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Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Draft RfC on words

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Suggested outcomes
  1. There is a lot of potential damage listed below, which it would be nice to get looked at, and given a second-opinion.
  2. We need WP:NOTDIC updated to reflect actual practice, with examples of recommendations (what's acceptable, what's not).
  3. We need consensus on how Wikipedia treats short (and long) articles on "notable words".

Suggestions and assistance of any kind, clarifying the following, are more than welcome. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:39, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Workspace edit

Relevant policy page(s) at Wiktionary:

Structure notes edit

Wolfkeeper is the most active debater, and current-practice-disputer, hence his edits make up the majority of examples.

There are 3 different areas in which Wolfkeeper disagrees with a large number of other editors. We need to establish what Wikipedia's recommendation and consensus is, for:

  1. Core dispute: Is a "notable word" a valid topic for an article?
    There are around 6-10 other editors who share some of Wolfkeeper's opinions, on this point.
    A current closely-related discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 11#Proposal.
  2. Should etymologies be placed anywhere in the 1st sentence or paragraph, or even anywhere near the top of the article.
    E.g. Elephant and Cat and Herpetology and Octopus.
  3. Including derived/directly-related topics in an article, sometimes as the result of a merge.
    E.g. Slam dunk and Sliced bread (and less clearly: Isotropy and Zax (tool)).

Specific words edit

Articles about words, that Wolfkeeper has previously said ought to be either deleted, or fundamentally rewritten/merged:

American (word) – Craic – Football (word) – Fourth Estate – Fuck – Mad as a hatter – Moonies – Negro (draft AfD at User:Wolfkeeper/scratch) – Nigger – Prithee – Secularity – Slam dunk – Spastic – Thou

Other word article examples that were simply mentioned in past threads, to exemplify that Wikipedia does allow coverage of notable words:

Akata – Banhammer – Chemistry (etymology) – Cunt – Etymology of ham radio – Fête – Grok – History of the term Vlach – History of president – Humbug – Idle – Infidel – Isibongo – Jazz (word) – Jew (word) – Man (word) – Milord – No (word) – No worries – Orange (word) – Ratfucking – Roman Catholic (term) – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – Witch (etymology) – Yankee — Misinformation

Main categories: Category:Words and Category:Flagged dictionary definitions.

Discussion participants have rough-guessed at a scope of somewhere above, or below, 1,000 articles, in total.

Major discussion threads edit

A few relevant archived threads (there are many more at individual article talkpages, etc), last updated in March:

WT:What Wikipedia is not#Removal of 'exceptions' from ISNOT, March 2010
WT:Notability#This is only a guideline, March 2010
WP:ANI#Template:Wi, March 2010
WP:Village pump (policy)#WP:DICTIONARY needs tweaking?, February 2010
WP:ANI#Insults in subject line, February 2010
WT:Lead section#Etymology in first sentence?, November 2009
WP:Content noticeboard#Language, November 2009
WP:Village pump (policy)#Long grammatical information in lead section, November 2009
WP:ANI#Wikipedia:Naming conflict again, January 2009
WP:ANI#More eyes please, December 2008
WT:Naming conflict#"Common subsets versus uncommon supersets with shared names", December 2008
WT:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a dictionary (and next 2 sections), September 2008
WT:Manual of Style (lead section)/Archive 12#Etymology in first sentence?
WT:Manual of Style (lead section)/Archive 7 (most of this page)
WT:Manual of Style (lead section)/Archive 6 (most of this page)
WT:Manual of Style (lead section)/Archive 5 (most of this page), January 2008-

The majority of these 7 pages is Wolfkeeper arguing with everyone else:

WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 5, September 2008-
WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 6, April 2009-
WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 7,
WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 8,
WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 9,
WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 10,
WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 11,

Examples of disagreement - 9 March - 12 April, 2010 edit

Most of Wolfkeeper's dictionary-related edits from the last month, that I disagree with, but that I did not revert (partially so we could have this discussion about them). Grouped, but unsorted.

intro rewrites:

Anchor baby – War on terror – Homophobia – Loose cannon – Forty winks – Pound for pound – Glamour (presentation) – Decorum – Nonconformism – Doublethink – Spiv – Chav – Sniglet – Cold feet (metaphor) – Apples and oranges – Culture shock

blanking/redirecting:

Homonegativity – Throw under the bus – Canuck – Love handle – List of English words with diacritics – I (pronoun)(April 3. Blanked then selfreverted)

dicdef tagging

After Saturday Comes Sunday – Ama-gi – Ahoy (greeting) – AfPak – Fourth Estate – Dime (slang) (it got blanked immediately after) – Orthogonality – Anathema – Craic – Spastic – Negro – Honky

rewritten policy/project/template pages:

