True. In American English, a list of 3 items is usually "bacon, eggs, and cheese" - not "bacon, eggs and cheese." The later implies a connection between the items, but the former doesn't.
James
-------------- Original message --------------
e2m wrote:
Why this resource is not used to deal with the differences of the type "behaviour" and "behavior" or "center" and "centre"?
One reason is that the differences between American and British English are more involved than simply changing the spelling of a few words. Punctuation and grammar are also involved. If you changed behavior to behaviour in an otherwise AE sentence, the sentence would then be wrong in both languages. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences
Angela. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
True. In American English, a list of 3 items is usually "bacon, eggs, and cheese" - not "bacon, eggs and cheese." The later implies a connection between the items, but the former doesn't.
From a book dedication:
I'd like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
Sean Barrett wrote:
True. In American English, a list of 3 items is usually "bacon, eggs, and cheese" - not "bacon, eggs and cheese." The later implies a connection between the items, but the former doesn't.
From a book dedication:
I'd like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
This case is covered in the style manual, which recommends the "with comma" version for exactly that reason, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_style#Commas
(FWIW, the punctuation section I couldn't remember the reference to is on that page as well, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_style#Punctuation)
The current style suggestions seem mostly reasonable to me. Certainly better than a bunch of weird wikimarkup to try to accomodate all variants.
-Mark
On Sep 30, 2004, at 3:49 PM, Delirium wrote:
This case is covered in the style manual, which recommends the "with comma" version for exactly that reason, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_style#Commas
(FWIW, the punctuation section I couldn't remember the reference to is on that page as well, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_style#Punctuation)
The current style suggestions seem mostly reasonable to me. Certainly better than a bunch of weird wikimarkup to try to accomodate all variants.
-Mark
I agree, the mark up idea looks like a problem in search of a problem.
My 2 [[eurocent]]s:
The possibilities for diverse British/American spelling being so widespread, the adoption of "both options"-markup would absolutely _guarantee_ that every single article's markup would become so convoluted that it will more successfully prevent new contributors from joining the Wikipedia than all other "less than optimal" proposals combined.
The differences between British/US English DO NOT impair understanding of the article text for most people. Extra markup to "cater for" these differences DECIDEDLY WOULD impair understanding of the markup text for most people.
IMHO the motion to introduce the proposed markup epitomizes the victory of grammarian stormtrooping over the KISS principle.
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On 30 Sep 2004, at 20:53, modean52@comcast.net wrote:
True. In American English, a list of 3 items is usually "bacon, eggs, and cheese" - not "bacon, eggs and cheese." The later implies a connection between the items, but the former doesn't.
James
-------------- Original message --------------
e2m wrote:
Why this resource is not used to deal with the differences of the type "behaviour" and "behavior" or "center" and "centre"?
One reason is that the differences between American and British English are more involved than simply changing the spelling of a few words. Punctuation and grammar are also involved. If you changed behavior to behaviour in an otherwise AE sentence, the sentence would then be wrong in both languages. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences
Angela. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Jens Ropers wrote:
My 2 [[eurocent]]s:
The possibilities for diverse British/American spelling being so widespread, the adoption of "both options"-markup would absolutely _guarantee_ that every single article's markup would become so convoluted that it will more successfully prevent new contributors from joining the Wikipedia than all other "less than optimal" proposals combined.
The differences between British/US English DO NOT impair understanding of the article text for most people. Extra markup to "cater for" these differences DECIDEDLY WOULD impair understanding of the markup text for most people.
IMHO the motion to introduce the proposed markup epitomizes the victory of grammarian stormtrooping over the KISS principle.
Every suggestion to add a feature to wiki markup gets immediately denounced by certain people who insist that adding any new feature will make the wiki markup too complicated and drive away new users.
And yet, no one has ever shown that that new users have been put off complex wiki markup. In fact, the number of editors grows every day, and continues to grow, regardless of the complexity of wiki markup. This kind of reactionary opposition to the addition of features to wiki markup is unwarranted. We already have wiki markup for mathematical formulas and even Egyptial hieroglyphics. Why is support for dialect variants such an onerous addition? Do want to not implement a feature that actual people want and desire and will use because there may be hypothetical people who might not join the project because we have the feature?
It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails, tables, and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to read and understand for new users. The reality is that in the creation of an encyclopedia, there are complicated things and ideas that require complicated markup. Is localized dialectical consistency not something worth striving for? And who should make that decision?
Is
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue.
going to dissuade users from editing an article any more than the following?
<div style="border: 1px solid black; background: #ffefcf; padding: 7px;">If you were looking for an article on the abbreviation "VFD", please see [[VFD]].</div>
{{Shortcut|[[WP:VFD]]}} {{deletiontools}} {{VfD_header}} [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&... <small>edit</small>]
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
- David Friedland
On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:29:59 -0700, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
Is The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue. going to dissuade users from editing an article any more than the following?
I think you are over-simplifying the problem, David. My point earlier was that changing from American to British English is about far more than just swapping a few words. In the example you give above, you'd actually need
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the -{en-us U.S.; en-gb US}- flag are red, white-{en-us ,; en-gb }-and blue.
