Direction of Fedora desktop manager Gnome, related to complaints in OT morons thread

[Andrew Haley]

On 03/22/2011 11:35 AM, Alan Cox wrote:
>>> You can find someone on the internet who will believe anything is
>>> incorrect.
>>
>> Sure, but that's rather beside the point.  We're not talking about the
>> opinion of J.Random Nutter here, but about something that Fowler's
>> Modern English Usage, also published by Oxford, warns about.
> 
> And.. there are a considerable number of people who consider that
> Fowler's is J Random Nutter (notably everyone from Cambridge who don't
> even agree with Oxford spelling rules)

I think you're being unfair to Fowler: these days it mostly describes
English as it is used, noting disagreements where they arise.  It
certainly doesn't take a strong pro-Oxford stance.

>>> Oxford by the way take bug reports, so you can write them a
>>> letter giving examples of the problematic usage and suggesting changes -
>>> but IMHO you have to balance excessive detail against usefulness in
>>> any learning process.
>>
>> Indeed so, but the problem arose here because someone, quite
>> reasonably, tried to use the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary as an
>> authority.  It's clearly not fit too be used as one.  I think that's
> 
> It's not an authority, there is no authority except the person who wrote
> the words, hence Humpty.
> 
>> wrong: advanced learners deserve to be treated with a little more
>> respect.  Even if you believe that anything goes, it's unfair not to
>> tell an advanced learner that there is a controversy.
>
> We could all go one better. As it was obvious what they meant so you could
> simply have assumed that meaning.

But I did simply assume that meaning; I am not the poster who
complained.  I am not taking any position WRT "beg the question".  I
am taking a position WRT bad dictionaries.

> Who *cares* about the finer points of US v Indian v UK English
> providing people are understood ?

That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, but it's one that
you've taken based on what you know.  There is a difference between
saying to a pupil "X doesn't really matter" and not telling them about
X at all.  I think advanced learners have a right to make up their own
mind, rather than have someone else decide that they should remain
ignorant.

IMO all this is rather like Postel's robustness principle: "be
conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from
others."

> Should I go around correcting every time some American writes "If I
> was" or other horrors ?

No, certainly not.  See Postel's principle.

Andrew.