David Friedland wrote:
I recognize that spoken British English and spoken American English are very different in many subtle and usually ainconsequential ways, as you say, but _written_ British English and American English, which are much more standardized, tend to differ in certain specific ways...
Although I still disagree with the conclusion, I did want to acknowledge that this is certainly true.
Where a word has different spellings/usages, the spelling/usage that has the most number of Google hits shall be the spelling/usage used on Wikipedia. If the spelling/usage with the most number of Google hits changes, then so shall the spellings/usages on Wikipedia.
At least this way we can be sure that the spellings/usages we use will be ones used by a majority that is based on actual data. It's incontrovertible, democratic, neutral, and completely dialect-agnostic. Not to mention consistent.
This does have some merit, and of course "number of Google hits" is a traditional method of settling other disputes. But the problem as I see it is that American English is much more common on the Internet than other variants, so the rule would in practice amount to "always use American English" -- and this strikes me as deeply undesirable.
I suppose the biggest area where we differ is in our estimation of the magnitude of the problem. I view the differences as relatively minor, and as far as I have been able to determine, the number of edit wars and acrimonious arguments about this has been quite small overall. Are people really getting upset about this?
--Jimbo