User talk:BernardFox1595

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Control copyright icon Hello BernardFox1595, and welcome to Wikipedia. Your additions to Rock ptarmigan have been removed in whole or in part, as they appear to have added copyrighted content without evidence that the source material is in the public domain or has been released by its owner or legal agent under a suitably-free and compatible copyright license. (To request such a release, see Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission.) While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues.

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It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:46, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Varieties of English

Hi BernardFox1595! I noticed a few of your edits seemed to change the spellings of words from one variety of English to another. You seem to have reverted some of your edits back to the original, but please check out MOS:ENGVAR if you're not aware of it already. It doesn't matter which national variety an article uses as long as it is consistent, but it shouldn't be changed from one to another without consensus after discussion on the article's talk page. Rhinopias (talk) 00:37, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to reinforce that. The main consideration is consistency within articles, which generally means following the variety of English chosen by whoever established the article. "Not an American animal", as you commented on Common ostrich [1], is not a valid argument - it's not a British animal either... and even if it were, that's not an argument for switching spelling convention without discussion. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:28, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

coloration v, colouration

'coloration' is acceptable or preferred in AU and UK english, can you undo where you changed that please. cygnis insignis 10:26, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

you'll never get thanked, mark my word, probably reverts from editors who have no idea of engvar  :( JarrahTree 07:02, 21 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @JarrahTree:, this may be a stupid question, but are you talking to me or cygnis insignis? I don't quite understand, I'd be very thankful if you were to explain.BernardFox1595 19:27, 21 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Next warning - changing spelling throughout articles

You have already been asked above to please stop far-tanging spelling changes between American and British English, as you did at Zebra finch. This is acceptable to bring individual outliers in an article in line with the spelling adopted throughout the rest of the text; it is NOT when it involves changing the spelling variant of entire articles. This is laid out at MOS:RETAIN. Please read that and stop this British crusade. Further edits along these lines will result in you being reported for disruptive editing. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 01:12, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • You reverted the above, I didn't look why, but would prefer you didn't do that again. You will find out that is the overwhelming sentiment in the community. cygnis insignis 19:32, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another notice that I reverted grey to gray wolf in an 'Australian"' article, for no other reason than this is going to grate away the patience of others with this singular focus. Spelling differs, and any formula for asserting this word must be spelled this way in this article becomes an absurd territorial claim. I happen to live in Australia, but take a world view to editing. cygnis insignis 09:12, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:RETAIN

Hi BernardFox1595, you may be interested in a discussion that I opened at Talk:Common ostrich § Variety of English, regarding your edits there.

I noticed that a large proportion of your edits are changing from one variety of English spelling to another. That's not necessarily a bad thing; when articles contain mixed spellings, it's usually a good idea to make them consistent. On the other hand, this can be a sensitive issue, and if it seems that you are arbitrarily changing things, other editors may object, as I noticed that Rhinopias, Elmidae, cygnis insignis, and others have done in the comments above and in other places. In order to reduce the chances that your edits get reverted and/or irritate other editors, you may want to consider the following:

  • The variety of English can, in some cases, be determined by the article subject, according to MOS:TIES. This is only true if the subject has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation, and I'm afraid your interpretation of this in some cases has been overly broad. I noticed a few times you've left edit summaries like "this is not an American species", such as this edit to the Lion article, and this edit to the Hippopotamus article, in both of which you changed many words from -ize to -ise endings. This is not a valid application of MOS:TIES (though the change may be valid for other reasons, see below) and people may rightly object to this explanation. I noticed also in your comments in User talk:Elmidae § British Crusade?, about the "Lion" article you mentioned "customary English spelling in India, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, and South Sudan which all are home to native Lions." Again, I find that this is not a valid application of MOS:TIES. Many of these are not considered "English-speaking nations", and when English is spoken, there isn't necessarily an established variety, especially in countries like Ethiopia that were never colonized by the British. But more importantly, the subject of "the lion", as an animal, simply doesn't have strong enough ties to a particular English-speaking nation in order to invoke MOS:TIES to establish or change the variety of English. It should only be used in very obvious cases, otherwise it's safest to pursue discussion and consensus on the talk page.
  • In nearly all other cases, the variety of English can be determined by that established in the earliest post-stub revision of an article, according to MOS:RETAIN. It is not established by the preponderance of one variety over another in the current article. On the talk page mentioned above, you noted "the Australian variants outnumbered the American, it used 'colour' three times and 'color' once...". That's not a valid argument, though I see you followed it with "If you go back into the article's history you will see that it originally used 'colour'", which is. It should be understood though, that this is a kind of "tie-breaker" rule, designed to prevent edit warring when editors can't agree. It's preferable that they do agree, through consensus on the talk page, and this ideally should be obtained by proposing and discussing it before making extensive changes. The argument that the article predominantly uses one variety, even though another variety was established earlier, could be considered in such a discussion.
  • MOS:RETAIN also doesn't support changing from -ize to -ise endings in articles with British spelling, if the former spelling is consistent. I'm not quite sure about Australian English. I don't know if you've done this, but I just wanted to mention it in case you weren't aware.

As an example of all the above, let's look at the Common ostrich article, where you recently changed a large number of -ize endings to -ise with this edit, again with the explanation "This is not an American species." This animal, like the lion, is found across large regions of Africa, and MOS:TIES doesn't justify the establishment of a particular variety of English. Secondly, although the word "behaviour" was present in the article early on, it was still a stub: [2]. The first post-stub revision clearly established American spelling with the use of "color", "fertilized", "organization", etc.: [3]. Furthermore, even if it had only introduced -ize endings in a British-English article (which is not the case), neither MOS:RETAIN nor MOS:TIES justifies changing them without prior discussion. As I've noted, consensus is preferable, so I opened the discussion on the article's talk page.

I don't mean to take you to task, and again, your contributions toward making articles more consistent in their spelling are appreciated, and I don't see any problems with the majority of them. It's just that I noticed a number of complaints, valid or not, so I wanted to make some suggestions about how to avoid that in the future. Going strictly by the book with MOS:ENGVAR is usually a good approach, and if there's anything unclear you can look through past discussions, or ask questions, on the talk page there. Also being careful with edit comments is recommended. Any sort of repeated changes or edit-warring about varieties of English is especially frowned-upon and considered disruptive. I would particularly encourage you to use the talk pages first, if you're changing more than a couple of words, if there is any possibility that a change might be objected to by anyone, even if you think such objections might be wrong. Thanks for your understanding... --IamNotU (talk) 13:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi IamNotU, Thank you for the message but I think you'll find that you're a little bit late. Since my dealings with the users mentioned above I have no longer been changing spelling out side of the established variety used on any given article. I have only been keeping the spelling consistent with MOS:RETAIN or to articles with strong national ties or relation to a particular nation. BernardFox1595 (talk) 22:33, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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