Talk:NBA draft

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was not moved, although this does not preclude another RM about using the abbreviation. --BDD (talk) 17:04, 30 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose – Sources suggest that it is seldom treated as a proper name. Per
  MOS:CAPS, that's why we have it at lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 23:37, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Oppose reliable sources do not capitalize draft. Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Yahoo, NY Times, USA Today all do not capitalize it.
  talk-contribs 23:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Support. There is no evidence that the lowercase form predominates, so the undiscussed move should be undone. (I do not in the least accuse Dicklyon of acting out of line at all. This was a good-faith move that I oppose in equal good faith.) Red Slash 06:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Even if you discount the evidence I and Hot Step presented, the usage is still very mixed, so per

MOS:CAPS we choose lowercase. Dicklyon (talk) 16:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

And you can get idea how many of those n-gram counts are due to titles and headings by clicking through to book search. It's hard to find a page of 10 hits with more than 3 using the capitalized from in sentences. The 2004 page, for example, has only one (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Basketball) with "NBA Draft" in other than headings. And recall that WP uses sentence case for titles and headings, per

WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 21:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

I don't think this is a valid argument at all. When referring to the "NBA Draft" after the term "NBA Draft" has already been said, it the word "draft" would always be in lowercase, just as the word "university" should be in lowercase in articles such as "

Boston university

".

Also, "NBA Draft" is used to distinguish it as the NBA Draft as opposed to other drafts, such as expansion drafts, for example. –HTD 05:06, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, nobody would propose Boston university, as Boston University is consistently capitalized in sources. I can't imagine why you say it would always be lowercased after the first use. Very unlike the NBA draft. I'm not sure what you mean about capitalizing to distinguish; I don't see that in sources, and it's not compatible with WP style per

MOS:CAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

The graphs do look really impressive, until I saw the y-axis is less than 0.00002%. What does that mean? How big is the sample? And why are we using Google Books? Yeah I know the draft has been covered in books, but Google News must be more appropriate here? Are there any options for a case-sensitive Google News search?

"NBA draft" can mean the draft for rookies, an expansion draft, a dispersal draft, or any generic draft, or event with the word "draft" on it the NBA holds, just as "Boston university" means any university in Boston. The "NBA Draft" is the proper name for the draft held every June for rookies, just as "Boston University" refers to the Boston University. –HTD 09:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the annual NBA Draft is a TV special, hence you can argue

MOS:CT (just as any prospective article about LeBron's infamous decision will be entitled as "The Decision" and not as "The decision"). Can anyone who has TV Guide check out how they named this show? Was it in title case? That is if TV Guide covers sporting events such as this one... –HTD 09:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

I believe the percentages are percentages of all n-grams, not percentages of books. They do this so the relative frequency can be compared across years. The threshold for inclusion is pretty low (32 occurrences iirc), and you can get a further idea by looking at individual year trigram stats, like 2002 NBA draft, where the lowercase form meets the threshold but the uppercase doesn't. Some other years like 2000 don't make it at all. So maybe they're counting only about 30 or so occurrences per year. If you find other stats, let us know, but I'm sure they're not going to suddenly reveal consistent capitalization. As for the TV special, yes of course the show title would be capitalized in TV Guide. But I don't think this article is about the TV show; it's about the draft. Dicklyon (talk) 21:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Heh? No

2000 NBA Draft

? Figures because it is the worst draft ever (LOL).

As for n-grams, what are they? Are they hits on something? Hits of what?

As for the TV show, the TV coverage, when we're talking about the sporting events, is coextensive. The draft is the show. I don't anyone's making "2013 NBA Draft (TV show)" and a 2013 NBA draft, with different capitalization. It will be absurd if somehow someone makes an article about the show separate from the draft, and they all have different article titles, as long as capitalization is concerned, isn't it? –HTD 05:28, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See about ngram viewer; I learned a lot myself by looking that up. I agree it would be silly to have an article on the show per se. Dicklyon (talk) 05:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So the search is exclusive only for books? While a separate article for the show would be silly, it is plausible and should pass

WP:N. We could have 2013 NBA Draft on ESPN article, then have a separate article for the 2013 NBA draft, all capitalized differently. –HTD 05:55, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

Books and some magazines; print publications. Here's a mag with mixed case usage. Dicklyon (talk) 06:01, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So yeah, whatever is in Google Books: books, magazines, journals, the like. While those may be extensive, in terms of the NBA Draft, the most extensive coverage should be newspapers (before the internet) and websites in the internet age. We can't base our decisions on a sample size of 30 when the 2013 NBA Draft alone has 6,150 results in Google News. –HTD 06:15, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

True, let's look at those, too. Generally, books are pretty representative of what well-curated sources do; certainly enough to show that the term is not consistently capitalized in sources, which is the criteron in

