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October 2011

Mass nomination of Waterloo Road character articles

Resolved

 – Done.

I've now nominated all the many re-created Waterloo Road character articles, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Fisher. Please do contribute to that discussion. U-Mos (talk) 09:47, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I commented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 17:10, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding accuracy

Resolved

 – Punting for later resolution at WT:MOS. Circular bickering in user talk is a waste of time.

I've thought about our conversation and I have come to a conclusion: If you care so much about accuracy that you cannot abide placing the periods and commas inside the quotation marks or allowing others do to so when the rules of English require it, then you should care enough about accuracy to do a ten-minute Google search to confirm the accuracy of your own statements. I've offered sources showing that "British" and "American" are valid ways to describe the commas-sometimes-out and commas-always-in punctuation practices, used by the Chicago Manual of Style and other reputable sources. It did not take me long to find them. You've shown that the WP:LQ issue is worth your time and energy. Take ten minutes of it and see if any sources back you up. You don't even have to admit to me that you did it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:25, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Who cares? What you call them isn't the important point. I criticize your use of "American" and "British" not as made-up by you, but as unnecessarily divisive and pointlessly argumentative. I've already posted links to American academic and non-academic sources using logical quotation, and British journalistic and fictional publications using typographic quotation, more than once, over several years, and so have others, at WT:MOS and elsewhere. I see no need to do so again. If you care about that micro-issue, then go look for it yourself; Google is free.

But it's not the point, it's a red herring. I can find 100 sources that call Republicans "stupid" in about 30 seconds, but they would not be useful in a discussion of how to write politics articles on Wikipedia, and no one is interested in engaging in a debate about whether sources for the term "stupid Republican" can be found, because it has nothing to do with collegial consensus-building on how to write an encyclopedia. Same with your insistence on the non-issue that some people pointedly label typographic quotation style "American" (because they don't know better or because they have a position to advance).

The "rules of English" do not "require" terminal punctuation inside quotations. A set of guidelines you have personally chosen to follow, and which are favored by newspaper journalists and fiction writers and their editors, typically but neither exclusively nor all-inclusively American, recommends doing this. The entire rest of the world doesn't, in and out of English. Wikipedia is not journalism nor fiction writing, but a work of precision that requires quotations to be precise. The end, please move on.

Consensus can change, but it doesn't do so by re-re-raising the same issue again and again. Until you can magically show that logical quotation is less precise that typographic quotation, there's nothing to discuss. The WP:MOS is, by definition, a prescriptive grammar work; we are prescribing for practices, within the encyclopedia, that make it more consistent and more precise, and against those – even where they are more comfortable for many users – that introduce ambiguity or lend themselves to potential confusion.

As a linguist by training, I'm huge fan of linguistic description over prescriptive grammar from an observational perspective. There is no dispute, from me or anyone else I'm aware of, that as a descriptive linguistics matter Americans prefer typesetters' quotation, on average (though this is rapidly changing, and yes I'll have a citation for that). It's just not relevant to the decision making processes. Obviously 99% or more of English speakers prefer contractions like "aren't" and "we're" in daily usage, but we don't use them in articles. Most of us use first and second person to refer to generic situations ("How do I play chess?", "First you determine whether you are the white or the black pieces.") while the encyclopedia uses third person. And so on.

The more you keep trying to turn this into a "stop being mean to us poor Americans" issue, which no one buys, and hasn't bought since the issue arose 6 or whatever years ago, the more it looks like you simply have an axe to grind, and it hurts your credibility in other debates. That's unfortunate, because you're often in the right against some silly stuff that should not happen. I feel you are not acting in bad faith, you just seem to have this as a massive pet peeve and are consequently making a huge deal out of it.

PS: I am an American. I'm living proof that not all Americans follow TQ instead of LQ. I've used LQ professionally since 1993, including in an online newsletter that in its time was one of the most-read political e-journals on the entire Internet, and on a website that, before the rise of Google and other "must use every day" sites, was the #4 most-linked-to site in the world according to WebCrawler stats (after only one of the then-hot search engines, and Microsoft and Netscape's competing "Best viewed with..." browser icon campaigns, which was practically cheating). I got complaints about "bad punctuation" maybe once every three months or so, clear proof that no one is confused by LQ style, and virtually no one cares one way or the other, they simply read on, because only the most parochial, barely-literate American dumbasses have never seen LQ and can't wrap their minds around it instantly when they first encounter it.

