Talk:Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic

Type of English tag

Thread started by a ban evading sock, see WP:Sockpuppet investigations/TheCurrencyGuy 74.73.224.126 (talk) 16:41, 7 June 2023 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Hello all.

A user recently changed all the "-ize" spellings to "-ise" in the belief that this is exclusively American English, when this is the Oxford spelling, and I would like to place the Oxford tag on it to avoid further issues. 92.21.251.88 (talk) 09:35, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• Disagree with change to Oxford spelling, as opposed to standard British English. No good reason has been presented to support this change. Tammbeck^talk 10:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  My reasoning is that this was the variety already used in the article before a recent edit, it would merely be making it official to avoid problems. 92.21.251.88 (talk) 10:35, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Assuming you're right that Oxford spelling was consistently used in the article (I don't particularly want to plough through it) then MOS:RETAIN would apply and I would have no objection to the Oxford spelling tag being added. Tammbeck^talk 16:42, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Renewed discussion regarding variant

@Bgsu98, Black Kite, John Maynard Friedman, and Tammbeck: I hatted the discussion above, but there is a salient point raised about which variety of orthography and vocabulary to use.

For record, the net diff resulting from ban-evasion is this.

The MoS procedure for determining which variety to retain in case of dispute is that the variant used by the first non-stub revision stands, or if there is no clear variant at that revision then whatever variant the article naturally evolves to first is retained.

Determining the first non-stub is a bit messier here than usual since the first revision was sectioned, but mostly empty. However, by the 50th revision we have a non-stub. Unfortunately all that we can really derive from that is to use ruble rather than rouble.

Ironically TCG's usual line of argumentation that ruble is unacceptable in EngvarB would lead us to conclude that the article must be something else, but in fact ruble vs rouble is more of a STYLEVAR thing, and many respectable EnvarB publications use it (example).

Now I have no intention of going through line by line, but looking ahead a bit by mid-05 -ize is preferred to -ise (revision) but even that doesn't tell us much, could be Philippine or Nigerian or Oxford Commonwealth.

By mid-07, airplane has appeared (revision) which means not British, but doesn't rule out say Australian with Oxford spelling, and while -ize still predominates, forms are becoming mixed.

If forced to choose, I'm inclined to just go with Canadian because I seem to remember a few Canadians branching out and doing a good deal of the early work on the climate and geography of Northern Asia and Europe, but any variant that combines a preference for -ize with a tolerance for North American vocabulary could be correct. Singaporean with Oxford spelling anyone?

Personally, it would probably be better if we just didn't pay much attention to this sort of thing, and I think that in general only MoS pedants are actually bothered by articles that use mixed forms, but unfortunately the ruble vs rouble thing came up so we're here.

Anyway it's possible I missed something, happy to hear everyone else's thoughts. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 23:57, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

As long as the spelling is consistent, it shouldn't matter which version of English is used. This is not a topic that is inherently British or inherently American. But the back-and-forth edit warring over a choice of English cannot continue. And there's only one person I've seen who's stuck on "rouble" and his opinion no longer matters, so "ruble" it is! Bgsu98 (Talk) 00:06, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

The -ize ending is vanishingly rare in the UK, to the extent that if the author didn't also add a {{use}}, it is reasonable to assume that it is not Oxford. Most British readers have never seen it. To illustrate: there was an episode of Inspector Morse (which is set in Oxford) where the perpetrator of the "perfect crime" was only unmasked as "an Oxford man" by his use of the -ize ending in a forged suicide note. So that possibility can be dismissed with a clear conscience. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@Bgsu98: It is more formal than that. The RFC at talk:Ruble#Request for comment concluded that WP:Engvar determines which form should be used, so 74.73.224.126 is correct in first identifying which dialect was first in use. (And while this discussion is still in progress, you should not really have jumped the gun – even if the outcome is fairly obvious.) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:23, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

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"Third Republic of Estonia" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Third Republic of Estonia has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 January 6 § Third Republic of Estonia until a consensus is reached. Casablanca 🪨^(T) 17:57, 6 January 2026 (UTC)