User talk:Skookum1/Archive 27
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Archive 20 | ← | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | Archive 29 |
WP:MOS and other guidelines
I believe there may be a point where Wikipedia guidelines will need to undergo yearly consensus-decided changes. Only then can Wikipedia have consistent correct English grammar that isn't overrun by the statistics and beliefs of guideline-for-policy preaching Wikipedians such as DL. There was once a time when I created pages for Wang Ling's Rebellion, Guanqiu Jian and Wen Qin's Rebellion, and Zhuge Dan's Rebellion but two other Wikipedians (who I assume speak a southeast Asian language as their native language) insisted on changing it to Wang Ling's rebellion, Guanqiu Jian and Wen Qin's rebellion, and Zhuge Dan's rebellion. Not only did it end there. They then made a RM for them to be changed to Wang Ling Rebellion, Guanqiu Jian and Wen Qin Rebellion and Zhuge Dan Rebellion and I lost the consensus to it. Nearly a year later I managed to move the pages without a RM to First Rebellion in Shouchun, Second Rebellion in Shouchun, and Third Rebellion in Shouchun and it stirred to conflict but the only names given to these rebellions were the original "Name's Rebellion" as they appear in the Dynasty Warriors video games as they don't really have a name in official histories. It is for this reason I have gained passion in further encouraging people to weigh significance of words and how they are used in the English language without looking at other's ways through Wikipedia guidelines because English is the imperfect language. Statistics, I believe, cannot be used to weigh correctness in English grammar for this very reason. Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 20:11, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
- A lot of the imperious intervenors, regular or otherwise, admins commonly, who lurk/patrol RM and CfD are not historians, geographers etc; if you look at their contributions and userpages are gamers, sports, film, etc whose appreciation of history and the larger reality beyond their BUBBLE is as low as their obsession with rulesets is out of control. "Consensus" unfortunately winds up including the stupid, and the uninformed, and also those with no self-reflective capacity, which is their replies are so condescending, they are engaging in AGF for sure, and quite often NPA, soft-spoken or not. "Votes" are not votes, each reason should be weighed by reason, is it valid or not? No, it's often just a pat guideline-statement and nothing else, or the WP:IDONTLIKEIT thing; on important matters I've seen WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS used to perpetuate great wrongs, and important, detailed replies to stupid questions hammered with WP:TLDR, even one CfD shut down using that in the rationale as to why the closer closed against it, i.e. she wouldn't read what I had to say in reply to "wrong votes" and shit all over me in her closing comment, deleted my talkpage appeal/comment to her with "get a life" or "I have no time for this" or whatever it was exactly; in her closes she says things indicating she has little time: she's impatient and doesn't want to take the time to read/understand, and even crowed that her lack of knowledge on a topic area made her more qualified to impartially decide i.e. to impose guidelines read only one way, and even cited guidelines that said the opposite of what she thought (she's TLDR so prob hasn't read past the first parag of each, IMO), and made NPAs in her closing comments....and ignored data results even while demanding them on other pages, and claimed the guidelines specified that only Googlebooks and Googlenews should be used, and with a certain detailed formal layout; there's nothing of hte kind in the guidelines; TLDR is not supposed to be used on talkpages/discussions boards and applies only to articles...or is supposed ; having that point out, the next time around they dug out WP:WOT which can be used on discussions, but it's used selectively; I think there should be WP:WOB (walls of bullshit). It's a game of rules, not about encyclopedic authenticity, and taken over by rule-mongers. You have to consider, coders and gamefreaks think in numbers, and often don't know much about the past or other countries etc. Often there's childish behaviour and sophomorism from the rule-thumping crowd. All Wikipedians are not equal; there are those who are driven by rules, many of whom have power, or who have gathered it around themselves.
- MOS reform should be raised at a Wikipedia conference. There are no rules, per the Fifth Pillar, but that's the pillar that is most ignored, and in a place that is supposed to have no fixed rules, there is now a sea of them, often mutually conflicting, generally used in isolation from each other. MOS is different in a special way; what Wikipedia uses influences English as a whole, which is why things in it that don't "fit" with normalcy, like the endash rules vs hyphens and the use of indigenous endonyms in the proper modern form, instead of colonialist and/or pejorative names because linguistics as a profession (in particular) hasn't caught up to the reality of emergent native reality in Canada. where the endonyms are part of Canadian English for the last twenty years, and still there were people maintaining that Canadian English was not a valid parameter, despite WP:ENGVAR and WP:CSG, and that "global" sources should outweight Canadian ones on that; even when they don't, statistically.... Talk:Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District#Requested move and Talk:Poland-Lithuania#Requested move (or another P-L page) were MOSite hells, including DL as you'll see on those; there's a series of BC RMs he weighed in, on specious grounds; The Alberni-Clayoquot discussions were needless; in the end it was a government styleguide that shut them up, including a dressing-down from the government's counsel-general's office towards them which was an interesting read. Why fuck with titles that have been long-standing for no good reason other than OCD/obsessive "putting all the ducks in an exact line"? There's also the the effect of homogenizing English worldwide, and imposing homogenization based on monolithic/narrow readings of one guideline; how much wiki-time is taken up fighting off stupid RMs and stupider CfDs? Less than the time spent by those armed with guidelines and sword to fight off rationale ones, that's how much.
