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These pages also need to be moved:
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 08:56, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Also, Sep invented the distinction between attributive adjectives and attributive nouns. That is not supported by our sources. — kwami ( talk) 16:39, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
We've seen great arguments from both sides of this issue, and in this editor's opinion, it barely matters. 99.9% of people who come to this page are not going to care or notice. So, why not just move on for a while? Its actually making me smile and chuckle about how much effort we have put into on this tiny technical detail. Maybe we need to have a forked article, The - -/— — War of 2011.
Well.
Maybe not. -- Avanu ( talk) 03:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Mr Bartlett has broken the strict policy against administrative actions by admins who are "involved"; the stated reason for this rule is to avoid conflict of interest by editors who have been granted special powers in good faith by the community. The policy, inter alia, states that:
“ | involved administrators may have, or may be seen to have, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include ... disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute. | ” |
He has breached the rule by pursuing an administrative action and then, within a day, entering exactly the same dispute to barrack for one side and against the other in line with his use of the tools. It is utterly irrelevant whether his admin action or his unwitting disclosure came first. He has attempted to defend his actions by saying, "I am involved in this second discussion, but not in the first one. I will not be closing this second discussion." The discussions are about the same issue, and the second has been directly brought about by his admin action. He appears to be up to his neck in it, and it is now there for everyone to see that he was up to his neck in it while acting as an admin, too. He is welcome to express his views as an editor, of course.
Mr Bartlett gave explicit and implicit undertakings at his RFA to abide by the policies pertaining to admins, and the community took him on trust when they voted to give him admin status. I will show good faith by assuming that he is misunderstanding a basic duty of WP admins (rather than disregarding it). I ask him to respond to the points I have made here. Tony (talk) 14:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
You say, ""Given your own involvement in this dispute". As I pointed out above, everyone is welcome to put their view as an involved editor—Mr Bartlett and you included. However, I did not take an administrative action while involved: he did. What exactly is your point? I'm not sure you understand the principle of conflict of interest; and I had hoped the en.WP had moved on from the practice by which admins gang up to support each other's wrongdoing. Tony (talk) 15:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Tony, you have not provided any evidence he was involved when closing the RfM. If he's crusaded against en dashes, that would be a COI, but you've not shown that. There's no reason for him to even respond to you here. If you only want a personal explanation, there's his talk page, assuming he's willing. If you want to pursue sanctions, take it to the proper place, ANI. But they'll require evidence, or you'll simply be seen as disruptive. — kwami ( talk) 17:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
“ | involved administrators may have, or may be seen to have, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include ... disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute. | ” |
Johjhutton says, "Bartlett was not involved when he closed the previous RM, but he has the right to become involved at a later time if another RM is opened, which it was." (1) He was' involved, by his statement (unless his views have suddenly changed in a day or two). (2) He does not have the right to become involved a few days later in exactly the same debate he has closed and resolved to favour one side—casting a !vote, no less, to influence the outcome of moves to reverse his action. It is the most blatant conflict of interest I have seen on WP for some time. Tony (talk) 12:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a non-issue, and we should stop wasting our time. I've asked Tony to provide difs showing a COI, and he has failed to do that. Without evidence there is nothing for us to talk about. — kwami ( talk) 22:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Response: It is a fundamental issue that goes to the heart of the admin policy. Kwami, you keep asking for diffs, but the evidence is just above. I have copied it here twice: Bartlett disclosed strong feelings (that is, "involvement") within a day or two of making an administrative action. Mr Hutton is concerned about past versus present versus future: the policy says nothing about when a disclosure of CoI is made; it cares only that an admin action be made without involvement at the time. The main argument by fellow admins who have rallied around Bartlett seems to appeal to when the disclosure of CoI was made. If, as an admin, I closed an RfC, took admin action to implement what I interpreted as consensus, while admitting there was vocal opposition, and then admitted two days later that I was partisan (!voting as such in a move to reverse it), I would resign as an admin when someone complained.
Kwami and others talk about WP:TITLE gazumping MOS. Let's take a look at WP:TITLE. I see this, first off:
“ | Editing for the sole purpose of changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed.... Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia. | ” |
Could Bartlett explain how his actions were in accordance with WP:INVOLVED and the text above in WP:TITLE? His continuing silence, in my view, proves his guilt. The matter will need to be pursued, sooner or later, since the community deserves to know whether the protection against corrupt actions that is afforded by WP:INVOLVED can be simply glossed over by wikilawyering over whether the disclosure of involvement at the time of the action was made before, during, or after the action. Tony (talk) 07:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Tony, you still haven't shown any breech of policy that I can see. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place. If the move was illegitimate, then of course it should be reverted, not just apologized for. But you aren't getting anywhere here. If you're serious about it, take it to WP:ANI and provide the diffs they need to see things your way. — kwami ( talk) 19:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Since we're still blabbing about the hyphendash conflict, I thought I might mention that technically, Mexicans *are* Americans, so really a more techincally correct title might be "The war between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848". Well, anyway... blah blah. -- Avanu ( talk) 13:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This edit changes some of the hyphens to dashes; whatever may be justified, this is contrary to MOS:CONSISTENCY: while some may think An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within a Wikipedia article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole. Consistency within an article promotes clarity and cohesion. is too strong, that is what MOS says.
Perhaps more seriously, it damages the article. Foos' book is subtitled about the "Mexican-American War", not, as Kwami makes it, the "Mexican War" - a significant error in these days of string searches. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
So now you have a title with hyphen, the lead-section ("lead–section"?) with en dash, the reflist with hyphens, and the talkpage notice (yes, up there ^) with hyphen... hello?... WTF people? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, dashes vs hyphens carry important meanings for readers, and are a long-established part of the language. It is yet more important since readers see our text on electronic monitors; often, they are not of the best resolution, and no one sees it as well as on paper in good light. Hyphens can look like dots or smudges in many circumstances. This might be OK for when a hyphen is correct, but when a dash is prescribed by many of the most prestigious authorities in the US, the UK and elswhere, it is professional to use it.
This debate needs to be at MoS talk, not here. Tony (talk) 02:53, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Guys, I am not a native English speaker, but, are you sure that this construction is correct? I don't recall seeing this before. Shouldn't it be one of the following?
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 09:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
"Mexican troops were trained to fire with their muskets held loosely at hip-level" removed by 99.189.28.19 for 'lacking citation since 2008'
I looked this quote up in Google to see if there were any reliable sources, and mostly I find that a LOT of sites copy Wikipedia content verbatim without checking the facts. -- Avanu ( talk) 05:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
From Avanu ( talk) 17:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC) Rather than going on and on and on, why not introduce some additional reliable sources? Everything I have seen above that is being suggested as a "solution" does nothing to actually advance the debate about which type of punctuation is best. Since we are bound by "Reliable Sources" being our guide, and since the sources are clearly in dispute for numerous reasons, either get more sources, toss a coin, or duel it out at dawn. Either way, it is clearly an endless debate that can't be solved by just arguing a lot.
