Simple talk/Archive 153

Writer vs author

This has been annoying me for years. We have separate articles for Writer and Author. Each has their own matching En.wiki page There is a slight difference as an author is a person who creates an original work. It does not have to be a written work though. From a SEnglish view point, I think for our usage, writer is most often the correct term for what is meant to be said. When talking about a person who uses written word to communicate, we are talking about a writer. But more often than not, it tends to be editors choice on which term to use.

As written, the two articles here talk about the same thing with an added blurb at the end of the article which is easy to miss. It need to be more prominent as it is the major difference between the term.

If there is consensus, I would suggest Writer be the preferred term for linking and general naming conventions (sililar to the use of movie over film). The article for author would be rewritten in a manner more in keeping with the En page in the Author is similar but different and the page describes how that is. My basis for this opinion is that a writer is always a person who writes while and author can have other meanings which are not as obvious. Writer is just much simpler and less ambiguous. the alternate, as I see it, would be to continue as we are going and have editors chose which term they favor as they are writing.

Should this be the decided course of action, a bot could be harnessed to adjust links similar to how it was originally down with movie / film, but as with that, it will likely be an eternally ongoing task to keep the linking as chosen. Pure Evil (talk) 05:03, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I guess author, because it sounds more professional for an encyclopedia. But writer, for authors of written works, sounds reasonable. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 08:42, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

It is not about sounding professional. It is about what is easier for the reader to understand, especially with a limited vocabulary. Pure Evil (talk) 09:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

That still suggests that author should be used. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 16:53, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

To me, it suggests that writer should be used. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:38, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

We have "Category:Writers". We seem to not have, "Category:Authors". Fine!--Now, please enlighten me: Are there cases of authors, who have never been writers? 46.15.21.93 (talk) 17:17, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

You can have an author without being a writer. Take the example of a company president dictating a letter to a secretary. The secretary is the writer but the president is the author. fr33kman 17:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The secretary is doing the physical writing, but I don't think they'd be called a writer for doing that. For our purposes, author and writer mean the same thing; they mean the person who composes a piece of writing. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:54, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Legally that must be so. The whole of copyright law depends on it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 19:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

It must be author. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 21:00, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Writer is easier for English learners, because they will probably know the verb write and the suffix -er and be able to figure out what the word means if they don't already know it. -- Auntof6 (talk) 21:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Fine, I will agree, but I am fluent to english and for me it is challenging to write in simple english. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 19:43, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, sometimes people don't understand that writing in simple language is harder. People who are learning English sometimes assume that any English they know must be simple just because they don't know much English. People who are fluent in English think that any writing that is clear must be simple enough. Neither of those is necessarily true.

An offshoot of this is that people in our target audience (people whose English skills are limited) are often not able to write well here, for different reasons. -- Auntof6 (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

"Writer" has the advantage of coming from the "basic" verb "write." "Author" has the advantage of having more cognates in Indo-European languages. Since 1950, "author has maintained about a double frequency in books according to Google n-gram viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=writer%2C+author&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3). Kdammers (talk) 03:36, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

That does not mean it is simple. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 11:46, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Writer is a more frequent word than author, and word frequency is strongly related to comprehension. Our 1500 word list has "writing". "Author" is not there. We went over this kind of thing years ago. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:23, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I quit, do whatever you like :( 88.110.38.249 (talk) 07:06, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Chenzw bot reverting

People keep reverting my additions of phylogenetic trees and simiplifications, I think, sinde chenzw bot is an automated program, it is making mistakes, sorry if I am not putting this discussion on WIkipedia:AN. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 14:37, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Looking at your edits to bird, the bot reverted typos, poor grammar. and unlinking/renaming of terms on an edit tagged for removing references.. I fail to see any problem there. Should I recheck your other recent edits to see if the bot is targetting you or if you are triggering it as you did on Bird? Pure Evil (talk) 17:01, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I removed refs removing complex sentences, typos and/or poor grammar could have been just fixed by another editor. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 20:18, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Note: as a automated program, chenzwbot make mistakes. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 20:18, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

And you are a human. They tend to make a lot more mistakes. Many of these are fixed by automatic programs. If you want it to stop fixing your errors, stop triggering it. YOU are causing it to clean up your mess. Pure Evil (talk) 20:35, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

 (change conflict)  I have to say that chenzwbot is throwing the baby out with the bathwater! 88.110.38.249 (talk) 16:23, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

You probably should not expect the bot to search through pile of dung to see if someone left anything valuable in there. The job of the bot is to clean up crap, not mine for copper plated coins. And if that baby is drowned, bloated and reeking, it needs to go. Pure Evil (talk) 19:55, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

But it reverts some constructive edits >:( 88.110.38.249 (talk) 13:02, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Which are covered in offal and stink to high heaven. What little good is in them is massively overshadowed by the bad. Its a net win to remove the whole thing. A person could redo the entire edit to not suck entirely, but that requires manpower we do not have. The bot cleans up the obvious garbage without the (non available) manpower needed to pick through the mess for the random tidbits of actual useful info. Over all, the wiki is better without these edits than with them as the are more negative than positive. Pure Evil (talk) 19:08, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Im trying to be helpful. 88.110.38.249 (talk) 06:58, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

