[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

Sat Jun 10 14:10:51 UTC 2006

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Not surprisingly, that rarely helps. Most topics are not strongly
> associated with one form of English or another. How about this
> scenario: The original "contributor" writes 2 paragraphs in AmE.
> Later, a group of British editors decides to expand the article to 40
> paragraphs. According to our guidelines, they would not be justified
> in changing to BE.

It would really help -- pardon me for engaging in a bit of
wistful thinking here -- if people wouldn't get so worked up
about the whole AmE/BrE thing.

If someone gratuitously rewrote a bunch of my own purple prose
into the other style, I'd just laugh, or shake my head.  What's
the harm?  It's certainly nothing to get roiled up into a revert
war over, or a big, wonky policy debate.

There seem to be lots of American editors who think that British
English is *wrong*, and likewise British editors who think that
American English is *wrong*.  (They rarely come out and say this
explicitly, but the vigor with which they debate a change from
one to the other suggests that's how thy really feel, deep down.)
But, of course, it's not that one or the other is Right or Wrong;
they're just different.

(The problem's just as bad over on Wiktionary, where there are
stubbornly, defiantly distinct pages for `color' and `colour'.
Huge, repetitive, internecine arguments regularly erupt, whenever
anyone has the temerity to suggest that the two entries be merged
somehow since they're "obviously" just two spelling variants
for "the same" word.)