So my suggestion is, either:
1. Get an overwhelming preponderance of reliable sources for one side or the other.
2. Compete in some game of chance or skill to decide this. (plus, it's fun)
3. Shut up (and I say this in the most charitable way possible).
The preceding section has been subject to a lame edit war about whether a subheader should make reference to horse carcasses, as far as I can tell. I have been asked to look at this on my talk page. I've warned one editor two editors not to edit-war, but the warning really applies to all of you. Folks, if you want to make comments about horse carcasses or something, please add them as a new comment and do not overwrite anything written by others. And above all do not edit-war on a frigging talk page. Or I may block you all for sheer lameness. Regards,
Sandstein
19:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
There have been attempts to breach the style guides on the dash issue. That would be fine, but consensus needs to be gathered here first, on the basis that this article should differ from WP's site-wide practice. I ask that those editors seeking to cause disruption in the article cease, and that the matter be sorted out here.
Keep the status quo in the text, consistent with the MoS guideline There was no consensus to change the typography of the article title, and there is definitely no consensus to change the article text. To do so, it should be demonstrated that this article has special conditions that make it "common sense" to go against site-wide practice as articulated in the style guides. Tony (talk) 14:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Change the typography for article-specific reasons (please state them with your signature).
Time to stop repeated discussions and stay with established consensus (please provide outstanding rationale)
I don't think WP:COMMONAME is applicable here; we're arguing about the typographic style, not about what to call it. The relevant guideline is the MOS section on dashes. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Good to see you here, CWenger. No, it was not a violation. For one thing, some material on the page (in the categories at the bottom, and elsewhere) had the en dash form and could not be changed, and some had the hyphen form. So consistency could not be achieved in any case. Therefore, when in doubt, edit according to clear MOS guidelines. The prevailing and irremediable inconsistency comes about because of editors' refusal to accept a peace proposal that you tentatively suggested and I took up and presented, in the second RM at Talk:Mexican-American War [...] I'm not kidding: this is all more serious than it looks, because of the wide implications for policies and guidelines, and the potential to generate precedents for disorder if they are ignored.
dréachtaí 17:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
There have been TWO move request over the title of this article, next guy who edit-wars to reinsert the damned dash will be dragged directly to
WP:AN3 for violatiing
MOS:STABILITY. --
Enric Naval (
talk)
21:01, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
![]() | The related Category:Mexican-American War has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming . You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page. |
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Enric Naval ( talk • contribs) 01:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
I moved over the past week and a half, and came back to Wikipedia disappointed to see that there has been absolutely no progress on the Mexican~American War naming issue. Again, I personally am not really sure if a hyphen or en dash is correct, but I do know that using both interchangeably, particularly in the same article, looks unprofessional. I don't see any way this issue is resolved without some authoritative figure/body making a decision. Therefore I suggest arbitration as the only way forward. – CWenger ( talk) 04:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
WP:MEDIATION would be more appropriate; WP:MEDCOM will actually have an authority figure, and may therefore be more likely to persuade people to co-operate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I reverted some changes of hyphen to en dash within the article, and a move a related linked page that User:Enric_Naval moved from en dash to hyphen. I think we don't have consensus for that, and if consistency is what he's after, there's an easier way back to that. Dicklyon ( talk) 20:14, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Hey, listen, we may have differences and feel passionately about the role of this or that style guide or policy, and the role of various typographical symbols. But one thing we must agree on, I believe, is to show some kindness towards each other, or at the very least, a non-personal approach. Let us by all means strongly debate the issues, but it would help if we studiously avoided even mentioning usernames. I have been guilty of this, too. The tone and standard of discussion will rise, I can assure you.
User:Sandstein is right to be concerned about the drama. So let's fix the drama ourselves, or an unsatisfactory solution will be imposed on all of us. I suggest the matter be slowed down, more measured, with emotion taken out if possible. (I have a RL workload that leaves little time for WP right now, I'm afraid.). Tony (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I know we have been over every inch of this topic several times, but I want to present a new, common sense argument that I came up with (originally on my talk page). MOS:ENDASH makes an exception for elements that lack lexical independence, e.g. Sino-Japanese trade. Presumably this would apply to Franco-. Is it likely that two terms as similar as Franco-German border and French-German border would use different punctuation? I think the idea behind the "hyphen for elements that lack lexical independence" rule is that the disjointedness of the two elements is evident. With nouns, like France-Germany border, it could possibly be mistaken for the border of a single country (France-Germany). With adjectives, like French-German border, it fits best into the former category, i.e. there is minimal possibility for confusion with only a hyphen. I think this explains why the vast majority of reliable sources use Mexican-American War, and why we should follow them in our WP:MOS. Even if it is not explicitly stated in style guides I think we should be able to figure out what is going on and follow common usage. – CWenger ( talk) 22:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
What I had asked for before was any single example of a publication that shows evidence of a policy of using the en dash in the style that our MOS specifies, and yet does not use it for the Mexican–American War. Surely they must exist. I've found the other way: this book set's the "core–periphery" conflict with en dash, and also the war with en dash. So far, that makes en dash in Mexican–American War a majority among books that clearly have a policy of using en dash to represent to, and, between, versus. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:22, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
This uses both Mexican-American War (hyphen) and 1841–1845 (dash; as Polk's term). You will have to search; the dates are in the footnote. That would appear to be a solid majority of usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
So, we still have no example of a book that uses en dash to connect parallel nouns (like core–periphery or Bose–Einstein), and yet uses a hyphen in Mexican-American War. So there's no evidence that would support making this odd exception to what our MOS specifies. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Since the issue here is primarily an issue for WP:MOS, and since nobody has been able to show a single source that implies that "Mexican–American War" is anywhere treated differently from other joined pairs as "U.S.–Mexico border", and since the hotly protested move to the hyphenated title has introduced conflict and inconsistency into an area that was previously stable, self-consistent, and consistent with WP:ENDASH for several years, I do therefore move that that we repair this mess by moving the article back to the previously stable en dash form. Any reasoned support or objection appreciated. Dicklyon ( talk) 17:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I reiterate my call for reasoned support or objection. Attacking me doesn't count. Dicklyon ( talk) 00:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
All of you have excellent arguments for your positions on this issue. You're not going to get anywhere unless someone makes a rule that forces a solution, so why not do this 'binding RfC' (whatever that is) and allow its answer to be THE ANSWER, and then move on? -- Avanu ( talk) 02:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Avanu, I'm not sure what you refer to when you say "All of you have excellent arguments for your positions on this issue." I've been asking for objections, but no such arguments have been advanced (just personal attacks on me for not seeing consensus). And MPA then adds another accusation of me misquoting him, and neglects to count the book that I've cited in evidence several times, claiming I've shown zero. I've asked what this "Binding RfC" thing is, because I've never seen such a process; who decides the binding outcome? If someone makes a definite proposal, and says what the scope is, we could consider it. But if nobody gives an argument against repairing the inconsistency caused by the contested move to hyphen soon, maybe we won't need to go there. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Let's write this article in American English, as almost all Americans practise it, and call the War either the Mexican War or the Mexican-American War.
Why should we abandon writing English to these two or three or four editors, who have cobbled together a system representing an extreme minority (if any) of actual written English, a small minority of style guides, and which attracts the support of no editor but themselves?
