Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 10

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Yes, wikipedia is not a dictionary but...

Encyclopedias are meant to give descriptions and information on every word. Dictionaries are meant to give brief details and (a lot of times) pronunciation. 24.121.0.194 (talk) 08:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

"Encyclopedias are meant to give descriptions and information on every word"? That's utter codswallop. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

RfC on Wolfkeeper and words

Here are my notes: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/RfC on Wolfkeeper and words.

Everyone has been arguing with Wolfkeeper about the same thing for over 2 years now (archives 5 and 6 are almost all him). Something has to change.

We have to make things clearer to him (and the few editors who seem to partially agree with him), that notable words can be topics for encyclopedic coverage, and that this has overwhelming community consensus. Otherwise he's going to continue spreading his false-interpretation of NOTDIC, rewriting article leads to their detriment, edit-warring over guidelines, and starting these circular arguments.

I'd prefer that someone else lead the process - ideally an admin with Wiktionary experience, and RfC experience. Volunteers welcome.

Requests:

1. mass-assistance to help organize these notes, into the formal structure required for a RfC/Med/Arb/whatever case.
2. Afterwards or concurrently, a separate proposal to update the wording of this policy (various people have proposed rewriting, or rewriting and demoting it to guideline-status).
3. Afterwards, mass-assistance reverting Wolfkeeper's many rewrites of article leads. Extensive diffs are given in my notes, for 3 months worth of his contribs (meaning there are many many months I haven't examined, but it's a start).

I hope everyone will avoid fanning any flames. I'm off to do some gardening in the sun... -- Quiddity (talk) 22:47, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure going through a users edit history and reverting their changes, based entirely on who did them, where the changes themselves are not in violation of any policy, and haven't been reverted by anyone else afterwards, won't be considered wikihounding at all. Your RFC will explain everything and make a sure-fire and completely ironclad case for this, I'm sure.- Wolfkeeper 23:05, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

It's possible to condense your draft quite a bit by using pipes and converting lists into a single paragraph. I have started that, but will go to bed now. (I envy you for being able to do sunlight gardening in the middle of the night...) Hans Adler 23:12, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

No offense, but that RfC and this note reads more like a witch hunt and personal attack for anyone daring to agree with the idea that Wikipedia is not a dictionary and that no, most words should NOT have an article here. It doesn't seem like any sort of RfC appropriate for this page nor as a sub-page. If you want to do an RfC/U or whatever against one editor, I would think that belongs in your user space, and it seems very inappropriate to call for a mass reversion of good-faith edits because of...? What? They disagree with your view? Looking at a few of the random diffs of his "lead rewriting" they seem like improvements to me. Can you prove conclusively that there is "overwhelming community consensus" that NOTDIC is being misinterpreted by Wolfkeeper or anyone else, and that there are only a "few" editors who agree with him? You seem to have a fairly long list of those who do agree with him in that RfC, which seems like more than a few to me. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 16:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The edits need to be examined (and in some cases just reverted) because they completely misunderstand use-mention distinction. Many already were. Do you believe that this is a more accurate first sentence?

Wolfkeeper's edits are predicated on the notion that "it's never correct to have an encyclopedia article that is centered on a word"(ref). So far, nobody has agreed with that. (Some editors believe we should have very very few articles on words, as in, less articles than we currently do have; but only Wolfkeeper has consistently suggested that we really ought to have zero).

As has been stated repeatedly, everyone (everyone!) else agrees that the vast majority of 'words' aren't notable enough to warrant individual encyclopedia articles. Nobody (nobody!) wants to merge Wiktionary with Wikipedia. Where to draw the line, for what constitutes "more than a dicdef", is what this policy is meant to be addressing.

"Overwhelming community consensus", is based on the results of afds for longer articles on notable words (as listed), and 2 years worth of discussions (as listed).