MOS:CAPS. And beware of web-search snippets, since they prefer to show headings, titles, and other capitalized uses; click through and look at usage in sentences. And beware of focusing too much on the 2013 NBA draft, which does not yet have mature coverage. Dicklyon (talk) 06:53, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

AFAIK, Google News does turn out search hits when the search string is found in the body. As for the 2013 draft, I used that since it is the most recent, and most news hits would have not yet died due to link rot, although this is an American event there shouldn't be much problem on that. –HTD 15:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also, snooping around individual search results, the search also gives out the result for "NBA's D/draft". Any writer of repute always has a smaller "d" for the word "draft" when the sentence is structured that way. I dunno how that inflates "NBA draft" vs. "NBA Draft", since as stated earlier, even news websites (of repute; the ESPNs of the world), do use the smaller case "draft", while other lesser websites (the DraftExpresses of the world) primarily use "Draft". –HTD 15:35, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, usage is mixed. But go back to

MOS:CAPS for how we handle that: "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. Most capitalization is for proper names or for acronyms. Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia." – Dicklyon (talk) 17:33, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

• Oppose—indeed, and please let's not do our utmost to make readers-in-search ponder what NBA means (see below). Tony (talk) 03:45, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

NBA

One thing nobody's brought up; the title should be abbreviated to

Yes. This was badly titled from the get-go. This should've been named either as "NBA draft" or "NBA Draft", the same reason the

NBA finals???) isn't at "National Basketball Association F/finals". –HTD 09:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

Agree that it should be "NBA" Draft (yes, capital D). Spelling out the title goes against all cases of

WP:COMMONNAME. Jrcla2 (talk) 19:29, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

Nobody? Dicklyon (talk) 19:40, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Leave it to you to catch me on an exaggeration,

WP:COMMONNAME. Red Slash 23:53, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply

]

I wouldn't disagree, except that you're proposing the case error again. On the other hand, the fact that the short acronym-based name is most common is not necessarily determinative. COMMONNAME is in support of recognizability, one of 5 criteria. The spelled out name is at least as recognizable; arguably more so. Dicklyon (talk) 00:15, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I did the search you did above on this issue, and the search strings with "NBA" had more hits than "National Basketball Association". Interestingly, 0 hits for "National Basketball Association Draft", the original title of this article prior to the move (lol). –HTD 15:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Also more interestingly, I saw a couple of instances of "National Basketball Association Draft" (every word in title caps). What's the deal here?

It's really too bad we can't measure Google News hits as they are not case sensitive, but one would imagine on how the options stack up as per

WP:COMMONNAME

, with some theories:

1. NBA Draft
   • Let's face it; this is the default frontrunner here. If it is not that widespread, then why are
     WP:RS
     won't be using the capitalized "Draft".
2. NBA draft
3. National Basketball Association draft
   • (Apparently this includes "National Basketball Association's draft"; also might be the case for option #4 and probably all four options.)
4. National Basketball Association Draft
   • The only reason I can think of for the last two options is that in
     WP:RS
     in which the reference per se treats itself as if it is authoritative and formal, they do spell out what "NBA" means.

As per recognizability (which is apparently not a word), if you're a basketball fan, or heard of basketball, "NBA" would be more recognizable than "National Basketball Association"; the reverse may be true if one hasn't heard of basketball. The disparity isn't as big though as the recognizability between "FIFA" and whatever "FIFA" means. –HTD 15:14, 18 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move per request.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:35, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Beyond the fact thing brings the title in line with a number of other NBA related articles. Further, I believe it's a fair argument to name that the acronym is common name and widely understood in English.--Labattblueboy (talk) 06:28, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Common name, and more concise. bd2412 T 13:56, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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: not moved. Jenks24 (talk) 07:43, 9 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NBA draft → NBA Draft – NBA Draft is a proper noun. Thus, it should be in caps. Robert4565 (talk) 14:13, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. The evidence presented in the prior RM on this topic overwhelmingly supports keeping the 'd' in draft lowercased, per multiple reliable sources. To quote myself "reliable sources do not capitalize draft. Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Yahoo, NY Times, USA Today all do not capitalize it."
  Talk To Me 14:33, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• NBA.com does capitalized the 'D' in Draft. Look at the "Events" section.

Robert4565 (talk) 15:26, 2 July 2014 (UTC) It seems that there is a mix of capitalizing the 'd' in NBA Draft. Some reliable sources do and don't; it's interchangeable. I guess it wouldn't really matter then? Robert4565 (talk) 15:26, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Per
  WP:COMMONAME, the spelling used by reliable sources should be used, not the official name used by the NBA. Since there is a current mix of usage, there is no overwhelming need to change the existing name at this time. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:34, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]

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.