I’m new here but have been a writer and editor for 48 years. I recently read, but now can’t find, a wikiHOW commitment to use and respect the widest range of variant “Englishes”, of which American English is just one example. If I edit an article written in US English I will make US alterations regardless of how much content I add or change, and regardless of whether the author is long gone. Not to do this is, IMO, to disrespect the author – “I don’t care how you wrote it, I’ll just impose my values and my language over yours”. There are some obvious, avoidable differences such as S and Z, then less obvious ones such as “traveler” [US] and traveller [UK/Aust]. So what at first glance may seem an error is in fact the richness of our dialect differences. Then there are different words for the same thing, elevator/lift; faucet/tap. Please don’t ‘correct’ mine unless you’re certain I’m wrong. One editor added mention of a ‘gas station’ in one article, no-one sells gas here, we have petrol stations. In France, asking for Gaz would get you directed to a camping store for camping stove fuel. America also has idiomatic phrases, e.g. “get off of the couch”. The ‘of’ is entirely redundant. I doubt the President’s speech writers would write like that. Next, it is important that American writers in particular understand just how pervasive and insidious US English is. The most widely used document software is Word. The majority of the Australian civil service types in US English mostly because they don’t know how to reset the spelling and document generation. Selecting Australian English is no better because it admits US spellings. Only UK English differentiates. But it gets worse. You CAN delete US English entirely but Excel won’t function and will auto-install US English again. WikiHOW also needs to update its Style advice. Currently the site uses ‘e-mail’ instead of ‘email’, which has been common use in Australia for more than 7 years. In summary, I suggest not editing any article which uses an English other than yours unless you’re willing to be sympathetic. We fellow ex-Colonials hate having our dialect disrespected.
We already talked about this numerous times before, and we have asked editors to respect the original authors’ choice of English. However not all editors (especially new editors) go on the forums. If you see someone who changes to a different English, you can rollback their edit and send them a talk page message explaining why you do so. I personally understand US English and UK English, and have no problem with using either, however it’s better to stick with one English for the sake of its appearance to the viewers. Therefore, respect the English that is used originally in the article.
Hibou8
4
However, instead of rolling back the edit, maybe consider changing it and leaving the editor a message. It isn’t usually a lot of work to change three or four spellings, and it lets us keep the useful information.
Ttrimm
5
I have to admit, I do my best to do that as well, but to be honest, I REALLY have issues with ALUMINIUM
Ksisky
6
Hi all, sadly I am probably preaching to the converted here. Maybe what is needed is a Mentoring process regarding editing [only?] where new wannabe editors are walked through a couple of sample edits, to highlight issues and treatments, before they are authorised to edit??
Consistency is key. If an article uses British English, for instance, and you’re used to American English, leave the spelling alone. If that article’s author made one small typo and wrote “color”, the acceptable thing to do is to add a “U” to the word to maintain consistent spelling. In fact, here’s an example of an edit I made to highlight that point: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Colour-Popcorn&diff=16167854&oldid=16133539
I understand your frustration, but in my experience, most of the editors that really need to read best practice documents hardly even do. I suggested the wikiHow tour to a LOT of new editors, but most don’t ever read it. They just want to dive in and edit right away. In my opinion,the best thing to do is to revert edits with the second form of English being used and leave a message to someone asking them why they changed the Englis, as well as explaining the policy and why its in place. It doesn’t take long. Usually, the good faith editors will take it seriously. And the people who don’t take advice usually don’t stay long. For me, requiring someone to go though a tutorial goes against the wiki spirit of “anyone can edit”. If you add on a bunch of requirements “anyone can edit” becomes “anyone can edit if…” And honestly we could apply required example walk throughs or even quizzes to any number of common mistakes (bad grammar, duplicate articles, incorrect nomination for deletion reasons), but most people on a wiki (as in life) learn by making mistakes and then fixing them. And to make something like a writing sample walk-through mandatory, it may require a lot of IT work that may be better used toward something else.
