Conservapedia talk:Commandments

American Spelling of Words

I think we should add as a new commandment that you have to do the American spelling of words. I'm pretty sure it used to be on the homepage, but it must have been removed...I can't find it. What do you guys think? ~Deborah~

• I agree. --TimSvendsen 19:16, 11 January 2007 (EST)
  • Why bother? You would alienate conservatives who are from Europe. And I am a little biased here because I use British spelling all the time. =D -- Katie 22:44, 18 January 2007 (EST)
    • Because we are an American encyclopedia...not British. PhilipB 22:49, 18 January 2007 (EST)
      • Point: We are an online encyclopedia which can go all over the world, including England. And if a British man had a good point that he put up on the site but used his own spelling, would we ban him? After all, he would be "breaking the Conservapedia Commandments." I just don't think making people spell things the American way should be in the rulebook. (People on this site often make spelling errors anyway)--Katie 23:06, 18 January 2007 (EST)
        • If a British guy starts using British spellings we warn him to stop... if he continues... we would block him. If people refuse to respect our rules they can go elsewhere. PS. Sorry for editing your post... I'm just trying to keep things organized. PhilipB 23:10, 18 January 2007 (EST)
          • British and American are basically the same thing. We should encourage people to use the American spelling but it is ridiculous to "block" them...After all, American is just butchered English --Katie 23:18, 18 January 2007 (EST)
            • We are not debating the issue of blocking someone for disobeying a rule (which is something we have reserved the right to do), we're debating adding an "American spellings" rule. The fact is that were an American encyclopedia so we should remain patriotic and use the American spellings for words. We can't just say that Conservapedia "encourages" or "recommends" this, because we can't enforce that. PhilipB 23:42, 18 January 2007 (EST)
            • We are talking about blocking people because when someone breaks a "Commandment", they get warned and then [perhaps] blocked... Well, I understand that this is an American encyclopedia, but realistically, it seems like such a small thing to actually create an enforceable rule about and you may unintentionally wind up alienating people who wish to contribute to the page, people who are American but do spell things the British way without realizing it (people of older generations for example who were taught that way in Catholic grammar school) If the majority of people want an official rule about this, then that's fine but who is going to go through the entire conservapedia to enforce this?? It will be a monumental task, in my opinion, as you would have to go entry by entry every single week to ensure that this commandment wasn't being violated. --Katie 23:56, 18 January 2007 (EST)
            • If we make a rule about it people will be more likely to use the American spellings. Obviously we will not block specific people without ample warning. We will not have to patrol the pages day and night to make sure... just whenever someone does an edit post on their user page a reference to the rule and they'll stop. PhilipB 00:07, 19 January 2007 (EST)
            • It appears that you are missing my point. If you make a rule about it, people will have to use the American spelling, (not be 'more likely' to) which is unfair, as many people on this site cannot even spell normally. But hey! I am sure that you all have a just reason to make such a petty rule. (Oh, right; "We're American". The homepage doesn't really state that we're American anyway)I'm sure that I am unpatriotic because I spell "favorite" like our Founding Fathers did with a 'U' ... like a Brit. --Katie 08:35, 19 January 2007 (EST)
              • By the way... is everyone aware that most of the differences between U. S. and British spelling are the direct personal work of none other than Noah Webster? U. S. schools used British books, and Webster thought Americans should learn from American books. He published spelling books and dictionaries that were widely adopted, and over the years he gradually changed the spelling, dropping the "u" from "color" and "honor," changing the order of the "r" and "e" in "center," and so forth... Dpbsmith 21:34, 19 January 2007 (EST)

I suggest that when anyone notices a British spelling, they should just change it to the U. S. spelling, with an edit comment like "per Conservapedia style." I think British contributors will get the idea. Brits who are familiar and comfortable with U. S. spellings can do so, those who aren't should just do their best and let others copyedit their work.

On a cooperative project, one has to be prepared to do a certain amount of cleaning up after others.

When a U. S. author is published in England or vice versa, nobody expects the author to rewrite their book in the other national style. The publisher does that for the author as part of the publishing process.

If Conservapedia's stylesheet mandates U. S. spellings, then contributors who use British spelling shouldn't object to having their work copyedited to use U. S. spellings.

Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith 10:46, 19 January 2007 (EST)

Well said Dpbsmith. I guess it would just be best to make a "Conservapedia requests" rule for this... instead of a command. What do you guys think? Thanks. PhilipB 13:47, 19 January 2007 (EST)

• I agree with Philip and Dpbsmith. SharonS 16:20, 19 January 2007 (EST)

• • Yes, editing is fine, if you so wish it. But making a big rule about it is not necessary, as I've been saying. Dpbsmith has an excellent point. (Had to put my opinion in again) --Katie 21:17, 19 January 2007 (EST)

• • I suggest posting a commandment like "As far as is possible, american spelling of words will be used" and specify that people will not be blocked for violation of this one unless they start changing things away from american spellings, or are clearly deliberatly ignoring that rule. --TimSvendsen 23:48, 19 January 2007 (EST)

• • • Seems to makes sense, Tim. --Katie 22:07, 20 January 2007 (EST)

Comment: I agree with Tim on this one; though we may not block people unless they are obviously disregarding the rule, we should definately have it on the rule page.

--BenjaminS 22:32, 24 January 2007 (EST)

Encyclopedic Content

We should add a new commandment that states that only things that qualify as encyclopedic content will be allowed. one of our criticisims of Wikipedia is "Wikipedia claims about 1.5 million articles, but what it does not say is that a large number of those articles have zero educational value. For example, Wikipedia has 995 separate articles about "Moby" and "song". Many hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles -- perhaps over half its website -- are about music, Hollywood, and other topics and gossip beneath a regular encyclopedia." We should be backing this up with a commandment. --TimSvendsen 22:31, 24 January 2007 (EST)

• Tim, I don't know if that's all that necessary right now. As you say on the South Park page... we have only deleted one because of its content. Remember, we don't want to have a ton of rules. If this ever becomes a major problem we can add it. PhilipB 08:59, 25 January 2007 (EST)
• Perhaps we should simply make a guideline about encyclopedic content. It could read something like this: "When creating new pages, we request that you attempt to limit your contributions to encyclopedic content." If we add that, we will need to define Encyclopedic Content. I think one of our main problems is that this is rather difficult to define. This whole issue is not very important at the moment, so we can probably just continue what we have been doing so far for the time being. I think we will need a rule on this at some point in the future, however. We should discuss this further so we will be have a plan to use when that time comes. ~ SharonS 13:11, 25 January 2007 (EST)

We need to add a commandment to prevent a problem from happening in the future. Is there ever a reason to allow an article that is not encyclopedic content? If not, then why not have a commandment. --TimSvendsen 22:48, 25 January 2007 (EST)

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