Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 11

Specific instance
Please could you tell me whether the following article section is acceptable under WP:NOTDICT?
 * Pleiades (star cluster).

(Most if not all of these appear to be listed on the wiktionary Pleiades page.) Thank you.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:14, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It doesn't look ideal to me, but it's not in violation of this policy. There's no rule against defining words in the context of an encyclopedic topic, and the Pleiades itself is an encyclopedic topic. If the topic was Pleiades (word), that's completely different. You just don't have an individual article that consists entirely of information on a word, because we have dictionaries, there's no point, in the long run it hurts the other projects, and that's not the way it's traditionally done in encyclopedias anyway (in fact that's pretty much the only workable definition I could find for what an encyclopedia is).- Wolfkeeper 18:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * agree with WK here... no problem, but why on earth (or Pleiades) would you have that at the top of the article. That is the kind of stuff that once I reached it, I would prossibly stop reading.  Should be at the end of the article.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 19:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk) 20:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Neologisms
There is a naming dispute about the word arborsculpture, on the Tree shaping article. The dispute has spilled over onto related articles, as some editors believe the word is a neologism and shouldn't be used on other articles. Arborsculpture was coined by Richard Reames in his first book in 1995 to rename the art-form of Tree shaping. Other editors disagree that arborsculpture is a neologism and wish to use the word on related articles to Tree shaping. For example Talk:Axel_Erlandson is mostly a discussion about the neologism of the word arborsculpture. There was a request to move Tree shaping to Arborsculpture here. There is a huge discussion going on there ranging over various issues.

I'm asking for some opinions about arborsculpture and the Wikipedia's policies on neologisms.

Please note that I am Becky Northey Co-founder of Pooktre one of the artists talked about on the tree shaping article and also have a web site called www.treeshapers.net about all the different artists in this art form. Blackash  have a chat 14:16, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Please note also that a new RfC on this very topic, whether the Arborsculpture article is (or ever was) an article about a neologism, was started today by the above poster, at Talk:Tree shaping, (arborsculpture is presently titled Tree shaping, another point of serious discussion). The existence of the new RfC was none too clearly disclosed either here or at the so called "spill over" (the related) Talk:Axel Erlandson page. I'm noting this there too, and wherever else the oddly vague reference is made, so that comments and discussions on this topic can be consolidated on the talkpage of the main article, rather than be spread thinly all over the wikiplace, and so that we can somehow conclude this tired discussion. The main body of the discussion and consensus building is taking place at the Arborsculpture eh..tree sharpening article talkpage, where thoughtful editors would love to welcome more thoughtful editors to that RfC, as well as to the still open & now 16-day old RfC on Editorial conflict.  Good fun will surely be had by all. Please bring your own bong. :) Duff (talk) 01:36, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Question
May i ask why sometimes wiktionaries contain entries for words that aren;t in the language of the wiktionary? For example the Punjabi wiktionary contains some entries for english words too. just wanted to ask befopre changing. Gman 124 talk 13:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * See the main page http://en.wiktionary.org "This is the English Wiktionary: it aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English.", and see wikt:Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion for further details. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:21, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Well then whats the point of having separate wiktionaries, if they are going to include all entries in any language anyway. isn;t that then just redundant work being doen on all wiktionary projects. since they all then make enteries in their own language and also in other languages as well. In that case shoulnd't there just be a common wiktionary? Gman 124 talk 21:06, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That would make it lengthy and hard to navigate. If I as an English-speaker learning Japanese look up "可愛い", I don't care about or need to see a Spanish-language definition. --Cyber cobra (talk) 23:01, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * ok. i guess that works. i was thinking that everyone also adds the definition in all languages on all wikis, i guess thats not it. Gman 124 talk 00:25, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * They do add the definitions in all languages on all wikis, but the descriptions are each all in the base language. Compare wikt:pain with fr:wikt:pain. There was a wonderful plan for a database of content. See http://www.omegawiki.org/ and our out-of-date explanatory pages at OmegaWiki and meta:Category:Ultimate Wiktionary. Currently, OmegaWiki is a separate (non-foundation) project. Perhaps, hopefully, one day, the projects will all merge, as doG intended. :-/ -- Quiddity (talk) 01:01, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Would be nice to have something like the google translator. so that only one place in fixed and all laguages benefit. well thank you for the info Gman 124 talk 02:07, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Human languages are simply not that mechanical. A, say, French language article for a French word would not necessarily be a direct translation of an English language article.  Languages are not isomorphic, even at the level of words that you, an English speaker, might consider to be elementary. Uncle G (talk) 16:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * OmegaWiki is being discussed on various mailing lists currently (wiktionary-l archive), and also at meta:Requests for comment/Adopt OmegaWiki‎. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:14, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Related AfD
