Talk:Halifax Explosion

Yes David....Harbour. This battle was fought and won in 2007. Some of us have been around longer than you think. AlanE (talk) 00:41, 16 December 2016 (EST)

Okay... I'm officially confused: harbor is the American, common spelling. harbour is listed as the British spelling (and also in the bottom 30% of words in popularity). Not sure which battle/where you are referring to, but if it was on CP, I wasn't around then, obviously. :/ I'm not trying to marginalize your time here--I could look back, but I believe you've been here since 2006, when CP started. I value your corrections, and try to follow them. However, they usually look to me like curve balls in an otherwise predictable game. I'm sure there are reasons which you have seen in your time here, but sometimes I feel like I should start a directory of quirks to look out for and protect... --David B ^(TALK) 01:45, 16 December 2016 (EST)

First; my first CP edit was in May 2007.

Now; cutting to the chase.....

American v. British spelling.

There was once a CP Sysop named Philip J. Rayment. Apart from being a true and valiant warrior for truth as he saw it on the anti-evolution front, he was Australian. Being Australian, he was usually polite (don't laugh, some of us are) and would gently revert some "iggorant" Yank's change from Brit to Yank spelling saying reverted your correct spelling to my correct spelling. During 2007 and 2008 he and others including me gained the ascendency Indeed, as late as some time during this last year or so I invoked the PJR clause and Andy came on board to ask me to give Phil. his (Andy's) regards "next time I see him."

My policy on this is:

if it's a article or associated talk page that has an American subject and spelling I use American spelling.

if it's an article or talk page that is about a non-American subject then I use my own Australian (British) spelling.

if I come across an article on a non-American subject that has always had American spelling I leave it be.

if I come across a recent change to American spelling on a non-USA article I revert it. Hence my Halifax Harbo(u)r revert.

This is the first time in at least six or seven years a revert of this nature has been questioned. However a Bot has not been involved until now.

Cheers AlanE (talk) 00:22, 17 December 2016 (EST)

I guess that makes sense, is a sort of compromise/truce sort of way. To some extent, the manual of style agrees with you, though more by allowance than preference. It states the for most purposes, American spelling is preferred. I don't really care what we have, but it seems to be we should be consistent. It's not my intention to run a steam roller (bot) over your carefully devised plan, but the bot expects uniformity even more than people. If I'm trying to catch spelling/grammar errors, it must use one or the other. <!--nobot--> can be used to exclude pages from all regular bot edits, so you could add that to some pages where the bot is being troublesome. With the American English ruleset implemented, the only way for me to stop most of the American --> Commonwealth changes is by checking each edit as it is qued, and blocking it before the change is made. I already do this for a number of suggested changes, but I do miss some. (As I've said before, I want a better bot!) As for myself, I'll try to keep in mind that there is no one standard, but I may still forget, and go making changes you don't want. If I do, there's always the undo button, I suppose.

Until next time I muck something up, cheers! --David B ^(TALK) 11:33, 17 December 2016 (EST)