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Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 6

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Latest comment: 15 years ago by Wolfkeeper in topic Wikipedia is not a pronunciation guide
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Hall

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Is it just me, or are the articles Hall and Hall (concept) hopelessly muddled? I'm not sure either one is in line with this policy in its current state. Powers T 11:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Policy

Latest comment: 15 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion

Many WP policies do, indeed, have cases where they are not followed to the letter. This does not reduce them from being policies. In some cases, since there is no hierarchy to policies, two or more policies may conflict (or appear to conflict) and one must, perforce, give way. To use this fact, however, as an argument in itself for reducing a policy to "guideline" is, in my honest opinion, not going to help. This particular policy is referred to as such in other places, and thus I would say it should so remain. (this section added as despite all above sections do not appear to address this head-on) Collect (talk) 12:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

  • The extent to which exceptions occur is the only difference between policies and guidelines. As we have numerous exceptions to this policy, it is evidently at the guideline end of the spectrum. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Uh huh. Out of getting on for 3 million articles, how many are you claiming violate this?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps you would tell us which policies have absolutely no mention in AfD? That it gets cited there does not make it less of a policy. Collect (talk) 11:02, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
This supposed policy has not been mentioned in that AFD - it might as well not exist for all the difference it makes and so might best be tidied up per WP:CREEP. For more evidence that this policy is not followed, please see List of glossaries. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Which do not violate this policy as it is written. Those articles furnish a manner for a person to find many related terms -- which, alas, Wiktionary neither does nor is intended to do, and which the policy here says is a proper usage of WP. Note that WP has "encyclopedic glossaries" and that is specifically noted in the policy here. Collect (talk) 11:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree that glossaries are not the best example for illustrating how widely ignored this policy is. Category:Etymologies contains much better examples. Powers T 12:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
(going on wb shortly) The examples I looked at in that category do not appear to violate this policy. Jew (word) is clearly not a dictionary entry. Nor is Man (word) a Wiktionary type of article at all. Which examples in that category do you specifically feel should be tranwikied to Wiktionary? Collect (talk) 14:02, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Jew (word) is quite like the OED entry except that it does not seem to be so long and it has poorer references. There is a difference of style in that dictionary entries have a more regular structure and make extensive use of abbreviations for conciseness but I think we are more concerned with content than style here. Etymologies are clearly dictionary content. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

(out) Other than the fact that the examples I found are not dictionary content, and that perhaps the category is ill-named, which example do you wish to cite? Which ones did you transwiki per policy? Collect (talk) 15:16, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Jew (word) has enough cultural and religious aspects that it could probably be encyclopedic. Man (word) I think belongs in a dictionary as an etymology, however comprehensive it may be. Another example is Origin of the name Eskimo, which contains nothing but two suggested etymologies. Witch (etymology) contains the etymology of not one but two words; anything encyclopedic in there should be moved to Witch and Wicca. Yeoman contains multiple definitions of the word (satisfying Wolfkeeper's criterion for being a dicdef) and little actual discussion of the concepts the word represents. I could go on... Powers T 19:32, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Did you transwiki the incorrect articles? That would appear to be fully proper as I read the policy. Collect (talk) 02:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I did not transwiki them. They would require significant reformatting to match wiktionary's style and I haven't had the time to go through and do it properly. Powers T 14:44, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Help with dispute resolution

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The humanism article needs some attention from some editors with knowledge of Wikipedia's goals and policies. American Heritage Dictionary gives five widely varying definitions of the term (see http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=humanism&search=search ), and for several years, the status of this term on Wikipedia has been:

  • AHD definitions 1, 2, 3 loosely grouped under the "humanism" article
  • AHD definition 4 briefly mentioned under the humanities article
  • AHD definition 5 has its own article at Renaissance humanism and connection to definition 1 mentioned in the humanism article
  • Recently, an editor added a disambiguation page to direct readers to the different types of humanism, and added the appropriate hat-note to the article.

Over the past few years, one particularly tendentious editor attempts every few months to change the primary focus of the article, sometimes in favor of AHD definition 4, sometimes in favor of definition 5. Each time, I attempt to respond by showing the common use in best-selling books, news articles, magazines, web sites, and organizations applying the term to themselves is consistent with definition 1 instead. The tendentious editor has proposed moving the article and was voted down, so now he deletes his 3-revert warnings from his own talk page and attempts to create a consensus on other users' talk pages where his viewpoint will encounter no resistance, rather than on the article's own talk page. In general he seems to bring editors into the article who are abusive, argue by putting words into others' mouths, and recite their opinions over and over without providing evidence of verifiability.

The policies I feel the tendentious editor and those he brings into the discussion are breaking are these:

  • WP:DICTIONARY: Wikipedia articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic, however, they should provide other types of information about that topic as well. The full articles that the wikipedia's stubs grow into are very different from dictionary articles.
  • Also at WP:DICTIONARY: "The same title for different things (homographs): are found in different articles."
  • WP:VERIFY: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true."
  • WP:UNDUE: "Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: In general, articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and will generally not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth does not mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, a view of a distinct minority."
  • WP:PRIMARYTOPIC: "When there is a well-known primary topic for an ambiguous term, name or phrase, much more used than any other topic covered in Wikipedia to which the same word(s) may also refer, then that term or phrase should either be used for the title of the article on that topic or redirect to that article."
  • WP:Naming conflict: "A number of objective criteria can be used to determine common or self-identifying usage: * Is the name in common usage in English? (check Google, other reference works, websites of media, government and international organisations; focus on reliable sources) * Is it the official current name of the subject? (check if the name is used in a legal context, e.g. a constitution) * Is it the name used by the subject to describe itself or themselves? (check if it is a self-identifying term)"

In an attempt to show a most common, most popular, and primary usage for the term "humanism," I've posted top lists of search results of best-selling books, web pages, multiple news sites, magazines, and organizations. In response, my repeated requests for evidence that AHD definition 1 is NOT the most popular use of "humanism" have been met only by occasional single web pages or books that were hand-picked specifically for their biased POV, rather than algorithmically selected for their popularity as Google, Amazon, Alexa, and the other sources I've cited.

