Talk:JCPenney/Archives/2015

Requested move 17 January 2015

 * 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: No consensus to move - supports and opposes are split at 4 each after two full listings. The opposes make the case that WP:COMMONNAME does not strongly favour either title at this time. They also make the case that the two titles are essentially different stylings of the same thing, and that WP:MOSTM mandates that we do not automatically pick the styling of the trademark. Since the opposes are grounded in valid policy arguments (as are the supports, as it happens), they represent a lack of consensus in the discussion. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 15:25, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

J. C. Penney → JCPenney – Requesting that article title is renamed to the doing business as name. Since articles such as Walmart and Linden Lab are titled as such, then it should be the case here. --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 07:25, 24 January 2015 (UTC) MikeM2011 (talk) 01:57, 17 January 2015 (UTC)


 * In, you referred to this discussion as "exact rehash of previous failed RM". On the contrary, the current circumstances differ substantially.  In particular, when the previous move request was made, the company was in the process of replacing its longstanding "JCPenney" brand with "jcp" (as part of a marketing strategy that proved disastrous and short-lived).  Had I participated in the earlier discussion, I'd have opposed a move.  —David Levy 17:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:COMMONNAME, the official corporate name isn't necessarily the most appropriate article title. It's reasonable to argue that "JCPenney" isn't sufficiently predominant among reliable sources, but its absence from legal documents is immaterial. —David Levy 17:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC) I agree that "We should use English, not a logo" (and have made this argument on multiple occasions), but CamelCase is well established in the English language and at Wikipedia (including the aforementioned MOS:TM). —David Levy 01:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC) We don't want editors changing articles' English varieties simply to match those that they happen to speak (thereby fueling endless back-and-forth edit wars), so when it comes to justification, we set the bar relatively high. Otherwise, a rationale as tenuous as "The UK is in Europe." could be cited as an excuse to write every article with a European topic in British English. Or someone would try to convert the entire encyclopedia to American English on the basis that "Americans constitute a majority of the English Wikipedia's readership." (I've actually encountered both arguments, which obviously went nowhere.) No such concern exists here; the styling of this department store chain's name has no far-reaching implications and favors no country's editors over another's, so there's no compelling reason to retain the status quo instead of switching to a better (even if only slightly) alternative. —David Levy 01:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC) Respectfully, if you're under the impression that I seek to suppress others' opinions or instigate a "fight", you've misread the situation. —David Levy 20:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC) Indeed, you can either assume good faith on my part or believe that I've engaged in treachery and deceit in the pursuit of moving an article from an acceptable title to one that I regard as slightly better. —David Levy 03:32, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per MOS:TM and WP:COMMONAME. The d/b/a or official name is irrelevant. Articles titles should match the most common name used by most independent reliable sources (see WP:COMMNAME), and follow standard English spelling and formatting (see MOS:TM). The Walmart and Linden Lab articles are titled that way because those are also their common names, and they follow standard spelling and formatting. Doing a Google search, I still see a mixture of both "J. C. Penney" and "JCPenney" used by reliable sources -- thus still not overwhelming evidence to warrant a change. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:25, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Query: Has the company ever actually used the spelling "J. C. Penney" (or "J.C. Penney")?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes. Apparently, such signage remains in place at a small number of older locations (or did until recently).  —David Levy 03:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not just for older usage. The company also uses "J. C. Penney" for formal business purposes. It just uses the logo style for marketing branding purposes. See my other comment below. For example, its SEC filings are under "J. C. Penney Company, Inc." and its Form 8-K says that is the "Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter" and that is the title of the company that appears with the signature of the CFO. That is also the name that appears at the beginning of the first sentence and in the later identification of the company in its latest press release. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:38, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * That cinches it, then. There's no justification for such a move.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:14, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * As discussed above and below, the official corporate name isn't necessarily the most appropriate article title. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. uses the public-facing name "Walmart" (our article's title).  This chain's public-facing name is "JCPenney".  —David Levy 17:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Hence my description of "JCPenney" as "the chain's public-facing name" and reference to its separate corporate identity.
 * In my view, "JCPenney" is not really a substantially different name – it is just a different stylization of the same name. When encountering non-standard-English stylizations, I believe we try to see whether or not the more "normal looking" stylization is also found reasonably often for the topic. If it is found reasonably often, we tend to prefer the "normal looking" stylization on Wikipedia (e.g. per MOS:TM and WP:AT, incl. WP:TITLETM), which in this case is "J. C. Penney" (the current title). Some other topics have different issues. For example, with Wal-mart / Wal-Mart / Walmart and Linden Research / Linden Lab, to me, none of those look especially like a logo styling that differs substantially from ordinary English. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:59, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with almost all of the above. I disagree only on the question of whether "JCPenney" is "normal looking".  To me, in the relevant context (the typographical rendering of a commercial brand), it doesn't seem out of the ordinary.  (As a point of reference, "JCPENNEY" or "JcPeNnEy" would.)  For Wikipedia's purposes, it certainly isn't more unusual than "T.J.Maxx" or "hhgregg" is.  (To be clear, I don't assert that "JCPenney" is an appropriate title because other stuff exists.  I realize that renaming those articles is another possible course of action.)  —David Levy 19:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of "T.J.Maxx" or "hhgregg", and those are interesting examples, but I do notice that neither one of those has had a very substantial article title discussion. There are no Requested Moves on their Talk pages. Perhaps those examples exist only because they haven't gotten much attention. —BarrelProof (talk) 20:13, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * That's quite possible. Both titles strike me as questionable.  —David Levy 20:26, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. I agree with most of Zzyzx11's comments, but I've arrived at a different conclusion.  Back when the styling "JCPenney" was found primarily in the chain's logo and marketing materials, I would have opposed this request.  