One reason we should scrupulously stick to conventions is that in the event that we someday have a long discussion and decide that our old convention is undesirable, our sticking to the convention makes it a lot easier to change.
That is, it would be pretty simple to write a script to move all pages from "Blah blah blah (movie)" to "Blah blah blah (film)", but a lot of work to fix "Blah blah blah (the movie)" and "Blah blah blah, a movie" and "The movie: Blah blah blah" and so on.
On 5/1/03 12:10 PM, "Jimmy Wales" jwales@bomis.com wrote:
One reason we should scrupulously stick to conventions is that in the event that we someday have a long discussion and decide that our old convention is undesirable, our sticking to the convention makes it a lot easier to change.
That is, it would be pretty simple to write a script to move all pages from "Blah blah blah (movie)" to "Blah blah blah (film)", but a lot of work to fix "Blah blah blah (the movie)" and "Blah blah blah, a movie" and "The movie: Blah blah blah" and so on.
We actually did have a big discussion about this and film ended up being nixed because of the problem of digital videa replacing actual film as the medium for "films". Thus, "movie".
This was a *long* time ago so I have no memory where the record of that discussion is.
On Thu, 2003-05-01 at 09:35, The Cunctator wrote:
We actually did have a big discussion about this and film ended up being nixed because of the problem of digital videa replacing actual film as the medium for "films". Thus, "movie".
Wow, I sure don't remember *that* discussion, and I find that argument fundamentally flawed to the point of being comical. Might there have been two such discussions, I wonder?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)