Talk:Johnstown Flood (disambiguation)

Requested move 11 May 2018

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 move. We have consensus that this subject is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. We also have no agreement about decapitalizing. Cúchullain ^t/c 15:36, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

– Johnston Flood is ambiguous whether capped or not. The capping is usually found when referencing books titled The Johnston Flood, books which themselves use lowercase flood in the text, at least in some cases. This was started as a technical request to fix the disambig page title, but then then Randy reverted the other, so I've converted to a multiple move request. Dicklyon (talk) 06:17, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is a contested technical request (permalink). –Ammarpad (talk) 17:27, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

- Oppose changing the primary, please move the name of the page back to Johnstown Flood (moved by Dicklyon without discussion), and I'd ask an admin to reverse the lower-casing of this main Johnstown Flood article which Dicklyon boldly moved a couple of days ago, and to bring all of this to an RM if Dicklyon still intends to change both titles. Per Johnstown Flood National Memorial, Johnstown Flood Museum, this n-gram, page sources, and page references which contain the upper-case. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - A better n-gram shows the true situation better. Most of the capped Floods are in proper names of museums and memorials, book titles, and such. Dicklyon (talk) 16:34, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    - Your "better" n-gram is a mishmash of "of", "the", and "in" which, it turns out, makes a near-perfect image of spaghetti. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:43, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted the Johnstown Flood article to the stable title per request. As there are other floods known as "the Johnstown flood of X" but only one referred to as "the Johnstown Flood" it seems that the Ngrams results may be unreliable in this context. However, in his edit summary for the move Dicklyon noted that some sources use "the Johnstown flood" in reference to the 1889 event (are these all in reference to the geological analyses?). Dekimasuよ! 17:49, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support as nom – After considerable analysis of sources, I found that the capping of "Flood" in books was mostly in reference to other books with titles such as Johnstown Flood, The Johnstown Flood, History of the Johnstown Flood, The Johnstown Flood: Core Events of Deadly Disaster, and The Bosses Club: The conspiracy that caused the Johnstown Flood.... Within these, flood is usually lowercase, as in this one, this one, this one, this one, etc. There's not much evidence for "Johnstown Flood" as a proper name, as there is for "Great Flood" and for the museum and memorial named for the flood. Sure, lots of source do cap Flood, but most don't, and the caps are clearly optional, so per MOS:CAPS they are not what we do in Wikipedia. Dicklyon (talk) 06:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral (don't care one way or the other) about capitalization. Strongly oppose changing the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 09:43, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support per MOS:CAPS and various previous moves of this sort. This isn't a proper name, it's a description, and multiple notable Johnstown floods means one in particular cannot really be "the" Johnstown flood in an encyclopedia. A label like "The Johnstown Flood" is only going to make sense in a very particular local-history context (and one that's already obsolete). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:29, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose, the stable name since the page's creation in 2004, this is an obvious common name per search engines, per the references and bibliography in the article, per common sense, per historical attributions about the topic, per n-grams (linked above), per the museum and other things named after the flood, and per the scale of this event which has made it a proper name and not just a description of one particular flood. It is the flood of its time, and people with a sense of history and scale have named it so, in capital letters, which is how the flood is known and differentiated. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:43, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support—downcase; and disambiguate to avoid irritating readers. Tony (talk) 08:57, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tony, you're back! I will change my ivote to 'Strong' Oppose in celebration. But seriously, on this one, Johnstown Flood is the proper way to go, it's about as common a name for an event as there is. When historically aware people think 'flood' they think of the Johnstown Flood (or Curt), upper-cased. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:33, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Johnstown Flood, as a proper noun, refers to the famous 1889 flood. Johnstown flood, as a descriptive phrase, could theoretically apply to any of the three floods that have articles, but the Johnstown Flood is such a clear primary topic[1] that it's better to keep it as a redirect to avoid irritating readers by sending them to a dab page where they don't want to be. Station1 (talk) 20:10, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for same reasons as last RM. Johnstown Flood refers to the 1889 version the vast majority of the time, and is referred to with a capital F in reliable sources. Easy WP:COMMONNAME. Insert side procedural complaint: Talk:Johnstown_Flood#Requested_move_25_March_2015 shows that was a contested technical request, which resulted in a failed RM. Please do not move without discussion after having already failed an RM; just file a new RM directly. (And the Flood itself would be the better place to hold this debate, as it has the relevant earlier RMs right there in the history.) SnowFire (talk) 18:07, 16 May 2018 (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.