Let's see if anybody but the predictables opposes this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Furthermore, in doing much to extend the nation from coast to coast, the Mexican-American War helped set off economic booms (such as mining in California)
Does anybody have a source, or reasoning, for this? It's effectively a claim that if gold nuggests had been found in 1842, there wouldn't have been the Rush as we know it. Got citation? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 08:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
At this point, there are a few ways this can go: the three or four dissentients can continue to revert-war for the spelling they hold to be better; this will produce permanent inconsistency, contrary to their claimed desire. If this keeps up, I will consider what avenues of dispute resolution will settle this matter, and I will not hesitate to ask to have them topic banned; if they succeed in the obvious counter-request, I presume some other voice of sanity will arise.
Or they can provide sources which demonstrate that their preference is actually significantly present in American English; I will be amazed, but settle.
Or we can call this war what most English speakers actually call it, the Mexican War
Or we can actually have this uniform, as they claim to desire.
I will see what comments there are in 24 hours. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I note the proposal to reverse a consensus move decision because the proposer has engaged obstinancy and delay. That proposal should get the proposer banned. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:58, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Since the messy situation of topic banning arose, I have mostly decided to stay out of this article, but it is still in my watchlist. Since the outcome of that topic banning thing was a suggestion of a Binding RfC and apparently you all still cannot agree, I'm going to propose a new suggestion. I've listed the names of those people who appear to be a part of this hyphen/dash thing (if I am mistaken take your name out or add it). Indicate next to your name whether you would 1. support a Binding RfC - 2. agree to simply accept what a Binding RfC says - 3. want to keep arguing - 4. hate mimes
Incidentally, I would ask that the binding RfC be strongly controlled, much like the RfC/U where people get a spot for their case and have to stick within that section, and aren't allowed to comment on other's sections. I think everyone is pretty clear on what their positions are, so a controlled and carefully guided situation seems like the way to make it work best. The editors below wouldn't be allowed to decide the outcome of the controlled Binding RfC, only present their cases.
Regardless, after 3 days, I will ask an admin to implement a 1RR rule and strictly enforce WP:BRD. I'm not seeing an end in sight unless we change how this is working, so I would ask for your support of choices 1 or 2. Also, if an editor fails to respond, I would take that as an assumption that they will accept the binding RfC. If anyone has a better idea, I'm definitely open to it. Thanks. -- Avanu ( talk) 17:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Good idea to get that RfC going; I'm still unclear on what it means for such a thing to be "binding", as there's no process that I'm aware of for picking a "decider". And what should we do in the mean time about people who try to sneak in their widespread changes under edit summaries like "ce", and call those who revert them "vandals", when what we really have is a frustrated attempt to move away from years of consensus based on following WP:MOS? Dicklyon ( talk) 19:11, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Regardless, after 3 days, I will ask an admin to ban User:Avenu from this page as being a nuisance. Also, if an editor fails to respond, I would take that as an assumption that they are in favour of banning User:Avenu. If anyone has a better idea, I'm definitely open to it. Thanks Tony (talk) 08:51, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
The challenge above has now been refined to: find a book which complies with all of WP:ENDASH, and uses Mexican-American War [hyphen].
There are several contributing causes:
These three are together more than sufficient explanation for not finding any.
Let us therefore have a comparandum: how many books follow WP:DASH in its entirety, and yet use Mexican–American War? [dash]
Zero to zero proves zero. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:40, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I thought PMA's suggest to call it The Mexican War might have some merit, but it turns out that the evidence as it appears in his link melts away if you drill down a bit. If you look at how many recent books (since 2000) with previews available in gbs use the term "The Mexican War", you get 48 pages of hits; if you do the same with "The Mexican American War" you get 55 pages of hits (a few of those are wiki mirrors, of course). And 24 pages of hits on books using both terms. So at least in recent books, the trend appears to be away from the old American-POV term toward the more descriptive term that we use in all the WP articles. So probably not a great solution.
I had the same problem with some ngram evidence I presented re Napier inventing vs. discovering logarithms. Noetica destroyed me on that one, so I learned to count actual book hits. Dicklyon ( talk) 21:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
User:Pmanderson keeps calling me a liar for saying that this article was improperly moved. Here's why I think it was improper and ought to be restored back to the stable and consistent form.
To see what I'm summarizing, check this old RM discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Mexican-American_War&oldid=424408005#Requested_move_.28February_2011.29
It was improperly closed as "move". PMAnderson claims an 8–2 consensus to move, but most of these were just unreasoning echos of his ill-founded proposal, and some of us who would have argued to stick with the guideines of the MOS were not aware that he had taken his anti-MOS battle there.
The 2 against made a very good case that this move request was improper and in the wrong place, being an attack on MOS guidelines based on a novel interpretation of policy.
Nominator Septentrionalis/ User:Pmanderson started with "unless there is some well-printed source which actually uses the dash, this should be strong support". I'm sorry I wasn't in on this, as I later found and showed him a bunch of examples; but it had been closed already.
The "support" includes such gems as "I think you're right about this Septentrionalis. User:Groundsquirrel13" and "per Septentrionalis. User:Jonathunder" and "Support lightly but status quo is fine User:Avanu" (with a bit of analysis that made it clear that he was pretty neutral), and "I am in full support of changing the title of this and similar articles where a dash has been used in place of a hyphen User:Xession" (he backed that up with an ancient style guide that didn't have en dashes in it). The ones that had a bit of substance still didn't have a clear rationale for subverting the MOS: " WP:V The hyphenated name has been verified in multiple books. The dashed name has not verified anywhere User:Enric Naval" could have been easily fixed by looking at some books, like I did.
Basically the argument is that we should abandon our WP:MOS typography guidelines if the sources on a topic to not adopt the same typographic style that we do. They cite WP:COMMONNAME, which is not really about typography at all.
There was one other logical argument for the move, by User:LtPowers: " Mexico–America but Mexican-American" (and nominator had made a similar point about noun vs adjective forms being related by the en dash). The trouble is, there's no evidence for this logic. Books have plenty of examples of en dash connecting a pair of adjective forms, such as Mexican–American War, French–German border, Turkish–Armenian War (one that PMAnderson specifically said does not exist, so I looked) and lots of others. I've found books with en dash in Mexican–American War, but no books that demonstrate a policy of en dash between equal names but still using hyphen in Mexican-American War. I've asked PMAnderson and others to look for any example to support this theory, but they haven't found one.
PMAnderson framed this move discussion as a disagreement between policy ( WP:TITLE) and guideline ( WP:MOS) when he wrote "Is MOS the central authority here? No. We have a policy on Article titles, which says to follow reliable sources; so does MOS, if the actual pronouncements of the oracle make any impact here." The admin who later closed the debate, after a huge discussion that clearly indicated no consensus, adopted this theory and closed it with "MOS is only a guide and the Wikipedia:Article titles is a policy overiding it," which is really quite a bizarre new theory, if you think about it (typography is covered in the MOS, not in the TITLE policy).
Noetica made an ernest appeal to discuss the issue at WP:MOS to prevent the sort of fragmentary inconsistency that we now have.
