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".
That's one minor reason (but that convention was written sometime in the UseMod days - well before digital movies were widely available in movie theaters). Another is that the word "film" is often applied selectively (in at least the United States) to movies that are considered to be of a higher caliber. Thus, to many people, all films are movies but not all movies are films.
However, it basically comes down to this - we had to choose something to serve as a standard disambiguating term just as we had to choose one format to have all the day articles reside at.
Disambiguation is aimed at resolving ambiguities and having both "film" and "movie" exist side by side is inconsistent - creating ambiguity.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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