User talk:Birdofadozentides

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Ƿynn!

Hi there, Birdofadozentides, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks for taking an interest in entries about Old English :-) I see you've been working through entries replacing the graph <w> with <ƿ>. I can see why this might seem a good idea, but there are some problems here. Wikipedia entries cite (or should cite) the sources for their quotations of Old English texts, and the text in the Wikipedia entry should be the same as in the source cited. Since these sources probably all use <w>, changing <w>s to <ƿ>s makes Wikipedia less accurate. If you were really keen to replace <w>s with <ƿ>s, you'd have to find editions to cite that use <ƿ>. But that gives rise to another issue, which is that almost no modern editors do use <ƿ>, so your edits are also leading Wikipedia to diverge from the scholarly norms in editing Old English. I really appreciate you wanting to work on Wikipedia: that's great! But I think on this detail it would be better to undo your edits -- how does that sound? Thanks! Alarichall (talk) 10:58, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I see that Ealdgyth has already made these points in discussion with you. She was right! Alarichall (talk) 11:07, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Alarichall, thanks for talking so friendly to me. Answering your last question, well, it sounds awfull.

"...almost no modern editors do use <ƿ>, so your edits are also leading Wikipedia to diverge from the scholarly norms in editing Old English".

And these norms are wrong, Ƿynn was the main letter for this sound in Old English, yes, sometimes it was also written as u or uu, but Ƿynn was in the alphabet, so why not to pubslish Old English texts with Ƿynn?

They say it's to prevent confusion with p, but P and Ƿynn are writen differently, perhaps in the beginning there can be problems, but later learners will get used to it. This confusion it overrated, especially for printed texts, where all letters are shown in the same way unlike manuscripts.

However, the norms don't give it a chance, people are just running in circles publishing Old English texts only with w. I know only two books that used Ƿynn, they're very old. In modern editons they only mention Ƿynn or even don't speak about it. Why so? Ƿynn never deserved to be treated like that.

And I don't think changing w to ƿ makes Wikipedia less accurate, on the contary. In original these texts were written with Ƿynn, it were the publishes who changed the orthography, and now the texts just look like they're supposed to. Why the sourse's orthography is more important than the original manuscripts'?

I undertand the copryrights are the evil, and even change of orthography would not be tolerated, though it could stay this way, I don't think that all the sourse's owners would check it out, and even if they would, would they want to bring you in trouble for this? I'm sadly sure that my edits will be reverted anyway. Birdofadozentides (talk) 11:55, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Who is Ealdgyth? I didn't have a discussion with her. Birdofadozentides (talk) 11:58, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hey ho!

Thanks for the reply.

This isn't to do with copyright: it's that Wikipedia, as an encyclopaedia, needs to reflect the mainstream of academic knowledge on a subject rather than to lead the way in changing knowledge. If you want to change how people edit Old English, you'd need to start publishing good scholarly editions using wynn, and then Wikipedia could cite them. Until then, though, Wikipedia needs to reflect existing scholarship. At the moment, if someone looks at the text of, say, Exeter Book Riddle 60, they will be led to believe that Krapp and Dobbie's edition uses wynn, which it doesn't. So at the moment, the Wikipedia entry will mislead rather than enlighten readers, which isn't the goal of the encyclopaedia :-(

One option might be to start adding in diplomatic transcriptions of the manuscripts alongside accurately reproduced edited texts. These might include wynn but also accents, punctuation, and spacing used in the actual manuscripts. This would be a bit like what I've been doing for the Old English on the Franks Casket (Franks_Casket#Front_panel), where I've been adding in the actual runic texts alongside (but not instead of) edited version in Latin letters. (In the case of Exeter Book Riddle 60, these transcriptions would be based on these facsimiles: The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, ed. R. W. Chambers, Max Förster, and Robin Flower (London: Lund, 1933) and the facsimile CD with The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501, ed. Bernard J. Muir, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000).)

Again, how does that sound as a way forward?

Thanks!

Alarichall (talk) 12:53, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Your discussion with Ealdgyth was a while ago, so I guess you've just forgotten it, which is fair enough, but it's here: User_talk:Ealdgyth/Archive_69#About_my_edit!

Okay, now I see things are even more darker than I imagined. What can I say, the world we're living in is a broken place and it'll never be fine. You want me to revert my edits, you'll get what you wanted. P.S. Yes, I've really forgotten, it was a minor conversation, that's why. And I do hope you don't mind I've changed the orthography of topic's name Birdofadozentides (talk) 14:05, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, sorry you're disappointed at the world, but I'm glad you're not disappointed at me personally! I appreciate your willingness to engage in reasoned discussion, and thanks for reverting the edits :-) There's definitely a lot of other cool stuff we could be doing with Old English on Wikipedia -- lots of riddles don't have entries for example! If I can help you with further work on Old English here, do let me know! Alarichall (talk) 15:02, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

How could I be dissiapointed in you, you were nice to me, and you were just following these Wikipedia rules, 99% of people would do the same, and most of them not so friendly. Thank you for conversation. Birdofadozentides (talk) 17:09, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"At the moment, if someone looks at the text of, say, Exeter Book Riddle 60, they will be led to believe that Krapp and Dobbie's edition uses ƿynn, which it doesn't".

Why can't something like this be done:

"*This sourse uses w instead of ƿynn, but we changed the orthography due to historical reasons".

And then to put this phase to the end of the sourse's reference. Then there will be no lie.

I'm sorry for bothering you, I feel like nothing will be changed anyway, but it seemes like not such a bad idea for me. Birdofadozentides (talk) 05:19, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]