Talk:Auschwitz trial
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On 8 April 2014, it was proposed that this article be moved from Auschwitz Trial to Auschwitz trial. The result of the discussion was moved. |
Difference: Execution site and date of Höß
editThe page on Rudolf Höß (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hoess) states that he was executed on April, 16, 1947 in front of one of the crematorium buildings at auschwitz, while this page states that all death senteces from this trial were executed on January 28, 1948 at Krakow. Could someone please verify this? tnx
2006-09-06 Also, how can it be that Rudoel Hoess was executed in April 1947 (as also stated in the article about Rudolf Hoess and on [[1]]) if the trial started in november 1947? Can someone make this clearer?
- So far as i´ve seen on Law-Reports, there was a seperate trial on Rudolf Höß in Warsawa 11TH-29TH MARCH, 1947 - Source: Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals, The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume VII, London, HMSO,1948 - http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/hoess2.htm. So his sentence felt in Warsawa. In Kraków there was a preliminary stage. I dont know the source.
- --Asdfj 10:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Hans Koch
editIs the link in the text correct? It sounds like another person with the same name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.72.23.182 (talk) 02:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Due to the fact that the war criminal cited HERE was sentenced in 1947, and the Hans Koch on the other page was killed in 1945, I think it's clear that these are two different people with a fairly common-sounding name. I'm going to Be Bold and clear out that link. Empath (talk) 22:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
- Indeed, this plethora of dead links to non-existent pages implores me to clean this up; I'll also check the people that do have pages to avoid another 'Hans Koch' issue. Empath (talk) 22:18, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Requested move April 2014
edit- The following discussion is an archived 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: Option 1 agreed, and so moved. Xoloz (talk) 00:26, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
- OPTION 1
- Auschwitz Trial → Auschwitz trial
- Chełmno Trials → Chełmno trials
- Doctors' Trial → Doctors' trial
- Einsatzgruppen Trial → Einsatzgruppen trial
- Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials → Frankfurt Auschwitz trials
- Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials → Hamburg Ravensbrück trials
- Majdanek Trials → Majdanek trials
- Pohl Trial → Pohl trial
- RuSHA Trial → RuSHA trial
- next 3 added later by BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- Stutthof Trial → Stutthof trial
- Dachau Trials → Dachau trials
- Belsen Trial → Belsen trial
- Nuremberg Trials → Nuremberg trials
- next 1 added later by BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
- Bełżec Trial → Bełżec trial
- OPTION 2
- Sobibór trial → Sobibór Trial
- Treblinka trials → Treblinka Trials
- next 1 added later by BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials → Mauthausen-Gusen camp Trials
– These are all trials related to Nazi Holocaust extermination and concentration camps, as listed in Category:Holocaust trials. They should be capitalised consistently.
So far I am neutral, and have no preference between the 2 options; but the discussion may lead me to prefer one option, in which case I will make a !vote below. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:12, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- NOTE additions. I have just added to this nomination 4 pages which I had overlooked. Two editors have !voted so far (@Poeticbent: and @Victor falk:); please would they be kind enough to indicate whether their !votes still stand after the addition of these 4 pages? Thanks! (and sorry for the inconvenience). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:19, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- I'm willing to contribute work to {{fixit}} any issues resulting from a move; just notify me. walk victor falk talk 21:52, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- Support OPTION 1. Fixing it all would take a bit of time, but these were not the official designations (i.e. titles) of the trials as they took place, but only their descriptive names given later on by historians. To my understanding, capitalizing the word Trial implies the opposite. Poeticbent talk 15:32, 8 April 2014 (UTC) Addendum: Please include in my !vote all of the above articles, but make sure that our subcategories in Category:Holocaust trials are fixed as well. It's a mess. Poeticbent talk 16:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- Whatever the outcome of this discussion, I will organise any necessary renaming of the categories. AFAICS, a speedy renaming per WP:C2D will be applicable. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:42, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- Support OPTION 1 per Poeticbent. walk victor falk talk 15:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
- Support OPTION 1 and remove diacritics as most sources don't use them - it's a Wikipedia affectation. We need to add Bełżec Trial to the list for the same reason. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
- Bełżec Trial added in this edit. Please can the issue of diacritics be kept aside for a separate discussion, and applied consistently to all related articles? For example, Bełżec extermination camp and Bełżec Trial should be considered together, to ensure consistency. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:11, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
- Support OPTION 1 as a descriptive not a designation. Agathoclea (talk) 12:07, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
- Support OPTION 1; descriptions, not titles. I would rather leave them alone and have at least a few titled correctly, than go with OPTION 2, which seems clearly incorrect. TJRC (talk) 22:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
- Support OPTION 1 (nominator finally climbing down off the fence). I agree with TJRC and Agathoclea that these are descriptive titles (see WP:NDESC). As such they are not proper names, and should not be capitalised. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
- 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.
