Help talk:Guidelines
Couple of questions about the guidelines[edit]
First, about tense. Are characters that die referred to in the present tense? I've dug around for a while, and it seems that that is the case. Examples include Rashek and Denth. However, I did find one counter example: Cenn, the youthful spearman from WoK. Should he be changed to "is"?
Related to this, how about a character who died prior to the events of a book (or book series)? For example, Shashara "was" one of the five scholars. Denth "is" one, even though by the end of Warbreaker, he is dead.
Is that the distinction? If they are in a book, they get to be "is" even if they later die, but if they're a historical figure in the context of the book, and are dead at the beginning of the book, they get a "was"?
And how about locations? Luthadel gets a "was".
Second, the guideline to use American English. I am from the U.S., but I don't have a problem when I see, for example, "colours" in an article. (It's certainly less grating than seeing "loose" for "lose." Ugh.) However, I've seen people on Wikipedia change the spelling and get yelled at for being a provincial American.
So I guess the question is, are we going to enforce this guideline closely, or does it really matter? If it doesn't really matter, why not remove the guideline?
Thanks!
Hadhad (talk) 11:00, 20 January 2017 (MST)
- Huh, I thought the guidelines explicitly said that tense and colloquial spelling are neither hugely important. the preference is to be present tense and american English but only if it works out that way? and you shouldn't feel forced to stick with these at all... a lot of the articles are in past tense because that used to be the policy, but now it's present is the preference. --Joe ST (talk) 11:09, 20 January 2017 (MST)
- Everything should eventually get changed to present tense though. Past tense is really only to be used in things like History sections, in the context of the topic, where present tense would be confusing. this is because present tense is the standard for literary discussions in academia and stuff (because since theoretically the events of the books take place every time somebody reads them, they never stop happening and so are not truly in the past from our perspective). As for British vs American English it's not as big a deal, no one will object if you change stuff to American ('though I would likely revert edits that did the reverse, if I notice it).--WeiryWriter (talk) 12:34, 20 January 2017 (MST)
- Yes, it does say at the top, mistakes are okay, but let's do our best, etc.
- Check out my changes to Cenn, and see what you think.