Articles for deletion/Clientitus brings up this policy. Kitfoxxe (talk) 15:48, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Deletion sorting/Language is where these should all be tagged and listed, and everyone interested should watchlist. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:08, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal
Should the policy that Wikipedia is not a dictionary explicitly allow articles about words and phrases? Colonel Warden (talk) 06:50, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Some background: This policy page, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and the related section of the What Wikipedia is not policy page contradict each other, or in the very least are being used in two contradictory ways. For years, the latter page has contained the following wording or a close variant: "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject, such as Macedonia (terminology) or truthiness." This is often used to justify the articles on words, terms, and terminology that Wikipedia does have. However, WP:NOTDIC contains no such caveat, and is often used to assert that words are never an encyclopedic subject. As such we have a contradiction in our policy pages that needs to be cleared up. In my opinion, WP:NOT better reflects the community's actual position, in that Wikipedia does have articles on words, which the community has found to be suitably encylopedic in discussion, AfD, etc. As such I think the easiest way to synchronize the two policies will be to just copy over the wording from WP:NOT to this policy. Hence this proposal.--Cúchullain t/ c 13:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In the spirit of working out the issues without resorting to edit warring, I'll make the following proposal here.

This policy page should contain the following wording, which is already present at WP:NOT:
 * Proposal:
 * In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject, such as Macedonia (terminology) or truthiness.

--Cúchullain t/ c 14:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support as proposer.--Cúchullain t/ c 18:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's never correct to have an article about a word subject in an Encyclopedia. Some articles sometimes claim that they're about the word, but for an encyclopedic article the real subject is always something else.- Wolfkeeper  18:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * A word or term is just a collection of letters. And it's never correct to have the article simply about the usage of that sequence of letters either. That's simply what dictionaries are for.- Wolfkeeper  18:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support as it accurately describes the views of the majority of the community. -- Neil N   talk to me  18:39, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support. As many have pointed out, that doesn't really say a lot, but that's the wording we've had for years at WP:NOT and, apparently, this page needs to say the same, until and unless there's a change at NOT. - Dank (push to talk) 19:40, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - guideline should be descriptive, and we have many articles on words (whether anyone likes it or not). – xeno talk 19:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support per all 4 above. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Absolutely NO FUCKING WAY!!! For an article to be encyclopedic, it has to go beyond being about a term. It's the bits beyond the term that are the subject, not the terms themselves. If you make the topic about the terms then it's just an extended dictionary article. But Wikipedia is not a dictionary is the most fundamental principle there is after it being in encyclopedia, and a critical part of what makes it an encyclopedia at all. This is probably the most self defeating and negative suggestion in the entire history of the wikipedia.- Wolfkeeper  20:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * We do NOT have any valid articles on words.- Wolfkeeper  20:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fuck...you don't say...eh? – xeno talk 20:22, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * With that kind of attitude, must be a Yankee yes, sorry, joke was too good to pass up . -- Neil N   talk to me  20:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Or Hoosier for that matter. --Cyber cobra (talk) 00:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support Way. For an independent example of an encyclopedic article about a word, please see the article Yahweh in Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Our equivalent article, Tetragrammaton, might be added to examples listed here as it lacks the recentism of the current examples.  