- Note. Many of these articles have associated eponymous categories. I have just nominated them for speedy renaming to the lowercase format, at WP:CFD/S. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:43, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Requested move 3 November 2022
edit
- 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: Request withdrawn. See below — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:44, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
- Auschwitz trial → ?
- Belzec trial → ?
- Belsen trial → ?
- Sobibor trial → ?
- Doctors' Trial → ?
- Einsatzgruppen Trial → ?
- Flick Trial → ?
- High Command Trial → ?
- Hostages Trial → ?
- IG Farben Trial → ?
- Judges' Trial → ?
- Krupp Trial → ?
- Milch Trial → ?
- Ministries Trial → ?
- Pohl Trial → ?
- RuSHA Trial → ?
- Chełmno trials → ?
- Dachau trials → ?
- Frankfurt Auschwitz trials → ?
- Hamburg Ravensbrück trials → ?
- Majdanek trials → ?
- Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials → ?
- Nuremberg trials → ?
- Stutthof trials → ?
- Treblinka trials → ?
- Kharkov Trial → ?
- Krasnodar Trial → ?
- Ulm Einsatzkommando trial → ?
- Eichmann trial → ?
– How should we capitalize Holocaust trial articles?— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:09, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
- Option 1 — Singular trial names should be capitalized T (e.g. Auschwitz Trial) while plural group trial names should be lowercase t (e.g. Treblinka trials)
- Option 2 — Both singular and plural group trial names should be lowercase t (e.g. Auschwitz trial, Treblinka trials)
- Option 3 — Both singular and plural group trial names should be uppercase T (e.g. Auschwitz Trial, Treblinka Trials)
- Option 4 — All mixed (status quo, whatever the hell it is right now)
- Option 5 — Lowercase, unless a significant majority of sources have a consistently capitalized T AKA move requests should be individual based on the sources. (added 18:31, 3 November 2022 and further clarified 20:07, 6 November 2022 (UTC))
(I am primarily in favor of option 1, but also think option 5 would be fine.)
- Auschwitz trial → Auschwitz Trial
- Belzec trial → Belzec Trial
- Belsen trial → Belsen Trial
- Sobibor trial → Sobibor Trial
- Ulm Einsatzkommando trial → Ulm Einsatzkommando Trial
- Eichmann trial → Eichmann Trial
Keep current plural small t: Chełmno trials, Dachau trials, Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, Hamburg Ravensbrück trials, Majdanek trials, Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials, Nuremberg trials, Stutthof trials, Treblinka trials
Keep current singular big T: Doctors' Trial, Einsatzgruppen Trial, Flick Trial, High Command Trial, Hostages Trial, IG Farben Trial, Judges' Trial, Krupp Trial, Milch Trial, Ministries Trial, Pohl Trial, RuSHA Trial, Kharkov Trial, Krasnodar Trial
It's been 8 years since the move discussion that took T>t for all the indicated articles (see above). I think we have a number of sources which treat some of these as a proper noun. What's clear to me from perusing the sources is that there are examples in the list which are proper nouns (the singular ones e.g. Auschwitz Trial, RuSHA Trial, Doctors' Trial, Bełżec Trial) and those which are not proper nouns (the plural ones e.g. Treblinka trials, Hamburg Ravensbrück trials).
I recently closed a move discussion (see here) which resulted in Doctors' trial > Doctors' Trial. I then WP:BOLDly moved the remaining 11 Nuremberg trial names to the capitalized T. But now I see there was a discussion in 2014 which went the opposite way. I am of the opinion that singular names should be capitalized (like other important events or places e.g. World War II or "The second World War", Wall Street Crash of 1929, Black Monday, White House, etc.) But specifically, as an illustrative example, here's all the data for the Auschwitz trial, Belzec trial, and the Doctors' Trial. See below for examples of sources which treat it as a proper noun and those that do not:
- Proper noun (Auschwitz Trial): Wittman 2002 · Kauders 2006 · Pendas 2006 · Swift 2006 · Wolf 2006 · Berghahn 2008 · Wolf 2007 · Bryant 2008 · Wittman 2012 · Pietrzykowski 2016 · Davies 2022 · Wittman 2022
- Not proper noun (Auschwitz trial): Pendas 2000 · Guttenplan 2002 · Allen 2007 · Pelt 2002 · Langer 2009 · Wagner 2010
- Mixed (both T and t): Wittman 2003 · Pendas 2013 · Turner 2020
- The ngrams are ambivalent.
- Proper noun (Belzec Trial): Schreiber 2017 · Fulbrook 2019 · Kornbluth 2021 · Wittman 2021
- Not proper noun (Belzec trial): O'Neill 1999 · Browning 2007 · Bryant 2011 · Fulbrook 2017
- Mixed (both T and t): (none)
- (ngrams not available).
