Talk:Line in the sand

Comments
Talk:line in the sand (phrase)

Whilst I would not question the integrity of the current entry, all references to this phrase seem to suggest that "a line in the sand" is a concrete, absolute boundary, or reference point that either must not be crossed or must be deliberately crossed. My understanding, but I seem to have no references to support it, is that " a line drawn in the sand " is quite a different thing. Precisely because of the shifting nature of sand and the ephemeral nature of a line drawn in it, a line drawn in the sand is a boundary or rule, or often a code of behaviour which is rigidly imposed by those who origionally drew the line but is no longer easily seen by those who may inadvertantly "cross the line". It is similar to breaking unwritten rules: it is not that they are simply unwritten. You aren't warned about them in any way, and usually don't find out you have broken one until afterwards, if ever. Thus.....To draw a line is to say "Thus far and no further" To "draw a line under" is to say this argument, discussion, subject, event is now closed. To cross a line is to transgress. I can see that to draw a line and ask people to choose which side of the line they stand is legitimate. However, the very essence of drawing a line in the sand is that it will disappear shortly after you drew it, however emphatically you made the gesture, and is therefore much closer to breaking unwritten rules than setting out absolute and arbitrarily chosen ones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robinhowell (talk • contribs) 10:24, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

That (the comment by Robinhowell) is exactly my understanding of the original meaning of the phrase, which has obviously come to be roughly equivalent to 'draw a line under'. But it is precisely the addition of 'in the sand' that makes it different. My other issue with this entry is with the examples, none of which appear to be of the phrase in question; not even the Alamo example provides a citation or quotation. These should be removed and replaced with examples of the phrase. I'm currently trying to find earlier examples of the original meaning. Sneedy (talk) 05:53, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Warner cartoon
that's an interesting point. It brings to mind a classic Warner Brothers cartoon in which Yosemite Sam uses his foot to scratch a line in sand and challenges Bugs Bunny to step over it. Bugs does, compelling Sam to draw another line and repeat the challenge. Bugs crosses the new line, of course, forcing Sam to step back and draw another. The process repeats itself until Sam backs himself up and over a cliff. 165.91.64.176 (talk) 07:41, 10 July 2009 (UTC)RKH

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was no consensus. @harej 03:57, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Line in the sand (phrase) → Line in the sand — The space will be freed, and there is a DAB page for the multiple related articles. Ludvikus (talk) 03:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Support. All similar uses are for titles using an upper case "S" and are already disambiguated. Station1 (talk) 05:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. No indication given that the phrase is the primary topic sought by readers entering "line in the sand" in the search box and hitting "Go". -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong support: It's extremely obvious to me that "Line in the sand (phrase)" is the WP:Primary topic, and that therefore it should read "line in the sand." --Ludvikus (talk) 12:02, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There are some metrics for determining primary topic at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. "Extremely obvious" isn't one of them, but some of the others might support your proposal. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the acknowledgment (that others might support my proposal). By "Extremely obvious" I simply my belief was consistent with the policy explicated at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - I meant I followed precisely the rule you cite. Implied in what you say is the point that there is some "primary topic" which would prohibit the move - or are you just being academic? --Ludvikus (talk) 13:28, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That's good. Please recap here what you found when you followed precisely the rule I cited. Yes, I suppose you could view this as being academic in asking you to "show your work", since this move request appears to be somewhat pointy from the discussion at Talk:New World Order. -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:24, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Oppose The DAB page is actually named Line in the Sand and redirects from Line in the sand so they would both have to be moved/modified, too. Also that DAB is sufficient.  Finally, if people write "Line in the sand (phrase)" specifically into the search tool they get here.  However the phrase is the primary usage, so there is an opposite argument that is logical and within Wiki guidelines.  Jubilee♫ clipman  15:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Line in the Sand can continue to be the dab page; it's a different title than Line in the sand, which is the only current use of the lower case "s" on Wikipedia. There should be a hatnote, of course, from Line in the sand directing readers to the dab page. Similar to Once upon a time and Once Upon a Time. Station1 (talk) 18:55, 7 October 2009 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 28 November 2019

 * 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 section. 

