Thread:User talk:Internoob/Deprecating less-than symbol in etymologies/reply (2)

In all frankness, I cannot assure you of the behavior of other editors. (I can assure you that I will do no pesking myself.) If the vote passes, it is the proposed text that passes. The proposed text is, to recall, this:

'Voting on: Setting the use of "from" in etymologies as Wiktionary standard, and deprecating the use of less-than symbol. In particular: (a) adjusting Wiktionary:Etymology, a guideline for formatting of etymology, to state that "from" is the standard, by replacing less-than symbol with ", from" in examples and by other adjustments as needed; (b) declaring that anyone is welcome to replace less-than symbol with "from" in etymologies, no matter whether manually or robotically. (c) There should be a comma and a space before "from", with the exception of "from" that is at the beginning of the etymology, and possibly some other exceptions; as in "From A, from B, from C" rather than "From A from B from C".'

The proposed text does not prevent editors from pesking, but it also does not mandate pesking. But then again, for pesking, senior editors do not need any vote: it suffices that they claim that the newbie has violated "what the community has decided" without there being a vote, such as the use of templates in etymology sections. Actually, in my case with missing lang=la mentioned in my previous post, I was no longer a newbie yet I got pesked by a senior editor. Peskers will pesk; many of them have an innate drive to do so. I think I have such an innate drive but I am trying to block it. If you want to prevent pesking in general, you have to do more than oppose a vote that makes it possible for people to replace "<" with "from": you have to say, possibly in boldface, I vehemently oppose pesking newbies for failing to use 'from'. When you see pesking that you do not like, you have to stand up to the pesker. However, there are some senior editors who won't care anyway, your boldfaced opposition or not, this vote or not. This vote really is not about whether newbies should be pesked, but rather about whether editors can feel free to quickly converge to "from".

As my afterthought, consider Votes/pl-2011-02/Romanian orthographic norms. This vote could have been opposed on the ground that the editors should spontaneously converge to something in the mainspace. In fact, there was not all that much time for editors to spontaneously converge to anything as regards Romanian forms, unlike "from" vs "<" which was given at least four years for the convergence since I have started editing Wiktionary. One of the Romanian editors has been pesking another Romanian editor for using the option that has in the end won in the vote. Thus, this particular vote has protected the pesked from the peskers, despite the vote's imposing a standard.