The discussion degenerated into jokes by people who didn't see it as serious or important. There was clearly no consensus, in spite of the numbers, just some people who were willing to go along with PMAnderson because they aren't tuned into how en dashes are used in the context of a style guide that specifies them. And then it got closed, by a guy who then showed up taking the side of moving other articles from en dash to hyphen.
This pattern was resisted when they tried to move the category and other articles, but then finally some random dude came along and closed the RM on Battles of the Mexican–American War as a consensus to move! He says to make it "consistent with other articles, namely Mexican-American War", the one improperly moved, even though that made it inconsistent with all the others!
The only sensible way to straighten this out is to move this article back to where it was for years, before Pmanderson brought his dislike for the MOS here to attack it. Dicklyon ( talk) 07:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Comment: All of this "new" argument has been gone through minutely before. This will come as no surprise to the seasoned editor. If you have not read the saga up till now, you are merely contributing variations on points long since blunted to ineffectiveness. And you have probably missed the counterpoints that dispatch them, equally indecisively. Myself, I do not and will not present argument on punctuation and style here. This is not the forum for deciding general guidelines for style or naming; it is the forum for deciding how the Project's guidelines apply for one article. If there is some special difficulty in the present case, let that difficulty be discussed. But in fact there is no special difficulty. If there are general difficulties in interpreting guidelines or policy to which we are alerted here, they ought to be referred for general treatment at WT:MOS (and perhaps also WT:TITLE). A couple of editors militantly disagree with such sound procedure. If you want to feed their appetite for chaos, by all means continue with decentralised, ever-churning discussion here (and at the next hundred articles at which the very same questions will proliferate, when those militants plant them there). Some of us have better uses for our time, and more respect for the Project's established mechanisms and protocols.
Sorry, handn't noticed that PMA was still asking for this link to where he said I "lied" (and "bad faith" in edit summary). Dicklyon ( talk) 06:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I have just read some of the above and realized I will have to read a lot more to get to a bottom line. What I have noticed is a lot of the wrong type of discussions. I arrived here because of comments left on Talk:Texas-Indian Wars concerning hyphens and dashes. I presented what I felt was valid reasoning for the use as is. WP:MOS does give credibility to the use and like articles use the same form. Some of them are;
Someone brought up the possible title "The Mexican War" and there were comments that it was popular in the mid 1970s. I was in high school by this time and it was not referred to as such where I live. The war being discussed was between Mexico and America and it has been brought up that Wikipedia is not an "American" encyclopedia. With this in mind, the fact that two countries were involved, and considering proper weight, the evidence supports the names of both countries in the title and I am not sure why consideration would be made otherwise.
There are some that do not like hyphens or dashes and some that think they have no use. It would seem there would be preference to the shortened "Mexican-American War" than "The war between Mexico and the United States". to me Mexican American War makes it appear that there was some war between Americans of Mexican decent and some other faction. Personally I favor "Mexican - American" war, Mexico – United States border, or U.S.- Mexico border crossings but can not fathom that the concerns over usage would be enough to consume hours of comments and neglect the many articles that could use editors. I just do not see that this is of a concern it has been made out to be. There are articles I feel are incorrect such as, German-American Soccer League and German-Americans in the Civil War. President Reagan used German-American Day in 1983. I do not like to change article titles on a whim so would need something concrete. Otr500 ( talk) 08:13, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Your welcome Dicklyon. I am honored to have a dialog with such an esteemed person. I do not mean this to be smart (maybe a little) but considering it appears you have the propensity to start salutations on an edgy note I am replying in kind. I rechecked the small space between my comment and your reply and will copy it here to refresh your memory, "...but can not fathom that the concerns over usage would be enough to consume hours of comments and neglect the many articles that could use editors. I just do not see that this is of a concern it has been made out to be.". I did not, as is plain to see, state the issue as unimportant but that there has been a lot of writing on something so simple. Other editors have gone as far as to use the word "silly:. I am also thinking there might be a little math computation problem as "a few paragraphs" is a lot less than has been dedicated to such an apparently monumental problem. I am still trying to figure out who is on first and so on but give me a little time and a "few paragraphs" (say 200 or so) and I will be up to speed. I can appreciate your perceived humor and hope you have verified the information concerning Thomas Jefferson. All jokes aside I am trying to figure out what is actually going on as I was sucked in from another article with apparently related issues. Since I can be considered as one of those "outside participants" I would think condescending antics might not be the best choice of games. I have my opinions but am willing to examine the evidence with an open mind. What I see so far, if I am in the right ball park, is arguments as to how the title should be presented. At this point the current title is supported. Looking around I see that Northern Illinois University ( here) also prefers Mexican-American War. As far as I can tell there are MOS guidelines to support this as well as references and several articles using the same "typography". Now that you and I have joked and laughed I will do some digging. Since I am a member of the WP:WikiProject Military history , as well as the WP:WikiProject United States, I am sure you will be seeing me around. Otr500 ( talk) 23:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
I will check it out but you really should work on your manners. If I disagree and have valid grounds I do not shy away from an issue. I do not consider any work (sometimes more difficult than others) to improve Wikipedia as a "fight" (possibly just a poor chose of words) and thus do not intend to do so. If I continue involvement it will be with a goal of resolution and whatever it takes within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia to accomplish this end. I am beginning to think you do not interact with people much in your line of work. Your comments, "...assuming you want to actually help...", and "...or whether you'd like to oppose it and let us keep fighting.", just does not even sound nice. I am just stating that in fairness you should have stopped at presenting the compromise proposal location as all the rest (and the beginning) is unnecessary. This may not be your intentions so I thought I would mention it. Otr500 ( talk) 05:35, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I know I don't have any sources for this, but I don't think the invasion of a large city resulted in 0 civilian casualties. Can someone verify this, because it seems highly unlikely. Czarcalvinsk ( talk) 06:24, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
This article would be more NPOV if the "Results" section included views of Mexican officials involved and also included an "Impact of the War in Mexico" section to parallel the "Impact of the War in the US" section. 76.166.212.133 ( talk) 10:11, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Non-admin closure. An uncontroversial case because there is an ArbCom injunction in place prohibiting moves due to exchange of hyphen and en dash. See current poll and discussion on that style issue: the poll; the discussion. Noetica Tea? 00:34, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Mexican-American War → Mexican–American War – MOS:ENDASH: The proper punctuation is an n-dash, not a hyphen. The current punctuation means "War of the Mexican Americans"; to mean "War between the Mexicans and the Americans", an n-dash is necessary. — the Man in Question (in question) 20:51, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
The article describes the strength of the Mexican Army as "25,000–40,000 ". This is grossly understated. Mexico was defeated by an American force that was significantly smaller in size. America did not become a world class power until the civil war. It appears that the estimates here forfeit historical fact for alterior motives and bias. Profcje ( talk) 18:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
It was, the Mexican Army at the time was not as well equipped or as well trained as the American military. Compare the firearms and so forth of each side. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.41.7 ( talk) 01:12, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
These pages also need to be moved:
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 08:56, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Also, Sep invented the distinction between attributive adjectives and attributive nouns. That is not supported by our sources. — kwami ( talk) 16:39, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
We've seen great arguments from both sides of this issue, and in this editor's opinion, it barely matters. 99.9% of people who come to this page are not going to care or notice. So, why not just move on for a while? Its actually making me smile and chuckle about how much effort we have put into on this tiny technical detail. Maybe we need to have a forked article, The - -/— — War of 2011.
