[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures (was: cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism userbox)

Fri Jun 9 18:54:02 UTC 2006

On 6/6/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/6/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/6/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Now, to get onto userboxes that are really disruptive, how about the
> > ones
> > > that say "This user contributes in American English" or "This user
> > > contributes in British English".  Isn't this, in essence, a rejection
> on
> > > Wikipedia's policy on accepting both AE and BE?  Sure, on talk pages
> and
> > one
> >
> > Surprisingly, it's actually relevant. You're supposed to respect the
> > preferences of the first contributor to an article. What better way to
> > find out their preferences than checking their user page?
> >
> > (I'm only being slightly facetious)
>
> Well, I'd say that only holds if they expressed on.  If I were to write a
> stub and use no words that differ between BE and AE, and someone else
> comes
> along and writes an article using AE, the "first user preference" is
> their's, not mine.  Anyway, expressing a preference ("prefers BE" or
> "prefers AE") is fine.  Saying that they "contribute" in AE/BE says "I
> don't
> want to compromise".  If I write an article about an American topic, I
> should use AE, not matter how much it grates.
>

*sigh* People pursuing BE and AE should see what it's like to be a writer
who has to write a certain way because our style guide says so. Our company
writes in AE, while I personally dislike AE and prefer to write in BE as
much as possible. I write in AE in my company because I'd likely get fired
if I didn't.

I'm on a Wiki that uses AE exclusively (the Ultronomicon, a Star Control
Wiki) because the Star Control game itself was written in AE, despite the
fact that several main contributors, including the "founder" prefer to use
BE. Therefore, our contributions to the main articlespace are in AE while
most of the talk pages are in BE.

I prefer to to write in BE, but when I see people trying to convert American
articles to BE, such as [[Special Activities Division]], it annoys me
greatly. Same with British articles to AE (such as [[Harry Potter]]). This
also applies to articles that could be written in either AE or BE, but were
first written in one form, and people come to convert it over. I wish I
could apply a category or template to indicate that the article is written
in AE, and please piss off with the BE conversions (and vice versa).