User talk:SpNeo/Archive1

Spelling tags

Please stop what you're doing and join the discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. What you are doing (namely adding spelling tags at the beginning of articles) has little support and will soon annoy people. Kind regards, jguk 14:22, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it does any harm. And I'd never do it in unclear cases. Just have a look at the NATO history, it's full of reverts to UK spellings. SpNeo 02:04, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The majority view on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style was very much against such notices because people do think it causes harm. For instance, no article is owned by any particular nationality, and we should encourage all to contribute. Plus, your ideas of what is and what isn't acceptable variation of style are not shared by everyone. Please discuss what you're doing on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style before proceeding, jguk 06:45, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, okay... SpNeo 15:28, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. However, I feel there's no need for it. WP's who copy-edit are sooner or later pointed in the direction of the MOS and should apply those rules. They do not need a special code for each article - and, indeed, I fail to see the benefit of the hidden additions you are proposing to make. If you wish to continue arguing for such hidden additions, please bring your case to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style so all interested parties can consider them. Kind regards, jguk 14:09, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it a "special code", they are just comments. Comments are "used to leave comments in a page for future editors" (Wikipedia:How to edit a page). They are not at all "policy" or in any way "authoritative". When I notice mixed spelling in an article, such information is really helpful for copy-editing purposes. I'll contribute to the discussion on the MoS talk page. SpNeo 02:24, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

By the way, after you (again) removed the spelling info in the NATO article, somebody changed all the spellings to U.S. English, just to be reverted. What a waste of time!

And this happens frequently, see the edit history. If that anonymous editor had seen the spelling info, he might not have done it! SpNeo 02:35, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, SpNeo. I agree that a language tag would prevent lots of wasted time, and also many cases of inadvertently mixing national forms of English.

The resistance to this seems to be based on the perception that it is somehow limiting editors, or being prescriptive. (jguk writes no article is owned by any particular nationality. On the other hand, WP:MOS says Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix). I think it's very important to make it clear that the tag is documentary; merely making explicit what's already there, as you've done in the latest version which says Note for copy-editors: .

Also, the documentation (currently on your home page) should explicitly link to every national variety of English we can think of, so no one is left out.

Since these tags constitute metadata and are likely to appear in hundreds or thousands of pages, it's probably a good idea to start using a template for them early on. Something simple, like {{English|UK}}. Advantages:

You can globally change the code generated by a template when necessary.
Consequently, the usage will remain consistent.
It can be used for research; e.g., count the number of pages in each language form.
It can be updated to provide new functionality, e.g.,
- generate html metadata: <html lang="en-US">.
- provide info for a hypothetical spelling-checker (server-side or client-side).
- you could add code to your user style sheet to visually indicate the language form (e.g., a flag)
- automatically change language form according to a user's preference (getting a little far-fetched here).
What else?

—Michael Z. 2005-03-24 14:27 Z

I agree, the tags shouldn't be perceived as prescriptive, but rather as documentary.

I'm not so sure about templates though... aren't templates always visible on the project page? Another user has proposed such templates (Template:AmE). Displaying such templates in articles will annoy many readers and editors. Spelling information is only intended to serve editors.

I think hidden comments have the following two advantages:

They are hidden
They are part of the wikicode, always visible to editors (only)

As long as a language tag like "en-GB" or "en-US" is included in the comment, automatically searches are possible in order to add new fuctionality as you described and for research...

SpNeo 02:46, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A template can render any text, including an HTML comment, just like the proposed tags above. It can also include a wiki category tag, which lets the embedding pages be aggregated without any new search mechanism.

Only drawback is: someone seems to have altered the template code a couple of weeks ago, so it adds a single carriage return (not an HTML line break) at the front. This has no effect if the template is preceded by, or starts with white space, but will add a single space in the web page's rendering otherwise. —Michael Z. 2005-03-25 06:59 Z

Whether you intend them to be perceived as prescriptive or not is irrelevant, it is whether they will be seen as prescriptive, and I find it hard that they can be perceived as anything else. I also question the value of them - I think we should encourage positive contributions from anyone who wants to contribute - not chastise them if they use -ize instead of -ise, or whatever, jguk 06:24, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is hardly chastising. I think it's more polite to inform an editor of the language before they start writing, than to go in and change their text without warning, if what they write is inadvertently inconsistent with the existing article. If they don't know (e.g.) British English, then they won't be surprised when someone immediately does a copy edit on their work. Anyway, we are all making assumptions here, and can't know what editors will perceive it as without trying it out. —Michael Z. 2005-03-25 06:59 Z

Question about spelling

Hey SpNeo, you are doing noble work in fixing the spelling issues. Just one question. How do you decide which is the majority spelling? Do you count the words with each spelling in articles? I could not find this information on your user page. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 14:47, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I use a custom-written computer program that counts British and American spellings. It only considers unambiguous instances. For example, grey and gray are both correct in U.S. English, but in UK English, it's always grey. '-ize' endings are acceptable in UK English and the norm in U.S. English. '-ise' is only used in UK English and so on... SpNeo 16:09, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've created a British/American Spelling Guide. If you're interested, check it out: User:SpNeo/Spelling Guide SpNeo 16:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your pointer to the spelling guide. I will take a good look at it, since I am doing spelling myself (some details about that are on my user page — Oleg Alexandrov). I have a couple more of questions. Could you tell me more about the custom written computer program you said you use? Meaning, what operating system you use, what language, and what libraries. Thanks a lot. 17:37, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PS You can write here, so that we keep the conversation in one place. Oleg Alexandrov 17:37, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The program (Dev C++, Windows) counts British and American spellings in a given textfile. The output for London (for example) looks like:

Analysing en_check.txt
Results: (text length 9144 words)

UK total: 45 words:
organisations (2x) / centres (3x) / centre (22x) / neighbouring (1x) / characterised (1x) /    
organised (1x) / neighbourhood (1x) / labour (3x) / modernised (1x) / favourable (1x) / specialises  
(2x) / organisation (1x) / computerised (1x) / centred (2x) / specialise (1x) / flavour (1x) /  
subsidised (1x) / 

US total 0 words:

UK spelling ratio: 4.92126 / 1000 words.
US spelling ratio: 0 / 1000 words.

I've compiled three large wordlists (U.S., UK and -ise). The program uses these wordlists to determine if a spelling is British or American. It doesn't consider proper names and borderline cases. I think it's a good idea to search for typos and correct them (your math spellchecking project)! Standardizing articles to conform to American, British or other varieties of standard English is a quite sensitive issue... Generally, I prefer standardizing articles that are closely related to a certain English-speaking country. The longer the article the better! It doesn't make much sense to standardize a short article unless it is obvious that the article's length is sufficient. I use the Firefox SpellBound Extension (English spell checker), it's an excellent high quality tool. See [1]. Using SpellBound, you can spell check HTML text areas, like the Wikipedia edit window. SpNeo 10:06, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Nice. How many articles did you spellcheck so far? Oleg Alexandrov 15:16, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't know, I haven't counted... I don't check and standardize spelling on a regular basis.

SpNeo 11:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Spelling guide

You're welcome. Hope you didn't find it too presumptuous. I approve of what you're doing. Totally positive=good thing. Grace Note 16:13, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

License plates in Germany

Hi, you're welcome to edit the article as you see best, same as any other. I think I started it by clicking on a link. Saintswithin 18:58, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Flavours in particle physics

Hi, Thanks for taking care of the merge. Bambaiah 08:15, May 24, 2005 (UTC)