PPS: Just for you, so hopefully this can be put to bed, I've changed my mind and have spent several hours on source research and writing it all up. Not done yet, and I have somewhere to be 10 minutes ago, so I'll post it later. It's a bunch of evidence, all trivial to find. It's taken 10x longer to write this up than to find the evidence and just look at it, which you could and should have done yourself. It's not my job to do your homework for you, and you as the challenger of the status-quo consensus on the issue bear the burden of proof. But, I'm going to save it all and also make sure it's archived at WT:MOS so it will be easier to bring back the next the issue comes up. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 01:23, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

If you didn't care what I called them, you wouldn't have scolded me for using "incorrect" terms. [1]

I don't like it when you call British style "logical" because that falsely implies that British style is more logical than American style, and "typesetters" falsely implies that American style is old-fashioned, but I acknowledge that those are what people call these styles. You claim that I'm doing some framing. Well, so are you.

The "some people" who call American style "American" include the writers of the Chicago Manual of Style. I doubt that they "don't know better."

You don't like that I call them "British" and "American" because these names highlight a very valid argument, that as long as Wikipedia claims to care about national varieties of English equally, then it must permit the forms of punctuation that are correct with respect to these varieties. You say "divisive," and I say "vive la difference."

Bottom line: You have a pet peeve against American punctuation and you don't like to be reminded that what you're doing, and requiring others to do, is not correct English. I could buy allowing people to use British punctuation, especially in articles with no connection to the U.S., but banning American punctuation takes revisionism way too far. Wikipedia is best served by a MoS that shows the English language as it really is, not as some people wish it were.

I'd also like to point out that I didn't re-raise the issue. Ihardly started the thread. I answered his or her question and pointed out that the use of American punctuation would have solved the problem. You're the one who posted the rant.

This is less of a "stop being mean to Americans" issue and more of a "stop imposing your pet peeves on trained writers who spent years learning how to do this right" issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:40, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

One more thing, I wouldn't need to show that either style is more practical than the other; I would only need to show that either or both styles are practical enough for Wikipedia's specific needs. I offer one hundred and fifty years of American English usage and the past four years of WT: MOS as evidence. During these four years, no one has reported even one problem caused by American punctuation, and one person reported one problem caused by British punctuation (and it was minor). It seems to me that neither style causes enough problems to make a ban appropriate. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:49, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Uh, regarding looking things up? I did look up sources showing that "American" and "British" are accurate terms. I showed them to you, remember? [2] I even mentioned them when I started this section.

As for sources on the differences between British and American English, I've been looking up articles on that issue for years. I used to think that "logical" punctuation was its own, bastardized system, but then I decided to research the issue, read a few style guides, read a few articles, and concluded that it is indeed a valid English punctuation system—standard British English. It's just not correct under American rules. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:07, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Re "who cares?", I mean who cares whether there are sources for "American" and "British" or "typesetters'" and "logical"? To the extent that the terminology matters (and it does matter, which is why I criticized the nationalistic usage), it's not a matter of sources but of whether it's constructive or not; nationalizing it and making it a jingoistic us vs. them bitchfest isn't constructive. I get that you don't like the terms I'm using, but they're not my invention. You can go dig Fowler up and beat his dead corpse, I guess. The logical style obviously is more logical than the other, which is why everyone in the world uses it except a supermajority (but shrinking) subset of Americans. Even the most outspoken proponents of typesetters' quotation admit, loud and clear, that it isn't logical at all, but completely illogical, and "should" be done simply because it's conventional. Yes, citations are coming. There is no such thing as "correct English". There are numerous prescriptive notions of what "correct English" might be, and every published style guide on the topic differs from every other on innumerable points. I can and will demonstrate that "American" style is neither exclusively nor all-inclusively American; not everyone buys into typesetters' quotation, including American-published legal and language journals using logical quotation, and pretty much all tech publishers. Even the Chicago Manual of Style doesn't "enforce" it 100% of the time. Other than having originated in the US, it's not "American"; lots of British newspapers and fiction publishers use it too. If it weren't for the fact that to a continually increasing degree the TQ practice isn't actually the only game in American writing circles, and it's not actually limited to the US at all, I'd agree with you immediately that it's an ENGVAR issue. But it's just not the case. Same reason I suppose "First quote level 'second quote level'" order - there are sources, including influential British style guides that say to use that order, even if the informal British preference is for '"..."' order.