Could someone who is familiar with the most popular use of the word "humanism" AND mindful of Wikipedia policies provide feedback? The focus of the article and its definitions have been established long before I came around, as evidenced by the contents of Template:Humanism, Outline of humanism, the categories to which the article belongs (Epistemology, Freethought, Humanism, Humanist Associations, Humanists, and Social theories), and the projects to which the article belongs (WikiProject religion, WikiProject atheism, and WikiProject philosophy). The continued attempts to change the focus of the article fit what WP:DISRUPT calls, "their edits occur over a long period of time; in this case, no single edit may be clearly disruptive, but the overall pattern is disruptive."

Thanks! Serpent More Crafty (talk) 18:36, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Bloat

Latest comment: 15 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

Another editor is concerned about bloat and I agree that, per WP:CREEP, we should be vigilant and cut back overgrowth. There is current a section called Good definitions which seems quite redundant as it is not clear what point it is making or how this relates to the main thrust of the policy. I shall therefore remove it. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

No; you won't. This is actually the only place where there is a policy on definitions for article's topics. I've actually used this policy as a way of dealing with an administrator that seemed to be deliberately rewriting the wikipedia's guidelines for what I can only assume were nefarious reasons. This is a surprisingly critical part of the overall policy, and has been there for a long while.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Hey, here's an idea, how about you don't remove fundamental policies without discussing them first?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
This is incorrect. It is directly referenced from WP:ISNOT. This is indeed fundamental policy, and goes back a long way.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

This became labelled policy with this edit, based on an earlier categorization that may have just been sweeping policy and guideline related matters into a cat. Rich Farmbrough, 04:24, 27 August 2009 (UTC).

The category was already marking it as policy and this from 2001 is pretty clear: [1].- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 12:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a pronunciation guide

Latest comment: 15 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

That Wikipedia is not a pronunciation guide bears mentioning, don't you think? Just like it is not a usage guide. --Una Smith (talk) 09:13, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

You don't mean to imply that Wikipedia shouldn't offer guidance in pronouncing words, do you? Do you object to help on correcting common mispronunciations? Do you object to Wikipedia engaging in controversy or curtailing freedom of speech? I find the unnecessary use of the International Phonetic Alphabet a bit annoying, but I'm sure many people appreciate learning good pronunciation to avoid making fools of themselves. Unfree (talk) 04:06, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
IMO it's very probably a defensible position that the wikipedia should not help with pronunciation of English words in most articles; you can always look it up in wiktionary, and wiktionary is liable to be accurate. That's the kind of things that dictionaries do very well. It's probably also the case that etymology should be minimised also in most articles. The wikipedia should be largely language agnostic; it should be easy to translate an article between languages, but tying articles to particular English words doesn't help with that.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 06:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
(It's different for articles specifically on etymological topics; but there they should be trying to cover all or at least a range of different languages.)- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 06:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

WT:Policies_and_guidelines#Subcats

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Discussion about policy subcategories for several pages, including this one. As far as I know, this doesn't make any difference, except as a help to people trying to browse policy. - Dank (push to talk) 03:37, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Change to guideline

Latest comment: 15 years ago115 comments15 people in discussion

I've changed the tag on this document to label it as a guideline. I have at least skimmed through the conversations above, and I'm not unsympathetic to the issues that are raised in favor of keeping it labeled as a policy, yet I'm unconvinced. From WP:POL: "Policies ... are standards that all users should follow. They are often closely related to the five pillars of Wikipedia." and "Guidelines are primarily advisory. They advise on ... how to apply and execute policy under specific circumstances." Since this document is intended to support a specific case given in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, it is clearly advisory in applying that policy, and should therefore be a guideline. I also see some arguments above, given in support of keeping this a policy document, which seem to reply on a value judgment where there is an assumption that policies are somehow greater then guidelines. Where that could be true in cases of conflict between two documents, it's not a general axiom by any means.

