Talk:2020 MLS Cup Playoffs

Rounds are proper names?

@SounderBruce: In this revert you say "As explained in other playoff articles, the rounds are proper names and referred to as such by media". I don't recall where this was explained, but looking at news media and books, I'm not seeing treatment as a proper name except when in the context of specific conference names. Please fill me in on your thinking. Dicklyon (talk) 05:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

How are they done in the other 'Year MLS Cup Playoffs'? GoodDay (talk) 15:43, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The same, as far as I know. This isn't about 2020, it's just that that's where I was when I noticed. Dicklyon (talk) 16:57, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Actually, as I look at older ones, I find a lot with "conference semifinals" lowercase in the text, but capped in the section heading. This heading over-capping seems to have some in over 10 years ago, with this edit. In 2007 MLS Cup Playoffs the headings for finals and semifinals are still lowercase, and in 2008 MLS Cup Playoffs there's a mix of heading styles. I haven't checked all others yet. Thanks for asking. Dicklyon (talk) 17:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

In the 2011 article, the headings were sentence case until SounderBruce capped them in 2019. Part of the problem is that they also had "Western conference" and "Eastern conference" with lowercase conference, which seems like it really did need to be capped, but then the headings with finals and semifinals were wrongly capped at the same time. He did the same for the 2012, then reverted the guy who reverted him, with comment "rounds differ, but the league seems to prefer the proper form", which is a rationale in no way aligned with our guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The 2023 MLS Cup Playoffs even has a heading "Round One" (which came in here, before there were sources) that should be "Round one" or "First round" according to all the cited sources that were added later. The 2022 MLS Cup Playoffs has lowercase that I did in a JWB run last year, not noticing that SounderBruce had reverted the first time I had done so. I didn't do a lot of that at that time, probably because I noticed a revert or two. As far as I can find, I had not touched any others before this 2020 one that I found myself on somehow. Dicklyon (talk) 18:04, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm acceptable to either uppercase or lowercase. Let's be sure which ever version is chosen, gets applied to all the Year MLS Cup pages. GoodDay (talk) 19:44, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely. But it will take time. Let's see if we can do this one first. SounderBruce is ignoring the ping (even though he's the one who told me to bring it here when he deleted my query on his talk page), so I'll do the case fix again and see if he cares enough to join the discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 00:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

First of all, no user is obligated to respond immediately to a summons like this, especially when it is during the working hours of the day and during a very stressful time of the year. The current winter storm has knocked out my internet and electricity several times (including twice while writing a response here, unable to be recovered). The user talk page discussion was removed because of WP:MULTI and my desire to keep a tidy user talk page.

I waited until I saw you were editing for a few hours. So don't sound so put-upon. Dicklyon (talk) 03:06, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I am still trying to keep some level of consistency and standardization across American soccer articles, and in years past the norm in secondary sources has been to capitalize the round names in following with the traditions of other American sports, namely baseball (e.g. ALDS/ALCS). It is not a matter of promoting the league, but simply conforming with what readers are likely used to seeing. I am tired of the constant edit warring that wastes time that is better spent improving articles and making meaningful contributions to the project (of which I have many on my to-do list). Just drop the stick. SounderBruce 00:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Noticed this stuff on Dicklyon's talk page, always a nexus of capitalization questions. The observation about patience, above, is on-point, but these sourcing claims require investigation. I'm a regular sports editor, and it simply is not normal to capitalize "semifinals", "final", "quarterfinals", "qualifying rounds", "last 16", and other rounds/segments/legs/brackets of a tournament or similar competition. The event as a whole certainly has a proper name (MLS Cup Playoffs, along with the overarching MLS Cup), but these bracketing and elimination divisions within such an event are not consistently treated as capitalized proper names of their own in independent reliable sources, even sports-specific ones. Capitalizing in this case as if this one sport or this one series of events is somehow uniquely different (an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary sourcing) isn't supported by source usage, but quite the opposite. Going through Google News results for this specific event, I see semi[-]final capitalized frequently in title-case headings but not otherwise, as well as in non-indepenent material from MLS itself or MLS teams' official websites (self-published primary souces), or sometimes venues selling tickets (which are also not WP:INDY). There could be some actual independent news source somewhere that prefers the capitals (there usually are, in sports topics especially), but it's nowhere near an almost-uniform practice, and I didn't actually find any at all in the search results.