I'll happily bother informing WT:MOS next time I run into a problem caused by TQ; I fix them regularly, but I haven't felt any need to crow about it. I can't remember a single time I've been reverted on it. TQ is not practical enough for Wikipedia's purposes, or we'd've never concluded that we needed to use logical quotation. Blah blah blah, this is getting to be a time waste. I've already written up most of this as an essay with sources, so I don't feel like recasting any more of what I've already written as a reply here, so I'm skipping some of this. Hopefully not totally missing a point or two... Oh, right. Who first posted a question about LQ isn't really what I was getting at; I'm observing that if you use any such opportunity to try to re-open the TQ/LQ debate again, that's pretty much the definition of tendentious and forum shopping, and it's why other MOS regulars like me and Tony1 get a bit testy about this. It's been happening for years, fomented by a very small number of disgruntled editors, and it's just tedious. Finally, I have no peeve at all about TQ - outside of writing something like an encyclopedia. I live in the US (again; I've also lived in Canada and the UK), and see TQ all day every day, and don't even notice it 99% of the time. When I read British or Australian stuff, I see LQ and don't notice. I really do notice when I see TQ misused, however, or questionably used, as it frequently is in American newswriting. It's generally impossible to tell whether something quoted as a full statement was in fact a full statement or a truncated snippet. That's a very frequent problem in Wikipedia. I regularly find TQ used in WP quotations, and have to go dig up the original source to see what it really said, and then fix the punctuation to (often, maybe even usually) stop falsely implying that a quote was in fact a complete statement rather than a prematurely chopped fragment. I'm also a trained writer, with a book published by Harper Collins. I was also browbeaten into using TQ by professors (not all of them!) and editors. That doesn't mean I "spent years learning how to do it right", it means I grew up knowing one system (TQ) and doing it mandatorily even when it was a bad idea, for people who had the power to force me to do it, and learning another system (LQ) that made more sense in the contexts in which I was writing, and using it when I could. I'm not sure why you keep using terms like "right" and "correct" as if God Himself came down and told you how to punctuate. It's simply a stylistic preference, as is LQ. They both have their rationales. LQ's is reasonable, TQ's isn't, no matter which of the three stories for its creation you believe. More on all that later. It's 1:50 in the morning my time, and I have a pool tournament at 11 a.m., so I'm tabling this stuff for now. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 07:50, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

You care: You said that the terms were inaccurate and got very strident about how I shouldn't use them. I showed you evidence that the terms were accurate and pointed out how you use terms that I don't happen to like but I put up with it because there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Here, on this page, I asked you to do a ten-minute web search to see if there were any sources comparable in quality to the ones I showed you that would back up your statement that the terms were inaccurate. (I am not under the impression that a ten-minute web search would be sufficient to change your general opinion on WP:LQ.)

I'm not advocating us vs. them; I am not anti-British-punctuation. I am pro-punctuation-that-matches-spelling.

CMoS requires standard American punctuation most of the time, making exceptions for things like data strings (Type in "D%Cjf.,".) Wikipedia is a general-English publication. It should use most-of-the-time rules.

It is absolutely not true that there's no such thing as "correct English." Writing "kurekt nglCh-" is wrong and writing "correct English" is correct. Why else would we bother writing an MoS that shows Wikieditors how to use correct English (most of the time, at least)? What is true is that 1. what is considered correct English can change over time (see history of contractions) and 2. there are issues that fall into gray areas (see singular they). However, at any given time, there are some things that are correct and some things that are incorrect. Look at it this way: If, in five, ten or twenty years, British punctuation becomes correct in the U.S., we can always change the MoS then. I can see how adopting a "let's assume that there's no such thing as correct English" mindset would help a sociolinguist conduct studies, but you need to accept that that's a mental experiment, not a factual reality. Right now, the MoS is telling people to use incorrect punctuation in American English articles.

it's not actually limited to the US at all, I'd agree with you immediately that it's an ENGVAR issue Then consider that American and British spelling systems aren't universal either. I drive past a sign in Kansas that says "town centre" or read a story by an American writer about his time in the "theatre" doesn't mean that "centre" has stopped being British.

TQ is not practical enough for Wikipedia's purposes, or we'd've never concluded that we needed to use logical quotation.

That's not how WP:LQ got into the MoS. I dug through the archives a couple years ago and saw two editors talking about how it was originally a compromise position between British and American punctuation styles. The old crowd back in 2002 or so decided "Let's use American double quotation marks and British commas-out terminal punctuation." LQ got into the MoS because it is British.

It sounds as though you aren't seeing incorrect American punctuation. American punctuation does not imply that the period or comma was part of the original material; it is understood that it may be or may not be. It sounds as though you are seeing correct American punctuation.

Maybe the reason WP:LQ keeps coming up is because WP:LQ should not be in the MoS. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

