User talk:W.C.

Welcome! (We can't say that loudly enough!)

Here are a few links you might find helpful:


 * Be Bold!
 * Don't let grumpy users scare you off
 * Meet other new users
 * Learn from others
 * Play nicely with others
 * Contribute, Contribute, Contribute!
 * Tell us about you

You can sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the New contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type   on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

We're so glad you're here! Stay tuned & keep wikiin', JackLumber.  19:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Jack! And same to you, too! W.C. 15:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Transportation -> Transport == ==

Welcome to Wikipedia! I saw your vote about the transportation articles in Asia. Note, the same user has also created a vote for a mass rename of Transportation articles in South America:

Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_July_14

A group of us are hoping that neither vote goes through (actually, we were hoping Darwinek would withdraw it, but he won't), and that we can discuss this matter instead, here:

Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_%28categories%29

Feel free to join us!

Best wishes, --  Cultu ral Fre edom  2006-07-19 -22:31 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I don't think nuisances like Darwinek can be persuaded to withdraw renamings. In fact, I think asking him, too, only makes him more determined. Anyway, some involvement allows me to do a little research and see how English is used around the world. I think it is also interesting how the British also use "transportation". And on the discussion thread you mention above, I found the perception I've heard before about how the British influence English usage in Europe interesting. It is true to a certain extent, but the French might see it as French influencing the British with French words taken up by the English such as "transport" or "theatre". Then maybe the French decide, hey, let's call it the "Ministry of Transport", not from being influenced by the British--although this may be so, I just don't know--but simply because it is a spelling they already know in French--it is in a sense French. But an Englishman might look at that and say, hey, they are "influenced" by us, never realizing that "transport" was simply the path of least resistance, a spelling and concept all Frenchmen have already mastered. The same for "theatre". British spellers might say, hey, see, they spell it just like us. But the French are probably thinking, hey, (except for the lack of those special makings) the British spell it just like us, after all, it was originally a French word!


 * I'll try and look in on the various discussions from time to time. W.C. 15:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Use of “transportation” (not “transport”) in Latin America.
Here are some examples of English usage related to the argument against the proposed renaming proposal at Wikepedia: Categories for deletion/Log/2006 July 14:


 * In government: "The Ministry of Transportation".


 * In business: "The Minister of Transportation".

(From Darwinek's discusion page, removed by him)
Darwinek wrote: "if I am right "transportation" is a term used only in United States and its dependencies..."


 * Comment - If? This guy is an administrator (some 20 year-old punk? What can he know about anything? I mean, I know some bright kids, but they do research--Darwinek does none) and he makes decisions based on "if"? It is easy enough to do a little a little research on these things online. Or if he's in England, he can simply pick up any newspaper and find "transportation" routinely such as in these examples. My suspicion is that Darwinek is not a native speaker of English and/or does not read the newspaper. His statement is the kind of thing you might hear from someone who has studied English as a second language in basic text books, but has no contact with normal (British) English usage. I mean how else can one account for the fact that he doesn't realize "transportation" is also used in England? Even if he has only a limited command of English, I think he ought to be allowed to participate in these discussions, but he also should stop taking actions based on "if" and do some research first before proposing votes. W.C. 22:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * This whole fiasco has made me really depressed about Wikipedia. People make mistakes, especially young people working in a language they don't have perfect command of. Such are just the peccadillos of youth. But once their mistakes are pointed out, you would think they would learn, and thus try to undo these mistakes. Darwinek seems utterly unwilling to make any changes. Because there are so many people who vote without thinking, it now looks like a mass renaming, based on a violation of WP guidelines, and a misunderstanding of the global use of English, is going to take place. Is it time to start a new wiki encyclopedia? --  Cultu ral Fre edom  2006-07-19 21:32 (UTC)

Well, it's depressing to a degree. Then again, maybe we just have to adjust our expectations a little. After all, we all know how the names "should" be. The more intelligent users, who come by after the fact know this, too. Since there's no real stopping these kinds of abuses (of renaming)--not just at Wikipedia, but all over the Net (imdb.com uses "theatre" and I would guess because Brits combined with American actors insist on the lesser used spellilng). The people who vote with him are "thinking", that is they made up their minds in advance, that they would vote with him, in order to change the spelling according to their personal preference of Brit. spelling, Any reasons they give are simply a kind of pretext. If their reasons are disproved they're not going to change their vote. Their minds are made up and they're beyond reasoning with. Wikipedia's guidelines to me are more about freeing management from getting involved in anything. Simply because they don't have the funds to pay people to enforce guidelines. That's a trade-off for not being supported by advertising. The trade-off we users have to make, in turn, is to kind of lower our expectations about certain things on Wikipedia, and to develop a kind of filter--and that filter may apply to the Net in general. A certain skepticism. For example, that in some ways, on the Net, you'll see a preponderance of British English that doesn't reflect the real world or its proportion in the real world, i.e., a reference work like imdb.com using "theatre". Now, at least, I understand a little about how this may have come about. Things like Darwinek's abuses point out to me some basic problems with the Internet, voting, democracy, society, human beings. It isn't just Wikipedia. The idea that you can solve things with a vote, or that the majority (this is a falisy often said about the Net) will always make the right choices. I think that naive idealism is more at fault than characters like Darwinek who just expose that naivite and bring it to light.

