[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

Sat Jun 10 10:06:19 UTC 2006

On 6/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/10/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > I don't see it as making it impossible to change, but rather saying that
> > violating "whatever makes sense for the topic" is the only good reason
> > to change from one to the other.
>
> 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.
>
> As I see it, the change just has to be justfied by some tangible
> benefit. Here, the benefit is clear - great expansion of the article.
>

Good writers should also be able to write in a style contrary to their own:
in this case, writing AE when BE is their preference.