On 20/09/05, Jack & Naree jack.macdaddy@gmail.com wrote:
And what if they search for "red", which version does it link to?
a single version of course, as mentioned, and as is surely obvious.
No, I meant would it link to "color", "colour", or both.
Why? Just because the headword is different, you suggest we manually copy all changes to one onto the other?
perhaps headwords are the problem.
Then perhaps a solution to that problem, such as one article having multiple headwords, might be more appropriate?
Or perhaps the entry on that plant in a US encyclopedia and in a UK one would be fundamentally different in some way?
in some articles, they may well be (and no, I don't have a list - I have a life).
Sure; and some don't; and some articles which don't have varying "orthographies" might contain different information. If it's a really fundamental difference, we use "disambiguation" of some form; if it's a more minor difference, the difference is incorporated and/or discussed in the article itself. There is no correlation between needing such disambiguation or discussion and having two spellings, so why build a policy as though there were?
And what, as I say, of other articles which happen to mention, and probably link to, the term in one form or the other? Should they link both?
yes; in each form, the [[same way it works now]]
So a British reader might come upon a sentence saying "it is made from [[eggplant]]/[[aubergine]]", and, seeing that the two articles were separate, assume that these were alternative ingredients. Then, following the links, they might realise that the two were actually the same text copy-and-pasted with a bit of search-and-replace, and wonder why on earth we didn't just have one article.
Somebody has mentionned that something similar is done on Wiktionary, but that is a very different situation: in a dictionary, the entire article is discussing the headword, as a word; in an encyclopedia, on the other hand, the article is discussing the entity denoted by the headword. That is, a dictionary entry for "aubergine" is discussing the meaning, etymology, etc of that string of letters; an encyclopedia entry for "aubergine" is discussing the plant itself, using the string of letters merely as a label. It follows that whereas the dictionary entries for the words "aubergine" and "eggplant" are distinct (because they are two different words), the encyclopedia entries under those two words will always be *exactly the same* - you might even put the article under its scientific classification, but you'd still be discussing the same plant (and you wouldn't suddenly be discussing it in Latin, either).
yes, you can
Can what? I was trying to point the absurdity of treating "aubergine" and "eggplant" as different subjects. But if you want a question to respond to, what "orthography" would you write the article in if it was under its scientific classification? Such an article would contain exactly the same *information* whichever of the 3 headwords you filed it under, so the only possible reason for having more than one would be to "translate" a few usage differences to suit the same dialect as the headword [I note from the Wikipedia article that this *wouldn't* be possible in this case, because there are two species, but the point stands]
whether in separate wikis or not - it means that all those articles have to be written twice, or constantly kept in synch
not necessarily
Well, since any "good" edit to the article "eggplant" would also be a "good" edit to the article "aubergine" (except for those edits correcting orthographical differences), I fail to see how synchronisation could be avoided.
to you, perhaps, but these are clearly two seperate languages
No. They are *arguably* two separate languages, though I've heard few people take such a strong stance, except in jest. If it was at all clear, we wouldn't be having this argument.
"blatant waste of effort" is invested in creating wikis for tiny, pointless languages and dialects: Ossetic, Tartar, Walloon, Interlingua, Limburgish, Western Frisian, Asturian, Sicilian, Scots, Macedonian, Esperanto, the list is bloody endless.
So, because we have wikis in languages which are "pointless" but unambiguously distinct languages, we should not have wikis which include minor variations of the same language?
But I won't go into this - if you want to read endless debates about wiki creation policy, go to http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/ Yes, we have lots of wikis. Yes, a lot of them are controversial. No, you're not the only one who thinks we have too many. No, you're not the first to suggest merging some similar ones. Right now, however, we're discussing the particular case of the English wiki, not some other case with different political, linguistic, and geographic facts.
You've even got the two forms of Norwegian! Yet English English speakers have to accept American-English!
And "American-English" speakers have to accept a little bit of "English English" in return. Most of us learn to live with it.
Indeed, the main problem would be defining the various variants (it would be as arrogant to claim there are only two "proper" forms of English as to claim there is only one)
there really are only two orthographies. Canadian and Australian just aren't anywhere near divergent enough.
I'm sure Canadians and Australians will be pleased to hear you pronounce that from your golden pedestal. As will Indians, New Zealanders, South Africans, etc etc. [It was pointed out, for instance, that an Australian user would not wish to select either "US" nor "British" spellings, because they would naturally use a mixture of the two.]
and there'd still be compromises needed on grammar and punctuation issues, etc etc
grammar and punctuation is a different issue - one for edit whores.
Why? Because it doesn't annoy you as much as spelling does? Because it's not as straght-forward to "correct"? It seems to be very much part of the same issue if you ask me.
the "we're all against you" playground routine doesn't wash. It's no surprise for a handful of Americans and Americanised types to oppose this, but I doubt you'd get the same from Brits and Irish. If this is to be an inclusive, uniting project, then this issue over American-English hegemony needs to be resolved in a fair way.
I am British, born and bred, and strongly object to being labelled "Americanised" simply because I am pragmatic enough to put up with two spellings of the word "colour". I hate to say this, but you're beginning to remind me of a much-discussed-on-this-list anti-semitic individual (sorry, "White Nationalist") who believed Wikipedia was run by a Zionist Conspiracy of Jews, with the unaware support of "useful idiots". I am not a "useful idiot" of either a Jewish or an American conspiracy, I am an individual who tries to examine propositions logically and reach his own conclusions.
That rant over, I would characterise it more as you coming and saying "I'm against all of you" than us saying "we're all against you" - you have yet to prove that there is even an issue to solve (except inasmuch as it is stopping you from contributing; and the more I hear of your biases, the less of a problem that seems).