- Proper noun (Doctors' Trial): Caplan 1992 · Lippman 1992 · Grodin 1996 · Moreno 1996 · Wyszinski 1998 · Marrus 1999 · Schmidt 2004 · Glaser 2008 · Glaser 2009 · Annas 2010 · Frewer 2010 · Taylor 2013 · Aurey 2017 · Grodin 2018 · Shuster 2018 · Wilensky 2018 · Aurey 2020 · the Harvard Law School Library Nuremberg Trials Project · the Florida Supreme Court · the US Holocaust Memorial Museum · the State of Washington · Jewish Law.com · World War II Database · Jewish Virtual Library · the Museum of Jewish Heritage
- Not proper noun (Doctors' trial): Pross 1991 · Shuster 2005 · Lemaire 2006 · Moll 2012
- Mixed (both T and t): (none)
- ngrams clearly in favor of capital T Doctors' Trial.
- The Chicago Manual of Style doesn't have an entry on trials, but it itself does not capitalize "Haymarket trial" whereas Encyclopedia.com actually does as does the Encyclopedia Britannica. The AP Style Guide has no entry on this.
- As for policy and guidelines: MOS:CAPS would appear to support Option 1 or Option 3, as per:
Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to proper names of specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood and the Exodus...)
. - MOS:AT and WP:PROPERNOUN specifically are ambivalent and defer to usage in prose in our sources as per above.
- WP:CONSISTENCY would tell us to just make a decision on this and stick to it. It probably leans slightly in favor of Option 1 or Option 3, given that "Doctors Trial" is now a title determined by local consensus. But, of course, more global consensus trumps more local consensus.
- As for policy and guidelines: MOS:CAPS would appear to support Option 1 or Option 3, as per:
My personal inclination is towards Option 1, as it is the best consensus via compromise of the sources, the policy, and status quo (and doesn't overrule the recent move discussion which would have precedent). Moreover, a good test to use where determining if something is a proper noun (especially an event) is to ask oneself: which ____ is it? Is this a special ___? or just any old ____ ?
In this case, the "Auschwitz Trial" is a very specific trial/event, that is enshrined forever in history as a notable moment. A la the "Wall Street Crash of 1929". Whereas the "Treblinka trials" are a collection of events which each are not any more notable than the others. But, anyway, what does everyone else think?— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:09, 3 November 2022 (UTC)(edited for clarity and to adhere to RM rules 12:07, 4 November 2022 (UTC))
- Note: fourth proposal has been slightly altered to remove the diacritic, because Sobibór trial redirects to Sobibor trial, and redirects are ineligible to be current titles in move requests. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'r there 20:49, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
- Doctors' Trial → Doctors' trial
- Milch Trial → Milch trial
- Judges' Trial → Judges' trial
- Pohl Trial → Pohl trial
- Flick Trial → Flick trial
- IG Farben Trial → IG Farben trial
- Hostages Trial → Hostages trial
- RuSHA Trial → RuSHA trial
- Einsatzgruppen Trial → Einsatzgruppen trial
- Krupp Trial → Krupp trial
- Ministries Trial → Ministries trial
- High Command Trial → High Command trial
- Most of these have no consistent capitalization either way, and therefore should be lowercased in Wikipedia per our capitalization rules. For examples, see Ministries T/trial and Einsatzgruppen T/trial. Some such as IG Farben trial appear to be trending towards the capitalized version but others such as Flick trial and RuSHA trial show the opposite pattern (during a time period when the Wikipedia articles were capitalized). In case someone is concerned that the lowercase versions might refer to something else, the Google Scholar results are pretty clear and also show mixed capitalization. Also, the capitalization of these trials should match the parent article, subsequent Nuremberg trials. In other cases such as Auschwitz trial the community has opted to lowercase "trial" in article titles. (t · c) buidhe 17:42, 3 November 2022 (UTC) (moved from Talk:Ensatzgruppen Trial 19:35, 3 November 2022 (UTC))
- @Buidhe, here you say
Most of these have no consistent capitalization either way, and therefore should be lowercased in Wikipedia per our capitalization rules
which capitalization rules are you referring to? I see nowhere a policy which lists a consensus in favor of lowercase in ambiguous situations. I believe, in ambiguity, we default to the most recent discussion, or if it has been long enough, we hold a new discussion to see if consensus has changed. Nowhere is there a consensus which states that lowercase is the default in event/court case titles. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:43, 3 November 2022 (UTC)- Shibbolethink Please take a look at the relevant guideline, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization), which notes that titles should only be capitalized if they would be in running text. Then check out the linked guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters, "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." (t · c) buidhe 04:18, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, the policies I mentioned above and below several times. They default to the sources, which are ambiguous in many of these particular trials. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 10:50, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- Then Wikipedia defaults to lowercase, as the guidelines state. (t · c) buidhe 03:05, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, the policies I mentioned above and below several times. They default to the sources, which are ambiguous in many of these particular trials. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 10:50, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- Shibbolethink Please take a look at the relevant guideline, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization), which notes that titles should only be capitalized if they would be in running text. Then check out the linked guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters, "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." (t · c) buidhe 04:18, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Buidhe, here you say
- Addenum: the official short names of these trials end in "case", so "Justice Case" etc. These were originally capitalized and are generally capitalized in RS but the unofficial names with "trial" are not consistently so. (t · c) buidhe 17:42, 3 November 2022 (UTC) (moved from Talk:Ensatzgruppen Trial 19:35, 3 November 2022 (UTC))
- Agree with buidhe, per their reasoning in addenum, above. Kierzek (talk) 18:11, 3 November 2022 (UTC) (moved from Talk:Ensatzgruppen Trial 19:35, 3 November 2022 (UTC))
- Regarding Doctors' Trial in specific, a move request to the current title was closed at 12:46, 3 November 2022, literally 5 hours before this discussion was initiated. See Talk:Doctors' Trial#Requested move 28 October 2022. -Ljleppan (talk) 19:07, 3 November 2022 (UTC) (moved from Talk:Ensatzgruppen Trial 19:35, 3 November 2022 (UTC))
- Note: above comments made prior to this notice were moved from Talk:Einsatzgruppen Trial, where a similar move discussion was also started today— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:35, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
- Note: WikiProjects Germany, Law, Jewish history, and Medicine have been notified of this discussion. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:58, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
Why were these two RM discussions merged?
