Wikipedia's Lamest Edit Wars 219
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Who says Wikipedians don't have a sense of humor? While perusing Wikipedia I recently came across an article documenting the lamest examples of wikipedia edit wars over the most trivial things. As one wikipedian says: 'Some discussions are born lame; some achieve lameness; some have lameness thrust upon them.' A few of the most amusing examples include: Was Chopin Polish, French, Polish–French, or French–Polish? Can you emigrate from a country of which you are not a citizen? Can you receive citizenship if you already have it? The possibilities for intensive study are endless. Next up, Are U2 an 'Irish band' or simply a band that happen to be from Ireland, since two of their members were born in the UK? A heated discussion took place for over two-and-a-half weeks that resulted in at least one editor getting blocked and many more getting warnings. Next, should members of the Beatles be listed in the 'traditional' order or in alphabetical order? Another edit war which flares up continuously in The Beatles involves whether to identify the band as 'The Beatles' with a capital T or 'the Beatles' with a lower case t. The issue became so contentious it merited an article in the Wall Street Journal. One such installment of this saga was brought before the arbitration committee (by an administrator, no less) where it was quickly declared 'silly.' Next, Is J. K. Rowling's name pronounced like 'rolling' or to rhyme with 'howling'? Rowling is on record claiming she pronounces her name like 'rolling'. An irate editor argues that this is a 'British' pronunciation and the 'American" pronunciation of her name should also be noted. 'This is slightly ridiculous as she is English, and therefore of course will pronounce it in an English manner. Perhaps it rhymes with "Trolling"?' Finally did Jimmy Wales found Wikipedia or co-found it? 'Not surprisingly, those who actually were around at the time and know the answer stayed far away from this one. The casualty list has yet to be compiled, but no doubt editor egos will be among the worst hit.'"
Next up: Slashdot's lamest submissions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next up: Slashdot's lamest submissions (Score:4, Funny)
Of course Slashdot has the time. Just look at Timmy playing with his new video camera or Samzenpus staring out the window. Loads of time.
Do the reader's have the time? After that summary, I'd say "No".
Hopefully, someone will now come along to yell at me for placing the final period in the above sentence outside the closing quote. Only way to save this thread I'm afraid.
Re:Next up: Slashdot's lamest submissions (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that many Slashdotters, myself included, feel that the current convention for the use of punctuation vis-à-vis quotation isn't technically accurate enough anyway.
So, sorry that I couldn't save the thread.
Re:Next up: Slashdot's lamest submissions (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is that many Slashdotters, myself included, feel that the current U.S. convention for the use of punctuation vis-Ã-vis quotation isn't technically accurate enough anyway.
FTFY. It's my understanding that the Brits currently use logical punctuation placement.
(The thread's still doomed.)
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My guess is that many Slashdotters, myself included, feel that the current U.S. convention for the use of punctuation vis-Ã-vis quotation isn't technically accurate enough anyway.
FTFY. It's my understanding that the Brits currently use logical punctuation placement.
(The thread's still doomed.)
Last I heard from a grammar nazi familiar with various style guides is that American usage actually allowed for either.
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Curious, in that although I was made quite aware of the "correct" punctuation in school here in the U.S., I refuse to use it as it is the absolute antithesis of "logical".
The end-quote ends the sentence's subsection of the word or phrase quoted, the period indicates the end of the entire sentence.
The "correct" punctuation is the logical equivalent of doing this in code...
if (instances == 0) IncrementInstances(;)
Which is entirely illogical. Surely someone could throw together a formal argument for this on t
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I have to laugh over the rolling vs howling... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes people don't think too far past the end of their noses. I mean they don't pronounce bowling like howling in the U.S. so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to pronounce Rowling like bowling instead of howling. sheesh.
Re:I have to laugh over the rolling vs howling... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have to laugh over the rolling vs howling... (Score:5, Funny)
Check-mate.
I will edit that to be "Touché." instead!
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Oh yeah?
I pronounce howling and rolling the same!
Your move.
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WTF Your thinking of VanDamn. Ballet dancer, no black belt.
Chuck Norris was a full contact Karate champion before he was a movie star.
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Chuck Norris was a full contact Karate champion before he was a movie star.