Wikipedia:Tutorial and next edit — Template:Wi — Cat:Words — Template:Dicdef-doc — Cat:English idioms — WP:Avoiding common mistakes — WP:NOT


in contrast, I agree with these, generally, or only have minor concerns:

Syndicate — Git (British slang) — Hoo-hah — Horsefeathers — Artnapping — Longtail rat — Doorstepping — Girl Friday (idiom) — Regolith

October-November 2009 - older examples edit

Further examples, from months before:

edit-disputes

Slam dunk — Pissing contest — Prithee — Nesh and Nesh2

rewritten leads

Truthiness — Lies, damned lies, and statistics — American (word) — The three Rs — Rip-off Britain — Plastic Paddy — Strawberry generation

deleting article contents

Junta (terminology) — Cunt — Copse — Mad as a hatter — Bloviate — Secularity — Galimatias — Rodomontade — Man of parts — Dude — Go West, young man — Hip Hip Hooray


A few I'd agree with:

Outway — Judas priest (curse) — Bakemeat — Sunday_painter

AfDs - other editors edit

Try searching Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Language/archive for more background and examples of the very-short-dicdefs, citable only to dictionaries, that are deleted by strong-consensus.

The two example sets below were found just by searching the archives for "dictionary". There might be others editors who frequently nominate AfDs based on NOTDIC (but that usually result in a keep, indicating misunderstanding of how the community views "articles on notable words")?

LtPowers, eg.

TenPoundHammer, eg.

AfDs - Wolfkeeper edit

AfDs he's been in, as both nominator or participant. In some of these, I/we agree with his position - usually because the articles in question were 1 paragraph long, with no potential for further growth.

as nominator
Prithee - Wolfkeeper = delete ("transwiki") | result = keep
Spastic -Wolfkeeper = delete | result = keep
Voseo - Wolfkeeper = Merge to pronoun | result = keep
Human-readable - Wolfkeeper = delete | result = keep
Old school - Wolfkeeper = delete | result = no consensus
Potato (word) - Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
Copasetic (2nd nomination) - Wolfkeeper = Transwiki | result = delete
(restored copy at User:Quiddity/Copasetic, discussion at WT:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 6#Copasetic example and User_talk:Wolfkeeper#Copasetic)
Nincompoop - Wolfkeeper = delete | result = soft-redirect
Frob (2nd nomination) - Wolfkeeper = Transwiki | result = Transwiki
Olifant - Wolfkeeper = merge | result = merge
Bloviate (3rd nomination) - Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
Zenzizenzizenzic (2nd nomination) - Wolfkeeper = Merge to square (algebra) | result = keep
as participant
Laicology - Hairhorn = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
Glamour (charm) - Ged UK = nom | Wolfkeeper = keep | result = no consensus
Pissing contest - Sandstein = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = keep
Take it one step at a time - Largo Plazo = nom | Wolfkeeper = keep | result = delete
Moonbat (3rd nomination) - kgrr = nom | Wolfkeeper = keep | result = keep
Prout patet per recordum - LtPowers = nom | Wolfkeeper = Transwiki and then Merge | result = Merge
Meh (2nd nomination) - RoySmith = nom | Wolfkeeper = keep | result = keep
Encyclopedia article (2nd nomination) - Graymornings = nom | Wolfkeeper = keep | result = merge to [encyclopedia]
affixes
-graphy - SemBubenny = nom | Wolfkeeper = Transwiki or delete | result = keep
-logy - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = keep
-graphy (2nd nomination) - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = keep
-onym - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = transwiki| result = no consensus
-oid - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
Ar- - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
List of words ending in -ology - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
-hood - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
-itis - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
-izzle - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = soft redirect
-holism - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = redirect to Addiction
-ism - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete
-cide - Wolfkeeper = nom | Wolfkeeper = delete | result = delete

Parties involved edit

Editors involved, who seem to at least partially agree with User:Wolfkeeper: User:LtPowers, User:TenPoundHammer, User:Fartherred, User:Roux, User:Peter Isotalo, User:AnmaFinotera, User:Rossami (admin)

Admins who've disagreed with Wolfkeeper about Dicdef interpretation: User:EncycloPetey‎, User:SlimVirgin, User:Cuchullain, User:Masem, User:Bkonrad, User:DGG, User:Jafeluv, User:Angr, User:Marskell, User:Rjanag‎, User:Rodhullandemu, User:SilkTork, User:Father Goose, User:David Levy,


Possibly they should all be invited to comment? Perhaps now, or perhaps once the notes are cleaned up...?

Discussion edit

moved to talkpage

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