[Wikipedia-l] Re: technical measures for English variations...

Wed Oct 6 11:45:21 UTC 2004

In message <ck0buh$hev$1 at sea.gmane.org>, David Friedland 
<david at nohat.net> writes
>Finally, since no one seems interested in bringing dialectical 
>consistency to Wikipedia in this area, might I propose an alternate 
>policy for usage disputes?
>
>Where a word has different spellings/usages, the spelling/usage that 
>has the most number of Google hits shall be the spelling/usage used on 
>Wikipedia. If the spelling/usage with the most number of Google hits 
>changes, then so shall the spellings/usages on Wikipedia.
>
>At least this way we can be sure that the spellings/usages we use will 
>be ones used by a majority that is based on actual data. It's 
>incontrovertible, democratic, neutral, and completely dialect-agnostic. 
>Not to mention consistent.

Argh! No, I strongly object to this proposal. The Google majority is 
_not_ always right, and in any case the preponderance of US websites 
would tend to bias Wikipedia towards US usage.

Just this morning, I noticed a discussion on the UK Wikipedians article 
about the [[IUPAC]] standardised spelling of the name of element 16, 
where it was noted that despite what IUPAC says, they have no standing 
for determining what British English usage is, where the element remains 
"sulphur".

-- 
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/