User talk:SMcCandlish/WikiProject English Language

Old history

This project is a clean start, and has no connections to earlier attempts at a "WikiProject English" (this short name was avoided on purpose to avoid any such mental connection, and because it's ambiguous anyway, probably suggesting to many new editors that it has to do with the English people, or as some kind of "wikiclub" for editors based in England).

The original WPP English was undeveloped, had a single participant, and though nominated for deletion "to clear the space for a project which might have a better chance of success later", was simply tagged with {{Historical}} by WP:Miscellany for deletion, in a Demember 2008 MfD. It returned to MfD in July 2011, and was deleted as "stillborn", still with a single listed participant. Another project was created at the same name not long after, with the specific intent of fighting consensus on issues like the use of diacritics in article titles, and other "pure English" PoV-pushing. It was deleted in a November 2011 MfD, with a scathing indictment as "a battle-standard under which those from one side of a debate can organise canvassing against the other side...; even the title of the project is misleading.... [I]t serves only to polarise the project... [and] will simply create a hostile editing environment."

This new project is the diametric opposite, being organized to collaboratively develop new and better content related to the English language as an encyclopedia topic, fully consonant with the Wikipedia:Core content policies.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:58, 3 February 2016 (UTC)