All of the above being said, what drew me to this issue is a simple list. Let's play a small game: "which one of these things doesn't belong: Policies and guidelines - What Wikipedia is not - Wikipedia is not a dictionary - Ignore all rules - Verifiability - No original research - Neutral point of view - Consensus?"
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 21:45, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Fortunately, you are god and you do get to unilaterally decide what is and isn't wikipedias core policies without discussion. Oh! Wait!
Undone.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
This is a policy that defines what the wikipedia is. This is not a guideline that you can follow only in a few circumstances, if you feel like it, unless it's too much bother. There is not a more fundamental pillar; than that the Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and this is the main policy that supports that. If you kick it away, the wikipedia is no longer an Encyclopedia. The Wikipedia is defined by negatives- it's not a dictionary, it's not a guidebook, etc. etc. These are core policies.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Look, no article ever got deleted for violating a guidline like WP:MOS.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
This policy gets articles deleted, it's a hard-edged policy; either it's followed or it's gone. That's because it's not a guideline.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:08, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
I would agree this is stronger than a guideline. I do understand that many editors want absolute inviolate rules which are followed every time. But WP doesn't have many... wp:IAR is important.- Sinneed 22:44, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
You're actually discussing Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not rather then this document, though. This is an adjunct, or supplement to, WP:NOT. It doesn't really stand well on it's own, and as I just mentioned in the Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Suggested merger thread the current document suffers for being separate and from being a policy page (in my view, at least). I'm not at all addressing the need for this document (in some form), so most of the arguments being offered here are simply missing the mark. I'm not suggesting weakening the actual idea underlying this document, I'm simply attempting to discuss effective presentation and proper classification.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 23:14, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Uh huh, so you're not weakening it, you just don't think it should be mandatory anymore? (But that's not weakening it.)- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:24, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
What?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 01:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
If someone changes a mandatory policy to an optional guideline they are weakening the text. Johnuniq (talk) 03:32, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
There's nothing at all "optional" about guidelines, any more or less then there's anything that is either "optional" or "mandatory" about policy. If this is really the level of stewardship over policy and guideline documents generally then it's no wonder that people have encouraged myself and others to "damn the torpedoes" and engage. Have you folks actually read Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines recently? More directly relevant, have you read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 03:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
Hmmm. So you are linking "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy?" for me, and providing a link so I can allegedly see that the words "policy" and "guideline" are the same strength? Or are you complaining that my one-line quick reply to your "What?" is so inaccurate that it does not answer your question? Johnuniq (talk) 04:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
...both? I don't know, how am I supposed to reply to this? If you want to get the point across that you think that I shouldn simply shut up, then message received (and ignored). If there's something more to this, then I'm certainly ready and willing to listen.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Marking this page as a guideline, vs. merging it into the policy page WP:WWIN seem to be mutually exclusive options...? I agree with the first proposal, and object to the merging proposal. I'll write more on this when I have time. (Please stop attempting to use sarcasm. It doesn't transmit textually or interculturaly.) -- Quiddity (talk) 06:57, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
    I actually tend to agree that the guideline proposal is the strongest, but the possibility of either course seems reasonable and I see no reason to ask both questions (especially considering the irrational and immediate hostility to the guideline change).
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
    Gee, I don't know why I was so irrational to revert undiscussed changes to core policy. Given the complete lack of consensus (you know, consensus- what you're supposed to get before making changes to policy?) I prefer the word 'vandalism'. To be honest, given your characterisation of the revert as 'irrational and hostile' the other word is 'troll'.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 14:16, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
    Your own objection is all I see. One person does not consensus make.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:56, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
    Sinneed also has stated a position contrary to this.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Wolfkeeper: Further above you say "This policy gets articles deleted, it's a hard-edged policy..." then lower down you say "[this policy is ...] completely misrepresented at AFD and used to delete articles that should never be deleted". Could you give us an example or two of each, please? The only cases I'm familiar with are your recent nomination of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/-logy, and your nomination of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/-ism wherein you stated you intend to afd more suffix articles, one at a time.
    I'd have to dig around a bit. FWIW the '-' suffix articles violate quite a few policies and guidelines, and I find that they largely cannot be brought into line, with a few exceptions. Even their titles are violations of WP:MOS.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Secondly, please please stop replying with attempted sarcasm ("Gee, I don't know why ..."). It is hard to understand without vocal intonation, is intentionally rude, and is ineffectual at convincing anyone. Every time you reply with hostility, you decrease everyone's respect for you (whether the hostility was warranted or not). Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
    Speak for yourself. I would appreciate it if you stuck to the issues rather than apparently attacking me (and one of the issues is unilateral action by one or more people here).- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 02:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I notice that Wolfkeeper has reverted another attempt to change this policy to a guideline. I support that revert. Johnuniq (talk) 03:57, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Ohms law should be warned--was, in fact, rather soundly castigated the first time--with a block forthcoming if he changes it against consensus again. → ROUX ₪ 04:39, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

