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Undiscussed page move

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This page move from the correct and sourced M40 Gun Motor Carriage to an invented and incorrect M40 gun motor carriage was not discussed first, is harmful to our accuracy, and should be reverted. Andy Dingley (talk) 07:42, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sources that capitalize it are mostly from recent years after Wikipedia started capping it. Most older sources use lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 15:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support reverting -- move was undiscussed, and does not align with MOS:MILTERMS. It's irrelevant when the term began being capitalized; the majority of sources use the uppercase format which is generally aligned with the longstanding (since at least 1981) naming scheme for U.S. military ordnance nomenclature as defined in MIL-STD-1464A.⇒SWATJester Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 17:51, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The official maintenance manual says "The 155-mm gun motor; carriage M40 and 8-inch howitzer motor carriage 43 are identical vehicles except for ..." and such in sentences and captions. This Aberdeen book has "the gun motor carriage, M40, which ...". This index of technical manuals uses lowercase even in the doc title listing. This book always uses lowercase in sentences. This doc lists it as "M40, 155 mm. gun, motor carriage". This book has "the U.S. Army also fielded the 155mm gun motor carriage M40 as well as the 8-inch howitzer motor carriage M43." This book has a list section "Heavy field artillery motor carriages – total" with "M40 (T85), for 155mm gun" under it. This one has "M40 motor carriage 155-mm gun". And so on. Clearly descriptive of the M40's type, like the rest of the gun motor carriages, not a name.
These are clear enough proof that caps are "unnecessary", and our style is to avoid unnecessary capitalization. Just like with all the unanimous RM consensuses on the light tanks, medium tanks, heavy tanks, armored cars, etc.
Of course, you are entitled to revert as it was not explicitly discussed; and then we can open an RM discussion. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And it is not irrelevant that the capping took off in the last 10 years, after Wikipedia treated it as a proper name even though sources didn't. Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Origins and early adoption of "gun motor carriage"

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While waiting for some responses on the discussion above, and/or a replacement of the RM section below by a properly formed RM, I'll collect some notes in this section.

Responses are welcome. Dicklyon (talk) 03:41, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2 August 2024

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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: Procedural close. If the proposer wants to move these articles back to "Gun Motor Carriage", then open an RM for that. Doing a "move discussion" pointing at the current targets is nonsensical and malformed and out of process. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 02:01, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

M40 gun motor carriage → M40_gun_motor_carriage – Move from M40 Gun Motor Carriage to M40 gun motor carriage. A batch of them, all of the basic form 'Gun Motor Carriage'. Apologies if I've missed any of them.

This is a large batch that have already been moved, without discussion. However this move has been opposed by multiple editors and is likely to be reverted. To avoid edit-warring, there should be a real move discussion for them. An attempt to discuss this at the related move discussion Talk:All-purpose_Lightweight_Individual_Carrying_Equipment#Requested_move_24_July_2024 was closed down and taken to ANI for 'disruption'.

The term 'Gun Motor Carriage' is the invention of the US Army around World War II. It did not exist beforehand, it has no independent existence. It is capitalised, as is the wont of armies everywhere. There is no such thing as a "gun motor carriage". That's an adjectival, descriptive phrase that no-one uses. But "Gun Motor Carriage" is the US Army's chosen term for self-propelled artillery (at varying times). It should be capitalised. It should always be capitalised. It has no meaning, no robust sourcing otherwise when not capitalised. No other (AFAIK) armies have used this term, other than by inheritance, and it has no meaning in the non proper name form anywhere else. GMC is easily sourced: it's used throughout Chamberlain & Ellis, Chamberlain, Peter; Ellis, Chris (1981). British And American Tanks Of World War II. ISBN 0-668-04304-0. which is WP's generally agreed standard listing textbook of US AFVs of WWII. It's used by Ogorkiewicz and you might note that he carefully capitalises APC in the US sense but not for other nations, likewise Infantry Tank when applied only to the early WWII British doctrine. It's used in Jane's recognition handbooks.

But because Google can also trawl up some occurrences of it uncapitalised, these have been discarded. The uncapitalised form is used literally as syntax in many places, and Google easily finds them. But as semantics this still only ever refer to the Gun Motor Carriage as designated by the US Army. There are no gun motor carriages that are not Gun Motor Carriages, and are more appropriately labelled in this form. That is a difference to the term Armoured Personnel Carrier and others, where there is a valid lowercase form as a generic term (even though the capitalised form also exists). The evidence [sic] supporting this page move is here, [1], a list of books that use 'Gun Motor Carriage' (no, I don't understand how that works) and a Google ngram.

