Australia's modifications: what's up with that?

Looking through Australia I see some countless and irritating changes:

• "Xth portrait" removed from circulating coinage
  
• images changed to new photos that are incredibly dark and hard to see
  
• "Aluminium-bronze" changed to "Aluminum-Bronze", and 200 requests to change it back
  
• Copper-nickel changed to "Copper-Nickel"
  
• mind numbingly long titles that could be written in the commemorative field instead
  

...and a Bullion coin page with the title "1 Dollar - Elizabeth II (4th portrait; "Kookaburra" U.S. State Quarter New Jersery))" with a value of 0.01.

Little things like these don't bother me too much, but as the saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and someone decides to go their own way and completely ignore the guidelines while several members try to revert these changes. Headache and facepalming for days.

Are these pending changes, changes have been reviewed and approved (why?), or changes that a team member made directly (double why?)?

I think these were edits made by one member that the referee approved without second thought. Really don't want to push blame on anyone but I hope these small changes don't continue, they really are a headache.

If Australia is in dire need, I will start going through my images to see if I have any that are better... unless the unnamed trouble member is me

Citeer: "KennyG"​Looking through Australia I see some countless and irritating changes:
​

• about 200 requests for "Aluminium-bronze" in place of "Aluminum-Bronze"
  

​This is more than fair for an Australian section of the catalogue. Aluminium is how the metal is spelled in New Zealand, Australia and England. USA is about the only country that clings to Aluminum when the guy that named it himself decided that Aluminum didn't sound right and changed it to Aluminium. Since this is an English version of the site and not an American version of the site, technically all of the coins should be written as Aluminium rather than Aluminum

Citeer: "neilithic"​

Citeer: "KennyG"​Looking through Australia I see some countless and irritating changes:
​​
​

• about 200 requests for "Aluminium-bronze" in place of "Aluminum-Bronze"
  ​
  

​

​​This is more than fair for an Australian section of the catalogue. Aluminium is how the metal is spelled in New Zealand, Australia and England. USA is about the only country that clings to Aluminum when the guy that named it himself decided that Aluminum didn't sound right and changed it to Aluminium. Since this is an English version of the site and not an American version of the site, technically all of the coins should be written as Aluminium rather than Aluminum

Let's not get start a fight about what version of English the English portion of the site represents. 99% of the time, when people say English, they aren't talking specifically about British English. We have users here from USA (last I checked, still #1, based on the number of users), Canada (also ahead of the UK), Australia, Ireland, India, and just about everywhere else where people speak/learn English. UK users are only a small portion of this audience. There is no need to act like Britain still gets to set the rules for everyone.

Aluminum is the older name, but Aluminium is more in line with the names of other elements and is the preferred spelling in most of the world, including scientists in the US, so I do prefer the latter.

Even so, I am against customizing each country's coin descriptions based on that specific country's version of English.

I was objecting to the assumption that it is wrong to try and rename the metal the coins are made of into the form that is used in the actual country because it is not what he personally uses. Do you think the US users would approve if I went through the American pages and changed every instance where the word "color" is used and renamed it to "colour" because that is what I use in my country therefore everyone should use it?

Citeer: "neilithic"​I was objecting to the assumption that it is wrong to try and rename the metal the coins are made of into the form that is used in the actual country because it is not what he personally uses. Do you think the US users would approve if I went through the American pages and changed every instance where the word "color" is used and renamed it to "colour" because that is what I use in my country therefore everyone should use it?

​I think most US users would find it peculiar but would not give it a second thought. It's UK users that have a problem with US spellings, not the other way around. :)

Sorry, but your mistaken. Let's not forget that this thread was started by an American complaining about the spelling being changed from the American form to the British form. Also I have met many Americans, I've flatted with a large number of them while at University here in New Zealand and they were incredibly arrogant about American pronunciations and spelling being the "correct" form. One of them even had the gall to try and correct me when I was saying the word "cards" saying that I was pronouncing the word incorrectly. We had many debates over the use of catalogue, aluminium, colour, and "ise" as opposed to "ize" (as in organise, specialise, categorise, etc)

Citeer: "neilithic"​Sorry, but your mistaken. Let's not forget that this thread was started by an American complaining about the spelling being changed from the American form to the British form. Also I have met many Americans, I've flatted with a large number of them while at University here in New Zealand and they were incredibly arrogant about American pronunciations and spelling being the "correct" form. One of them even had the gall to try and correct me when I was saying the word "cards" saying that I was pronouncing the word incorrectly. We had many debates over the use of catalogue, aluminium, colour, and "ise" as opposed to "ize" (as in organise, specialise, categorise, etc)

I'm sorry you've only met arrogant Americans.

ps: It's "you're mistaken".

God I must be tired. I was an English major at University and usually I'm the one correcting other people's spelling and grammar. I'm going to go and hang my head in shame and hand in my grammar Nazi membership badge.

Citeer: "neilithic"​God I must be tired. I was an English major at University and usually I'm the one correcting other people's spelling and grammar. I'm going to go and hang my head in shame and hand in my grammar Nazi membership badge.

​*nod, nod* Missing a comma after "God," too.

