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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. There is a consensus that "the" is part of the proper name of this event. ( closed by page mover) Brad v 04:43, 9 December 2017 (UTC) reply

The Players Championship → Players Championship (golf) – Per WP:THE and MOS:TMTHE, and because this fails WP:SMALLDETAILS since every single thing at Players Championship (disambiguation) is sometimes referred to as "the Players Championship" in its context. A leading "The" (much less a capitalized one in mid-sentence) is not consistently used in reliable sources for this golf tournament, even in golf-specific sources [1]. Also need to clean up the text to stop capitalizing "The" in mid-sentence, per MOS:CAPS. Yes, we know the trademark holder likes to capitalize it and various golf writers do as well, but this is exactly the same case as overcapitalization of "the" in band names and in music journalism, and the same in university and other organization names and their internal house style sheets. We just don't do that here except for the rarest of odd exceptions, like The The and The Hague, and only because independent, reliable sources do so with near uniform consistency for those cases. That just demonstrably does not apply here.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:00, 23 November 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. Mahveotm ( talk) 17:13, 1 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Question: is this not an exception to WP:THE (similar to The New York Times)?... also, I think this is overwhelmingly the primary topic for Players Championship... so even if we drop the “The”, I don’t see the need for parenthetical disambiguation. Blueboar ( talk) 22:21, 23 November 2017 (UTC) reply
  • The New York Times is not an exception to WP:THE; it's a title of a published work, and a leading The is retained in capitalized form in the titles of works, per MOS:TITLES. A golf tournament is not a publication. There is no grounds for an exception here, because "The" is provably not an integral part of the name (much less in perpetually capitalized form) in most reliable source material; it just appears sometimes. By contrast, The The and The Hague always take "the", virtually always capitalized "The", regardless of English dialect or type of publication, and you'll even find at least The Hague listed as an exception to capitalization rules in various major off-Wikipedia style guides.

    PS: Whether this subject is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC or not might be an argument for moving it to Players Championship and moving the DAB page to Players Championship (disambiguation), but not for retaining "The". No one's made a properly documented PRIMARY case for doing so, and unless they do, the proposed rename to Players Championship (golf) is standard practice. If it were the primary topic, and given that this article has existed since 2005, why doesn't Players Championship already come to this article? I think people who are not golf players/fans are apt to contest making this the primary topic, but I don't care either way, as long as the leading "The" is removed.
     —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  03:10, 24 November 2017 (UTC) reply

• Note: the stylized name of the tournament is THE PLAYERS Championship, or THE PLAYERS for short. So the PGA Tour clearly considers "The" to be an integral part of the title. pʰeːnuːmuː →‎ pʰiːnyːmyː → ‎ ɸinimi → ‎ fiɲimi 04:24, 24 November 2017 (UTC) reply
• Support move per nom. The PGA may consider "The" to be part of the title, but reliable sources often use lowercase "the", indicating that the common name is "Players Championship". I have no opinion as to whether disambiguation is necessary.  ONR   (talk)  09:35, 24 November 2017 (UTC) reply
• Oppose: "The" is an integral part of the name. We have others, including The Open Championship, The Amateur Championship. Calling the Open article "Open Championship" wouldn't make any sense, the whole point of the "The" is to stress that its The Open Championship, not any old Open Championship but the first, the original. Similarly here it's The Players Championship, not any old Players Championship. The fact that we often use "the Open Championship" in the text (lower case "the") is simply that when it's clear that we're talking about this event we don't need to use "The" pedantically but use "the" which reads better. Nigej ( talk) 09:40, 24 November 2017 (UTC) reply
  • @ Nigej: Except the sourcing already provides proves that "The" is not an integral part of the name at all. That's the entire point of this RM. The fact that two other golf championships are overcapitalized this way is WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS and WP:OFFICIALNAME, and just a demonstration that this is a run-of-the-mill WP:Specialized-style fallacy: golf people just really love to over-capitalize these things as a form of emphasis, of "special signification". Not doing that is the first rule of WP:MOSCAPS. PS: "Calling the Open article "Open Championship" wouldn't make any sense" only because it's ambiguous; the proper article title is Open Championship (golf), as with Players Championship (golf), Players Championship (snooker), Masters (darts), Masters (snooker), and a zillion other ambiguous tournament and tour names.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:53, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
    • You say the article describing The Open Championship is overcapitalized and is "other crap"? Lord have mercy. The Open Championship is, well, The Open Championship, possibly and historically the most honored name in sports. Nothing like it in the world, nor should there be. And you say in an edit summary that "its next on the list" after this RM. Nope, its page, and this page, are already perfectly named. Randy Kryn ( talk) 10:33, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
    • To me a title like Open Championship (golf) makes no sense for The Open. There are hundreds of golf Open Championships but only one the goes as "The Open". Similarly there are loads of golf Masters events but every golfer knows what they mean when they say The Masters. I can see you're keen on WP:whatevers but surely we just need some common sense sometimes and to me the current title is perfectly ok. Nigej ( talk) 18:18, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply

