People are looking for things to become outraged about.
You hold open a door for someone, and they're like, "What, do you think I'm too old to open a door?" Or, "Well! That ladies first nonsense went *out* decades ago, you chauvinist p*****"
Calling a game 'soccer' or 'football' will get you punch in the mouth in certain European pubs.
People will fight to the death over the name of a river; or a "nation" like Quebec; or everyone's favorite: "Judea and Samaria" vs. "occupied Palestinian territories".
Now we will all have to take a few days off to argue about who an "American" is:
* North America = Canada, US, Mexico, Central America + Caribbean Islands * South America = Columbia and all those other countries south of the Panama Canal
BUT:
* norteamericano = US + Canada * Latin America = Mexico and all countries south of it
I no longer have time for such games; I have more important crops to plant. If anyone wants to use Wikipedia to cultivate their outrage, go ahead and do it but don't expect me to get excited about it.
Uncle Ed, aka Ed Poor
Ed-
People are looking for things to become outraged about.
You hold open a door for someone, and they're like, "What, do you think I'm too old to open a door?" Or, "Well! That ladies first nonsense went *out* decades ago, you chauvinist p*****"
Calling a game 'soccer' or 'football' will get you punch in the mouth in certain European pubs.
People will fight to the death over the name of a river; or a "nation" like Quebec; or everyone's favorite: "Judea and Samaria" vs. "occupied Palestinian territories".
Consider this adage: "Opinions are like asses - everyone has one." (And I don't think this refers to donkeys.) These naming disputes are an opportunity for people to contribute to Wikipedia who may not have much else to say. The best way to solve them is to have a quick vote (not a braindead manual voting system like the one used here) and get on with more serious matters. The people who then carry on the disputes are the ones who seek to cultivate outrage, as you put it.
Even though the voting system used was screwed up and took far too long, the end result ("List of people from the United States") seems perfectly acceptable. I would suggest a similar name should we ever have a "List of people from the European Union".
Regards,
Erik
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 11:40:56 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
People are looking for things to become outraged about.
BUT:
- norteamericano = US + Canada
- Latin America = Mexico and all countries south of it
Now hold on! You can't go around saying that the people of Belize, Guyana or Surinam are Latins. :-)
Doesn't the current President of the USA wich he spoke Latin so that he could communicate with them? :-)
Richard Grevers wrote:
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 11:40:56 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
People are looking for things to become outraged about.
BUT:
- norteamericano = US + Canada
- Latin America = Mexico and all countries south of it
Now hold on! You can't go around saying that the people of Belize, Guyana or Surinam are Latins. :-)
Doesn't the current President of the USA wich he spoke Latin so that he could communicate with them? :-)
Latin and Pig-Latin are not the same, but then the pommies believe that they can be better understood on the Continent by simply speaking louder. :-P
Ec.
No. That was said about Dan Quayle, though I don't know if he really said it. Zoe Richard Grevers dramatic@xtra.co.nz wrote: Doesn't the current President of the USA wich he spoke Latin so that he could communicate with them? :-)
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:16:03 -0800 (PST), Zoe zoecomnena@yahoo.com wrote:
No. That was said about Dan Quayle, though I don't know if he really said it. Zoe
Thanks Zoe - so many of the Dan Quayle gags were recycled for George W., but that was one I must have missed the first time round. What does this say of the retention span of many Americans? :-)
Some discussion has occured in [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)]] about the formats of dates; i.e., whether or not [[January 2]], [[2003]] is American-Imperialist. (My feeling: yes, but that's not the only reason I like it.)
A suggestion was made to allow date strings to be wrapped in <date> - </date> tags which the Wikipediware will parse and render properly. I have written a Perl routine to not only do this, but also return either the American or the European format, based on a flag set in each user's preferences.
Questions:
How would I go about adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
Should I even bother adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
Does anyone care?
-- Sean Barrett | The more you sweat in peace, sean@epoptic.com | the less you bleed in war.
A suggestion was made to allow date strings to be wrapped in <date> - </date> tags which the Wikipediware will parse and render properly. I have written a Perl routine to not only do this, but also return either the American or the European format, based on a flag set in each user's preferences.
Questions: How would I go about adding this routine to the Wikipediware? Should I even bother adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
I don't want it. With some units (metres vs. feet etc.) I can understand the desire to provide automatic conversion, because many Europeans don't know the American system and vice versa. With dates, the common notations are reaonably unambiguous -- any reader, once familiar with our notation, can get used to it. As a German, I am already used to reading different date styles in English texts (mostly "February 27, 2003", "2/27/2003" and "27th of February, 2003" -- I haven't seen "27 February 2003" much, but maybe I wasn't paying attention). Having a German-style date in an English text (27. February 2003), on the other hand, would look alien to me.
Adding <date> tags also further complicates our syntax at little benefit. And I don't even want to think about converting all the existing dates.
What I do want is a consistent policy on the date style for each language. We should hold a vote on each Wikipedia to determine the preferred style.