LQ keeps coming up because a handful of people just won't stop beating the dead horse. There are several issue like this. It's why MOS has a FAQ. Centre isn't British. It's also Canadian and a lot of other things. I urge you for umpteenth time to stop trying to nationalize the issue. Even "-ize" isn't national (the OED recommends it, even if The Guardian and other UK journo sources prefer "-ise"). If you see "Town Centre" in Kansas, that's just someone being cute, like the owner of "Ye Olde Candy Shoppe" downtown; it's not evidence of general usage or professional usage. I do, on the other hand, have evidence of both for LQ in the US and TQ in the UK. They are not national styles, they're simply styles, divided principally by type of publishing. That one style is more common in one area than another is actually a mathematical near certainty, so it's not particularly relevant. Contrast this with, say, "tire" vs "tyre" for the round things on your car; there is virtually zero currency of the one spelling in the other area. Apples and oranges. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm still working up the essay, but have other irons in the fire. Trying to do all that and argue with you in talk is not productive. I suspect this is going to be a "religious" matter. You keep refer to absolutes like "right" and "incorrect", and this indicates that you take it as a matter of faith. I don't mean this insultingly, like I think you're not capable of seeing it my way, you just clearly don't, and appear to be coming from something akin to a natural law perspective on the matter, while I'm a linguist in observation, and a pragmatist when it comes to Wikipedia MOS prescription and proscription. I am highly skeptical that any amount of evidence I provide will change your mind, but I'm not writing it up for you any longer, but rather for MOS and Wikipedia generally at this point. People deserve a clear explanation and solid rationale for it. And I'm actually pretty good at it (cf. Card sharp; all of the language research in that article is mine, and it came from settling a talk page dispute and revert war about sharp vs. shark; the material was fairly easy to convert into prose and citations, and I hope what I'm writing up will improve the relevant article, as well as MOSQUOTE. I.e., I've done and am still doing a lot more than a 10-min. web search. NB: The reason we have MOS telling people how to write on Wikipedia is not to enforce "correct English", which doesn't exist (again, every single style guide ever written disagrees with every other style guide ever written, on multiple points; Q.E.D.). It is to enforce consistency, clarity and lack of ambiguity. These are very, very different goals. Failure to understand and/or acknowledge that is the #1 reason for rancorous bickering, usually about the same crap over and over again, at WT:MOS. When I arrived at MOS, I came in the with same mindset as yours, and it took a lot of convincing over a long period of time before I understood MOS's true nature and purpose. MOS is not a style guide in the sense that Chicago and Hart's are. It's like a human DTD for a document type called "Wikipedia article". — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:25, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Then how come it's not brought up by the same people each time? People show up, take a look at the MoS and go "Hey, what's up with WP:LQ?" The "handful of people" are the MoS regulars who think that their own personal preferences are a suitable substitute for sources or facts.

I use words like "right" and "incorrect" because English is a system and systems have rules and because writing is a skill that takes practice and involves both structure and style. These rules can differ by time and place; that's part of what makes the language so rich and colorful.

I I'm the one who's taking things too much on faith, then how come I'm the one showing sources and asking for evidence? Just a few weeks ago, I asked if anyone remembered even one case of American punctuation causing any problems on Wikipedia and no one could. Even Noetica admitted it. People believe that American punctuation causes errors even though they've never seen it happen.

You want to know what would change my mind? Take this for an example: I don't believe that people should be required to use double quotation marks in British English articles. It's my understanding that British English permits either double or single, depending, but I don't think Wikipedia should force one or the other. Then someone pointed out that single quotation marks can interfere with the search feature. People can hit CTRL-F and see for themselves that this problem is not imaginary (though it's my understanding that it is being surmounted by newer web browsers; I've repeatedly said that this rule should be reversed as soon as the technology makes it practical to do so). That's what should be required for the MoS to contradict correct English—a real, concrete problem that is non-trival and not limited to people's whims.

So if someone could show me a thorough, unbiased, exhaustive study proving 1. that American punctuation frequently causes serious, non-hypothetical, non-imaginary problems on Wikipedia under ordinary conditions and 2. that British punctuation does not cause such problems, then I would support LQ as a temporary measure until those problems could be solved in better ways.

By "non-imaginary" I mean nothing like "this looks like it would confuse someone" but rather "this DID confuse someone; here's the link." Not, "oh, I have to look at the original to tell if that period is part of the quote or not" because that is true of both British and American practices. Not "oooh, this happened ten whole times!!" but "this happens so often that it is interfering with the reader experience in a negative way." Something real, provable, style-specific and serious enough to merit forcing people to use incorrect punctuation—because that's what WP:LQ does. Darkfrog24 (talk) 06:17, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

"It's my understanding that [whatever] permits either [x or y], depending, but I don't think Wikipedia should force one or the other." This is precisely why this conversation is pointless. You do not believe that the MOS should advise consistency [it doesn't "force" anything, not being a policy], and nothing changes your view on this. You are only in favor of nationalistic views of prescriptive grammar "rules" with no checks and balances with regard to their often radical inconsistencies. What you really mean, if you think about it, is just "the rules I am personally used to", since precisely zero published style guides actually agree with each other about everything; the idea of some unified "correct" English, even at the national level, is an illusion.