I specifically avoided listing all his incivility. I'm not interested in searching for and listing his rudeness. I just want to get the dispute resolved. He is the main focus of the dispute, hence the main focus of the RfC. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Synchronizing WP:NOTDIC with WP:NOT

I think we're making some decent progress towards remedying the disagreement between this policy and WP:NOT. In continuing to proceed, it will be helpful to keep in mind what Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines says on the matter: "[Policy and guideline pages should:] not contradict each other. The community's view cannot simultaneously be 'A' and 'not A'. When apparent discrepancies arise between pages, editors at all the affected pages should discuss how they can most accurately represent the community's current position, and correct all of the pages to reflect the community's view." It is important to remember that Wikipedia's policy pages do not highlight rules to be enforced, they are summaries of widely-followed practices. We should not be looking at this as a softening or strengthening of rules that articles are subject to, but rather a wording update to better describe what the community is doing already.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see how they contradict each other at all. This page, before it was edited, simply gave a more general definition of the differences, while WP:NOT notes that it was "sometimes" okay to have such an article, but it should be the exception not the norm while giving more explicit examples. And I fail to see why you (and I'm using you because I really don't see anyone else doing this) should get to choose to update THIS policy versus updating WP:NOT without any sort of discussion or consensus one way or the other as to which one actually is the correct one. Wikipedia's policies are, in fact, "rules" and thus far I have yet to see any actual evidence that the community as a whole prefers the version you've instated here (against multiple objections) rather than WP:NOT when there have, in fact, been absolutely no community notifications about any of these discussions nor even a good RfC. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 18:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

First off, I didn't introduce the update here, my edit actually softened the wording. There has been literally months of discussion about this, here and a WT:NOT (See, for one example, this thread, where there turned out to be no consensus to alter WP:NOT). This is what is expected in trying to remedy apparent discrepancies in policy pages, per WP:POLICY. And Wikipedia policy pages like this one do not prescribe practices to follow, as said at WP:NOTLAW.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

You are correct, you didn't introduce the change (my apologies), but that does not end the lack of community discussion. There were no announcements about any of these discussions anywhere to the general community, so how can one argue it is the general communities consensus, versus the initial consensus of, what, 5-6 editors several of whom seem to have some serious personal beefs with one another that seems to color their every interaction. Reconciliation does not mean arbitrarily decide one is right and the other should be changed, particularly when dealing with policy pages. "Disagreements [in policy] are resolved through consensus-based discussion" not the whims of a very small number editors. "Edits that would imply a change to accepted practice, particularly such edits to a policy page, should usually be discussed in advance to ensure that the change reflects consensus" and there is been no actual supporting evidence to confirm one way or another what the "accepted practice" is. People vandalize daily, but that doesn't make vandalism an accepted practice. Word articles existing alone doesn't make it accepted practice either. That is why the original wording should be restored and a proper community discussion held to determine what the community itself feels needs to be done. This policy changed to reflect WP:NOT, WP:NOT changed to reflect this policy, or both changed to some other standard. As it is now, the change here was made in good faith but basically reflects the personal views of those who support more word articles, while not giving the community any real change to weigh in (let's face it, few editors have WP:NOT on their watchlists and even fewer have this policy on it). If those who support the wording change are so certain the community agrees with them, where is the harm in restoring the original wording until the discussion is done, then the new wording can be reapplied knowing it actually IS supported by the community rather than personal views? I.E. I think the wording should be restored, a well-defined RfC written and posted via the watchlist announcer thing (and I mean an RfC without the extreme hostility I've seen in the discussions you posted against a single editor or several editors - let's stick to the issue without the personal baggage, let it run its course, and then go with the actual community consensus. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 18:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. There is nothing wrong with getting more community input. But in all fairness, this has been brought to wider attention. There have been the months of discussions here and at WT:NOT; it has also been discussed at WT:POLICY, notices have been posted in various places, and it has been brought up at village pump, etc. Something like this, which is in all honesty a pretty minor change - adding one sentence to one policy that just reflects what is already at another, better known policy - does not usually require an RfC. But if one is necessary, then one is necessary.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:11, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

You are not trying to sort out a policy; you are deliberately trying to break it. You are deliberately trying to introduce A and not A into the policy. Basically: 'You can't have any words, except when you can, but there's not rules for when you can, [so you can].' How else is anybody supposed to interpret this? It's obvious that this is your true aim here, you are deliberately attacking this policy, which is part of the fundamental pillars of the wikipedia; apparently so that you can keep your beloved 'craic' article in the Wikipedia and possibly other articles as well.- Wolfkeeper 19:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