This is not a natural way of writing and would be practically impossible to read in the edit box, or on a diff page. The difference between this and templates such as the VfD shortcut is that {{Shortcut|[[WP:VFD]]}} very rarely needs to be edited. These are add-ons to articles, not part of the body of text itself. There's no need to ever learn what {{VfD header}} does, whereas if you want to edit an article you would need to understand this proposed spelling syntax.
Angela.
David Friedland wrote:
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue.
going to dissuade users from editing an article any more than the following?
<div style="border: 1px solid black; background: #ffefcf; padding: 7px;">If you were looking for an article on the abbreviation "VFD", please see [[VFD]].</div>
{{Shortcut|[[WP:VFD]]}} {{deletiontools}} {{VfD_header}} [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&... <small>edit</small>]
Actually this already happens - look at article histories, and you'll see dozens of editors not fixing obviously broken table or image markups, and when I fix those myself, I'll get little thank-you notes from people saying "I have no idea how those work". Fortunately they occur in support bits like images, not in the content proper. As Angela's excellent example shows, the markup can easily overwhelm the text and render it as unreadable as any HTML hack.
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
So you're saying that there are Americans unable to follow articles written in British style, and vice versa? I've not seen that - the most common situation is where readers understand full well what is being said, but object to the way it's being said, usually for nationalist/chauvinist reasons. We should take our example from the Portuguese, who recognize that there are local dialects, but who have set themselves the goal of writing their encyclopedic material in a dialect-neutral fashion.
Stan
David Friedland wrote:
Jens Ropers wrote:
My 2 [[eurocent]]s:
The possibilities for diverse British/American spelling being so widespread, the adoption of "both options"-markup would absolutely _guarantee_ that every single article's markup would become so convoluted that it will more successfully prevent new contributors from joining the Wikipedia than all other "less than optimal" proposals combined.
The differences between British/US English DO NOT impair understanding of the article text for most people. Extra markup to "cater for" these differences DECIDEDLY WOULD impair understanding of the markup text for most people.
IMHO the motion to introduce the proposed markup epitomizes the victory of grammarian stormtrooping over the KISS principle.
Every suggestion to add a feature to wiki markup gets immediately denounced by certain people who insist that adding any new feature will make the wiki markup too complicated and drive away new users.
And yet, no one has ever shown that that new users have been put off complex wiki markup. In fact, the number of editors grows every day, and continues to grow, regardless of the complexity of wiki markup. This kind of reactionary opposition to the addition of features to wiki markup is unwarranted. We already have wiki markup for mathematical formulas and even Egyptial hieroglyphics. Why is support for dialect variants such an onerous addition? Do want to not implement a feature that actual people want and desire and will use because there may be hypothetical people who might not join the project because we have the feature?
It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails, tables, and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to read and understand for new users. The reality is that in the creation of an encyclopedia, there are complicated things and ideas that require complicated markup. Is localized dialectical consistency not something worth striving for? And who should make that decision?
Is
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue.
going to dissuade users from editing an article any more than the following?
<div style="border: 1px solid black; background: #ffefcf; padding: 7px;">If you were looking for an article on the abbreviation "VFD", please see [[VFD]].</div>
{{Shortcut|[[WP:VFD]]}} {{deletiontools}} {{VfD_header}} [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&... <small>edit</small>]
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
- David Friedland
Please consider that there is English spoken outside us and uk, consider our dear friends down under, who are said to be understandable while speaking English, Please consider these poor sods who do not speak English right from the tit. Yes, there are differences, but when I, someone from the Netherlands am to write stupid markup where I am not even really aware if it is American or English what I write, I promis you that you will find many people like me leaving the English wikipedia as an editor.
The difference with table markup and whatever markup is, that they add value, they add content that everyone understands. Not only that, this mark-up works in ALL wikipedia and is not so parochial. The difference between en-uk or en-us or en-au is not something that adds value for many, while complicating wiki beyond recognition. If this extra markup is hidden from view when editing, we are talking. But as long as we are to see this markup, we will lose many people and for what, for who ?
Thanks, GerardM
On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:29:59 -0700, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
Is
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue.
going to dissuade users from editing an article any more than the following?
Here's a scenario: Sue the Surfer comes across an article that says "The colour of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue." Spotting the "Edit this page" link - and maybe having surfed enough to get the idea that it really means she can - she clicks. She looks for the text she wanted to change, and sees "The -{en-us color; en-gb colour}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue." Does she know what to do now? Are "en-us" and "en-gb" likely to mean anything to her? Will she know that she needs to put the s onto both spellings? Will she understand that some people see one and some the other? The answer is likely to be no, and the result may be that she "leaves it to someone more experienced".
Unlike with a lot of the existing features, this example doesn't feature anything intrinsically complex (maths formulae, formatted navigation boxes which are displayed on multiple pages, etc); it just comes in the middle of a sentence. I think that's quite a significant difference. Note that markup such as ''italics'' and '''bold''', although somewhat opaque to a new user, doesn't actually interfere with the text, it just looks like somewhat spilt some punctuation nearby. Probably the most imposing markup we have *in the middle of sentences* right now is piped links: "The colours of the [[United Kingdom|British]] flag are red, white and blue" (there are times it looks worse than that, I know, but I'm tired). Hopefully, the effect of those is clear enough that it wouldn't take someone long to just guess; language switching may not be quite so obvious, because it's very hard to see in action.