To get back to the point: But advising consistency, and a consistency that makes the most sense for our encyclopedic needs and purpose, is the only reason that the MOS exists. Consistency necessarily requires that some parties who prefer x won't be 100% satisfied with being told they should do y. That's life, and that's just how compromise works. It's physically impossible to keep everyone happy all the time. If you still aren't getting this, see the last sentence of WP:NOT#PAPER; the MOS is explicitly an exercise is doing what is best for Wikipedia and its users, with fully conscious recognition that this will sometimes conflict with what is done on dead trees and in other media. "These rules can differ by time and place." Precisely. Wikipedia is a new time and place.

"I asked if anyone remembered [blah blah] and no one could." Most of us have better things to do that re-re-re-readdress old arguments about old issues, and we all very certainly have better things to do that go dig up diffs for you, assuming we even remember where they were, which is a lousy assumption (I have over 60,000 edits, most of them "gnoming" like grammar and punctuation and clarity tweaks). And assuming we're even bothering to read what you post any longer because of the amount of sheer noise, in the S:N ratio sense, you've been introducing. "Will not be browbeaten" and "busy with important things and can't be bothered" are not synonymous with "can't". If you pay me a reasonable salary and fund me a research staff, I will quite happily supply you with "a thorough, unbiased, exhaustive study" of this or any other issue at Wikipedia. If you won't cut the checks, then please stop making absurd demands. Next you've asked for proof that "British punctuation does not cause such problems" and earlier stated "...'I have to look at the original to tell if that period is part of the quote or not' [but] that is true of both British and American practices." For this reason alone, I do not believe I can have a productive conversation with you about this topic, even if I spent another 100,000 words on it, because you do not actually understand LQ at all. If you did it would be instantly self-evident that LQ does make it perfectly clear whether or not the period is part of the quotation or not, and that LQ does not introduce the kinds of ambiguity problems that TQ does. That you're not seeing this is astounding to me, but you clearly don't since the entire purpose of logical quotation is this unmistakeable, unmissable, irrefutable anti-ambiguity feature. It's like saying you can't see the difference between a car and an airplane other than their form, because they both just roll around on the ground and neither of them can fly, and airplanes are British form and don't belong in America. [I guess it should be "aeroplanes".] That is, no kidding, exactly how cognitively dissonant your argument sounds to me.

I'm not going to respond any further on this thread here, since it has turned completely circular to the extent that any of it has been cohesive due to your disbelief that LQ actually is logical and non-ambiguous on purpose. (Cf. previous stuff about arguing against faith being a waste of time.) Neither of us is making any new points, only recycling. What I suggest for you is to just ignore LQ entirely and write the way you like, since your personal experience of and contributions to Wikipedia are suboptimal because of how much LQ bothers you. This is actually a really good example of why WP:IAR exists and is a policy. Other editors who believe in the MOS will clean up after you eventually, and la-de-da, have a nice day everyone. Just don't editwar with them over it, and everyone can go about their merry way. Like me: I always convert the "–" en dash Unicode character to "–" any time I encounter it in a situation in which it is actually important that the right character be used and thus important we know that it is an en dash and not a hyphen, because they look too similar in too many fonts to be sure the en dash character is being used if it's not converted to a character entity code like that. And I say so in the edit summary. Sometimes I get reverted. I just sigh and move on, and forget after a bit when something else more interesting has my attention. Try that. You might like it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 07:30, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think that the MoS should either keep the rule where the article is the unit of consistency or reject ENGVAR entirely and write the entire encyclopedia in British English. For the time being, individual articles should pick one variety of English and use it consistently, from the spelling down to the commas.

SMC, please pay attention. I've said this before and you seem to have missed it: I AM NOT ADVOCATING THAT WIKIPEDIA ONLY USE AMERICAN STYLE. I AM ONLY SAYING THAT WIKIPEDIA SHOULD LIFT ITS BAN ON AMERICAN STYLE. Don't accuse me of pushing inconsistency and then claim that I can only tolerate one variety of English.

The MoS should do what's right for Wikipedia, not what would be right for a legal document or treatise on linguistic theory. There is nothing about Wikipedia that requires British style on all articles.

SMC, you asked what would convince me. That's what would convince me. No, I don't expect you to conduct such a study yourself, but you should stop expecting me to give your opinions the same weight as I would give actual evidence, facts or sources.

SMC said that it was "Adam's fault," and the boss misunderstood. (American)

SMC said that it was "Adam's fault", and the boss misunderstood. (British)

Neither style tells me whether the comma was part of the original quotation or not. On Wikipedia, British style offers no material advantage. It's only advantage is that most of the MoS regulars finds that it appeals to their sense of logic—to their imaginations.

