Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 76

message: * Move the comment "If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoke conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please do not be too quick to make accusations!)" to Rule 4 rather than Rule 1. First note that the rules are given "in rough order of precedence". Rules 1 and 2 are precisely designed to specify cases where changes are justified, and this language suggests that even justified changes might provoke conflict. This is counterproductive because people should be encouraged to accept changes based on these rules rather than reject them. This language was originally lower down in the list. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Provoking conflict"

message: * Remove the comment "which will rarely be the case" from under Rule 4. Rules 1 through 3 give good reasons to change spelling/usage in cases which cannot be described as "rare", and this language seems to create a presumption against those arguing that the requisite conditions for changes under Rules 1 through 3 apply. This change was made over the objections of one editor (in his edit summary) on 24 December 2006, and I can locate no talk page discussion of the change. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "rare" is an exaggeration, even if it is only warranted in a minority of cases. It seems to me that it is quite likely that in articles of international interest, a "haphazard mix" may well have developed through lack of attention. In that case one needs to change perhaps half the spellings, in some cases more if you need to resort to the "first major contributor" rule. A second issue is that it's only rare if you assume that other people are abiding by the rules in the first place. Finally, it is not rare that disagreement may arise about whether an article is country-related, particularly when a subject has some aspects of worldwide interest and others of interest to only one or a few English-speaking countries. In such cases the article may well have been started by people not from those countries. For example, it is entirely conceivable that an American interested in France might start an article on some aspect of EU law. Then other editors are justified in changing it to UK/Irish usage. People who are not knowledgeable about the rules may be comforted in the idea that the guidelines support them, because it is supposedly "rarely the case" that changes are needed. Joeldl 02:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment - Justification for a wholesale changing of an entire article does arise and, whilst not all that common, it seems to arise (in my experience) more often than really fits with its description as "rare".  That aside, though, what I question is the use of noting this "rarity" at all.  These words don't really seem to add anything.  You either have such a case or you don't - whether these cases be rare or not has no effect on what should be done in them.  Therefore I support this suggestion of Joeldl's. Jimp 02:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Rarely the case"

message: * Assuming the "one dialect" rule is relaxed as above, it becomes less important to look at the first major contributor in Rule 5, and we can look at the first contributor instead. In fact, in deciding whether to write organise or organize, determine whether -ise or -ize predominates in the article (rather than identifying a hypothetical dialect). If this is impossible to determine or disagreement persists, just look for the first ever occurrence in the article of a word in the -ise/-ize family. This is an objective rule that will make it unnecessary to determine the nationality of the first major contributor, and, if they turn out to be Britsh/Australian, etc., to guess whether they would have preferred -ise or -ize. (The Oxford prefers -ize, though this is a minority spelling in Britain, Australia, etc.) Also, one criticism I see of the "first major contributor" rule is that there may have been many contributors before the article stopped being a stub, and the person who removed the "stub" template may not have done much at all. If all we have to do is look for the first occurrence of petrol/gasoline for example, without regard to the significance of that editor's other contributions, we have a simple criterion that is not unfair, given that the effect will be limited to the determination of a single vocabulary choice rather than the dialect of the entire article, and the criterion does not call for an evaluation of the importance of various editors' contributions. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * In this case, the new rule is not any more complex to state than the other one. We are just deleting "significant". It is useful because it provides a more easily and objectively applied criterion. Joeldl 08:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

text: ** That would enable people to go around writing substubs to "claim" the article for their particular dialect.  There are some who think the entire encyclopedia should be in their dialect because it's more common among internet users or more "correct" for historical reasons.  The current wording is best. — Omegatron 12:48, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * With the previous proposal, they would only "claim" it for -ize or -our or whatever words they happened to use. Also, the current system says nothing about what happens when many people contribute before it stops being a stub. In that case, which is frequent, "major" remains undefined. Joeldl 18:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "First major contributor"