<div style="border: 1px solid black; background: #ffefcf; padding: 7px;">If you were looking for an article on the abbreviation "VFD", please see [[VFD]].</div>
{{Shortcut|[[WP:VFD]]}} {{deletiontools}} {{VfD_header}} [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&... <small>edit</small>]
That example shows some interesting things: the <div> at the top is ugly, because it is essentially a hack to get the desired effect, something we haven't come up with wiki-syntax for. The templates neatly hide away ugly table code, and some ugly <div>s; they are hard to edit, because templates are relatively new, and we haven't come up with a decent interface for them yet - this could indeed be a fairly major point of confusion. The last line is even hackier than the first, and is just crying out for some proper wiki-markup to be invented, because it looks a lot more complex than it really is.
This suggests to me that: extra wiki-markup can be a force for good as well as evil. We need to use it sparingly, and design it carefully, so that the confusion caused doesn't outweigh the advantage of the extra feature.
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
But the question is: is the impact of the proposed solution proportional to the impact of the problem. My personal feeling is that, for barely-dialectical variants of English, the answer is no.
I also agree with Angela's point that we need to remember just how many variants of English there are out there, and consider whether artificially splitting the English-speaking world into US and UK could actually *cause* conflict over what the people see who are neither.
David-
It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails, tables, and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to read and understand for new users.
Not really. Templates hide complexity and give ordinary users the power to quickly make use of things like nicely formatted infoboxes without knowing anything about the HTML. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of our table syntax, however; I'm as geeky as they come and I still fall back to HTML every now and then. The reStructured Text syntax is much lovelier, albeit easy to mess up:
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | Header row, column 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 | Header 4 | | (header rows optional) | | | | +========================+============+==========+==========+ | body row 1, column 1 | column 2 | column 3 | column 4 | +------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | body row 2 | Cells may span columns. | +------------------------+------------+---------------------+ | body row 3 | Cells may | - Table cells | +------------------------+ span rows. | - contain | | body row 4 | | - body elements. | +------------------------+------------+---------------------+ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#tables
Still, I think a combination of something like this for quick tables, and HTML hidden in templates for complex ones would be best.
Like templates, image tags have also reduced the amount of visible HTML in articles - don't you remember when we cleaned out all the <div style="float:right"> tags? This is a good thing. Surely you're not suggesting there's a need for empirical proof that added complexity deters newbies? I hold that truth to be self-evident, but in case you don't, browse around a TWiki or TikiWiki site sometime.
I believe that in the long term, we must entirely eliminate HTML from all regular pages and limit its use exclusively to templates. For this, we need to make some improvements to the template syntax (default values, loops, conditions) so that all current HTML content can be moved there and used dynamically.
Things which need a clean wikitext replacement: - — (my suggestion: --) - (my suggestion: __) - <br> (my suggestion: \) ...
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue.
I think you won't find any supporters for that scheme ;-). Even though we have ugliness in some articles, our sentences are at least readable. The current situation with regard to spelling is somewhat dissatisfactory to consistency nuts like ourselves, but aside from auto-conversion for the most common words (which would probably take too much performance to be worthwhile), I really see no good solution.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
David-
It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails, tables, and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to read and understand for new users.
Not really. Templates hide complexity and give ordinary users the power to quickly make use of things like nicely formatted infoboxes without knowing anything about the HTML. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of our table syntax, however; I'm as geeky as they come and I still fall back to HTML every now and then. The reStructured Text syntax is much lovelier, albeit easy to mess up:
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | Header row, column 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 | Header 4 | | (header rows optional) | | | | +========================+============+==========+==========+ | body row 1, column 1 | column 2 | column 3 | column 4 | +------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | body row 2 | Cells may span columns. | +------------------------+------------+---------------------+ | body row 3 | Cells may | - Table cells | +------------------------+ span rows. | - contain | | body row 4 | | - body elements. | +------------------------+------------+---------------------+ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#tables
Still, I think a combination of something like this for quick tables, and HTML hidden in templates for complex ones would be best.
Like templates, image tags have also reduced the amount of visible HTML in articles - don't you remember when we cleaned out all the <div style="float:right"> tags? This is a good thing. Surely you're not suggesting there's a need for empirical proof that added complexity deters newbies? I hold that truth to be self-evident, but in case you don't, browse around a TWiki or TikiWiki site sometime.
I believe that in the long term, we must entirely eliminate HTML from all regular pages and limit its use exclusively to templates. For this, we need to make some improvements to the template syntax (default values, loops, conditions) so that all current HTML content can be moved there and used dynamically.
Things which need a clean wikitext replacement:
- — (my suggestion: --)
- (my suggestion: __)
- <br> (my suggestion: \)
...
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white and blue.
I think you won't find any supporters for that scheme ;-). Even though we have ugliness in some articles, our sentences are at least readable. The current situation with regard to spelling is somewhat dissatisfactory to consistency nuts like ourselves, but aside from auto-conversion for the most common words (which would probably take too much performance to be worthwhile), I really see no good solution.
