On 20/09/05, Jack & Naree <jack.macdaddy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
And what if
they search for "red", which version does it link to?
a single version of course, as mentioned, and as is surely obvious.
No, I meant would it link to "color", "colour", or both.
Why? Just
because the headword is different, you suggest we manually
copy all changes to one onto the other?
perhaps headwords are the problem.
Then perhaps a solution to that problem, such as one article having
multiple headwords, might be more appropriate?
Or perhaps the
entry on that
plant in a US encyclopedia and in a UK one would be fundamentally
different in some way?
in some articles, they may well be (and no, I don't have a list - I have a
life).
Sure; and some don't; and some articles which don't have varying
"orthographies" might contain different information. If it's a really
fundamental difference, we use "disambiguation" of some form; if it's
a more minor difference, the difference is incorporated and/or
discussed in the article itself. There is no correlation between
needing such disambiguation or discussion and having two spellings, so
why build a policy as though there were?
And what, as I
say, of other articles which
happen to mention, and probably link to, the term in one form or the
other? Should they link both?
yes; in each form, the [[same way it works now]]
So a British reader might come upon a sentence saying "it is made from
[[eggplant]]/[[aubergine]]", and, seeing that the two articles were
separate, assume that these were alternative ingredients. Then,
following the links, they might realise that the two were actually the
same text copy-and-pasted with a bit of search-and-replace, and wonder
why on earth we didn't just have one article.
Somebody has
mentionned that something similar is done on Wiktionary,
but that is a very different situation: in a dictionary, the entire
article is discussing the headword, as a word; in an encyclopedia, on
the other hand, the article is discussing the entity denoted by the
headword. That is, a dictionary entry for "aubergine" is discussing
the meaning, etymology, etc of that string of letters; an encyclopedia
entry for "aubergine" is discussing the plant itself, using the string
of letters merely as a label. It follows that whereas the dictionary
entries for the words "aubergine" and "eggplant" are distinct
(because
they are two different words), the encyclopedia entries under those
two words will always be *exactly the same* - you might even put the
article under its scientific classification, but you'd still be
discussing the same plant (and you wouldn't suddenly be discussing it
in Latin, either).
yes, you can
Can what? I was trying to point the absurdity of treating "aubergine"
and "eggplant" as different subjects. But if you want a question to
respond to, what "orthography" would you write the article in if it
was under its scientific classification? Such an article would contain
exactly the same *information* whichever of the 3 headwords you filed
it under, so the only possible reason for having more than one would
be to "translate" a few usage differences to suit the same dialect as
the headword [I note from the Wikipedia article that this *wouldn't*
be possible in this case, because there are two species, but the point
stands]
whether in
separate wikis or not -
it means that all those articles have to be written twice, or
constantly kept in synch
not necessarily
Well, since any "good" edit to the article "eggplant" would also be a
"good" edit to the article "aubergine" (except for those edits
correcting orthographical differences), I fail to see how
synchronisation could be avoided.
to you, perhaps, but these are clearly two seperate
languages
No. They are *arguably* two separate languages, though I've heard few
people take such a strong stance, except in jest. If it was at all
clear, we wouldn't be having this argument.
"blatant waste of effort" is invested in
creating wikis for tiny, pointless
languages and dialects: Ossetic, Tartar, Walloon, Interlingua, Limburgish,
Western Frisian, Asturian, Sicilian, Scots, Macedonian, Esperanto, the list
is bloody endless.
So, because we have wikis in languages which are "pointless" but
unambiguously distinct languages, we should not have wikis which
include minor variations of the same language?
But I won't go into this - if you want to read endless debates about
wiki creation policy, go to
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/ Yes, we have lots of
wikis. Yes, a lot of them are controversial. No, you're not the only
one who thinks we have too many. No, you're not the first to suggest
merging some similar ones. Right now, however, we're discussing the
particular case of the English wiki, not some other case with
different political, linguistic, and geographic facts.
You've even got the two forms of Norwegian! Yet
English English speakers
have to accept American-English!
And "American-English" speakers have to accept a little bit of
"English English" in return. Most of us learn to live with it.
Indeed, the
main problem would be defining the various variants (it
would be as arrogant to claim there are only two "proper" forms of
English as to claim there is only one)
there really are only two orthographies. Canadian and Australian just aren't
anywhere near divergent enough.
I'm sure Canadians and Australians will be pleased to hear you
pronounce that from your golden pedestal. As will Indians, New
Zealanders, South Africans, etc etc. [It was pointed out, for
instance, that an Australian user would not wish to select either "US"
nor "British" spellings, because they would naturally use a mixture of
the two.]
and
there'd still be compromises needed on
grammar and punctuation issues, etc etc
grammar and punctuation is a different issue - one for edit whores.
Why? Because it doesn't annoy you as much as spelling does? Because
it's not as straght-forward to "correct"? It seems to be very much
part of the same issue if you ask me.
the "we're all against you" playground
routine doesn't wash. It's no
surprise for a handful of Americans and Americanised types to oppose this,
but I doubt you'd get the same from Brits and Irish.
If this is to be an inclusive, uniting project, then this issue over
American-English hegemony needs to be resolved in a fair way.
I am British, born and bred, and strongly object to being labelled
"Americanised" simply because I am pragmatic enough to put up with two
spellings of the word "colour". I hate to say this, but you're
beginning to remind me of a much-discussed-on-this-list anti-semitic
individual (sorry, "White Nationalist") who believed Wikipedia was run
by a Zionist Conspiracy of Jews, with the unaware support of "useful
idiots". I am not a "useful idiot" of either a Jewish or an American
conspiracy, I am an individual who tries to examine propositions
logically and reach his own conclusions.
That rant over, I would characterise it more as you coming and saying
"I'm against all of you" than us saying "we're all against
you" - you
have yet to prove that there is even an issue to solve (except
inasmuch as it is stopping you from contributing; and the more I hear
of your biases, the less of a problem that seems).
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]