You are deliberately trying to damage the encyclopedia's policies in such a way that craic can be kept. This should be obvious to most people. So this is a bad-faith attack on the wikipedia. I'm sure that people will accuse me of lack of good faith, but looking at Cuchullain's edit history will show that it's probably true. I'm not required to assume good faith when it's clear that there isn't good faith.- Wolfkeeper 19:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

What you're supposed to do, the wikipedian way, is rewrite craic encyclopedically rather than trying to game the rules like this. But that requires, you know, thought and effort. But it's still going be a lot less effort than trying to work out a clever way to break the policies, because fundamentally people like me and quite a few others will oppose you in this kind of attack on the policy. You can't have A and not A in the same policy.- Wolfkeeper 19:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Replying to Anma: I have no objection to an RFC. I don't have an opinion on what the wording should be, but because the previous content of this page was being used to claim that our policy is the opposite of what it is at NOT (and has been for years), I'll continue to revert any attempt to remove the wording that was imported verbatim from NOT, "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject, such as Macedonia (terminology) or truthiness" from this page, until some new wording gets consensus, subject to the letter and spirit of 3RR of course. I always support discussion over reversion, but there just isn't anything left to say that hasn't been said many times already, here and at WT:POLICY and WT:NOT. - Dank (push to talk) 19:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. I see the same editor reverted the change again. Per the spirit of 3RR, I'm not comfortable making the next reversion, someone else will have to get it. - Dank (push to talk) 19:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Can I ask how calling for a revert war on a talk page is in the spirit of 3RR??? How is this supposed to be consensus change if you have to revert war it?- Wolfkeeper 20:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

• You made your case at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Craic and the article wasn't just kept, it was a snowball keep. This demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that your absolutist position on this matter does not have consensus support. Per WP:NOTLAW, this page should be brought into line with our policy as demonstrated in this and numerous other cases. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

We should just delete the policy, it clearly gets in the way of essay-like dictionary articles, and these are very popular, and it has no teeth at all anymore anyway, anyone can correctly argue that it allows word-based articles.- Wolfkeeper 21:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

• I have protected the page because of the recent edit war. Any bickering on my talk page that I have protected the wrong version will probably be ignored. Rettetast (talk) 20:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
  • No, no. That's fine. We don't need this policy anyway, having a policy that says words are allowed and not allowed is fine, we can just do all-keeps at AFD on this issue, like they did with craic and many others.- Wolfkeeper 21:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
  • FWIW I'm just going to revert to the long-standing version as soon as it comes off protection.- Wolfkeeper 20:30, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Just a pointer, most of the discussion seems to be over at WT:NOT#Removal of WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so I commented there. - Dank (push to talk) 21:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Might want to read this before you start edit warring again, "This page is currently protected from editing until May 21, 2010 or until disputes have been resolved." Clearly, the protection should not come off until we can agree on acceptable wording. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. What we should do is use this opportunity to hammer out some wording that better reflects the community's position on both pages. It is not productive to threaten to start edit warring again once the protection expires.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a translation dictionary

I wonder whether this page could be usefully expanded to include a general statement against articles whose content is basically, "This is the (non-English) word for (name of encyclopedic subject with a perfectly decent article)." For example, IMO the English Wikipedia should not have anything at Comida (the Spanish word for food)—neither an "article" that says, basically, "Comida is the Spanish word for food", nor a redirect to Food. (On the other hand, disambiguation pages might be appropriate, if there are places or things that begin with the same word; see Agua as an example.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Curious, you just supported Wikipedia basically being allowed to be a dictionary. So why not word articles for non-English words? If they are excluded, that would seem to go against [{WP:BIAS]]. On the Spanish wikipedia, the article on Comida interwikis to meal, not food. Surely there are plenty of sources tracing the history, usage, etc of "Comida" as much as any other word? So why is meal more notable than comida. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 19:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

We do not have an article about the word used by English-speaking people to indicate to each other that they are talking about things people eat (rather than, say, things people wear, or things they sit on, or things they burn). We have an article about what people eat at Food, but it is about food itself, not about the sounds English-speakers make when talking, or about the letters written on the paper, that we use to indicate the thing itself. Do you understand this distinction between the "word" food and the "thing" food?

