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I recently edited this page in accordance with South African English, as the subject was born in South Africa and does not have any clear reason for ambiguous nationality. In so doing, I changed the note on variety of English at the top of the edit page to "South African" from "British," based on my understanding of MOS:ENGVAR—particularly MOS:RETAIN. Another editor quickly reverted my edits, claiming that "The variety Of English is determined at the time the article is created and should not be changed." I found this confusing, as I have never seen such a rule, and indeed, such a rule would go against almost everything related to MOS:RETAIN—which makes clear that varieties of English can and ought to be changed if there is just reason for doing so. Original guidelines for an article are not written in stone, especially if they are incorrect. I don't want to get into an edit war about this, of course, so I would like some clarification about it, as I am certain that varieties of English absolutely can be changed, and I would argue that the variety of English used in this article should be changed for the South African subject. Thanks. Anwegmann (talk) 21:08, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Anwegmann. I’ve read what you’ve had to say here, and at WP:FOOTY. I don’t see any issue in what you have said here or at WP:FOOTY, and you are correct as confirmed by other users already.
I’m not sure whether you’ve had a discussion with the relevant user/s that reverted your edits or whether they have seen this, so it may useful to ping them (ignore this part if they have already engaged or seen).
Of course, no one wants an edit war, and you have done the right thing here. Fats40boy11 (talk) 19:42, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for the reply, @Fats40boy11. I appreciate your suggestions, and I figured that a public discussion is the best way to approach something that affects a wide variety of articles. That's why I initially did not treat this as a conflict between two users. I linked the WP:FOOTY discussion in my most recent edit summaries, to justify why I was doing the edit. But I will certainly ping the user (@Daemonickangaroo2018) who was making a different argument than that which I made here and at WP:FOOTY. Thanks, again. Anwegmann (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
