june utc myth of 'flat earth' belief the titling of this article has been difficult as the myth it is about is not about the false idea that the earth is flat see flat earth but of whether there was a general belief in that false idea in europe during the medieval period i invite comment on whether myth of 'flat earth' belief would be a better title talk russell calls it the modern flat earth error or just the flat error in inventing the flat earth in a conference he then refers to it as the myth of the flat earth no capitals anywhere none of these variants convey what the actual error is and of course the reason russell doesn t try is that a literally accurate name would be quite long something along the lines of the modern misconception of a medieval european belief in a flat earth myth of a 'flat earth' belief isn t horrible but it s still not likely to mean anything to someone who doesn t already know what it s supposed to mean in which case we haven t achieved anything by changing russell s book title works better than any of these other attempts something along the lines of flat earth concoction would give less chance for someone to mistake the article as a description of the belief that the earth is flat something that has already happened twice in just the call for a capitalization change comment we don't care if russell likes to overcapitalize in ways that mos caps doesn't sanction and the source cited above suggests that there's a myth of russell's capitalization at work here heh wp has a convention of not capitalizing such labels even for universally accepted theories modern flat earth error is a good start toward settling on a wp article title that makes sense this article is about a modern belief about pre modern belief in a flat earth how do we address that most clearly two previously mentioned possibilities were modern misconception of prevailing middle ages' belief in a flat earth which has a possessive usage error and modern misconception of prevailing belief in a flat earth in history i think i'd go with '' with precisely that capitalization see above rm which can and should proceed in the interim to comply with wp moscaps since this what should this be titled discussion could drag out for who knows how long if it ever gets resolved