WP Transcriptions

I was intending to start with something minor, but since at the moment there's a debate going on on a Wikipedia Talk Page that I think is fundamentally important, I'll mention it now. WP aims to give IPA-style transcriptions of English pronunciations of names and unfamiliar words to help readers with the pronunciation. However, they don't want the transcription tied to either an American or a British standard, so instead they have devised a "diaphonemic" transcription that in theory can represent the vowels and consonants of any variety of English. The resulting system can be seen here. The discussion I referred to above is mainly between one WP editor who supports this system and another who prefers a re-spelling system that doesn't involve learning the IPA-style symbols. The argument has become very long, but it's worth reading. You can find it here. (You may need to scroll down to the section of Talk called "Poorly Conceived"). My own view is that I support the use of transcriptions with IPA symbols, but I am doubtful about the validity of the diaphonemic framework. I'll go on about this at more length later.