Often in spelling discussions these sincere posters will say, OK vote on it, the best choice should win consensus. These guys are a laugh, too. But again I think that their view is also a reflection of what a lot of users believe, whether or not it is correct.

This issue also brings out problems with both trying to apply open source models to non-programming environments, and with the English language itself. Open source works better for programming. If the program doesn't work then the programmers will fix it because it is no use to anyone otherwise. On the other hand, a Wikepedia article can have lots of good content or some good supporting links so you can confirm things (but sometimes neither of these), but with a British title. So the "content" of the software/article "works" to a degree. There's no incentive for anyone to really change the title, then. You just make the mental note that it looks oddly British for some reason and move on. Since N.A. English and British English overlap a lot they're lumped together and yet the two camps may have other big differences in outlook or history, etc. that go beyond just the linguistic differences. You don't have that same can of worms with say the French vs. the Germans beacuase the greater language difference demands they have their own distinct articles. I know there might be smaller region differences within those langauges, but the gap is not that great.

Further, with an open source program, you can download it and modify things to your liking if you have the programming skills. With Wikipedia, you probably won't bother to "fix" your own version. You just make a mental note--OK these clowns messed with the English a little or whatever else they put a British spin on. And then you go on to take from the article what is worth taking.

The good news about Darwinek is that in a year or two he probably won't be hanging around his university's computer lab 24/7 anymore and will be pushing pencils in some office somewhere to support himself. In short, that such people are transients, as with many kinds of users. Of course, others similar to him are also likely to pop up to replace him.

So he deleted what I wrote. But that also means he read it. And that he had a momentary "reaction" to what I wrote. And interested parties can look at the edit log. As for the wider audience who comes by later and are of the type who don't check the edit log, I don't think they are many in number or that they really care much. Besides the handful of us, they're mostly Darwinek clones anyway and nothing I write is going to change their minds much I would think.

What I'd like to see is some users from New Zealand coming on a few years from now and them, not us or Darwinek, changing it back to "transportation" themselves. I mean local people taking action about their own topic areas.

I'm still in favor of modifications to the browser, if only at a personal level. Having the langauge reflect the local area, that is just a management tool to me. A way to settle disputes. It doesn't address the question of the reader, where he is from and the way he would like to read things. With print media, they publish novels in both British and U.S. English versions, after all. There is a demand from the public for this to happen. I think on the Internet, you would like to have this choice, too. On the other hand, in print, you're paying for that service, but at Wikipedia, it's mostly free. So in a way all of the Internet open community things, is for this reason, and for the Darwineks, going to be somewhat inferior to print material you pay for. I guess I can learn to live with that, as long as I develop a good filter in my head for sorting some things out, as there are still many things I find useful about Wikepedia (along with a healthy skepticism), that probably comes from all the good people working on it, to use as a kind of launching pad, for doing my own "research" into topics I'm interested in. W.C. 02:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I noted that you did not vote on Transport in Africa. That may be because you have framed yourself into a local usage box. I don't really support the local usage idea. It is exploitable for attempting to gain consensus from the renaming boarder line voters since it is a popular notion among Darwinek supporters, but then I ask myself, as an American with foreign language skills, should I be forced to change languages every time my topic concerns a different local? Or, if my audience consists mostly of people who can understand a single langauge, should I simply stay with that common langauge. I think the latter makes more sense. The local usage argument seems invalid to me. The focus should be on the audience. Not on the topic. Wikipedia guidelines even state this although the idea has been Shanghaied and twisted by the likes of the Darwinek's and even programmed into the minds of many of his opponents as the only way to resist his movement. They've confused the idea of "audience" with "topic". Why for example would you try to explain African transportaion to an African who is probably already knowledgeable on the topic. It would be more likely that the purpose of this article is to explain the topic to a non-African who doesn't live there and hence doesn't know about the topic. To someone in America, or China, for example.