Here are the lower-case examples from that news search: FoxSports.com, ESPN.com, [1]AS.com (a dominant football/soccer news site), [2]TheAthletic.com, Inquirer.com, KING-TV Seattle, WCPO-TV Cincinatti, FrontRowSoccer.com, OrlandoSentinel.com, TechRadar.com (which covers sports and other streaming, not just gadgets), Tennessean.com, BroadwaySportsMedia.com, WCVB-TV Boston, PDXMonthly.com Portland, SocTakes.com (may be an unreliable Indiana U. blog with just two writers). All of them are lower-case except sometimes in headlines/headings. [3]SportingKC.com bounces back and forth between both styles in the same article, in multiple articles (but all-lowercase in others [4]). Nor do all the league teams consistently capitalize or seem to care at all, e.g. Stars and Stripes FC goes lowercase, while Orlando City SC also flips between spellings in the same article, using lowercase in running prose and uppercase in headings, list items, and other things intended to "draw the eye". Exact same pattern in WFAA-TV North Texas, [5]Dispatch.com, and several others. 3rdDegree.net (doesn't look like a reliable source anyway, but some random guy's local-sports blog) varied by article, as did DirtySouthSoccer.com (fan page of Atlanta United FC). MLSMultiplex.com, a ticket-seller, was also inconsistent within the same page, as was BrotherlyGame.com (fansite of Philadelphia Union FC).

All of these links are from the GN search results on 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs semifinal OR semifinals OR semi-final OR semi-finals [6], and account for all of the independent coverage there, instead of self-published primary material from the league or one of its teams/clubs. There simply were zero actual-news sources using "Semifinals" or "Semi-Finals" outside of headlines and the like. Perhaps surprisingly, Google Scholar has significant hits for a broader MLS Cup semifinal OR semifinals OR semi-final OR semi-finals search [7], and the running-text capitalization of terms like semi[-]final[s] and final[s] in this context shows up only in roughly 1 source in 20. So, the claims the rounds are proper names and referred to as such by media and the norm in secondary sources has been to capitalize the round names are obviously wrong and are improperly defending POV over-capitalization for "signification" and marketing, and OR based on primary-sourced house style preferences of the league itself. People really need to stop making incorrect claims about sourcing like this in defense of their topic-specific stylization shenanigans; it does not improve our content in any way, and is corrosive to community goodwill, treating other editors as if they're stupid and can't spend a few minutes to verify a claim. Verifying claims is what we do around here. Some very good advice from the above was: tired of the constant edit warring that wastes time that is better spent improving articles and making meaningful contributions to the project .... Just drop the stick. The entire encyclopedia project (internally and in a reader-facing sense) would be vastly better off if editors trying for unsupportable reasons to get strange style divergences away from every other topic would knock it off and especially stop making completely unsustainable sourcing claims that anyone can dispel in a couple of minutes of looking. Speaking of which, I took a few to go over a search like the above but with ALDS OR ALCS [8]; semi[-]final[s] is not much used in baseball, and when it is, by independent sources, it is almost uniformly lower-case outside of title-case headings, headlines, etc., as expected, since this is the norm across sports reporting generally. But I could have told you that since I've been editing sports articles here for over 18 years and this is hardly the first time this question has come up.