What this comes down to is WP:MOS vs. WP:RS. Our style guide prefers lower case. The sources support capitalisation. If Wikipedia were to develop an armoured division, it might equip itself with gun motor carriages. But it was the US Army that did so instead, and they went with Gun Motor Carriage. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:21, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose and revert move Gun Motor Carriage is correct and appropriate. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:21, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If you look at the section #Origins and early adoption of "gun motor carriage" immediately above, you'll see why pretty much everything you've said in your nominating paragraphs is false. The term came from Britain and France, before and after WWI, not from the US Army around WWII. The Army used it in lowercase, typically, in sentence contexts. The generic term has a clear meaning, as seen in early sources, even if the term seems a bit awkward or stilted. The generic "gun motor carriage" is frequently paired with letter/number designators such as M40 and M10, from as early as 1939 and 1940. Dicklyon (talk) 03:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Malformed request – the articles are already at the proposed new titles. One result of this is that the articles are not notified. Andy, if you want to revert recent undiscussed moves, you can ask at WP:RMTR. After that, restart this RM discussion and it will make more sense. Or I'll restart it, since I'm favor of lowercase, and it's odd for you to propose a move that you oppose. Or propose a move to upper case if you prefer. Not this. Dicklyon (talk) 21:03, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Please focus on the move request, not attacking other editors. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:07, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No moves have been requested. The articles are already at the target names. Dicklyon (talk) 22:10, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, I see it listed at Wikipedia:Requested moves#Possibly incomplete requests, and I notice that you didn't follow the instructions at WP:RM, so none of the articles are being notified, nor the capped redirects. Better start over. Or just ask at WP:RMTR to revert to lowercase and I'll do a proper RM. This isn't going to work out for you. Dicklyon (talk) 02:53, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Revert move. These look like proper nouns. There is some evidence they were intended as proper nouns, eg "90-mm Gun Motor Carriage M36B1" does appear to be a proper name. The present capitalization is the status quo and there is no indication it is actually "wrong". Anyway, what is next? "M4 sherman"? "mbt-80"? There seems to be an increasing amount of unnecessary indiscriminate decapitalization against long standing status quo in recent months on this project. I personally wonder if a moratorium is desirable. James500 (talk) 22:00, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The present capitalization is the lowercase, and nobody is proposing to lowercase proper names such as Sherman or acronyms such as MBT. If you think it's productive to make your case in the context of this malformed RM, then some reference to guidelines and policies such WP:MILCAPS, MOS:CAPS, and WP:NCCAPS might be in order. Also see the section above where we started to discuss this. Keep in mind that "appear to be a proper name" is really not part of the criteria. Dicklyon (talk) 22:15, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In all fairness, those do say that proper names should be capitalized. James500 (talk) 22:22, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Right, and in all the discussions we've ever had about case, I can't recall anyone disagreeing with the principle that proper names should be capitalized. So saying that's what you're for doesn't really say anything. Dicklyon (talk) 22:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And while we are on the subject, these names may be the wrong way round ie it possibly should be "[155-mm] Gun Motor Carriage M40" rather than "M40 Gun Motor Carriage", looking at the sources. James500 (talk) 22:27, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As to whether to include the mm size, maybe the hyphen, put the M40 first or last, etc., see the section above where I quoted quite a few options from sources. There's no proper name, and the descriptive names are quite variable in order and in style. Dicklyon (talk) 22:42, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Your evidence is selective. For example, the manual does capitalize it repeatedly: [2]. Other indexes of technical manuals do capitalize it: [3] [4]. As do some US Army articles [5]. It is not apparent that the evidence proves that "Gun Motor Carriage M40" is not a proper name. It might prove that the US Army was in the habit of not always capitalizing proper names. (A proper name does not cease to be a proper name because it is not capitalized. And the Army were soldiers, not English teachers). What Ngrams actually appears to show is that capital letters were extensively used in the 1940s and, even including use of expressions like "any gun motor carriage" (ie expressions which do not refer to a particular model), were still more frequent from the 1960s to the 1990s. The period from 2000 to 2010 could be a blip caused by the internet. Anyway, if capitalization is now completely dominant (and it seems to be) does it matter who caused that domination? If the US Army almost always decapitalized the name in the 1940s, I might agree that capitalization was potentially factually inaccurate or a neologism, but that does not seem to be the case. Is there anything like MIL-STD-1464A from the 1940s that says that capitalization is "wrong"? James500 (talk) 04:11, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My point is only to show that it's not meeting the MOS:CAPS criterion for a proper name: "consistently capitalized in sources". Even in particular non-independent Army sources it's not consistently capitalized. And stats show lowercase is more common. And nobody is saying that capitalization is "wrong" – it's just not WP's style to capitalize unnecessarily. Dicklyon (talk) 04:19, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    James, if you really think the move to lowercase was not in accord with our guidelines or policies, you can simply ask at WP:RMTR to have them reverted. Then I can make a proper move request to move them to lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 04:23, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose and request procedural close – The pages are all already at the requested new titles, so there's nothing to support, and what looks like a multi-RM was entered as a single-page RM, so no articles got notified of the intent (which is the opposite of what is proposed). Andy or a closer can restart it as a proper multi-RM from the existing titles to the intended capitalized titles, or can revert the recent moves and I'll open an RM to lowercase (add the ones he missed if you like M37 105 mm howitzer motor carriage and M41 howitzer motor carriage). Dicklyon (talk) 01:34, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Malformed unclear request and procedural close, no moves needed per Dicklyon. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:51, 5 August 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.