Regards,
Erik
I've just had an idea:
Why not use templates as the solution? Put the dialect-specific code in the templates, and just put {{ }} around words that vary by dialect. That can't be any worse than '' '' for italics, can it? That would solve probably 90% of the cases.
Thus, for our example sentence, we would have something like
The {{colour}}s of the U.S. flag are red, white, and blue.
And the colour template would have the dialect-specific code like
-{en-us color; en-gb colour}-
Similarly, {{zucchini}} could be
Of course, then we would have to agree on what to call the templates, but that seems like a much easier problem to deal with. At the very least, {{color}} could just include the {{colour}} template, or vice-versa.
- David
Grrr, accidentally pressed ctrl-return to send...
I meant to say
I've just had an idea:
Why not use templates as the solution? Put the dialect-specific code in the templates, and just put {{ }} around words that vary by dialect. That can't be any worse than '' '' for italics, can it? That would solve probably 90% of the cases.
Thus, for our example sentence, we would have something like
The {{colour}}s of the U.S. flag are red, white, and blue.
And the colour template would have the dialect-specific code like
-{en-us color; en-gb colour}-
Similarly, {{zucchini}} could be
{-en-au Zucchini en-nz Courgette en-us Zucchini en-gb Courgette en-ca Zucchini-}
Of course, then we would have to agree on what to call the templates, but that seems like a much easier problem to deal with. At the very least, {{color}} could just include the {{colour}} template, or vice-versa.
- David
David Friedland wrote:
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
Why do you say it is a fiction? I don't see any real problems with it at all. There must be some examples that would tend to persuade me, but color/colour and the like are not very compelling.
I discovered the last time I was in London that what we Americans call 'arugula' is called 'rocket'. This is a rather preposterous name for a lettuce, in my opinion, but nonetheless, that's what they say. And I was pleased to have learned about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arugula
would have informed me of this quite well. Would it be better to have used fancy wiki markup to deny me this learning opportunity?
Where the languages are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, we don't need to do anything. Where the languages are different enough to cause trouble, we have a delightful teaching opportunity which adds considerable richness to our work.
--Jimbo
On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:32:42 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I discovered the last time I was in London that what we Americans call 'arugula' is called 'rocket'. This is a rather preposterous name for a lettuce, in my opinion, but nonetheless, that's what they say.
And "arugula" is a *sensible* name? It's not even pronouncable... ;)
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
David Friedland wrote:
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that they are different, that those differences can and empirically do cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
Why do you say it is a fiction? I don't see any real problems with it at all. There must be some examples that would tend to persuade me, but color/colour and the like are not very compelling.
Well, let's talk about the million/milliard/billion/billiard/trillion fiasco.
See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations]
It says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks"
Now, I'm a fairly linguistically tuned-in guy, and I'm familiar with the word "milliard", but only in the sense that it's a large number that has something to do with "million" and "billion". I just quickly asked all my co-workers if they knew how much a milliard was, and none of them had even heard of the word, let alone knew how much it was (and they all have degrees in linguistics).
If Wikipedia is to be maximally accessible, it shouldn't use dialectical words like this that are mostly inaccessible to to a large group of native speakers (in this case, Americans).
But the alternative is not entirely satisfactory to the speakers of en-gb and related dialects. To them, a "billion" can be 1,000,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 depending on which system is being used. To them, the least ambiguous way to describe the number 226,000,000,000 is to say "226 milliard", as was done is this article.
So what is the solution? One suggestion would be just to avoid these words, of which admittedly there aren't many. "Milliard" and "billion" could just be written out as large numbers. The problem with this solution is that it sacrifices overall readability. It's much easier to read "1 billion" than "1,000,000,000" (did you notice yourself counting the zeroes?).
Another example is the verb "slate":
According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_Brit...], slate means "to disparage" in en-gb but "to schedule" in en-us. In the (admittedly not very good) article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Mongoose], we have "the idea of giving him a tattoo could be seen as a bit mature so the idea was slated". To an en-us reader, this sentence will be at best confusing and at worst misleading. Was the idea of giving him a tattoo disparaged or scheduled?
I want to note that all my examples are from the American perspective because I am American. Also, it is my understanding (although I don't have any firm proof of this) that American culture has a stronger overall impact on the British than the reverse, due partly to global American cultural hegemony and partly to rampant cultural isolationism in the US. In other words, my guess is that it is more likely British readers will be familiar with American usage than the other way around.
The differences are indeed few and the likelihood of confusion small, but nevertheless possible. Rather than gloss over these problems or embrace them in the name of diversity, we should endeavor to eliminate the likelihood of confusing our readers. We will have done the reader a great disservice if he or she reads an article, and based on dialectical differences, comes away with a misunderstanding of the topic.
In most cases, the potential misunderstanding can be fixed by rewording, but as in the milliard example, alternatives are non-ideal. Should we settle for a non-ideal solution, or should we create a solution that is ideal?
It is a fact that modern browsers can be configured to specify what language and dialect they prefer, and this feature _could_ be used to help reduce the amount of potential misunderstanding on Wikipedia. Why not take advantage?
