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Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

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Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#161

Post by cookiengineer »

v-erne wrote: post #147
cookiengineer wrote: post #131

This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in Germany. There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all founded under the umbrella of a quasi-propaganda organization that officially was just a society/club. [1] They created their own "purified" dictionary with a "clean language" that was trying to find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationali…

I'm rereading Orwell's 1984 and this all seems a bit like Ministry of Truth and its whole newspeak ordeal (of course MT was a bit more absurd - they wanted to get rid of all ambiguity in language also). I wonder if this was maybe Orwell inspiration?

The organization predates George Orwell by around 20 years... so I guess nope ;D

But I agree with the similarities of the Ministry of Truth, and what it wanted to achieve. The issues as I mentioned is that I don't think there's a universal truth to anything; and therefore eradicating wordings or forms of language that are "not good" is a very subjective perspective.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#163

Post by nhinck2 »

redmorphium wrote: post #117
bee_rider wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t love “is comprised of,” and think it can usually be replaced with something like “contains” or simply “is,” resulting in a better, more direct sentence. But I’m not going to go on a crusade against it.

"My itinerary is comprised of four hotel stays." ---> "My itinerary is comPOSED of four hotel stays." or "My itinerary coNSISTS of four hotel stays." Much better.

?? If you say so

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#164

Post by melagonster »

In the context of taxonomy, the term "comprise" is commonly used in research articles, while "constitute" is not appropriate to describe the relationship between phyla and classes. To convey the intended meaning that phyla exclusively contain the classes mentioned, the phrase "phyla are comprised of classes" is unambiguous. This formulation signifies that the phyla encompass and solely consist of the mentioned classes. Referring to the relationship as "a phylum comprises classes" simply denotes that these classes are included within the phylum. By adhering to these distinctions, the paragraph conveys a more technical and professional tone.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#166

Post by lIl-IIIl »

p-e-w wrote: post #10

The justifications given in that essay leave a really bad taste in my mouth: > I believe using "comprised of" is poor writing, because > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language. That's true for many, many other words. In fact, most instances of definite and indefinite articles "add nothing to the language", since the actual…

"I go house" is not standard English. When they said 'There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of"' it is implied that those other ways are standard English.

>The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised of', and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even though the term has been part of standard contemporary English for a long time."

But they are not imposing their preference. They are making an improvement that has a consensus and the edit is appreciated by the authors of the text and Wikipedia editors.

Look at the "Reaction to the project" and the barn star awards they got. People whose text was edited to remove "comprised of" thanked this person for their work. Only 1% of the time the edit was reverted. Their work is overwhelmingly viewed as a good thing for Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#167

Post by lIl-IIIl »

317070 wrote: post #127
FabHK wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's true for many, many other words. Well, yes, but other words aren’t wrong and irritating to many readers. The point is that the usage in question has several disadvantages, but zero redeeming features. > "To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, but not in the same sense. That’s not the point. “To shoot” and “to be shot” contain the same word, but mean opposite things, but that’s a well un…

Those are just autantonyms, and English has plenty already. First you dust the cake, then you dust the table. The castle is impregnable. And if you add more collocial words, wicked now is good, but also means bad. When a song is cool, you mean it's hot. People tend to not object to that.

It is objected to in some writing.

"Inflammable" is taught to be avoided.

So are things that mean opposite things depending on locale, like "tabling" an issue. It may be ok within a local group, but would be avoided in writing inside a multinational corporation.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#168

Post by lIl-IIIl »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #158
jl6 wrote: post #122

Wow, there’s a lot of unjustified negativity in this thread. The whole encyclopedia (and a whole bunch of the wider world of computing) is built out of this kind of hyper-focused nerding over details. These changes don’t make your day worse. He’s not shoving it in our faces or claiming it’s going to save the world. We don’t know what’s going on in this editor’s life or what he “should” be doing with his time instead.…

Since there isn't agreement on this actually being janitorial work (in the sense that they are not simply enforcing the Wikipedia styleguide), this is not some completely innocent activity. No, this is in its essence very petty vandalism, an attempt to force his notion of grammar on the entirely of Wikipedia despite knowing this is forbidden. That this forcing is the intended goal is clear from their own description…

In "Reaction to the project" the author links to a "semi-vandalism" charge. You can read the discussion among Wikipedia editors there if you're interested (spoiler alert - most found it valuable and nobody thought it was vandalism).

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#169

Post by Pazzaz »

As a non-native English speaker, I appreciate pedantic editors like this one a lot. When I read Wikipedia, I want the text to be easy to understand and consistent with the rest of Wikipedia and when I edit, I want people to improve what I wrote. I wish everything I wrote had a copy-editor as pedantic as Wikipedia power users.

Some people are complaining about overly zealous editors who delete a lot of and as an Inclusionist [1] I understand the sentiment. I think deleting information from Wikipedia is pretty bad. But being pedantic about English is not deleting information, it's improving the transmission of information.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inclusionism

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#170

Post by tasuki »

chx wrote: post #49
nicklaf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantic, perhaps, but within the purview of an editor of an encyclopedia enforcing a style guideline!

Except there is no such thing. To quote. > Wikipedia does not have a policy or guideline on whether "comprised of" is welcome in the encyclopedia. This is nothing less but one person trying to punch way above their weight in shaping the English language.

They're trying to influence the English language for sure. Who are you to say they're punching above their weight?
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