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Spelling standard - American vs. Aussie/British?

Politoed666

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Hello all,

It's been brought to my attention that Bulbapedia has no standard for spellings of words such as "color" and "flavor." There was apparently a discussion a while back, but I browsed through it and it seemed as though responses were mixed and no solid conclusion was made. Therefore, I'm reinvigorating the topic in a brand new thread.

Now, although I am American and prefer American English, I'm not here to try and convert all the Brits and Aussies. No, the problem I wish to discuss is the lack of a standard regarding spellings that differ by country. Bulbapedia needs a policy regarding this. This morning, I was browsing and came upon the word "color" spelled two different ways in one paragraph. That's a problem.

As a kind of metaphor, Bulbapedia users always need to use link templates when linking to a Pokémon. This is mostly to avoid linking to a disambig, but keep in mind that the use of link templates is still required when linking to a Pokémon that doesn't have a disambig page, and instead redirects you to the Pokémon's species page. Why is this? It's so we have a standard. The standard policy of using link templates. We need the same type of policy regarding language. Now please, your thoughts?
 
I use British English, but when I go to edit Bulbapedia or Wikipedia or whatever I always use American. That's just the way it is on wikis.
 
I know how stupid this seems, but to me, this feels like language discrimination. I think we should just let people use whichever style they want, only exceptions being things like categories, which, as Zhen pointed out in the last discussion, can't be given redirects for multiple spellings.
 
It was decided that the wiki would use American spelling because that's the standard in the games and the animé is translated in the USA, additionally a number of individuals on these boards don't even know the British spelling for most words. One of the moderators actually sent me an hilarious pm informing that I am completely unable to spell things correctly because he obviously does not know what British spelling is. With ignorance like that I would think that it's better to keep it American.
 
Please do not speak on behalf of the editorial board. We made no such decision.

Feel free to correct articles to have consistent spelling, but no edit-warring.
 
Please do not speak on behalf of the editorial board. We made no such decision.
Quick correction: I never said I was speaking on your behalf anywhere in my post, please show me where I did because I never even mentioned you and I never claimed that you made such a decision. I was referring to another thread on this topic in which the general consensus for bulbapedia was to use the American spelling, not to your editorial board.
 
There's a difference between "The concensus was that <...>" and "It was decided that <...>" - the latter implies someone, presumably in authority, decided something. Please phrase things more precisely.
 
As has been noted before, it is silly to have an edit consisting of changing one to the other.
 
I would probably side with US English, because you do realize that that's the main English distributor of Pokémon games. Don't forget, the games come first.

Don't protest that Europe has its own distributor too. The US came first.

And I'm not suggesting Bulbapedia be in Japanese because Japanese came first. We already have a Japanese wiki.
 
There is no point in choosing between the two.

Each editor should use whatever they're comfortable with.
 
There is no point in choosing between the two.

Each editor should use whatever they're comfortable with.

Sure, editors are free to use whichever spelling they want. However, other editors are free to change it to uphold the standard.
 
Sure, editors are free to use whichever spelling they want. However, other editors are free to change it to uphold the standard.

But, we were already told that we shouldn't waste an edit on just changing the spelling, since both spellings are correct. We are supposed to hide the changes with other edits and clean-up.
 
Does it really matter? I use the pedia reguarly and although i prefer Aussie English (since i'm Aussie), i don't really mind if i come across American spelling, but the real issue is redirecting pages, for example, i think it's fixed now, but Alternate Colouration didn't work, them sort of things need to be redirected, but i'm not fussed about the type of English used,
 
But, we were already told that we shouldn't waste an edit on just changing the spelling, since both spellings are correct. We are supposed to hide the changes with other edits and clean-up.

Zhen Lin stated earlier in the discussion that we were free to change spellings for consistency.
 
Consistency within the article.

Therefore, if a page has completely one spelling, do not go and change the whole page to the other.
 
Please note: The thread is from 16 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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