In my last post, I made a proposal to use templates for dialect marking. Thus, in the examples above, making the wikitext the following would fix it:
a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 {{milliard}} gold marks
would appear to an en-gb reader as
a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks
and to an en-us reader as
a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold marks
And if we allow that, who's it going to hurt to allow "The primary {{colours}} are red, yellow, and blue."? Certainly a few extra {{ }} marks aren't any more burdensome than ''' marks.
Our primary duty is to inform, and we should create solutions for impediments to our duty.
I discovered the last time I was in London that what we Americans call 'arugula' is called 'rocket'. This is a rather preposterous name for a lettuce, in my opinion, but nonetheless, that's what they say. And I was pleased to have learned about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arugula
would have informed me of this quite well. Would it be better to have used fancy wiki markup to deny me this learning opportunity?
If you were reading about the primary exports of a small region of an obscure country and in the list was "rocket", is it possible you could have come away from the article believing that the obscure country is a mjor exporter of rockets? Under ideal conditions, yes, these kinds of dialectical differences can be illuminating, but under equally likely non-ideal conditions, the differences can be confusing and misleading.
Where the languages are similar enough to be mutually intelligible, we don't need to do anything. Where the languages are different enough to cause trouble, we have a delightful teaching opportunity which adds considerable richness to our work.
While I admire the pluck of characterizing inconsistency as richness, I think that "down in the trenches" the reality of the differences in dialect (mostly between en-us and en-gb, but also, for example between pt-pt and pt-br) is a continuous stream of conflict, debate, confusion, and frustration that policy has failed to allieviate.
There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and not significantly burden editors. Should we reject this solution on the wishful notion that our differences can unite rather than divide us?
- David
David Friedland wrote:
There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and not significantly burden editors.
See, the trouble is that both of those assertions probably aren't the case and have been questioned already on this list without sufficient answer.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
David Friedland wrote:
There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and not significantly burden editors.
See, the trouble is that both of those assertions probably aren't the case and have been questioned already on this list without sufficient answer.
- d.
In fact no one has replied in specific to my most recent proposal as to why it might be unacceptable (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-October/035317.html)
- David
David Friedland wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
David Friedland wrote:
There exists a technical solution that would alleviate the problem and not significantly burden editors.
See, the trouble is that both of those assertions probably aren't the case and have been questioned already on this list without sufficient answer.
- d.
In fact no one has replied in specific to my most recent proposal as to why it might be unacceptable (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-October/035317.html)
- David
You are wrong. To me English is English I am colo(ur) blind to what makes English English or American. You forget that there other types of English as well and as I mentioned earlier when I am expected to do the work YOU want people to do, you can count me, and with me many non-native (whatever English) speakers out, to contribute to EN:wiktionary. I have posted these reasons before.
On a brighter note, your problem got me thinking and I have introduced templates in the nl:wiktionary to enable the indication of words in their regionality. I have created templates for German, English and Chinese at this time. Propably more will follow. (see [[wikt:nl:Catalaans]] for an example with traditional and simplified Chinese The names for the templates are zh-tc and zh-sc. I welcome any suggestions to make them more usable.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
You are wrong. To me English is English I am colo(ur) blind to what makes English English or American.
OK...
You forget that there other types of English as well and
This is patently false. If you actually read my proposal, you would see that both the proposal and the examples given account for more varieties than just en-us and en-gb. The reason I focus on en-us and en-gb is because that is where the greatest differences are. Most of the other written dialects of English are substantially the same as either en-us or en-gb, with minor variation in usage.
as I mentioned earlier when I am expected to do the work YOU want people to do, you can count me, and with me many non-native (whatever English) speakers out, to contribute to EN:wiktionary. I have posted these reasons before.
I don't think there was anything about my proposal that indicated that editors will be expected to know all the regional differences and be required to put variant words in curly brackets. The beauty of the wiki system, you see, is that when someone comes along who DOES know the word is a regionalism, they can add the brackets, thus increasing the article's accessibility.
Besides, there are plenty of people who get bothered when they read things written in a foreign dialect. Why not allow them to read Wikipedia the way the want to?
- David
David Friedland wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
You are wrong. To me English is English I am colo(ur) blind to what makes English English or American.
OK...
You forget that there other types of English as well and
This is patently false. If you actually read my proposal, you would see that both the proposal and the examples given account for more varieties than just en-us and en-gb. The reason I focus on en-us and en-gb is because that is where the greatest differences are. Most of the other written dialects of English are substantially the same as either en-us or en-gb, with minor variation in usage.
as I mentioned earlier when I am expected to do the work YOU want people to do, you can count me, and with me many non-native (whatever English) speakers out, to contribute to EN:wiktionary. I have posted these reasons before.
I don't think there was anything about my proposal that indicated that editors will be expected to know all the regional differences and be required to put variant words in curly brackets. The beauty of the wiki system, you see, is that when someone comes along who DOES know the word is a regionalism, they can add the brackets, thus increasing the article's accessibility.
Besides, there are plenty of people who get bothered when they read things written in a foreign dialect. Why not allow them to read Wikipedia the way the want to?
