Talk:Rotavirus/Archive 3

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Improper national varieties of English change

I strongly object to giving "featured article" status to an article with an improper national varieties of English change by User:GrahamColm in numerous edits in the 2 Nov–5 Nov 2007 time period.

This aricle was already over five years old at the time. It had been a full-fledged, multiple paragraph article using American English for 4 years 10 months since 3 January 2003. This was changed, contrary to long-established MoS rules, without discussion by GrahamColm. Gene Nygaard (talk) 23:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Now i'm just really pissed off.

I just noticed that User:GrahamColm has added a banner to this page saying

• Rotavirus is written in British english.
  

According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

NOTE. The "relevant style guide" had the same provisions, when GrahamColm improperly changed it from the years-long-standing American English to British English, without making any attempt whatsoever to achieve that "broad consensus" required for the change he made last November. Gene Nygaard (talk) 23:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I presume you're not being sarcastic, so whoa there. There's no need to get 'really pissed off over something as, well, relatively unimportant as whether the article spells "diarrhea" or "diarrhoea", etc. I'm sure Graham has, or had, a perfectly good reason for this. Why wasn't this brought up by anyone at FAC? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Good question. Gene Nygaard (talk) 00:11, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe because FAC isn't graced with anyone obsessive enough to go back into the history of a perfectly fine article to argue whether it's diarrhea or diarrhoea. If there was no opposition over the many months that Graham worked on this article, there's no good reason for it now other than wasting a lot of good editor time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• The article was in a very poor state before I started work on it.[1]. There were no references and it was not possible to identify a "principal" editor or editors. The article did not seem to appear one anyone's watchlist, because when my changes became bolder, I received no feedback here. I used British English because I write and spell check in this variety and the early books and papers that I have in my collection were written by Tom Flewett and Ruth Bishop in British/Australian English. I don't mind that much what variety the article uses, as long as it is consistent. I did not work on the article over a few days in November 2007; I slaved over it for 100s of hours over four months. There has been ample time to raise this issue before today and to be "pissed off" rather than pleased that it achieved FAC seems like sour grapes. As long as the article is consistent in its use of US English, I am happy to leave it so. But should it start becoming a mixture, (again) I will revert. Graham. GrahamColm^Talk 05:57, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• • Oh, poppy cock. Graham uses Commonwealth English in this article for the same reason I use American English for most of mine right now. His computer spell checks in Commonwealth English. I bet it has nothing to do with what the articles use. Mine spell checks in American English. It used to spell check in British English.
  • No one is writing virus articles. Graham gets most everything correct that I've seen so far. Don't make him do the piddly work that any good editor with a grasp of the English language can do when there's almost no one on Wikipedia with a knowledge of viruses. What a waste of his time and talent. It takes me up to 8 hours of research to add a single sentence to an article on a plant virus.
  • If it's factually accurate what does it matter whether the runny stools wind up in diapers or nappies? --Blechnic (talk) 06:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• PS. I clearly announced my intention to make major revisions to the article here, [2], before I started work. Gene Nygaard owes me an apology. Graham GrahamColm^Talk 11:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

• Gene, did you wake up this morning and decide to go out of your way to piss off an FA author? In what way are your furthering WP's goals and building up quality editors? That a few anons don't understand that WP hosts the occasional British English article on its main page is understandable. That an established editor should go out of his way to research the evidence in order to pick a fight with a gentleman such as Graham is quite astounding. Our guidelines exist in order to help and solve disputes, not to create them from nowhere. Please direct your anger to the trolls and POV pushers, not one of our best writers. I mean, the previous article was sourced to Bad Bug Book for goodness sake, and now it has 124 high quality academic sources. Don't you have any respect for that? Shame on you. You do Graham an apology. Colin°^Talk 13:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

GrahamColm is the number 1 editor on Rotavirus; he has now 535 edits on the article. SandyGeorgia is number 2 with 60 edits, and I am number 3 with 49 edits. I prefer American English but I consider it more important that the article be internally consistent and I think GrahamColm has earned the privilege of choosing which English that will be. --Una Smith (talk) 15:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

hmmmmm ... most interesting and unproductive way to spend one's wikitime, picking on the English version used in a featured article that was completely abandoned and rewritten with care and consistency. Well, anyway, I support Graham's choice, period. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding to this "broad consensus" I think the current variety of English in this article is just fine and dandy. If Graham doesn't want to join in the Americans' over-zealous use of the letter Z, or the other strange aspects of English in their regional dialect, then he should be perfectly free to do so. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

On the scale from 1 to "I don't care", this is a ... well... OK, actually, I do care. I care in the sense that it would be nice for logged-in users to be able to see English in their own dialect. For example, it would be pretty easy for someone to write up a script that finds all British variants and changes them to American variants, and vice-versa for the Brits. I say this because the problem will otherwise never resolve itself on its own, unless we declare the American Wikipedia independent from the tyrants of the British Wikipedia. Antelan^talk 03:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:LAME. Move on people. JFW | T@lk 07:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Archived discussion GrahamColm^Talk 12:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

My twopence worth on the variety-of-English issue

Gene Nygaard et al. are displaying extraordinary petulance in their attitude towards this article and the excellent job done by its main author. This kind of disrespect is contrary to WP's main tenets. I see no strong argument that the article should be changed to US spelling (and I've recently twice criticised non-US spelling in US-related FACs, so please don't accuse me of bias on that account). Tony (talk) 16:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

One more comment on the variety of English. It seems the Wikipedia policy is something to the effect that if an article is started in one type of English, and it is not otherwise inappropriate to use that variety (an Australian article written in American English), the article should continue to be written in the English it began with. There are a lot of little orphaned articles all over Wikipedia. I won't be able to keep straight which brand of English I use, because I use mostly American English for writing right now. If I work long and hard on an article, I don't want to waste my time on style matters, if I write well in English, while researching for content. I think that policies like this: keep it in the same English, lead to a sense of entitlement, when what really matters is the content. The content of this article is quite good. It's useful. I would print it out and hand it to people to learn about Rotavirus. This should be more important than brand of English, but policies trying to keep certain articles belonging to one brand of English writer or another do not serve much purpose on an international encyclopedia when the same brand of English writer may not always be available to do the hard work on an article. Why even suggest that authors be hampered by rules that serve no value to enhancing the content of the encyclopedia? --Blechnic (talk) 05:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)