"Sonia"

When I would like a "Given name", moved to "Given name (singer)", what is the preferred simple way that it should be done.--The first issue is that I would like to translate the En-wiki (disambiguation) article (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia), to Simple-wiki.--"Sonia" links only to the article (in regard to mainspace-links). 2001:2020:30D:6231:CCB6:ECF7:A092:3635 (talk) 21:56, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Are you asking someone to move Sonia to Sonia (singer)? I can do that, if you want. You can't move pages, because you need to have an account and be autoconfirmed. Kk.urban (talk) 22:02, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Move, without redirect? Yes, please (that is my question). 2001:2020:341:C4EB:75FE:6DC4:C132:3B81 (talk) 22:22, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I've moved the page with a redirect. Now just replace the redirect with a disambiguation page. Kk.urban (talk) 22:26, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Also, when you copy a page here, even a disambiguation page, please be sure to simplify the text. I just did some simplifying on this one. -- Auntof6 (talk) 22:53, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

and if you are going to disambig two movies, name each one with the year. Sonia (1943 movie) and Sonia (1952 movie) not Sonis (movie) and Sonis (movie). Pure Evil (talk) 21:11, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

TV production terms

Im looking for alternate/parenthesis explanations for a few tv production terms.

Premier in the context of christmas special

Executive producer/producer

show runner

any thoughts? ~~~ OlifanofmrTennant (talk) 06:08, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

@OlifanofmrTennant: More context would help with some of these. If you mean premiere (note the E on the end -- a premier is a head of government) of a stand-alone special, you could use first broadcast, where "broadcast" is either a noun or an adjective, depending on how you use it. For example, instead of either "The special premiered on <date>" or "The special's premiere was on <date>, say "The first time the special was on television was on <date>".

For the others, I'd want to see an example sentence using the term. -- Auntof6 (talk) 08:12, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

The article I'm trying to translate is [1] so that should provide context basicly its "blank" is the "blank" OlifanofmrTennant (talk) 18:57, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Two simple, one not asmuch.

• Premiere = broadcast for the first time. The link to broadcasting is there if they need it. That term is used since there is a link for it. I use it for the verb form of show/n and air as well as it is less ambiguous.
• Producer exists. I can't confirm it covers the topic well, but as Executive producer redirects to it, I would guess it does. That should work for both terms.
• Show runner is a bit trickier. It is not used frequently here. The term is used as a red link on one person and that red link is also targeted by 2 templates (doc pages) so a total of 5 uses. if I were to make a suggestion, it would be to make a section on Television program that covers the topic and have the red link redirect to that section. THere does not seem to be enough need for a full article so the section should cover it well enough.

Pure Evil (talk) 21:07, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion about categories for countries at association football competitions

I've started a discussion at Category talk:Countries at association football competitions#Discussion of this category's great-grandchild categories. Your participation is invited and requested. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them on the linked page. Thank you. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:01, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Should we send a talkback to the involved IP editors? MathXplore (talk) 11:07, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I suppose it wouldn't hurt. Do you know of an automated way to identify the IPs? I spot-checked 2 or 3 and it wasn't the same IP for all of them. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:24, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if there is an automated way to do that, but I understand that these are coming from IPs starting from 2407. I think it's an IP that frequently changes their address, but the first 4 digits are always same. MathXplore (talk) 11:27, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I just sent a talkback to the latest creator. I guess it is just one person making changes from this range. I see that most edits from the IPs starting from 2407 are category creations. If creations continue, then we may need to send another talkback to the latest IP. MathXplore (talk) 11:34, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Auntof6 (talk) 11:45, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

"Translating" articles

Hello. I usually only do editing at English Wikipedia, but sometimes I read Simple English Wikipedia so I would like to help. Is it a helpful thing to "translate" some articles from English Wikipedia to Simple English Wikipedia, without changing the information but just changing the language used? Thank you for your help. -- NotCharizard ^🗨 16:15, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi and yes, we often take information from enwiki and use it to create articles here by ensuring that we simplify the language. An important point to express is that the language we use should be easily read by 12-16 year olds and the article understandable by non-experts in the subject. Key guidelines to read are; WP:SI, WP:HOW & WP:CW. Thanks for coming by to help us expand this important project and welcome to the Simple English Wikipedia! fr33kman 17:09, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your answer and for the links :) I tried to do a Simple English version of an article I wrote on English Wikipedia for practice. It is in my sandbox. Can you tell me if the language is appropriate? (I am not sure what to do about the headings though). -- NotCharizard ^🗨 17:39, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

The article in your sandbox looks good. Because you are a new user you can't use page move to move it into mainspace so you can use copy & paste to move it. Thanks for coming to the Simple English Wikipedia! :) fr33kman 18:20, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Their edit history here dates back at least until Apr 2022.. I don't think they are not still a new user here technically. Pure Evil (talk) 20:37, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I was thinking of their having 9 edits since 2022. fr33kman 21:14, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Is the cut off 10? If so, they would be good just for being polite and posting a thank you. I tend to over look the number requirement as it is so easy to get past.. the time requirement at least is sort of something Pure Evil (talk) 21:56, 13 September 2023 (UTC)