Talk:Louis-Philippe Pigeon

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- KenWalker | Talk 06:17, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Louis-Philippe Pigeon.jpg
Image:Louis-Philippe Pigeon.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 18:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Changing "honorary" to "honourary"
This article used the spelling "honorary" up until 19 August, when User:Mr Serjeant Buzfuz changed it to "honourary". He claims it is listed as an acceptable variant in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Even if it is (I don't have a copy to refer to), it is used in no other national variety of English; in all other English-speaking countries, it is seen as a flat-out misspelling that is a result of a failure to distinguish between the different etymologies of "honour" and "honorary". The Manual of Style (in WP:COMMONALITY) says "Wikipedia tries to find words that are common to all varieties of English. Insisting on a single term or a single usage as the only correct option does not serve the purposes of an international encyclopedia ... Universally used terms are often preferable to less widely distributed terms". It does not serve Wikipedia or its readers well to change a commonly accepted spelling to a spelling that is in, at best, marginal use. The spelling should be returned to its original form. Chris the speller  yack  15:19, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * " Insisting on a single term or a single usage as the only correct option does not serve the purposes of an international encyclopedia ... " Quite so.   The MOS also states:  "The English Wikipedia prefers no major national variety of the language over any other."   Wikipedia is an international collaboration, and articles that relate to a particular country should use the variant of English in that country, as the MOS entry for "Strong national ties to a topic" indicates. Thus, it is not appropriate to reject a spelling used in Canadian English on the basis that it is not used in other national variants of English, as argued in the previous post. Even if a spelling is not acceptable in other variants in English, using that analysis to insist on a particular spelling is essentially an argument that Wikipedia does in fact prefer a particular variant of English. As the tag at the top of this page indicates, this article is written using Canadian English, and the article clearly has strong ties to Canada, being a biography of a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Since both variants are acceptable in Canadian English, as shown by the entry in a reputable dictionary, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, it would be inappropriate to insist that only one variant should be used in Wikipedia articles;  that is contrary to the principle that Wikipedia does not prefer one national variety over another.  Canadian editors should not have to justify their use of acceptable spellings within Canadian English, any more than a British editor should have to justify their use of British spelling, nor US editors justify their use of American spelling. And for the record, last August I did not simply change the spelling of the word, as seems to be suggested by the post above.  As a review of the history of this article will show, last August I was making an extensive series of editorial changes to this article, adding considerable new content, wiki-links, and so on (18 separate edits, for a net total of 7,352 characters). I don't recall making any conscious choice of the spelling of "honourary";  that is simply an acceptable Canadian spelling that I used, without even thinking about it. It is not appropriate to insist that only one spelling be used, even though both spellings are recognised in Canadian English. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 07:12, 8 December 2014 (UTC)