Ignoring WP:LQ is not an option. I tried that for a few weeks. I'd go into articles that already used American English and correct the strays (along with other basic copy-editing improvements). I GOT BROUGHT UPON AN/I FOR IT. This is why I keep saying that the MoS isn't "just a guideline." If people who don't follow it can be punished, then it is a set of solid rules. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:50, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Like I said, don't editwar about it. Of course you pissed people off by changing the existing prose to not agree with WP:MOS. No one can you bring up at AN/I for writing a new article that uses TQ. They'll just change it to LQ if they even notice. As for the rest of this, I mostly can't do anything but repeat, with the same evidence, that it's not a national issue, and the styles are not intrinsically "American" or "British". It's like saying that potatoes "are" "American food" and "are not" "Irish food", and therefore it's "incorrect" to include any potato dish in a list of Irish cuisine (and worse yet, incorrect to include any dish as American if it doesn't contain potatoes), all on the basis that the US consumes more potatoes than Ireland and the potato plant was originally native to the Western Hemisphere, not Ireland, and some people have written books that say that potatoes "are" intrinsically American. Cf. Flying Spaghetti Monster for precisely the same kind of issue; it's a faith-based argument, and its absurdity becomes clear when you replace the tradition signifiers with different tokesn. Wikipedia isn't "banning" "American" anything, it's recommending one particular type of punctuation for logical reasons. That the opposing kind happens to be favored by a never universal and continually shrinking percentage of North Americans is coincidental and irrelevant. Show me all -ize and -or words respelled (respellt?) -ise and -our and we'll have some indication of "American style" being "banned". Please stop haranguing me about this. Re: "Adam's fault" and "Neither style tells me whether the comma was part of the original quotation or not", so what? Of course they don't in a construction like that. If I bury an airplane 50 feet under ground, I don't expect it to fly. Let's not be silly. The issue isn't that LQ always tells you something you want to know, it's that it never lies, unlike TQ. Being perfectly and completely truthful some of the time, and never false the rest of the time, is much better than being perfectly false much of the time. PS: There is no reason to drop ENGVAR entirely and force British English, because American spelling (unlike what you call American-style quotation punctuation) doesn't automatically produce reader uncertainty as to the accuracy of quotations and other literal strings. PPS: Thanks for clarifying that only an impractical level of research with a dedicated paid staff could possibly produce enough evidence to convince you to change your mind. This is concrete proof that you are an extremist on the issue, so I have no further reason to bother with you. Have a nice life. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 02:05, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't edit war about it, SMC. I was brought up on AN/I for doing almost exactly what you've recommended: 1. I went into articles that already used American punctuation and 2. corrected the strays while making other basic-copy-editing changes. (I also went into BrE articles and changed strays to conform to British style.) There were no reverts. There were no re-reverts. There were no edit wars based on my changes. I was brought up on AN/I anyway.

If the overwhelming majority of American English writers and style guides do and advocate X and the overwhelming majority of British writers and style guides do and advocate Y—and they do—then X is American and Y is British, even if it is also okay to call them other things. Look at it this way: If were writing a Wikipedia article on different punctuation styles, and I wanted to refer to them as "British" and "American" and you didn't, I would have enough sources to meet WP:RS and WP:V and you would not.

The MoS does not recommend; it requires. And it doesn't have any logical reasons to require British punctuation in American-English articles. There is no evidence that American punctuation has ever caused even one non-imaginary problem on Wikipedia. If American punctuation "produces uncertainty," then surely you can show me one time when that actually happened.

I'm an extremist because evidence would change my mind? It sounds like the only thing that would make you think I'm not an extremist would be for me to share your opinions, which, to my understanding, are not based on evidence. That seems backwards.

Maybe this will clear things up. I don't expect you to drop your own business and conduct the study, but you've said you're a linguist. Maybe in six months or ten years or whatever, you'll hear about such a study. Maybe you'll bring it up the next time we talk. What I would expect from fellow wikieditors is pretty much what came up a few weeks ago when I asked if anyone had witnessed, whether they remembered the specifics or not, any problems caused by American punctuation. I was actually surprised when no one knew even one (and pleased when no one made any up). Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

AN/I: It's like my lawyer said about stupid and pointless estate lawsuits: "Anyone can file a case for any reason; doesn't mean it will go anywhere." The MoS recommends, not requires. See WP:POLICY on the difference between policies and guidelines. And I've told you I have witnessed problems caused by TQ, and that I regularly fix them. I probably didn't post it at WT:MOS; I don't read there every day any more, because it's just exceedingly tiresome. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 07:59, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay. What kinds of problems were they? Do you have any links to the page histories or the fights on the talk pages? (I just want to make sure we're thinking of "problem" the same way. I mean an actual misunderstanding, misquotation or error, not an "I think someone might misunderstand this" situation.) Darkfrog24 (talk) 10:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't save old junk like that. I make over 10,000 edits a year (manual ones, I mean; I do AWB runs mostly from another account). Maybe I'll think to remember future ones. But things like this generally don't cause fights on talk pages any longer because the MOS is clear on the issue, and we use logical quotation. Nothing to fight about. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

But do you remember what kind of problem American punctuation caused? Was a reader talking about being confused? Was there an error in subsequent editing?

