and what you know or what anyone knows does not matter. Reliable sources matter. That's how we roll here at the big online encyclopedia, bro. Hugh (talk) 01:39, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

This section was opened merely to call for a close because I believe it's over. The status quo rules because neither the OP nor any of the supporters have shown that the longstanding titles of these articles are anything but proper names. This section was not meant for continued rehashing of ideas already expressed and rebutted elsewhere. If you must continue to go over and over and over the old, beaten arguments, then please do so outside this section in a more appropriate section. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 15:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

"The status quo rules because..." Oopsy! Your call to keep this section free argumentation might have been more persuasive had you resisted the temptation for a final final word. Hugh (talk) 18:03, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

"Oopsy"?

Us last word freaks just have to get our "oopsies" in, don't we. – Paine Ellsworth^CLIMAX! 19:06, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Data from sources

Let's accumulate the evidence for or against "consistently capitalized in sources" here. Dicklyon (talk) 17:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Do what you want, but don't remove data from the comments above. The capitalized name is so prevalent in the data you, I, and others have presented (even in your 9 and 10 above) that to hide this data to be read after someone has voted goes against everything I know about consensus. Can't admins step in and stop this kind of thing, I have no idea how that works. Are you just allowed to pick and choose one side and argue that even if other evidence that the page names are very common names? Í don't get it. Glad I'm not a Wikipedia politician if this is what all of that is about. Randy Kryn 18:04 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

Did I remove something? I relocated a few of my own comments; I could duplicate them above if you prefer. Dicklyon (talk) 03:29, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

And why is "Web search" so far down your list? It seems going into a data-search arm-wrestling match with you is like bringing a common-sense wand to a knife fight, you still get cut if you don't have one yourself. I don't know the ins and outs of trying to put up a question on Wikipedia and defending it with numbers and policies and semi-policies. You've got me there. I just know that when you google or bing or other search engine these things, capitalization is prevalent. To me that's the common name. To Wikipedia policies it looks like that means it's the common name. What is there not common about it? Randy Kryn 18:22 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

I moved web search up top for you. Dicklyon (talk) 01:24, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Can anyone report on a scan of the articles' own sources? Thanks. Hugh (talk) 07:54, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I've added a section immediately below for that. Dicklyon (talk) 22:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Article's cited sources

Per request by HughD above. Dicklyon (talk) 22:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

1. [1] no "civil rights movement" on the linked page

2. [2] lowercase "civil rights movement" throughout

3. [3] no "civil rights movement" on the linked page

4. [4] lowercase "civil rights movement" throughout

5. [5] lowercase "civil rights movement" throughout

6. [6] "civil rights" and "Civil Rights Act", but no movement

7. [7] no "Civil" at all

8. [8] no "Civil" at all

9. [9] mixed case "Civil Rights movement"

10. [10] lowercase "civil rights movement" throughout

11. [http://www.amazon.com/The-Strange-Career-Jim-Crow/dp/0195146905] lowercase "civil rights movement" throughout

12. [11] no "civil rights movement" in text.

13. [12] lowercase "civil rights movement" in abstract and introduction; paywalled

14. [13] lowercase "civil rights" throughout; no "movement"

15. [14] "civil rights laws", no "movement"

16. [http://www.amazon.com/Black-Maverick-Howards-Economic-Studies/dp/0252034201] mixed, with "early civil-rights movements", "modern civil-rights movement", "a successful Civil Rights Movement", "civil rights and other movements", etc.