We have enough difficulty with people trying to cram everything willy-nilly into Wikipedia. The last thing we need to do is give tacit permission to do so. Wiktionary exists for a reason. → ROUX ₪ 04:39, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I can easily support the basic idea behind the page, and a lot of the writing is very good quality, but I've never seen this page cited as policy, and I can think of some reasons why. Even though it's been marked as policy off and on for years, it's never been added to any of the 4 main policy subcats (content policy would be the obvious choice). It's hard to imagine that this page would have the same kind of force at ANI or Arbcom that other policy pages have ... "Ban him, he's defining words rather than describing subjects!" The tone and content of the page doesn't seem to me to resemble very much the 7 content policy pages; it reads more like it's making suggestions and giving how-to advice. If Wolfkeeper is right that people don't pay much attention to this page at AfD, then that's a pretty good reason to demote the page; policy pages are the pages that people already do pay attention to, not the pages you want them to pay attention to. The suggestion to merge into NOT whichever sentences can get support as policy might be a good suggestion; a lot of people read NOT, and not many people read this page, so you'd get much wider support and acceptance for the main ideas. - Dank (push to talk) 19:17, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
P.S. This was what I meant by "not a lot" ... that's about the same number of hits that the least-read style guidelines get, probably mostly due to webcrawlers and mirrors. Compare that with WP:NOT. - Dank (push to talk) 19:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
One other data point: This document has 79 people currently watchlisting it. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not has 789 people watchlisting it.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 04:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Actually, that's a complete perversion of my point. My point is that it is fairly often quoted at AFD for articles, but that people that do so haven't read the policy; in much the same way that most people quote 'NPOV' when what they really mean is 'I disagree with a lot of this', rather than 'it doesn't contain all reasonable points of view' which is what NPOV is really about.
People often quote 'dicdef' to mean that they think that an article is too short to be encyclopedic (which is ridiculous if you think about it, all articles have to start somewhere), or just as a ruse because they don't like it.
e.g. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Glamour_(charm) they were arguing that there should be no article on Glamour, because the claim was that it was inherently dictionary-like. But that's on the face of it ridiculous, it's the kind of thing that encyclopedias are about, and not the case.
On the other hand some articles actually are dictionary definitions:
e.g. [[2]] 'Old school' which is about lots of different definitions of the term with no overlap (and if you think about it, 'old school' is an adjective, similar to old fashioned, but encyclopedia articles are always on nouns and verbs; you don't get an article on longest.) Hint: which policy forbids adjectives... only this one. I think anyone that's thought about it for a bit will agree that adjectives are not encyclopedic, but are dictionary entries.
All this is quite subtle and that's why we need specific policy for it; and it has to be policy because if it isn't then it's not able to delete material- it has to be mandatory (barring explicit use of WP:IAR).- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
There's quite a few things on this page that are not in the quick summary on WP:ISNOT.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
The other thing is WP:GOODDEF, that cannot really go anywhere else, this is the best place for it, and it's critical that every article defines what it's talking about. (At one point WP:LEAD had no requirement that you define what the article was on, and for whatever reason several admins were committed to removing any mention of this... this died down when the clear and very old policy was pointed out. There really was a strong push to stop there being a requirement of a definition in articles of what an article was about.)- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
We now have MOS:BEGIN which states clearly, "The first paragraph of the introductory text needs to unambiguously define the topic for the reader...". That is a good place for this advice while the point seems quite peripheral here. Colonel Warden (talk) 05:06, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, which I also helped write. That's only a guideline. But an encyclopedia article that doesn't define the topic is not encyclopedic. Period. That's why this is not a guideline, it's policy, and has to remain so.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
Your authorship of these pages seems a significant factor. Please see WP:SAUCE and WP:OWN. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
This policy really does matter, and although the summary in WP:ISNOT is quite good (I helped write it) it's neither able to be expanded much, nor is it as accurate as this page.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I couple of points. I wouldn't characterize this as a "demotion" at all. It actually is a supporting guideline, since this document details and supports one specific case of WP:NOT. That doesn't cause the importance of this document to decrease at all, and as a matter of fact in some ways it actually increases it. The change to mark this document properly, as a guideline, is simply administrative housekeeping. Marking it in a manner which clarifies it's role of supporting the widely cited and accepted WP:NOT policy allows it to be more easily used. @Wolfkeeper, I find your reply above to be perfectly agreeable, and I support the views that you're expressing there almost completely, it's just... not quite on point.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 00:16, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Making something weaker makes it stronger?!!??? You are a troll then?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
    • Pointless hostility. Please desist. Whilst I agree with you that Ohm shouldn't have been edit-warring over the classification, at least he is managing to be civil and mature on the talkpage. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
      Holy fuckin' shit! Well, when even your supporters abandon you, then you know that something has gone totally, completely off the rails! Would someone please point out to me how I've ever "edit-warred" over anything on Wikipedia?!? I think that I'm going friggin insane here! *bangs head against desk*
      — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 10:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
      initial change to guideline. Boldly done, which is fine in most editors eyes (imo). Then, after wolfkeeper reverted you, you changed it back twice more 1 and 2 despite objections here. Not so fine.
      But that has nothing to do with abandonment (melodrama not warranted). I still support classifying this page as a guideline, but the classification itself has very little importance (ie not worth revert-warring over), unless it affects how it is being "used" in places like afd. I'm opposed to the deletion of useful information, which in this instance means information that editors at Wikipedia don't want to deal with, and want to delegate over to Wiktionary. My serious concern is that much of this information is not wanted at Wiktionary, and they would be advising editors there to move it to Wikipedia (or delete it). Don't forget that we're purposefully mixing reality with idealism, which makes for some convoluted arguments... -- Quiddity (talk) 18:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