message: * Relax the rule about a "nationally predominant form". The reality is that any English written by academics or journalists in an English-speaking country is, with few exceptions, easy to understand. I don't think we should have to determine whether soda or pop is "nationally predominant" in the United States. Either could be found in academic writing or in the press anywhere in the United States. Although pop is more common in Canada, English-speaking Quebecers say (and write) "soft drink", never "pop", and "soft drink" would also be understood anywhere. Along the same lines, eaves troughs is more common in Canada than gutters, but not in Quebec. Scotland in particular is well known to have its own vocabulary distinct from England's, not only in informal contexts, but appearing in academic writing, etc., as well. The press and academic authors "self-censor" somewhat so that regional words they think unlikely to be known to outsiders appear less often in their writing. But on the other hand, there are some well established regional words which people may consciously or unconsciously retain in their writing. Since, ultimately, the press and academic authors are our model at Wikipedia, there is no need to expect people to self-censor beyond what they already do naturally when writing for a national or, in the case of articles of international interest, international, audience. I would rename the entire section to "Geographic varieties of English", and say that there is no preference among geographic varieties of English, so long as usage conforms to what might be anticipated from a speaker of a particular variety writing in an academic context or in the press. There is little doubt that this includes the use of some regional words as well as "national" ones, and Wikipedia should allow this. Joeldl 12:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, to a degree: it is clear that there is no clear standard for what constitutes "American English", "Canadian English", "British English", or "Australian English", and editors have some leeway within the standards, allowing for certain variations within the regional mix. On the other hand, there are some really unlikely combinations that don't generally occur, and those really need to be avoided: -or -ise mixes, for example: very rarely is the word "colorised" seen (I think that was mentioned). We don't care about an exact definition of what constitutes any Canadian English, for example, but we need a standard to which to keep articles. I support this idea, but only to the extent that it acknowledges that individual varieties are themselves unstable - anything more, and we are arguing to allow gross inconsistency in articles. Nihiltres(t.c.s) 17:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think spelling does tend to be more of a national thing rather than regional within countries, so this is really much more about vocabulary than spelling. As far as spelling is concerned, I don't think it's worth trying to prevent -or/-ise mixes for reasons explained under "Haphazard mix". Joeldl 18:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I must say that I believe that the opposite of relaxation should happen. Wikipedia needs a standard form of the language to use. If it is not a standard form of a language, confusion can result. All of the English posting should be done on one standard, for example BBC English; without uniformity, a encyclopedia is nothing.Spacedwarv 01:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the inclusive nature of these guidelines is something for Wikipedia to be proud of. If a single standard were chosen, there is little doubt that it would be American English, the form used by two-thirds of the world's English-speakers. Currently, the guidelines lead to the result that about two-thirds of what's written is in American English, for that very reason, and that seems fair. Joeldl 10:17, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It would not be American English, American English is only America, which is only 300 million people, the commonwealth composes of 1.7 BILLION people, nearly all of which use a more BBC like English, no. Spacedwarv 23:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You do realise, Spacedwarv, that the use of billion to mean one thousand million is an Americanism (well, they got it from the French but the French have since realised their mistake). Jimp 00:16, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The number of people in the world who speak English well enough for it to be identifiably "British" or "American" leaning is not that much larger than the number of native speakers. Joeldl 08:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

text: There are no "official" dictionaries of English, just dictionaries that claim to record usage. Good dictionaries record words specific to places like Scotland, New England, etc. Joeldl 08:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A provision for common sense may be useful; but do we really want to write Daniel Webster in New Hampshire dialect? Written subnational dialects really don't differ all that much; and soda/pop really only falls under the "leave it alone" parts of this rule anyway; it's not (now) tied to any particular variety of English. (Local brands, like Moxie, probably should follow local dialect; adding translations might be a good thing.)   Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Written subnational dialects do differ, most notably in Scotland, but elsewhere as well on issues of vocabulary. I think one of soda or pop might well fail the "nationally predominant" criterion, but common sense tells us that its application, at least in this case, makes no sense. Let me turn this around. It is understood that in the context of the Manual of Style, we are only talking about written Scottish English, etc. In what cases would the "nationally predominant" criterion disallow something in a way that was justified? Joeldl 21:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Nationally predominant form"