David Friedland wrote:
Jens Ropers wrote:
My 2 [[eurocent]]s:
The possibilities for diverse British/American spelling being so
widespread, the adoption of "both options"-markup would absolutely
_guarantee_ that every single article's markup would become so
convoluted that it will more successfully prevent new contributors
from joining the Wikipedia than all other "less than optimal"
proposals combined.
The differences between British/US English DO NOT impair
understanding of the article text for most people.
Extra markup to "cater for" these differences DECIDEDLY WOULD impair
understanding of the markup text for most people.
IMHO the motion to introduce the proposed markup epitomizes the
victory of grammarian stormtrooping over the KISS principle.
Every suggestion to add a feature to wiki markup gets immediately
denounced by certain people who insist that adding any new feature
will make the wiki markup too complicated and drive away new users.
And yet, no one has ever shown that that new users have been put off
complex wiki markup. In fact, the number of editors grows every day,
and continues to grow, regardless of the complexity of wiki markup.
This kind of reactionary opposition to the addition of features to
wiki markup is unwarranted. We already have wiki markup for
mathematical formulas and even Egyptial hieroglyphics. Why is support
for dialect variants such an onerous addition? Do want to not
implement a feature that actual people want and desire and will use
because there may be hypothetical people who might not join the
project because we have the feature?
It seems to me that the syntax for templates, image thumbnails,
tables, and mathematic formulas have already made the wikitext hard to
read and understand for new users. The reality is that in the creation
of an encyclopedia, there are complicated things and ideas that
require complicated markup. Is localized dialectical consistency not
something worth striving for? And who should make that decision?
Is
The -{en-us colors; en-gb colours}- of the U.S. flag are red, white
and blue.
going to dissuade users from editing an article any more than the
following?
<div style="border: 1px solid black; background: #ffefcf; padding:
7px;">If you were looking for an article on the abbreviation "VFD",
please see [[VFD]].</div>
{{Shortcut|[[WP:VFD]]}}
{{deletiontools}}
{{VfD_header}}
[
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&…
<small>edit</small>]
Rather than trying to live in the fiction that en-us and en-gb are
equally understandable and mutually compatible, we should admit that
they are different, that those differences can and empirically do
cause problems, and that we should create a solution to solve it.
- David Friedland
Please consider that there is English spoken outside us and uk, consider
our dear friends down under, who are said to be understandable while
speaking English, Please consider these poor sods who do not speak
English right from the tit. Yes, there are differences, but when I,
someone from the Netherlands am to write stupid markup where I am not
even really aware if it is American or English what I write, I promis
you that you will find many people like me leaving the English wikipedia
as an editor.
The difference with table markup and whatever markup is, that they add
value, they add content that everyone understands. Not only that, this
mark-up works in ALL wikipedia and is not so parochial. The difference
between en-uk or en-us or en-au is not something that adds value for
many, while complicating wiki beyond recognition. If this extra markup
is hidden from view when editing, we are talking. But as long as we are
to see this markup, we will lose many people and for what, for who ?
Thanks,
GerardM