      The initial change that I made here wasn't bold at all, as I attempted to point out in the opening of this and several times since. Frankly, I find the characterization that I edit warred to be... I don't know how to even describe it. Exasperating, I guess. Since you're the second person to ignore all of the evidence to the contrary and level that accusation at me, however... well, I don't even know what to do, except what I have basically already done (which is to essentially give up). This is like being in the twilight zone or something, and frankly I don't know why I should deal with it. I (badly) want to find a means of dealing with it and carrying on here, but I just don't see how I can work in this sort of environment. I've done plenty of community building in the past, and dealt with my fair share of trolls and vandals, and to be accused like this... I'll readily admit that my feelings are hurt, but the largest issue is simple confusion. I know that I didn't do anything wrong, but... well, like I said, I've basically given up.
      — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
      Well, I could euphemistically describe it as a "slow motion disagreement", if that makes you happier?! ;) Describing it as (revert/edit-) "warring" was meant in the weakest interpretation of that word. Don't give up, just be prepared to discuss things with exasperatingly stubborn editors. Or take it to the WP:Village pump (policy) for wider input. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • As a real world example of what happens when you get rid of policies and regulations, you only have to look at the current economic crisis. I remember seeing the picture of the guys cutting up a big stack of policies with idiot grins on their faces; and being very scared. About 10 years later the effects finally kicked in.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
    Huh?
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 10:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
  • You don't seem to understand, all the critical bits of the wikipedia are the policies, not the articles. Without the policies the wikipedia doesn't work properly. The policies control and steer the creation and editing of the articles. Removing or weakening policies destabilises it.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
    • That's your opinion. My opinion is that the contributors are the critical bits of the wikipedia. Wikipedia is not nomic, and is wp:not a bureaucracy. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
      • The same contributors could doubtless do all kinds of other things, if organised correctly. The policies are not the point of the wikipedia, but are essential to it. The policies serve to organise the contributors to make an encyclopedia.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
      • As a matter of fact the WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY talks about it not being a set of rules intended to stop you doing stuff. Unless you are trying to make the wikipedia into a dictionary or something, I don't really see how that policy applies in this discussion.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
    Blah, blah, blah about contributors/policies etc... who cares? A guideline is not less then a policy! holy crap, who's new to this here? The guideline category was created only 6 months after the policy category was (and that was 4 years ago!). Am I insane, or living in an alternate universe or something? Does making this a guideline eject it from the galaxy? fuck!!!
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 10:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Please see WT:NOT#Compromise. - Dank (push to talk) 13:36, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
  • User:Ohm's law has maintained a number of times that changing a policy to a guideline is not weakening it but has offered nothing more than the bald statement as evidence. Looking at the top of this discussion page I see that users are warned to be sure that changes have wide acceptance before making them. That is not so with a guideline talk page. A neutral observer should conclude that a policy outranks a guideline.--Fartherred (talk) 01:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
    Please see Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. Maybe that document needs to be changed?
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • One can merely look at the template at the start of this talk page to see that policies are more difficult to change than guidelines. If nothing else User:Ohm's law would be making the NAD policy weaker by making it easier to change. The reasoning Ohm's law gives is consistent in being based solely on personal opinion. For example, "Since this document is intended to support a specific case given in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, it is clearly advisory in applying that policy..." This gives no logical support to the change that Ohm's law intends.--Fartherred (talk) 02:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
    My experience doesn't bear this out in the least. The only difference between policy and guidelines in practice is where they are applicable, with policies generally being more widely applicable (usually policy describes site-wide practice, where guidelines describe more narrowly focused issues).
    As for the issue itself, the simple fact is that what people actually use is WP:NOT. When WP:NAD is cited, the usage is indirect by utilizing WP:NOTDICTDEF, which leads to the section on WP:NOT that includes a prominent link to this document. Everything about the current structure supports the view that this is a guideline in enforcing a specific use of WP:NOT, and the only inconsistency is that it is marked as a "policy".
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Let me be very clear about the nature of the logical flaw in Ohm's law's argument. A policy must be composed of general and detailed portions. If one accepts the general policy but not the details defining that general policy, one accepts nothing. Everything that is a mater of policy is a detail. It is only Ohm's law's opinion that NAD is "clearly advisory." There are no facts presented to support this contention.--Fartherred (talk) 02:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
    This makes no sense.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ω) 07:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
  • In the Life cycle, Demotion section of WP:POLICY the page refers to demoting a policy to a guideline. That in addition to the statement by Johnuniq in a "Policies/guidelines" thread below indicate definitively that a policy outranks a guideline. I quote Ohm's law again, "...this document is intended to support a specific case given in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not..." Again I point out that this is only Ohm's law's opinion. The first of the five WP:PILLARS seems to disagree. It mentions directly that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Ohm's law cites personal experience to support the contention that WP:NAD is a mismarked guideline. Ohm's law is welcome to specify the experience and we can judge if it is convincing. Ohm's law fails to understand my contention that the degree of specificity or generality is irrelevant to whether something is a policy or a guideline. Perhaps I can give a better example. A law prohibits driving in an unsafe manor. Another prohibits driving faster than the posted speed limit. The fact that the former is more general than the latter has nothing to do with whether they are laws or not. One might say that WP:POLICY is not law, but what evidence does Ohm's law give that the degree of specificity has a bearing on whether something is a policy? None. It may very well be that WP:NAD should be changed from a policy to a guideline, but Ohm's law has not made the case. What are we and all Wikipedia editors since the 12th of May 2005 missing that explains why WP:NAD should be changed to a guideline? That is what Ohm's law must tell us.--Fartherred (talk) 20:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
    It's already been debated numerous times:
    Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary/Archive_4#Change_to_Guideline_status
    Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary/Archive_5#Examples_of_Wikipedia_articles_on_words
    Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary/Archive_6#Policy
    This indicates there is a wide and longterm disagreement/lack of consensus that this page should be categorized as "policy".
    Everyone agrees that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". We just disagree over how to interpret and apply that statement. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Policies/guidelines

