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. Per consensus. The conversation here has run its course. The consistency of the usage of the capitalised form had been disputed before the first close; the referenced breed standard has also been questioned to be WP:UGC/ WP:SPS after the first close. I see no disagreement in the proposed title with the applicability of MOS:LIFE. ( closed by non-admin page mover) – robertsky ( talk) 18:25, 3 December 2023 (UTC) reply

Chincoteague Pony → Chincoteague pony – In sources, pony is usually lowercase after Chincoteague; per MOS:CAPS, that's what WP should use for the title. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:09, 3 November 2023 (UTC) — Relisting.  Reading Beans ( talk) 18:18, 14 November 2023 (UTC) — Relisting.  Reading Beans ( talk) 19:18, 21 November 2023 (UTC) reply

• Support I don’t see why this would be any different than Canada goose American bison, Bengal tiger or Arctic fox.-- 67.70.101.104 ( talk) 01:47, 5 November 2023 (UTC) reply
• Support these are ponies for on or near Chincoteague. This is a descriptive noun phase and not inherently a proper name. Per this ngram, it is not consistently capped and should not be capped per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS. Cinderella157 ( talk) 05:56, 5 November 2023 (UTC) reply
• Weak support: This seems like a borderline case. One question (see WP:NCFAUNA, MOS:LIFE, and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 150#RfC on capitalization of the names of standardized breeds) is whether this is considered a " standardized breed" or a mere population or a landrace. The article says it's a breed. A formal breed name could be capped, like American Quarter Horse, German Shepherd, or Oriental Shorthair. Formal breed names are treated differently from species, subspecies, or landrace names like Canada goose, American bison, Bengal tiger and Arctic fox. There is indeed an International Chincoteaque Pony Association, which caps the full name consistently and publishes a set of " Chincoteague Pony Breed Standards" and maintains a breed registry. The breed is recognized in the law of Virginia. Another question is whether "pony" is part of the name of the breed or is an appended descriptor – see Siamese cat, Thai cat, Balinese cat, Arabian horse, Canadian horse, Morgan horse. Wikipedia doesn't seem entirely consistent about this; see also Bhirum Pony, Timor Pony, German Riding Pony, Eriskay Pony, Quarter Pony, Lundy Pony, American Shetland Pony, American Paint Horse, Canadian Rustic Pony, Lac La Croix Indian Pony, Basuto pony, Batak pony, Highland pony, New Forest pony, Newfoundland pony, Hucul pony, Bankhar Dog (lowercase in the article), Carolina Dog (lowercase in the article). But overall, this seems like a landrace name or a geographic-based type name with an appended descriptor (see Chincoteague, consider other pony and horse articles that consist of a geographic identifier followed by "horse" or "pony"). The Landrace article lists examples of landraces that include Icelandic horse, Newfoundland pony, and Shetland pony (although those articles describe them as breeds and don't use the word "landrace"). —⁠ ⁠ BarrelProof ( talk) 17:21, 8 November 2023 (UTC) reply
• Oppose (for now at least). Well, Dicklyon, where are all these sources you're talking about? – I'm not seeing them. Of the 37 sources in this version of the page, several do not mention the Chincoteague breed by name or at all (refs 14, 15, 25, 30 (as far as I can see it), 34, 35, 37); a substantial number (including refs 1–8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 20, 22–24, 27, 31, 33, 36) use the same capitalisation as our article title; I can't access #13; ref 21 is in all-caps, so not helpful here.

Here are some other names that also occur:

1. Assateague Pony ^{[1]: 127  [2]}
2. ChinCôteague Pony (yes, that spelling) ^{[1]: 127  [3]}
3. Chincoteague (ref #9)
4. "Chincoteague" ponies (ref #10)
5. Chincoteague/Assateague ^[4]: 452
6. Assateague and Chincoteague ^[5]: 436

I'd support a move to either of the last two if there's consensus for that. Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 18:20, 8 November 2023 (UTC) reply

