Talk:List of spaghetti Westerns

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: moved. No super compelling reason has been given to override the uppercased "Western" naming convention common on similar articles. The last multi-move did not attract much participation. I suggest that if someone opens another multi-move that it should be hosted on Talk:Spaghetti Western where it may attract more eyeballs. There is consensus to lowercase "Spaghetti". (closed by non-admin page mover) Schierbecker (talk) 05:46, 24 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Oppose – The mixed-case proposed "spaghetti Western" (or its plural) is much less common in sources than either Spaghetti Western or spaghetti western. The lowercase one is more common, and more consistent with WP style guidance at
  MOS:CAPS, in spite of the lack of consensus to always decapitalize western in genres. This is in stark contrast to contemporary Western. Dicklyon (talk) 19:59, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose per Dicklyon, who knows his spaghetti (and westerns). Randy Kryn (talk) 12:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  FTR, I like to think I know my Westerns as well (considering the number of sources I have actually read on the subject to cite hundreds of articles) ;-) ButlerBlog (talk) 13:05, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No disrespect Butlerblog, and after much thought I've struck the controversial comment as I'm not really sure if Dicklyon knows his westerns or not (films, books, boots on the ground, etc.). Randy Kryn (talk) 13:12, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We're good - I didn't take it as disrespect, nor uncivil. But thanks for the strike, just the same. ButlerBlog (talk) 15:01, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And you're right, you know a lot more about westerns that I do. I perhaps know more about Wikipedia capitalization style though. Dicklyon (talk) 03:36, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That was unnecessary. I did not suggest that I know more than anyone - it was a lighthearted response to Randy, and I did not mention you nor what you do or don't know. ButlerBlog (talk) 18:55, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Support alternative per
  MOS:GENRECAPS. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

"about 75% of the time - less than a threshold of about 80% for ngram evidence" seems to be splitting some mighty close hairs. 75% seems more than enough to keep something uppercased, that's in common name recognition range. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: To clarify, within the scope of this discussion, whether "Westerns" is capitalized or not is an "all or none" issue (as previously discussed in the subgenre move discussion). There are many subgenres and there needs to be consistency of how they are presented, whatever that is determined to be (which as of right now is "no consensus", and I would argue that present long-standing consensus is to capitalize Westerns, whether traditional or a subgenre). This is only about "spaghetti". And my reasoning in presenting this was simply for consistency across subgenres because it is currently the only Western subgenre consisting of two words ("something" western) where we are capitalizing where the name of the subgenre is not a proper noun. Prior to Cinderella157's input, I was inclined to withdraw as I don't see this presently going anywhere and I'm fine leaving it status quo ante. I get that some people love ngrams, but as someone who spends a good deal of time in the Westerns project digging through sources for those articles, I see it differently. I will concede that on a practical level (i.e. actually searching for, looking at, and reading sources), I see a closer percentage relationship between all three possible combinations of S/spaghetti W/western than the other subgenres, but for most other subgenres, it is not as close a relationship. But my contention is that, given the close relationship between the three possibilities, I'm looking for consistency with the other subgenres. Considering Dicklyon's obsession with caps MOS and the outcome of the previous discussion, I was hoping for some level of meeting me halfway on this, but that's clearly never going to happen; and likewise, I'm equally as rigid on the necessity that there is no practical reason for "spaghetti western" without discussion of all subgenres as a whole for reasons already mentioned, and we've already just had that discussion (which you all already know). Since no one from the Westerns project (or anyone else) has weighed in on this one, if you're all fine with me withdrawing at this point, I'll withdraw the move request. Otherwise, we'll keep it open the full term and allow an uninvolved editor to close it as what clearly is going to be "opposed"/status quo/no move/whatever. ButlerBlog (talk) 15:14, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  If we want consistency, we'd lowercase western in all genres. Sources are pretty clear that a lot of them are usually lowercase. But it's not an all or none issue as you say. Dicklyon (talk) 03:45, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Move to
  MOS:CAPS we should only capitalise if a substantial majority of sources do so. Indeed, the proposed form is down in third place so certainly no substantial majority there.  — Amakuru (talk) 06:32, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  For the reasons noted above, that's not the move suggestion, nor can it be part of this discussion. ButlerBlog (talk) 11:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not sure what you mean by "nor can it be part of this discussion". Per

