Talk:Poop

Edit request on 26 November 2012

POOP: an acronym standing for Permissible Objects Of Postability. POOP is an object sent through the mail without an envelope, box, or any kind of packaging; and placing the address and stamp right on the object. A coconut is a common type of POOP. The first time POOP was used in print is in Wired magazine 12.6 (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/multimedia/2008/11/st_15returntosender) Woodyman11 (talk) 00:36, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Not done: - This is a disambiguation page. It contains links to articles and we don't add entries without a blue link to an article. I can't see what existing article we would link to, and, from your source:

"The most prolific contestant was Barry Wood, a 50-year-old government GIS specialist from Vero Beach, Florida. Wood had actually been running his own contest for years, encouraging friends to flummox the Postal Service by sending unusual items he called "permissible objects of postability," or POOP."

I'm afraid I can't really see the notability that would be required for the information to be included in an existing article, sorry. If there are other references, or an existing article where this information would be relevant, please feel free to reply, and reactivate the request, or make a new one at the relevant article. Thanks.Begoon ^talk 11:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 18 April 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:09, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

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Poop → Poop (disambiguation) – Feces is the primary topic for poop. Under this proposal, “poop” would redirect to “feces”. The disambiguation page would be hatnoted at the top of the feces page for those redirected from a search for “poop” who are looking for other meanings of the word. Mrbeastmodeallday (talk) 07:23, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

• The historic proper meaning of "poop" is "stern of a ship", from Latin "puppis". See wikt:poop. And verb "be pooped" = "of a ship, for a big wave from aft to break over its stern". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:16, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
• I thought looking at the parts of speech the word is often used in might help. Google Ngrams comparison shows noun is the most used. This doesn't tell us what noun target is most appropriate (feces or "stern of a ship"), but it does show that redirecting to a verb-based term like defecation is not advised. -- Netoholic @ 13:36, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support: Relatively few people today are familiar with historic naval terminology, and probably many of those who are would not commonly refer to the stern of a ship as a poop unless they are joking around. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:47, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support per modern meaning. Hyperbolick (talk) 06:28, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NOTDICT WP:NOT and lack of any evidence in the nomination. While I support full accessibility for Wikipedia to American seven-year-olds, it should not dictate article titles. And even if it should, it is not clear if said reader would be looking for feces or defecation; classic case for a disambiguation page, i.e. the status quo. —  AjaxSmack  01:25, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

  At first I thought you were just mistaken with your frequent incorrect citations of NOTDICT. Based on your uncivil comment, I'm now coming to the realization that there is a much deeper problem which needs to be addressed. -- Netoholic @ 10:04, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

  Sorry, you're right. I meant to cite WP:NOT. Thanks. —  AjaxSmack  16:29, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

  Poop means feces as much to 70-year-olds as it does to seven-year-olds. Maybe some 170-year-olds would think of a different meaning, doubt we have many of them reading. Hyperbolick (talk) 21:44, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. While one meaning is popular, the other has long-term significance. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 19:39, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps the topic with the greater long-term significance is the topic that existed long before ships were invented. —BarrelProof (talk) 04:17, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 2 June 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Discussion has been open for another nine days after relisting, and in that time another eight editors have commented.

However, we are no closer to a consensus than we were at the time of the previous close; the strength of argument on each side is still comparable, as are the number of !votes for each side.

As such, I'm closing this as no consensus; I don't believe further relists are likely to result in a consensus being found. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 19:13, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

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Poop → Poop (disambiguation) – It's been 4 years since the last RM closed with no consensus, and I think this is worth revisiting. Yes, the nautical sense of the term is older, but that is not the standard that decides primary-topic status. It would only be relevant if "poop" to mean feces were a neologism, but after 250 years that sense seems to be sticking around. Yes, "poop" is also a verb, but see Netoholic's point in the previous RM; the more logical search term for someone looking for Defecation is "pooping". Thus neither counterargument from the previous RM seems very persuasive. What is clear is this: In modern English, "poop" overwhelmingly refers to feces. Per WikiNav, in April 59.61% of outbound clicks were to Feces, 12.19% to Defecation, and 6.86% to Poop deck. This page should be moved to Poop (disambiguation), and the redirect should be targeted to Feces, which is both the common-sense primary topic and the subject of an outright majority of outbound clicks. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 07:37, 2 June 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 04:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per previous RM, nothing has changed. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:12, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support. I don't think the previous RM's consensus was overwhelming. In this case, the wikinav link is convincing enough that people searching this likely want feces or similar. So, this would not be a poopy move. --Quiz shows 17:13, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Between the object and the act that creates the object, there isn't a primary. Steel1943 (talk) 19:55, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