Citation?
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Chuck Norris was a full contact Karate champion before he was a movie star.
Citation?
Ironically and yet predictably and also pathetically for you, Wikipedia provides the citation [wikipedia.org]. Unless an edit war has broken out.
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their heritage is rooted in less civilized cultures in general than average-skinned people.
*cough*crusades and inquisition*cough*
Ooh then there's the Holocaust, the Baton Death March, Stalin's regime basically massacring 20 million of his own countrymen, the Salem Witch Trials, Japanese internment camps during WWII, and slavery. These are just off the top of my head. The list of misdeeds of "average-skinned" people is legion. I would not dare call any country truly civilized as yet. We're all plenty barbaric whenever we feel the need to be. We just play dress up with civilization.
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Sometimes people don't think too far past the end of their noses. I mean they don't pronounce bowling like howling in the U.S. so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to pronounce Rowling like bowling instead of howling. sheesh.
Actually this one interests me a bit. Not that I care about JK's name (and BTW the end of the last HP novel sucked big time), but the way that the pronunciation/spelling of words are changed by "the media" to suit their audience.
One of the biggest examples of this is the terrorist group formally known as Al Qa'ida. If you listen to news reports from 10 years ago the name was given as Qa'ida and pronounced with 3 syllables, but over time it slowly morphed into Qaeda*, with only 2 syllables. I don't know
Re:I have to laugh over the rolling vs howling... (Score:5, Funny)
* I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think that the pronunciation change is more noticeable in US media.
Well, the British are famous for some pronunciations too, especially when it comes to town names.
Just look at the nice little town of Littlelancfordupstratdoushire, pronounced "oi".
Re:I have to laugh over the rolling vs howling... (Score:5, Funny)
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Would you describe it as rolling on the floor howling with laughter?
I liked that the editorializing on the "British" vs "American" pronunciation proclaiming that it should, of course, be pronounced in an "English" manner.
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Sometimes people don't think too far past the end of their noses. I mean they don't pronounce bowling like howling in the U.S. so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to pronounce Rowling like bowling instead of howling. sheesh.
I pronounce it the way that annoys Harry Potter fans more.
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Also, IANAL (linguist)
IMO, Americans have lost a great deal of understanding of the pronunciation of the English language where vowels are concerned. To us, Rolling and Rowling (not to men
Re:I have to laugh over the rolling vs howling... (Score:4, Funny)
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In any case, it's a proper name, it's *her* name, so people should damn well pronounce it the way she says it is. I think it's incredibly arrogant for an (assuming) American editor to suggest otherwise... and for the record, I'm American, not British. (though I admit to being something of an anglophile)
Do you think that's more arrogant than assuming you can personally overwrite how a language is pronounced by it's own population just for your name - and then getting prissy when folk don't adhere?
And for the record I'm Scottish - I was born, raised and live in the city where she wrote the damn books - and I pronounce it roul-ling. Mainly because it's easier to hear the contempt in my voice when pronounced that way; Row-ling is too soft sounding.
Well, no, not really.. not when said person is of the land where the language originated, but in any case, it's a proper name, not a dictionary word. .. (takes another sip of Dewars ..)
Go back to sleep, Angus darlin'
BTW, I love the sound of a good Scottish brogue as much as I do Brit received pronunciation. No matter how you say it, I'll bet it still sounds cooler (to me) than the way we say it here across the pond.
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Sometimes people don't think too far past the end of their noses. I mean they don't pronounce bowling like howling in the U.S. so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to pronounce Rowling like bowling instead of howling. sheesh.
Really, such a row about nothing.
I long ago decided that English-English is a language where they take other people's spelling of words and pronounce them in their own non-phonetical/non-native way. Jaguar, for example. Not that they have to be foreign words (Worcestershire). One of the differences between English English and American English is that American is more likely to track the original native language pronunciation.
If she wants to answer to "Rowling-as-in-bowling", more power. Tolkien was on recor
WTF? (Score:2)
Rowling is on record claiming she pronounces her name like 'rolling'. An irate editor argues that this is a 'British' pronunciation and the 'American" pronunciation of her name should also be noted.