 * Thanks for your extremely interesting thoughts. Are you familiar with the Wikipedian Essay? You might consider turning the above into an essay, and listing it as such. I'm going to respond a bit more when I get a breather (my wordload is Hell right now). About the Africa vote: you are exactly right about my thinking, and you've convinced me I was wrong, so I voted. By the way, I am still cleaning up Darwinek's mess (double redirects, etc.), and he still hasn't apologized to me.... --  Cultu ral Fre edom  2006-07-24 08:09 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply and the suggestion. I understand your situation. I was wondering if I was not being to "strong" with my position, as I re-read some of the guidlelines and saw how they do spin things in the direction of local usage. But after that I tried to imagine why those guidelines were made and who might have made them, and came away dissatisfied because: 1. They don't reflect the real world (i.e., when Darwinek visits London, goes to the books store and looks for a book written by John Steinbeck, he'll most likely find spellings of "colour" or -ise instead of -ize, etc.)(my British copy of the da Vinci code uses British spelling even though I am sure Dan Brown wrote it in the American variety of English) in that the real world focuses on audience for whom the text is intended, not on the irrelevant use of a foregin language (English) by the local population of a given topic; 2. The guideline makers (there should be more transparency here on who exactly they are/were and what their qualifications are) are most likely not experienced langauge policy specialists by training, or people with international relations backgrounds, but rather comptuer programmers (it seems a lot of the early or long-time contributors are computer science or science people who use the Internet more than the general public--as is the pattern with almost anything online) and these types have a bias towards uniformity as a top priority as a program will not work at all if multiple programming languages are used at the same time whereas combining varieties of English doesn't present the same problem; 3. If I'm right about #2. then it partly explains #1. that unqualified people make blunders like not wording guidelines with more circumspection and not consider how language variety is determined by target audience in the publishing world; 4. Variety of English will also bias the content of articles as more of the benighted like Darwinek will be encouraged to contribute to those articles. (If anything makes Wikipedia look amateur--and there may just be no way getting around this--it is the use of British English where it does not belong.)

In may cases, you simply click on the foreign language side bar to get an article in the local language. I'd argue that foreign users use their L1 (native language) in Wikipedia and not English, whenever this is possible. I mean how often did you go to a Scandanavian site in order to find out more about Shakespeare? (I realize this is possible, but more esoteric, and not something the core audience of Wikipedia is likely to do.)

The guildelines for this were simply ill-conceived. When you look at who the people who set up Wikipedia were, it is only too obvious as to how unqualified they were to make such decisions. The examples they give are simply ridiculous. American books written by Americans and explaining things about the British never use British spelling or word choices (ie. transport for transportaion). To me it is simply a kind of management tool to use on the naive and try and control them. As if to say, now boys and girls, we need to have some kind of (arbitary) rule... But then when the Wikipeida population begins drawing individuals smarter and wiser (enough so as to look at how the publishing world handles language issues--and to see that language issues will reflect on the bias of content in the longer term) than the amateurs who started Wikipedia then problems arise.

Some of the Brits may think I just don't like things British, but I find this funny and a bit ironic, in that my favorite author is British, most of my favorite playwrights, and the sports I've enjoyed most all come from the Britsh, commentators and personalities I enjoy most use the UK variety of English. And when traveling in countries where the British variety is used, even the local language dominates, coming across a sign now and then in the former, still gives one the pleasure of being "abroad", as it were. But I'm sure the British I mention would side with my views. After all, a British author wants to reach as many eyeballs as he can. He doesn't want to limit his audience by insisting on a variety of the language that would limit this. He wants to take away as many of the barriers as possible.

Even the case for uniformity is suspect to me. It may be based on the idea of eventually developing a paper version based on articles developed online. That was stated by the founder, I beleive. That might be a nice idea, but it probably doesn't capture for me what is so good about Wikipedia, that it is constantly evolving and that any printed edition just becomes obsolete the moment it is printed. Non-uniformity is a more honest state of affairs. It suggests that the article is created by many different users not just one. Uniformity suggests there was an effort made by one individual author or a group of authors sharing the same variety of English. If any uniformity needs to take place, it should be based on our audience, and that audience should be a global audience in most cases, and a debate needs to take place over what that global variety is. The evidence I've provided in terms of the likely Internet population tends to say that this is going to be something closer to the American variety than the British. Which is why the likes of Darwinek probably prefer to ignore intended audience, and to be satisfied with the status quo (for the guidelines) of categories based on the topic and the local variety used by the locale discussed in the topic--not many people in a remote and sparsely popluated part of Africa may have ever seen a PC, and they may have no interested in knowing about local things, but more in foreign things, but never mind, their government has a website that uses the noun "transport".

