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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”

#591

Post by crazygringo »

kelnos wrote: post #567
jaggederest wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This person's arguments seem to hold water. Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.

OP discusses this; the language has not really evolved. Certainly there are some dictionaries that acknowledge the newer confusing usage, but always as an alternate. Also consider the "why": does this phrase pop up more and more often due to misunderstandings and copy/paste? Or is it because people actually want to change the meaning of the phrase and are doing it consciously? I don't see any evidence of the latter.…

> but always as an alternate.

This is not true at all. Merriam-Webster includes it as its second definition of three [1]. It is not presented as an "alternate" or as confusing or incorrect in any way. To the contrary, there is a usage note at the end emphasizing its validity -- how it is "now somewhat more common in general use".

> I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.

But there is nothing ambiguous whatsoever about "is comprised of". Its meaning is crystal clear.

> But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way

It's not, because they're not "pushing" anything. People are just communicating in the same constructions they've unconsciously absorbed, like they do with most of language. The only people "pushing" are people like this Wikipedia editor, who is trying to impose an exclusionary viewpoint that, for example, the editors of Merriam Webster disagree with.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise

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

#592

Post by SoftTalker »

OJFord wrote: post #531
tayo42 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats just your opinion. if you understand me and i understand you then were good. my experience with grammar is that it just explains how we talk, like music theory. when your young and learning to speak, you just speak, your parent (probably) don't sit down with a white board and explain noun and complex verbs tenses at the age of four

I understand you, but it's more difficult than if you wrote correctly (according to my arseholish prescriptivist rules, if you like, yes) - you're communicating less effectively by not subscribing to the standard rules; I misread you, take longer to understand your meaning, it takes patience and begins to frustrate.

Also spoken language is looser. You can't hear the difference between "there," "their," and "they're" but your brain fills in the appropriate meaning. When you see it written though, there is a slight mental stumble as you initially parse the word as written, then understand that it's wrong, and make the appropriate mental substitution.

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

#593

Post by giardini »

jaggederest wrote: post #512
ghaff wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Editors will edit based on whatever style guides they use and what's generally considered "proper" usage while respecting the author's stylistic choices as much as possible. With respect to this case, I'd have to see a given usage in context but I would probably generally leave it as is. If I'm editing you I'll try to avoid making a lot of changes that boil down to stylistic choice but I will absolutely cha…

Right, and they're free to do so, just don't try to justify it by saying it's "correct". I'm not saying we should write poorly, or deliberately sloppily, just it's at the author or editor's preference. I'd support this guy if he said "I hate 'comprised of' and so I am changing it where I can", but the idea that there's somehow a logical argument justifying it is silly. Appeal to authority is particularly silly in the…

"Comprised of" grates at my mind: the sooner that phrase and the authors using it are cast into Hell the better!

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-you-use-co...

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

#594

Post by ghaff »

wolverine876 wrote: post #584
ghaff wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and the oxford comma, but I wouldn't make them the law Oh, I would :-) But I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain contexts. That said, there is a certain appeal to authority mindset if you're looking for mainstream non-fiction (and a lot of fiction as well) publication. Maybe "correct" isn't the right term but "accepted practice" or something along those lines which boils down to more or less the same thing…

> I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain contexts Why AP style - written specifically for journalists - instead of all the other styles such as APA, Chicago, etc. etc.?

The contexts are blog posts and press releases often targeted at journalists, who will often copy-paste sections, so standard company stye is to write in a way that conforms to what they use so they don't need to fix it up.

Otherwise, I/we use Chicago and Oxford comma.

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

#595

Post by epgui »

SoftTalker wrote: post #592
OJFord wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you, but it's more difficult than if you wrote correctly (according to my arseholish prescriptivist rules, if you like, yes) - you're communicating less effectively by not subscribing to the standard rules; I misread you, take longer to understand your meaning, it takes patience and begins to frustrate.

Also spoken language is looser. You can't hear the difference between "there," "their," and "they're" but your brain fills in the appropriate meaning. When you see it written though, there is a slight mental stumble as you initially parse the word as written, then understand that it's wrong, and make the appropriate mental substitution.

Spoken language is also different in that, as you correctly point out, it is at times more limited in how much information it contains, but also, in other ways it can be much richer in information than the equivalent writing. Things like nonverbal or tonality can contain a lot of helpful or contextually-relevant information that cannot be found in writing.

So writing and speaking, while having a lot of linguistic overlap, are just different beasts.

(Ironically I think my grammar in this comment is not great, but FYI English is not my first language-- I'd appreciate a correction if appropriate)

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

#596

Post by canjobear »

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…

In principle prescriptivism is about slowing language evolution, but in practice almost all of the prescriptive rules that people talk about (including opposing “comprised of”) are not based in any historical usage pattern. The prohibitions on ending a sentence with a preposition, “less” before a count noun, etc. are all made up out of thin air.

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

#597

Post by efraim »

jaggederest wrote: post #452
JW_00000 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After your first sentence, I thought you were going to argue the opposite. This person's arguments seem to hold water. Aren't the people that argue with him and want to revert his edits a (very strange) activist superminority? Maybe we need a defense mechanism against bike-shedding, no matter what color bikeshed one prefers?

> This person's arguments seem to hold water. Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.

Why is it ok to be prescriptive with things like spelling of words but not grammar or the meaning of words? If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended. I have no problem calling out such use as being wrong.

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

#598

Post by crazygringo »

loudandskittish wrote: post #559
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…

The editor is imposing a controversial viewpoint on tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles that is not supported by authority or consensus. Merriam-Webster, for example, disagrees with the editor [1].

It's not so different from if a Brit tried to change every instance of "color" to "colour", or an American changed every instance of "colour" to "color". It would be incredibly annoying, patronizing, and disrespectful.

Wikipedia is not a place for people to wage their private grammatical language wars, and so people are responding in a negative way because the editor is trying to impose their viewpoint by sheer force rather than respecting contributors who choose to use Merriam-Webster's 2nd definition of the word.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comprise

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

#599

Post by jmull »

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.

> Pedants tilting at windmills shouldn't be able to alter the cultural landscape this easily

The battle here pedant vs “comprised of”. What’s the cultural importance?

Language drifts. The rate of that drift is of no particular importance and that seems to be all that’s at stake here.

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

#600

Post by chris_va »

harles wrote: post #527
alasdair_ wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> The content is mostly written by subject matter experts that contribute large blocks of useful text to just a few articles each. That sounds like the ideal scenario. Any evidence that it is or isn’t this way? I would guess it’s skewed more towards a handful of folks simply writing many articles about things they’re moderately knowledgeable about.

I actually ran a full character-level diff with move detection over the entire wikipedia edit history (few thousand machines) back in ~2008.

The vast majority of content was created by a long tail of users, with a very small minority of users being the last to "touch" a particular piece of text (copy edits, moving things around, etc).

Probably should have published that.

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