Daniel-
No - that's not what I wrote. I wrote that
whatever date style that is
already in an article should, in general, be respected
Oh, so there's also a firstborn rule. OK, that makes things even more
complicated for editors.
1) Check: article has dates in it? Yes: Use that style - No: Proceed
2) Check: article is about a British subject? Yes: Use British style - No:
Proceed
3) Use "American" style
This is a compromise since there was no clear majority
supporting either
style as absolute policy. So we must tolerate both.
As I said before, this is an illogical conclusion. Many of the same people
who voted FOR either of the existing options have already REJECTED the
other options that were listed. Nowhere was it made clear that if no
"clear majority" (whatever that is) could be determined, one of the other
listed options would be used. Nor have you been invested with the
authority to decide which option that would be.
If we do not then
whatever side
losses is going to /very/ pissed and many of them may leave or fork the
project based on such a minor difference.
That can always happen, with all of our policies. Whether it is worth
it should be decided by the Wikipedia community at large, not by a few
members of it. I personally think it is, but maybe many others agree with
you. So far it doesn't look like it.
> Of course,
> no similar rule exists for German style if I wrote "17. June"
> in an article about a German subject, I would be called a
> vandal after three reverts.
German style? Why the straw man? We are talking about
two competing /English
language/ styles. What the Germans do is their own business and has no
bearing on the subject at hand.
The underlying logic between the British/American split is to accommodate
the feelings of different users. Well, there's a third group of countries
that adds a dot after the number. One of these countries is Germany,
others are Denmark and Norway. Should we now, according to the same logic,
use this style in articles about Danish, German, and Norse subjects?
My point is: Giving stylistic privileges to one group of users working on
one segment of articles does not seem to be in the spirit of a neutral,
consistent encyclopedia to me.
The distribution of opinion is that a large group of
people want to have the
International style be the absolute standard and another large group want to
have the American style be the absolute standard. Both sides should be able
to live with a compromise that allows both.
Then let them vote for it, please. If they think the "compromise" (which
heavily favors the British user segment of Wikipedia) is worse than the
danger of losing some contributors, I don't think you have the privilege
to enforce another solution.
> * US-style spelling in all articles
> * British style dates in all articles
And then World War III starts between American and
non-American Wikipedians.
If so, hopefully one side will win and we can carry on with our business.
I don't buy the argument that we look
unprofessional by tolerating variant
spelling and date formats. We /would/ look unprofessional if we lost a large
segment of our users because we made an absolute policy to use one or the
other style though.
Personally, I don't think that will happen. Sure, there are always
absolutists. But if we agree on a style as a result of an open community
process, most people will probably be able to accept it.
What we do not want is a cabal. Agreed?
Regards,
Erik