As for Darwinek in particular, there isn't much one can do with him or similar people. Some of the interesting brain research in the past several years (I'll post the references later here) show us that teenagers have trouble integrating different kinds of information. The most recent ongoing studies hypothesize that this limitation may extend well into the 20's. And this is all due to the brain simply not being fully developed until that time. In Darwinek's case, even in his 40's his brain may never mature properly, as there is variation from individual to individual. Generally, what I'm saying is that the younger Wikipedians may not be so easy to convince on language variety or connecting the dots on why you can't delete you user page (i.e., not being able to integrate actions with long-term consequences). Also in his case, the English langauge becomes a filter. Living abroad I am sure you will know what I mean. You can simply tune out a foreign language. If people warn him about Wikipedia rules about not deleting things he can simply tune it out. It has no impact on him. He can even do this sincerely, as if to say, "does this have any value..." and "Oh, no, it is not worth the extra effort of reading it all in a foregin language-- it's just a bunch of rules that don't make sense to me..." tune out.

(This may also have to do with why he won't apologize for certian things. He honestly dosen't connect action with consequences, for him, or for others, or not fully so. So it is something about him we should all just filter out and get on with what we need to do here.)

So whatever I contribute that helps to correct the damage people like him do, is only in a minor way meant to try and reach a Darwinek, but more aimed at those who do have their intergrative brain skills working up to speed and are open minded and motivated to listening to both sides of an issue and from the audience come to our discussions not yet having made up their minds, or having voted, but wondering if their points of view can be supported by any documentation. It is also to set the record straight (how "transportation" is used not only in many places around the world, but in England as well, or how "theater" is used in California (despite some Americans claiming it isn't), regardless of how the vote goes, or whether or not Darwinek changes his mind. The reasons some of these people are full of misinformation. You can't do much about the way the vote goes in the end, but you can put the correct information out there for those who are interested.

All of this said, one might think I'm pretty frustrated about the state of things. But to greatly offset this, I've also had a lot of pleasant experiences with Wikipedia, learned a lot directly from others, or in my own research inspired by the errors of others, and found many good ways in which Wikipedia satisfies needs for me that print media doesn't. Those pleasant experiences far outnumber the Darwinek cases, by 10 x or 100 x even. At the same time, he's made me more aware of how we all have to develop a filter when dealing with Wikipedia. I mean a healthy skepticism to sometimes check out dubious statements or to ignore the wrong application of a certain variety of English now and then. That's what I mean by filter. I think we all have this kind of filter for using the Internet, and on the surface, Wikipedia seems like a safe zone, but then we run into the Darwinek's and discover we have to reconstitute another kind of filter for dealing with Wikipedia. That there is no truly safe zone on the Internet. No management or rules, espeically in a free (unpaid) site, can eliminate all abuse or human error. So ironically, in a way, there is much that I have the Darwinek types to thank for.

In closing, and returning briefly to the topic of varieites of English, idealy I'm against imposing any variety of English on anyone, and I can sympathize with the way some British users must feel. This is why allowing customization to the browser, if practical (it may be too labor intensive) is the best solution. Allowing each user his own choice is the best way to go, if this is possible. The above is simply what I believe to be the next best thing if customization can not be realized.

No need to respond to this. Just clarifying some ideas here. You need to concentrate on your work. So good luck with it! W.C. 11:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Here's an example of what I mean by the complications of British vs. American English influencing content, as the conflict can go beyond simply langauge and become tainted with nationalistic bias (often it seems on the part of some of the more feisty Brits). In this case, Paul, an often testy Brit.,and also one blind to his own writing deficiencies (see our long discussion at "Mona Lisa" Talk, where he "claimed" (because he couldn't face the fact he'd constructed a poor sentence) you could shave your own eyeball. Brits like him tend to dismiss non-British references sources like Webster's. The OED is the Bible to them. Where conflict exists, his edit might have said that source A says X but source B says Y. Instead he simply deletes 3 paragraphs and calls it all "gibberish". He's not really a part of that article project. He doesn't bother to discuss the issue with others who have invested much time and energy into developing the article. He simply comes along and makes a sudden radical edit like that. Idealy, there would be a British site, where the world could be viewed through a British lens, language, usage, content bias and all. And a real site where topics are treated with proper balance.

Paranoia
I've commented on your paranoia at User talk:WikiFair1. violet/riga (t) 11:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Paranoia is too inflated a choice of word. It assumes the pest is something more than the puny gnat that it is in reality. Harmless gnats only require a good swatting from time to time. W.C. 02:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)