3 ms·

The Wikipedia editor here is not allowing personal use, part of their proposal is to edit quotes too - to me it reads as if the person has problems with compuls

The Wikipedia editor here is not allowing personal use, part of their proposal is to edit quotes too - to me it reads as if the person has problems with compulsion and doesn't want to stop themselves from "correcting people" (which is not correction so much as forcing that editor's own personal linguistic predilections on others). There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).

kelnos 4y ago
This part of the editor's process bothered me, too. Overall I agree with his premise and have no problem with what he's doing. In fact, I think he is improving Wikipedia with his edits. But changing quotations seems like a step too far. I think his practice of changing a quotation to a paraphrasing (where it doesn't really matter if the article includes a quotation or not) is fine (if a little obsessive). But actually changing quotations feels wrong to me. I do agree with his assessment that including people's grammatical/spelling mistakes in a quotation detracts from what the person said, but I don't think the correct move is to change the quotation to something the person didn't actually say. At most, the "offending" part of the quotation should be removed and replaced with correct usage inside square brackets to indicate the changed/added part was not part of the original quotation. But overall I think he should just leave these instances alone. > There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!). I think you are in a way proving the editor's point, though? Purposefully chosen or not (I did chuckle a little), that sentence is garbage, and if I were to read that in something without knowing or realizing it was a joke, I would take your words less seriously. I would think, if you can't even use language properly, and need to "inflate" your words, maybe your ideas are overinflated too. On a different note, I don't think we should care about people's "autonomy" when we're talking about a resource like Wikipedia. "Letting people write whatever and however they want" is not a positive trait in an encyclopedia.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Fixing "it's" to "its" transparently in many cases is one thing. More significant changes to what someone presumably meant deserves a [SIC]. Something that's not wrong but isn't your stylistic preference? No way.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > More significant changes to what someone presumably meant deserves a [SIC]. “[sic]”, which is always lowercase, indicates something the current author views as (probably) erroneous or otherwise improper that is left unchanged in the quoted text, to emphasize that the author isn’t endorsing the usage/construction so marked. It doesn’t mark a change.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I actually knew that :-) Busy day. But, yeah, the basic point is to not change a quote unless it's some trivial mistake. (But you can flag it so that it doesn't look like you're the one who may have screwed up.)

kelnos 4y ago

This part of the editor's process bothered me, too. Overall I agree with his premise and have no problem with what he's doing. In fact, I think he is improving Wikipedia with his edits. But changing quotations seems like a step too far. I think his practice of changing a quotation to a paraphrasing (where it doesn't really matter if the article includes a quotation or not) is fine (if a little obsessive). But actually changing quotations feels wrong to me. I do agree with his assessment that including people's grammatical/spelling mistakes in a quotation detracts from what the person said, but I don't think the correct move is to change the quotation to something the person didn't actually say. At most, the "offending" part of the quotation should be removed and replaced with correct usage inside square brackets to indicate the changed/added part was not part of the original quotation. But overall I think he should just leave these instances alone. > There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!). I think you are in a way proving the editor's point, though? Purposefully chosen or not (I did chuckle a little), that sentence is garbage, and if I were to read that in something without knowing or realizing it was a joke, I would take your words less seriously. I would think, if you can't even use language properly, and need to "inflate" your words, maybe your ideas are overinflated too. On a different note, I don't think we should care about people's "autonomy" when we're talking about a resource like Wikipedia. "Letting people write whatever and however they want" is not a positive trait in an encyclopedia.

ghaff 4y ago
Fixing "it's" to "its" transparently in many cases is one thing. More significant changes to what someone presumably meant deserves a [SIC]. Something that's not wrong but isn't your stylistic preference? No way.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > More significant changes to what someone presumably meant deserves a [SIC]. “[sic]”, which is always lowercase, indicates something the current author views as (probably) erroneous or otherwise improper that is left unchanged in the quoted text, to emphasize that the author isn’t endorsing the usage/construction so marked. It doesn’t mark a change.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I actually knew that :-) Busy day. But, yeah, the basic point is to not change a quote unless it's some trivial mistake. (But you can flag it so that it doesn't look like you're the one who may have screwed up.)