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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 82.76.30.78 (talk) at 22:17, 30 July 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Making up words

One question for all of you: Doesn't making up words count as humor? Like if i tell my friends I'm going to "Wikipedia" it? I know it derives some laughter because it's so common yet unmentioned, so does that count too? I'd like to hear some thoughts. --Macrowiz 04:53, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"It has been claimed that humour cannot be explained. However, attempts can be made, such as this one"

Is that intended to be funny, or am I just a loony?

I thought it was hilarious actually....now theres two of us...

Dissapointed to find "Wit" leading right back to humour. Seems like it should have it's own page. Datepalm17 15:01, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, if it has to go as far as you have to explain your humour, you have already failed being humorous, so that's a wasted one. --OleMurder 12:52, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Vancouver Sun

Announcement: This page was listed in the Saturday, May 29 edition of the Vancouver Sun as one of the best pages for humour on the internet. Kathy T 20:19, May 30, 2004 (UTC)

I added a link, http://www.iridis.com/glivar/Humour . I am not sure if it has more information than the wiki articles or if it just shows them in a different format, but the things on it are things I havn't yet seen here. It gives credit to the wikipedia.

I took it back off because it seems to be just a copy of this article. I will keep it in here for reference.


Why isn't there a link to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Humour somewhere prominent on this page? maybe an icon just to the left of the page/entry's Title? maybe a "Lookup {current page title word}" to the right somewhere? these are simple questions to ask. like "where's your sense of humor?". so little real estate; so much scissorgy.  :)Ozzyslovechild 04:42, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So add it yourself! Be bold! --Zakharov 01:14, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Trust thyself, young padawan. Have confidence.--OleMurder 12:48, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragements:). I was just scribling on this discussion page cuz that's where i was when it occured to me to ask/suggest, but it's more of a site layout topic not specific to this article. I wanted to be reminded later of the wonder on my watchlist so I could mull it again and then at some point ask it somewhere that discusses the overall layout. Seems like there should be a link to the relevant Wiktionary article for all Wikipedia search terms, with implementation decisions needing to think about for all or for all single-word searches? for only those which have Wiktionary articles already created for them? for only those with articles already created & for words that exist in a valid-word file depending on technical feasibility? -:)Ozzyslovechild 21:29, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why does lawyer (in the rabbi, priest, lawyer example joke) link to shark? is this intended humo(u)r?Stale Fries 01:53, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes this was intended humor. Quite amusing, really. I fixed it though DaveTheRed 02:11, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • I know that asking kills the joke, but what is the significance or humor in this? Besides the fact that lawyers are obviously not sharks...Stale Fries 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

U.S. English

Should this page be in US English to match the rest of WikiPedia?--BozMo|talk 13:21, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The language policy is a bit more complicated than that... my understanding is pages started in one spelling are maintained in that form... there are some more details on the help/about pages. Krupo 02:39, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)
But think of all the stoarage space Wikipedia could save by getting rid of these useless and distracting 'u's.--Frank J. Fleming 02:08, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Useless? Speak for yourself! The u's have a good place in words, it's just the American bastardisation of pronunciation and writing that's caused them to be dropped. OK yes I'll concede Wikipedia originated in America so US English is accepted by me, but more people use British English :)
"... to match the rest of Wikipedia?" There is a huge number of articles written in BrE! See [1].
There is no preference for U.S. English. Dumbledore 02:42, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Considering that most native English-speakers are American (see the graph to the right), this page (and all Wikipedia pages) should be in American english unless the word used is more common in England/AU/NZ/Canada/etc. --tomf688 (talk) 23:31, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

percent of native born english speakers
percent of native born english speakers
And most people who speak English as a second language (far more than the native speakers) learn British English. Which makes British English more common. Let's try to avoid this insular attitude. The Wikipedia policy works perfectly well. -- Necrothesp 10:02, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What a pointless issue. It should be British English only to piss these American imperialists off. They want monopoly on their u's, EH!? WELL SO LET'S GIVE IT TO 'EM! *throws an U!* Take that, "universal" use of English! Most is not all!--OleMurder 09:37, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't American imperialists who took a perfectly good article named Humor and renamed it Humour for no good reason but their horror at spellings different from those they're used to. --Angr/comhrá 10:28, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Request to move humour to humor

I'd like to hear some input here as to whether or not this page should be moved to humor. I feel English articles here must be made for the majority, not the minority. In this case, the majority of native english speakers (see pie chart) are Americans, so most articles should be in American english.

