User talk:UrsoBR

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Welcome!

Hello, UrsoBR, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! --Jwinius (talk) 12:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bothrops jararaca

Regarding your recent edits to Bothrops jararaca, I regret that I've had to revert them. Obviously your efforts were in good faith, and it may very well be that you are right, but you must understand that the spellings are correct according to the references given (I double-checked). Regarding the common names, if you know of one or more alternative spellings, add a new statement with your reference -- never change existing information that already has a reference (unless you have access to that reference). As for the type locality, that's always a direct quote from the original description of the taxon, including spelling mistakes and outrageous errors. Hope this clears things up for you! --Jwinius (talk) 12:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

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Thank you for your kind welcome, Jwinius. I do intend to stay and contribute as much as I can.
As for the jararaca issue, I accept the type locality reversal, since it is an established taxonomic principle. As a non-specialist, I didn't know it was, and thank you for giving me that new piece of information. But now it's my turn. I am Brazilian, hence a native speaker of Portuguese, and as an educated man, I certainly know how to spell in my mother tongue - so, it's not easy for me to ignore such things when I see them... By contrast, the referenced book is American (from Cornell, it seems), and therefore you double-checked the spellings against a foreign reference with no native command of the original language. And maybe "the spellings are correct according to the references given" when they are in some language you don't know and have no means to verify, so you'd better be on the safe side, trust the authors and not be "creative." But if you know the language and know it's blatantly wrong, I believe it would be unethical and disloyal to readers to knowingly give them incorrect information. And it happens that I do know Portuguese and I have the means to check the spellings in that section (that is, if I needed that). Now I am going to offer you those means as well, if it makes any difference. Then you will judge whether my corrections were appropriate or not, regarding not only Wikipedia's rules, but its goals and priorities.
First, let's have a look at the corrections I made by themselves - let's not consider citation rules at this moment. Other than the cosmetic italicization I made (which I can do without, no problem), the unedited or reverted section contains two spelling errors. First, "jararaca-de-matta-virgem": except for traditional old personal and family names inherited by notarial inertia at birth registration, double "t" does not exist any more in Portuguese, since a spelling reform that became effective in 1943, 65 years ago, and was jointly approved by the official language regulatory bodies of Portugal and Brazil. (By the way, it's also "...da-mata-virgem...", not "...de...") Second, "jararaca-preguicosa": the latter word (meaning "lazy," hence "lazy jararaca"), as it is spelled in the article, would be pronounced "preh-ghee-kaw-zah," which doesn't exist and no Portuguese speaker would understand. The correct spelling, preguiçosa (with a c-cedilla, which I was careful to write as an HTML ampersand entity, so that there would be no charset problems for foreign readers), is pronounced "preh-ghee-saw-zah." I believe K and S sound very different...
Simply put, the reference contains two spelling errors, which were passed on by the article. One of them is an archaism, and the other is serious enough to hinder comprehension by a native speaker if pronounced that way (and then provoke a burst of laughter, when he or she finally understands it). It's not a matter of "alternative" spellings - the ones in the article are unacceptable in correct Portuguese. Your remark above implicitly assumes that there is room for dispute or alternative versions here. There is not: the corrected versions are the only acceptable spellings, period.
It's not me who says that, it's the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, which have the legal attribution in their respective countries to define the grammar and spelling standards for Portuguese. And I know that, and knew it when I edited the article. And now you know it, too. And we both know that the authors in question may be totally authoritative in reptile biology, but they are definitely not authoritative in Portuguese spelling - it's beyond their field of competence. However, a major Portuguese dictionary such as Houaiss or Aurélio is authoritative in that respect. I have both here, and both endorse my corrections (and by the way, they also mention some other jararaca common names, as well as subspecies and related species' names, that Campbell and Lamar didn't).
As for adding a new reference instead of correcting the spelling mistakes, I don't think it would make the article any better to keep the authors' unacceptable spelling for absolute faithfulness, then add that it was wrong and introduce an off-topic language issue the reader wouldn't be interested in, and refer him/her to the dictionaries... That would be the only way to do as you suggested, because I don't need to refer to a foreign book on reptiles to know how to spell some simple words in my own language - I already learned how to spell them at school when I was a little boy...
So, what shall we do? Keep the article as it is and knowingly pass to its readers incorrect information, in the name of rules, purity and faithfulness to the referenced source, or give them correct information? What is the priority? Which option will serve the readers better? Now it's up to you to decide. I will say (or edit) no more...
--UrsoBR (talk) 17:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Whoa, what an impressive response! It sounds like you know what you're talking about, so I think the best solution here will simply be to delete the names in question. Campbell & Lamar (2004) didn't get it right, so I don't think it would be correct for us to make it seem as though they did. On the other hand, if you think these names are significant, we could include your corrected versions separately without a reference, but I hate working that way -- I'd feel better if you were to come up with a reference.
This situation is unfortunately part of a problem that occurs all too often at WP, which when referenced statements are modified by people who do not have access to the reference material in question. Usually these alterations are simply wrong, in which case the reference tag at the end of the sentence or paragraph makes the new statement look downright misleading. It happens so frequently that I think if I were to stop editing, most of my contributions would be corrupted within a year. Maybe WP v2 will help to address this issue when it's finally introduced, but I'm not holding my breath. Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 20:43, 16 April 2008 (UTC)