Talk:Lobe switching

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Lobe On Receive Only which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 03:34, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lobe On Receive Only

Apparently one can't do an RM discussion on a redirect, even to fix its appearance in a category. Presently we have Lobe On Receive Only appearing in Category:Radar, over-capitalized thus, redirecting here to similarly over-capitalized Lobe switching#Lobe On Receive Only. I had moved the one with the category tag to Lobe on receive only to fix this, and also fixed the other occurrences, but was reverted, so now we need to discuss before I attempt again to fix it. Sources don't cap this, except in some table entries and headings – in sentences it's "lobe on receive only", as a quick book search verifies. Can we just fix this, please, by moving the Category tag to the lowercase redirect, and correspondingly fix the section heading in Lobe switching and the disambig page entry at Loro? These fixes have all been done and reverted once already. Dicklyon (talk) 04:11, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The ref that was added apparently to support the capped name (here is the version at books.google.com, as opposed to the one at books.google.co.uk that doesn't show for me in the US) has a section heading 6.3.12 Lobe on Receive Only, and twice later on the page "Lobe on receive-only" (the hyphen perhaps because it's in an adjective context, though one hyphen does seem odd). This table of acronyms has "Lobe-On-Receive Only" for LORO, in a table with everything capitalized, like "Line Of Sight", so obviously has no bearing on the issue here. This journal has a table with capped "Lobe on Receive Only" along with things like "RF Tracker" and "Primary In-Flight Antenna", clearly not indicating proper name status. The rest of the first page of 10 book hits use lowercase, in sentences and in tables. Lacking any evidence of proper-name status, and lacking any objection here, I plan to fix it again immediately. Dicklyon (talk) 02:02, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So you have no support for this, and you plan to edit-war over it? This is what you always do in your Personal Crusade To Save Wikipedia From Capitalisation. Enough. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:13, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'll hold off a while if there's any opposition. Are you going to present a reason to oppose? Dicklyon (talk) 02:39, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sourcing. The most common form is "Lobe on Receive Only", but if either of us can think of any WP-based reason to use that, I'll be surprised. Otherwise it's Lobe On Receive Only, as is used already.
Well, if it was a "composition title" we'd have MOS:CT telling us to lowercase the "on". But I don't think it's that. Dicklyon (talk) 04:58, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of course "lobe on receive only" appears too, it always does. But that's mostly used in a descriptive context, or even simply as an adjectival phrase, rather than the ordinal and defining context which is what we're looking for (and uses Lobe on Receive Only or Lobe On Receive Only). Andy Dingley (talk) 02:49, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When you say "most common", what are relying on? The source you added uses lowercase, as most books do. Are you saying there's a radar known by Lobe On Receive Only as its proper name? Or what? Dicklyon (talk) 02:53, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It uses "Lobe on Receive Only". It also uses "lobe on receive only", but that's just as part of a longer descriptive sentence, not as a name. There is no "radar known by Lobe On Receive Only as its proper name", but there is a whole class of them (as a technical means of implementation, as this article explains, although clearly inadequately) which are known as such. But really, you have to know this stuff, before pontificating on how everyone else who works in a field is just wrong. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:59, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying it's the name of a class, and capped as such? Got any sources to support that? Dicklyon (talk) 03:12, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Andy Dingley: – Let me know if you need more time to look for it. Dicklyon (talk) 16:56, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You do not get to dictate timescales to other editors. Get over yourself. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:57, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was offering to let you set the time scale. If you're done, I'll go ahead and fix it. If you're not, I can wait. Dicklyon (talk) 17:37, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Lobe on Receive Only" is the generic title applied to those radars (such as the Fan Song E) which use a lobe for their receive antennae only. It's a well-recognised term within its field. It's capitalised as such. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:00, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I hear your claim. Not understanding how "generic title" or "well recognized term" suggests need to capitalize. Looking for evidence of it; I don't see it in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Look at scholarly articles, for example. Dicklyon (talk) 17:35, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, there's quite enough evidence of the downcased form in sources for it to be downcased here. MOS explicitly says not to cap just because an item's initialism is capped. Tony (talk) 01:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No contest, really. I went ahead and made the corrections indicated by guidelines and sources. Hopefully Andy will see that it's right. Dicklyon (talk) 04:53, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Andy Dingley, it's not Dicklyon you're opposing here, it's the Wikipedia MOS that is your nemesis. ~Kvng (talk) 15:19, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

But MOS is correct. When the sources use caps, use caps. But (as always) Dicklyon decides beforehand that caps must be wrong. He's having this same argument on something like four different topics at once right now, and he's no prior knowledge of any of those subjects. Then he just cherry-picks to find "sources" (any barrel-scrape will do) which agree with him. As adjectival use of any phrase goes with lower case, that's never hard to do. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:23, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, MOS correctly represents WP style. Not sure what Andy means by beforehand. I consulted sources before concluding that this should be lowercase. The barrels scraped by Google Books and Google Scholar are not the whole universe, but they're usually representative enough. And adjectival use of proper names still gets capped, so not sure what Andy is trying to say there. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The MOS:CAPS lead does say, Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized... IMO, this is not a very good summary of the policy. What's applicable here is Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Science_and_mathematics: In the names of scientific and mathematical concepts, only proper names (or words derived from them) should be capitalized. ~Kvng (talk) 15:31, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The fix for this is to move the category markup from the over-capitalized redirect to one that doesn't have that problem. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:16, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I already did that. I was originally trying to avoid that as a "cut-and-paste move", but apparently that's a non-issue for redirects. Dicklyon (talk) 15:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No opinion I was visiting WikiProject Electronics and saw notice for this discussion there. As someone not familiar with this I have no preference. I do like the idea of Wikipedia having a style guide which makes a recommendation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]