There still appears to be argument regarding whether a guideline is weaker than a policy. Here is an extract from WP:Policies and guidelines:

  • Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are standards that all users should follow.
  • Where a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, the policy takes precedence.
  • Guidelines are primarily advisory. They advise on how to prevent or avoid causing problems, and on how to apply and execute policy under specific circumstances.

Common sense and the above text shows that a guideline is weaker than a policy. Johnuniq (talk) 08:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

But guidelines, such as WP:NOTABILITY (which is also summarized in WP:NOT) are not exactly "weak"... right? Is this page closer to WP:NOTABILITY (guideline) or WP:NPOV (policy)?
Realistically, and based on what is currently/historically retained in Wikipedia, this page is used as a guideline. Hence we have things like WP:WikiProject Etymology and Category:Etymologies and Category:Affixes, and Portal:Contents/List of glossaries etc etc etc.
But again, none of this is of practical importance, unless this page's instructions are being misused. Wolfkeeper said above that "This policy gets articles deleted," but he also said "[this policy is] used to delete articles that should never be deleted". Which seems contradictory. We need examples of where this policy is succeeding (or failing) to manage article-content, within Wikipedia. Bearing in mind that editors naturally disagree about what belongs here, some more vehemently than others... -- Quiddity (talk) 18:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
It's not contradictory at all, everything and everyone gets abused in AFDs sooner or later.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
And note the deliberate misquote by you, the whole thing reads: "The other thing is that this policy is one that is abused, a lot. As in completely misrepresented at AFD and used to delete articles that should never be deleted."- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
(I deliberately shortened your statement. I thought it retained the essence. My apologies if you feel I missed a critical subtext.)
How about I rephrase it entirely: According to Wolfkeeper, this policy is used to delete things that he thinks should be deleted, and misused to delete things that he thinks should not be deleted.
Again, if you can find some, examples would be really useful for this discussion. Where/How is this page of instructions being misused? -- Quiddity (talk) 20:02, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
That's still misquoting me, the term I used was misrepresented, and I picked it carefully.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:16, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Quiddity wrote: "Realistically, and based on what is currently/historically retained in Wikipedia, this page is used as a guideline. Hence we have things like WP:WikiProject Etymology and Category:Etymology and Category:Affixes and Portal:Contents/List of glossaries etc etc etc." I can only suppose that the logical relationship intended is that these articles violate the WP:NAD policy and therefore it is in practice not a policy but a guideline that can be freely violated. If some other logical relation is intended, Quiddity, please state it explicitly. The above logical relationship is false because Neither WP:WikiProject Etymology nor Category:Etymology nor Category:Affixes violates WP:NAD. None of them is a dictionary. The WP:NAD policy does not forbid encyclopedia articles about dictionaries. It forbids the kind of article which would be a dictionary article, a word and its definition. The WP:NAD policy is a good policy because it is not flouted. WP:NAD is not cited often in AfD because it is well respected and not often violated.--Fartherred (talk) 10:13, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
    Yes. They don't violate NAD, but, some editors claim that they do. Hence, as I said above, the disagreement is over how to interpret and apply this page of instructions. See the past discussions (that I linked above) that are full of disagreement and examples (like Thou and Dude and Jew (word) and British slang). See all the parent and child categories of Category:English words (and the hundreds of pages they contain). See all the discussions linked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Glossaries#Old threads. Etc.
    The most comprehensive previous thread (if you're only going to read one, read this) is possibly Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 5#Examples of Wikipedia articles on words. Hope that helps. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
  • It seems that evidence supports that some Wikipedia users want word based articles. Was the AfD process for Dude stuffed with sock puppets? If a representative sample of Wikipedia users do not want WP:NAD, I don't know what good it will do the change it to a guideline rather than change the policy. Has this question gone through RfC? Word based articles were not what I was paying for with my paltry donation to Wikipedia.--Fartherred (talk) 03:28, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • So the AfD was not stuffed with sock puppets. I checked enough of those who voted "keep". This group would not have been fooled by sock puppets. I will still support Wikipedia for the things I like. There is no point to my adding any further comments here.--Fartherred (talk) 04:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
The question is not whether there should be an article on 'dude's, but what kind of article(s) it should be.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:09, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Provided the meanings covered are largely of completely synonymous, then it's not a problem.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:09, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Whatever the outcome of this debate, I am relieved to see that the policy status of this page has been retained. It should not have been changed without discussion and consensus. Tony (talk) 02:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem, and there does seem to be one, is that everyone interprets this area of policy differently. Some people see excellent articles like Thou and Fuck and think that any article about a word is good and worth keeping because "it's a notable word". Other people see this policy page and think it means that we should delete any article-about-a-word that doesn't come up to the standards of Fuck and Thou. Other people think that this policy only prohibits dictionary definitions, and that a list of pop-culture uses or an etymology is sufficient to be "more than just a dicdef". (Astute readers could probably figure out into which camp I fall, but it shouldn't be important.) It's long been clear to me that there is a disconnect between what this policy says and the way the majority of people !vote in AfDs, but there also seems to be a lot of inconsistency (an AfD result depends heavily on who sees the discussion and into which articles-about-words camp they fall). Powers T 15:14, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I think there are things that are generally agreed though. An article that is about multiple topics, practically nobody argues about it when the article gets split up, or bits get deleted.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
And I'm not sure how much of it is simply poor user education- I went through some of the help pages and rewrote them; there are signs already that this may be helping. Ultimately AFD is a numbers game (in theory, no it isn't, in practice, yes it is), so the more people that actually know the basic idea behind the policy, the more chance the AFD should go the right way.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Example deletions citing this policy

Here are some samples of content deletion, citing this page as rationale:

The thing I most strongly object to, is the utter information-loss.

eg. The information that was at [Secularity] was not merged into Secularism, nor into wikt:secularity. It was just vaporised. This is counter to our Editing Policy, WP:PRESERVE. I'm not suggesting every sentence should have been kept, but an attempt should have been made to retain what was salvageable. Somewhere.

(Not to single out a single editor, as I completely agree with many of his other decisions, such as here. However, I disagree with his perspective in these edits at Negro and Orange (word), where a word is receiving an encyclopedic treatment.)

Discuss. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

You seem to be missing several points. Preserve is about preserving information that would be in a final draft of the article. If the information violates our policies, it won't be here, it will be in Wiktionary or gone completely.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 05:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
We don't keep information that violates policies like this; we don't keep how-to information, we don't keep unverifiable content (even if it's true), we don't keep unbalanced POV, we don't keep things that violate policy.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 05:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
The thing you need to get into your head is that encyclopedia's don't do treatments of individual English words at all well, or at all. That's what dictionaries do. An encyclopedic treatment of the word orange would have to cover all word versions of orange in all languages, and even that probably wouldn't save it. And we already have orange (color) which is on the abstract concept- that at least is encyclopedic. But the section in it on etymology is really not, it's pure dicdef, and English-only dicdef at that; it should reference the wiktionary, not the wikipedia, since wiktionary is the lexical companion.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 05:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I have looked at each of the edits mentioned above and am in general agreement with them:

  • In Football (word), a short section with two somewhat related terms was removed. I put those terms in a new "See also" section which I think is worthwhile (although that could be debated).
  • Secularity had some (slightly) useful information, but changing it to be a redirect to Secularism is the correct procedure because there is no encyclopedic difference between the two titles. I have added a note at Talk:Secularism#Secularity merge to alert readers of that page that there may be some useful information that could be merged in.
  • Nesh has been (at least for now) rescued by an editor who restored the text. I think a case could be made to keep that article, although the Usage section is very dubious.
  • I agree with the other edits that removed the dictionary treatment at Eu, Miso, Eco, Neuro, -ine. Johnuniq (talk) 08:01, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Discussion about policy basis of deleting and redirecting Secularity