Well.
Maybe not. -- Avanu ( talk) 03:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Mr Bartlett has broken the strict policy against administrative actions by admins who are "involved"; the stated reason for this rule is to avoid conflict of interest by editors who have been granted special powers in good faith by the community. The policy, inter alia, states that:
“ | involved administrators may have, or may be seen to have, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include ... disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute. | ” |
He has breached the rule by pursuing an administrative action and then, within a day, entering exactly the same dispute to barrack for one side and against the other in line with his use of the tools. It is utterly irrelevant whether his admin action or his unwitting disclosure came first. He has attempted to defend his actions by saying, "I am involved in this second discussion, but not in the first one. I will not be closing this second discussion." The discussions are about the same issue, and the second has been directly brought about by his admin action. He appears to be up to his neck in it, and it is now there for everyone to see that he was up to his neck in it while acting as an admin, too. He is welcome to express his views as an editor, of course.
Mr Bartlett gave explicit and implicit undertakings at his RFA to abide by the policies pertaining to admins, and the community took him on trust when they voted to give him admin status. I will show good faith by assuming that he is misunderstanding a basic duty of WP admins (rather than disregarding it). I ask him to respond to the points I have made here. Tony (talk) 14:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
You say, ""Given your own involvement in this dispute". As I pointed out above, everyone is welcome to put their view as an involved editor—Mr Bartlett and you included. However, I did not take an administrative action while involved: he did. What exactly is your point? I'm not sure you understand the principle of conflict of interest; and I had hoped the en.WP had moved on from the practice by which admins gang up to support each other's wrongdoing. Tony (talk) 15:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Tony, you have not provided any evidence he was involved when closing the RfM. If he's crusaded against en dashes, that would be a COI, but you've not shown that. There's no reason for him to even respond to you here. If you only want a personal explanation, there's his talk page, assuming he's willing. If you want to pursue sanctions, take it to the proper place, ANI. But they'll require evidence, or you'll simply be seen as disruptive. — kwami ( talk) 17:22, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
“ | involved administrators may have, or may be seen to have, a conflict of interest in disputes they have been a party to or have strong feelings about. Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include ... disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute. | ” |
Johjhutton says, "Bartlett was not involved when he closed the previous RM, but he has the right to become involved at a later time if another RM is opened, which it was." (1) He was' involved, by his statement (unless his views have suddenly changed in a day or two). (2) He does not have the right to become involved a few days later in exactly the same debate he has closed and resolved to favour one side—casting a !vote, no less, to influence the outcome of moves to reverse his action. It is the most blatant conflict of interest I have seen on WP for some time. Tony (talk) 12:29, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a non-issue, and we should stop wasting our time. I've asked Tony to provide difs showing a COI, and he has failed to do that. Without evidence there is nothing for us to talk about. — kwami ( talk) 22:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Response: It is a fundamental issue that goes to the heart of the admin policy. Kwami, you keep asking for diffs, but the evidence is just above. I have copied it here twice: Bartlett disclosed strong feelings (that is, "involvement") within a day or two of making an administrative action. Mr Hutton is concerned about past versus present versus future: the policy says nothing about when a disclosure of CoI is made; it cares only that an admin action be made without involvement at the time. The main argument by fellow admins who have rallied around Bartlett seems to appeal to when the disclosure of CoI was made. If, as an admin, I closed an RfC, took admin action to implement what I interpreted as consensus, while admitting there was vocal opposition, and then admitted two days later that I was partisan (!voting as such in a move to reverse it), I would resign as an admin when someone complained.
Kwami and others talk about WP:TITLE gazumping MOS. Let's take a look at WP:TITLE. I see this, first off:
“ | Editing for the sole purpose of changing one controversial title to another is strongly discouraged. If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed.... Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia. | ” |
Could Bartlett explain how his actions were in accordance with WP:INVOLVED and the text above in WP:TITLE? His continuing silence, in my view, proves his guilt. The matter will need to be pursued, sooner or later, since the community deserves to know whether the protection against corrupt actions that is afforded by WP:INVOLVED can be simply glossed over by wikilawyering over whether the disclosure of involvement at the time of the action was made before, during, or after the action. Tony (talk) 07:21, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Tony, you still haven't shown any breech of policy that I can see. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place. If the move was illegitimate, then of course it should be reverted, not just apologized for. But you aren't getting anywhere here. If you're serious about it, take it to WP:ANI and provide the diffs they need to see things your way. — kwami ( talk) 19:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Since we're still blabbing about the hyphendash conflict, I thought I might mention that technically, Mexicans *are* Americans, so really a more techincally correct title might be "The war between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848". Well, anyway... blah blah. -- Avanu ( talk) 13:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This edit changes some of the hyphens to dashes; whatever may be justified, this is contrary to MOS:CONSISTENCY: while some may think An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within a Wikipedia article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole. Consistency within an article promotes clarity and cohesion. is too strong, that is what MOS says.
Perhaps more seriously, it damages the article. Foos' book is subtitled about the "Mexican-American War", not, as Kwami makes it, the "Mexican War" - a significant error in these days of string searches. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:49, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
So now you have a title with hyphen, the lead-section ("lead–section"?) with en dash, the reflist with hyphens, and the talkpage notice (yes, up there ^) with hyphen... hello?... WTF people? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, dashes vs hyphens carry important meanings for readers, and are a long-established part of the language. It is yet more important since readers see our text on electronic monitors; often, they are not of the best resolution, and no one sees it as well as on paper in good light. Hyphens can look like dots or smudges in many circumstances. This might be OK for when a hyphen is correct, but when a dash is prescribed by many of the most prestigious authorities in the US, the UK and elswhere, it is professional to use it.
This debate needs to be at MoS talk, not here. Tony (talk) 02:53, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Guys, I am not a native English speaker, but, are you sure that this construction is correct? I don't recall seeing this before. Shouldn't it be one of the following?
-- Enric Naval ( talk) 09:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
"Mexican troops were trained to fire with their muskets held loosely at hip-level" removed by 99.189.28.19 for 'lacking citation since 2008'
I looked this quote up in Google to see if there were any reliable sources, and mostly I find that a LOT of sites copy Wikipedia content verbatim without checking the facts. -- Avanu ( talk) 05:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
From Avanu ( talk) 17:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC) Rather than going on and on and on, why not introduce some additional reliable sources? Everything I have seen above that is being suggested as a "solution" does nothing to actually advance the debate about which type of punctuation is best. Since we are bound by "Reliable Sources" being our guide, and since the sources are clearly in dispute for numerous reasons, either get more sources, toss a coin, or duel it out at dawn. Either way, it is clearly an endless debate that can't be solved by just arguing a lot.