  MOS:CAPS has a much higher bar for capitalising than even simple 50/50 usage, it seems like a no brainer that the move should go ahead. The parent article Spaghetti Western should also be moved in the same way.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:01, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  I thought it was clear in my note above, but moving to "spaghetti western" creates a practical problem of consistency. There are a few dozen subgenres of Western, and some crossover genres. If you move this page to "spaghetti western" and carry forward with lowercasing it across the various articles, you're going to run into consistency issues when the same article discusses "revisionist Western"[1], "neo-Western"[2], or some other crossover (which does happen a lot when dealing with subgenres). This is why I said that the discussion of lowercasing "western" in the subgenres needs to be an all-or-none discussion, taken as a whole rather than as a part. Longstanding is that Western is capitalized, and we just wrapped up an overarching discussion of a number of the subgenres as a whole that was closed as no consensus (Talk:List of Western subgenres#Requested move 12 July 2023). This move came out of a suggestion within that discussion. There are three possible outcomes, but if the move to "spaghetti Western" is opposed, the better option in this case is to leave it status quo for the reason that I outlined above. ButlerBlog (talk) 12:46, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Referring to your note, the previous RM was no consensus. While the result is to retain the status quo, "no consensus" means just what it says - there was no consensus either way with respect to capitalising western. There is no long-standing consensus to be argued. One can make an argument here for

  WP:CONSISTENT. However, doing so is to argue consistency with a form of capitalisation for which there is no consensus. While consistency between articles is a "nice to have", ultimately, an article need only be consistent within itself - and this is not precluded by the capitalisation (or other variations in language) used in related articles that may be referred to in a particular article. As for your ngrams, it was resolved at the previous RM that the ngram part of speech function is not efficacious in these instances since the evidence is that it appears to treat attributive noun phrases as adjectives. Seaching for x westerns, however, is much more specific to the cowboy genre, and excludes references for Western, meaning occidental and similar. Here, revisionist westerns is only slightly less than revisionist Westerns and Revisionist Westerns is only a small percentage that may be attributed largely to use of title case. It should not be capitalised at all. Neo-westerns has only a small representation in the corpus, such that the results tend to represent individual book releases (see here) and the usage is quite mixed. Again, the results do not support capitalisation at all. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:09, 29 July 2023 (UTC) Correction: x westerns. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  This is probably a better ngram. Dekimasuよ! 06:24, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Either way. Your ngram only goes to prove that wester/westerns in spaghetti western|s is not capped in a substantial majority of sources per

  WP:NCCAPS. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:07, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Move to
  List of spaghetti westerns per above discussion (note that this is an additional !vote on top of my initial "Strong Oppose" of the original proposal). Dicklyon (talk) 17:17, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support While I'm not a huge fan of mixed capitalization, I'm concerned this might be a back door to changing "Western" to "western," in spite of literary and academic norms and the result of the original discussion. For me, literary and academic norms are more important than our arbitrary MoS stuff. And the weakness of things like ngrams is they only look at the internet and are easily overwhelmed by random articles and frankly substandard sources. If it takes a lowercase 's' to retain the proper form of Western, I'm ok with it. Intothatdarkness 18:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Just to clarify, by the result of the original discussion, you're referring toTalk:List of Western subgenres#Requested move 12 July 2023, correct? ButlerBlog (talk) 19:01, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Correct. I should have made that clear. Intothatdarkness 20:06, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm concerned this might be a back door to changing "Western" to "western," in spite of literary and academic norms and the result of the original discussion - I would strongly agree with that assessment. And unfortunately, that appears to be what is being pushed by those that only take a cursory look at this discussion, without considering the whole along with the previous discussion. ButlerBlog (talk) 15:14, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I hate these discussions but feel that we should keep it at Spaghetti Westerns. Carptrash (talk) 21:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I would not be opposed to this option. I've seen it go both ways, honestly, at least when it comes to these particular movies. Intothatdarkness 00:29, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Lowercase "spaghetti": This is a genre (or subgenre), and per
  MOS:GENRECAPS, we don't cap genres. Whether or not we capitalize "western" can be argued as a reference to a particular place, but I don't see any good argument for capitalizing "spaghetti". Probably we shouldn't capitalize "western" either, per Amakuru, but definitely we shouldn't capitalize "spaghetti". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:42, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • Correction/refinement included above. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:08, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • i.e. support. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:15, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - Best to keep the status quo. I can't recall seeing "List of spaghetti Westerns", very often. GoodDay (talk) 23:46, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per my comments at the other discussion, but this looks like no consensus. That said, at least as importantly, oppose the alternative
  List of spaghetti westerns. Given that downcasing of "Westerns" was rejected in the broader move discussion at Talk:List of Western subgenres just a week ago, that suggestion would just eliminate the current consistency among related titles. Dekimasuよ! 06:20, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support:
  MOS:GENRECAPS: "Names of genres (such as musical or literary) are not capitalized unless they contain a proper name." Seems simple to me. Western is debatable, but spaghetti is not. SchreiberBike | ⌨  20:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support per
  MOS:GENRECAPS. Neither "spaghetti" nor (in this context) "western" or proper names. When "Western" is a proper name it refers to Western culture.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:43, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]

  Sounds like you mean to support the alternative with both lowercased then. Dicklyon (talk) 21:06, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Support
  List of spaghetti westerns per above reasoning. Capitalizing the W makes no sense. —В²C ☎ 22:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support
  List of spaghetti westerns per above. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply
  ]