  People generally don't refer to verbs by their infinitive, though, but rather by their gerund (in this case pooping). I gave the Fly example above. See also Drink (the substance) vs. Drinking (the act); Taste (the sense) vs. Tasting (redir to Degustation); Wolf (the animal) vs. Wolfing (redir to Competitive eating). In each of those cases, the word that could be either a noun or an infinitive is assumed to be a noun. Are there any cases where we don't take that approach? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 21:24, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

  "I gotta poop" is quite common as a phrase. The other examples, I agree, are usually not referred to by their infinitive, but poop is a stinky exception for some reason. Steel1943 (talk) 10:56, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

  It's not a question of whether you can use the infinitive to refer to the act (of course you can; that's true of all English verbs), but of whether that's how a reader would conjugate the verb to get the article on it. And the clickstream data indicates that this is no exception to the idea that readers looking for the act use the gerund, not the infinitive. It's 5:1 for the substance. The target pages' actual pageviews are significantly closer together than that (28k/mo. Feces, 20k/mo. Defecation), suggesting that that 5:1 ratio isn't simply because people are more interested in the substance than the act, but rather because most people arriving at the DAB page are looking for the substance. Defecation can always be added to the hatnote at Feces, meaning that it will still be one click away, same as it currently is. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 17:54, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Oppose per Steel1943. I see no compelling reasons presented to move this to the article on solid waste instead of the article on the act of excreting solid waste. Keeping it as a dab makes more sense than the alternatives presented, so keeping this as-is seems fine. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 18:19, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support. Agree in full with Tamzin's reasoning. Regarding the act vs the result, I agree in full with Tamzin's 17:54, 3 June 2023 (UTC) comment. In everyday usage, "poop" is the result, not the act, so it wouldn't make sense to redirect "poop" to the act instead of the result. (I don't usually vote on RMs. No points for guessing why I decided to vote on this one.) Enterprisey (talk!) 05:42, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

  I've never understood why editors feel the need to announce that they have participated in a forum they believe they usually do not. Many editors participate in a forum once or twice, and then usually don't again ... it's not like it's a needle in a haystack. Steel1943 (talk) 19:04, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support The primary topic is what MODERN-DAY people would most want to navigate to. An antiquated meaning is not primary. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 14:37, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support I agree with Tamzin's comment on the distinction between an article on pooping versus an article on poop. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 03:20, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Nothing has changed. Still no primary topic in terms of long-term significance. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:32, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
  • And, really, is anyone going to type in "poop" when they're looking for faeces? WP:ASTONISH is being completely misapplied. Is it really encyclopaedic for a childish slang word to take precedence over serious topics? Should Willy now redirect to Penis because some sniggering five-year-old (or 35-year-old going on five) might type it in? -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:38, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
• Strong support, ASTONISH.--Ortizesp (talk) 06:17, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support per nom, WikiNav. As Tamzin said, the act is a verb and expressed as a gerund. Wracking ^talk! 23:27, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't think anything has changed since the last discussion, which was lightly attended, but agreed there was no primary topic. I'm actually surprised how low the click-thru numbers are for the "primary" topic. SportingFlyer T·C 21:11, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  I still obviously oppose this move after the relist. Although the click-thru rate is higher for one specific article, that will always be the case for a disambiguation page. It's also been stable for a very long time - while consensus can change, it's been clear that a primary topic has not been supported for a long time. SportingFlyer T·C 12:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting per move review, still awaiting administrator reversion of page move pending the result of the re-opened RM. EggRoll97 ^(talk) 04:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support per WP:ASTONISH and both since the definition of "feces" also has long-term significance. :3 F4U (they/it) 07:14, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
  • "Also" being the operative word! There is no primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:32, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