Line in the sand (phrase) → Line in the sand – Per WP:DIFFCAPS. Only lowercase usage of this. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 11:48, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose – "Only lowercase usage of this" is not a good rationale for a case-only primarytopic takeover. Dicklyon (talk) 06:07, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. There is no other article using the title "line in the sand". There are four articles using the title "Line in the Sand", and that should remain a dab page, but even if we were to disregard WP:DIFFCAPS the phrase "line in the sand" would still be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC based on the |Line_in_the_Sand|Line_in_the_Sand_(Close_Your_Eyes_album)|Line_in_the_Sand_(Mot%C3%B6rhead_song)|Line_in_the_Sand_(Bleeding_Through_song)|Line_in_the_Sand_(ZOX_album)|Line_in_the_Sand_(Stargate_SG-1)|Line_in_the_sand_match overwhelming number of pageviews and significance. Station1 (talk) 09:06, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. As someone said in some others in this series of "takeovers", DIFFCAPS properly applies when the capitalization scheme in question is very distinctive; it doesn't really work in a case like this. That would leave us with a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC argument for the move, and I don't think the metaphoric drawing of lines in the sand qualifies, nor does the idiom as such. It just being the original referent is irrelevant. If this were a strong PRIMARYTOPIC case, I would support the move (and am supporting 4 or 5 of the nom's concurrent moves on that basis, while opposing all the rest per the same reasoning Dicklyon provides above and that Gonnym has supplied in most of them, though not here yet. It's not the weakest case of the bunch – "line in the sand" still has a lot of currency as an idiom, but it's a very generic cliché. The concept isn't an encyclopedic topic, and the phrase may not be one either, per WP:NOTDICT. This just isn't one of those stand-out phrases like man's best friend or blessing in disguise, with a rich cultural history that we can encyclopedically cover; it's just a miscellaneous collocation of word, like several other cases I'm opposing (sea change, silver lining, head start, etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:52, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Support it gets 2,608 views compared with 347 for the other uses of Line in the Sand [|Line_in_the_Sand_(Close_Your_Eyes_album)|Line_in_the_Sand_(Mot%C3%B6rhead_song)|Line_in_the_Sand_(Bleeding_Through_song)|Line_in_the_Sand_(ZOX_album)|Line_in_the_Sand_(Stargate_SG-1)] so even if we ignore DIFFCAPS it still gets over 7.5x the views of the others so its clearly primary.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 13:42, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * do the page views convince you? Even if we assume everyone used lower case this would still be primary.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 18:32, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * No. If you search Google for "line in the sand", the wikipedia page it takes you to is this one, but that doesn't mean everyone who follows is actually looking to get here.  Seems highly unlikely, actually; wikipedia is not a dictionary. Dicklyon (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Google isn't case sensitive while we are, if even Google returns the phrase it seems likely its primary and indeed when I Google line in the sand I get the phrase article and results dominated by the phrase (only 1 result on the 1st page of results isn't for the phrase) so it seems that the phrase is the clear primary topic even ignoring case (which we don't). If the phrase gets so many hits and comes up 1st on Google that's telling that its primary even by usage.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 22:19, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Could you be confusing cause with effect? Dicklyon (talk) 22:23, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Causing what?  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 22:30, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Causing what DL just said: you Google the phrase, and Google overwhelmingly draws attention to this page, without providing links to the DAB page, so readers have little choice but to come to this page first. Given the high frequency with which this phrase is used in titles of pop-culture output, I think it's highly unlikely that most people really are coming here looking for a glorified DICDEF about the phrase itself.  Part of why this might be happening is lack of a hatnote pointing to the DAB page. I've now added one, and after a while this might cause Google to adjust what it's doing.  If the very first link on this page goes to an index of things with bands and TV stations on it, the spider is probably smart enough to realize that when someone looks for "line in the sand TV" they do not mean this phrase page but someone at the DAB page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Google tends to have a bias towards commercial/popular culture so the fact that Google thinks that this topic is what people want is telling. The article includes "(phrase)" in the title so its unlikely is sending people here because of ambiguity. If I Google "Apple" I get results dominated with the company, not the fruit even though that's at Apple and the company's at Apple Inc.. I agree the article does have dicdeff problems but that's not really a major issue for RM. In any case I think the views, (WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) DIFFCAPS (this being the only topic called "Line in the sand" per WP:PRECISE) and the fact that other uses are likely derived from it seems sensible to have this at the lower case base name.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 21:30, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, someone looking for "line in the sand TV" does not wind up on this page at all. Google directs them to A Line in the Sand (TV series) and the dab page. Per WP:NAMB, this article should not need a hatnote if it were not the primary topic. The very fact that a hatnote needed to be added is an indication that this is the primary topic. Station1 (talk) 07:37, 6 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Support. Hyperbolick (talk) 20:49, 7 December 2019 (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.