Note also that Yahweh is also an entry in the OED which is proof positive that dictionaries and encyclopaedia overlap. Colonel Warden (talk) 21:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But you're arguing against yourself because tetragrammaton isn't about the word tetragrammaton, it's about YHWH/yahweh. That's not forbidden by the rule; the current rule is that the article is about the topic denoted by the title, not the title term itself.- Wolfkeeper  17:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's an article about a word. Q.E.D. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:57, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not really about the particular word tetragrammaton or YHWH or Yahweh because it varies between different languages and usages. The same idea is written different ways. A word or term is a particular sequence of characters. The article is about the idea, and not the term tetragrammaton.- Wolfkeeper  01:13, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * A dictionary entry is not just a particular sequence of characters as dictionaries commonly cover alternate spellings, plurals, conjugations and derivative phrases together. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:47, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Opppose makes the presumption that WP:NOT is correct. Neither wording seems to describe the actual majority views of the community, and for reasons beyond me, the very sensible suggestion that a proper RfC on the issue that would effect the wording of both continues to be rejected on the claim that "we already know consensus" when we don't. AfD alone does not establish consensus, nor do conversations between less than a dozen editors buried in a policy page that got little attention. Do a proper, neutral RfC asking the community's view on whether Wikipedia wishes to have dictionary articles, and how the policy has been worded. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 23:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support Accords with current practices & AfD outcomes. --Cyber cobra (talk) 00:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Although per PowersT, suggest different examples be used. xeno et al. have given several better ones. --Cyber cobra (talk) 23:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So does voting KEEP for an article you wrote yourself. That doesn't mean its a good idea. Policies are supposed to be best practices, not bringing it down to the lowest common denominators.- Wolfkeeper  17:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So does voting KEEP for an article you wrote yourself That doesn't usually correlate w/ AfD outcomes. Also, thanks for WP:BLUDGEONing this discussion. --Cyber cobra (talk) 02:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Otherwise, let's add a policy specifically allowing swear words; they're extremely popular.- Wolfkeeper  17:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support This page should adequately reflect NOT, and the social effects and history of specific words can be encyclopedic, just like the cultural meaning and popularity of given names can be encyclopedic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose, and those are bad examples anyway. Truthiness is more about the concept as Colbert defined it, and Macedonia (terminology) should really be at Terminology of Macedonia or something similar.  Powers T 20:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Apart from the poor choice of examples, why else do you oppose? --Cyber cobra (talk) 03:26, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If an article is about a word, then you logically have to include all meanings of that word.- Wolfkeeper 03:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Doing that is inherently unencyclopedic. The whole point of encyclopedias is to push similar things together into articles where any differences and commonalities can be discussed. If we have articles like slam dunk where the article is all about basketball and then suddenly in the middle we have a discussion about George W. Bush who wasn't talking about basketball at all, then it raises the serious question as to whether people have seriously lost the plot. And the answer is yes.- Wolfkeeper 03:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Was my question directed to you? No, it wasn't. Stop WP:BLUDGEONing. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 05:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Point of fact, you've made more edits than I have in the last two days, even including this one of mine, and even ignoring your minor edits.- Wolfkeeper 05:49, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose again. Articles about the thing behind the word are encyclopedic content.  Articles about words as words belong at Wiktionary.  In rare cases, the historical and social significance of the word or a few historical oddities may justify an exception but they are clearly and should always be noted as the exception.  We should not be codifying the occasional WP:IAR example into the policy.  Rossami (talk) 21:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But it's already said explicitly at WP:NOT, where the exact same wording has appeared for years. This is an attempt to make the two policies not contradict each other.--Cúchullain t/ c 21:14, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And in hindsight, the exception wording at WP:NOT was the mistake in my opinion. Rossami (talk) 21:19, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary doesn't do articles - they only do stylised dictionary entries plus lexical stuff like anagrams. Consider cellar door, for example, a quintessential article about words qua words.  Wiktionary would not permit such an article and so it's no good pretending that they are a better home for such notable material.  