What I suspect is this: You saw American punctuation and went, "Hey, the reader might think that that period was part of the original quotation." That's not the sort of thing that I would consider a problem because 1. that doesn't actually happen; most readers will know that that's just how American punctuation works and 2. the ones who don't know won't be thinking about the punctuation on that level of precision. A real problem is something that impacts the reader experience. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:11, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a trap. I've already said I haven't saved details about this stuff; it's just one of a huge assortment of gnome edits I regularly do. I'm one of the something-hundred (I forget) most active editors on the entire system. You've also made it clear you want excessive, actually impossible levels of proof. So, you already know that I don't have a pile of diffs for you, and I know you'd just reject any out of hand as insufficient proof anyway. I tire of this game, and have been working on a solid write-up instead. I repeat that actual editing disputes about this just don't arise any more, because LQ simply solves the problem. But it's not about vicious editing disputes to begin with. Probably 99% of the time confusing flaws in articles go unreported, either because the reader doesn't realize they've been confused and blissfully walk away with incorrect information and inferences based thereon, or they do realize it's confusing, roll their eyes about how lame Wikipedia is, and go play a video game or something. Your repeated suggestion that a problem is not a problem until it leads to outspoken conflict is off-base. That said, yes, I have seen it turn into arguments, but not in a long time because most editors here don't use TQ any longer. Being silently misled is arguably the worst impact on reader experience, over the long haul. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 14:02, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not a trap. I'm not trying to trick you. I'm quite serious. Yes, I want large, well-organized piles of evidence, but I also want whatever's on the top of your head. The former will hold more weight with me, but the latter isn't worthless.

While I doubt that you and I have the same idea regarding what does and doesn't cause a problem for the reader experience, I promise not to reject what you say out of hand—the fact that I'm still reading your long posts proves that I'm willing to give you my time and energy. I promise to look at it carefully and consider it seriously. While I doubt that American punctuation causes any real problems on Wikipedia, I've changed my mind about similar matters before when I encountered evidence that I was wrong. What I expect is that learning about what you consider to be evidence and what you consider to be problems will help me understand you better.

I said that a problem is a problem if it impacts the reader experience in a negative way and that "this looks like it would cause a problem" isn't evidence. (Example: It sure looks like "centre" would lead readers to think it's pronounced "sen-treh," but that doesn't actually happen on any serious scale.) It is likely that not all problems leave proof behind in the form of reader complaints, but you said that you encountered problems caused by American punctuation. That means that you must have seen something that led you to believe that a problem existed. What did you see? Or, just off the top of your head, what do you remember seeing? Did a comma end up in the middle of a quote that didn't originally have one? Did a reader talk about being confused? Did an editor indicate on a talk page that he or she had misunderstood something? Did anyone out there actually think that "Melissa," "Somebody to Love," or any other song title actually had a comma as part of its text? What did you see? Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and people do still use American punctuation on Wikipedia. About one out of every ten featured articles that's made the front page since April has been written with American punctuation. So if there aren't many problems related to AQ, it's not because AQ isn't in use. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

You're contradicting yourself. You said that MOS "forced" TQ, and that if you try to use it you'll be punished at AN/I. As for the trivia you're reporting: Correlation is not causation. Featured articles are reviewed by many eyes for all sorts of clarity problems, and if they passed FA using TQ, it's because in those cases the usage didn't cause clarity problems. No one ever said TQ causes clarity problems every single time it is used. However, it's much more likely, given the number of MOS sticklers there are at GA and FA that such articles are promoted with LQ, then later modified to use TQ. Even when they aren't, so what? WP:IAR exists for a reason. No one is going to be banned because they used TQ. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 22:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

The people who use American punctuation do so at risk; my experiences are proof that they can be punished. It is also unfair to the Wikieditors to undo proper work and unfair readers to lower article quality by replacing correct punctuation with incorrect punctuation. Sloppiness is bad for the reader experience. Teaching good English might not be Wikipedia's primary purpose, but we gain nothing by teaching bad English instead.

If American punctuation is "much more likely to cause clarity problems" then show me one time when that has actually happened. We shouldn't ban American punctuation based on "I think that this is likely to cause problems" any more than we should ban British spelling. Again, just because British spelling looks like it would cause problems doesn't mean that it happens on any kind of regular basis.

If American punctuation causes problems so often that it must be banned by the MoS, then why can't you remember even one? Is it that you've never actually seen one? Or did you see it twice, six years ago, and haven't seen another since? Because that's the vibe I'm getting.