- David
You underestimate the problems with readability you get when your proposal is set into motion. I do not think I will bother with editing en:texts when I cannot easily read what it says. When people are edititing a text, they have to read what it says. All this extra balast will make it hard just to READ the article let alone edit it. So maybe there are "plenty" people who get bothered when they read something they are not familiar with but making it extra hard to editors will also make for "plenty" people who resent this unreadable garble. An other thing you miss is that with other ways of writing you get slightly different meanings and your system CANNOT cater for that.
Is Wikipedia not a platform to make people come together ??
PS The USA and the UK should go metric. :)
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
You underestimate the problems with readability you get when your proposal is set into motion. I do not think I will bother with editing en:texts when I cannot easily read what it says. When people are edititing a text, they have to read what it says. All this extra balast will make it hard just to READ the article let alone edit it. So maybe there are "plenty" people who get bothered when they read something they are not familiar with but making it extra hard to editors will also make for "plenty" people who resent this unreadable garble.
How exactly does putting curly brackets around a word make it any less readable than square brackets as for links, or quote marks as for bold and italic?
I'm sorry, but calling
The primary {{colors}}, according to ''The Big Book of Color'', are [[red]], [[yellow]], and [[blue]].
"unreadable garble", but saying
The primary colors, according to ''The Big Book of Color'', are [[red]], [[yellow]], and [[blue]].
is not "unreadable garble" is disingenuous.
An other thing you miss is that with other ways of writing you get slightly different meanings and your system CANNOT cater for that.
Neither does your system, which I presume is doing nothing. I'm not claiming my proposal is a cure-all for problems regarding understandability. It is, however, a way to increase understandability and also increase consistency. Doing nothing, of course, does nothing to increase understandability or consistency.
- David
I don't actually have an opinion on David's proposal yet.
I am however under the impression that it probably has gotten confused with earlier proposals by some of us and that it hasn't really been looked at by most of us. Without having made up my mind, I think it does indeed deserve another look:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-October/ 035317.html
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On 6 Oct 2004, at 11:06, David Friedland wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
You underestimate the problems with readability you get when your proposal is set into motion. I do not think I will bother with editing en:texts when I cannot easily read what it says. When people are edititing a text, they have to read what it says. All this extra balast will make it hard just to READ the article let alone edit it. So maybe there are "plenty" people who get bothered when they read something they are not familiar with but making it extra hard to editors will also make for "plenty" people who resent this unreadable garble.
How exactly does putting curly brackets around a word make it any less readable than square brackets as for links, or quote marks as for bold and italic?
I'm sorry, but calling
The primary {{colors}}, according to ''The Big Book of Color'', are [[red]], [[yellow]], and [[blue]].
"unreadable garble", but saying
The primary colors, according to ''The Big Book of Color'', are [[red]], [[yellow]], and [[blue]].
is not "unreadable garble" is disingenuous.
An other thing you miss is that with other ways of writing you get slightly
different
meanings and your system CANNOT cater for that.
Neither does your system, which I presume is doing nothing. I'm not claiming my proposal is a cure-all for problems regarding understandability. It is, however, a way to increase understandability and also increase consistency. Doing nothing, of course, does nothing to increase understandability or consistency.
- David
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Gerard Meijssen gerardm@myrealbox.com wrote:
PS The USA and the UK should go metric. :)
The UK already has - well, except for road signs and beer. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#UK_and_Ireland
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 01:14:26 -0700, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
I don't think there was anything about my proposal that indicated that editors will be expected to know all the regional differences and be required to put variant words in curly brackets. The beauty of the wiki system, you see, is that when someone comes along who DOES know the word is a regionalism, they can add the brackets, thus increasing the article's accessibility.
This isn't an argument against your {{foo}} proposal, more an additional design consideration, but there is a problem with how you know, while reading, whether an article is using translations or not - by design, you only see one version of the text. So people will only come across places to put these braces (or whatever other markup, for that matter) if they are already editing the article. Or, I suppose, if the word they see is not the one that matches their choice of dialect.
----
On the "milliard" front, can I just point out that this isn't actually normal British usage anyway - "thousand million", ugly though it is, is what British people would have called 1000,000,000 until recently. Some probably still do, and when "billion" is used in casual usage, let alone "trillion", it tends to be worth checking the context to see if it is a traditional/European (10^12) billion or a US/modern (10^9) billion.
If you standardise on "-{en-us billion en-uk thousand million}-", you're going to get into trouble with "-{en-us trillion": the obvious choice of "en-uk billion}-" is not a good idea, because many official British institutions now use the US definition of "billion" anyway. Maybe this just means we shouldn't bother translating this one at all, or maybe it goes to show how complex this problem really is; I'm not sure which.
David Friedland wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
You are wrong. To me English is English I am colo(ur) blind to what makes English English or American.
OK...
You forget that there other types of English as well and
This is patently false. If you actually read my proposal, you would see that both the proposal and the examples given account for more varieties than just en-us and en-gb. The reason I focus on en-us and en-gb is because that is where the greatest differences are. Most of the other written dialects of English are substantially the same as either en-us or en-gb, with minor variation in usage.
as I mentioned earlier when I am expected to do the work YOU want people to do, you can count me, and with me many non-native (whatever English) speakers out, to contribute to EN:wiktionary. I have posted these reasons before.