What Rossami is therefore proposing is that such stuff should be extirpated and this is clearly not our policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary does accept such content. You are right that they don't use "articles" - their style guide would put the content of cellar door in quite different order and format.  But all that content fits quite well in Wiktionary.  (I get really tired of this perennial strawman argument about Wiktionary's content rules.)  Rossami (talk) 04:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Please provide an example of a prose article comparable to cellar door on Wiktionary. Note that they have no entry of any sort for this particular case.  If you were to propose transferring it there, do you think you would stand the slightest chance of success?  Our policy should reflect this reality. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Request seconded. There is extreme confusion as to how long-form content is received at Wiktionary. E.g. the closing argument here, and the comment from a Wiktionary admin here, and similar examples. Wiktionary's wikt:WT:NOT: "Encyclopedic information should be placed in our sister project, Wikipedia" is confusingly imprecise. Where we draw the line between "encyclopedic content" and "dictionaric content" is what this policy should be extrapolating. It isn't black&white. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:05, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wait. What? I was literally in the middle of editing multiple, related wiktionary entries, and he didn't delete them or put them up for deletion when I was done. This is just your usual bad habit of (apparently deliberately) taking things completely out of context.here.- Wolfkeeper 17:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The reason we need some exceptions explicitly mentioned within this policy page, is that some editors interpret the current policy to mean we should never have articles on words. Hence articles like Jew (word), Meh, Negro, Thou, Orange (word), Yankee, Internets, Scop, Alu (runic), Infidel, Craic, Spastic, Jazz (word), Chemistry (etymology), American (word), Sisu, and dozens of others (not thousands, but possibly a hundred or so examples altogether), get taken to AfD or argued over continuously. The policy should reflect reality, which is that a very few words are notable enough to have articles in this encyclopedia. Most words are not notable (and everyone agrees that there are articles currently at Wikipedia that do not belong here, such as Git or Précis); but the few words that are clearly notable, come under constant assault from a handful of people, because of the way this policy is (mis)interpreted. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:05, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support We need to clarify that sometimes words are exceptable. I've been through enough AFDs where this has come up, to support some clarity to prevent future needless arguing.   D r e a m Focus  01:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support as reflective of consensus elsewhere, for the benefit of its simply clarity, and for reduction of pointy conflicts in other discussions.  Schmidt,  MICHAEL Q. 01:41, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No Brainer Words are perfectly valid subjects for articles. Words have histories and evolution.  "Spaz" for example is a word whose meaning has evolved and shifted.  There are numerous words that have valid articles above and beyond mere definitions.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:47, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. An article that employs a word as its title is acceptable if the subject referenced by that word is notable per WP:NOTABLE and that subject is the focus of the article. But in such cases, the article is about the thing that the word refers to, not the word itself (although the history, or other aspects of the subject's name could also be discussed in the article). If one wants to learn about the word itself (e.g., pronunciation, meanings, origins, etc.), and there is no article for the subject referenced by the word, a dictionary will do the job nicely. The alternative, of course, is to create a Wikipedia article for every word in the dictionary, as every word has a history and other things that can be said about it. BTW, this shares some similarities with another issue under discussion here: If a single instance of a word or term appears in Wikipedia, and that word is similar to the title of a disambiguation page, should a dab entry be created that links to the page on which the word is mentioned? Lambtron (talk) 19:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Support A word or phrase can easily be, in and of itself, an encyclopedic topic. A blanket rule prohibiting these is a horrible idea. Sithman  VIII !! 00:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Support. The caveat at WP:NOT is appropriate for those (admittedly somewhat uncommon) cases where a word as such is of encyclopedic interest. To be clear, simply defining words and giving other dictionary content is not encyclopedic, but discussions of words such as Thou or Feminazi may be. Cnilep (talk) 17:56, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * FWIW Thou is just a pronoun, along with the other pronouns it shouldn't be in the Wikipedia, Wiktionary covers pronouns much better anyway.