      This book explains that "The Open" and "The Open Championship" are short for "The Open Championship of the British Isles". And this one explains it with only "Open" being capped. Lots of sources don't cap "the" in this context. There's not much support in sources for the idea that "The" is an essential part of the name. Dicklyon ( talk) 06:02, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

This is completely untrue. I have never heard it called "The Open Championship of the British Isles". There is no "of the British Isles" in its title. It is "The Open Championship". It is often referred to as the British Open but this is not an official title. Nigej ( talk) 08:13, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

• Strong Oppose this good faith nom, per Nigej. The name of this unofficial fifth major tournament contains the well-known 'The' (and is even stylized by its logo and other examples as 'The Players'), so in this case 'the' is an important part of its common name. And per The Beatles, where the 'the' isn't usually used in sentence case, but is an integral part of the article title. Randy Kryn ( talk) 10:46, 24 November 2017 (UTC) reply
  • @ Randy Kryn and Oknazevad: The Beatles is not a parallel case, because bands are covered by a special guideline, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Music#Names (definite article), which consensus has established is a partial variance from WP:THE, while sport events are not.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:53, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
    • The name of this tournament, as every golf fan recognizes, is The Players Championship. Just as every Beatles fan knows that the full name of the Beatles is The Beatles. We are an encyclopedia, an encyclopedia which is not quite trusted by much of the public because "anyone can edit", thus "Crazy Joe down the street might be putting nonsense into it as we speak". Changing the name of the unofficial fifth-major of golf could cause further mistrust of Wikipedia, on a conscious or unconscious level, of every golf fan who sees the page. There is a policy or guideline somewhere (yes?) that we should think of the reader on every edit. That's what some of us do when considering names of articles, that if the real name, the familiar name, is available and easily read and rendered, we go with that, for the good of Wikipedia and its readers. @ SMcCandlish:, a tweak and a qualifier is surely not needed in this case, for as the real name of a well-known event the name is already encyclopedicly perfect. Randy Kryn ( talk) 10:26, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
      • Except even golf publications do not treat the name this way, as the evidence provided in the nomination proves. You can keep recycling the disproven same fannish assertions over and over, but it will not change the fact of what the sources show; sorry.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  11:29, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
        • Your one and only example is of a single article on PGAtour.com which says, quote, "He hasn’t won since his 2016 PLAYERS Championship triumph...". That's your reason for wanting to change this "fannish" (?) title? That the great god "Consistency" can take away common and proper names from major events because one guy on a website paraphrased its name? Randy Kryn ( talk) 12:36, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
          • There are other examples from websites which paraphrase the name, but, like when "the Beatles" is used and not the actual name of the band, those website writers are paraphrasing the name of the topic. Randy Kryn ( talk) 13:48, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
• Oppose per Randy. The Beatles were exactly the analogy I was thinking of as well. Yes, the "the" might be lowercased in running prose, and left off when the name is used as an attributive noun phrase, but we would never title our article as "Beatles" without the "the". Also, the vast majority of results on Google books for the search "player's championship" are for the golf tournament, which indicates to me that it is the primary topic (Google news shows similar results, though the darts tournament is presenting a bit higher at the moment as the event just passed.) oknazevad ( talk) 11:43, 24 November 2017 (UTC) reply
  • See above; The Beatles is subject to a different guideline. And again, whether or not this is the WP:PRIMARY topic has nothing to do with the "The" matter, only with whether this should be at Players Championship (golf) or at Players Championship with the DAB page moved to Players Championship (disambiguation).  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  07:53, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
• Check this out..., the nominator, along with other wholesale changes, just went into the text of the Manual of Style on Capital letters and removed this, which points out that The Open Championship is an exception to the 'The' guideline. He says that "it's next on the list after The Player's Championship". WP:WTF? If I went in, removed a guideline example about an exception, and then threatened to change its name, I'd be hog-tied and given some kind of ban. Randy Kryn ( talk) 12:13, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply
  • Seems he's set his heart on winning this one, despite our opposition. Nigej ( talk) 18:21, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply

    As per WP:BRD, SMcC having been bold, it's open to another editor to revert, and then we can have yet another discussion... Peter coxhead ( talk) 19:38, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply

    You're right, and I was too harsh in my comment. I'm glad I found that deletion though. Randy Kryn ( talk) 23:53, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply

  • Seems the "rent-a-vote" has come in to push it through. Nigej ( talk) 08:15, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

    @ Nigej: please WP:AGF. Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:27, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

    I did until the proposer started changing the rules. Now I'm in my cynical phase. Nigej ( talk) 10:53, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

    BRD works both ways. When someone goes to MoS and inserts a pet "rule" without any discussion that serves no purpose but to carve out a one-topic alleged exception – which isn't actually reflected in the sources, or this RM would not be happening – anyone can revert it, even if the addition has gone undetected for a while. It's standard operating procedure to revert additions to guidelines and policies that are attempts at nit-picky exception making, unless there's a demonstrable consensus (e.g. an RfC) to include them. Most such things have been stripped from all such pages long ago. I have no issue with my revert of that addition being re-reverted in turn, but the material is marked as disputed in the interim.

    See also WP:FAITACCOMPLI; Randy Kryn's argument ("According to our own guidelines the present name is fine", below) is that this RM should be rejected because MoS has a line-item permitting the exception; but the line-item was added without consensus specifically to try to make it permissible, to exempt this and two other golf tournament articles from a big pile of guidelines by putting them in a magic bubble. Consensus doesn't work that way.
     —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:13, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

    A magic bubble isn't needed (and remember readers and closer, the nominator has already said that the next on the list is The Open Championship, arguably the most honored name in sports) because this is the real and common name for this tourney. My argument is not that a line-item permits the "exception" but that the present name meets all of the WP:CRITERIA asked for by our style-guideline on the RM template, which are what article titles and moves are supposed to be based on. The present title is fine, no need to fix what certainly is not broken. Randy Kryn ( talk) 12:33, 28 November 2017 (UTC) reply

• Support – though many sources copy the styling with all-caps "THE PLAYERS", and lots do cap the "The", quite a few also do like WP style and drop or downcase to "the", since it's not an essential part of the title. Even books by golfers use lowercase "the" quite often: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. Dicklyon ( talk) 20:55, 26 November 2017 (UTC) reply

• So what? That some author's paraphrase the name has nothing to do with what a Wikipedia RM is based on according to the RM template itself. The template says that the multiple points presented at the WP:Article titles page determine the title. The present name is recognizable, precise, concise enough to differentiate from other sports' championships, and is the accepted common and familiar name. There is no problem here. According to our own guidelines the present name is fine. Randy Kryn ( talk) 12:20, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