@ Justlettersandnumbers: I was referring to sources more generally (books), not just the ones currently cited. Note that many of the capped Pony uses are for the National Chincoteague Pony Association. Also from the n-grams you can conclude that all variants of the Assateague name are much less common. Dicklyon ( talk) 04:51, 9 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Well, Dicklyon, I don't see how you can expect us to review the sources you're talking about unless you cite them here. Nor do I see how your ngram search is limited to reliable sources only – those being the only ones that are of any interest to us. That aside, your diagram appears to show that "the Chincoteague Pony" is more than twice as frequent as "the Chincoteague pony" and that "The Chincoteague Pony" is considerably more than twice as frequent as "The Chincoteague pony" – and it is of course 'the Chincoteague Pony' that we're talking about (see the first three words of the article). I don't know what all the other clutter is, but perhaps you could repost the search without it for extra clarity? What we're trying to establish here is the actual name of the breed, a proper noun comparable to, say, 'London Road' (a specific stretch of tarmac) rather than to the generic 'London road' (any road that leads to London), so it's unlikely – though not impossible – that it would be preceded by an indefinite article. Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 16:52, 9 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Books, as a whole, tend to be more often "reliable" than any other set of sources we can get statistics from; nobody is expecting you to review them all. Unless you can show that many or most of the lowercase uses in books are in some way consistently tainted, I think the stats acceptable enough. And even if the capped version is 2x more common in some context, that's still not "consistently". I realize that in some areas capitalizing breeds is the convention; but it's not clear that this is even a breed, in that sense. Also note that forms like "The xxx" with capped "The" are often headings, or titles of works, and therefore not what as frequently we're looking for to indicate usage in sentences, compared to ones with lowercase "the". Also note that your observations are heavily biased by recentism. Go back a few decades and the lowercase pony totally dominates. It's not necessary for WP to either follow or lead this trend toward more capitalization. Dicklyon ( talk) 03:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC) reply

• Support per MOS:LIFE, WP:CONSISTENT, WP:NCCAPS. We only capitalize the species name at the end of a breed epithet when that word is nearly universally capitalized in that specific case, and that only happens in the rarest of ambiguous circumstances (e.g. American Quarter Horse, because "American Quarter" by itself would seem to refer to a coin, and Norwegian Forest Cat because "Norwegian Forest" by itself would appear to refer to a woodland; there are only a handful of other examples). In all other cases, it is lower case: from Abaga horse to Zakynthos horse, from Altex rabbit to Zika rabbit, etc. Really exceptional evidence would have to exist in support of overwhelming source consistency in capitalization of "Pony" or "Horse" in this case, and it does not. PS: Even the highly unusual cases like American Quarter Horse and Norwegian Forest Cat only apply to standardized breeds with official names on standards. Chicoteague ponies AKA Assateague horses are not standardized breed but a feral landrace a.k.a. " natural breed" though even that term is ambiguous (it has multiple meanings and is best avoided). Our article about these horses/ponies is just flat-out wrong in calling them a breed in this way without any clarification that they are a landrace. Various sources do not distinguish between breeds in the standarized sense and landraces, but Wikipedia is not among them, and cannot abuse sources that fail to make the distinction to engage in OR on our part to trick the reader into believing there is not distinction to make. Feral populations are landraces by definition (when they are even distinct enough to qualify as something other than randomly mongrelized). PPS: As for the suggestion to move to "Chincoteague/Assateague" or "Assateague and Chincoteague", that would be against WP:AT. We do not jam alternative names for things into the article title, and "Assateague" is nowhere near the WP:COMMONNAME for this feral population. The latter barely turns up in search results at all [1].  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:57, 10 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisting comment: I had previously closed this, but Justlettersandnumbers requested for the input of an "experienced admin". So, relisting. Reading Beans ( talk) 18:18, 14 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Thanks, Reading Beans. I asked you to undo your close because I'd really like some clarification of what governs our decisions on article titles – frankly, I'm confused. Dicklyon and seem to agree that the choice of title should be based on the sources (which I think I have now convincingly shown to support the status quo). SMcCandlish refers us to various "rules", but without showing how they support a page move.

At Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms I read " ... breeds should generally retain the capitalization used in the breed standards ..." and then – as the first example – a title that (a) we don't use for our article and (b) is not that in the breed standard. Anyway, the breed standard for the Chincoteague Pony is here; it uses the same capitalisation as our present article title.

Re "We only capitalize the species name at the end of a breed epithet ...": does anyone here believe that 'pony' is a species?

Re "We do not jam alternative names for things into the article title ...": except that of course we do indeed commonly do so when two or more topics form a single entity – Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Laurel and Hardy, Nord–Pas-de-Calais, or for horses Nordlandshest/Lyngshest, Ostfriesen and Alt-Oldenburger etc. If for some reason we aren't going to follow the sources and capitalise Pony, then something like Assateague/Chincoteague would be supported by WP:NATURAL, " ... an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title ... ". Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 10:40, 17 November 2023 (UTC) reply