If the MoS is as unimportant as you say it is, then why not just permit American punctuation? Why not follow the style guides and sources rather than a few people's preferences? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I repeat: TQ isn't causing problems here very often any more, because we overwhelmingly use LQ now. This discussion has come full circle again. You're back to faith-based assertions like "right", "correct", "is American", etc., and nonsense like "MOS is banning" this or that. I've already addressed all of this. Not taking the bait. Hook me once, shame on you; hook me twice, shame on me. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:32, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

There's no bait. I'm not trying to trick you. What is it that you think I'm trying to trick you into doing?

Where is this "faith-based" stuff coming from? I believe that commas-always-in is correct in American English and incorrect in British English because all my school lessons and the overwhelming majority of the style guides say so (reliable sources) and it's borne out in the majority of American and British material that I read (evidence).

But American punctuation is used occasionally on Wikipedia, despite the ban. Therefore, the absence of problems related to American punctuation is not due to the absence of American punctuation itself. Do you want links to the articles in which I've seen American punctuation?

Look at it this way: Driving 45 in a 35 mile-per-hour zone is illegal, but people do it anyway; they just get speeding tickets for it. What I'm saying is "No one is having accidents even though we're driving fast, so this road should be made into a 45 mile-per-hour zone so that no one can get a ticket for doing something that's not inappropriate." (In this metaphor, American punctuation is 45 in the should-be-45 road, and getting a ticket is being brought up on AN/I for "speeding.")

What I'm getting from you is 1. you believe that American punctuation causes problems but 2. either you've never actually seen any for yourself or you saw some so long ago that you don't remember any of the details. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:56, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, you said that American punctuation in featured articles was probably there because it had been vetted as error-free or error-unlikely by the Wikieditors who'd polished those articles up, so I went to the front page and hit "random article" a few times. Excluding articles that had no quotation marks with terminal punctuation (and those whose only cases were complete sentences), the first article I hit had exactly half British and half American style, the second had British style (article on the song "Linda") and the third had American style. [3] Fourth too.[4] Fifth uses British.[5] That's what I was able to come up with in five minutes. If the question is "Is American punctuation used on Wikipedia?" then the answer is yes. If the question is "Is American punctuation easy to find on Wikipedia?" then the answer is that it sure was this time. I grant that the sample is too small to answer the question "How common is American punctuation on Wikipedia?" Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:10, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Neither here nor there. Substitute "cases of it's for its" for "American punctuation" and you'll get the same result. Substitute "no space between number and unit", "single quotation marks used for top-level quotations instead of double", "sentence fragments", "run-on sentences", "misused semicolons", etc., etc., etc., and you'll get the same result. Doesn't mean the MOS shouldn't exist and shouldn't address such things. This is an encyclopedia editable by anyone, for better or worse, and 95% of that "anyone" have atrocious grammar, while many of the rest like to IAR even when they shouldn't. It's the nature of the beast. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 05:30, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, that's not the point I was trying to make. You said something like "Errors attributable to American punctuation aren't found any more because American punctuation is no longer common on Wikipedia." I said, "Well it's in the featured articles," and you said "They don't count." I found those random articles to show that American punctuation is still quite easy to find on Wikipedia. Therefore, the absence of errors cannot be because of the absence of American punctuation.

We seem to have misunderstood each other somewhere: I do think we should have a MoS. I just think that it should be based on sources rather than on what people think looks cool. If we were editing the article on quotation marks, and you wanted to make the statement "American punctuation/TQ causes errors under Wikipedia-like conditions" would you be able to find even one reliable source that would back you up on it? Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

One more thing: I asked the guys at the WP:OR noticeboard if your statement that the term "American style" is a misnomer counted as original research when used in an article (rather than on a talk page). I'm pretty sure it does, but if you want to get your say in, here's the link: [6]. Darkfrog24 (talk) 01:08, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

New Page Patrol survey

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Invitation from the Guild of Copy Editors The Guild of Copy Editors invites you to participate in their November 2011 Backlog elimination drive, a month-long effort to reduce the size of the copy edit backlog. The drive begins on November 1 at 00:00 (UTC) and ends on November 30 at 23:59 (UTC). We will be tracking the number of 2010 articles (and specifically will be targeting the oldest three months), as we want to copy edit as many of these as possible. Barnstars will be awarded to anyone who copy edits more than 4,000 words, and special awards will be given to the top 5 in the following categories: "Number of articles", "Number of words", and "Number of articles of over 5,000 words". We hope to see you there! – Your drive coordinators: Diannaa, Chaosdruid, The Utahraptor, Slon02, and SMasters. >>> Sign up now <<< Sent on behalf of the Guild of Copy Editors using AWB on 02:12, 29 October 2011 (UTC)