• The "so what" is that neither golf nor non-golf sources consistently do "The Players Championship", but often "the Players Championship", "Players Championship" (and stuff like "The PLAYERS Championship", etc.). There is no case to make that "The" is a required part of the name – in our writing or anyone else's, not even in the specialist material. Ergo, both WP:THE and MOS:CAPS apply. Golf fans inserting a pet "golf tournament rule" into MOS:CAPS without consensus doesn't magically undo the applicability of the guidelines' general rules.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:24, 27 November 2017 (UTC) reply

Question: in these examples, are the ones omitting the definite article before "Players" followed by another noun, such as "Players Championship victory" or other such phrases? Because then it is standard English rules to leave off a leading article, but doesn't mean it's not part of the name. Again, just as I could say "Magical Mystery Tour is my favorite Beatles album" doesn't mean we leave off the "the" when using the name of the band standalone (because in the above sentence it's being used in the role of an adjective). Such uses have no bearing on whether the name of the tournament has a leading "the". oknazevad ( talk) 15:01, 28 November 2017 (UTC) reply

The Magical Mystery Tour is a title of a work, subject to MOS:TITLES. And the comparison doesn't make sense anyway, since "The Magical Mystery Tour' is my favorite" is the normal way to say that; leaving the "The" off is slangish informality, and thus not relevant to formal writing.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  11:57, 2 December 2017 (UTC) reply

However it remains the case that it's a perfectly good name, the golf community seem quite happy with it, guidelines are only guidelines and it seems pure pedantry to change it. And I can still be happy to write "I went to see the Beatles" and have their article called "The Beatles". Nigej ( talk) 09:40, 28 November 2017 (UTC) reply

WP isn't written by or for "the golf community", and doesn't care what they're perfectly happy with under their style guides in their publications. But as proven right at the start, golf publications are not in fact consistent about this at all.  —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  11:57, 2 December 2017 (UTC) reply

WP is an encyclopedia, and any title which seems incorrect by the very people who know and care about an event lessens the respect for Wikipedia as a reliable tool and increases the viewpoint of Wikipedia being an inadequate source. You want to lessen the title of this event and then, as proclaimed, use the result here to lessen and incorrectly label what is arguably the most honored name in sports, The Open Championship. You don't agree, but in my opinion these type of actions hurt the overall Wikipedia project and lends credence to the "anyone can edit Wikipedia so it's not reliable" meme. Randy Kryn ( talk) 12:11, 2 December 2017 (UTC) reply

WP is there to help people find stuff. However my experience in life is that it's better for the stuff to be written by those who know something about the topic, rather than those who don't, hence the part of my comment about the golf community. Nigej ( talk) 12:34, 2 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Oppose per Randy, Nigej and others. Calidum 05:10, 1 December 2017 (UTC) reply
• Oppose - The Support rationale appears to have two main components: secondary sources, and guidelines.
  1. Secondary sources are very often less attentive to such minor details, and the COMMONNAME principle can be over-applied like any p&g. We are not slaves to the secondaries on something like this, any more than we would misspell a word because a majority of secondary sources misspell it. Besides, have the Supports even shown such a majority, or are they cherry-picking? Unlike with the comma-before-Jr issue, the "official" name is clear enough here, and I don't think anybody would claim that this is merely an arbitrary style element.
  2. Guidelines are not set in stone and are themselves a work in progress. The guidelines applicable here already include exceptions determined by consensus. "There is no exception for this" is not a viable Support argument unless the community has already thoroughly considered this case and decided that it should not be an exception. I don't see a link to that consensus. I don't even need to invoke WP:IAR, although I reasonably could do so.
  I don't play or care about golf. ― Mandruss  ☎ 16:19, 3 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Discussion

Concern has been raised above about edits to guidelines affecting this RM. I have raised the matter on the relevant talk page. Andrewa ( talk) 02:47, 9 December 2017 (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.