Talk:2024 NWSL expansion draft

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On 17 March 2024, it was proposed that this article be moved from 2024 NWSL Expansion Draft to 2024 NWSL expansion draft. The result of the discussion was moved.

Requested move 17 March 2024

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

The result of the move request was: moved. Per consensus. – robertsky (talk) 16:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

– Per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, reserve caps for proper names. These are most often lowercase in sources (and NHL is being handled separately, for no particular reason). Dicklyon (talk) 02:54, 17 March 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. queen of 🖤 (they/them; chat) 19:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral - either versions (uppercase/lowercase) are acceptable. GoodDay (talk) 03:41, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support—It's much easier to read—and more logical—than birdshot capping. Apart from the other, more formal reasons to respect the difference between proper names and common. Tony (talk) 04:36, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. I don't think our encyclopedia should buy into the chutzpah of a proper name for what is basically a process as much as it is an event. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 07:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment doing a web search for one of the listed articles at random (2022 MLS Expansion Draft), it seems to me that its most often capitalized in sources. In any case, I see how for most of these it can work both ways. The 202X Expansion Draft is the title of the main event – held on a specific day and usually televised – and is therefore capitalized. The 202X expansion draft would then refer to the general topic of the process of distributing players to teams. BLAIXX 15:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your WP:OR theorizing about how proper names do or should work (a subject of intense professional debate in philosophy, linguistics, and some other fields for over 200 years, and to this day completely unsettled) does not have and could not have anything of any kind to do with how WP makes capitalization decisions. MOS:CAPS: Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. (Emphasis in original.) The fact that capitalization is fairly common in the sports press and sports-related websites does not translate into meeting our standard, especially when a large proportion of the capitalizing sources are non-independent but have direct promotional ties to an event, team, league, or sport, or are otherwise non-secondary, unreliable sources, but meawhile a large number of the professional journalism and other sources use lower case. Also, these articles of ours are not about televised program[me]s, they are about sports events/processes; none of these things are notable in and of themselves as audiovisual works on television (or the today's web equivalent of television), so there is no plausible argument to force them to be capitalized as titles of works (nor is there any evidence provided, anyway, that the titles of the TV coverage, as-aired, actually agree with our articles titles about the processes/events in the first place). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't call my discussion point "OR" or "theorizing", you're being unnecessarily dismissive. What I was saying is directly relevant to WP:NCCAPS (as cited by the nom) which states that "proper names" should be capitalized in titles. BLAIXX 01:00, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Blaixx, the idea that the article is about a "main event – held on a specific day and usually televised" as opposed to "the process of distributing players to teams" and the 202X results thereof, is itself not right. Look at the article. It's all about the process, not the event, and nothing about televised. So even if your linguistic theory about what makes a proper name was correct, its premise here is not. Check out the article, and I'm sure you'll wan to retract your opposition. Dicklyon (talk) 11:11, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Forget about the television bit then. I guess I wasn't very clear but my point is simply that each of the topic names can be used as proper nouns or a common nouns depending on context. BLAIXX 21:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they "can be used as proper nouns", but if sources don't do so consistently, then WP's style guideline says not to capitalize them. There are not many book uses of these terms with these leagues, but the general term "expansion draft" is most often lowercase, and for the NBA expansion draft, the only league with robust stats in books, lowercase is still more common with the league name prepended. So "consistently capitalized in independent sources" is unlikely still when the same term is used with less prominent leagues. It's easy to find examples of lowercase usage in news (e.g. this). Dicklyon (talk) 05:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Similarly with dispersal draft. Dicklyon (talk) 05:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related page moves. Giant Snowman 17:42, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Blaixx. Giant Snowman 17:43, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But Blaixx's rationale isn't actually applicable. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support per MOS:CAPS (espcially MOS:SPORTCAPS, MOS:SIGCAPS) and the derived WP:NCCAPS. This is not "consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources". The capitalization tends to be quite common in sports news [1]. However, it needs actual analysis. Various cases show capitalization in headlines and headings (not uniformly though), then lower-case or a mixture in body text (e.g. KC Soccer Journal, University of Missouri–Kansas City Law Review, etc.). Some also show capitalization of usages that are absolutely, positively common-noun-phrase constructions by definition; e.g. "The Expansion Draft eligible player list includes ...", where "Expansion Draft" is not attached to any name (abbreviated or otherwise); and that's a style WP does not permit (and most other publications don't either; it's the same as writing "while attending the University" or "She left the Corporation in 2012"). Various publications, e.g. The Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Mercury News, Pro Soccer Wire, Los Angeles Daily News, The Athletic, Just Women's Sports, The Washington Post, and many others, consistently use lower-case for this stuff, including even in headlines. Some (e.g. CBS Sports) are consistent within any given article but inconsistent across multiple articles, probably reflecting the proclivities of particular writers not made to conform by editors to a specific style (increasingly common in today's journalism where speed to publication is considered more important than anything else). While, yes, some are all-caps-all-the-time, an outright majority of those appear to not pass the WP:INDY and WP:RS tests, but are fan sites of particular teams, official pages of leagues or teams, official city websites (Orlando & Salt Lake City) promoting events they are hosting, ticket-seller websites, student publications, and other claptrap.
Anyway, the gist is that these terms do not meet our capitalization standards. The capitalization is just favored by particular publishers like Goal.com and All for XI (whatever those are), and ones with promotional ties to a sports or its leagues or teams. These are demonstrably not proper names (in any sense that WP cares about or which affects capitalization decisions). The very fact that they're frequently lower-case is proof of that. No one writes "the pacific ocean" or "the netherlands", but quite a large number of writers use "the NWSL expansion draft", etc. PS: Lower-case is also even more common outside the only quasi-independent sports press, of course [2]. PPS: An further indication a bunch of this capitalization is simply wrong is that a number of these things are foreign leagues from non-English-speaking places, and "expansion draft" is simply an English-language term being applied to what they are doing, and is not an official name of anything to do with those leagues (not that WP cares about official names anyway). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 08:55, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Following up on my previous comments, I'm not completely against this proposal but I have not seen enough evidence in this nom from those in favour. It is very clear that expansion draft on its own is a common noun that is usually lower case (i.e. "the league's upcoming expansion draft..."). However, when used the way it is in these titles (ex. "the 2022 MLS Expansion Draft will be held in St. Louis on..."), it seems to me that they are consistently capitalized by third-party sources. BLAIXX 15:32, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are precious few sources using that phrase, fewer in sentences, and even fewer independent of MLS. All of the article's references are to MLS pages, and those also capitalize "the Expansion Draft", so clearly aren't representative of any independent style, where that would be lowercase. Having so little to go on, it's best to interpret these as descriptive titles, as opposed to proper names, like in so many other sports and leagues. Dicklyon (talk) 11:43, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support: The supporting reasons above need not be repeated. Exactly what is a proper noun is fuzzy around the edges. At this point, let's aim for consistency in Wikipedia. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 23:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per Collins dictionary, a proper noun ... is arbitrarily used to denote a particular person, place, or thing without regard to any descriptive meaning the word or phrase may have ... These are clearly descriptive with respect to process and the event at which this process occurs - though these articles focus on the process. They are therefore not ipso facto proper nouns that would normally be capitalised except for significance and we don't do that per MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. We might do so if they we clearly capitalised consistently in independent sources (per MOS:CAPS an WP:NCCAPS). The evidence provided does not indicate this to be the case. Alegorical claims are not substantive evidence. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:39, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support as per MOS:CAPS and MOS:SPORTCAPS. Flibirigit (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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