Talk:Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

infobox
I've removed Infobox Political post based on the same logic that I used at Talk:Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This office is a military office and not a political one. I think there is some confusion is because Congress has to approve it. But Congress has an incredible amount of oversight and control over the military... for example, the authority to promote an officer to a higher grade is derived from Congress, but that doesn't make every promotion a political act either. Note that I've done the same at the Chairman's page.  bahamut0013  words deeds   05:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

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Capitalization?
Re: this edit diff by User:Eyer which removed all capitalization of "Vice Chairman" in the article, citing MOS:JOBTITLES. Would like to have a discussion as to if/how that would apply to this article.

While there are some specific spots where the lowercase seems appropriate, others, like the title, seem to warrant Upper Case (which I re-added in this edit).

Opinions? &mdash; MrDolomite &bull; Talk 04:59, 29 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Titles modified by adjectives, including articles like “the’ are lowercase. See MOS:JOBTITLES. — Eyer (If you reply, add   to your message to let me know.) 05:03, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Per Article titles and Official names and the official VJCS page here ("the position of Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,"), I would disagree and have reverted your edit to the article title. While the rest of the capitalization is up for debate, the title, in my opinion, is not. &mdash; MrDolomite &bull; Talk 05:20, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia doesn’t capitalize “The President of the United States” on its page, so why should we capitalize “The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff”? MOS:JOBTITLES is clear: modified job titles aren’t capitalized. — Eyer (If you reply, add   to your message to let me know.) 05:29, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would like to also point out that the U.S. military is in fact, supposed to follow, the Associated Press style book for job titles as seen HERE, with only a few exceptions that is covered in their own style guide. For example, the Chief of Naval Operations is lowercase when it succeeds a person's name. Neovu79 (talk) 21:25, 29 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Support - Capitalization of titles are always a gray area, because the starting sentence can both reasonably be seen as a modified job title in reference to the position or as a unmodified job title in reference to the person holding said title/office. But in this case, logic would have me believe that the sentence is referring to the overall position and not the person, so I would have to agree with User:Eyer in this. Neovu79 (talk) 08:34, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This is the title of a unique position. It is therefore capitalised in its own article to match the article title; to do otherwise would make no sense. See Category:Chiefs of defence, for instance. They're all capitalised. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:40, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support edit by . Overall, it appears quite consistent with the guideline. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 11:27, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * PS Rewrite the lead to match the title capping and meet with the guideline. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support, since no clear case for ignoring MOS:JOBTITLES has been made or apparently can be made. There's nothing unusual or special about this office/title.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:25, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose - WP:JOBTITLES is being used like a sledgehammer, forcing decapitalization on Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 13:49, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 26 October 2020 [aborted]
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff → vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Given the clear consensus in the above discussion (and many similar discussion on other pages about various offices and titles), this should be moved per MOS:JOBTITLES and to agree with the actual text in the article. There are probably a lot of other such pages that need to be moved, but we might as well start somewhere. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:25, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose - This de-capitalization push has gotten out of hand. We most certainly don't start article titles with a 'small' letter. GoodDay (talk) 13:48, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Um, there's no such thing as doing that; Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are auto-normalized by the software to resolve to, Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; you're having a WP:PANIC over a completely meaningless typo.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose – even president of the United States has a capital "P" in the title. Garuda28 (talk) 13:53, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * See above; president of the United States and President of the United States are .  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to rescind this as a wash, and relist it without the typo, so we get responses that are actually, well, responsive.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 26 October 2020

