Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of” • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by gbromios » Sat, May 06, 2023, 12:53 PM UTC

I am personally a rabid descriptivist, but I still find myself somehow sympathetic to this editor's cause. Much like "literally", losing the "official" meaning of "comprise" would leave us (i.e. English speakers) without a word which uniquely captures that meaning.

People will use words however however they will, and that's their absolute right. And without pretending that the aforementioned unique quality should (or even could) justify enforcing one meaning over the other in the English language at large, I think that it's fine to have different standards for different contexts, and that Wikipedia is a context whose need for precision and clarity justifies some pedantry.

If this guy's willing to put in the legwork, more power to him.

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

#182

Post by prepend » Sat, May 06, 2023, 12:58 PM UTC

lIl-IIIl wrote: post #167

317070 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It is objected to in some writing.

Everything is objected to, that’s not sufficient for a decision. It’s the reason or volume of objecting.

Just saying there’s some objection is the Twitter fallacy. It could be one person, or even me, or it could be 100% of editors.

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

#183

Post by prepend » Sat, May 06, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

jasomill wrote: post #156

redmorphium wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"I'll be staying at four hotels."

“I’ll stay at four hotels.”

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

#184

Post by in_being_the » Sat, May 06, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

irthomasthomas wrote: post #179

Now please do same for "factoid". The recent inversion of the definition of factoid is a much bigger problem. The term originates from medical science and means "a FALSE fact that is believed to be true after appearing in print". But some journalists miss understood it to mean "a small, but TRUE fact." Their new definition was false, but is now believed to be true after appearing in print. So, the modern definition o…

A true fact is as capable of "resembling a fact" as a false one.

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

#185

Post by prepend » Sat, May 06, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #130

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…

"impose my preference on everyone else" By fixing a common mistake on a collaboratively edited encyclopedia? What are you even talking about? Do you have any idea what an editor does at the New York Times?

But it’s not a mistake to everyone, it’s just a mistake in this person and some others eyes.

But it’s an accepted usage of the words.

I’m not exactly familiar with specific editorial duties, but it seems NYTimes editors allow “comprised of” [0] so they don’t seem to correct all occurrences of “comprised of” by changing text to “composed of.”

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comprised+of%22+site%3Any...

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

#186

Post by zephrx1111 » Sat, May 06, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

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…

Sorry, but as a non-native English speaker, “compromised of” confuses me more, I guess mostly because I was exposed to the other meaning too much.

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

#187

Post by prepend » Sat, May 06, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

sholladay wrote: post #74

housemusicfan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one seems to understand Wikipedia operates as a system of lords and serfs, where a powerful few pull this crap all the time . Most relevant example I can think of is when Mac OS X was renamed and stylized to "macOS" someone went and systematically did a find and replace all instances of "OS X" to macOS even in situations where it made absolutely no sense as the article was explicitly talking about prior versions.…

There are probably hundreds of articles that mention macOS. What are you suggesting that they do, edit them all individually by hand? That could take months. If more than half of the instances deserve to be updated, then replace all saves time. You can always check the diff and undo any damage.

I think it’s a balance based on harm of not changing vs harm if changing incorrectly.

I’m this example, there very little perhaps no harm of not changing because it’s just a corporate brand and the corporation cares and if they cared, they would edit.

The harm of incorrectly changing means information is wrong and makes understanding wrong and readers either have the wrong knowledge or spend time researching and correcting something they normally wouldn’t.

I don’t think the goal is absolute accuracy of cosmetic branding, I think the goal is accurately capturing humanity’s information to improve human understanding and knowledge.

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

#188

Post by prepend » Sat, May 06, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #170

chx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They’re enforcing a style that’s not in a work’s style guide.

That’s a total noob move for pedants.

A more at weight pedant would work on changing the style guide.

This is the equivalent of a self appointed hall monitor yelling “no skipping in the school hallway” when there’s no rule against skipping. The fact that some people don’t like skipping and that skipping is dangerous is not relevant, the place for that discussion is for the rules nerds in authority to change the rules to disallow skipping.

What worries me about this approach of one person is that they can say “I yelled at people 90k times to stop skipping therefore it’s important and we should change the rule based on all this anti-skipping activity.”

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

#189

Post by NoZebra120vClip » Sat, May 06, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #87

DangitBobby wrote: post #25

Is there a way to prevent people from doing petty and unnecessary vandalism to articles you've authored or are you pretty much at their mercy?

You can't, Wikipedia is pretty much entirely pedantry at this point. To give an example: a while back a semi-notable object in my local area burned down. It has a short Wikipedia page of a few hundred words, but it is not something anyone would actually care about. At 02:00AM (in the middle of the night) I added this to its Wikipedia page, citing a Tweet from the official fire department. Five minutes later the entir…

If the Tweet that you cited was indeed from the official account of the local fire department, then the editor who reverted you was wrong. Twitter accounts are mostly unreliable sources, except when they are reliable: that is, when an official or verified account gives information about themselves. See WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:SPS. The same goes for any such social media platform: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, whatever.

In fact, there are many TV news outlets who have official YouTube channels -- why wouldn't these be acceptable as reliable sources, just like a newspaper or a live TV broadcast?

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

#190

Post by soraminazuki » Sat, May 06, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

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…

> > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language.

I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas. In the novel, the totalitarian state of Oceania uses that exact same justification to promote the use of the Newspeak language:

> After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? ... Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak