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

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

#551

Post by crazydoggers » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:08 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #323

crazydoggers wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, he seems like a perfectly happy person, so I’m assuming saying he’s “sad” is attacking him personally because you don’t agree with him.. which is sad. Second, comprised already means “consists of”. Unlike your example, heard, which is the past tense if hear. So “comprised of” essentially means “consists of of” which is nonsense. Hence why it’s better to say “comprises” rather than “comprised of”.

Meaning is not macro replacement. If we suppose that "comprised" means "consists of", it does not follow that "comprised of" means "consists of of". (Setting aside, for a moment, that "comprised" does not mean "consists of"). Just like "make" possibly meaning "create" doesn't imply that "make up" can turn into "create up". To comprise means for something to contain certain components (usually with a nuance that the l…

If you look up the word “comprised” in multiple dictionaries they all define it including “consists of”, “composed of”, “made up of” etc. So right off the bat your argument is flawed. Perhaps you would like to define it the way you did, and perhaps some set of people you converse with may, but the point of a dictionary is so we can define words in ways we all agree on so we all understand each other.

As we have learned from Gödel, language is complete, but not consistent. Unlike math. So trying to argue about “comprise” using a more consistent logical framework of A, B, C, commutation, etc. is already a losing battle.

I could argue for a long time, having been both an English major, and a software engineer but the short of it is that words are tools.

Don’t use a hammer for a screw.

Sure you’re allowed to, and the language can evolve into everyone using a hammer on a screw, but the language losses something in the process.

There have always been, and always will be editors and people like the Wikipedia editor who help proscribe the usage of words to convey the correct and precise meaning to as many people as possible. The goal is to allow as many people as possible to have as precise an understanding of what is being communicated, with as much precision as is possible for something the must be complete but can’t be consistent. An example can be seen, even on this very page, of English learners, non-native speakers, thankful for what some call “pedantry”, so they can understand what is being said.

Without that, language can often become siloed, with the evolution of pidgins, and creoles etc, with the consequence that fewer and fewer people understand each other.

Imagine your grandmother trying to read and understand half of what is written on Twitter and TikTok.

For content that matters, and that includes Wikipedia, and published texts, editors who work for those publishers are the invisible people behind the scenes helping us all understand eachother.

You can scoff at “pseudo-intellectual twits”, but people often fail to realize that the world is often a better, richer place for intellectuals. The people who spend time on things most people find pedantic, often end up inventing things like transistors, understanding quantum physics, etc.

Software engineers often appreciate those types of results, but ignore or sweep away the results that lead to richer arts, language and cultural heritage.

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

#552

Post by bscphil » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:09 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #529

gnulinux wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is shocking to people but if a phrase is systematically used by native speakers, it is then part of the language. There is no notion of native speakers being systematically wrong in linguistics. It wouldn't make sense scientifically. In order to examine natural languages using the scientific method, linguists gather data (i.e. native speakers' spoken or written communication) and then analyze this (i.e. f…

There is a tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and it has to do with the rate at which the language evolves. Prescriptivism resists language evolution. Decriptivism allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to evolve it. Some rate of language change has to be accepted, but it needn't be as fast as if we rejected all prescriptivism. We each prescribe or refuse to prescribe language rules as we…

> Decriptivism allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to evolve it.

More importantly, taken to an extreme, descriptivism describes language in the way a map describes the territory. Any time a person speaks and is understood, no matter how badly, end-stage descriptivism has to allow their diction as syntactically and semantically valid in the language in which they spoke. The most you can say is that some expressions are rarer than others (you see "was done well" much more often than you see "was done good").

But this is also a wrong way of talking about language, just as much the old prescriptivist way was wrong. People are not static language replication machines, learning how to speak purely from imitation of their elders and community, and observed from on high by language anthropologists seeking to observe how they behave. They are concept-builders, rule-learners. They have a sense for not just how to speak in particular cases, but also what it is to speak well. It is this public sense of correct speech that is the subject of evolution over time, and is therefore also the proper target for descriptivist accounts of language.

Writing is similar to speech, but in writing most people are even more keyed to correctness, and less keyed to achieving the bare minimum of communication. Rules are stickier. We ought to understand this Wikipedia editor not as a noxious outsider to the evolution of language, who like the anthropologist inserts prescriptivist rules where they are unwanted, but as someone who is part of the normal evolution of language itself and therefore part of the terrain to be described! There have always been people who have been sticklers for particular rules.

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

#553

Post by tinideiznaimnou » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:09 PM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #500

matteoraso wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know the right solution to this problem, but I wish there were some kind of effective defense mechanism in open society against activist superminorities. Wikipedia is nothing but a superminority making the website their playground, though[0]. If you get rid of the superminority, the website literally couldn't function. The inner workings of Wikipedia are actually a fascinating rabbit hole to fall into, but t…

>a minority of the minority produces a lot They produce a whole lot of edits . They don't actually contribute an especially large amount of content, which is the thing with real value. The content is mostly written by subject matter experts that contribute large blocks of useful text to just a few articles each.

It's a really neat division of labor. Subject matter experts provide the facts from a subject matter-focused viewpoint. Those are known to be rough around the edges, so editors make sure they fit together in a more or less cohesive picture of the world.

As with most human efforts, the emergence of a political layer is inevitable. But overall they seem to be doing a pretty good job keeping their shit together. Even though I have no way of knowing whether the information on Wikipedia is correct as a whole, at least it presents as self-consistent.

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

#554

Post by panxyh » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:11 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #492

denton-scratch wrote: post #214

"Comprises" means "consists of". So "comprised of" means "consists of of". It's not just that some people dislike it; it's simply wrong. Whenever I come across the word "utilize" in WP, I change it to "use" (with the edit comment "Don't utilize utilize"). Nobody's ever reverted me for that. I think there is a proper use for the verb "utilize": it means "to render useful". But usually, it's just a substitute for "use"…

"Yeah no" and "No yeah" mean clear and different things, despite being superficially total nonsense. I've probably heard "comprised of" thousands of times in my life to mean "made of." What's wrong with phrases having meaning?

Yeah no, they are not total nonsense.

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

#555

Post by chris_wot » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:13 PM UTC

ezekiel68 wrote: post #414

I don't know the right solution to this problem, but I wish there were some kind of effective defense mechanism in open society against activist superminorities. Pedants tilting at windmills shouldn't be able to alter the cultural landscape this easily. I am aware that their problem and my problem are privileged "first-world problems". The seeds of the open society carry the germ of this pathology, I guess.

You need to look at those who edit categories. Wikipedia no longer gives much credence to those who create, research and improve articles. It is now full of people poking around the edges.

There is one editor, BrownHairedGirl, who tags articles with “bare links” (note she does not actually change those links very often), and gets into battles about categories that has driven off dozens of users (if not more). They are the most toxic editor on Wikipedia but have amassed a group of followers who are of the same ilk - people who do nothing but poke at minor parts of Wikipedia but contribute nothing of significance - and will remove anyone who gets on their bad side.

Wikipedia is said to have hit “maintenance phase”. That’s ridiculous, there is a lot more to be writing about. Basically these people are killing the project. It’s a complete tragedy.

Edit: here’s an example of the vicious and petty actions they make - they created a category “Abusive, mean, petty Wikipedians” for people who use a particular category that is never filled in on their user pages. This has been there since 2017. We have one user who calls themselves the “category police” who is currently arguing such a divisive and abusive labeling of editors is quite acceptable. The irony is strong in that one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abusive,_mean,_petty_...

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

#556

Post by xdennis » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:13 PM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #509

vajrabum wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. If you look at Wiktionary or if you prefer, your favorite etymology dictionary, the word utilize is descended from Latin from the French word utiliser, via the Italian utilizzare which got it from the Latin utilis. All of those words mean to use. I'd be the last person to say you're wrong. Matters of grammar and usage ultimately boil down to does it feel right and current usage. As is usual with these th…

>All of those words mean to use. "The teachers were unable to utilize the new computers" means something different from "The teachers were unable to use the new computers"

Sorry, but what is the difference? "To utilize" is literally defined as "to use".

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

#557

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:14 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #454

s1artibartfast wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my parent post points out, it is certainly not history in the legal system and other fields where precise and Technical meanings matter.

That only applies in cases of ambiguity at which point it’s often best to avoid both the old and new definitions.

I generally agree with that sentiment. And something like a patent the definition is well understood.

The sentiment that I disagree with is defending an incorrect or at least ambiguous word choice when there is a clear alternative. The strikes me as simple stubbornness.

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

#558

Post by FR10 » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #417

bloppe wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is the ambiguity. Someone who uses the original meaning of comprise will interpret a sentence in the opposite way of someone using the new. "America comprises many states and territories" -> "Many states and territories are comprised of America" have the same meaning with the original definition. With the new definition, you'd have to invert both sentences. This is called a Janus word because it can…

Biweekly is not its own antonym but it means two completely different things (every other week and twice a week) which for me as rendered it useless since you cannot know which meaning is intended. The best way to deal with this issue is to have body that slows down language changes, then normalise them based on logic and history, something like the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy .

Yeah the RAE is super useful to end debates on what a word means, thats it. I see no issues with language not "evolving enough". Spanish written/talked a century ago is different than what it's spoken presently, even if the words mean the same.

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

#559

Post by loudandskittish » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

ezekiel68 wrote: post #414

I don't know the right solution to this problem, but I wish there were some kind of effective defense mechanism in open society against activist superminorities. Pedants tilting at windmills shouldn't be able to alter the cultural landscape this easily. I am aware that their problem and my problem are privileged "first-world problems". The seeds of the open society carry the germ of this pathology, I guess.

I'm finding this entire comment section confusing and I genuinely want to understand what is so offensive about what this editor did. To me this does not look like a problem that requires a solution and I even appreciate the essay (I've always had a hard time understanding the usage of 'comprises').

...yet I'm seeing unironic comparisons to both 1984 and Nazi Germany, so ... what this person did is evil?

Can someone please help me understand this?

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

#560

Post by kelnos » Sat, May 06, 2023, 8:17 PM UTC

ezekiel68 wrote: post #414

I don't know the right solution to this problem, but I wish there were some kind of effective defense mechanism in open society against activist superminorities. Pedants tilting at windmills shouldn't be able to alter the cultural landscape this easily. I am aware that their problem and my problem are privileged "first-world problems". The seeds of the open society carry the germ of this pathology, I guess.

I don't see this as a problem.

The editor here is arguably correct in that the usage he's changing is incorrect.

You may find it pedantic (and I might agree), but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Does tilting at this particular windmill make Wikipedia worse? I would say it makes it better, even if in a very small way.

Even if you don't care about the incorrect usage, I find his argument that some uses are there just to make the prose sound more "intelligent" -- at the expense of clarity and ease of reading -- to be valid enough. I would much rather read "The residents are former New Yorkers" instead of "The population is comprised of former New Yorkers". The latter is unnecessarily complex for a sentence like that.

I'm sure someone can find a completely separate example of this sort of editing that actually is harmful. But the solution to that isn't "ban all edits of this sort".