Talk:IRT Lexington Avenue Line

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Requested move 17 November 2017

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

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Do not see enough agreement either way in this discussion. Perhaps if the issue of whether "Line" is part of the name or "line" is descriptive can be resolved, then we would know for certain how these articles should be titled? "No consensus" means that garnering consensus may continue at any time. Happy Holidays to all! (closed by page mover) Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 20:01, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

– Case normalize per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS and book sources. These are just the Avenue lines of the NYC subway; the rest will follow. In most systems, "line" is not part of a proper name. The navbox template Template:NYCS lines navbox shows the names without line. Sources don't usually cap lines. So per WP:MOS we should not treat line as part of a proper name and per WP:NCCAPS we should set the title in sentence case. Dicklyon (talk) 06:36, 17 November 2017 (UTC) --Relisted. Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 21:06, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: We should keep in mind that renaming these articles will lead to renaming about 700 articles on stations (including former stations), such as 125th Street (IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line). Vcohen (talk) 13:18, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm prepared to work through this cluster of over-capitalization, but it won't happen overnight unless someone volunteers to do it by a bot. Thanks for pointing out how this error is mirrored in disambiguators. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose, per official MTA documentation:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kew Gardens 613 (talk • contribs)

So you'd just ignore the relevant guidelines? Normally we discount "official" usage and go with "common" usage. Many of your links don't even show a relevant context (cap in titles and headings don't imply treatment as proper name). Dicklyon (talk) 03:55, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict × 3) The usage of these titles is relatively uncommon among the everyday public, so it shouldn't matter anyway. See my comment below. epicgenius (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. These are proper nouns. Common usage has both capitalizations, and anyway, this doesn't help readers in any way. The usage of the "XXX line" nomenclature in any way, uppercase or lowercase, is rare enough that the Google book results are negligible. Most people, in their everyday goings-about, don't refer to the physical tracks when referring to something on the subway, they refer to the routes (e.g. the 5 train, not the Dyre Avenue Line). We are not most subway systems around the world in this sense. But when people do talk about the tracks, they generally do so using these proper names, or they may use colloquialisms like the Lexington IRT. epicgenius (talk) 22:33, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
There's no evidence that these are proper nouns. Some don't appear at all in sources. Using lowercase helps WP readers by sticking to our usual style, avoiding giving the incorrect impression that these are proper nouns. They are descriptive titles. Dicklyon (talk) 00:37, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
MTA uses them as proper nouns. These are the official names, not descriptive titles. If they were descriptive titles, we'd have messes like IRT Livonia Avenue line (for IRT New Lots Line) and BMT Broadway (Brooklyn), Fulton Street, and Jamaica Avenue line (for BMT Jamaica Line). epicgenius (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Like most organizations, MTA caps the stuff that's important to them. See WP:SSF. We don't do that in WP. Dicklyon (talk) 00:45, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just the MTA, and different sources use different capitalizations. These for "BMT Brighton line", for example: [9] [10]; for "BMT Brighton Line": [11] [12]; and the AIA Guide to NYC even has both "BMT Fourth Avenue line" and "BMT Brighton Line". epicgenius (talk) 00:57, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly so. And where sources are inconsistent in caps, we interpret it as therefore not a proper name, and default to lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 03:26, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support per MOS:CAPS, WP:NCCAPS, and a shipload of previous RMs. These are not proper nouns, they're descriptive phrases. WP follows its own MoS, not the house style of some over-capitalizing government agency. We've been over this innumerable times already. How can it be this difficult for a handful of editors to understand that we don't adopt the style guides of external publishers and that internal govermentese has little in common with encyclopedic writing style? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 22:37, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
PS: All of the reasoning about "station" versus "Station" at the recent Village Pump RfC that concluded in favor of lower case also applies to "line" versus "Line". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 22:42, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the source for these not being proper nouns? All the usages I've seen are proper nouns since these are official names of actual trackage, not just the descriptions of which tracks run under which avenues. epicgenius (talk) 22:47, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Official and actual do not add to proper. Lots of specific things have official designation that are not proper names, and lots of sources have styles like WP's where they don't cap unnecessarily. For example this book. Dicklyon (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This book also eschews capitalization. Useddenim (talk) 00:59, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I repeat what I said above: The usage of the "XXX line" nomenclature in any way, uppercase or lowercase, is rare enough that the Google book results are negligible. It could go either way. I don't see any problem with the current name, or with redirecting your proposed titles to the current name. I personally use both—for example, Second Avenue Subway uses both uppercase "Second Avenue Line" and lowercase "Second Avenue line"—but I use the former when I want to refer to the specific, actual trackage, and the latter when I want to refer to a general line alignment that runs under the avenue. epicgenius (talk) 23:12, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So the names are both official and uncommon? That would seem to be a bad choice, then, per WP:COMMONNAME. In any case, no reason to not comply with our normal style guidelines. It took a while to fix that on statons per WP:USSTATION, but we got there. Most countries use lowercase line already, but some US systems stand out as violators of those style guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The NYC Subway has some consistency with uppercase "Line" used only throughout the system. It's not consistent with the rest of the subway systems in the world because physical lines are uncommon compared to routes. I'm not saying that the official names are right or wrong, but the debate is negligible anyway since there's not enough meaningful evidence to argue for one side or the other. A few books from official sources and transit historians don't necessarily reflect common usage, but they do reflect the majority of correct, published usage (as opposed to "Lexington IRT"). epicgenius (talk) 23:54, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of sources for these long names just supports the idea that they are descriptive. The IRT Second Avenue line is also called the Second Avenue El and such. Does any source actually suggest that "IRT Second Avenue Line" is, or ever was, its proper name? Or even use this name? It's a fine definite description and article title, but let's only cap the proper-name parts of it. Dicklyon (talk) 00:34, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
But of the sources that do exist, roughly two thirds are lowercase and one third is uppercase, if the word "Line" is used at all and if it isn't some weird permutation like "Lexington Avenue subway" or "Lex Avenue Line" or "Lexington IRT" (again). These account for yet more usages that may be even more popular, e.g. "Second Avenue Subway" over "IND Second Avenue L/line". That's barely a majority. As with the Amtrak or WMATA station pages moved under USSTATION, there aren't enough references to any particular line that clearly picks one capitalization over another. The solution is not mass-moving 700+ pages that, at best, are disruptive to watchlists and make the vast majority of our not-at-all-broken links into unnecessary redirects. epicgenius (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the case for capping "line" is very weak on several counts, as explained by Dicklyon and SMcCandlish above. Tony (talk) 00:38, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Here's another idea. Instead of moving IRT Second Avenue Line, IRT Third Avenue Line, IRT Sixth Avenue Line, IRT Ninth Avenue Line and Fifth Avenue Line (Brooklyn elevated) to lowercase "line", why not move these to Second Avenue Elevated, Third Avenue Elevated (Manhattan), Sixth Avenue Elevated, Ninth Avenue Elevated, and Fifth Avenue Elevated? Or "elevated", whatever it may be. If people want COMMONNAME, let's start with that. epicgenius (talk) 01:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I like that idea. But still probably want to downcase the elevated; see books n-grams. Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose. This is all about proper grammar. The titles are litteraly fine the way they are, so why change them? --Davidng913 (talk) 17:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You're saying that most reliable sources have bad grammar, and we need to fix that by capping where they don't? Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support per the nominator's evidence that these are not proper names. Per WP:NCCAPS, we don't capitalise unless there's a good reason to do so, and there is no such good reason here. — Amakuru (talk) 17:07, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nominator, and Amakuru. —usernamekiran(talk) 17:27, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. If we're going by n-grams rather than official name, Lexington Avenue subway is much more common. Doodle77 (talk) 18:19, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We have a long-standing naming convention in WP:NYCPT. We don't need another snowballing move request like the one a while back with the station names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Captian Cavy (talk • contribs) 05:08, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That page doesn't say anything about caps. It looks like the project never noticed that they're out of step with the rest of wikipedia on such things. I also see that this RM discussion notifies the project there, which is why we're seeing so much 'local' opposition probably. What more central place should be notified to provide some balance? Dicklyon (talk) 16:26, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NYCPT does mention it, as in the naming convention it does in fact show usage of "Line". This is becoming a Snowball already, just like the last time the naming convention was challenged. --Captian Cavy (talk) 19:23, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Kew Gardens 613, Epicgenus, Davidng913, and anyone else who has spoken out against it. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 20:09, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Several NYCPT contributors have given their reasons which I strongly agree with. —LRG5784 (talk · contribs · email) 12:35, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Ambivalent. There is a case to be made for Xxx Line referring to the route or service, and Xxx line for the trackage along Xxx Street/Avenue. Useddenim (talk) 01:04, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Even if we are to ignore the officially-used capitalization, then "IRT", "BMT" and "IND" shouldn't be used unless they are necessary for disambiguation since the companies no longer exist and the lines aren't usually referred to with the company names even in official usage (e.g. Second Avenue Subway, which is the official brand name and the current article title). This move request also fails to mention all of the affected articles, including most of the lines (including Archer Avenue Lines and 63rd Street Lines, which I would support renaming to decapitalize "Lines"). Finally, there is a case for not bothering to use what's used in publications since the RSes usually use the service names, which are much more well-known. Jc86035 (talk) 11:53, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.