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Here's a good task for anyone not afraid of a little Wikipedia editing.

A search on the phrase "confined to a wheelchair". Let's reduce that from 383 results to 0...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kalmn

1, not zero? first hit is:

"a woman who uses a wheelchair" rather than "a woman in/confined to a wheelchair."

which i think might want to be left.

From:

badgerbag

Good point!

From:

aleja

This is an excellent idea. Just a little change will do... will be doing this in my "spare" moments. :)

From:

badgerbag

I started with Ricardo Montalban. It was peculiarly satisfying!

From:

badgerbag

Oh and when we get that number down there's wheelchair-bound to stabbity stab stab. (at 300+)

and wheelchair bound with no hyphen at 493 instances!

Edited Date: 2009-08-31 10:34 pm (UTC)

From: (Anonymous)

I'm doing some of these.

From:

hobbitbabe

So am I - mostly working from the bottom of the list up.

From:

sasha_feather

Great idea!

From:

kake

What a good idea! I've done a few.

From:

vehemently

I've obviously been reading too much fanfic because "confined to a wheelchair" and "wheelchair-bound" both just sound incredibly porny to me.

(Kinky wheelchair: red velcro hand/leg cuffs and revolving spikes on the wheels, Y/Y?)

From:

badgerbag

ha yes, I'm always like... I'm not bound in it but would you like me to be, it could be arranged! LOL!

Edited Date: 2009-09-01 02:57 am (UTC)

From:

softestbullet

Hee!

From:

whump

I did 10 entries from the bottom of the search results, and marked them as minor edits, with the comment "preferred usage is 'wheelchair using' rather than 'wheelchair bound.'"

From:

merovingian.livejournal.com

I did one or two. I couldn't help but be a little snarky with my comment, though.

"Wheelchairs don't confine people. Unless they're jail-wheelchairs, and I just made those up. Wheelchairs help people get around."

From: (Anonymous)

May I repost? (Along with setting some of those wheelchairs free from their confinement.)

From:

thera

Oh, poo, that was me.

From:

badgerbag

absolutely!

From:

badgerbag

$softestbullet: Seven of Nine in a space suit. (Scrubs/ JD! TURK! ...TURK! JD! \o/)$

From:

softestbullet

Aw, how wonderful!

From:

badgerbag

ILU!!!! It does have an impact seeing all those pitying drippy snippets of language - so unoriginal - "And he was confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life" on the screen. Not sure how the index is built but I figure it will update at some point and the # of confined and bound wheelchairs will start to drop. I started at the 100th one and am working up.

From:

19_crows

This is just the type of obsessive project I enjoy. I'll do a few whenever I think of it.

bonus: found an entry with "wheelchair bound" AND "confined to a wheelchair".

From:

srevans

Um, so, I think I'm on your friends-of-friends list, and I think this is a great plan. I will do my part. :)

ETA: started at the end, working my way up. Did about twenty.

Edited Date: 2009-09-01 04:38 am (UTC)

From:

badgerbag

Yay!!!

From:

wild_irises

I did ten or twelve of them, until I found an entry where I had to spend 20 minutes cleaning up the grammar and syntax (and the "confined to a wheelchair"). I'll do more.

This is a great idea!

From:

whump

I'd have to look around the help for wikipedia, but there are templates you can drop in on a page like:

{template:needs_edit}

which will mark a page as in need of a grammar/spelling/syntax pass.

The cool thing is that you can search on templates and there are folks who watch those queues.

Which is nice when you see a page that needs it, but don't have the energy or cycles to throw at it.

Edited Date: 2009-09-01 08:09 am (UTC)

From:

hypatia

maybe there should be a {template:needs-de-ability!failification} hehe

From:

shadowspar.livejournal.com

Heh, when I first tried to edit one, I found that somebody had already edited it out from under me. =)

From:

vass

Excellent plan! I'll do what I can.

From: (Anonymous)

Excellent plan! I like that the first thing I edited was the "Spike" (from Buffy) entry ^_^
Also, Tweeted to spread the word.

~K~

From:

hobbitbabe

I went to do more "wheelchair-bound"/"wheelchair-using" and found that a couple of my edits from yesterday have been reverted with comments like "using common and accepted terminology" [Ghostbusters franchise], "unecessary change. wheelchair-bound is more formal and common" [Texas Chain Saw Massacre]. Is anyone else encountering this?

From:

zvi

As far as I could tell from the Wikipedia policies, there is a desire to be less offensive rather than more, and more specific rather than more generalized when it comes to issues of identity, but there doesn't appear to be a preference for more common terminology. Basically, tell whoever reversed your edits to stuff it, and re-revert.

You may also want to make a Neutral POV argument.