PS: Whether to hyphenate semi-finals varies, though it seems unnecessary to do so; concision is preferable, and dominates in the source material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

; more source evidence added: 17:34, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I've generally converted "Semi Finals" and "Semi-Finals" to "Semifinals" (maybe not capped, depending on context), and otherwise left the hyphens alone. But I agree they're unnecessary and could be removed. Dicklyon (talk) 03:29, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Bruce, I commend your focus on maintaining a level of consistency across articles. I'm happy to help with that. But as I've said in many places, the best way to work toward consistency is by way of consistency with guidelines. I won't fix everything immediately, but will eventually. If you'd like me to hold off a few months so I can get JWB access back and do it all more quickly, just say so. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Similar on the main article MLS Cup Playoffs, where the cited sources from mlssoccer.com cap a lot of things that the independent sources mostly do not. Dicklyon (talk) 16:17, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that longstanding capitalization consensus, conventions, and guidelines favor going ahead and downcasing things like what SounderBruce reverted. But if there are other objections, how should we best air those first? I don't want to be seen as working contrary to consensus, or without consensus, or using a "stick", but this should just get done, consistently, like in most other (non MLS Cup) articles. Dicklyon (talk) 03:33, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

With Bruce ignoring the conversation, and nobody else objecting yet, I'll go ahead and get started and see... Dicklyon (talk) 00:28, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, I did edits at MLS Cup Playoffs, 2004 Major League Soccer season, 2006 Major League Soccer season, and 2009 MLS Cup Playoffs that are reasonably representative of the things I've found that I think need fixing (I picked those years because they had over-capped section links from the main one). Comments? Dicklyon (talk) 00:51, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

If the consensus is 'lowercase'? then apply it to all the 'Year MLS season' & 'Year MLS Cup Playoffs pages. Keep'em consistent. GoodDay (talk) 01:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

You mean today? Or tomorrow? Or eventually? You volunteering to help? Want to do it quick before anyone else has a chance to comment? What's your point? Dicklyon (talk) 03:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I've implemented the 'lower-case' style into (I think) all the aforementioned pages. If my changes are 'reverted'? then WP:BRD goes into effect. Otherwise, all is calm. GoodDay (talk) 03:58, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm happy to not have to be the bad cop, or however some view me, on this one. Dicklyon (talk) 04:03, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

In my example edits there were more things to fix in each year's article, which you might have missed. This is why JWB would be handy, to collect, remember, and apply all the fix patterns. These: Season Format, Overall Standings, Clean Sheets. To me, these further hammer home the point that these articles have never been worked on by anyone who knows or cares about WP's capitalization guidelines. Now that we're working on them, it would be sad to stop half way. I'll get to them (not today) if you don't. Thanks for what you've done. Dicklyon (talk) 04:17, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not certain if I have JWB. If I have, I've never used it. GoodDay (talk) 04:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

You have to request permission, and learn to use it. Not a huge hurdle, but if you don't know, you probably don't have it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:33, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm working through those by hand. Did 21 articles (not all on MLS) with "Season Format", and fixed "Overall Standing" and "Clean Sheets" in those at the same time. There are more to do. I know how you hate inconsistency, so I'm on it. Dicklyon (talk) 23:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, done for now. There are still 123 with "Clean Sheets" in headers; I won't take that on without JWB. Dicklyon (talk) 23:15, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks like no more pushback on these changes. Thanks again. Dicklyon (talk) 22:33, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Once again, no user is obliged to immediately respond to anything. This is a volunteer project and not a job. I have a lot of offline stressors and this weekend has been extremely busy, so just because I lack the privilege of unlimited free time doesn't mean changing the status quo and ignoring the discussion process. There is no deadline to meet, there is no reason to rush out edits without discussion, and there is no reason to make snide comments about a user who is acting in good faith.

