deskthority

Just a quick question; is there any official stance on whether we should use American or English spelling in the wiki?

Chyros wrote: Just a quick question; is there any official stance on whether we should use American or English spelling in the wiki?

I use English/Canadian spelling in the wiki and the forums here. It's one of the few places I frequent that I can do that. I will otherwise use American spelling if it's a US site.

Chyros wrote: […] is there any official stance on whether […]

An official stance? Here? On DT?

Mai roflcopter goes SOISOISOISOISOI.

No one here will get that reference, but I care not.

I really have no preference as to how things are spelled. It's the internet AND it's a multinational forum. Do you seriously expect someone to get salty if theatre is spelled theater? Gray, grey? Pfffffffft.

^ This. Do you understand the information presented? This is more important to me than anything else. Then again, there is a saying a quote from a co-worker all the time... "The emotions run highest when the stakes are the smallest."

I appreciate well crafted writing, but it isn't necessary here. Understanding is only part of the battle.

How much effort does it take to understand something?

That's also important in other settings. But this... This is a forum. It's where people go to unwind or pick a fight in the OT area. It's the internet.

Edit: but that's off topic. This is about the wiki. I think either spelling is fine, so long as it isn't wrong in BOTH British and American English.

ohaimark wrote: Understanding is only part of the battle.

For a wiki? A pure information dump by many different people from many different walks of life? I think understanding is the battle, personally.

I've been drilled to create "reader oriented" documents in my college programme. When you really start digging into it understanding is the end goal. I agree that it's the majority of the battle, certainly.

On the other hand, how difficult something is to understand can cause complete breaks in communication. Could I understand a wall of disorganized and barely legible text after serious parsing? Yes. That isn't optimal, though, because some people either wouldn't make an effort to understand or could be incapable of understanding.

Chyros wrote: Just a quick question; is there any official stance on whether we should use American or English spelling in the wiki?

As long as you don't use awful grammar, and worse sentence structure (like me) !

I got the impression that the loudest people on the forum a couple of years ago wanted British spelling ...
We are also a more European forum .. and we are sometimes compared to Geekhack which is American forum, so I think some like to use British just to set us apart from them.

I use British spelling otherwise. I have that set in my OS so I always get British spell-checking.
I find British to have a bit more class.

Here's the older discussion:
wiki-talk-f33/spelling-convention-t4294.html

A wiki should not be confused with a forum, and article should be clear, well written, with a structure, details and not a collection of references. I don't like when I land on an article and end up with only more questions.

DanielT wrote: A wiki should not be confused with a forum, and article should be clear, well written, with a structure, details and not a collection of references. I don't like when I land on an article and end up with only more questions.

Easier said than done DanielT! Often I don't have enough information to even write one paragraph, or quite often I am adding keyboards that I do not own myself and therefore know nothing about. Even when I do have the keyboard here I still have to come up with a good description, at moment this is a nice example:

wiki/OKI_HMB-35957U-22

There have been times that I have created an article "stub" only to keep a note of a little titbit of information. Those stubs have not always been very structured but they are searchable and have always got categories, thus being part of a greater whole.
I think it is better to have something little that helps me find more information about a subject than having nothing at all.

Findecanor wrote: There have been times that I have created an article "stub" only to keep a note of a little titbit of information. Those stubs have not always been very structured but they are searchable and have always got categories, thus being part of a greater whole.
I think it is better to have something little that helps me find more information about a subject than having nothing at all.

In the case of the OKI there is plenty of information but a description still needs to be written.

I know how complicated it is, for the last 8 years I maintain a technical wiki used by my team. I write the articles, edit the stuff other write in order to have a consistent format and approach. I know how difficult it is. I'm a bit rusty at mediawiki since I have migrated to doku wiki which is easier to work with, but I will try to contribute to the 60% area

I don't think spelling discrepancies between English-speaking countries are wide enough to impair comprehension.