On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 06:10:39AM -0700, Jimmy Wales
wrote:
Jason Williams wrote:
Why is it so? Why is the principle that American
and British English
have equal status abandoned here? Why is the ugly "movie" explicitly
preferred over the perfectly good "film"?
That "movie" is ugly is a pretty ad hoc aesthetic judgment, don't
you
think?
Of course; since it's quite obviously subjective I assumed people
would assume that I was stating it as such :-) I wasn't trying
to argue for wholesale replacement of "movie" by "film", just the
same admirable agnosticism that is applied across the rest of
the wikipedia.
At any rate, perhaps there was a discussion
somewhere about this?
I expect so, but I couldn't find it by googling the mailing list
archives and there isn't a Talk page corresponding with
[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (movies)]].
I was an active participant in that discussion in March 2002. Its
apparently factored remnants are at [[Talk:Film]], but it seems to me
that it also went on across several talk pages. I've never considered
this debate as an American vs. British English sort of issue. As a
supporter of "movie", then as now, I obviously don't consider
"movie" to
be ugly. I am of course pleased that (movie) has become our standard
disambiguating term, but even here I recognize that most Wikipedia rules
are subject to change. As things stand "movie" has developed
considerable inertia, and making the change over such a large array of
articles could be very confusing. Making the disambiguating term
optional doesn't seem very attractive.
Eclecticology