Talk: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

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I'm quite familiar with As of 2004 and similar devices. However, in this case, it simply superfluous: the most recent edition as indicated by publication date is by definition the current. When a new edition appears, this can be modified accordingly. -- Viajero 19:08, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I believe the link should stay in somewhere, however, since it helps keep track of such pages needing updates. There is no guarantee the original author(s) will be around to update it. I'll put it around 2000. How's that? (I agree with you the wording was awkward but I'm reluctant to see those tracking links removed)-- Decumanus 19:10, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am sorry, but I don't completely follow your logic. If you remove the temporal qualifier ("current edition") than tracking it doesn't become an issue. It is completely meaningless to do so unless one happens to know that indeed a fifth or subsequent edition has been published. Moreover, linking it to "current" is unituitive. Please, I have used the As of device many times here; I know its purpose; I assure you it doesn't belong here. It primary purpose is for ongoing events or situations. -- Viajero 19:23, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Have it your way. You win, dude. -- Decumanus 19:24, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Setting aside the irrelevant "primary purpose", and Viajero's insulting talk of "current" and "most recent" being equivalent, the point is they think "current" or "most recent" is superfluous. They want to write articles that are true, and will stay true, and this one can do that by not mentioning what it takes to make the article the article more complete. The information that there is no newer edition does not make the article false, and is indeed in that sense superfluous. But at some point it almost certainly will become woefully incomplete, and in the meantime, it reeks, to the careful reader, of incompletion.

The as of 2003 that i wrote was not a whim. It reflected the time when the sentence "The most recent edition, the fourth, appeared in 2000" was added -- a sentence that Viajero thought was just fine back in November, BTW. I trusted the research of whoever wrote that sentence, but hoped not to have to take the time to update it; i would otherwise have had to, since tracking its source became dicey when i recast that information into the current edition list.

Anyway, the article is still true until updated when it says "most recent as of 2004." (I just noted the 4th as still current, as i presume Decumanus did, when i tried to improve another date.)

With as of 2004 there, it may or may not get rechecked once a year, but we're open about how recently it was checked, and we're sure we don't end up checking it ten times a year. And when we get to closer to 2008 thru 2012, when we should start expecting a new edition, we'll probably manage to check at least once each year.

Otherwise, unless someone decides this is "their" article, it could go on for years listing 4 edtions once there are five. If we don't say "current" or "most recent", yeah, it'll still be true, but it'll suck. Let's not suck, let's use more Wikipedia:As of links instead. --Jerzy 21:58, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

Thanks to Viajero for several good copy edits on my text, BTW. --Jerzy 22:22, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

Hi Jerzy, I am sorry, but I am having trouble following your logic above. I don't want to be dogmatic about this; for me it is strictly a practical matter. I use the As of primarily for temporary situations, and by temporary I mean a few months, or for example, when I refer to something taking place within a half year, such as the publication of a book. In principal it could also be used in this and many other places, but let's not abuse the thing. If you look at Special:Whatlinkshere&target=As_of_2003, you will see that there on the order of five hundred links which haven't updated. If there are two or three thousand I assure you no one is going to check them all. If HM published a new edition every three months, I would wholehartedly agree, but we are talking about eight to ten years. Hence, the text As of 2004, it remains the current edition. is going to go out of date far sooner than is necessary. Simply listing the fourth edition and its publication date is IMO quite sufficient.

As for current and most recent, I would have thought that they were virtually synonmous in this context; perhaps you could explain to me what the difference is. -- Viajero 11:41, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi, V. [smile] Lemme respond in reverse order, as i think my describing your comment as insulting requires explanation and qualification. I'm pleased to find that you intended no insult. (I say that, bcz i see no sign you are being disingenuous). I thot the effect was insulting bcz very few people would disagree with you, me, and i think Decumanus, that "they were virtually synonmous in this context". IMO, mentioning the obvious made it seem, contrary to your intentiions, that your reaction to the disagreement was "D. must be too dim-witted to realize they are the same, otherwise D would agree with me." IMO, D used the alternate wording not as a fundamentally more appealing solution, but bcz they either

• misremembered what the previous wording was, or
• felt on second thot that it flowed a little better (recall that D moved the link to the intro for similar reasons -- tho IIRC that happened after rather than before your remark abt no difference and could not have affected your making the remark), or
• were just as mystified by the disagreement as you were and, consciously or not, tried to "jiggle" the situation a little to see if that by chance created an occasion for a response by you that might lessen the disagreement.

(Of course, D might chose to speak for themself, more interestingly than i can speak for them. [slight blush].)

So you and i are agreed that any difference in meaning is insignificant here, and my concern about that part is satisfied.

Turning back to the use here of "as of", i would summarize you by saying you think "as of" is overloaded, and that i am worsening that, and D. is abetting me in that by trying to keep the link there.

I think all of those are probably true, based on two pieces of evidence: your observation about the backlog of un-updated "as of" links, and my realization that i have created a lot more of them than i have updated: probably dozens, and zero respectively. (D., on the other hand, has updated at least one, bcz i created it as 2003 and D made it 2004.)

Where we differ is what to do about it. Without making a detailed argument (beyond saying that there should be almost no one who looks at every article containing an as-if, even tho we should hope for nearly every article with an as-of to get visited for that reason by one or a few editors per year), i think

1. i am going to set a minimum goal of my looking at all the As of 2003 article titles before August (and maybe look at Cleanup less often if that's what it takes), then go on to as much of As of 2002 as i can get thru before January.
2. why doesn't one of us 3 summarize and/or refactor this discussion, at Wikipedia talk:As of?
3. IMO one of us should propose at Wikipedia talk:As of that a section with a list of As of 2003, As of 2002, etc. appear on Wikipedia:Maintenance tasks. (And that the new section be flagged, somehow, as an example of "Tasks that are best done by a lot of people making small contributions"?)
4. we should figure out how to promote
   1. the practice of adding to talk pages the URLs that have been used to check As-ofs from the corresponding article, in order to reduce the effort of checking, and in some or many cases, the expertise needed for checking,
   2. some lists of special-situation article-with-as-of cases, e.g., "needs a long read of this URL once per [day/week/month/year/every August/etc]", "no point to anyone who couldn't have written the article to check, but these editors are taking turns as of 2004 and might welcome a reminder if not done by [Feb/May and October when Proceedings of the Fall and Spring Conferences are published/etc]"
   3. a template to go on the article's talk page where people actually checking the as-of can record the date that they did so
   4. additional as-ofs for once-a-quarter and once-a-month checks, with clear guidelines for where they are justified.

Could these measures lessen your concern about as-ofs like the one in this article? --Jerzy 18:17, 2004 Feb 16 (UTC)