So my suggestion is, either:
1. Get an overwhelming preponderance of reliable sources for one side or the other.
2. Compete in some game of chance or skill to decide this. (plus, it's fun)
3. Shut up (and I say this in the most charitable way possible).
The preceding section has been subject to a lame edit war about whether a subheader should make reference to horse carcasses, as far as I can tell. I have been asked to look at this on my talk page. I've warned one editor two editors not to edit-war, but the warning really applies to all of you. Folks, if you want to make comments about horse carcasses or something, please add them as a new comment and do not overwrite anything written by others. And above all do not edit-war on a frigging talk page. Or I may block you all for sheer lameness. Regards,
Sandstein
19:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
There have been attempts to breach the style guides on the dash issue. That would be fine, but consensus needs to be gathered here first, on the basis that this article should differ from WP's site-wide practice. I ask that those editors seeking to cause disruption in the article cease, and that the matter be sorted out here.
Keep the status quo in the text, consistent with the MoS guideline There was no consensus to change the typography of the article title, and there is definitely no consensus to change the article text. To do so, it should be demonstrated that this article has special conditions that make it "common sense" to go against site-wide practice as articulated in the style guides. Tony (talk) 14:58, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Change the typography for article-specific reasons (please state them with your signature).
Time to stop repeated discussions and stay with established consensus (please provide outstanding rationale)
I don't think WP:COMMONAME is applicable here; we're arguing about the typographic style, not about what to call it. The relevant guideline is the MOS section on dashes. Dicklyon ( talk) 22:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
Good to see you here, CWenger. No, it was not a violation. For one thing, some material on the page (in the categories at the bottom, and elsewhere) had the en dash form and could not be changed, and some had the hyphen form. So consistency could not be achieved in any case. Therefore, when in doubt, edit according to clear MOS guidelines. The prevailing and irremediable inconsistency comes about because of editors' refusal to accept a peace proposal that you tentatively suggested and I took up and presented, in the second RM at Talk:Mexican-American War [...] I'm not kidding: this is all more serious than it looks, because of the wide implications for policies and guidelines, and the potential to generate precedents for disorder if they are ignored.
dréachtaí 17:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
There have been TWO move request over the title of this article, next guy who edit-wars to reinsert the damned dash will be dragged directly to
WP:AN3 for violatiing
MOS:STABILITY. --
Enric Naval (
talk)
21:01, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
![]() | The related Category:Mexican-American War has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming . You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page. |
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Enric Naval ( talk • contribs) 01:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
I moved over the past week and a half, and came back to Wikipedia disappointed to see that there has been absolutely no progress on the Mexican~American War naming issue. Again, I personally am not really sure if a hyphen or en dash is correct, but I do know that using both interchangeably, particularly in the same article, looks unprofessional. I don't see any way this issue is resolved without some authoritative figure/body making a decision. Therefore I suggest arbitration as the only way forward. – CWenger ( talk) 04:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
WP:MEDIATION would be more appropriate; WP:MEDCOM will actually have an authority figure, and may therefore be more likely to persuade people to co-operate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I reverted some changes of hyphen to en dash within the article, and a move a related linked page that User:Enric_Naval moved from en dash to hyphen. I think we don't have consensus for that, and if consistency is what he's after, there's an easier way back to that. Dicklyon ( talk) 20:14, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Hey, listen, we may have differences and feel passionately about the role of this or that style guide or policy, and the role of various typographical symbols. But one thing we must agree on, I believe, is to show some kindness towards each other, or at the very least, a non-personal approach. Let us by all means strongly debate the issues, but it would help if we studiously avoided even mentioning usernames. I have been guilty of this, too. The tone and standard of discussion will rise, I can assure you.
User:Sandstein is right to be concerned about the drama. So let's fix the drama ourselves, or an unsatisfactory solution will be imposed on all of us. I suggest the matter be slowed down, more measured, with emotion taken out if possible. (I have a RL workload that leaves little time for WP right now, I'm afraid.). Tony (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I know we have been over every inch of this topic several times, but I want to present a new, common sense argument that I came up with (originally on my talk page). MOS:ENDASH makes an exception for elements that lack lexical independence, e.g. Sino-Japanese trade. Presumably this would apply to Franco-. Is it likely that two terms as similar as Franco-German border and French-German border would use different punctuation? I think the idea behind the "hyphen for elements that lack lexical independence" rule is that the disjointedness of the two elements is evident. With nouns, like France-Germany border, it could possibly be mistaken for the border of a single country (France-Germany). With adjectives, like French-German border, it fits best into the former category, i.e. there is minimal possibility for confusion with only a hyphen. I think this explains why the vast majority of reliable sources use Mexican-American War, and why we should follow them in our WP:MOS. Even if it is not explicitly stated in style guides I think we should be able to figure out what is going on and follow common usage. – CWenger ( talk) 22:48, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
What I had asked for before was any single example of a publication that shows evidence of a policy of using the en dash in the style that our MOS specifies, and yet does not use it for the Mexican–American War. Surely they must exist. I've found the other way: this book set's the "core–periphery" conflict with en dash, and also the war with en dash. So far, that makes en dash in Mexican–American War a majority among books that clearly have a policy of using en dash to represent to, and, between, versus. Dicklyon ( talk) 01:22, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
This uses both Mexican-American War (hyphen) and 1841–1845 (dash; as Polk's term). You will have to search; the dates are in the footnote. That would appear to be a solid majority of usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
So, we still have no example of a book that uses en dash to connect parallel nouns (like core–periphery or Bose–Einstein), and yet uses a hyphen in Mexican-American War. So there's no evidence that would support making this odd exception to what our MOS specifies. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Since the issue here is primarily an issue for WP:MOS, and since nobody has been able to show a single source that implies that "Mexican–American War" is anywhere treated differently from other joined pairs as "U.S.–Mexico border", and since the hotly protested move to the hyphenated title has introduced conflict and inconsistency into an area that was previously stable, self-consistent, and consistent with WP:ENDASH for several years, I do therefore move that that we repair this mess by moving the article back to the previously stable en dash form. Any reasoned support or objection appreciated. Dicklyon ( talk) 17:32, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I reiterate my call for reasoned support or objection. Attacking me doesn't count. Dicklyon ( talk) 00:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
All of you have excellent arguments for your positions on this issue. You're not going to get anywhere unless someone makes a rule that forces a solution, so why not do this 'binding RfC' (whatever that is) and allow its answer to be THE ANSWER, and then move on? -- Avanu ( talk) 02:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Avanu, I'm not sure what you refer to when you say "All of you have excellent arguments for your positions on this issue." I've been asking for objections, but no such arguments have been advanced (just personal attacks on me for not seeing consensus). And MPA then adds another accusation of me misquoting him, and neglects to count the book that I've cited in evidence several times, claiming I've shown zero. I've asked what this "Binding RfC" thing is, because I've never seen such a process; who decides the binding outcome? If someone makes a definite proposal, and says what the scope is, we could consider it. But if nobody gives an argument against repairing the inconsistency caused by the contested move to hyphen soon, maybe we won't need to go there. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Let's write this article in American English, as almost all Americans practise it, and call the War either the Mexican War or the Mexican-American War.
