On 6/6/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/6/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
Now, to get onto userboxes that are really disruptive, how about the
ones
that say "This user contributes in American English" or "This user contributes in British English". Isn't this, in essence, a rejection
on
Wikipedia's policy on accepting both AE and BE? Sure, on talk pages
and
one
Surprisingly, it's actually relevant. You're supposed to respect the preferences of the first contributor to an article. What better way to find out their preferences than checking their user page?
(I'm only being slightly facetious)
Well, I'd say that only holds if they expressed on. If I were to write a stub and use no words that differ between BE and AE, and someone else comes along and writes an article using AE, the "first user preference" is their's, not mine. Anyway, expressing a preference ("prefers BE" or "prefers AE") is fine. Saying that they "contribute" in AE/BE says "I don't want to compromise". If I write an article about an American topic, I should use AE, not matter how much it grates.
*sigh* People pursuing BE and AE should see what it's like to be a writer who has to write a certain way because our style guide says so. Our company writes in AE, while I personally dislike AE and prefer to write in BE as much as possible. I write in AE in my company because I'd likely get fired if I didn't.
I'm on a Wiki that uses AE exclusively (the Ultronomicon, a Star Control Wiki) because the Star Control game itself was written in AE, despite the fact that several main contributors, including the "founder" prefer to use BE. Therefore, our contributions to the main articlespace are in AE while most of the talk pages are in BE.
I prefer to to write in BE, but when I see people trying to convert American articles to BE, such as [[Special Activities Division]], it annoys me greatly. Same with British articles to AE (such as [[Harry Potter]]). This also applies to articles that could be written in either AE or BE, but were first written in one form, and people come to convert it over. I wish I could apply a category or template to indicate that the article is written in AE, and please piss off with the BE conversions (and vice versa).