One thing to keep in mind is that the referenced breed standard, in this instance, is not something produced by a widely recognized notable breeder/fancier organization. It seems to consist of a handful of volunteers – only one of whom (the President) lives in the same state as the organization's mailing address (and no two of whom are in the same state as any of the others). See the organization's Staff and About pages. —⁠ ⁠ BarrelProof ( talk) 11:36, 17 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Yeah, that seems to be WP:UGC/ WP:SPS. At best, there may be a serious attempt to establish a standardized breed based on a landrace population. WP is not in a position to declare it successful. There are many such efforts going on, in various species, and most of them fail. And, no, we do not put alternative names of things in article titles. Laurel and Hardy is not a case of that, it'a duo best known as a duo; same with Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and this is covered at WP:NCPMULTI. Nord-Pas-de-Calais (probably better rendered as Nord–Pas-de-Calais) is the unitary product of a merger, like DaimlerChrysler. Nordlandshest/Lyngshest is an official name of a standardized breed; it is not Wikipedia making up a title with two names in it (that the official name was, off of Wikipedia, made out of two separate names is irrelevant; it's a case like Aoraki / Mount Cook, where again WP isn't trying to "pseudo-disambiguate" by jamming two names for the same thing into one title; the official name of the place is in a dual format, and forms a unitary name for WP purposes). That's not happening here. There are two names for this variety of horse, one of which is very common, and one of which is almost never used.

Finally, Ostfriesen and Alt-Oldenburger appears to be either the exact the same kind of case as Nordladshest/Lyngshest, or to be two distinct topics jammed into one article, depending on which of the sources you trust (if any), but probably should not be an encyclopedia article, as the total studbook consists of only 180 specimens, and there is no sourcing to indicate this is notable. There's a self-published defunct blog at Horse-Gate which talks a lot about various lineages but never mentions "Ostfriesen" or "Alt-Oldenburger" at all, only the "Oldenburger" which our own article says is a different breed. Then a promotional link to a breeder site (primary source) Oldbenurger-Pferde which is again about the other Oldenburger; it mentions two organizations Verband der Züchter des Oldenburger Pferdes and Springpferdezuchtverband Oldenburg-International, which again are not about an "Ostfriesen and Alt-Oldenburger" but the other Oldenburger. Next is a page at the Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung alter und gefährdeter Haustierrassen titled "Das Schwere Warmblutpferd der Oldenburger-Ostfriesischen Zuchtrichtung" which seems to indicate that Ostfiesen is an alternative name of the older Oldenburger not something called Alt-Oldenburger (a name that never appears in their article), so it directly contradicts our material. Finally, there is another primary-source, promotional link to a small group dating to the 1980s called Zuchtverband für das Ostfriesische und Alt-Oldenburger Pferd, the first and only mention of "Alt-Oldenburger" and the first an only suggestion that this is the same thing as Ostfriesen, conflicting with the other sources. Their own material indicates that what they are trying to do is "backbreed", to approximate a re-creation of, a breed that has been lost to outbreeding with Hanoverians and other stock. In short, that article is a prime candidate for AfD, being about a non-notable topic with nothing but primary, self-published, and promotional sourcing, and clearly engaging in OR and clearly PoV-favoring the claims of a particular breeder group over others. It is not exemplary of anything in any way. Quite a few other articles on more obscure livestock breeds have similar problems.

PS:, re: "does anyone here believe that 'pony' is a species?" Of course not, but let's not be silly. The MOS:LIFE wording is clear on this: A species term appended at the end for disambiguation ("cat", "hound", "horse", "swine", etc.) should not be capitalized, unless it is a part of the breed name itself and is consistently presented that way in the breed standard(s) (rare cases include Norwegian Forest Cat and American Quarter Horse). Neither "hound" nor "swine" are in the same class as words substituting for species names, so there is no question that MOS:LIFE's lower-casing in this regard also encompasses "pony", a substitute for "horse" when the variety is short. I find Justlettersandnumbers's sudden resistance to the application of MOS:LIFE (in multiple ways even!) exceedingly strange, because this editor participated heavily in the VPPOL RfC that lead to MOS:LIFE saying what it does today, including permitting limited forms of capitalization for established, standardized breeds, not for landraces, and not for terms like "pony" and "horse" except in unusual cases of extreme ambiguity, and even then only when supported by the preponderance of the source material. That was a hard-won consensus, against considerable opposition (i.e., a preference to lower-case everything but proper names of places and the like). This remains a rather fragile consensus, and JLAN turning against it out of the blue is quixotic at best, since a new RfC on the matter would be fairly likely to conclude against any special allowances for breeds at all since independent source support for such capitalization is quite weak (it's a habit primarily found in breeder and fancier materials, not newspapers, encyclopedias, etc.). PPS: The first example at MOS:LIFE's material on breeds has been corrected to reflect that the article moved (again). The fact that an MoS line-item might not be updated quickly after a page move does not magically invalidate the MoS.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:08, 17 November 2023 (UTC) reply

Relisting comment: No new !vote has been made since last relist. Relisting again for a very clear consensus here. Reading Beans ( talk) 19:18, 21 November 2023 (UTC) reply