Talk:Thoughts on Wikipedia interlanguage priorities

and how about the issue of the use of international, british or american english? there are plenty of articles in wikipedia that have a slight american slant, usage of american spelling and so forth. but wikipedia is supposed to be international (which we can most likely tell by the many translations to other languages).

For years Wikipedia policy has been to have no preference for any particular national variant of English (for spelling, word use, etc). (See eg en:Wikipedia:Manual of Style, en:Wikipedia talk:Articles using American English titles) Any standard English is perfectly acceptable, though it's recommended to be consistent in usage within any single article, and it's highly recommended to make note of significant departures, such as differing terms that are mutually not recognizable. (Where you see that this is not done, be bold in editing and fix it!)

Is there a lot of American usage? Yes, because there are a lot of Americans here, and -- surprise! -- they spell like Yanks, just as the Brits spell like Brits and the Aussies spell like Aussies and the Canadians spell like, well, they can't make up their minds. ;) Does that make the project not "international"? Only if the United States doesn't count as one of the nations. --Brion VIBBER 18:19 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It is not only international because of translations, but because people of different cultures work together. And the international wikipedias have a life on their own. They are not mere translations.

Coda

I love this page and all its contributors. Worth revisiting all our early decision trees, actually. –SJ talk  21:14, 17 February 2013 (UTC)