I don't think there was anything about my proposal that indicated that editors will be expected to know all the regional differences and be required to put variant words in curly brackets. The beauty of the wiki system, you see, is that when someone comes along who DOES know the word is a regionalism, they can add the brackets, thus increasing the article's accessibility.
Besides, there are plenty of people who get bothered when they read things written in a foreign dialect. Why not allow them to read Wikipedia the way the want to?
- David
I have rememebered wrong for which I am sorry, the curly brackets do hide the difficult stuff. This makes a world of difference.
However, which word are you to use for the template "colour" or "color" ? The point is when you decide you want to edit an existing article you have to search for the place where you want to edit. This is because of the difference in layout. When the words also change because of these templates, it will be that much harder to find the right location. So I had it wrong, the curly brackets hide the complications I thought there were but, there are still arguments against your scheme.
Thanks, GerardM
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 15:28:49 +0200, Gerard Meijssen gerardm@myrealbox.com wrote:
However, which word are you to use for the template "colour" or "color"?
This is an interesting point. AFAIK, you can't use redirects in templates to include the content of Template:Color when you enter {{colour}}, but it is feasible that this feature could become available in the future.
On 6 Oct 2004, at 15:28, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
David Friedland wrote:
<snip>
I have rememebered wrong for which I am sorry, the curly brackets do hide the difficult stuff. This makes a world of difference.
However, which word are you to use for the template "colour" or "color" ?
You could just use one of the two and make a redirect for each alternative spelling.
The point is when you decide you want to edit an existing article you have to search for the place where you want to edit. This is because of the difference in layout. When the words also change because of these templates, it will be that much harder to find the right location.
True, but is this really a major problem? I gather that a majority of people on this list isn't all that bothered about "fixing" British/US spellings, but a non-trivial minority is, as the subject keeps cropping up. Implementing the technical plumbing for David's "curly brackets plus templates"-suggestion would enable people like him that are really serious about "fixing" these things to work away and do it, while not really inconveniencing the rest of us (and yes, it would be more difficult to do, for the reasons you've just mentioned, but hey! you and me don't have to do it ;-) .
One thing should be clear however: No bot should ever be set lose to, e.g., seek all non-curlified color's and colour's and curlify them, as this would break a great many things (think ColoUr Graphics Adapter). This will only ever be a human job to do (in the absence of significant AI breakthroughs ;-) .
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
David Friedland wrote:
Besides, there are plenty of people who get bothered when they read things written in a foreign dialect. Why not allow them to read Wikipedia the way the want to?
If they get bothered about such things it's their problem. How can you broadly presume how anyone wants to read Wikipedia? If they're that concerned maybe they should be writing it.
Judging from the tone of the discussion, it seems that if your scheme is adopted you would be the only one using it. The ultimate test of a technological solution to a human problem is whether people use it, not its technical soundness.
Ec
On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 15:48:33 -0700, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
I want to note that all my examples are from the American perspective because I am American. Also, it is my understanding (although I don't have any firm proof of this) that American culture has a stronger overall impact on the British than the reverse, due partly to global American cultural hegemony and partly to rampant cultural isolationism in the US. In other words, my guess is that it is more likely British readers will be familiar with American usage than the other way around.
We should not forget, however, that English, and a British derived one, is an official language of 1 milliard (er, billion) people in India. And that the Beeb (that's BBC to non Brits) is a more influential news source globally than any American broadcast concern. However, I do agree that given contemporary media exposure, American English tends to have more overall impact given the number of pirated films and music around the world.
As Jimbo said, we should not overengineer the system to weed out all color|colour and flavor|flavour in our English articles. But I do agree with you though - in situations where precision is paramount (ie. scientific articles, statistics, legal issues, politics, etc.) this stylistic confusion should not be left open ended. If WP can come up with a mechanism and policy to conditionally display milliard|billion, slate|schedule definitively.
PS - I can speak as someone close to this subject, as I recently moved from an American style to a British style university system.
Whoops, meant to complete this sentence:
If WP can come up with a mechanism and policy to conditionally display milliard|billion, slate|schedule definitively, it should.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 07:13:45 +0800, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 15:48:33 -0700, David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
I want to note that all my examples are from the American perspective because I am American. Also, it is my understanding (although I don't have any firm proof of this) that American culture has a stronger overall impact on the British than the reverse, due partly to global American cultural hegemony and partly to rampant cultural isolationism in the US. In other words, my guess is that it is more likely British readers will be familiar with American usage than the other way around.
We should not forget, however, that English, and a British derived one, is an official language of 1 milliard (er, billion) people in India. And that the Beeb (that's BBC to non Brits) is a more influential news source globally than any American broadcast concern. However, I do agree that given contemporary media exposure, American English tends to have more overall impact given the number of pirated films and music around the world.
As Jimbo said, we should not overengineer the system to weed out all color|colour and flavor|flavour in our English articles. But I do agree with you though - in situations where precision is paramount (ie. scientific articles, statistics, legal issues, politics, etc.) this stylistic confusion should not be left open ended. If WP can come up with a mechanism and policy to conditionally display milliard|billion, slate|schedule definitively.