What part of this policy justifies redirecting Secularity to a related but different term like Secularism? You all seem to be discussing what content should be saved, while you miss a much bigger problem. The terms are not synonyms. If anything secularity might redirect to Secular (disambiguation), but that should be discussed on the talk page prior to making such a bold move. An alternative would be AfD, which would also generate discussion also, and would if successful gain a clear consensus to delete the secularity entry, if in fact it is deemed unfit for the encyclopedia.PelleSmith (talk) 17:28, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Please also note that a majority of the discussion on Talk:Secularity has dealt specifically with the issue of secularity not being synonymous to secularism. This goes for "secular" as well, which is the adjective form of secularity. The adjective form of secularism is secularistic. Likewise a secular person, is not the same as a secularist. These are meaningful and important distinctions. It is always helpful when making drastic content changes, like deleting and redirecting an entry, to read the talk page first. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 20:02, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I really can't see any significant difference between them. Both are about secular activities and organisation in life. The secularity article is just a dictionary definition of secularity with a disambiguation list on the end.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Have you read the entries or the talk page mentioned above? Have you picked up a dictionary? Secularity is the state of being secular -- of not being religious. Wikipedia is secular in this sense. Note that wikipedia does not take any POV regarding religion, it simply is not religious. Secularism, even in its broadest sense, is a stance against religion in some way. Most frequently, and most neutrally, secularism is used to denote the ideology that the public sphere and religion should be seperate. The ACLU is secularistic in this sense, because they actively promote the separation of church and state. This should be clear from the entries themselves, from the linked discussions, and from any other source you can read about the matter in.PelleSmith (talk) 12:05, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
If you feel that the the secularity article is just a dictionary definition of secularity, then I suggest an AfD as I've stated elsewhere. That assertion, however, does not make the two terms synonyms, nor does it justify entry deletion without discussion. Such a measure should not be undertaken unless there are clear and egregious policy violations in the entry being deleted.PelleSmith (talk) 12:42, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
The saying is 'there are no true synonyms'; every synonym is slightly different, which if you take it really seriously (as you seem to be doing here) forces a one-article per word scheme on the wikipedia, which would basically be ridiculous. My point is that the secularity article could be trivially merged with the secularism article without any major increase in the secularism article- articles are on topics not words; it's up the wikipedia's editors to choose reasonable topics; and I'm not sure that that happened here; while secularity is distinguishable from secularism, they're both about extremely similar things.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:05, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Per my comment below I'm going to disengage here. These are different topics, not slightly different near synonyms. This would be like suggesting a merge of Spirituality with Spiritualism. No need to keep this going anymore as it appears my attempts of explanation are going no where.PelleSmith (talk) 17:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
This is not the place to hash out the ultimate fate of the Secularity article. I suggest taking it to the talk page and getting back to the topic at hand here, which is how and to what extent this policy is utilized and referenced in Wikipedia. Powers T 15:47, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
(ec) I agree that other venues are more appropriate for discussing the fate of that article (or any article for that matter) but that is exactly the problem that brought me here since the only discussion that occurred regarding this matter happened on this talk page. Policies should be applied on a case by case basis and whether or not a policy is relevant to a specific case is something that should be determined via consensus at the relevant talk pages. It is troublesome that editors discussing the fine points of this (or any other) policy would go around making drastic changes to content without any prior or future engagement with those content areas. It is more troublesome if when such editors are reverted by regulars they would start edit warring over their out of context policy based decisions. I'll disengage from this no problem, but I feel that making this point here, of all places, is more effective than on the content talk pages that said editors are not engaging in the first place. Regards.PelleSmith (talk) 17:07, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Copasetic example

Another example: Copasetic was just deleted entirely, after this AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Copasetic (2nd nomination). (I asked the admin to restore a copy for discussion purposes, which can be found at User:Quiddity/Copasetic.) The AfD closing statement was (with my bolded highlight) "The result was Delete. There's no point in transwikiing, since Wiktionary already has an entry for copacetic, and the information in this article is too encyclopedic for inclusion there."

The issue is over this. Wiktionary's wikt:WT:NOT states that "Encyclopedic information should be placed in our sister project, Wikipedia." It's a subjective set of disputes (how much information to include, where to include it) which I think isn't recognized by many, especially those people referencing NAD at afd.

I think many editors would agree that the information that regularly gets deleted (eg copasetic), should be retained somewhere. I've suggested before, that if information is valuable (and especially if it is well-cited), then it should be retained either here or at wiktionary. I think it follows logically that if Wiktionary doesn't want to deal with certain information because it is too verbose/encyclopedic/[criterion]/etc, then it most likely belongs here. However, Wolfkeeper's statements here seem to be opposed to that angle. Is that widely shared? (There's a lot of useful discussion in that Feb 2009 thread: Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary/Archive_5#Examples_of_Wikipedia_articles_on_words, if anyone feels like reading it).

