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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.
Oppose. The consensus reached at
§ Requested move 13 November 2015 is still correct.
MOS:TM states: "When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should examine styles already in use by
independentreliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner." A significant portion of independent reliable sources spell Find a Grave with the word a in lowercase, including The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Tribune-Star, the Deseret News,
BBC,
Fox News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Miami New Times. As there are also reliable sources that use Find A Grave with the A capitalized, we defer to standard English:
MOS:CT states that a is not capitalized in
title case (the case used by
proper nouns including Find a Grave). — Newslingertalk 05:13, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose per
MOS:TM /
WP:TITLETM and the RM discussion of 2015. Nothing has changed. The proposer just doesn't seem familiar with the Wikipedia guidance and appears to think we should consider self-published styling as dispositive, which is exactly what the guidlines say not to do. —
BarrelProof (
talk) 13:15, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose, and consider early close... No chance this MOS violation comes to fruition.
Nohomersryan (
talk) 19:22, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
Comment The name of the company and website is "Find A Grave" (with a capital A). It is also a trademark (servicemark) in that form (registration #5252586. It is a proper name. That form of use appears in many many sources, although I know it appears with lowercase "a" as well. So, per
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization),
WP:PROPERNAME, and
WP:COMMONNAME, the "a" should be capitalized. Please take note that the
Make-A-Wish Foundation titling example used in a much much earlier discussion is no longer true. Feel free to start your MOS arguments overt there to get it moved back. Cheers!
Bitter Oil (
talk) 21:09, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
There is one key difference between the
Make-A-Wish Foundation title and the
Find a Grave title: the vast majority of independent reliable sources spell Make-A-Wish with A in uppercase, while a much more substantial portion of sources spell Find a Grave with a in lowercase. The hyphenation of Make-A-Wish also makes it a poor comparison to Find a Grave. — Newslingertalk 21:34, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
Both Make-A-Wish Foundation and Find A Grave are proper names. Hyphens don't make a difference to that fact. It would be very helpful if you could count the number of sources that use "Find a Grave" and the number that use "Find A Grave" and report back, perhaps with a spreadsheet tabulating the quality of the source by readership and circulation, and also by date (before and after the trademark was issued). Thanks.
Bitter Oil (
talk) 21:56, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
As explained in
MOS:CT and
MOS:TM, we generally don't capitalize a in
title case unless it's the first or last word, or unless the lowercase a form is not commonly used by independent reliable sources.
Proper nouns use
title case. The trademark registration (a non-
independent source) is not considered if independent reliable sources exist. Regarding research, the
burden of proof is on the editor who supports the page move. — Newslingertalk 22:46, 27 July 2019 (UTC)reply
Oppose per Newslinger, BarrelProof, Nohomersryan, Girth Summit and per previous discussion, above, in November 2015. —
Roman Spinner(talk •
contribs) 03:17, 28 July 2019 (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.
BillionGraves.com ?
How about at least mentioning their competitor BillionGraves.com, which, curiously, does not even have a Wikipedia entry?
Bhami (
talk) 16:41, 27 September 2019 (UTC)reply
should it be used as a source?
i dont think find a grave should be used as source, why? because i have seen several errors, and also its because it is community, what do you think?
Yes, the photographs of the tombstones or grave markers should be used as a source just as any other public record is.
BeenAroundAWhile (
talk) 23:34, 15 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Incorrect. How do we verify it's of the same individual?
Seasider53 (
talk) 23:54, 15 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Even if the right person .....you can put anything you like on it....most famous example Scott Wilson (2016).
Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. McFarland. p. 165.
ISBN978-1-4766-2599-7. Crawford, Joan (Lucille LeSueur, March 23, 1904 – May 10, 1977) San Antonio born film star.... Her ashes were placed in the vault beside the coffin of her husband, with the crypt listing her birth year as 1908..--Moxy- 00:03, 16 September 2021 (UTC)reply
Agreed, it is a proper source. Is it infallible? Of course not, but neither is any other source used in Wikipedia. An editor needs to be discriminating. If Find a Grave has an entry for someone whose dates of birth and death are already well documented elsewhere and the decedent's entry has a photo of the gravestone with that same info, it is pretty hard to refute that the person is indeed buried there. Is it metaphysically possible that the photo was posted for the wrong cemetery? Yes. But not very likely. On the other hand, I have personally seen entries while doing historical research on topics that some people just enter the names of family members who are supposed to be buried in Cemetery ABC (and who might be), but the posters haven't actually been there to photograph the grave marker. They might be right, but that is not knowable from the entry on-line. But, it is not appropriate to write off the entire soure because of some mistakes. After all, it is not true that you can put anything you like on the website. Or at least, you can't maintain it that way. I have myself found typos (e.g., misspellings of names that don't match the photo), but those can be fixed (or challenged if need be, although I have never seen it come to that). There is a blank where some users will post biographical sketches beyond what appear on the actual gravestones. Those are typically cited to newspapers (often with scans of the pages attached). But, for confirmation of the fact that someone was buried in a spot, an entry with a photo of the marker is compelling evidence of the burial and the info actually placed on the marker (presumably by a family member or close friend).
ProfReader (
talk) 02:14, 27 July 2022 (UTC)reply