Talk:Mechanical Edits/Mateusz Konieczny - bot account/surface=woodchip to surface=woodchips

Against

Hi - I'm not in favour of this.

• BOTH woodchip and woodchips are very rarely used at present - less than 300 each http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/surface=woodchip/surface=woodchips - therefore it's still early days and there are too few instances for it to be menaingful to say one is "more popular" than the other.
• In English language, "woodchip" is a mass noun. We never say "woodchips" in this context. I don't know who decided to put "woodchips" on the wiki or if there was any official process, but I think the decision is foolish, because native English speakers will continue to use "woodchip" because to an English speaker it's clearly the correct term.

So I would argue that the wiki entry should be changed. That's not necessarily your responsibility Mateusz, but I would certainly say that your proposed mechanical edit would be unproductive. I promise that people will carry on using "woodchip" - because it's the correct english term - until the key gets popular enough to have presets, which is some way in the future.

• "In English language, "woodchip" is a mass noun" - can you give source for this? "woodchips" seems to be OK or better - for example Wikipedia has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodchips (and my printed Polish-English dictionaries lack both versions of this word) Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 21:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Hmm OK the standard dictionary entries would be Oxford English Dictionary and Collins English Dictionary but they're referring specifically to wall coverings! There's "woodchips" here in Collins. I will admit that the evidence is mixed...! --Danstowell (talk) 21:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
• "are very rarely used at present" - that is why I focused on this, before people start inventing subtle differences between these two tags Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 21:12, 4 September 2015 (UTC)