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- Lowercase unless clear evidence that common usage is fully capitalized (Option 4, I guess?): The relevant part of WP:MOS appears to be WP:LOWERCASE, which states
The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text.
This is matched by the guideline at WP:CAPITALIZATION, which saysDo not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name.
For Doctors' Trial in specific, I think the evidence presented at the recently closed move is sufficient to demonstrate that for it, the WP:COMMONNAME indeed is fully capitalized. No idea about the others. -Ljleppan (talk) 21:42, 3 November 2022 (UTC)- So is your position that we should individually assess each title to see which have a fully capitalized COMMONNAME, and go with that? I've added this as "Option 5". The argument boils down to a disagreement between WP:LOWERCASE/WP:CAPITALIZATION, which defer to the sources, and WP:CONSISTENCY, which would have us figure out which is the predominant form and do that for all of them. (edited for clarity 12:04, 4 November 2022 (UTC)) — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
- All of them should be lowercase unless there is a specific set of them or single trial that is consistently capitalized in reliable sources.
- I also don't appreciate your shutting down my move request which was started earlier. There is no reason all Holocaust related trials must have the same capitalization, unless they are actually concretely related to each other, for example the subsequent Nuremberg trials. This discussion is honestly a trainwreck. (t · c) buidhe 04:22, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- Would you rather the two move requests happened independently? We have the 2014 move request, which was a consensus (albeit, an old one) which included all of these trials as a single category (holocaust trials). So it would be poor form (and subsequently confusing) to have local consensus discussions which supersede this more global 2014 consensus. We need to make sure whatever we decide, even if it’s to treat them differently, includes consideration of that more global discussion. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 10:49, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- So is your position that we should individually assess each title to see which have a fully capitalized COMMONNAME, and go with that? I've added this as "Option 5". The argument boils down to a disagreement between WP:LOWERCASE/WP:CAPITALIZATION, which defer to the sources, and WP:CONSISTENCY, which would have us figure out which is the predominant form and do that for all of them. (edited for clarity 12:04, 4 November 2022 (UTC)) — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
- I guess my input is that capitalization varies between the different trials. Doctors' Trial and Judges' Trial are both overwhelmingly capitalized in sources, while other examples are less clear or go in the opposite direction. I do notice some differentiation on the basis of whether the 'title' of the trial is a proper noun. I.e. it's perfectly natural to say "Nuremberg trial" but "Doctors' trial" would be internally inconsistent (neither is a proper noun but one is capitalized while the other is not). Same for the Judges' Trial, Hostages Trial, and High Command Trial. Which is ultimately why I nominated Doctors' Trial to be moved - seeing it written in all lowercase as "doctors' trial" in the article just seemed odd and apparently the scholarly sources agree. I have not gone through the Ngrams of them all but this is a basis for capitalization I have noticed. I think we should either a) leave all at status quo and nominated individually as needed; or b) make a broader finding based upon whether the first word is a proper noun or just a descriptor of the defendants. ‡ El cid, el campeador talk 15:48, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
- This is a thoughtful response, just one point I want to clarify: where usage is
less clear
, i.e., close to 50/50, CAPS requires lowercasing. Also, re the proper noun point, perhaps that is the underlying reason why sources tend toward one form or the other, but Wikipedia usage should be governed by the sources' usage, not that underlying reason, per CAPS. Wallnot (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2022 (UTC)re the proper noun point, perhaps that is the underlying reason why sources tend toward one form or the other, but Wikipedia usage should be governed by the sources' usage, not that underlying reason