If so, then my assertion is this: If the English Wikipedia doesn't need an article about the name used by English-speaking people to identify stuff that they eat, then we also don't need an article about the name that Spanish-speaking (or German-speaking, or Chinese-speaking, or...) people used to identify stuff that they eat.

By contrast, we should (and do) have an article about the actual thing(s) that people eat. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:47, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

As soon as you allow words, these problems become pretty acute- all words are slightly different in some way, so you have no general way to exclude words, even foreign words like tibla or gopnik, they're all notable for some peculiarity or other.- Wolfkeeper 20:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Has this actually been a problem in practice? Can you cite any such frivolous "foreign word" articles? --Cybercobra (talk) 20:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC) edit: added "frivolous"

We have quite a lot of articles on words from other languages. A good one from the top of my head is gaijin. We also have hundreds of articles on Latin words and phrases; WP:MOSBD specifically says that floruit should be linked when it is used in dates for historical figures. None of this has caused any major crisis so far as I know.--Cúchullain ^t/c 00:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

But is it really about the word gaijin, or is it about a person foreign to japan, who might be referred to as a gaijin?

If that sounds like the same thing, it's really not. It's the difference between honor and honor (disambiguation). The latter is about the word, whereas the former is about trustworthiness and status.- Wolfkeeper 00:57, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I am well aware of the difference. Gaijin is about the term gaijin, where it comes from, how it has been used through history, related terms and concepts, etc. Similarly floruit is about the term and what it signifies.--Cúchullain ^t/c 01:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Gaijin is an excellent example of the kind of content that belongs at Wiktionary. Too many people forget that just as Wikipedia is not paper, neither is Wiktionary. Gaijin has outstanding lexical content. Wiktionary would be a far stronger project if more pages had this level of detail. It should be transwiki'd over and a soft-redirect left here so readers can find the content in its proper context. Rossami (talk) 21:17, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Various replies:

1. No, I didn't, and don't, support Wikipedia as a dictionary. I think that there are encyclopedic things to be said about certain terms, e.g., moron, which is not merely a redirect to mental retardation, and gay-related immune deficiency, which is not merely a redirect to AIDS. As a general rule, terms are not encyclopedic subjects. In a (very) few instances, they most certainly are.
2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kanjivellam will always be my canonical example. Kanjivellam is the Malayam word for thin rice gruel. It was unfortunately named as an example of a non-notable article in a discussion at WT:AFD, and a group of inflamed inclusionists latched onto a singe mention of the Malayam word in a self-published history ("he was satisfied with mere boiled rice-water (Kanjivellam)") as proof not that rice gruel is notable—it is, and we have two articles, here and here on that subject—but that specifically one of the words used for this ancient food in Southern India is separately notable from the thing the word represents. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

FWIW I put floruit up for deletion; it's a 2 paragraph word article on a (latin) verb that's covered perfectly well at wiktionary (IMO).- Wolfkeeper 02:02, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't get to that in time. It looks like the consensus really is to delete "not a dictionary.: :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 11:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The reality is that people give wildly inconsistent answers, typically because they haven't thought it through and come up with a consistent position that weighs up the pros and cons. That's the problem with pure consensus. For example, for a short while, New Labour in Britain apparently tried to run the UK government based on focus groups, but they quickly found that people quite happily voted to simultaneously cut taxes and greatly expand government spending; the government would have gone broke in short order.- Wolfkeeper 18:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

So you often find that the same people will agree with the policy that verbs aren't allowed, while voting keep on verb articles. It's because they don't really understand what they're doing.- Wolfkeeper 18:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Bonzer

Is Bonzer in violation of this policy? I cleared out some spam and removed the (relatively little) material on Bonzer surfboards already covered at Surfboard, but the end result is troubling. --Ibn (talk) 09:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Not surprising. Most articles about words are sparse at best and this is an excellent example. Powers ^T 00:20, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not just me, then. Good. I've converted it to a disambiguation page. --Ibn (talk) 06:56, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Dispute tag required

As the page is locked again, we require a tag to show the uncertain status of this policy. I suggest:

{{Policycontroversy|talk=Discussion|section=yes}}

which will display as

{{Policycontroversy|talk=Discussion|section=yes}}

I will suggest this to the admin that most recently locked the page, ok? Colonel Warden (talk) 17:58, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I've added the disputed notice, but as this is a policy the best thing might be to restore whatever the consensus version was, if there was one. SlimVirgin ^{talk contribs} 18:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I reverted it to May 10th which seems to be the version that existed prior to the beginning of the immediate disputes. Also it seems that the protection didn't actually get applied, so I'm not sure whether it's meant to be protected right now or not. Gigs (talk) 17:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The protected version was already more or less the pre-dispute version; you just removed the dispute tags. Protection ended today so the protection tag ought to come off.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I noticed that after I posted here. Gigs (talk) 21:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

So.... what now? We just keep a disputed tag on here until wolfkeeper loses interest in his crusade? I don't see the value in a disputed tag in a guideline unless active discussion is actually happening, i.e. there is an actual, ongoing, dispute. Gigs (talk) 21:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

We just had a discussion and I was by no means the only person to disagree with the proposed change. Pretending that it is just me is a personal attack.- Wolfkeeper 16:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

But yes, there's no point in having a tag on the policy; basically all policies are all contended by somebody, somewhere, all the time.- Wolfkeeper 16:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The dispute tag needs to remain until the dispute is resolved, namely that this policy and WP:NOT contradict each other (or are generally quoted in contradictory ways). Ignoring the contradiction won't solve anything. If there is no agreement from this discussion, we'll need to find another way of resolving it. Colonel Warden suggests a formal RfC, that's probably what we should do.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

On that basis, both this and ISNOT should have the tag, and both should have had the tag continuously over the complete history of the Wikipedia.- Wolfkeeper 15:03, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The wording of WP:NOT is not the subject of a currently ongoing dispute, which is the case here.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:26, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

People specifically just did dispute that content here, and I absolutely do as well.- Wolfkeeper 17:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

There is no active dispute at WT:NOT, and there's no active proposal to change the wording there, even from the people who've expressed they don't like it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

If they don't match, then there's a dispute that affects that policy as well, so I've tagged the policy. It doesn't matter whether we discuss it here or there.- Wolfkeeper 19:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• To resolve this, we might make the proposal in the section above into a formal RfC. When this has been open for a reasonable time (it's not yet 30 days), it should then be checked to see if there is a reasonable consensus in support. I shall add an RfC tag now. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Should WP be a dictionary?

What if WP and Wiktionary were combined? Would that be a problem? In cases where a word had both a WP article and a Wiktionary entry then the later could become a section in the former. This is already the case in many WP articles. They have a section explaining the word itself, for instance Dog. I don't think all that many new articles would be added to WP. It might be cool to have WP articles on words such as "and" or "the." I'm sure they have interesting histories. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Basically you're talking about: Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Removal_of_WP:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary and turning the Wikipedia into an encyclopedic dictionary. It was resoundingly voted down.- Wolfkeeper 18:30, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

But clearly the concept is supported in indvidual cases. Why not be honest and admit that's what WP really is? (BTW this is the same as my position on American anti-drug laws. Enforce them or get rid of them.)Steve Dufour (talk) 18:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

The closer I look at it, the less clear that they are supported all that well, even in most individual cases becomes. A lot of pages that are usually cited don't seem to be particularly about the word, and historically many 'good' examples have had to be downgraded or removed. The number of articles that seem (according to my rough estimate) to be about a word or term is perhaps a thousand or less, whereas the other ~99.95+% articles are on a single meaning of their title (and their title can usually be replaced with another equivalent term without changing the text in any significant way, so they're not about the word in any conventional sense.)- Wolfkeeper 19:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

With drugs you're looking at a situation where tens of percent of the population have been, or are, involved in using them. It's really not the same thing at all.- Wolfkeeper 19:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, it doesn't look like you would get consensus on the change.- Wolfkeeper 19:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

