Talk:Michelin/Archives/2015

Question about sections and how they are organized

Wondering about a couple of things in the way the article is structured, if anyone knows how or why they came about:

• there's a "History" section under "Tires and wheels," but no main History section;
• "Recent developments," which is entirely about tires and wheels, is its own top level section;
• "Michelin Truck and Bus" is a subsection in "Other products," when it is about tires.

I'm curious because I came here expecting to find some background on the Michelin Guide; while there is quite a comprehensive history in that article, at least the fact that the guide was started in 1900 to promote cars to promote tires, at a time when there were only 3,000 cars in France, seems to belong in a general Michelin company history. Thanks! --Tsavage (talk) 01:21, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Tyre or tire?

Which spelling is correct for an international company that has a huge presence in the US?96.247.7.59 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:03, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy on national varieties of English (WP:ENGVAR) says (in the WP:RETAIN section) that in the absence of strong national ties, the existing variety of English in use in an article should be maintained, in the absence of consensus to the contrary. But also see this earlier discussion on the topic. DH85868993 (talk) 02:46, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I should know better than to wade into this, but it seems absurd to me that:

–This topic keeps coming up again and again (which it wouldn't if the article used the more common spelling like most editors think it should).

–A large chunk of the text of the article is repeated hidden comments about the spelling of a word. This seems like borderline vandalism, to be honest.

–The majority of the links and references in the article, including Michelin's own website, use a different spelling than the article.

–The article has wikilinks like [[tire|tyre]] and [[Run-flat tire|run-flat tyre]].

Seems to me the reasonable thing would be to fix the article to use tire and be done with all the above absurdities forever.ColinClark (talk) 19:50, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that "most editors" think it should be spelled "tire" instead of "tyre" (a quick look at the edit history indicates it's been changed from "tyre" to "tire" only about 10 times since the article was created in 2002 and reverted each time, and the discussions here on the talk page show about 4 or 5 editors in favour of "tire" and just as many opposed). Even if most editors of Wikipedia are American (and I have no idea if that's true) I don't think it's valid to assume they would all support the use of "tire" in this article - some (many?) might support the retention of "tyre" per WP:ENGVAR. I'm also not convinced that if it was changed to "tire" that we wouldn't constantly see people suggesting it be changed (back) to "tyre", "because Michelin originated in France, so the European/British spelling should be used", etc.

But having said all that, if you want to change it to "tire" and remove the wikinotes, I won't revert - I've already wasted enough of my life reverting the spelling on this article. DH85868993 (talk) 04:40, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

American editors tend to look at their local websites for international companies, see American spellings and terminology used, and assume this is a global standard. The websites use AE because they are directed at an American readership! The British websites will use BE, the Australian websites will use Aussie English, and so on. This is basic international marketing. Unsurprisingly, Michelin use 'tyre' in English language marketing in the UK and most places outside North America. --Ef80 (talk) 20:45, 10 September 2015 (UTC)