This page not significantly updated since 2005
I made several contributions as 213.208.107.91 (talk · contribs) (now obsolete, and Wikipedia history has been deleted), but registered on 14 Jan 05 as there seem to be some advantages, though nobody is actually any less anonymous for having a pseudonym.
I do my best to make contributions that are true, relevant, and impartial, and sometimes to rewrite paragraphs in a better way. My rewrites don't often get reverted or changed radically, so presumably they are considered an improvement.
If anyone wants to judge what I contributed as 213.208.107.91, a few examples follow. I'm not trying to claim great significance.
In many cases there is an ordinary English usage for a term. The specific example that leads me to make this comment is the damages disambiguation page. When I first looked at the page it started with a "Film and television" section; buried lower down was section "Law" with "Property damage", and "Other" with "Water damage". The article did have a link to the Wiktionary article.
In the case of a word like "damage" with a clear and common meaning in everyday English, that meaning should dominate a 2009 film and a band called "Damage"; a routine link to Wiktionary is not enough to inform a reader not familiar with the term of the meaning (a fortiori, it should not be assumed that readers use English as their main language, or that they live in a typical Western culture). A definition of the word (even if this is really a dictionary definition; an exception to the guideline discouraging such definitions should apply to disambiguation) should head the article, and meanings which are just variants of normal English should appear here; in the case of damage, "Water damage", "Property damage", "Fire damage" are applications of the normal meaning, not truly independent terms, and should be grouped with the main definition.
The article as I found it is at [1]; I left it as at [2], though I don't claim my version to be perfect or definitive. [In the particular case of damage I added a brief clarification of the distinction between damage and damages which isn't directly relevant to my point here, though it does clearly belong where it is (there are many cases of misuse like "the earthquake caused damages to a building and a bridge", presumably mainly by non-native speakers of English).]
I suggest that the guidelines on disambiguation pages be modified to cover this, very common, situation. Pol098 (talk) 15:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
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The Minor Barnstar | |
| For excellent grammatical correction and spelling of articles. Thank you! Dr. Persi (talk) 04:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC) |
Thank you! I'm glad it's seen to be of use. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 20:33, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
