[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Hyperlink convention

Wed Oct 6 13:28:49 UTC 2004

David Friedland wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> You are wrong. To me English is English I am colo(ur) blind to what 
>> makes English English or American. 
>
>
> OK...
>
>> You forget that there other types of English as well and 
>
>
> This is patently false. If you actually read my proposal, you would 
> see that both the proposal and the examples given account for more 
> varieties than just en-us and en-gb. The reason I focus on en-us and 
> en-gb is because that is where the greatest differences are. Most of 
> the other written dialects of English are substantially the same as 
> either en-us or en-gb, with minor variation in usage.
>
>> as I mentioned earlier when I am expected to do the work YOU want 
>> people to do, you can count me, and with me many non-native (whatever 
>> English) speakers out, to contribute to EN:wiktionary. I have posted 
>> these reasons before.
>
>
> I don't think there was anything about my proposal that indicated that 
> editors will be expected to know all the regional differences and be 
> required to put variant words in curly brackets. The beauty of the 
> wiki system, you see, is that when someone comes along who DOES know 
> the word is a regionalism, they can add the brackets, thus increasing 
> the article's accessibility.
>
> Besides, there are plenty of people who get bothered when they read 
> things written in a foreign dialect. Why not allow them to read 
> Wikipedia the way the want to?
>
> - David

I have rememebered wrong for which I am sorry, the curly brackets do 
hide the difficult stuff. This makes a world of difference.

However, which word are you to use for the template "colour" or "color" 
? The point is when you decide you want to edit an existing article you 
have to search for the place where you want to edit. This is because of 
the difference in layout. When the words also change because of these 
templates, it will be that much harder to find the right location.  So I 
had it wrong, the curly brackets hide the complications I thought there 
were but, there are still arguments against your scheme.

Thanks,
    GerardM