This would argue in favor of capitalizing T trial if the sources do. Is that what you intended? Because it is the opposite of what you put below. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:05, 6 November 2022 (UTC)- Could you clarify what you mean? My point is that we shouldn't use the observation "sources tend to lowercase trial after a proper noun and capitalize it after a common noun" dictate usage on Wikipedia; usage should be controlled by whether
a substantial majority
of reliable sourcesconsistently capitalize
it. Wallnot (talk) 18:35, 6 November 2022 (UTC)- That is exactly what I wanted you to clarify, thank you. It seems as though you are saying that, for each article, "if a substantial majority of reliable sources" "consistently capitalize", then we should as well. This is Option 5 in my description above. Let me know if that is indeed what you mean. There are a number of examples in which more than 2/3 of sources "consistently capitalize" so in such instances, I would think we should as well. There are also examples where that is absolutely not the case, and in such cases lowercase makes more sense. that much is uncontroversial. I suppose it depends on what "substantial majority" means. To me, it means more than 2/3. To SMcCandlish, it appears to mean 90 %. I don't believe there is consensus on that particular point, and I do not think we are going to (or should) figure that out here. We would have to go article-by-article and determine whether the sources are sufficient or not to capitalize. (and, I suspect, various editors would disagree on which sources should and should not count)Can you please clarify that in your reply below, where you say "all lowercase" which would be option 2 above, but here you clarify you actually mean option 5.... — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, it should be case by case. You seem to think that would be cumbersome, but that is what the guideline requires, and as buidhe observes, this discussion has become a mess, and it does not seem to have been necessary to centralize the discussion for all the Nuremberg trial pages.
- Something I want to clarify here, as it seems you are misunderstanding the intention behind CAPS: by design, there is a strong presumption against capitalization in the MOS. That is, the default is lowercase. We capitalize things only when the overwhelming majority of sources do so. People often quibble over what a proper noun is; CAPS avoids such debates by simplifying the argument and asking just "what do sources do?". Take, for example, something that is indisputably a proper noun: Germany/germany. Over 99.7% of usages are capitalized.
- Two-thirds is not a substantial majority because the ngram tool captures headings, in which all words are headline-style capitalized even if not proper nouns. Consider as a counterexample something that is indisputably a common noun: the word beaver. In 1916, nearly 75% of sources capitalize beaver—should we believe that people in 1916 believed it was a proper noun? Cf. the word president, which is typically lowercase on Wikipedia.
- Finally, I did not vote for option 5 because I do not mean option 5. I specifically referenced SMcCandlish's vote because he appropriately notes that the default is to lowercase everything unless the required showing is made for each article title. Cf. Buidhe's comment that
All of them should be lowercase unless there is a specific set of them or single trial that is consistently capitalized in reliable sources.
To the extent it is desirable to be WP:CONSISTENT, the default should be to lowercase all of them for the reasons I have given. Wallnot (talk) 19:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)You seem to think that would be cumbersome
oh not at all! I am sorry if I gave that impression. I think it's perfectly fine. I originally was in favor of option 1, but okay with option 5. I want to be extremely clear here. I centralized discussion because we had a former move request on this exact page from 2014 which centralized this exact disagreement. We need to deal with that former consensus. And it appears we are doing that easily and without much disagreement. As they say, hindsight is 20/20, and this discussion could have gone another way. Per the consensus that is developing, Buidhe's RM would also have been inapt, as it attempted to 1) overrule a discussion 5 hours earlier (which should almost never be done) and 2) make all of them lowercase regardless of the sources (which it appears most people here also think is a bad idea).CAPS avoids such debates by simplifying the argument and asking just "what do sources do?".