- So yeah it's frustrating; the tyranny of the machine-heads is difficult to get around; they think in boxes and want to fit everything into the same shoe. Theirs. Very Procrustean huh?Skookum1 (talk) 00:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. I also believe Wikipedia may one day affect the English grammar due to these reasons and certainly it needs to be stopped. I was wondering if we should address the topic of proper nouns and the like on a much larger scale, possibly request Wikipedia as a whole discuss it so an absolute decision can be made after people who understand English can actually weigh in their knowledge rather than a stupid guideline that is misinterpreted. One of my primary concerns, for example, is how people interpret "write article titles in the case as they would be used in a sentence". This doesn't apply to things like Pullman Strike. It applies to things like "Diet of a horse", etc. and people don't realize this and it is truly a shame. Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 01:59, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Talkback from Me!
Message added 03:47, 5 January 2015 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 03:47, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
I just reread your comment on my talk page and thought you may benefit from re-reading the PROD guidelines. You said on my TP "could have seen this wiped today, instead of being given some time to see how it grows." PROD's have a week for anyone, including the author, to remove the PROD no harm done. They cannot be deleted before the week has passed. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 20:29, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
BNA access
I noticed you recently added your name to my BNA list. You already did so in September after you had been approved in June, long before I took over this resource. Why? Chris Troutman (talk) 20:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
- If I did re-do it (I don't remember doing so but if my sig is there I guess I did) must be early onset Alzheimer's if not just a brain fart. I was actually going to write User:Sadads who was your predecessor about access, as even though I'm fully signed up to access any search results there will cost me a "credit" or whatever (can't remember the wording), so I'm wondering if there's a certain way for a Wikipedia access account to sign in; so far they're treating me as one of the paying yokels.Skookum1 (talk) 03:25, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
- Aha. That shouldn't be happening. You should have free access for the year. I'll contact BNA and get it straightened out. They won't be back in office until the 5th but it should be fixed shortly thereafter. If you have any other questions about BNA please feel free to ask me. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:07, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
- BNA tells me your account has been set up. Feel free to let me know if you have any other problems. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:41, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- Aha. That shouldn't be happening. You should have free access for the year. I'll contact BNA and get it straightened out. They won't be back in office until the 5th but it should be fixed shortly thereafter. If you have any other questions about BNA please feel free to ask me. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:07, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
How would I go about a massive naming convention request?
I think maybe we should take this flaw within our use of proper nouns on Wikipedia to a much wider scale. It should be stopped before it indirectly affects English grammar (which someday, I think it actually could if this continues). Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 01:36, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- Arguments about this have already affected logic, as can be clearly seen in what we are seeing in the responses; rules over reality, in a place where there are no rules, and homogenization of English vs its inherent diversity of usage. MOS needs an overhaul, and not one conducted by those policing and bludgeoning with it as has been happening way too much. I won't get into some of the silly things (RMs mostly) that Dicklyon weighed in on BC in my area; again with having no knowledge of the places concerned, only talking guidelines without adequate context, as also with various others I could name. Machine-thinking and anality; that's the future, sad to say. And it holds sway in Wikipedia, where those who have garnered power around their own personal biases/agendas are hunkered down and fighting off anyone who dares to dispute them, and not only disregard but snot on those familiar with the topics at hand or who have been the main authors of hte articles at question; that line about "do not take part in a discussion whose topic you are not familiar with" I mentioned is not in the main RM or CfD page, I have to go look for it; and want to make a template out of it to remind both lurkers and closers that "if you don't know what you're talking about, stay out of the kitchen". Instead some of them pride themselvs on their ignorance of the subjects at hand, and their own supposed expertise on the guidelines that t hey cite but never seem to have fully read.Skookum1 (talk) 02:15, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- Asfor how to go about that large-scale request, I'm not sure; they don't like bulk requests, even though Dicklyon gets away with it by his 5x5x5 posting style.Skookum1 (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- Logic? Quite ignoring the inherent logic of Dicklyon's arguments. Tony (talk) 04:20, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- No they're not logical, or at best rife with fallacies and really odd opinion/claims. Wasn't aware the MOS mafia had me watchlisted, how nice.Skookum1 (talk) 04:38, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- Asfor how to go about that large-scale request, I'm not sure; they don't like bulk requests, even though Dicklyon gets away with it by his 5x5x5 posting style.Skookum1 (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- Open a WP:RFC at WT:AT. That's the article titles policy talk page, so that's obviously the proper venue for any such "massive" proposal to change our article title naming conventions. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 14:45, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- I have started a discussion there and I hope many, many people will discuss. Eric - Contact me please. I prefer conversations started on my talk page if the subject is changed 20:50, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