PS - I can speak as someone close to this subject, as I recently moved from an American style to a British style university system.
-- Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
David Friedland wrote:
See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations]
It says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks"
When people write for a wide audience, I often see "thousand million", which is less graceful, but unambiguous. Alternatively, [[milliard]] is a quick way to inform the person unfamiliar with the term (and it forestalls editors "fixing" the "thousand million" usage).
Good writing for the rocket/arugula case would say "rocket lettuce" or "arugula lettuce", and/or link them, because a reader from India will probably not recognize either term!
It's certainly possible for Americans to use terms that mystify others - even the OED doesn't know "bumbershoot", without which the Seattle festival is unintelligible - and likewise for other dialects, but our goal should be to explain it all, not try to cover it up.
Anyway, there are a bunch of Britishisms I prefer, like "US" instead of "U.S.", so there's no preference setting that would be completely satisfactory to me. There are also subdialects to think of; US military usage is closer to British English than civilian usage, due to years of NATO coordination.
Stan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations
I just wanted to point out that this example, which I think was universally agreed to be A Very Bad Thing(tm), still says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks in forty-two fixed annuities".
To my knowledge, virtually no speaker of English will have the slightest idea of what this might mean. First, "milliard" which is apparently in declining use everywhere. Second "gold marks". A "gold mark" is worth approximately what? I have no clue.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations
I just wanted to point out that this example, which I think was universally agreed to be A Very Bad Thing(tm), still says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks in forty-two fixed annuities".
To my knowledge, virtually no speaker of English will have the slightest idea of what this might mean. First, "milliard" which is apparently in declining use everywhere. Second "gold marks". A "gold mark" is worth approximately what? I have no clue.
--Jimbo
Thanks to our wonderfull media, the solution should be simple. I created two interwikis; one to "milliard" and one to "gold mark". Somebody may know something sensible to say about the gold mark, but the milliard article is there.
It is one thing not to know a term, it is another not to be able to find it. People who are confused as to the meaning of a word deserve an article explaining a term. There is no need to dumb down. Because if we do that, people will not be able to read the sources of our articles.
Thanks, Gerard
GM> Thanks to our wonderfull media, the solution should be simple. I created GM> two interwikis; one to "milliard" and one to "gold mark". Somebody may GM> know something sensible to say about the gold mark, but the milliard GM> article is there.
There is an article about "Goldmark" at the german wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldmark). I could try to translate it, but since i'm not very experienced in writing english, i would prefer, if a native speaker could do this job.
...Zinnmann
Zinnmann wrote:
GM> Thanks to our wonderfull media, the solution should be simple. I created GM> two interwikis; one to "milliard" and one to "gold mark". Somebody may GM> know something sensible to say about the gold mark, but the milliard GM> article is there.
There is an article about "Goldmark" at the german wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldmark). I could try to translate it, but since i'm not very experienced in writing english, i would prefer, if a native speaker could do this job.
I don't know if that German article will help. It does mention that Germany used it until 1918, but the treaty in question is from 1921. :-$
Ec
In message 4174474C.8090002@telus.net, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net writes
Zinnmann wrote:
GM> Thanks to our wonderfull media, the solution should be simple. I created GM> two interwikis; one to "milliard" and one to "gold mark". Somebody GM>may know something sensible to say about the gold mark, but the GM>milliard article is there.
There is an article about "Goldmark" at the german wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldmark). I could try to translate it, but since i'm not very experienced in writing english, i would prefer, if a native speaker could do this job.
I don't know if that German article will help. It does mention that Germany used it until 1918, but the treaty in question is from 1921. :-$
A gold mark was also issued in April-October 1923 during the hyperinflation period, at its pre-war value of 20 gold marks = £1 sterling, 4.20 gold marks = $1 US. The hyperinflation was finally stabilised in November 1923 at 1,000,000,000,000 paper marks = 1 gold mark.
The same thing happened in Austria, with 14,400 paper kronen being worth 1 gold krone at the end of 1922.
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_in_Germany#Reparations
I just wanted to point out that this example, which I think was universally agreed to be A Very Bad Thing(tm), still says "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks in forty-two fixed annuities".
To my knowledge, virtually no speaker of English will have the slightest idea of what this might mean. First, "milliard" which is apparently in declining use everywhere. Second "gold marks". A "gold mark" is worth approximately what? I have no clue.
It seems that the writer may not be a native speaker of English. I just checked with the treaty, and at least the English version did not use the word "milliard"; the numbers were written in full.
"Gold marks" and sometimes "Marks gold" as in "To be issued forthwith, 20,000,000,000 Marks gold bearer bonds, payable not later than May l, 1921" was used in the treaty. That suggests that the term should stand, but perhaps with some explanation. What it was worth in 1921 or how it was understood then is more relevant than what, if anything, the term means now.
On the face of it "annuities" is also used wrongly. That term already relates to a series of payments. What may have been intended is "an annuity of 42 payments,". but I have not further researched the issue.
Ec
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org