What would the purpose be to telling Americans how to pronounce her name the "American way"? They should already be incorrectly pronouncing her name that way already. You pronounce someone's name how they want it pronounced, assuming they don't have some strange sound that you can't reproduce, then you just try your best.
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You pronounce someone's name how they want it pronounced
It's actually pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove".
They see me Rowling, they hating... (Score:2)
Aluminium (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Aluminium (Score:5, Informative)
I know your trolling, but here's the actual history behind the name. [grammarphobia.com]
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Try taking off the aluminium foil hat once in a while, it's blocking the woosh sound from over your head.
MOS:ENGVAR (Score:2)
Mutual intelligibility (Score:2)
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Re:Aluminium (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, I would always write it as yoghurt, but it's very tempting to go in a rename all instance of yoghurt to yogurt and vice verca, just for shits and giggles.
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Just thinking about those pages and pages of arguments about including that little silent "h" makes my yog hurt.
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People laugh about the old French guys in ugly green suits who are paid to declare the proper spelling of French words, but it turns out their are saving people a lot of time...
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The only reason an edit war between aluminum versus aluminium can exist is because there's no template to accommodate both spellings and show the appropriate spelling based on the reader's locale similar to the template to convert between units [wikipedia.org].
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Why have waste time coding a customized solution when a global solution [userscripts.org] already exists?
Repost (sorta): we had this sort of article before (Score:3, Insightful)
I gave up on being a Wikipedia editor a long time ago, what a waste of time trying to be helpful and make the articles better. Even doing a simple edit like "its" for an incorrect "it's" got nasty emails sent to be almost immediately about it, and the edits reverted in no time. All I ever wanted to do was correct minor grammatical and typographical errors, which never would have gotten past an editor in a "real" encyclopedia, and make for better looking articles. The grief I got for it..., well, it wasn't much fun. They want editors, they get them, the editors give up in disgust. It's also why I haven't given them a dime.
Everything2 was what Wikipedia should have been. Much better class of people there.
Re:Repost (sorta): we had this sort of article bef (Score:5, Funny)
Your right about that. I always corrected minor errors and its really annoying when people keep on changing them back irregardless of weather their correct or knot.
Re:Weather or knot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Repost (sorta): we had this sort of article bef (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, many Wikipedia editors seem more obsessed with destruction of content rather than creation. I added something once that I didn't realise someone would be so absurdly anal as to suggest requiring a citation and they just removed the whole block of information, rather than spend literally 10 seconds searching Google to merely add the citation they so desperately wanted. I did one of those dispute deletion things and the tit who deleted it was overturned but it still put me off ever wasting my time there
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You got nasty emails for just correcting grammatical errors? Why would anyone bother? Why would anyone revert to the wrong version?
Definitely "citation needed".
Years ago, I was involved in an edit war. (Score:3, Informative)
Namely, this was in the page for Desiree Washington, the woman that Mike Tyson was convicted of raping.
In the section about the rape accusation, trial and conviction of Mike Tyson, I added information about a previous false allegation made by Ms. Washington against a high school friend.
Someone reverted my change with a cryptic comment about "BLP". I saw it a few days later and re-created my change. Again, my change was reverted with more comments about "BLP".
This was several years ago so I don't remember exactly what was said back and forth but the gist of it is that the other party thought that there was something in the wikipedia rules about the "Biographies of Living Persons" that prevented me from including the information about the false rape allegations Desiree Washington made in the past. I challenged the person to show specifically where BLP precluded me from including this information, they could not so I restored my change.
Apparently this other editor had wikipedia political connections because I received a "Warning" for making my edits. I was willing to be banned over this because for me it's about the principle of the thing. If wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, I was going to make sure that this factual information was included. Hell, I can generate throw-away email addresses and wikipedia accounts. I'm not sure who resolved this but what happened in the end was that Desiree Washington's page went away and the information about the false rape allegations in her past were included on Mike Tyson's page.
After this, I stopped editing articles. I realized that situations like this are precisely why wikipedia isn't considered an authoritative source in the academic sense. People with more knowledge about a subject and with the supporting documentation can lose edit wars if the ignoramus on the other side has the political clout to have them blocked.