ANI
I have brought up my concerns with the battlefield behavior around Chinese Canadians in British Columbia at WP:ANI. The specific conversation can be found here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:51, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
- OH good grief, but at least it wasn't him who filed yet another discussion instead of researching the materials I've pointed him at, or giving pause to think "gee, maybe this guy really knows his stuff and I should listen to it". But nope, procedure, procedure, procedure and AGF AGF AGF.Skookum1 (talk) 02:46, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
wrong venue
Hello, User:Skookum1. Because you may not see it, I want to be sure you're aware that you put your note to me referencing my "exegesis above" at WP:NOR in a conversation of which I'm not a part. If you wanted to address the WP:ANI thread, you should move it. Other participants at ANI will not see it where you placed it, and I am not going to discuss behavioral issues at NOR. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:07, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
- sorry got confused as to which board was which....there's so many on this theme (including his endless multiple talkpage rants/walls of texts). As you know, this is all very stressful to deal with...which IMO is the whole agenda; to overwhelm me with more than I can handle so I'll go away etc.....I'll revise that when I get a chance in a bit, it's b'fast time here.....where I'd thought of taking the POVism he so regularly displays amidst his regular AGF/NPA towards me was the NPOV board, but the personal attack nature of his onslaught is clear as day from my end......yet who gets called to the carpet? 'I'm not the problem' but am being made to seem like I am, over and over and over again; I've consulted a well-known author about his challenges to points I'm making, he's collecting sources for me and may take part in editing the CCinBC page and other related ones; I get respect from those who actually know BCV history and geography, and nothing but spite and put-downs from WMT...soft-spoken but still attack/harassment IMO.Skookum1 (talk) 02:21, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
Hook, line, and sinker
I think you let yourself get baited on ANI. Here are a few tips to help you now and in the future:
- Try to avoid ANI if you can. If you must participate, keep your comments brief and to the point, aiming for less than 40 words. If you need to explain anything in depth, use your sandbox or a subpage and then link to it. Editors get upset at having to read long comments and you don't want to upset your audience.
- You aren't required to explain yourself. This isn't a court of law. People here aren't known for their communication skills or reading comprehension. They are poor listeners, terrible readers, and have a short attention span. If you do choose to explain yourself, half of the time you will be misrepresented or misread; pick and choose your battles, otherwise they will pick and choose you.
- Whenever you are tempted to write out a comment any longer than 40 words, and it involves attacks or defensive language, do it, but then instead of clicking save, close the window and delete it. I've started doing this a lot lately and it feels great. You get to say what you want off your chest, but you don't post it!
- Some editors prefer to inhabit an alternative reality where up is down and down is up. I don't need to name names, you know who they are. It's a waste of your time to try and convince them otherwise.
- Don't get overly attached with anything, whether it's a certain view, belief, or way of doing things. Think dynamically, like fluid. As Bruce Lee famously said, be like water.
- If you find yourself reacting in a negative way to certain editors or topics, think about changing your relationship to those things. Unless there's a consensus, it's unlikely the other person or topic will change. At the end of the day, the power and control is ultimately in your hands, and it's in your reaction that it resides. It's easy to forget that if you automatically react without thinking deeply about why you react.
Think about taking a short break to get yourself back into a positive headspace. Aloha. Viriditas (talk) 06:05, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
- Internet iffy-ness here aside, which is often why I don't post anywhere for hours/days (meaning other than Wikipedia also), I've been largely ignoring that ANI while working on various article research and also reaching out to other British Columbians/Pacific Northwesterners to "take back their history" from its colonization by bureaucrats more concerned with their own wielding/reading of guidelines than they are with the subject, or the quality of the content the results; the POV/COI issues I see among those who have opposed me over time are not resolvable by rational debate and real communication when unreason and not-listening; in that one certain editor's case, he could learn a lot from me, if he's genuinely interested in the subject under discussion; "a mind is like a box, if it's open, things get put into it; if not, then nothing does" as one sage friend of mine RIP had as a maxim. Walling out information by invocation and distortion of guidelines is a bureaucrat's game; attacking personality instead of discussing issues the infamously ancient tactic of propagandists. 'Nuff said; other than the bios and such linked/sourced while the witchhunt was underway (on the Chinese Canadians in BC and Indo-Canadians in BC talkpages), there are numerous important topics in need of doing in BC/Canada that are of not trivial importance that either need creating or improving:
- Red Chris Mine
- Tulsequah Chief Mine
- Ajax Mine
- Carnarvon Terms
- Salmon War
- Solidarity Crisis/Operation Solidarity
- McBride-McKenna Commission
- Powell Commission
- O'Reilly Commission
- Chinese-in-BC content on over 50 articles needs to be integrated and cogent, not POV forked on a tubthump/soapbox filter of academics-refs only; similarly with Indo-Canadian content and that of a good dozen groups of us (British Columbians, that is, I don't mean Wikipedians who are obsessed with ethnicity as a topic); to do that, someone has to know the history of the province and its geography. Not be shut out and patronized because they do.
