[PREV - CIRCULAR_REFERENCE]    [TOP]

WIKI_JARGON

                                            August 17, 2013

A long standing peeve of mine,
though a remarkably tiny one in
the grand (or not-so-grand) scheme
of things:

   People who work on wikipedia pages
   are invariably called "editors",                   I must confess that
   never "writers".                                   one reason I have
                                                      this peeve is that
   Clearly at least some people must be writing       someone used my lack
   the stuff, or else there wouldn't be anything      of familiarity with
   out there-- and no one is supposed to have         this idiom as a
   any kind of final authority over what is           trumped up excuse to
   written, so no one is *really* like an             revert some of my
   "editor", but everywhere you turn throughout       attempts at improving
   wikipedia discussion, inside or outside, you'll    a wikipedia guideline.
   see the term "editor" used in preference to
   anything else.                                         That's a small
                                                          example of a
       Possibly: authorship implies                       common abuse of
       ownership, which is contrary to                    jargon-- it can
       the communitarian ideal embedded                   be a tool to
       in wikipedia's rules.                              intimidate and
                                                          confuse newcomers.
       But the word "editor" implies        
       that you're the person-in-charge,    
       a manager that bosses around         
       "writers", which makes the           
       wikipedia usage a completely new     
       (original?) meaning for the word.    
                                           
                                       

--------
[NEXT - FISKING]