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


 * 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)

=Workspace=

Relevant policy page(s) at Wiktionary:
 * wikt:Wiktionary:What Wiktionary is not

Structure notes
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.
 * 1) 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.
 * 1) 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
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
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
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
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
Try searching 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.
 * Man (word) Keep
 * Witch (etymology) Keep
 * Bugger Keep
 * Fart Keep
 * Faggot (slang) Keep
 * Interweb (second nomination) keep
 * Monsieur keep
 * Raptio keep
 * Endogenous keep
 * Character (word) keep
 * Know-it-all keep
 * Alu (runic) keep
 * Scop Keep
 * Internets (2nd nomination) keep
 * Toyetic keep
 * Nucular delete but overturned
 * Amn't Keep, but it was merged 6 months later
 * Fruit (slang) no consensus
 * Oregon (toponym) no consensus
 * Ureotelic no consensus
 * Antebellum merge
 * Flip-flop (sex) merge
 * Origin of the name Eskimo merge
 * Ugliness (second nomination) merge
 * Con brio redirect
 * Ugliness delete
 * Rape (word) delete
 * Scorp delete
 * Awww delete

TenPoundHammer, eg.
 * Elephant in the room keep
 * Pwn Keep
 * Discography keep
 * Sisu (2nd nomination) keep
 * Stunt cock keep
 * Airplay keep
 * Any key keep
 * Window valance keep
 * Name-dropping keep
 * O RLY? (4th nomination) keep
 * Pwn (2nd nomination) no consensus
 * Boondocks no consensus
 * RAS syndrome no consensus
 * Akimbo no consensus
 * White lie redirect
 * Fanboy redirect
 * Off the shelf redirect
 * Technopeasantry delete
 * Doorbuster delete
 * Hand salsa delete
 * Word salad delete

AfDs - Wolfkeeper
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 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
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
moved to talkpage