Why should we abandon writing English to these two or three or four editors, who have cobbled together a system representing an extreme minority (if any) of actual written English, a small minority of style guides, and which attracts the support of no editor but themselves?
Let's see if anybody but the predictables opposes this. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:31, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Furthermore, in doing much to extend the nation from coast to coast, the Mexican-American War helped set off economic booms (such as mining in California)
Does anybody have a source, or reasoning, for this? It's effectively a claim that if gold nuggests had been found in 1842, there wouldn't have been the Rush as we know it. Got citation? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 08:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
At this point, there are a few ways this can go: the three or four dissentients can continue to revert-war for the spelling they hold to be better; this will produce permanent inconsistency, contrary to their claimed desire. If this keeps up, I will consider what avenues of dispute resolution will settle this matter, and I will not hesitate to ask to have them topic banned; if they succeed in the obvious counter-request, I presume some other voice of sanity will arise.
Or they can provide sources which demonstrate that their preference is actually significantly present in American English; I will be amazed, but settle.
Or we can call this war what most English speakers actually call it, the Mexican War
Or we can actually have this uniform, as they claim to desire.
I will see what comments there are in 24 hours. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I note the proposal to reverse a consensus move decision because the proposer has engaged obstinancy and delay. That proposal should get the proposer banned. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:58, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Since the messy situation of topic banning arose, I have mostly decided to stay out of this article, but it is still in my watchlist. Since the outcome of that topic banning thing was a suggestion of a Binding RfC and apparently you all still cannot agree, I'm going to propose a new suggestion. I've listed the names of those people who appear to be a part of this hyphen/dash thing (if I am mistaken take your name out or add it). Indicate next to your name whether you would 1. support a Binding RfC - 2. agree to simply accept what a Binding RfC says - 3. want to keep arguing - 4. hate mimes
Incidentally, I would ask that the binding RfC be strongly controlled, much like the RfC/U where people get a spot for their case and have to stick within that section, and aren't allowed to comment on other's sections. I think everyone is pretty clear on what their positions are, so a controlled and carefully guided situation seems like the way to make it work best. The editors below wouldn't be allowed to decide the outcome of the controlled Binding RfC, only present their cases.
Regardless, after 3 days, I will ask an admin to implement a 1RR rule and strictly enforce WP:BRD. I'm not seeing an end in sight unless we change how this is working, so I would ask for your support of choices 1 or 2. Also, if an editor fails to respond, I would take that as an assumption that they will accept the binding RfC. If anyone has a better idea, I'm definitely open to it. Thanks. -- Avanu ( talk) 17:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Good idea to get that RfC going; I'm still unclear on what it means for such a thing to be "binding", as there's no process that I'm aware of for picking a "decider". And what should we do in the mean time about people who try to sneak in their widespread changes under edit summaries like "ce", and call those who revert them "vandals", when what we really have is a frustrated attempt to move away from years of consensus based on following WP:MOS? Dicklyon ( talk) 19:11, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Regardless, after 3 days, I will ask an admin to ban User:Avenu from this page as being a nuisance. Also, if an editor fails to respond, I would take that as an assumption that they are in favour of banning User:Avenu. If anyone has a better idea, I'm definitely open to it. Thanks Tony (talk) 08:51, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
The challenge above has now been refined to: find a book which complies with all of WP:ENDASH, and uses Mexican-American War [hyphen].
There are several contributing causes:
These three are together more than sufficient explanation for not finding any.
Let us therefore have a comparandum: how many books follow WP:DASH in its entirety, and yet use Mexican–American War? [dash]
Zero to zero proves zero. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:40, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I thought PMA's suggest to call it The Mexican War might have some merit, but it turns out that the evidence as it appears in his link melts away if you drill down a bit. If you look at how many recent books (since 2000) with previews available in gbs use the term "The Mexican War", you get 48 pages of hits; if you do the same with "The Mexican American War" you get 55 pages of hits (a few of those are wiki mirrors, of course). And 24 pages of hits on books using both terms. So at least in recent books, the trend appears to be away from the old American-POV term toward the more descriptive term that we use in all the WP articles. So probably not a great solution.
I had the same problem with some ngram evidence I presented re Napier inventing vs. discovering logarithms. Noetica destroyed me on that one, so I learned to count actual book hits. Dicklyon ( talk) 21:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
User:Pmanderson keeps calling me a liar for saying that this article was improperly moved. Here's why I think it was improper and ought to be restored back to the stable and consistent form.
To see what I'm summarizing, check this old RM discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Mexican-American_War&oldid=424408005#Requested_move_.28February_2011.29
It was improperly closed as "move". PMAnderson claims an 8–2 consensus to move, but most of these were just unreasoning echos of his ill-founded proposal, and some of us who would have argued to stick with the guideines of the MOS were not aware that he had taken his anti-MOS battle there.
The 2 against made a very good case that this move request was improper and in the wrong place, being an attack on MOS guidelines based on a novel interpretation of policy.
Nominator Septentrionalis/ User:Pmanderson started with "unless there is some well-printed source which actually uses the dash, this should be strong support". I'm sorry I wasn't in on this, as I later found and showed him a bunch of examples; but it had been closed already.
The "support" includes such gems as "I think you're right about this Septentrionalis. User:Groundsquirrel13" and "per Septentrionalis. User:Jonathunder" and "Support lightly but status quo is fine User:Avanu" (with a bit of analysis that made it clear that he was pretty neutral), and "I am in full support of changing the title of this and similar articles where a dash has been used in place of a hyphen User:Xession" (he backed that up with an ancient style guide that didn't have en dashes in it). The ones that had a bit of substance still didn't have a clear rationale for subverting the MOS: " WP:V The hyphenated name has been verified in multiple books. The dashed name has not verified anywhere User:Enric Naval" could have been easily fixed by looking at some books, like I did.
Basically the argument is that we should abandon our WP:MOS typography guidelines if the sources on a topic to not adopt the same typographic style that we do. They cite WP:COMMONNAME, which is not really about typography at all.
There was one other logical argument for the move, by User:LtPowers: " Mexico–America but Mexican-American" (and nominator had made a similar point about noun vs adjective forms being related by the en dash). The trouble is, there's no evidence for this logic. Books have plenty of examples of en dash connecting a pair of adjective forms, such as Mexican–American War, French–German border, Turkish–Armenian War (one that PMAnderson specifically said does not exist, so I looked) and lots of others. I've found books with en dash in Mexican–American War, but no books that demonstrate a policy of en dash between equal names but still using hyphen in Mexican-American War. I've asked PMAnderson and others to look for any example to support this theory, but they haven't found one.
PMAnderson framed this move discussion as a disagreement between policy ( WP:TITLE) and guideline ( WP:MOS) when he wrote "Is MOS the central authority here? No. We have a policy on Article titles, which says to follow reliable sources; so does MOS, if the actual pronouncements of the oracle make any impact here." The admin who later closed the debate, after a huge discussion that clearly indicated no consensus, adopted this theory and closed it with "MOS is only a guide and the Wikipedia:Article titles is a policy overiding it," which is really quite a bizarre new theory, if you think about it (typography is covered in the MOS, not in the TITLE policy).