OK, I had to get to number 16 before I found an example of capitalized "Civil Rights Movement". Someone please continue if you need more data. Dicklyon (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! Hugh (talk) 23:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

It took me ten seconds to find a mistake in even this short list. Number 10, there are many capitalizations of Civil Rights Movement, not as you describe it. And many of the sources are from a group called 'Civil Rights Movement Veterans', capitalized. You give a few examples out of hundreds on the page. And even some of those you got wrong. HughD, please do your own search into these sources, and, as Dicklyon points out, many of them don't mention the movement at all (one he lists actually claimed there was no cohesive Civil Rights Movement, a fair source to use as an example for sure!). Randy Kryn 13:30 29 December, 2014 (UTC)

Not mistakes. Maybe I didn't make it clear that when I said "throughout", I meant that on multiple pages, wherever "civil rights movement" appeared in a sentence, it appeared lowercase. Many of these sources do also have headings, citations to titles, etc., that are capitalized, but that does not bear on the question, does it? And yes I agree that "Civil Rights Movement Veterans" is the proper name of an organization, but that also does not bear on the question, does it? Dicklyon (talk) 21:28, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Here's an idea: why don't you work through the cited sources from the other end, and see how far you have to go to find "Civil Rights Movement" capitalized in a sentence? Maybe you won't have to go as far from that end as I had to go from the start. Dicklyon (talk) 21:37, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Now the three of us have poked around in the article's refs. Randy, may I ask, from what you saw, how would you describe the capitalization? Consistently capitalized? Inconsistent? Mixed? Thanks. Hugh (talk) 22:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I'll do so more tomorrow, but it now appears to me that this issue has actually derailed this entire question. There has been so much emphasis on the term 'Civil Rights Movement' in this proposal when, in reality, there should be no discussion of it. It's like trying to change the name of 'Monroe Doctrine' to 'Monroe doctrine' because when the word 'doctrine' stands alone in is not capitalized. The same with 'civil rights movement' - when it stands alone it could or could not be capitalized (such as 'President Johnson' would be capitalized, 'president', standing along, wouldn't). The issue is the complete name 'African-American Civil Rights Movement', a proper name, a full name, and not the term 'civil rights movement'. Again, I'll add to this tomorrow, but this issue is now a bucket of soup with so many side-issues floating within it that it's either very appetizing or totally ruined by overseasoning. Randy Kryn 5:17 30 December, 2014 (UTC)

You're flip-flopping here. When I showed web search results for "African-American Civil Rights Movement", you pushed back on wanting just "Civil Rights Movement". Not that it makes any difference. I've shown with extensive data that no variation comes close to be being treated as a proper name in most sources. Dicklyon (talk) 05:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Totally flip-flopped. I realize I was playing by the rules and language you set up in your opening post in this entire section, where you set up the "agree" and "disagrees" on the words 'civil rights movement', which I finally have realized is of course not always capitalized. Sometimes it is, which is nice, I like doing so. But the term 'civil rights movement', standing alone, is not a proper name - it's understood to be a type of movement, a type of thing on its own, and some of us capitalize it. But what you want to do is change a real proper name 'African-American Civil Rights Movement' which, sir, is definitely a thing, and you have yet to somehow disprove that it's a thing. It's like not always having to capitalize the word 'president' if it's used alone - such as 'the president' - in a sentence on a Wikipedia page about President Lyndon Johnson. But if the words 'President Lyndon Johnson' follow one another, then it's capitalized for sure. My apologies for thinking that's what you wanted to discuss in your opening post in this long discussion, because it reads as if you did, and if I got off-track or took the discussion off-track, my apologies for that. Randy Kryn 19:00 1 January, 2015 (UTC)

Web search

Go deep into Google, go deep into Bing (I went 28 pages in), and do so with the lower case such as 'civil rights movement ' so as to be fair. The capitalization not only seems to be much more prevalent (even, of course, when Wikipedia is removed). It goes on and on. Wikipedia got the common name correct right from the start. Randy Kryn 18:30 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

The case of the search string has no effect, I think. Here they are with uppercase:

Google search for "African-American Civil Rights Movement"
Bing search for "African-American Civil Rights Movement"

Even though web search generally finds lower quality sources than book search, I agree it's worth a look. Both Google and Bing start off with a link to this article with its current uppercase title and text; both also find African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954) in their top 10. Those are not relevant, so that leaves 8 on each to look at.