 * 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: No consensus. User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff → Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Given the clear consensus in the above discussion (and many similar discussions on other pages about various offices and titles), this should be moved per MOS:JOBTITLES and to agree with the actual text in the article. There are probably a lot of other such pages that need to be moved, but we might as well start somewhere. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:TITLECASE. I don't like the guidance, but as long as we have it we should follow it as uniformly as possible. Garuda28 (talk) 15:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose as we have articles titles as Prime Minister of Canada, Vice President of the United States, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom etc. GoodDay (talk) 16:17, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Those are simply among the "lot of other such pages that need to be moved"; you've not offered an actual rationale.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:24, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree with what you want. Article titles are off limits. GoodDay (talk) 22:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for making it clear that your position is WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and that your "rationale" is that MoS can't apply to titles, when every single RM participant knows that we apply MoS to titles every single day of every single week of every single year.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Move the article title then, if you're so sure of yourself. Otherwise, respect that an editor doesn't agree with you & leave it at that. GoodDay (talk) 00:51, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per GoodDay. MOS:JOBTITLES leaves room for the term to be either capitalized or lowercase depending on the usage. In my opinion, the article title can be used as both a title and a position, so my !vote is to keep the status quo.  Bait30   Talk 2 me pls? 18:21, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per . MOS:JOBTITLES does in fact leaves open the same Associated Press MOS for capitalizing titles and positions of office while used in a sentence. Since the article's page heading is not being used in a sentence and is in reference to the position and not only as a title, it should be capitalized. Neovu79 (talk) 19:40, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per jobtitles as usual, since the caps are context dependent and not usually necessary. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten gets the cap, but "the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" does not.  We pretty much fixed that doe presidents, vice presidents, premiers, chancellors, chairmen, fellows, etc. of all sort of organizations; no need to special-case-cap for the Joint Chiefs. Dicklyon (talk) 21:36, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * FWIW: This is about the article's title, not its content. GoodDay (talk) 22:19, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Repeat: the name in the content and the title should agree, and there's a clear consensus above that it's "vice chairman" not "Vice Chairman" when it's not attached to a name. I really don't  care all that much; I'm just following the consensus flow and the guidelines where they are pointing.  If you think MOS:JOBTITLES is wrong, feel free to go to WT:MOSBIO and re-re-re-raise yet another proposal to change it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:28, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Again, I oppose your proposal. GoodDay (talk) 22:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I would normally agree with your points, if Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was used in a sentence, which in this case, as an article heading, it is not. Presidents, vice presidents, premiers, chancellors, chairmen, fellows, are lowercased because they are definitive titles can be used in a broad sense. President of the United States and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are represented as a singular, more focused positions, meaning that only one person can hold those positions at a time. Neovu79 (talk) 23:25, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * the above census was about how Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is used in a sentence not about how it is used in an article heading. As you can see above, I supported the change because of it's use in a sentence. Neovu79 (talk) 23:30, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a distinction you've invented out of nothing. MoS draws no such distinction.  You're trying to invent an imaginary conflict between WP:MOS and WP:AT which simply does not exist.  You wouldn't be the first, but the answer is always the same: there is no such conflict, you are manufacturing it, whether that be out of failure to understand how the WP:P&G pages interoperate, or out of a system-gaming desire to get what you want.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:09, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm going to assume that you are not intentionally trying to attack my rational and how I apply WP:MOS and WP:AT, which no one should be in the first place and is not of anyone's concern as the reverse can be said about anyone's options and interpretations. The MoS draws no distinction because there is no right or wrong answer as there is no definitive guideline. It's up to users to interpret it's mean. If a consensus cannot be reach, then it should be left alone or perhaps as you mentioned below, it should be something to bring up in WP:VPPOL which is something that I would definitely support, for the good of having a definitive guide. Also, I know many users have butted heads with many others, but I'm not that type of person, so I would expect everyone to assume good faith and treat me with respect, and I will do my best to make sure to do the same. Neovu79 (talk) 01:59, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You need to carefully review WP:P&G, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:WIKILAWYER, WP:GAMING, and a variety of other pages that all make it very clear that policies and guidelines must be interpreted as a working system that produces commonsensical, non-conflicting results, and that they do not exist to try to codify every imaginable scenario, but to (concisely and only when necessary) lay out general principles that we consider need to be written out. If MoS indicates that article titles and article text should not be in conflict, and also that human titles/roles/positions/offices should not be capitalized when not attached to a name, then  if the conclusion you draw from this is that because the material on human titles/roles/positions/offices didn't explicitly say it also applies to article titles that you are free to not only make article titles on such topics conflict with the article texts, but that you should dig your heels in to defend such "reader-hateful" writing.  Given that every MoS line-item that can logically apply to titles is applied to titles (we do it every single day at RM), if we edited MoS to say so line by line, MoS would bloat enormously, and we'd all be very tired of seeing "and this also applies to titles" over and over and over again in every MoS page.  In short, use WP:Common sense when approaching P&G interpretation questions: always opt for the interpretation that produces no conflict in what to do, over any interpretation that seems to suggest incompatibility.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This seems like a very long dissertation for "use WP:MOS as a guideline to form a consensus." Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what we're trying to do? Also, I don't believe anyone is immune to criticism as you have stated below, but I do believe that "constructive criticism" in the form of a kind and open manor will win a person more support with their peers that not, especially if we're trying to establish census. It seems that you may have been a party of a few heated discussions with others users in the past. In my experience, those types of conversations don't tend to win me much support with my peers, so I'd like to try keep this forum civil if possible. Neovu79 (talk) 11:59, 27 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Support. ÍIt's an unnecessary capitalisation ("Chair"). The practice is to downcase where the person's name is not adjacent. Tony (talk)  23:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment To be honest I don't think you'll find an actual consensus on this as there is no right or wrong on whether to capitalize "chairman" while it's being used in the middle of a title. So that's why these motions tend to fail. I wish these was on all encompassing right or wrong statute, but there isn't and frankly there is no precedence. Neovu79 (talk) 23:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Alright, if we keep getting a WP:FILIBUSTER pattern of objector 1 citing completely invalid "reasons", then objectors 2 and 3 saying "per 1" and adding a "reason" they made up out of thin air, and further pretending that this is a WP:CONSISTENT matter (circular reasoning: keeping a bad title to match other bad titles is not what that policy wants!), then the obvious solution is to mass-RM them, and list that RM at WP:VPPOL and other places to draw in sufficient eyes and brains to overrule the handful of stonewallers. These "not in my petty fiefdom" antics just waste too much time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I would welcome a village pump discussion as that would clear up a lot of confusion. I do object however to your characterization of my !vote. Considering I am the second of the three opposes, it looks like you are accusing me of stonewalling and of making up things "out of thin air". Making me look like I'm a bad-faith editor was uncalled for. I only left one comment in this discussion and I based my reasoning on my interpretation of the MOS.  Bait30   Talk 2 me pls? 06:46, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * People coming up with rationales that misinterpret actual policies and guidelines (usually as a WP:ILIKEIT mask) is a common foible, as is doing "per whoever" WP:JUSTAVOTEs that refer to someone making completely invalid arguments. Neither of those require "bad faith", but they're not useful in helping comply with, assess, or consolidate consensus, and are not somehow immune to criticism when they occur.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:24, 27 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Support, per [WP:JOBTITLES]. Slithytoad (talk) 05:05, 28 October 2020 (UTC) !vote by sock of community-banned User:Kauffner struck. Favonian (talk) 10:02, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Unique job titles only held by one individual at any one time are usually capitalised. They are proper names. Generic job titles that can be held by multiple people are not. Nothing in WP:TITLECASE mandates that we should lower-case proper names. In fact WP:JOBTITLES suggests that we should use upper case for such titles (e.g. Theresa May became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2016.). Suggesting it should be moved to agree with the actual text in the article is a little odd, as the text has been changed to agree with this proposed move, not vice versa, as a glance at the edit history will show. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:12, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Necrothesp. Timrollpickering (talk) 18:17, 2 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.