Noetica made an ernest appeal to discuss the issue at WP:MOS to prevent the sort of fragmentary inconsistency that we now have.
The discussion degenerated into jokes by people who didn't see it as serious or important. There was clearly no consensus, in spite of the numbers, just some people who were willing to go along with PMAnderson because they aren't tuned into how en dashes are used in the context of a style guide that specifies them. And then it got closed, by a guy who then showed up taking the side of moving other articles from en dash to hyphen.
This pattern was resisted when they tried to move the category and other articles, but then finally some random dude came along and closed the RM on Battles of the Mexican–American War as a consensus to move! He says to make it "consistent with other articles, namely Mexican-American War", the one improperly moved, even though that made it inconsistent with all the others!
The only sensible way to straighten this out is to move this article back to where it was for years, before Pmanderson brought his dislike for the MOS here to attack it. Dicklyon ( talk) 07:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Comment: All of this "new" argument has been gone through minutely before. This will come as no surprise to the seasoned editor. If you have not read the saga up till now, you are merely contributing variations on points long since blunted to ineffectiveness. And you have probably missed the counterpoints that dispatch them, equally indecisively. Myself, I do not and will not present argument on punctuation and style here. This is not the forum for deciding general guidelines for style or naming; it is the forum for deciding how the Project's guidelines apply for one article. If there is some special difficulty in the present case, let that difficulty be discussed. But in fact there is no special difficulty. If there are general difficulties in interpreting guidelines or policy to which we are alerted here, they ought to be referred for general treatment at WT:MOS (and perhaps also WT:TITLE). A couple of editors militantly disagree with such sound procedure. If you want to feed their appetite for chaos, by all means continue with decentralised, ever-churning discussion here (and at the next hundred articles at which the very same questions will proliferate, when those militants plant them there). Some of us have better uses for our time, and more respect for the Project's established mechanisms and protocols.
Sorry, handn't noticed that PMA was still asking for this link to where he said I "lied" (and "bad faith" in edit summary). Dicklyon ( talk) 06:08, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I have just read some of the above and realized I will have to read a lot more to get to a bottom line. What I have noticed is a lot of the wrong type of discussions. I arrived here because of comments left on Talk:Texas-Indian Wars concerning hyphens and dashes. I presented what I felt was valid reasoning for the use as is. WP:MOS does give credibility to the use and like articles use the same form. Some of them are;
Someone brought up the possible title "The Mexican War" and there were comments that it was popular in the mid 1970s. I was in high school by this time and it was not referred to as such where I live. The war being discussed was between Mexico and America and it has been brought up that Wikipedia is not an "American" encyclopedia. With this in mind, the fact that two countries were involved, and considering proper weight, the evidence supports the names of both countries in the title and I am not sure why consideration would be made otherwise.
There are some that do not like hyphens or dashes and some that think they have no use. It would seem there would be preference to the shortened "Mexican-American War" than "The war between Mexico and the United States". to me Mexican American War makes it appear that there was some war between Americans of Mexican decent and some other faction. Personally I favor "Mexican - American" war, Mexico – United States border, or U.S.- Mexico border crossings but can not fathom that the concerns over usage would be enough to consume hours of comments and neglect the many articles that could use editors. I just do not see that this is of a concern it has been made out to be. There are articles I feel are incorrect such as, German-American Soccer League and German-Americans in the Civil War. President Reagan used German-American Day in 1983. I do not like to change article titles on a whim so would need something concrete. Otr500 ( talk) 08:13, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Your welcome Dicklyon. I am honored to have a dialog with such an esteemed person. I do not mean this to be smart (maybe a little) but considering it appears you have the propensity to start salutations on an edgy note I am replying in kind. I rechecked the small space between my comment and your reply and will copy it here to refresh your memory, "...but can not fathom that the concerns over usage would be enough to consume hours of comments and neglect the many articles that could use editors. I just do not see that this is of a concern it has been made out to be.". I did not, as is plain to see, state the issue as unimportant but that there has been a lot of writing on something so simple. Other editors have gone as far as to use the word "silly:. I am also thinking there might be a little math computation problem as "a few paragraphs" is a lot less than has been dedicated to such an apparently monumental problem. I am still trying to figure out who is on first and so on but give me a little time and a "few paragraphs" (say 200 or so) and I will be up to speed. I can appreciate your perceived humor and hope you have verified the information concerning Thomas Jefferson. All jokes aside I am trying to figure out what is actually going on as I was sucked in from another article with apparently related issues. Since I can be considered as one of those "outside participants" I would think condescending antics might not be the best choice of games. I have my opinions but am willing to examine the evidence with an open mind. What I see so far, if I am in the right ball park, is arguments as to how the title should be presented. At this point the current title is supported. Looking around I see that Northern Illinois University ( here) also prefers Mexican-American War. As far as I can tell there are MOS guidelines to support this as well as references and several articles using the same "typography". Now that you and I have joked and laughed I will do some digging. Since I am a member of the WP:WikiProject Military history , as well as the WP:WikiProject United States, I am sure you will be seeing me around. Otr500 ( talk) 23:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
I will check it out but you really should work on your manners. If I disagree and have valid grounds I do not shy away from an issue. I do not consider any work (sometimes more difficult than others) to improve Wikipedia as a "fight" (possibly just a poor chose of words) and thus do not intend to do so. If I continue involvement it will be with a goal of resolution and whatever it takes within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia to accomplish this end. I am beginning to think you do not interact with people much in your line of work. Your comments, "...assuming you want to actually help...", and "...or whether you'd like to oppose it and let us keep fighting.", just does not even sound nice. I am just stating that in fairness you should have stopped at presenting the compromise proposal location as all the rest (and the beginning) is unnecessary. This may not be your intentions so I thought I would mention it. Otr500 ( talk) 05:35, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I know I don't have any sources for this, but I don't think the invasion of a large city resulted in 0 civilian casualties. Can someone verify this, because it seems highly unlikely. Czarcalvinsk ( talk) 06:24, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
This article would be more NPOV if the "Results" section included views of Mexican officials involved and also included an "Impact of the War in Mexico" section to parallel the "Impact of the War in the US" section. 76.166.212.133 ( talk) 10:11, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Non-admin closure. An uncontroversial case because there is an ArbCom injunction in place prohibiting moves due to exchange of hyphen and en dash. See current poll and discussion on that style issue: the poll; the discussion. Noetica Tea? 00:34, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
Mexican-American War → Mexican–American War – MOS:ENDASH: The proper punctuation is an n-dash, not a hyphen. The current punctuation means "War of the Mexican Americans"; to mean "War between the Mexicans and the Americans", an n-dash is necessary. — the Man in Question (in question) 20:51, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
The article describes the strength of the Mexican Army as "25,000–40,000 ". This is grossly understated. Mexico was defeated by an American force that was significantly smaller in size. America did not become a world class power until the civil war. It appears that the estimates here forfeit historical fact for alterior motives and bias. Profcje ( talk) 18:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
It was, the Mexican Army at the time was not as well equipped or as well trained as the American military. Compare the firearms and so forth of each side. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.217.41.7 ( talk) 01:12, 13 May 2012 (UTC)