Perhaps the issue is that option 5 is not clear enough as worded. I interpret it to mean exactly what you say. With the clarification (see above) would you support option 5?as buidhe observes, this discussion has become a mess
actually you should more accurately say "as both Shibbolethink and buidhe have observed". I also said this exact thing above. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:02, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- That is exactly what I wanted you to clarify, thank you. It seems as though you are saying that, for each article, "if a substantial majority of reliable sources" "consistently capitalize", then we should as well. This is Option 5 in my description above. Let me know if that is indeed what you mean. There are a number of examples in which more than 2/3 of sources "consistently capitalize" so in such instances, I would think we should as well. There are also examples where that is absolutely not the case, and in such cases lowercase makes more sense. that much is uncontroversial. I suppose it depends on what "substantial majority" means. To me, it means more than 2/3. To SMcCandlish, it appears to mean 90 %. I don't believe there is consensus on that particular point, and I do not think we are going to (or should) figure that out here. We would have to go article-by-article and determine whether the sources are sufficient or not to capitalize. (and, I suspect, various editors would disagree on which sources should and should not count)Can you please clarify that in your reply below, where you say "all lowercase" which would be option 2 above, but here you clarify you actually mean option 5.... — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- Could you clarify what you mean? My point is that we shouldn't use the observation "sources tend to lowercase trial after a proper noun and capitalize it after a common noun" dictate usage on Wikipedia; usage should be controlled by whether
- This is a thoughtful response, just one point I want to clarify: where usage is
- All lower-case, unless and until in some specific instance an overwhelming majority of sources capitalize it. PS: Almost all of these things have other names that are their actual proper names: the case names. E.g. "Milch trial" is really The United States of America vs. Erhard Milch. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:51, 5 November 2022 (UTC); rev'd. 20:54, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish@El cid This is the sort of ambiguity that is not very helpful in this situation... See Doctors' Trial above and Flick Trial below. Are these "overwhelming" enough? or not? A majority of scholarly sources capitalize in both cases. But what is an "overwhelming majority?" 75%? 90%? 99%? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I promise. But I want this to be as not-ambiguous as possible so the consensus ends up being useful, in case we have to go and do RMs for each and every trial which appears to have a lot of capital T usage. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:25, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- MOS:CAPS expects a substantial majority, and in practice that means 80 %, more or less. If we wanted to have a specific number we would have one by now. We also have WP:CONSISTENT policy to contend with here, though. To surmount that, I would expect to see 90 % for an exception to be made to lower-casing, which is the default rule. We also have MOS:DOCTCAPS, which says not to capitalize things just because in-subject materials like to do so (see also WP:SSF for an essay about it). I would almost bet money that the sources you want to rely on to capitalize are mostly in-subject materials, not sources independent of the subject. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:46, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- In what way precisely would this count as a "doctrine" or "school of thought"? Are you referring to "law" or "history?" What would count as "in-subject" here? Being jewish? Being a historian? Being a lawyer? Essentially every single source I have linked (on all sides of the discrepancy) is one of the following, in order of prevalence: 1) legal journal articles, 2) history journal articles, 3) textbooks, 4) professional monographs, 5) Academic dissertations. I carefully removed any which were from historical revisionists or holocaust deniers, and if there are any left on any of these lists I would be happy to remove them still. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:48, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- In-subject would be being a law-review article, law-degree dissertation, or the like. Lawyers writing for lawyers, versus, say, journalists or historians or other encyclopedists writing for the general public. This question and its rather obviousness is why I referred you to the essay, which covers this in more detail than is probably necessary. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- Does "legal history" count as "law" or "history"? I don't think you're right about sources on one side or the other falling on one side or the other and I would, humbly, ask you to back up that assertion. I also would dispute whether historians in these cases write for the public or for other historians, as in every scholarly journal. I included no popular press books, for the most part. I think the only popular press book I linked for Flick, for instance, capitalizes "Trial": Mallick 2018 (p. 178) — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- I decline to go 8 rounds with you in this trivial back-and-forth. If you don't understand how the entire paragraph of DOCTCAPS and the clear and obvious overall meaning behind it apply here, just because the literal string "legal case" isn't included in it, then I can't help you (especially given that the material already includes a legal example, "Draconian laws of athens", not "Laws"). Please extrapolate, like everyone else, from a clear principle to specific instances and don't wiki-lawyer over technicalities. You know as well as I do that it is not possible for any WP:POLICY document to presage every imaginable applicable scenario; our policies and guidelines would be 100× longer if they attempted to do this. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:04, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- No I completely agree with you that's an accurate interpretation of MOS:DOCTCAPS if the legal profession always capitalizes "Trial" in cases like this and very few other people do, but I'm not sure it applies as much as you are proposing it does to the sources I provided. Especially given that several "law review" articles also did not capitalize, and several historians did. If it were the case that this was an issue of legal writing convention, I wouldn't expect that to be the case. I'm not wikilawyering you, I'm just saying you're applying it without even checking to see that it's true here... — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:09, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- I decline to go 8 rounds with you in this trivial back-and-forth. If you don't understand how the entire paragraph of DOCTCAPS and the clear and obvious overall meaning behind it apply here, just because the literal string "legal case" isn't included in it, then I can't help you (especially given that the material already includes a legal example, "Draconian laws of athens", not "Laws"). Please extrapolate, like everyone else, from a clear principle to specific instances and don't wiki-lawyer over technicalities. You know as well as I do that it is not possible for any WP:POLICY document to presage every imaginable applicable scenario; our policies and guidelines would be 100× longer if they attempted to do this. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:04, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- Does "legal history" count as "law" or "history"? I don't think you're right about sources on one side or the other falling on one side or the other and I would, humbly, ask you to back up that assertion. I also would dispute whether historians in these cases write for the public or for other historians, as in every scholarly journal. I included no popular press books, for the most part. I think the only popular press book I linked for Flick, for instance, capitalizes "Trial": Mallick 2018 (p. 178) — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:55, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- In-subject would be being a law-review article, law-degree dissertation, or the like. Lawyers writing for lawyers, versus, say, journalists or historians or other encyclopedists writing for the general public. This question and its rather obviousness is why I referred you to the essay, which covers this in more detail than is probably necessary. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- In what way precisely would this count as a "doctrine" or "school of thought"? Are you referring to "law" or "history?" What would count as "in-subject" here? Being jewish? Being a historian? Being a lawyer? Essentially every single source I have linked (on all sides of the discrepancy) is one of the following, in order of prevalence: 1) legal journal articles, 2) history journal articles, 3) textbooks, 4) professional monographs, 5) Academic dissertations. I carefully removed any which were from historical revisionists or holocaust deniers, and if there are any left on any of these lists I would be happy to remove them still. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:48, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- MOS:CAPS expects a substantial majority, and in practice that means 80 %, more or less. If we wanted to have a specific number we would have one by now. We also have WP:CONSISTENT policy to contend with here, though. To surmount that, I would expect to see 90 % for an exception to be made to lower-casing, which is the default rule. We also have MOS:DOCTCAPS, which says not to capitalize things just because in-subject materials like to do so (see also WP:SSF for an essay about it). I would almost bet money that the sources you want to rely on to capitalize are mostly in-subject materials, not sources independent of the subject. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:46, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish@El cid This is the sort of ambiguity that is not very helpful in this situation... See Doctors' Trial above and Flick Trial below. Are these "overwhelming" enough? or not? A majority of scholarly sources capitalize in both cases. But what is an "overwhelming majority?" 75%? 90%? 99%? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I promise. But I want this to be as not-ambiguous as possible so the consensus ends up being useful, in case we have to go and do RMs for each and every trial which appears to have a lot of capital T usage. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:25, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
- All lower-case, unless it can be shown on a case by case basis that a substantial majority of sources consistently capitalize, per SMcCandlish. Wallnot (talk) 16:56, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
Some additional source reviews
edit- Proper noun (Flick Trial): Grace 2001 · Herz-Gonz 2006 · Van Schaack 2007 · Catalayud 2008 · Arai 2009 · McGregor 2009 · Wanless 2009 · Kuner 2010 · Karstedt 2015 · Sfekas 2016 · Sfekas 2017 · Mallick 2018 · Stahn 2018 · Slye 2020
- Not proper noun (Flick trial): Stallbaumer 1995 · Wiesen 1996 · Donihi 2012 · Priemel 2013 · Ridley 2018 · Shiba 2021
- Mixed (both T and t): Hallgarten 1952 · Bosman 2008 · Heller 2011 · Perich 2011 · Nathan 2016 · Ridley 2019 · Brudney 2020 · Diaz 2021
- The ngrams are ambiguous but maybe lean slightly towards capital T "Flick Trial".
(note, I had to remove a lot of false positives from "flick trial" and "flick trials" which were for scientific studies of tail flicks, or other "flicks" which were not related to the holocaust.)
- Proper noun (IG Farben Trial): Frei 1945 · Honig 1949 · Wortley 1949 · Knierim 1961 · Muller-Schieke 2001 · White 2001 · Zuppi 2005 · Wolf 2007 · Lopez-Munoz 2008 · Lopez-Munoz 2009 · Alamo 2009 · Wanless 2009 · Schmaltz 2010 · Danforth 2011 · Morrissey 2011 · Tsabora 2014 · Donohue 2015 · Kolieb 2015 · Weindling 2015 · Ambos 2016 · Kaeb 2016 · Beyes 2017 · Roelcke 2017 · Simunek 2017 · Weindling 2017 · Witt 2017 · Searles 2019 · Brudney 2020 · Wallis 2020 · Weindling 2020 · Van Ho 2020
- Not proper noun (IG Farben trial): Juma 2006 · Geneuss 2010 · Jessberger 2010 · Weigend 2012 · Little 2013 · Ryngaert 2014 · Stahn 2018 · Blewett 2019 · Erlinger 2019 · Lowrey 2020
- Mixed (both T and t): Deichmann 2002 · Doerries 2003 · Juma 2007 · Kuner 2010 · Kremnitzer 2010 · Perich 2011 · Lanoie 2012 · Lentschener 2019 · Heinrich 2021 · Schappacher 2022
- The ngrams lean pretty heavily towards capital T "IG Farben Trial".
— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 18:00, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
Proposal: WP:SNOW Withdraw in favor of individual move requests (AKA there should be no over-arching rule here other than what MOS:CAPS says)
editFrom the way this discussion has gone, it's clear that, contrary to 2014, the community is not interested in doing the exact same thing for each article in this group. AKA we think MOS:CAPS is more important than WP:CONSISTENCY for this group. Instead, it seems we would like to have the titles determined on an individual basis per MOS:CAPS, which says that we should do non-standard capitalization of the T in Trial only when a "substantial majority" of sources "consistently capitalize" the T in trial. I am perfectly happy to withdraw this RM in favor of move requests which are article-by-article and only for those which could reasonably be construed to have a "substantial majority." We can then disagree about what "substantial majority" and "consistent capitalization" actually mean for each article, based on the available sources.