- Nor vilified and dogpiled upon by haters; who abound in boardspace, ANI is a veritable swamp of judgment and contrarian-ness and unsubstantiated allegation and conflation and IMO is an abomination with very evident cult-like practices: stoning and shunning etc; where NPAs are used to claim someone else has NPAd simply for saying someone is "ill-informed" (especially if they do happen to be...);
- I did some reading last couple of days in MOS subpages; nothing there are having to use "cite web" type templates (I get pompous comments about that being 'not allowed' and 'frowned upon', even though the citeweb style templates are time-consuming, and make editing actual text cumbersome; nothing there about page-cites except under the conditions (quoted phrases) that WP:V does say....but it's clear to me for a while now that those who invoked guidelines the most loudly and severely also seem to be those who have no actually read the whole of the guidline; no wonder if a mere 40 words is threatening to them as a "behavioural problem".
- and somewhere there's a passage in some guideline or other I came across last week goes something like "if you are not familiar with the topic of a discussion, please do not take part. Might as well add to that, if you don't have time to read more than seven sentences at once and are offended by that, why are you taking time to denounce someone for writing something you won't even read? about something you don't know about, don't want to know about, etc?
- content and its validity are more important that guidelines-used-as-rules, and "consensus" formed by hostile and/or mal-informed folks who live for rules and like to create them and enforce them; but aren't interested in learning about the subjects they fiddle with, nor respecting the input of those who do. Contributing editors should not be treated as chattel as the bureaucracy so often does, the content is more important than the rules. And duh, "There are no rules" is the Pillar that doesn't seem to have gotten into most people's heads huh? See the maxims at the top of my talkpage about my opinion of "consensus".
- Such is the way of the world; I call this the Age of the Counter-Enlightenment, and will refer you to Samuel Butler's descriptions in Erewhon of the Colleges of Unreason and The Book of the Machines. Eerie to read, eerier still to see his satires become manifest.....
- Getting community participation in the writing of their own histories, and encouraging them to donate not just photos and textual input into Wikipedia, never mind donations of cash, is not easy when the bureaucratic imperiousness and stonewalling and uninformed guideline-mandated generalization/homogenization of terms/language is so rife; organizing and promoting local communities to undertake to enrich their local content is definitely an agenda of mine, as there's lots of wonderful and amazing community groups coming forward on places like Facebook of late; people are more comfortable there than they are with the rigidity and strangeness of Wikipedia, 'nuff said. But they're the ones who have the content that someone else wants to shut out and denounce me for even existing, and wants mere mention of any of them deleted if not page-cited as he demands. And he's not being dressed down for that; instead I'v been tied to the pillory and stoned again by people who don't know the material, won't read even a relatively short explanation of issues, and are just there to hate and denounce and are there for no other reason. Guidelines as invoked are just an excuse when POV/NPA is at stake, or someone's COI might be OUTed.....I'm totally "out"; my username is my blogging name and I was outed by a new editor over the Adrian Dix matter who distorted goings-on here, echoing the partisan agenda of my attackers. Needless to say, there are in two subject areas right now (Chinese history in Canada, and "terror-pushing" in general) where COI/POV are obvious in the problem "debates" underway. Nobody listens to reason or cares to learn about the issues; they only want to condemn.
- Wikipedia needs serious reform; "wiki" no longer mans "quick and easy", it now conjures up associations of a complicated bureaucracy with strange terminologies and complex code-structures that are increasingly a bar to ordinary people; and which have repelled dozens and hundreds of experienced, valuable Wikipedians re List of missing Wikipedians and WP:EXR for example.
- I'm staying out of that ANI for now; I've said my piece and have better things to do....like actually write articles instead of trump up reasons to stop someone from doing so (as is being done to me); the only "kill him" votes are coming from clearly hostile/hater types, not from anyone to do with teh articles in question; that it is entirely an NPA/AGF against me is true from start to finish, and applies to the board wars at OR and Talk:Indo-Canadians also, and a few dozen other places the procedural warfare has been going on it; seen it before, too many times, and the same game is played, and yeah the same players come up and go "I hate him too" because they spend, IMO, more time on discussion boards looking for people to condemn than they do actually contributing constructively to the encyclopedia.