    Poop is the primary topic by a huge margin with respect to usage. My point was not that poop and poop deck have equal long-term significance, but that it is incorrect to dismiss poop as not having long-term significance (see arguments made in previous move). :3 F4U (they/it) 14:00, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Several points here. Firstly, as noted by Necrothesp above, there's no case for applying WP:ASTONISH here. "Poop" meaning feces is a slang and somewhat childish term, and we purport to be a professional encyclopedia. By this argument we'd also expect dick, willy, balls, poo (the UK English variant of poop) and other similar terms to redirect to their meaning, but of course they don't. Secondly, the principal argument in the nom is that the majority of readers who leave the disambiguation page head to the feces page... however, this ignores the fact that the actual majority of people viewing the disambiguation page go nowhere else. Of 8.1k incoming views, only 2.3k go on to some other page (as contrasted with 1.8k / 1.7k for Subway, another disambig page I've chosen at random). This says to me, the majority of people typing "poop" are simply doing so idly or as a joke; those people aren't interested in reading an in-depth encyclopedic article on feces, they simply type the term into Wikipedia, have a laugh and then move on with their lives. For those people, I think showing the disambiguation is exactly the right outcome. They can look at the different meanings if they like, follow the Wiktionary link, or move on with their lives. We don't need to offer them anything more than that. Finally, I am also persuaded by the argument that defecation and poop deck are also legitimate encyclopedic targets here with long-term significance, particularly as the feces meaning is tied more to North America than other ENGVAR regions. Overall, I think the status quo is absolutely fine here.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:35, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Dick, willy, and balls all have non-slang meanings that rival or surpass their slang ones. Poo should probably be made a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT for the same reason that Poop should be. And I don't follow the relevance of the non-clickers. You're probably right that they're just people who typed in "poop" to see what would happen, but why do we care about them? What matters is where the people who were looking for something go. And that is, more than half the time and five times more often than the runner-up choice, to Feces. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 08:04, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per In ictu oculi, Steel1943, Red-tailed hawk, Necrothesp, SportingFlyer and Amakuru. The Poop disambiguation page lists the putative WP:PRIMARYTOPIC followed by six bulleted entries, one of which currently contains a redlink but no bluelink. Although there is some validity to the arguments that the term described as childish slang is nonetheless primary, it has a distinct un-encyclopedic tone to it as well as various other contradictory points elucidated in the detailed reasoning by Amakuru, above. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 23:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. Rreagan007 (talk) 01:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

  PT arguments don't fly; the encyclopedic meaning of poop is poop on a ship. We are not shitpedia. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

  No, the encyclopedic meaning of poop is feces. From the first page of Google Scholar results (ignoring one with an author surnamed Poop), every single entry [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] refers to feces. (Yes, one of those is Everyone Poops... apparently it gets a lot of scholarly cites.) The second page is the same. The first nautical usage is [10], the 25th entry overall. Prudishness about a term doesn't keep it from being the primary topic, colloquially or in academic sources. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 07:58, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think anyone opposing here is being prudish - I get a varied range of articles when I do a google scholar search that don't necessarily distinguish between the noun and the verb. SportingFlyer T·C 14:08, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think you're being prudish, but I don't know how else to interpret IIO's comment. The noun/verb argument is separate, and I don't see that we've move past the points I made before relist: 1. Verbs in English are not typically referred to by their bare infinitive. 2. I am not aware of any other term where we've said noun/infinitive distinction is an issue (see examples above). We could always structure the hatnote at Feces to include both Defecation and the DAB, if desired. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 16:51, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't think there's an issue of professionalism here. The primary meaning of "poop" refers to the bodily function and there's no reason to deny that as an encyclopedia. However I don't believe there is a primary topic between feces and defecation which is the real issue. The DAB page already treats those two as the main topics. (Also, can WP:ASTONISH ever apply to DAB pages? By definition they include the thing the user was looking for, so where does the astonishment come from?) WPscatter ^t/_c 13:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - "Poop" is also used as a verb. It might not be proper english, but it is common english, so I dont see a primary topic here. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose but we could do like "Shit" and have it be an article about the word. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 15:55, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support. Feces is the obvious primary topic per nom. It is already setup as such on the disambiguation page. Poop deck is really a WP:PTM. The previous RM had no consensus, completely appropriate to reconsider the question. Mdewman6 (talk) 16:03, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.