User:TreyHarris

I'm Trey Harris. I'm a system administrator and live in Seattle, Washington. I studied linguistics and computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Wikipedia:Babel

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In Japanese (日本語), I used to write my name using kanji (漢字) as 羽里須図礼 (ハリス・トレイ). But I've been told that some Japanese find it offensive for a Westerner to use a kanji name, so now I write it in katakana as ハリス・トレイ. (I've also been told that some find it offensive for me to reverse my name to Harisu Torei but my Japanese teachers corrected any assignment I handed in with Torei Harisu, so I'm sticking with Harisu Torei.)

Мня завут по-русский Трэй Харрис.

Edit the intro section by itself

Want some way to edit the introductory section of an article, by itself? Make a bookmark containing the following as the address (remove any newlines):

javascript:(function(){window.location=location.href
 .replace(/wiki\//ig,'w/wiki.phtml?title=')
 .replace(/#.*/ig,'').replace(/%24/,
 '&action=edit&section=0')})();

Then just choose it when you're looking at an article page (but not a redirected one). Presto! The intro will open in the editor.

Contents

1 Edit the intro section by itself 2 Frustrations of a Wikipedia newbie 2.1 Descriptivism vs. prescriptivism 2.2 Confusing project pages 2.3 The FAC process seems broken

Frustrations of a Wikipedia newbie

At the time of writing, I've been contributing for 30 days. At this point, I think I should have passed the initial bumps any new user of any complex system will face. So I'm going to start listing frustrations I have with Wikipedia below, in the hopes that once I'm better acquainted with how things work here, I might be able to do something about them.

Descriptivism vs. prescriptivism

One would certainly think (well, I would certainly think, anyway) that the philosophy of NPOV would translate into a fierce adherence by Wikipedians to descriptivism on matters of style and language. Descriptivism is the idea that language is as language is used, that no language academy or textbook or style manual can define what can and cannot be said.

But, to the contrary, I've noticed that a large proportion of Wikipedians, particularly in places where stylistic matters are argued frequently, like Wikipedia:Manual of style and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, are dyed-in-the-wool prescriptivists.

Prescriptivists believe that there is a "correct" version of the language, and it differs from what anybody, except for perhaps the most self-conscious perfectionists, speak. They differ widely on just who gets to say what "correct" is, and definitely on what "correct" is — but they all agree that there is such a thing as "correct" language and that most people don't speak that way. They also agree on a certain style of conservatism — new usage is to be distrusted and often derided, while the style of speaking of some time ago (60-100 years seems to be the current vogue) is to be admired.

In English, linguists are generally (I'm tempted to say always) descriptivists, while grammarians are prescriptivists. Unfortunately, grammarian is a term which seems to include many hobbyists, as well as virtually every teacher of a subject other than linguistics I've come across — mostly I think because they've been told that enforcing prescriptivism is part of being a teacher. And since virtually all of us have been exposed to this sort of enforcement during our own time in school, by way of the most unforgiving implement of a teacher's red pen, most of us are perfectly willing to roll over when told "that's wrong! Write it this way!"

It seems to me clear that prescriptivism is implicitly POV. First off, you deny the experience of the majority (the people who speak English), and instead insist that an extreme minority opinion (that of grammarians) is the "correct" one. Then you insist that your style of speaking is "correct" and the person you're criticizing is "incorrect." (On the other hand, descriptivism allows for many styles, even that of prescriptivists.)

I advocate a descriptive language rather than a prescriptive one be used as the yardstick by which the style and grammar of articles are judged.

Before you lay into me for letting Wikipedia go to hell in a handbasket of ungrammatical word salad, let me point out that descriptivism is different from "anything goes." Language is about communication between people. An utterance which is misunderstood does not serve its purpose. Street lingo, jingoism, cliché and constructions not conforming to the language's syntax ("ungrammatical," to use a loaded term) are no more appropriate for formal writing when approached with a descriptivist bent than a prescriptivist one.

Confusing project pages

I don't understand the difference between Wikipedia:Cleanup, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, and Wikipedia:Requests for page expansion. Obviously there are cases where a "cleanup" is not a "request for expansion", but isn't cleanup always "attention"?

The FAC process seems broken

The process on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates seems to me badly broken. Two data points:

1. The philosophy of featured articles, as I understand it, is that "any article, given enough effort, could be made a featured article."
2. There are some intractable objections about some articles that cannot be solved with any amount of effort. For instance, some say Ian McKellen must use "Sir Ian" to refer to the subject, and any other use would be objectionable; some say it must use "McKellen" to refer to the subject, and any other use would be objectionable. Or, for instance, the interminable debate over Gay bathhouse, where some say the article must discuss how objectionable homosexuality is to social conservatives, and others say it must not.

The two points are incompatible. If no amount of effort can resolve these objections, and yet the objections will disqualify the article from being a featured article, then the statement in #1 is false.

I'll add more as I think of it.