- Anyways, I hear you; the gods of the internet mercifully shut me down from time to time ... a bonus of living in a third-world country....and having to defend myself against unrelenting and unfair attack when the person(s) causing the problem go scot-free is, again, part of the way this sorry world increasingly is....with that same time there are lots of articles in need of doing/fixing that I've been trying to address (see my usercontributions) or to get at finally. Many overlap with this ethno-POV fork problem, many have to do with real world political agendas that may yet be battlegrounds for no good reason other than information manipulation and suppression as on Talk:Mount Polley mine disaster and a long list of other articles over time, but also including the Ottawa shootings article and very much so there.....
- One last comment, in my opinion, if someone is not capable of thinking/reading 500 words at once, or 1000 words, or even 2000 words, about complex matters, whether about guidelines or geeez actually about content and proper wording/NPOV, then they shouldn't be involved in the writing of an encyclopedia nor should they be using bureaucratic hassling to interfere with those who actually do. Impatience is a curse of the modern time, and semi-literacy is becoming the norm in the post-literate age; and a line from E.R Burroughs' Princess of Mars comes to mind when confronted with "the insults of old age".... I never used to understand the full import of that line; sadly, now, I do. All too much.Skookum1 (talk) 13:53, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
- No worries, mi amigo. I agree with much of what you've said. A lot of what you are describing is discussed in Is Google Making Us Stupid? and The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. I'm starting to see a very small, but growing backlash against technology for this reason, but it's not rooted in Neo-Luddism as many might think, but rather in rediscovering the potential of human interrelationships. You touch on this problem in your comments, and you have obviously developed a deep insight into this problem over time. Check out The Shallows up above, you may enjoy it. Be well. Viriditas (talk) 22:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
BC schools and French
"it sounds odd outside of Quebec, and belies the fact that nearly all school districts have French immersion programs, and also native-language and other-language programs/certifications. The term has a POV ring to it, and is part of central Canadian/Quebecois language politics. "
Ontario actually has its own Francophone systems too (and to the point where there are four public school systems operating at once in each location) so it's not unusual as it seems. Since this "dual school" system is seen throughout Canada I don't think it's a problem specifying "Anglophone public schools" even in British Columbia.
"Schools, including Deux Rives, should generally only be redirects to the governing school board" - If the school has no senior high school program that is true. If there is a senior high school program it is generally notable under Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Article_guidelines#Notability. However if a primary/junior high school school passes GNG it can be notable too: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Pershing_Middle_School_(Houston)
The reason why I emphasized the Francophone schools over the Anglophone schools with French bilingual programs is because it's a completely different government agency operating the schools.
I was asleep when you made the first post and I didn't wake up until after you made the second. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:33, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
- You completely miss the point; the term "anglophone schools" in BC has no relevance at all, it's not part of the local vernacular and is "alien" in BC; the majority of schools have French immersion K-6 of K-12 or 6-12, and many have programs for Punjabi, Chinese, German; and in BC it does have POV overtones because of the language politics of central Canada which have little bearing on life/education in BC. And the franco-colombien schools are not government agencies, nor are they school boards. I'm telling you, as a British Columbian, that it is a problem specifying "Anglophone schools" - it's misleading, given the multicultural nature of the curriculum in BC, and omnipresence of full-immersion French programs/certification. That's not "original research"...though your argument above decidedly IS.Skookum1 (talk) 05:40, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
- Re "Since this "dual school" system is seen throughout Canada" demonstrates once again how little you know about Canada; it is not seen throughout Canada, particularly not in BC. I don't know where you get the notion that what applies in Quebec or Ontario or NB must necessarily hold true "across Canada". That's fiction and does not bear on reality. Your are taking one notion, adding another, and generalizing a conclusion that does NOT apply as you are claiming; THAT is SYNTH, you are taking A+B and making Z.Skookum1 (talk) 05:43, 24 January 2015 (UTC)\\
- CambridgeBayWeather brought up Commission scolaire francophone du Nunavut. That's another province which has separate French language schools. Are there any provinces which don't have any sort of separate French board? WhisperToMe (talk) 06:36, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
- "And the franco-colombien schools are not government agencies, nor are they school boards." - A school district is a governmental unit by definition. Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique is a governmental unit. So the Francophone schools operated by Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique are "special" and should be pointed out as being such. WhisperToMe (talk) 06:33, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
- User:WhisperToMe, Skookum1 is correct. Anglophone for schools outside of Quebec looks very odd and is rarely used. The use of Francophone (or should that be francophone as in "Commission scolaire francophone du Nunavut") for schools outside of Quebec is acceptable. So École des Trois-Soleils or École Allain St-Cyr could be called a Francophone school. On the other hand nobody would call École St. Patrick High School an Anglo or Francophone school even though it offers English and French immersion. Sir John Franklin High School and all the schools in Yellowknife Education District No. 1 would not be called Anglophone schools, even though some of them are English only. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 06:20, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
- @CambridgeBayWeather: Hmmm.. When I refer to "Francophone" school I only did so when a Francophone school district actually operates it. If there was any case where I mistakenly referred to a school operated by an English-language school district (even a "bilingual school") as "Francophone" please let me know which cases I did so.