Regards,
Erik
I also think it would cause edit wars between people who would insist that their favorite date format is the only way it should be. Zoe Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:> A suggestion was made to allow date strings to be wrapped in -
tags which the Wikipediware will parse and render properly. I have written a Perl routine to not only do this, but also return either the American or the European format, based on a flag set in each user's preferences.
Questions: How would I go about adding this routine to the Wikipediware? Should I even bother adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
I don't want it. With some units (metres vs. feet etc.) I can understand the desire to provide automatic conversion, because many Europeans don't know the American system and vice versa. With dates, the common notations are reaonably unambiguous -- any reader, once familiar with our notation, can get used to it. As a German, I am already used to reading different date styles in English texts (mostly "February 27, 2003", "2/27/2003" and "27th of February, 2003" -- I haven't seen "27 February 2003" much, but maybe I wasn't paying attention). Having a German-style date in an English text (27. February 2003), on the other hand, would look alien to me.
Adding tags also further complicates our syntax at little benefit. And I don't even want to think about converting all the existing dates.
What I do want is a consistent policy on the date style for each language. We should hold a vote on each Wikipedia to determine the preferred style.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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I apparently have failed to be clear why I wrote this function. The idea was to allow editors to use any date format they like at the time they write the article, but only need to mark it as a date. Thus, "<date>January 1, 2003,</date> was the Western New Years Day, but <date>1st of Feb.</date> was the [[Chinese New Year]]" would be a valid fragment.
Then the rendering engine would look at my preferences and render that sentence as "[[January 1|1 January]] [[2003]] was the Western New Years Day, but [[February 1|1 February]] was the [[Chinese New Year]]." Someone else's preferences may result in "[[2003]]-[[January 1|01-01]] was the Western New Years Day, but [[February 1|02-01]] was the [[Chinese New Year]]."
The idea was to provide increased flexibility -- to eliminate formatting requirements -- not to to impose them.
-- Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 17:59 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Date Formatter Written
I also think it would cause edit wars between people who would insist
that their favorite date format is the only way it should be.
Zoe
Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:
A suggestion was made to allow date strings to be wrapped in - tags which the Wikipediware will parse and render properly. I have written a Perl routine to not only do this, but also return
either
the American or the European format, based on a flag set in each
user's
preferences.
Questions: How would I go about adding this routine to the Wikipediware? Should I even bother adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
I don't want it. With some units (metres vs. feet etc.) I can
understand
the desire to provide automatic conversion, because many Europeans
don't
know the American system and vice versa. With dates, the common
notations
are reaonably unambiguous -- any reader, once familiar with our
notation,
can get used to it. As a German, I am already used to reading
different
date styles in Eng! lish texts (mostly "February 27, 2003",
"2/27/2003" and
"27th of February, 2003" -- I haven't seen "27 February 2003" much,
but
maybe I wasn't paying attention). Having a German-style date in an
English
text (27. February 2003), on the other hand, would look alien to me.
Adding tags also further complicates our syntax at little benefit. And I don't even want to think about converting all the existing
dates.
What I do want is a consistent policy on the date style for each
language.
We should hold a vote on each Wikipedia to determine the preferred
style.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Sean Barrett wrote:
Some discussion has occured in [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)]] about the formats of dates; i.e., whether or not [[January 2]], [[2003]] is American-Imperialist. (My feeling: yes, but that's not the only reason I like it.)
A suggestion was made to allow date strings to be wrapped in <date> - </date> tags which the Wikipediware will parse and render properly.
Why a date tag? Common date formats should be quite easy to find programmatically; the rare false positives can be <nowiki>'d away. Adding more new tags (particularly for things like dates, of which we have many thousands!) would just be a royal pain in the buttocks.
I have written a Perl routine to not only do this, but also return either the American or the European format, based on a flag set in each user's preferences.
Can I get them in 2003-01-02 format instead? :)
How would I go about adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
It would be a help to post it or a link to it to the wikitech-l list.
Should I even bother adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
Does anyone care?
(shrug) It's really part of the same issue as US vs UK (and most everyone else) spellings and word usage. What's normal to one group appears galling to the other, and we allow both equally and have no official preference. (Though there may be a de facto greater presence of one or ther other due to the relative proportions of contributors... additionally, there are the titles of the day pages, which really should be consistent, whereever they happen to be at, and however many redirect forms will get you there.)
A separate issue is presentation of dates in, for instance, recentchanges etc. I for one would prefer to see YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS everywhere. But then, I leave my timezone setting at UTC so you know I'm a weirdo. ;)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Richard Grevers wrote:
On Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:16:03 -0800 (PST), Zoe zoecomnena@yahoo.com wrote:
No. That was said about Dan Quayle, though I don't know if he really said it. Zoe
Thanks Zoe - so many of the Dan Quayle gags were recycled for George W., but that was one I must have missed the first time round. What does this say of the retention span of many Americans? :-)
It shows it to be quite long since they have retained the spirit of Dan Quayle throughout these many years. :-)
Ec