LK
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If you want to see some real fun, find a way to post a sequence of example pics that supposedly show how people with anomalous trichromatic color vision see the world, then pull out the bowl of popcorn when actual deuteranomalous and protanomalous individuals scream, "WTF, these examples are just WRONG... but THIS is an example that works and is, to me, indistinguishable from the control picture" and the editors defend keeping the wrong pics as examples because the edits and new example pics made by actual
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You can't add such information on Wikipedia without a reliable citation.
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Well the academia is no different. The same petty politics, the same self-serving nipple rubbing. People are the same everywhere. The only difference is that academia is more p2p - If your real work is outgunned, you can hopefully find another journal or university, get a second opinion. This makes a hell of a difference - because wikipedia seems to be a central authority, you outsource much of your critical thinking and then find yourseld pissed when people happen. In academia, because of the explicit p2p
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I realized that situations like this are precisely why wikipedia isn't considered an authoritative source in the academic sense.
The primary reason it's not used as an authoritative academic source is because it's a tertiary source [wikipedia.org], as are all encyclopaedias.
Wikipedia's real nature (Score:3, Informative)
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Owning articles (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember giving up on Wiki (Score:5, Informative)
I'd been contributing to an article on a film. We'd sourced plenty of material and it was a really in-depth affair.
Then some ding-dong undergraduate deleted it and substituted his own 35,000 word essay. This boring shot-by-shot description written in stiff prose and sprinkled with gems from the thesaurus undid a year of work and good luck trying to get it repealed because his school buddies have plenty of time to wage an edit war when the rest of us are at work.
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I had a similar experience with theological articles I kept attempting to keep NPOV (Neutral Point-of-View) in regard to the way some denominations interpret certain scripture in their doctrine but my edits kept getting reverted and modified by some Southern Baptist and Quaker church members (Their usernames clearly identified them as such) who insisted their point of view was the end-all and be-all and that other major points of views didn't deserve to be even mentioned in an encyclopedia.
I remember inform
Remember UseNet? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. How people how argue and more specifically
2. What pedants argue about.
You want to argue about who's going to win the Super Bowl or be purged next in North Korea? Lots of good arguments and at the end, there is an actual measurable outcome.
Want to argue about which is the best operating system? Lots of arguing there but no measurable outcome. You can measure which is the most popular but that's like saying the most popular music is the best music. We argue about music and art.
But the arguments over word use and definitions of fact are the most vociferous because they are the most picky. And only picky, anal retentive types will argue so the arguments get more and more precise each time. When done well, we call it science.
But it's hard to use words and syntax well when arguing about word definitions and syntax. If you see no difference between French-Polish and Polish-French, well then there's no difference between African-American and American-African. It actually is debatable. Uninteresting to most but debatable to many.
Can inanity become a superlative? (Score:2)
State of the Modern Society (Score:4, Funny)
I can't decide if I should be thrilled that we have achieved some kind of intellectual enlightened society evidenced by our capacity to be pedantic in a globally connected ecosystem of information, or appalled that people don't have better things to do with their time.
Perhaps we should have a discussion about this. On-line.
gee (Score:2)
Final answers to stop all discussion (Score:5, Funny)
1. Chopin was Prussian.
2. You can only emigrate from a countrybefore receiving citizenship while already being a citizen.
3. U2 are a UK band with Irish members.
4. It should be capitalized with a capital T as such: "the BeaTles".
5. J.K. Rowling's last name is pronounced "roo-ling".
6. Jimmy Wales co-opted Wikipedia.
Now can we finally stop the edit-wars?
Re:Final answers to stop all discussion (Score:4, Funny)
1. Chopin was Prussian.
No. It's a little known fact, but he was actually Spanish[citation needed].
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Citation [wikipedia.org]
In Psoviet Prussia (Score:3)
Chopin was Prussian.
Does that mean in Psoviet Prussia, the Chopin article edits YOU?
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7. I am the real Napster.
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Once I was in Toronto, ON, and watched a local band perform rock covers. When I asked for the name of the band for a girl in the audience, she just waved and said "it's just an irish band".
What is an irish band, other than and band from Ireland?
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4. It should be capitalized with a capital T as such: "the BeaTles".
