[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

[Gerard Meijssen]

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