- Wolfkeeper 19:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment There are no FA-quality articles that are actually about words in the Wikipedia. That's because they're not really encyclopedic, as normally understood, so they inevitably fail multiple rules and guidelines, and 5P. It's inherently difficult to try to change the Wikipedia's policies to include word articles. To succeed at this you would have to include versions of all of the Wiktionary's policies as well. You guys seem to think adding a few throwaway words in a policy will make it work, but really, they don't. They don't even interwork with other encyclopedic articles around them at any level at all, because allowing word articles is a recipe for content forks, as there's no clear place to put content, because of synonyms. So in the long-run this idea inevitably blows up with multiple different degrees of badness.- Wolfkeeper 19:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Fundamentally, there's really, really good reasons why dictionaries and encyclopedias are different sorts of reference works and that's why word articles are highly undesirable.- Wolfkeeper 19:51, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Support. Successful policies and guidelines start as reasonable documents that address a specific, real problem. But often they get a life of their own. They make stronger and stronger demands, until finally they get in the way of writing an encyclopedia, rather than facilitating it. In this case the original problem was that people mistook Wikipedia for a dictionary. Before Wikipedia, a lot of people were not really used to encyclopedias but knew very well what a dictionary entry looks like. So there was a tendency to write dictionary entries instead of encyclopedia articles. This is the first key difference between encyclopedias and dictionaries:
 * Encyclopedias stress the meaning even if they are talking about a term, e.g. the EB1911 article for "abated":
 * ''ABATED, an ancient technical term applied in masonry and metal work applied to those portions which are sunk beneath the surface, as in inscriptions where the ground is sunk round the letters so as to leave the letters or ornament in relief. (The article on "act" would have been an even better example, but it's too long to list here. See wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Act.)
 * Dictionary entries stress grammatical and usage information. For contrast to the above see the entry for "abate" in Webster's from 1913.
 * Then there was a second aspect: Some stubs that were created as dictionary entries never had a chance to turn into encyclopedia articles, so the only option was to delete them. Why is it OK to delete a stub on a word even though that word is covered in hundreds of dictionaries? Again, because of a difference between encyclopedias and dictionaries:
 * Encyclopedias cover all sorts of topics, not just word. Therefore for a mere word to get an article a much higher threshold of notability/encyclopedicity must be passed than in a dictionary of the same size.
 * Dictionaries try to cover the language as completely as possible. For general-purpose dictionaries the threshold for inclusion is defined in terms of frequency in a corpus of text.
 * In cases of unclear or ambiguous terminology, it is very important to clarify what an article is about. If we pretend that the article is labelled by some concept rather than a word, we are less likely to get this right. Good encyclopedias are not, in general, about words but about concepts. But they are relaxed about this, not extremist.

TLDR version: If encyclopedias don't have articles about words, then Encyclopaedia Britannica is not an encyclopedia. Hans Adler 20:54, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Both of those examples are just horrible. Is that's the best you can do... seriously? Two disastrously bad examples from a century old encyclopedia? Would you want either of them in the Wikipedia? The point is, and it remains, that there are no good examples of doing this anywhere. Any encyclopedia article worth its salt goes far beyond the term to discuss the aspects of the subject that the article name refers to.- Wolfkeeper 22:38, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Support. Per sensible comments above, such as those of Cuchullain and Balloonman. Cavila (talk) 21:13, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Support In at least rare instances, words themselves can be the subject of an encyclopedic article. For example, the choice of what to call many ethnic groups is the subject of significant scholarly work.  The dictionary definition of Squaw, for example, is "woman" -- but that page should not be redirected to Woman.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I note that the proposal seems to have failed. To change policy requires about 90% consensus, which it seems well short of.- Wolfkeeper 19:13, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but you just made that number up entirely.--Cúchullain t/ c 19:18, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * No I didn't actually. The wording varies, but it requires more than a simple majority for major changes to policy like this. You need something near to unanimity, and that's not what you've got.- Wolfkeeper 21:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The 90% standard is pure nonsense. First of all, this isn't what most editors would call a "major change" in the first place, because it merely describes the long-standing practice more fully.  Secondly, responses need to be weighted according to the strength of the arguments.  "I personally don't like articles about the history and use of particular terms" isn't a good argument; "The community has hundreds of these articles" is.  Thirdly, in most policy-related discussions, any level of support that can't be legitimately described as a "bare majority" is generally accepted by the community.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, quite. Clearly there is solid consensus for this minor change. This lengthy RfC is much more than is usually done for minor changes like this.--Cúchullain t/ c 22:17, 23 August 2010 (UTC)