I'll rv the t>T WP:BOLD moves on the subsequent Nuremberg trial articles I did on Nov 3 which were not already at capital T (a few were already at capital T). Anyone who would want to change those already at capital T should probably do an RM on them T>t, as they have been at capital T for 17 years (e.g. Ministries Trial, Milch Trial, Judges' Trial, IG Farben Trial, Hostages Trial, High Command Trial, just my opinion and not part of this proposal).
Does anyone emphatically disagree with this? As proposer, I have no interest in standing in the way of that or delaying anything. If nobody here thinks this is procedurally out of order (I'm quite confident it is not) or a bad idea, I'll withdraw in a day or so. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 20:17, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- I did not suggest individual move requests; I said each move will have to be evaluated independently. There's no reason that can't happen on this page. My point about making a mess of it was that you've generated an enormous amount of text with relatively little input from anyone but yourself. Splitting the individual evaluations across multiple pages will make things impossibly complicated. The best approach would be to pull ngram data for each article title, post it here in a centralized, non-messy way, and make the call en masse. Wallnot (talk) 22:36, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
I did not suggest individual move requests
You did not, and you are not why that's the next step. Policy is. The more narrow the consensus, the easier to achieve, and the longer it is maintained.My point about making a mess of it was that you've generated an enormous amount of text with relatively little input from anyone but yourself
;The best approach would be to pull ngram data for each article title, post it here in a centralized, non-messy way, and make the call en masse
, Okay, feel free to do the rest yourself, if you believe you could do it in a more "non-messy way". No one is stopping you. I solicited input, I advertised at multiple venues, I concatenated comments and collapsed information that does not need to be perma-visible. As I said above, happy to take specific suggestions instead of broad denouncements. However, move review may have something to say if you decide this page, here, here on the Auschwitz trial talk page, is where we should individually decide for every other article what to do. Page titles should not be determined en masse unless it is a consensus decision applying to every page, or a change in convention. This would absolutely be an inappropriate venue for deciding the name of a different article on an individual basis for that article. This page has no overarching relationship to those other pages other than the prior RM. There are stakeholders on individual pages who may desire input, and would not be alerted if and when this discussion is closed as no consensus, option 5, etc. If we have no over-arching consensus, I will be withdrawing the RM tomorrow. You have described no policy or guideline which would make my withdrawal out of order. As you've said, I have spoken too much, so I will withdraw the RM, submit RMs at pages I believe there is consensus in the sources, and then let the RM process, as intended, take its course. You can then do whatever you want.My overall take is that you're being unnecessarily antagonistic in this discussion. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:50, 6 November 2022 (UTC)- ...if it isn't appropriate to make a decision here about the titles of other pages, then why did you start the discussion about the titles of other pages here? Wallnot (talk) 23:11, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
..if it isn't appropriate to make a decision here about the titles of other pages
- That isn't what I said. I said: if we are not determining an overarching WP:CONSISTENCY consensus for all of these pages, then this is not the right venue for determining their titles. If we aren't doing the same thing for all of them, or endorsing the prior RM, then we should determine the titles on the applicable talk pages, as would typically be customary. I could wait until this RM is closed as nocon, or option 4, or option 5, or whatever, but that seems a massive waste of time. Like this discussion. I'll stop replying now, thanks. Have a nice day. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 23:14, 6 November 2022 (UTC)- Makes sense. Not sure why the attitude though. Also, can you self-revert your bold moves in light of WP:PCM and the above RM from 2014? Wallnot (talk) 23:18, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
I'll rv the t>T WP:BOLD moves on the subsequent Nuremberg trial articles I did on Nov 3 which were not already at capital T (a few were already at capital T).
[2] — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 23:19, 6 November 2022 (UTC)- Thanks. And sorry if my tone came across as hostile. Like you, I am just trying to think about the most efficient way to do things. Apologies if I didn't communicate civilly in doing so. Wallnot (talk) 00:08, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
- It's okay, really. I was a bit short too, probably due to stress outside-of-wiki (which is why I'm procrastinating by over-focusing on things like this RM). No harm no foul. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:21, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
- Thanks. And sorry if my tone came across as hostile. Like you, I am just trying to think about the most efficient way to do things. Apologies if I didn't communicate civilly in doing so. Wallnot (talk) 00:08, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
- Makes sense. Not sure why the attitude though. Also, can you self-revert your bold moves in light of WP:PCM and the above RM from 2014? Wallnot (talk) 23:18, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
- ...if it isn't appropriate to make a decision here about the titles of other pages, then why did you start the discussion about the titles of other pages here? Wallnot (talk) 23:11, 6 November 2022 (UTC)