But it appears that reliable sources now favor it slightly – certainly not overwhelmingly, but to an extent that warrants serious consideration.  Combined with the fact that "JCPenney" is now the chain's public-facing name and the ambiguity regarding the other styling's precise formatting (This page of legal information on the company's website contains ten instances of "J. C. Penney", eleven instances of "J.C. Penney" and one instance of "J.C.Penney", and our article also is inconsistent in this respect.), I see sufficient justification to rename the article and no compelling reason not to.  —David Levy 03:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * And that page of legal copyright information contains zero instances of "JCPenney" (except for the logo at the top of the page). —BarrelProof (talk) 17:48, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * No one has asserted that "JCPenney" is the corporation's registered business name. —David Levy 17:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per David Levy. With mixed usage, I don't see anything wrong with deferring to the current name; presumably it will only become more common. --BDD (talk) 15:09, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per MOS:TM. We should use English, not a logo. This isn't a different name, it's just a different styling of the name. And if you go to the company web site and click on "About us", you get a page that says "J. C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE: JCP), one of the nation's largest apparel and home furnishing retailers, ..." Per WP:NCCORP, we ordinarily omit suffixes such as "Company" and "Inc." when they seem unnecessary, but per MOS:TM, we ordinarily avoid vanity styling. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:22, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Per WP:COMMONNAME, the question of what styling is found in the company's official corporate name isn't directly relevant here. That's why Wal-Mart was moved to Walmart, thereby reflecting the public-facing identity that's come to predominate (despite the corporate name retaining the hyphen and uppercase "M").
 * This isn't an instance of camel case, it just coincidentally, superficially resembles one. It's an instance of dropping punctuation and compressing whitespace visually (i.e., pure stylization), not forming a neologistic construction out of separate words or morphemes and using capitalization to make it parseable and as an aid to pronunciation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:18, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * From where are you pulling that definition (which seems closer to that of a portmanteau)? CamelCase is a longstanding and widely recognized branding convention.  —David Levy 17:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - Usage- and convenient-wise, typing 'JCPenney' is quicker than adding dots and spaces between uppercased letters. --George Ho (talk) 01:33, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose. According to the Google Ngram Viewer the spelling without the dots and spaces is currently more common but not by a huge margin, and it used to be much less common until a couple decades ago. Leave it alone per WP:RETAIN (and I'd be saying the same thing if it was at JCPenney too). &mdash; A. di M.  12:54, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * BTW, the current text of the article isn't consistent, "J. C. Penney" occurring 43 times and "JCPenney" occurring 79 times. That ought to be fixed. &mdash; A. di M.  13:05, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * As noted above, the same inconsistency exists on the company's website. Using the styling "JCPenney" avoids this issue.  —David Levy 01:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * So does using "J. C. Penney" consistently.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:19, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the issue of whether to include a space between the two initials. (Incidentally, reliable sources appear to use "J.C. Penney" a great deal more frequently than they use "J. C. Penney".)  —David Levy 17:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Regarding the space between the two initials, I believe Wikipedia guidance is to generally include the space, e.g., per Manual of Style/Abbreviations. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:24, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * That text pertains to names of people, not companies. —David Levy 19:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:RETAIN relates to varieties of English (such as British and American), not to styles in general.
 * Oppose For all the reasons already named in previous tries for the same thing.  And because I'm old-fashioned and think it should stay as the company was originally incorporated, not what it has been changed into for marketing appeal.  -- WV ● ✉ ✓  18:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Should we also move Sears to Sears, Roebuck & Company? —David Levy 19:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Rather than allowing consensus to form and others to express opinions opposite your own, you seem to want to fight about this. I, for one, am not interested in taking the bait, sorry. -- WV ● ✉ ✓  19:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia's consensus process is based on discussion, not majority voting. (For future reference, when SMcCandlish and I participate in a discussion, lengthy exchanges are highly likely, irrespective of whether he and I agree or disagree.  Succinctness is neither his strong suit nor mine.)
 * At the risk of not sounding very Wiki-AGF: I haven't misread (at least some of) your comments at all. -- WV ● ✉ ✓ 02:13, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I used the word "misread" to mean "misunderstood or misinterpreted". I say this because I've done nothing to suppress others' opinions and I have no desire to pick a "fight".
 * I think David's question was perfectly fine. Your argument, "it should stay as the company was originally incorporated, not what it has been changed into for marketing appeal", would seem to apply to the case of Sears, another department store, as well. It would make for better discussion if you could address why you believe the cases are similar or dissimilar. --BDD (talk) 05:51, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Because my comments were based on J.C. Penney alone, I won't be commenting based on the history of Sears as this issue is about Penney's. David Levy's comment (posed as a question) was a non-sequitur.  The way it was worded appeared combative and seemed to serve no purpose other than to be a challenge to my opposition.  And, honestly, I see no point in continuing this.  -- WV ● ✉ ✓  06:20, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It was a sincere question, asked in the hope of better understanding your argument and its scope. If you don't wish to answer, that's your prerogative.  But I don't know why you regard it as some sort of "bait", perceive my interaction as "combative" interference with the consensus process, and apparently believe that I'm lying when I explain otherwise.
 * If you're under the impression that my question was a rhetorical device – intended to belittle your position by comparing it to an obvious absurdity – you're mistaken. Our Sears article was located at Sears, Roebuck and Company previously (and moved after a discussion like this one), and the matter of which name to use has been raised repeatedly.  I regard the titles "JCPenney" and "Sears" as preferable, but I see nothing ridiculous about the titles "J. C. Penney" and "Sears, Roebuck and Company".  If you disagree (and believe that your rationale applies to one article but not the other), you're welcome to explain why.  If you prefer not to, I ask only that you refrain from attributing my presence to sinister motives.  —David Levy 15:17, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * 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.