@Andy Dingley: This is back in your court. If you want the titles capitalized, you can either start a multi-RM to do that (see WP:RMPM), or just ask at WP:RMTR for my moves to be reverted. Dicklyon (talk) 14:45, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress

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There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:M40 gun motor carriage which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 09:47, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even the RMCD bot is confused by the malformed request to move the page to itself. Dicklyon (talk) 03:55, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 27 August 2024

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– Per WP:MILCAPS, WP:NCCAPS, and MOS:CAPS, use lowercase as these "motor carriages" are generic terms, not usually capitalized in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Some data from nom:
    • #Origins and early adoption of "gun motor carriage", section on this talk page, lists and links some historical references where the terms are generic and where they are lowercase even when paired with the various M and T designators.
    • Book n-grams show dominant lowercase for * motor carriage, with an upward trend in caps only after Wikipedia capitalized them in 2006.
    • User:Dicklyon/MIL precedents lists RM discussions of the last few years as precedents for lowercase on this sort of title.
  • Oppose - proper vehicle names per manuals Denniss (talk) 23:14, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The 1947 official manual for the M40 and M43: 155-mm Gun Motor Carriage M40 and 8-inch Howitzer Motor Carriage M43, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947, p. 9 has "The 155-mm gun motor carriage M40 and 8-inch howitzer motor carriage M43 are identical vehicles except for gun tubes, ..." and many other lowercase uses in the text and figure captions; also quite a few capitalized uses of both, but not close to "consistently capitalized". Have you looked at some other manuals that you're talking about? Got links? Dicklyon (talk) 00:21, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose no sources given to support this rename, or the wild claim here that WP:MOS overrules WP:RS. Are we just expected to kowtow to your self-appointed authority (again)?
These are not generic terms. Some similar terms such as 'self-propelled gun' are more difficult, as those are both title and generic terms. But GMC (and the obvious variants) has not become genericised in the same way. It's only used in sources from the US Army, who capitalise.
WP:RS (real ones, not just counting Google hits from random prose) use GMC. Chamberlain & Ellis is accepted on WP as our standard go-to for WWII American armour. They capitalise. Ogorkiewicz is probably the most authoritative writer on AFVs and he capitalises. He also carefully capitalises SPG and APC when they are being used as titles rather than in the generic sense. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:29, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody here wants to override anything from reliable sources. The guideline question is whether these terms are "consistently capitalized" in reliable sources. I've shown you before, at the section #Origins and early adoption of "gun motor carriage" above, that sources do not mostly capitalize. No standard go-to source on WWII American armour overrides that, and our guideline WP:MILCAPS is very clear on why these should be lowercased. And per WP:NCCAPS, we do not use title case for article titles; we use sentence case. Dicklyon (talk) 00:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you keep presenting yourself as the great Defender of the Wiki and the only person observing policy (you're not), and then going on to misquote that same policy? That is not what WP:NCCAPS says. NCCAPS says not to do this unless the title is a proper name. That is the question here. The only question. Not whether MOS doesn't favour capitalisation, but if the title is to be treated as a proper name because there are robust RS that do so. Which there are. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:46, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone can have opinions about what's a proper name, but the guidelines say how we determine that question, using sources. MOS:CAPS says "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." and WP:NCCAPS says "For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence." I'm far from the only one who interprets our guidelines as saying that we should not treat these phrases as proper names, just as many reliable sources don't treat them as proper names. Dicklyon (talk) 02:58, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We work from WP:SECONDARY sources; Chamberlain & Ellis, Ogorkiewicz, or secondary RS of comparable standing. Not by your method of counting Google hits to WP:PRIMARY sources. It's rare to see an example where the problems with that, and the reason we have WP:SECONDARY as policy, made quite so clear. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:18, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We work by sources per case, not by 'precedents' and 'proof by authority' of one editor. Especially not when it's always the same editor banging the same tired drum. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:18, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Lazy nomination, with no evidence provided whatsoever. You can do better than this, Dicklyon. When I looked yesterday, prior to reverting the earlier undiscussed moves, it appears many sources do indeed treat these as a proper name. And I say this as someone generally sympathetic to the notion that we over-capitalise on Wikipedia. Come back with some actual data supporting the move request, and perhaps we can reconsider.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:55, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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