User:MB/sandbox9

There was one discussion on this page a year ago which was continued at MOS:BLP. The second discussion, to quote User:EEng, "collapsed under its own weight" and died out without any resolution. I would like to revive this since it is a source of ongoing disagreement. As it is not specific to BLPs, I am doing so here this time.

The issue is, should section headers be

• hypothetical:
  • (A1) 2018 Elections vs. (A2) 2018 elections
  • (B1) 2018 and 2019 Elections vs. (B2) 2018 and 2019 elections
  • (C1) Postwar period: Educator vs. (C2) Postwar period: educator
  • (D1) 2021–present: Educator vs. (D2) 2021–present: educator
  • (E1) 2021: Educator vs. (E2) 2021: educator
• actual articles
  • (F1) 1891–1940: Early history vs (F2) 1891–1940: early history from Glycine (watch)
  • (G1) 2005–2007: Career beginnings vs (G2) 2005–2007: career beginnings from Lady Gaga
  • (H1) 2003–2007: Production work, Encore and musical hiatus vs (H2) 2003–2007: production work, Encore and musical hiatus from Eminem

Although this is generalized to numbers, in reality it seems to apply mostly or perhaps exclusively to years.

One example without a number (year) is included because MOS:COLON is in play here, which says to use lower case following the colon unless what follows is a complete sentence. So per that guideline, most of the above should be lower case (C2-G2). That is unless someone has a reason that MOS:COLON does not apply to section headers. The other even more relevant guidelines are MOS:HEADINGS which says that section headings should use sentence case and MOS:SECTIONCAPS which says sentence case means Capitalize the first letter of the first word. This seems to be the source of the inconsistency. Some people interpret that literally and conclude the year is a number, not a word. Others read into that somehow that the year (or year range) is an "introductory clause" and "not part of the actual sentence" - sentence case begins after that. Other have just said that capitalizing the non-numeric element "looks better".

I see these options:

1. always lower case. Update MOS:SECTIONCAPS to say Capitalize the first character of the first element if it is a letter (A2-H2)
2. sentence case starts after introductory clause preceding a colon (C1-H1), otherwise #1 (A2-B2)
3. avoid the construct if at all possible, e.g (F3) Early history (1891-1940): or Early history, 1891-1940:

There are certainly examples of #3 - see Atari and George Clooney. But there are cases where doing that would be unnatural like in Clayton Kershaw. Even if we were to say #3 is preferred, we still need to decide what to do in the other cases and pick a second choice (#1 or #2).

MTD

When Draftifying articles, keep in mind that the author is likely new here any may not easily understand all our policies. The tutorial says that when moving an article to draft, we should customize the tools' editable preloaded message for the creator. There has been some discussion at the VP indicating this is often not done, leading to confusion (for example, the addition of more sources, but none that show notability). The script has been updated with a new menu, allowing a custom message to be created by just clicking on the appropriate simple-language reasons. There is still a choice that allows you to write anything. To use the new version, you have to edit your .js file from Evad37/MoveToDraft.js to MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft.js Note that this may not be the final location of the script and you may have to change this again.