[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

[Alphax]

Jack & Naree wrote:
> Yes, it was me, I did rant, I do apologise, but I'm just pissed off with 
> proper English being treated like this.
>
> You have Wikipedia in Klingon, in tiny tribal languages, and now in Scots 
> (and I'm Scottish btw) - which is basically as similar to correct English as 
> American-English is - at least I think most native English-speakers can 
> probably read it.
>

Actually, we don't have a Wikipedia in Klingon. It's a Wikicity, which
is hosted by Wikia, *not* the Wikimedia Foundation.

BTW, have you considered contributing to sco.wikipedia?

>  "- I think we can safely consider this as not providing a great deal of
> useful insight into our language policy :-)"
>  Why not? Ok, I ranted, but this not an illegitimate point, why should we 
> (and I say that because you have a ".uk" address) be forced to accept 
> Americanisms?

Really? I thought it was en.wikipedia.org...

> If you're British, do think we should start changing our spellings to 
> American ones? Start changing our grammar too?
>  someone at Wikipedia ages ago wrote to me that he thought it was fine for 
> articles in the English section to remain in the dialect relevent to their 
> subject matter - he basically said, if it's about the UK it can be in 
> English, but everything else is to be in American-English, but called 
> English - and he said he was British!

Actually, the policy is (or at least was):

* If subject of article is British (or other Commonwealth
English)-related, use Commonwealth English.
* If subject of article is USian, use US English
* If neither applies, majority style (in case both are used) of original
author is preferred.

>  I mean there are several issues here: cultural imperialism, ambiguation 
> (because of the many differences in American-English and English usage), and 
> English learners learning to spell incorrectly and talk like Americans - why 
> is it wrong to resist that?
> 

You are welcome to create your own fork of the site in Commonwealth
English, provided you comply with the GFDL.

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