Both also rank this history.com article high. It has uppercase in the title, but lowercase "African-American civil rights movements" in the text (it does have caps in "Civil Rights era", oddly.

Both find Britannica, with "American civil rights movement" lowercase

Bing finds more wiki mirror junk, like [15], and ebay junk like [16] and other bizarre junk like [17].

Google finds some more sensible pages like Minnesota History Center with uppercase in title and lowercase in text, and newrepublic with lowercase "civil rights movement".

In general, usage is mixed. Search engines tend to prefer to show titles and capitalized things in snippets, so if you don't look beyond the hit listing it looks more uppercase than it is. When you look inside, that illusion vanishes.

I find only 15 pages of results on Google, but more than 28 on Bing. That later Bing results are mostly duplicate wiki mirror hits and such garbage.

Dicklyon (talk) 01:24, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You know well that I didn't mean the term 'African-American Civil Rights Movement' which is an awkward choice of words to begin with, but 'Civil Rights Movement' in general. There are hundreds of examples when you put those words in (see the Bing link in my first comment above, which I've just added). Randy Kryn 10:47 28 December, 2014 (UTC)

Either way, the web search tends to show a lot of uppercase titles, but when you look in the docs, more than half use lowercase in the text (maybe not on page 1 of your Bing search, but on page 2 and subsequent). Dicklyon (talk) 18:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

More per Randy's preferred search:

Google search for "Civil Rights Movement"
Bing search for "Civil Rights Movement"

On both the Google and Bing first pages, one can spot more than half lowercase in the snippets, without even clicking into the pages to get past titles. The more you look past titles and headings, the more dominant lowercase is. Dicklyon (talk) 03:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Book n-grams

The n-gram viewer only works up to 5-grams, but African-American Civil Rights Movement is a 6-gram when the hyphen is included. So the best stats we can get there involve subsets of the full phrase. Here are some relevant comparisons:

African-American Civil Rights,African-American civil rights omitting movement
-American Civil Rights Movement,-American civil rights movement with leading hyphen
African American Civil Rights Movement,African American civil rights movement with no hyphen
American Civil Rights Movement,American civil rights movement broad 4-gram
Civil Rights Movement,civil rights movement broad 3-gram.

These have links you can use to click through to books if you're wondering what the next works might be on each side, and are holding out how that the entire 6-gram is capitalized. It's not.

You are selecting again. You included a hyphen for some reason in your "American Civil Rights Movement" and 'American civil rights movement' example above. I removed the hyphen, and the result is much closer and shows no need to change the title. [18]. Why did you put the hyphen in when you didn't with the others? Randy Kryn 18:28 27 December, 2014 (UTC)

Google n-grams treat the hyphen as a distinct "1-gram"; so when I include it, I'm searching for n-grams with a hyphen, and when I leave it out, I'm searching for n-grams without it, as I tried to explain with the brief annotations above.

That one you link is the one I showed as "broad 4-gram". It's closer, as you note; only about 2:1 favoring lowercase. So what? That's still not "consistently capitalized"; closer to the opposite; certainly evidence that capitalization is not "necessary" here. And it suggests that most capitalized uses of "Civil Rights Movement" are not in the context of American or African-American. Dicklyon (talk) 01:30, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You can get a better picture of usage in sentence context by ending with a word unlikely in a title, such as "was" or "and" or "of":

American Civil Rights Movement was
American Civil Rights Movement and
American Civil Rights Movement of

Generally, less than 1 in 5 caps in sentences. Again, clear evidence that most capitalization comes from titles and headings, not from treating as a proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 03:56, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Book search

The book n-grams tend to exaggerate the use of capitalized forms, since those are most in titles and headings, so have no bearing on what the correct capitalization would be in a sentence, which is what we need, since our title policy is to use sentence case, per WP:NCCAPS.

This effect is immediately apparent in book-search hits, where many of the capitalized forms are in book titles:

first page of hits
10th page of hits shows mostly lowercase, as book search tends to rank titles higher.

