[WikiEN-l] Happy birthday to me...

[Monahon, Peter B.]

> Earlier:
> ... [from bartleby.com, whinge = chiefly British to complain or
protest,
> especially in an annoying or persistent manner; versus (US?) whine =
to
> complain or protest in a childish fashion] ...

Peter Blaise responds:  Whinge / whine?  I subscribe to many daily
prompts with new information, such as Google Alerts on "wiki" and so on,
and this just came in from dictionary.com:

Word of the Day for Tuesday, November 27, 2007

kvetch \KVECH\, adjective:

1. To complain habitually.
2. A complaint.
3. A habitual complainer.

People kvetched when someone else wouldn't relinquish his position.
-- Barry Lopez, "Before the Temple of Fire.", Harper's Magazine, January
1998

They begin to look like malcontents who kvetch about the weather so much
that they don't notice the sun coming out.
-- David Shenk, "Slamming Gates", The New Republic, January 26, 1998

Time for my biennial kvetch about the West End theatre.
-- Simon Hoggart, "Hose bans, petrol mania: saying 'don't panic' always
triggers chaos", The Guardian, November 4, 2000

He's just a very up person, she says, which is odd, because he is also a
big complainer, a class-A kvetch.
-- Penny Wolfson, "Moonrise", The Atlantic, December 2001

He had difficulty getting American publishers for his later novels,
partly because of his self-created image by then as a crusty old kvetch.
-- Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "What Kingsley Can Teach Martin", The Atlantic,
September 2000

Kvetch comes from Yiddish kvetshn, "to squeeze, to complain," from
Middle High German quetzen, quetschen, "to squeeze."

==========

I do not believe we need to limit ourselves to negative or pejorative
definitions of what we are doing here when we appear to be "complaining"
- whinging / whining / kvetching.  I think this is all important dialog,
contemporaneously and for future visitors searching the archives, free
speech, "minority reports", calls to conscience, and so on.  By calling
it "whining" we diminish it's importance and may then think it's
dispensable, but without alternative and new contributions, no matter
how unpopular, there is no growth, and without growth, there is only
death.  Me?  I'm all for a lively (as opposed to deadly) Wikipedia
community, so carry on the lively discussions.

And now, back to endless discussions of the pros and cons of banning,
keeping the energies fresh, regardless of any initial name or intended
topic content of any thread, it's all about banning after all, isn't it?
;-)