Yes, I agree that Aluminium should be spelled "Aluminium", but someone had changed it to Aluminum-Bronze and now the system is flooded with requests to change it back (which I agree with, but is annoying nonetheless). We agreed on both forums that it should be spelled "Aluminium" although the folks here think it should be spelled otherwise. I'm sorry I hadn't explained well, edited OP.

EDIT: Now know the member who changes to and creates pages with "Aluminum-Bronze", will change all new pages to Aluminium-bronze.

I wonder who the Australian referee was ?

i have found since the rankings have come out it's definitely helped participation however that participation isn't always necessary or even correct I've rejected a few in the last few weeks !

I think Elvis is the referee, the guy that's changed a lot of them is probably the new member that has been adding all the recent Australian commemoratives and cleaning up the decimal coins. H's done a lot of work in the last few months so I wouldn't knock him too much for getting a bit picky.

Citeer: "neilithic"I think Elvis is the referee

The last referee for Australia was eitan190 if I'm not mistaken. He came after elvis123 but wasn't referee for so long since he's put off the team recently.

elvis123 did an excellent job, he was there at the start of the referee system. There has been a flood of good information, hopefully the bad changes don't continue.

And there is no longer a tutor in Australia. We need to replace it.

I can't help wondering if this is a due to the Catalogue contribution stats? Even though Xavier did remove it, it's still there (but no gold-silver-bronze league with public "top 100" lists, but still) and someone wanted to get better stats? This was what I told Xavier when the first announced the catalogue contribution top 100 list.

I wonder who the Australian referee was ?

i have found since the rankings have come out it's definitely helped participation however that participation isn't always necessary or even correct I've rejected a few in the last few weeks !

Citeer: "Mark240590"​I wonder who the Australian referee was ?
​
​i have found since the rankings have come out it's definitely helped participation however that participation isn't always necessary or even correct I've rejected a few in the last few weeks !

​And that's the role of a referee. Would I accept all requests I would receive in the future in Lorraine without checking it? Surely not.

oh wow.. Thanks for clearing that up for me !

it it was merely a statement and that the referee was obviously just accepting them or modifying them.

We could avoid a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth if referees were appointed based on such things as, oh I dunno..... maybe having some knowledge of the country/currency they are applying for and having been a collector for more than a few weeks.

While most referees are excellent, more than a few seem to have been appointed based purely on their ability to wave their front paws in the air and shout "Me!". What could possibly go wrong?

Guys .. I only just saw this thread ... and realised that I was the one who changed the words from Aluminium-bronze to Aluminium-Bronze.

My apologies if it upset anyone. What I was doing was trying to bring some consistency to the Australian entries. I didn't even think about American English or British English spellings. I agree though that if a coin is a USA coin that American English should be used. If it is Australian then British English should be used.

Basically I went through the entire Australian (RAM) entries and added missing coins, missing pictures, updated information, corrected mintages etc etc. Then I had to go thru them again to crop the pictures correctly as it was pointed out to me they should be cropped round not square. (Arghh)

This took hours and hours of my time but I enjoyed doing it. While I was making all these updates and changes I made the change from Aluminium-bronze to Aluminium-Bronze. I think it looks better to capitalise both metals. I would not make a change like that just on its own though. I only did it as part of the general clean up.

As to Australian Referee .... If you need one I am willing. I live in Australia which helps I think. I have been collecting Australian coins for over 20 years. I have got all the decimal issues and some of the pre-decimal stuff. I have seen how and why a coin can be rejected and what might need to be done to get a coin that was rejected then become an accepted one.

Anyway that's my explanation and once again sorry if it was the wrong thing to do.

Cheers Mike

Your input into the catalogue is much appreciated as I pointed out in my post

"the guy that's changed a lot of them is probably the new member that has been adding all the recent Australian commemoratives and cleaning up the decimal coins. H's done a lot of work in the last few months so I wouldn't knock him too much for getting a bit picky"

I've been going through cleaning up and adding all the missing NZ trade token pages and getting the entries all how I like them. I'd be a bit annoyed if someone was complaining about my hard work too. It may be annoying for the people going through the requests, but isn't it better to have a catalogue that is being actively audited by the members than to have a catalogue that is not being looked at by anyone at all?

Perhaps to clear this up it might be an idea to have the metal as a drop-down box with all the options presented to you when you enter or alter a page. That would clear up the different capitalisations on hyphenated metals and get rid of errors where people have spelled the name of the metal incorrectly and where people have put the symbols for the metals instead of the full name e.g. cupro-nickel, copper-nickel or cu-ni

Citeer: "neilithic"​Perhaps to clear this up it might be an idea to have the metal as a drop-down box with all the options presented to you when you enter or alter a page. That would clear up the different capitalisations on hyphenated metals and get rid of errors where people have spelled the name of the metal incorrectly and where people have put the symbols for the metals instead of the full name e.g. cupro-nickel, copper-nickel or cu-ni

​Sounds like a great idea to me ... and if an unusual metal type can't be found in the list an option to type it in which can of course be checked by an admin and added to the drop down box if valid.

Cheers Mike