Can we do something to prevent newcomers from "fixing" the spelling in articles that use a different variant of English from their own? We don't want to bite the newbies, but we have to revert them when they do this, which is not a good welcome. Could we somehow ask what variant of English they use and only point them at articles that use that variant?
Topic on Talk:Growth/Personalized first day/Newcomer tasks
Hi Kerry, and thank you for bringing this.
I'm afraid that not everyone is aware of these English differences. To be honest, I wasn't aware of them until recently, and the more I'm exploring English language the more I discover these subtile details.
Can you tell me more on how the articles using a given variant are identified? I know that some wikis have banners, especially the ones hosting multiple dialects, but it is not something I saw at English Wikipedia.
Also, how do you deal with these newcomers, besides reverting (which is indeed not a good welcome)? Do you inform them, and if so, do you react?
Thank you!
Hi, Trizek. I've noticed a similar thing with users trying to change such spellings. The main way English variety can be identified is that a template has been placed in the source text at the top of articles which then populates related categories. An example would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Use_Indian_English which populates Category:Use Indian English. The template isn't present in all articles but a significant number have been logged. In my opinion, spelling in Indian English is virtually indistinguishable from British English, it only differs sometimes in writing style (Indian English can be more poetic), so if absolutely necessary for efficiency it could be possible to group varieties together. Thanks, Zindor
Regarding the reverting of the changes, there is a variety of ways in which editors will react. Some will revert with no explanation, some will provide a simple text explanation in the edit summary and others i've seen have posted on the users talk page. The simplest way to explain to a new user is to provide a link to , the policy page we have on English varieties at en-wiki. Zindor
Thank you for these details, Zindor.
I observe that 138k articles are tagged as Indian English, 238k are tagged for British English, but only 49.5k articles are tagged for American English. So tagging is not systemic, so it could be difficult to use it. Plus, would it scale to more wikis? At the moment I'm not really aware of other wikis applying different spellings.
We have the cases of variants. Some wikis apply dialects variants (like Normand and Alemanic), where an article is written in a given variant (example). For Chinese, you can choose which variant to display (a script searches and replaces the ideograms), but I think (to be confirmed) that you can write in any form.
Maybe we can do some magic to detect the right spelling, but at the moment, I don't know yet if it is possible. We are likely to work on spelling, offering a task around it. We will certainly use your valuable input there!
To be continued.
Because of the prevalence of U.S editors, American English is the presumed variety unless another indication exists (such as the article unambiguously being an inherently British topic), so tagging for the U.S variety will naturally be far less. So thinking of it in the reverse, an avoidance strategy could make a difference. Recommending U.S based users anything except Indian and British categorised articles would remove 376k articles where these errors could occur. That's a significant number in my book . Regards, Zindor
No, this is not true; AE is not the presumed variety for an article in principle. The presumed variety is whatever variety the article creator or early modifiers used; or to put it another way, the presumed variety is whatever the variety was in the earliest version of the article where a particular variety (and not some other variety) is clearly evident. Overriding this however, is the principle of en:MOS:TIES, which stipulates that even if Americans first wrote the article Big Ben in AE and it became stable early on, nevertheless, the AE variety should be overturned in favor of BE, because the *topic* "Big Ben" has clear, national ties to England; therefore, British English is the choice, regardless who got there first.
In a practical sense, it's probably true that many articles that have no national ties to any country end up being written in AE due to the sheer number of American editors, but for any given article with no TIES, the variety is unpredictable because we are a volunteer project, and it just depends who volunteers first to create the article. Mathglot (talk) 04:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
What isn't true? While correct in what you're referencing, you've missed the context of this thread, I omitted mentioning existing English variety because the entire reason for this thread is that new users are struggling to make the realisation that other varieties exist and that existing variety takes precedence! This is about triaging where new users are sent so we can actively avoid the situations where MOS violations are likely to occur, not about teaching them policy after they've done the damage, we don't have the volunteers for that. American English has always been presumed unless there is an indication otherwise, if there is an indication then there is no longer a presumption. Avoiding sending American editors to the 376k articles i mentioned would go a long way in preventing damage. I've not kept track of what has since been implemented but it was a good idea at the time and there was nothing untrue in the advice i gave.
Just came across an edit apparently using newcomer tasks which was purely changing the English variation. I can't see from the page here how this is recommended to new users, the only mention of spelling is in "Sourcing the tasks" where it notes specific copyedits are not offered. However this is advised, it should probably be changed to not encourage this.
For Australian articles, the template is "Use Australian English". We also use the template "Use dmy dates" as well. Again, a problem we encounter (not just from newbies) is the desire to change dates into MDY format. I think the vast majority of articles relating to Australian content will have those templates, and consequently there is a pretty low tolerance of people who choose to ignore them when "Use Australian English" seems to be a pretty unambiguous directive (what else could it mean?!).
And as much as I think it is desirable to be friendly and helpful with newbies, there's just not enough time to hold the hand of every new user, so you need to pick and choose. I tend to take more effort with new users who have a username (I've given up investing time in IPs) who seem to be trying to add good-faith content to Australian articles as I figure I get the best return on the investment of my time with those folk if they stick around contributing to the same topic space (Australia) as I do. However, such people generally don't have a problem writing in Australian English.
This suggests to me that it might be useful to identify a topic area of interest to the newcomer and only point them at articles in that topic space (based on categories or WikiProject tagging). That way, the users who will notice them (typically via their watchlist) will be active in the same topic space and see the benefit of assisting in onboarding this new user who is interested in that same topci space.
The problem is continuing happening. We are critically short of Australian contributors and cleaning up after these newcomers is just a waste of everyone's time (the newcomers and the regulars). Can they kept away from variants of English not their own (ideal solution) or given explicit instructions to check and respect the variant of English. I don't want to just revert them because it's not welcoming but it is unfortunately the most time efficient thing to do. ~~~~
The above was sent by me but for some mysterious reason I was not automatically signed in.
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This is still happening. What is the value of explicitly encouraging a new editor to make a mistake?
As we can't rely on tagging for all cases, maybe the best option is to edit the onboarding messages locally to highlight this specific instruction?
This message says
You can fix spelling and grammar errors. This might include sentences that are too long, repeated words, or incorrect punctuation.
It could be edited for:
You can fix spelling and grammar errors. This might include sentences that are too long, repeated words, or incorrect punctuation. If you plan to fix spelling, please carefully look at the article and keep the variant of English.
I let you agree on the best (short and clear) wording for this sentence.
Don't forget that changing this message won't fix all cases of "wrong" English variants being used. Knowing this particularity of English Wikipedia is part of the learning path for newcomers among (too) many other important things.