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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”

#81

Post by sametmax »

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 lagging behind is better than a wrong correction.

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

#82

Post by emodendroket »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #23

This is one of the bad things about Wikipedia, letting people with pet peeves or obsessions having so much editorial control. Ultimately it's a small price to pay though.

Probably more insidious that shills working for whatever bogeyman you'd find most concerning can pull all the same levers.

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

#83

Post by tgv »

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 you’ve (inadvertently) pointed out a serious weakness in Wikipedia’s editorial process.

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

#84

Post by riwsky »

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…

> That's irrelevant to the current meaning of the word. This is called an "etymological fallacy"[1].

Did you read your own link? It explicitly calls out absolute neglect of the etymology as fallacious, as well.

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

#85

Post by tsimionescu »

netsharc wrote: post #39
tsimionescu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it became common usage, yes? If most people make "a habitual mistake", then by whose authority of it a mistake? > Sure, but why should people who can’t use the language properly (*) be an uncontested force in that evolution? How do you think English and all other modern languages formed? If some authority were able to stop people who can't use a language properly from evolving it, the people on the British isles w…

The most fun is reading threads about cars or racing, where people say "break" when they mean "brake". Should we accept "break" to mean deceleration, or as a noun for the equipment to slow down a vehicle, then?

This is a completely different example, as this is only a spelling mistake/difference. When these people write "break", they clearly mean "brake". They are not adding the meaning of decelerate to the verb that means to tear into pieces.

The evolution of writing is separate from the evolution of language in general. Read and read are still different words even if they are written the same. If the spelling "brake" for declaration fell out of favor and "break" was used for both words, this wouldn't change anything about the English language. The two are already homophones, and they would be far from the only homographs in English.

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

#86

Post by phoenixreader »

drewcoo wrote: post #22
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 illogical for a word to mean two opposite things. And to support your stance against that, I offer this: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their... They can take "cleave" from my cold, dead hands!

I was going to mention “sanction”. Happy to learn more words like that!

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

#87

Post by crote »

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 entire addition was removed, simply stating that "Twitter is not an acceptable source". Mind you, this is not an official policy: it is usually not allowed, but there are exceptions for instances like this. It was added back with less detail later on by a different user, who didn't even bother to cite any sources.

So yeah, don't bother trying to contribute to Wikipedia, unless you are willing to fight for every single edit.

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

#88

Post by hashmush »

eastbound wrote: post #37
eru wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if there was an Académie, what authority would they have? Eg the French have one, but that doesn't mean they have any moral authority.

Since the topic is “who defines English”, it’s useful to list our experiences with Académie Française. - Seats can only be replaced at death, which explains the advanced age. I generally think old people have more experience than younger ones, but opinions vary, and youngism and modernism are a thing. - The first woman in the Académie, in 1980, was Marguerite Yourcenar, and she probably was the most non-feminist woma…

Sounds like you have an ax to grind. The whole comment comes of as very dismissive of the feminist movement (which might be justified, I know nothing about feminism in France).

> [..] nor would I accept them if I got them (political militantism doesn’t make a good employee, especially if they pretend including women is a new thing).

I don't know what to make of this, you'd reject candidates because they used dots instead of parenthesis, citing political militantism?

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

#89

Post by infostud »

hatsune wrote: post #31

If contain and consist and replace a new word and it is supposed to be an encyclopædia then maybe it is a legit move. It's like English professor ranting about use vs. utilise. Mixing words are bad attempts and precise wording is objectively better, tho I highly question if the machine effort replacing a ambiguous word is good enough to detect what it actually means in context.

Yes I've been changing "utilise" to "use" by hand in Wikipedia for many years. When I read "utilise" I hear Homer Simpson in a top hat trying to be posh.

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

#90

Post by tysam_and »

112233 wrote: post #67
morsch wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Articles obviously add information: is it a specific, known house you are going to ( I'm going to the house ) or a non-specific/not previously referred to ( I'm going to a house )? When it's your own house you're going to, you could argue the definite article wouldn't add anything, and the phrasal verb to go home drops it (ie. I'm going home ), though adding an article is possible and changes the meaning ( I'm going…

This statement is true only if it is not possible to tell from the context if the noun refers to a specific/previously mentioned thing or not. It would be possible to measure the amount of information contained in these articles, Shannon style, by taking a body of text, removing the articles, and then asking a bunch of english speakers ( that can possibly be approximated by a LLM ) to put back in the correct articles…

I was thinking about Shannon entropy as well, as the OP completely forgets the word 'from' as well! "I go to house", "I go from house". Certainly, house contains more information, but the concepts of to and from as some kind of token do contain meaningful amounts of entropy as well.
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