- Anyway, in regards to "Anglophone for schools outside of Quebec looks very odd and is rarely used." Yes, I can see that it's true in BC and western Canada where English is clearly dominant. The reason why I put efforts to distinguish them is because Francophone schools are quite common in Ontario and I know this from editing Ontario-related articles (Ontario itself has pockets of French-speaking minorities), so I don't think it's limited to Quebec.
- French-Language Education in Ontario: "In Ontario, four school systems are publicly funded: the French public system, the French Catholic system, the English public system and the English Catholic system." - As the page stated, the province has 425 francophone schools and 12 Francophone school boards
- I Googled "Anglophone schools in Ontario" and got no results. However the Ontario provincial government does highlight the requirements for "English-language" primary and secondary schools and "French-language" primary and secondary schools in this document (see p. 29 and the index).
- In addition New Brunswick is officially bilingual. In that province one must distinguish between the English-language and French-language schools.
- In regards to western Canada, the English-language schools shouldn't be distinguished as "Anglophone". If I edit a Quebec article does this mean I should apply the same standards and not refer to the French-language public schools as being "Francophone"?
- WhisperToMe (talk) 06:33, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
- No, you should not apply the same standards to Quebec articles as to BC articles; provinces differ in many ways, and education systems and terminology especially. As for "I only did so when a Francophone school district actually operates it" as with your previous but false notion that Digital Collections is a "government site" (as if it were a branch of government, with political controls and peer-reviewing etd), the conseils de societe franco-colombien is NOT a "school board" (I'm not sure of their schools' status under BC's Education Act but a "school board" they're not).
- Please stop extrapolating using bad logic and imposing your SYNTH judgments on content, and on matters like this. It's a waste of time to dispute such things when you are corrected by informed editors from the place you are writing about.
- The education sections you modified with "Anglophone" (which as CBW notes is not capitalized; it's a French term and they use anglophone and francophone) would benefit by listing the other-language programs available in them, and also things like special needs programs and more. "Anglophone" in BC articles will offend many BC readers; it is a term alien to BC and the franco-anglo dichotomy is not a central part of the province's polity or society; our schools are multicultural, and English is a lingua franca; there is no official language for the province of British Columbia, by the way - and in all provinces. Your lack of familiarity with Canada is why you want to impose a "standard" based on what's on a page about one province, vs what should be used for another.
- Language politics are dicey issues to assert made-up logics about in Canada, especially imposed by someone unfamiliar with the niceties and volatilities of terms and local realities; why don't you go back now and use those resources I supplied you with an improve those sections with more than anglo-franco dichotomy stuff? Well, you haven't looked at all the sources I came up with for the other articles you started, so....Skookum1 (talk) 08:33, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
- User:WhisperToMe. I didn't see anything referred to as a Francophone school but I wasn't really looking, just on this page. In New Brunswick it does seem as if they use anglophone and Anglophone School Districts. Quebec, in the English language, seems to use English schools but in the French language uses anglophone.
- As to the capitalisation in English. I checked the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Maclean's and CTV Television Network All seem to prefer francophone (CBC) but sometimes Francophone, Globe and Mail, National Post, Maclean's and CTV.
- Thanks for the research! It does seem like the vocabulary is interchangeable if each province uses different words to mean the same thing, but I'm fine using one word or another if it's the best choice. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:27, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- By the way the Ping template does not seem to work. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 19:13, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
- And just to underscore that in NB and QC those are official designations and officially "English schools" (interesting that official English in Quebec does not use anglophone, probably because it's a recognizably and particularly French term, with not a few negative connotations within quebecois society) or "Anglophone School Board" in NB. BC has no official language nor any separate school system, other than privately-run bodies like those of the conseil des franco-colombiens. Canada is not homogenous, in structure, polity, or in language-use, and any attempt to impose or interpolate some kind of standard is completely not just off-based, but no do-able. BC doesn't have Catholic School Boards or Protestant School Boards like Ontario does (did?), though there are private Catholic and Protestant schools; WhisperToMe should read up on teh Manitoba Schools Act; Antigonish County in Nova Scotia has a k-12 program in Gaelic and native schools abound for rejuvenating native languages..... all underscoring that the "deux nations" paradigms of anglo-franco is while primary in Quebec and Acadia it's not that simple in the rest of the country; and the Quebecois term "anglophone" has a decidedly unwelcome ring; we'd no more use that in BC than "allophone", which is a political classification from Quebec language politics; extending either term westward as a "standard" is a non sequitur....and politically volatile = POV.Skookum1 (talk) 01:23, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- By the way the Ping template does not seem to work. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 19:13, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
- "BC doesn't have Catholic School Boards or Protestant School Boards like Ontario does" - Ontario still has its English-language and French-language Catholic school boards. This is in addition to the English-language secular and French-language secular boards.
- "BC has no official language nor any separate school system" - It does not have an official language. It absolutely does have a separate French-language school system with its own school board. That school system, however, is so small because there are so few French speakers. It's not even close to the size of Ontario's (Ontario has multiple French-language school boards).
- "Anglophone" is used in many non-Canadian contexts: For instance The Department of Anglophone Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Outside of Canada it doesn't seem to have any negative connotations. Do most English-speaking Canadians dislike this word?
- WhisperToMe (talk) 04:27, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- In Canada, "anglophone" and "francophone" usually refer specifically to a person's first language learned. They aren't pejorative; they just aren't synonyms for "English" and "French" in typical Canadian parlance. Schools can have English or French as the primary language of instruction, and so are generally referred to by those terms; referring to them as anglophone or francophone is confusing, as the criteria for entry isn't necessarily based on anyone's first language (in Quebec, for example, it is not). isaacl (talk) 04:53, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Not exactly "pejorative" no, other than when used in negative tones by quebecois about les maudits anglos; but not relevant, as we're trying to explain, and as you have explained, or tried to, and very much associated with language politics in Quebec; and while your legal educational status in Quebec isn't about your own native language, it is about your parents language(s); allophones are people whose parents speak a mother tongue other than French or English and they must got to "francophone schools", unless that's changed. The BC school districts that WTM was adding this "false paradigm" to quite often have full K-12 French immersion programs, and especially in the Lower Mainland, the majority of students often have other-than-English as either their own native tongue, or that of their parents; many "English Canadians" (a term which equates to "anglophone") put their kids in these programs, even though English is the lingua franca of nearly all BC communities, including Maillardville which does have a distinct French/Quebecois-origin.
As I've tried to explain, "anglophone" (w/wo caps) is an alien term in the BC context and gives a completely wrong idea about the multicultural/multiethnic nature of BC society and BC communities; finding a cite that "most English Canadians dislike this word?" is problematic as there are no polls about the word but it's decidedly from Quebec's (and Ottawa's) official lexical environment. It is not part of BC history or society, past or present; I googled and the only results about BC that use it are from quebecois sources and academics writing on linguistic politics; you won't find it in school board or provincial government citations.
The persistent SYNTH about "with its own school board" is once again incorrect; that is not a provincially run school board nor mandated by law as such and its not called a school board, either. And what is used in Germany is utterly irrelevant to Canada and to BC.
And re " It does seem like the vocabulary is interchangeable if each province uses different words to mean the same thing" is yet more SYNTH; and quite illogical; if each province uses different words to mean the same thing that does not mean that it follows that "the same thing" should be the same word used for articles on each/all provinces; as I've explained, education policy and jurisdiction is a provincial matter; the attempt to suggest a standard wiki-ism is completely off base; this is very clear to us, and you should bow and admit that you have been wasting time nit-picking on this concept; we understand it, it's time you did, too, and not seek reasons to continue waffling/arguing about it. Have you begun adding information on K-6/12 French immersion and other language programs in those same sections yet, by the way?Skookum1 (talk) 07:52, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- I just googled "anglophone" within the BC Ministry of Education website and all results that come up have to do with Canada/Quebec; none are about BC schools; and most results are in French. A google for your construction "anglophone schools" on the same site turned up "NO results".Skookum1 (talk) 07:58, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- The province of BC may not directly operate the French-language schools but it certainly does have authority over them just as much as it does over the English-languages. I don't think it's disputable that a separate French-language public school system that is not a part of the English-language school boards exists in British Columbia. Whether or not the English-language boards have French immersion programs doesn't change that.
- The exact nuances of the system of course are different (French-speaking persons aren't forced to enroll their children in the BC French school system) but these nuances don't come into play when someone makes a simple edit saying that this town has a French-language school.
