Jason Williams wrote:
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