From the recent AfD discussion it looks like the majority of people here do not have the kind of mental process that can even understand this policy. Not that makes them stupid or bad people. Anyway I plan to leave the whole issue alone. Steve Dufour (talk) 13:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Possibly. I think it's more that they don't want to believe it though. Most of the people here could do with sitting down with the Encyclopedia Britannica for a while, and trying to work out why it doesn't read much at all like a dictionary; EB is far more hardcore than Wikipedia on this. Except for linguistic articles, they don't even have etymology in most of their articles at all.- Wolfkeeper 13:24, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

With 20:20 hindsight, the Wikipedia probably should have been an encyclopedic dictionary for this reason, but that would cause other issues and the policies would have had to subsume the Wiktionary's as well.- Wolfkeeper 13:24, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Imagine the number of disambiguation pages we would need. It would make it significantly harder for a reader to find the content they want. Powers ^T 13:18, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

• The OED has about 615,000 words while Wikipedia has over 3,000,000 entries and adds about 1,000 news ones every day. As there is already considerable overlap, there would be no significant expansion if we were to exhaustively cover each entry. One would expect every commonplace word in the normal English vocabulary to have some form of entry here. I'll make a test... Colonel Warden (talk) 14:23, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

It's not a question of size it's a question of where you put stuff and avoiding massive content duplication, oh yeah, and naming clashes. If you allow articles on words, then do you put content on salads at rocket, rocket (word) or eruca sativa, or all three? Is the article at Rocket on the word rocket or the rocket vehicle? What policies are there for word articles, because Wiktionary, of necessity, has extensive policies, the Wikipedia would need those as well as the ones it has at the moment. A lot of it would require major rewrites of existing articles. And you still have problems with neologisms and scope; the Wiktionary has problems all the time about what or what isn't suitable for inclusion. It's just a massive can of worms.- Wolfkeeper 15:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

This ship sailed, the decision was made in 2001 to have a separate wiki for words and terms (wiktionary); trying to change it now is essentially impossible.- Wolfkeeper 15:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Except that new articles on words are added to WP every day. BTW what kind of traffic does Wiktionary get compared to WP? Steve Dufour (talk) 22:51, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Advertising is also added to the WP every day. So what?- Wolfkeeper 23:34, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

What I was saying is that WP is slowly moving towards being an encyclopedic dictionary, regardless of policy. Steve Dufour (talk) 00:40, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

How many words/terms are you claiming are being added per day?- Wolfkeeper 01:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Probably more than are being taken off. :-) Steve Dufour (talk) 04:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I just clicked "random article" and it took me 29 clicks to find a word definition article Skipper (boating). Steve Dufour To be fair I tried it again and gave up after 200 clicks, although there were a couple of boderline cases.(talk) 04:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

IMO even that probably isn't quite a true word article, but it's very close. The scope of the article is really defined by what it claims to cover in the first sentence, and the first sentence doesn't claim to be a word article. FWIW I also in the past did several hundred clicks of random, and failed to find a single one. Even if there is a net gain of one dictionary article per day (to pick a number at random) we're in a regime where the Wikipedia is growing by 1000 articles per day, and based on a quick straw poll I did of new articles, there are about 400/day or so of new encyclopedic topics that were invented since the Wikipedia was started in 2001. So on that basis, it never would ever include the million or so word articles from Wiktionary, and it's likely they would remain swamped by encyclopedic articles.- Wolfkeeper 05:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

So the nature of the Wikipedia is encyclopedic and I think it is highly likely to remain so, unless somebody rolls out bots to copy material from Wiktionary en mass or something.- Wolfkeeper 05:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• The page Rocket (disambiguation) is a typical example of a dictionary style entry here. This contains numerous examples of the word being used as a proper name and it's the proper names which give us so many more entries than a typical dictionary. Our article on the vegetable usage contains etymology, explaining how the words rocket and erugola both derive from the Latin eruca. So we contain all the same stuff as a dictionary - we just organise and present it differently. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Nope. Disamb pages aren't dictionary entries, they're navigation pages.- Wolfkeeper 15:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• If anyone is interested I am going to suggest a merge of Skipper (boating) to Captain (nautical). Steve Dufour (talk) 17:20, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• Just a comment. I checked out Wiktionary and I've got to say that the wiki idea seems to work better for an encyclopedia than a dictionary. Steve Dufour (talk) 13:16, 5 June 2010 (UTC)