- WhisperToMe (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- These aren't "simple nuances" as you are once again projecting false assumptions on; they can be crucial political-cultural reality i.e. language politics and have been a major force in the country's history; and once again, your comment shows that you don't "get" that many the regular public schools have full French programs.....and are "French-language schools" too; the difference with the societe francophone schools is they have a different curriculum; and all schools in BC are governed by the Education Act, and all organizations whether it's the societe franco-colombien or the Geothe Institute (which runs a German school in Vancouver) or organizations behind Chinese-only schools are all governed by the Societies Act. They are not "school boards as you were maintaining rather persistently. And "these nuances" DO come into play when "someone" makes a "simple edit" imposing the term and the paradigm ensuant upon using "Anglophone schools" and going on to argue about it when told by editors from the country that it is a wrong usage; do you realize how frustrating this kind of quibbling instead of listening/accepting informed input is? Do you care about how much of others' time and goodwill you take up by not listening but wanting to argue about "simple issues" and rather obvious ones to a Canadian, even when told you're wrong? By a Canadian??Skookum1 (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- The language of primary instruction in Quebec is determined by whether or not a parent has been educated in Canada using English as the primary language, regardless of their first language learned. In other provinces, either first language learned or language of education of the parents are qualifying criteria. Thus using the term "anglophone" or "francophone" to describe a Canadian school is a misnomer. isaacl (talk) 16:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- Ok! I'll describe them as "English-language" and "French-language" since that seems to be the best choice WhisperToMe (talk) 16:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- yes, at last it's not just "the best" choice, it's the reality of the place and the way things are; that it took this long for you to "get it" after so much laborious explanation; and not just by me, thankfully. But @Isaac1, there is no such "qualifying criteria" in British Columbia, for any other-language program full-time or otherwise; that's only restricted in Quebec and nowhere else (unless in NB, but I believe as in NS and ON it's purely choice). Things may be different within the franco-albertan and saskais and manitobaine and franco-metis communities there and in ON, and re AB/SK/NB legislation but I doubt it; in those communities it's cultural solidarity and pride that have kept their dialects/identity alive, as also in Maillardville. Not sure in the NT, CBW would know (they have something like 27 official languages including French and English)Skookum1 (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- My apologies for the imprecision; I was listing the criteria for the right to minority language education. There are other conditions (where numbers warrant) and so forth, and I don't know how every jurisdiction decides on allocating each individual's school tax funds. (In Ontario, to designate your school tax to a French-language board, you must have French language rights.) isaacl (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- yes, at last it's not just "the best" choice, it's the reality of the place and the way things are; that it took this long for you to "get it" after so much laborious explanation; and not just by me, thankfully. But @Isaac1, there is no such "qualifying criteria" in British Columbia, for any other-language program full-time or otherwise; that's only restricted in Quebec and nowhere else (unless in NB, but I believe as in NS and ON it's purely choice). Things may be different within the franco-albertan and saskais and manitobaine and franco-metis communities there and in ON, and re AB/SK/NB legislation but I doubt it; in those communities it's cultural solidarity and pride that have kept their dialects/identity alive, as also in Maillardville. Not sure in the NT, CBW would know (they have something like 27 official languages including French and English)Skookum1 (talk) 18:21, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- Ok! I'll describe them as "English-language" and "French-language" since that seems to be the best choice WhisperToMe (talk) 16:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
- The Northwest Territories has 11 languages (Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich’in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ) and Nunavut has 4 (English, French, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut). There are 3 types of schools in the 2 territories. The French language schools, one each in Yellowknife, Hay River and Iqaluit (École des Trois-Soleils). There are the Catholic schools all of which are in Yellowknife, Yellowknife Catholic School Board. Everything else in the NT and NU is just a school and not defined by language. Every school Nunavut has a "language of instruction" which must be one of the 4 official languages. In practice this means that Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk are classified as Inuinnaqtun and the rest of Nunavut as Inuktitut but are just called schools. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 16:02, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for the correction/clarification CBW...but it's not like WTM is even listening nor ever really has been, he's busy arguing his SYNTH word-games somewhere else right now, as I know all too well, and has no intention whatsoever of any further interest in Canadian schools or education content in articles as the issues raised do not fit the paradigm he was seeking to impose/juxtapose on them......rather than go back and add information on immersion programs and Punjabi, German and aboriginal programs and whatever else to where he dropped his franco-anglo dichotomy on and walked away from, he's done no such thing and gone "on the attack" defending "his" turf elsewhere.......Skookum1 (talk) 17:06, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
- The Northwest Territories has 11 languages (Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich’in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey, Tłı̨chǫ) and Nunavut has 4 (English, French, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut). There are 3 types of schools in the 2 territories. The French language schools, one each in Yellowknife, Hay River and Iqaluit (École des Trois-Soleils). There are the Catholic schools all of which are in Yellowknife, Yellowknife Catholic School Board. Everything else in the NT and NU is just a school and not defined by language. Every school Nunavut has a "language of instruction" which must be one of the 4 official languages. In practice this means that Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk are classified as Inuinnaqtun and the rest of Nunavut as Inuktitut but are just called schools. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 16:02, 27 January 2015 (UTC)