This is an absurd amount of text written over whether a few characters on a page are upper or lower case, and frankly it's eaten into a lot of time I wanted to spend being productive here instead of arguing the same points over and over ad nauseam. MOS:CAPS is a guideline and using common sense is spelled out as preferable; in the latter link the first step in the flowchart asks whether such a change improves the encyclopedia? I think the answer to disruptive editing that just fuels edit wars is a resounding no. SounderBruce 01:10, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry we rushed it. Dicklyon (talk) 02:07, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

If writing in normal English didn't improve the encyclopedia and wasn't common sense, WP would not have its own style guide. The obvious solution to unproductive and lengthy style disputes that one feels compelled to argue in ad nauseam is, of course, to just stop – follow the same guidelines as every other subject and editor, instead of seeking strange exemptions that do not comport with the P&G or the sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

A "strange exemption" would be far more extreme than simply using round names that conform with American sports tradition in an American sports article that is likely read by American readers. The style guideline simply needs to address these issues better through a measured and patient discussion as the process intended, not rushing behind the backs of users. It's no wonder editor retention is hurting these days. SounderBruce 09:33, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm the individual who 'lower-cased' the rounds-in-question (recently) in the pages-in-question. If you disagree? you've the option of reverting my changes. GoodDay (talk) 17:50, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Since I also fixed a bunch of uncontroversial stuff after that, reverting would be awkward. Best might be to start a conversation somewhere that will draw more attention if there's anything left to discuss. But I think Bruce will find he's in a significant minority here, as almost all such sport issues end up with a consensus to just follow the guidelines instead of copy how the leagues like to style things. Dicklyon (talk) 18:56, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

SounderBruce, I've already disproved, above, that your claim of this over-capitalization "conform[ing] with American sports tradition" is not supportable by independent reliable sources, including sports-specific ones, which overwhelmingly use lowercase; the capitalization is found almost nowhere but primary-source promotional material from the league itself, from teams within it (not consistently), and from ticket-selling venues (not consistently). Just repeating the claim after it has already been refuted is rather pointless WP:ICANTHEARYOU behavior. The sourcing doesn't lie. What actually harms editor retention in topics like this is walled-garden "my way or the highway" behavior by individuals who act like they have vested or tenured control over a topic here and like it belongs to them, and who treat other editors, trying to do something like basic copyediting, as if they are "enemies". No one is rushing behind anyone's back, and no one is required to satisfy you personally; we have guidelines for when to use uppercase, and this provably does not qualify, so there is no need for further delay in doing cleanup, especially if the one stonewaller involved ignores the evidence and returns to proof by assertion that this should be capitalized when reliable sourcing has already proven otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Most of this also applies to the "lowercase everything because I want it to be lowercase" brigade. And note that one participant has been blocked for incivil comments, so my desire to "refuse to listen" is less about not wanting to cooperate but rather avoiding needless drama. I got some work done during the course of this pointlessly long discussion, which has only served to distract me from actually improving the soccer coverage here. SounderBruce 19:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no "brigade" (you are basically accusing all editors who want to follow the sources and the WP:P&G on this matter as being some kind of conspiracy, but that really amounts to all editors other than you, who go by sourcing and P&G in all topics all the time), and it has nothing to do with a subjective "want", but with (again) simply following the sources and the guidelines. The only "I like it" argument being made here is by you, compounded by at least three disproven claims about off-site usage (the rounds are proper names and referred to as such by media, and the norm in secondary sources has been to capitalize the round names, and now [capitalized] round names that conform with American sports tradition). Whether someone got blocked for something unrelated to this is immaterial. You've made claims and continue to make them repeatedly after evidence demonstrates these claims to be wrong. That is the complete and only source of the "drama". It's fairly common for people who prefer to write a particular way about some subject to assume that reliable independent sources also consistently do it, but when this is demonstrated to not be the case, such a person needs to drop the stick and not get tendentious about their subjective and rather promotional style preference. Not being sure what the sources are doing is very different from continuing to defy the reality of what the sources are doing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:22, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Also, Bruce, you still haven't answered the question that I opened this section with. I'm wondering what you meant by "As explained in other playoff articles", and whether that was just you explaining, or some actual support for the idea. Dicklyon (talk) 18:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

MOS:CAPS says Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. A reader does not interpret a standalone header "Conference semifinals" any differently from "Conference Semifinals". It's not like "White House" having a distinct meaning from "white house". Barring it being shown capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources, capitalization is unnecessary.—Bagumba (talk) 08:23, 10 March 2024 (UTC)