It would be very helpful to have a clearer understanding of where the widespread consensus on these issues is. Thoughts? Can someone summarize this problem better than I have, in a neutrally-phrased form that could be taken to Villagepump for wider input? Other ideas? -- Quiddity (talk) 22:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I was toying with the idea of DRVing copasetic. When the closing admin picks a choice that none of the commenters suggested, it probably shouldn't have gone that way, the admin over-reached. And if it had been transwikied, then there would have been a copy in the transwiki section of the Wiktionary.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:56, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
But apart from that, I don't agree that deleted content should be kept; I guess that's what deleted means.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:56, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
The other thing to remember is that we are talking about a very small number of articles (c.f. 3 million plus total), and only the differences between the wiktionary copy and the wikipedia copy are lost, and the admins are able to rescue it for you anyway if you ask.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 01:57, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
If it had been transwikied, there would only temporarily have been a copy in the transwiki section of Wiktionary, because it would later have been deleted there, on the grounds that it's encyclopedic information. The only contributors to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Copasetic (2nd nomination) who are also Wiktionarians are Wolfkeeper and Thryduulf, and I don't think Wiktionarians appreciate it when Wikipedians decide their content. Wiktionary has its own criteria for inclusion and its own style guide, and what they don't want and regularly delete is lengthy paragraphs about a word's or morpheme's history (like this), because those are suitable only for encyclopedia articles. If you don't like the idea of encyclopedia articles starting with a hyphen, or having names that are adjectives, move such articles to names like The suffix "-ism" or The word "copacetic", rather than trying to delete all the linguistics articles from Wikipedia one by one. +Angr 08:12, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
While I agree that we should not be deciding Wiktionary content, neither should it go the other way. We have no responsibility to include dictionary content just because Wiktionary says they don't want it. Powers T 15:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Rewording the title doesn't make it not a dictionary article Angr. And I'm certainly not trying to remove all the linguistics articles at all; only sort out the articles that are about a single word. These are always simply extended dictionary items. In some cases you can save them by rewriting it to be about the underlying concept, in others not. And articles on single prefix and suffixes are pointless as well as violating several policies- and the wiktionary has those by the bucket load. But articles on all prefixes and suffixes or other linguistic concepts and patterns are very valuable and violate no policies at all.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk)
Maybe there is something I can add here. It seems that there is some possibility for articles based on single words to be deleted as is currently being considered. That is how I think things should go but some people are unhappy because of a loss of information not wanted by Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Perhaps they could start up a new Wiki for the extended consideration of the history and use of particular words. It could be called Wikiwords or Wordplanet.com or some such thing. This is perhaps off our topic, but is there philanthropic money out that might back such a thing.
As to our topic, if Wikipedia can stand the strain of holding over three million articles, another one to three hundred thousand articles on words probably will not be the difference that drags it down. One to three hundred thousand extra articles is the load I would guess Wikipedia would eventually carry, if the policy against word articles is either dropped explicitly or de facto. That is based on 165,000 entries in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition; foreign word articles; and slang articles. If there is no stop to word articles when there are on the order of one hundred such, then there will likely be no way back when there are ten thousand such.
I do not agree that any article based only on a word's use and history is a high quality article, but if most others want to keep some such articles, I can ignore it and hope it doesn't open the floodgates.--Fartherred (talk) 20:48, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
For the record, wikimedia has unbelievable finances, so complexity(=cost of running) is not an issue, secondly the human brain and many other systems, such as the web (which 10 years ago forcasters were incorrectly assuming was too big for its own good), are systems which are organised thanks to mathematical chaos itself, so extra complexity will results in a new stable system (not a "floodgate" mess), so please could the discussion focus on the policies from the user-friendliness side of the policies, not speculating on the servers? Thirdly, wikipedia and co. are an ever expanding "font of knowledge" so with the increase in quantity/quality it will tend to this critical points (really bad crasstalk between wikis /restrictive policies), ignoring problems does not works when they are clearly proportional as in this case to the increase of the system --Squidonius (talk) 09:41, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
This isn't about user friendliness, it's about making sure the wikipedia works. You can't make a bad idea work by throwing lots of resources at it, or even if you could, you do better not doing that and using resources more wisely.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:59, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
If you allow word definition topics then you're just duplicating the wiktionary, and worse, the wikipedia articles end up duplicating each other, because there would be large overlaps between articles.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:59, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
I do not know why User:Squidonius brought up finances and servers. There has been difficulty in getting enough eyes for RfC and various administrative tasks have backlogs. Throwing money on a problem can be worse than useless. The space program is an example. Enormous amounts of money have driven the program to make program decisions on the basis of what sort of program can use up that money the quickest, rather than setting a goal for the benefit of the nation and humanity and seeking money for that program as the needs of the program require it. More money can ruin a program, and those at the top of the administrative chain that doles it out have a conflict of interest with deciding to reduce the budget. The size of Wikipedia makes it more difficult to have a community at all. Increasing the size by ignoring the first pillar of Wikipedia and adding in provisions for soapboxes, advertizing platforms, a vanity press, a newspaper and a dictionary, all blended into Wikipedia, would make things worse not simply because of the increased size, but these features all have different standards for editing. The best way to improve Wikipedia is to keep material with different editing standards in different projects, such as Wiktionary. If we don't keep dictionary articles at a different web site, what material will we refuse?--Fartherred (talk) 16:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that it is not that difficult to find Wiktionary. Why are some people so intent on keeping things like the List of Latin phrases in Wikipedia? I was able to find the Latin phrases that I looked for in Wiktionary with no difficulty.--Fartherred (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
In regards to the idea that we would have articles on all words, if a few were allowed, that is a false slippery-slope. The division would seem to be when a subject gets "sufficient encyclopedic coverage". Hence we can and do have articles on words that entire books/papers have been written about (eg. fuck, Chemistry (etymology), Witch (etymology), Jew (word), Jazz (word), etc), but we will never have entries for words such as vacillate, imprudent, etc.
(Do note, I strongly agree that we have bad entries here, such as Bozo (etymology), which should be merged&deleted. But it's a scale of gray - not black&white.)
Dictionary entries belong at Wiktionary. Encyclopedic treatments of notable words belong here. (No, I'm not proposing we start a notability guideline for words, that would be poor instruction-creep. We just need this policy to be better written to make the above clearer.) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Or are some or all of these (as I believe) just cases which people WP:IAR and not encyclopedic at all? I'm pretty sure that this is so, if enough people 'just like' an article, then it's pretty much never going to be deleted, and it's very hard to come up with a general rule that can keep all these kinds of articles.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that our article on the word cunt should be deleted? Despite there being books and documentaries about the word? Despite its infamy as the most offensive word in our language? Despite Gropecunt lane appearing on our MainPage earlier this year? If so, you hold a minority viewpoint. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
If by should you mean 2. will likely (become or do something), no ;-)- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
And I certainly have no issue with Gropecunt lane, but that's a completely different article.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
cunt and fuck are doubtlessly two of the most notable words in the English language, due primarily to their vulgarity and confusing histories. But that in no way negates the view that our bar for inclusion of notable words is far too low. In practice, most AfD commenters will look at an article-about-a-word, see that it is more than a one-liner, and say "more than just a dicdef; keep." Powers T 13:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
In general I think we need to have rules as clear and unarguable as possible, in a 'good fences make good neighbours' kind of way. It cuts down on unproductive arguments; particularly on this rule where the wiktionary is the natural home for word articles (which isn't to say that wiktionary is perfect, and the culture over there quite frankly needs a bunch of people going there and sorting it out).
There's nothing much we can do if 100 people all turn up in an AFD and vote keep on something that violates all the rules (unless they're being deliberately disruptive, in which case, bans all round).- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 19:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
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