There are a billion of us speaking the language. It's a little presumptuous to tell a billion people what to do and there should probably be some amount of default resistance.
There's 380 million native speaker of this language, but another billion non-native speakers. If this change helps that latter billion, should the former 380 million object?
(On a personal note, as a non-native speaker of English I've always found the phrase "comprised of" confusing. I infer the "directionality" based on context but am unsure how to use it correctly myself.)
Nobody is telling a billion people what to do though? We're just talking about what word to use in an article edited by a handful of people. The billion people can keep using whatever words they want.
Do you really believe the loss society would suffer from editing "comprised of" in Wikipedia articles is actually comparable to what it would suffer if they discriminated against half the population on TV?
I can only speak for myself, but the actual phrase “comprised of” is the least interesting thing to discuss when it comes to this topic.
I am fascinated by a single person taking up the cause of “correcting” the language of others based off of their personal linguistic aesthetic preference.
I don’t see many people saying “I often have to stop at the words ‘comprised of’ and reevaluate the meaning of the sentence that I’m reading lest I completely misunderstand it.” This isn’t actually in practical service of clarity, it’s an exercise in preserving a sense of meaningful posterity — a deeply personal and sentimental endeavor despite what “reasons” one is able to elucidate.
But again, this isn't even about correcting others' language. People are fine to use whatever language that serves them personally well in their lives - but this isn't about that. It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way that's best for their readers. Every comment I'm reading here so far seems to insist this is somehow personal toward the author and correcting them, whereas it really isn't.
> It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way that's best for their readers.
This sentence contains a load-bearing “best”. The Wikipedia editor’s contention is that they have established the canonical “best”, and it is that contention that is being scrutinized.
(On a personal note, as a non-native speaker of English I've always found the phrase "comprised of" confusing. I infer the "directionality" based on context but am unsure how to use it correctly myself.)