Thread:User talk:Internoob/Deprecating less-than symbol in etymologies

I am responding on your talk page to your response at Votes/pl-2011-02/Deprecating less-than symbol in etymologies from 13 March 2011. I have overlooked your response; sorry for the late response.

Re: "You can't get everyone to structure their creations in exactly the same way, and with every new thing that gets standardized, we have to explain to newbies that make a mistake what their mistake was and ask that they remember it in the future.":

Getting everyone to use the common format and structure is exactly what Wiktionary has been trying to do all along. We require that the entries conform to ELE, including the requirements on used headings, used format in translation sections, and more.

The vote is not there to scare the newbies. It does not even use the word "forbid"; it says "deprecate", which is defined by WT as "to declare something obsolescent, i.e., to recommend against a function, technique, command, etc, that still works but has been replaced". The point '(b) declaring that anyone is welcome to replace less-than symbol with "from" in etymologies, no matter whether manually or robotically' formally allows editors to switch to the "from" format, which is what some editors have informally been already doing anyway. Once every etymology contains "from", newbies are likely to use the same formatting rather than being confused by the mixture. Instead of having to search for policies and guidelines, newbies will be able to just look around and imitate. Thus, this seems to be an improvement for newbies. I do not support people pesking newbies for using "<"; I merely support that people should feel free to replace "<" with "from". If you read the text of the proposal again, it does not say anything from which pesking of newbies would follow. If you are afraid that pesking of newbies could be read into the proposal, you can explicitly state that you oppose pesking of newbies for deviating from the standard.

The use of "from" is really easy to pick, and I have seen newbies spontaneously using the form. What is much harder to use for newbies are the etyl and term templates. Some newbies vehemently reject to use them. Some senior editors have been pesking newbies for failing to use the templates in etymology sections, asserting that their use is the community decision. (As you can seen from this vote, that is as improbable as anything. ) I have been pesked by a senior editor for writing instead of : what the editor complained about was the missing lang=la.

I am sorry for the long response; its benefit is that I could explain and highlight things in detail. Thank you for your attention.