So the n-grams are biased toward uppercase, yet show an overwhelming majority of lowercase. This is very strong evidence that these terms are not treated as proper names by book authors and editors. Dicklyon (talk) 18:10, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

On the proposal for "1960s Civil Rights Movement", it is actually very common in books, due to widespread citations to the title Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. But outside of this title, in sentences, lowercase is used, as in "1960s civil rights movement"; see book searches:

1960s Civil Rights Movement shows hits largely in the one book title;
1960s Civil Rights Movement -personal where the minus sign excludes hits on pages with "personal", to try to mostly knock out just that book title. Dicklyon (talk) 18:10, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Scholar search

Google scholar search for "African-American Civil Rights Movement" find lots of papers. Consider the first page of 10 hits:

1. this PDF that mirrors a wikipedia page, with uppercase

2. this book with uppercase in title, lowercase in text

3. this PDF with uppercase "Civil Rights Movement" thoughout, with this definition: For purposes of this article, I define the "Civil Rights Movement" as that movement which originated in the struggle for Black equality during the 1920s.

4. this PDF with lowercase "African American civil rights movement" in text.

5. this book with lowercase "African American civil rights movement" in text.

6. this book with uppercase "Civil Rights Movement" in description, but lowercase "civil rights movement" in the text in the Introduction.

7. this paper with lowercase "civil rights" in the part visible, and a capitalized title in a snippet.

8. just a citation to "Radical equations: Math literacy and civil rights"; no snippet or link, but lowercase as Google shows the title

9. this book with lowercase "civil rights movement" throughout text.

10. this paper with lowercase "civil rights movement" in the part of the text we can see.

Generally, lowercase appears to be most common; only one of first 10 uses caps. One could look further and collect more stats. Dicklyon (talk) 01:02, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Pings

@Jakec, North Shoreman, HughD, Edison, Chris troutman, Cptnono, and Lukeno94: @Dicklyon, Dekimasu, RGloucester, Tony1, Calidum, Red Harvest, and Djembayz: @SMcCandlish, Labattblueboy, Skookum1, and Ohconfucius: @Blueboar, ErikHaugen, BD2412, Hmains, Arbitrarily0, Neil P. Quinn, and Anglo-Araneophilus:. As part of the RM withdrawal at Talk:Watts Riots, User:Dicklyon agreed to ping involved editors on subsequent and new discussions. Even after being reminded, he has failed to do this, so I have done so. BusterD (talk) 15:53, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure your ping attempt had no effect; as I told you before, there's a rather involved process that we worked out that will work to ping more than the usual limit; it takes time, and didn't have time last night (and these are not among the articles for which I had agreed to do pings, but I don't mind). Anyway, I have pinged the list below, and added you to it. Please let me know whether you got the ping, and review the history of about 8 edits if you want to see what it takes. Hopefully I didn't leave out any of the crucial steps of removing the pings and signatures from the section before pinging again. Dicklyon (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

@Jakec, North Shoreman, HughD, Edison, Chris troutman, Cptnono, and Lukeno94: @Dicklyon, Dekimasu, RGloucester, Tony1, Calidum, Red Harvest, and Djembayz: @Blueboar, ErikHaugen, BD2412, Hmains, Arbitrarily0, Neil P. Quinn, and Anglo-Araneophilus:@SMcCandlish, Labattblueboy, Skookum1, Ohconfucius, and BusterD: – Since you have participated in or closed one or more of the recent riot/massacre/etc. decapitalization discussions, you are being pinged in case you want to be aware of this one. This goes beyond notification of moves of the 30 listed at Talk:Watts Riots, but was requested by BusterD as shown above. Dicklyon (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

There is no need to ping me on these; I was a discussion closer, not an involved editor. My participation in this matter is concluded. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:53, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
Great; thanks for verifying that the ping worked this time. Dicklyon (talk) 01:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
- I was told I'd been pinged here, but never did get a ping; and know of others I've pinged who got nothing.Skookum1 (talk) 04:19, 1 January 2015 (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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.