Exceptions to this concept, however, should be made for certain articles about events or geography; one such article would be London, an English city. But general concepts, history, and just about everything else should be written using American spelling. --tomf688 (talk) 23:50, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Not again. This comes up time and time and time and time again and everytime the answer will be the same. No, for all the usual reasons... yawn. Jooler 09:16, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Is Wikipedia only written for and by native English speakers? I think not. -- Necrothesp 10:04, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No, this is not the policy. Before suggesting things like this 1) read the policies; and 2) try and understand the reasons behind the policy. Moreover, it's long been established and is now universally agreed upon by most authorities that the majority of native English speakers with a half-decent sense of humour are, in fact, British English speakers, so you're out of luck with your numerical majority argument ;-) — Matt Crypto 11:55, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • BTW this pie chart doesn't look right to me. supposedly the data for this page comes from http://www.alt-usage-english.org/Distribution_English_speakers.shtml.
  • Using the data on that page to try to correlate it against the percentages - We have UK - 15.9% = 56,830,000 - therefore 1% = 56,830,000/15.9 = ~3,574,213.836, therefore 70.7% should equal 70.7*~3,574,213.836 = ~252696918.239, which is not close to the figure of 224,900,000 given for mother tongue speakers it is closer to the figure for lingua franca speakers. Furthermore, the figure of 56,830,000 for the UK doesn't include bilingual speakers of Welsh and Scots Gaelic and others which according to these figures counts for another 1,590,000. If this is taken into account we have a figure of 57,420,000 for the UK. Jooler 12:24, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
New version of the chart is online Dumbledore 12:12, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oh no, not again! To cut the debate short, please go to Wikipedia:Standardize spellings where an identical proposal has just been knocked on the head for the umpteenth time... -- Arwel 16:56, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Eh gotta shake things up around here :) I'm not trying to offend anyone, but things need to be standardiZed (:P) in my world. Guess I can live with a mixture... --tomf688 (talk) 00:08, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

I'm with Matt. I think that we need a totally separate heading for 'American Humor' to explain to the rest of us why Americans can collapse into helpless laughter just because the 'canned laughter' track has been turned to maximum volume. Unfortunately this is spreading to the UK now. Some UK-made 'funny' sitcoms are adopting the US method, and rely almost entirely on canned laughter rather than content.

Another argument in favor of humor

I agree with the suggestion that the article should be moved back to humor. Not because American English is more widespread (I don't know or care whether it is or not), or because American English should be exclusively used on Wikipedia (it shouldn't, IMO), but simply because the article began life as humor. If you check the histories of humor and humour, you find that humor began on 27 October, 2001, while humour began four months later, on 25 February, 2002, as a redirect to humor. On 7 August, 2002, Daniel C. Boyer moved the content to humour and made humor a redirect. WP:MOS suggests following the usage of the first major editor of an article in cases where the article is not on a topic specific to a particular country or region. Therefore the article should be in its original location, humor, and humour should redirect to it. --Angr/comhrá 09:28, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Going massively into POV here, considering Americans aren't funny....
err, what was I saying. It should stay where it is. Commonwealth English has as many if not more users than American English. The article also mentions (slightly) more comedic traits of Commonwealth English speaking countries. Kiand 15:16, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Har-har, most amusing. The number of users of the two types of English is highly controversial as it can be counted in many different ways. It's also irrelevant. The types of humor discussed in the article are not, in fact, characteristic of one region more than another. If there is anything here that's specifically British, it should be moved to British humour (which obviously should keep that spelling). --Angr/comhrá 15:42, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your argument makes sense, however, the article has been stable with humour for a long time. Therefore, the spelling should not be changed. There are many articles like this that started out using a different spelling. And usually the change is British -> American... Nobbie 09:34, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The only sensible solution is to have two articles, American humour and British humor (which obviously should keep those spellings). kwami 09:19, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)


Everyone on planet Earth, except from a few pitiful exceptions, knows that there is no such thing as American humour, or for that matter, 'humor'.

I hereby declare that the proper spelling is 'humour'. Let's face it, aside from electing Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, the US does not have anywhere near the humour of the BE English speaking world.

oh shut up all you brits and yanks! Have you ever heard of international english? It encompases both american and british spellings so let's just say it's written in international english and we could all shut up

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