From my brief experience with (English and Korean) Wikipedia editing many years ago, the problem was not "toxic" editors but more with entrenched ones. They never resorted to personal attacks, but instead used their vast knowledge of WP:this and WP:that to provoke other people until either they left or get banned.
E.g., for a long time, the article title in the Korean wikipedia for Japanese Empire was 대일본제국, literally, Great Empire of Japan. Well, this being Korean wikipedia, you could see how some people took offense at it. The sensible thing would be just to drop the "Great" part: everybody knows which Empire we're talking about, nobody thinks the Empire was particularly Great anyway, and then we could move on to actually talking about the article's content.
But no, some editors would object, because we have to use Official Names(TM) for everything. (For some reason, nobody bothered to change Bangkok's name to the official "Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit", but if anybody did that I'm sure it would be quickly reverted, citing WP:(You can't make an edit just to prove a point) or something like that.) To this day, I suspect some editors' criterion for "Official Names" and other similar policy was maximal likelihood for alienating potential contributors. Classic power game move.
But changing the current title "Coeliac disease" to celiac disease in Wikipedia might reduce confusion, and since celiac death rates are quite high if undiagnosed, over millions of users, save some lives.
(Against this, search engines are now very good at matching synonyms.)
I know, you didn't like the hint of political correctness in the particular Korean example. That's a judgement call, I might agree with you in general, but with such an emotional topic (comfort women, atrocities, etc) I wouldn't resent the change.
The disease is uniformly called celiac disease in page after page after page of results. What does Wikipedia gain by building a castle in the clouds (or distant UK past usage) and moving in?
Yes, it's a U.S. service but covers journals from all over the world.
"Celiac disease" is consistently between 15 and 20 times more popular than "coeliac disease".
Also, the Wikipedia article opens with "Coeliac disease, also spelled celiac disease,…"
Given the widespread use of "celiac", not only among the public, but also in the literature, one might reasonably argue at this point that "celiac" is the proper name.
>"Celiac disease" is consistently between 15 and 20 times more popular than "coeliac disease".
Because Americans don't know how to spell. The fact is that it's called 'Coeliac disease' by sane people and 'Celiac disease' by non-medical Americans. Medical Americans know how it's actually spelt, as do all non-Americans.
Because Americans don't know how to spell. The fact is that it's called 'Coeliac disease' by sane people and 'Celiac disease' by non-medical Americans. Medical Americans know how it's actually spelt, as do all non-Americans
Attacks like this are unwarranted.
Reviewing the references for the coeliac disease article shows plenty of "Medical Americans" and international papers referring to "celiac disease".
- Tonutti E, Bizzaro N (2014). "Diagnosis and classification of celiac disease and gluten sensitivity". Autoimmun Rev (Review)
- Ciccocioppo R, Kruzliak P, Cangemi GC, Pohanka M, Betti E, Lauret E, Rodrigo L (Oct 22, 2015). "The Spectrum of Differences between Childhood and Adulthood Celiac Disease". Nutrients (Review).
That's four from the first six references.
Of the first 25 references for the Wikipedia article, 13 spell it "celiac", 8 spell it "coeliac", 1 spells it "cœliac", and 3 don't mention the disease specifically. To my eye (granted, quickly scanned), they all look like solid references, mostly journal articles. To me, especially given the dipthong œ used in one case, this looks like a clear case of a word that has legitimate spelling variants, just as you used "spelt", where others would spell it "spelled".
E.g., for a long time, the article title in the Korean wikipedia for Japanese Empire was 대일본제국, literally, Great Empire of Japan. Well, this being Korean wikipedia, you could see how some people took offense at it. The sensible thing would be just to drop the "Great" part: everybody knows which Empire we're talking about, nobody thinks the Empire was particularly Great anyway, and then we could move on to actually talking about the article's content.
But no, some editors would object, because we have to use Official Names(TM) for everything. (For some reason, nobody bothered to change Bangkok's name to the official "Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit", but if anybody did that I'm sure it would be quickly reverted, citing WP:(You can't make an edit just to prove a point) or something like that.) To this day, I suspect some editors' criterion for "Official Names" and other similar policy was maximal likelihood for alienating potential contributors. Classic power game move.