All kidding aside, if "the" is actually part of the band name, then grammatically/syntactically , one should refer to them as the "The Beatles" - as Stephen Colbert often does with the "The New York Times".
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If the Beatles ever capitalized it, then it should be fair game for either.
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If the Beatles ever capitalized it, then it should be fair game for either.
It's interesting that the drawing of Ringo Star's drum set in the WSJ article has "The Beatles" emblazoned on the bass drum skin and not simply "Beatles"...
U2 is... (Score:5, Insightful)
They evade their taxes in the Netherlands, so it's a Dutch band.
Let's argue about fictional ducks (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_fictional_ducks [wikipedia.org]
May not be as protracted and vitriolic as some of the others but the disagreement over the notoriety of Jemima Puddleduck was hauntingly stupid.
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And how can a list of fictional ducks be complete without Dirty Duck [toonopedia.com]?
who said it? (Score:2)
"Who says Wikipedians don't have a sense of humor? "
No one, except some lame submitter trying to make a hook for an article by linking to some wikipedia page that's been around forever.
My favorite (Score:2)
My favorite is not actually an edit war, but a close/reopen war. The article about The Game has seriously been closed and then unclosed about a dozen times, it was hilarious watching it. (Also I just lost the game.)
Exploding Whale (Score:2)
My favorite argument on that list was over the issue of whether the article Exploding Whale [wikipedia.org] should contain the phrase "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds."
Future: Last Man Standing (Score:2)
Moderators there aren't too clever. (Score:2)
I got into a debate about super cars vs sports cars (I admit, it's a bit of an empty debate) but it seems there's no such thing as a supercar, only sportscars. So I can confirm some pretty dumb shit is debated.
What's significantly more frustrating, is I made a comedy edit to a womans profile who basically belittiles men who play games, quite harshly. (I admit, a comedy edit isn't cool) The edit was rightly removed, a moderator responded to me and said don't do it again. I said fine, I'd already posted th
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Just try editing a Wikipedia article introduce a deliberate mistake
Maybe something subtle, like poor punctuation?
Re:The problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
Just try editing a Wikipedia article introduce a deliberate mistake and see what happens :)
Worth mentioning that, in seriousness, you should never do this. It's Wikipedia vandalism [wikipedia.org], and waste's everyone's time.
Instead you could just find a Wikipedia edit which corrected an error, and backtrack to see for how long that error was present on Wikipedia. No vandalism necessary.
Re:The problem is (Score:4, Informative)
Further, here [freelists.org] is some discussion on just this topic.
(I could've sworn there was an official mention of this on Wikipedia itself, but I can't find one.)
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Beat me to it. That one was just hilarious.
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Not just that, but this article has been around in various incarnations for a solid decade now.
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Should be deleted for 'non notable'. They have deleted much more informative articles than this monument to their pedantry.
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I'm sorry that someone deleted the article consisting of "Reapy is awesome, dudes".
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped giving a damn and I stopped contributing to Wikipedia. The few times I tried to add information, sources and all, my changes got reverted by some wikidiot that didn't like how I changed things.
They're complaining about not having money and begging for it with their own banner ads at the top; stop running the site like an unmoderated debating web forum and perhaps people will be more inclined to participate and to give money. That may mean having *gasp* an actual editorial staff, and cutting the wikidiots from edit privileges when they nitpick things that don't mean anything.
BS (Score:2)
The other one the American bulldog it's an English Bulldog and the U.S. have no native breeds of dogs. They simply cross a Bull mastiff, which is half Bulldog with a English Bulldog.
So when an American Bulldog leaves a mess on your lawn, is it three-quarters bullshit?
For example the U.S. has no official language
True, the United States has no de jure official language. But because the Constitution, U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, and all U.S. patents are in English, as are all state constitutions, it has a de facto official language. If you're claiming that the UK has a better claim to English than the USA because England is a country in the UK, then you also have to put down Austria, which speaks a language not named afte
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The number of google hits is not how spelling is decided.
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As much as it pains me, the number of google hits is pretty much how spelling is decided.
Language is dynamic, and it's the very reason that formerly alternate spellings for words are now the "right" spellings for words.
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