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

Wed Oct 6 22:39:09 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>>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.
> 
> This does have some merit, and of course "number of Google hits" is a
> traditional method of settling other disputes.  But the problem as I
> see it is that American English is much more common on the Internet
> than other variants, so the rule would in practice amount to "always
> use American English" -- and this strikes me as deeply undesirable.

Well, all the data seems to be pointing towards Americans rapidly 
becoming an internet minority. Perhaps at first it will favor American 
usage, but eventually it will favor the most common usage, whether that 
usage is American, British, or whatever.

Of course, implementing this policy now would just be perceived by 
non-Americans as just another act of American linguistic hegemony, and 
as such is not really workable. I only suggested it to point out that 
sometimes the fairest and most neutral thing to do will be unpopular. 
Unfortunately, fairness and neutrality are often at odds with the 
equally laudable goals of inclusiveness and diversity. Is there an ideal 
way to reconcile these conflicting goals and does our current policy 
reflect that ideal?

> I suppose the biggest area where we differ is in our estimation of the
> magnitude of the problem.  I view the differences as relatively minor,
> and as far as I have been able to determine, the number of edit wars
> and acrimonious arguments about this has been quite small overall.
> Are people really getting upset about this?

I'm doing some searching and research and will post a summary of my 
findings later. I can, at the outset, say that from personal experience 
I have encountered invocation of the "original author's dialect" clause 
under dubious circumstances to support allegedly "British" usage.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Slovene_language]

- David