Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Archive 13

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AFD

Those who are interested in this policy may have interest in the AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yankee killer (2nd nomination), in which its application is being discussed.--Epeefleche (talk) 15:02, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

AfD for Directional Michigan

You are invited to participate in the deletion discussion for the term Directional Michigan. —Bagumba (talk) 21:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

• lol, all you michigan guys are looking for !votes where ever they can be found! This is amusing to normal people who care not a whit about american football.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 18:49, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

A question on the types of information

I want to learn what the following sentence actually means: "...but the article should provide other types of information about that topic as well." What is considered with other types of information? What type of information should be provided other than a good definition? Do we just delete stubs that contain no other type of information except the basic definition? Doesn't this sentence sound so vague?.--Alperen (talk) 09:06, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you make a good point, and I would agree that this page could use some improvement to make it clearer. But I also want to avoid editing during the above RFC; discussing something in flux tends to confuse matters further. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 02:29, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Request for guidance on NEO

At Talk:Santorum (neologism) we're discussing whether the article should exist as a stand-alone article. I'm interpreting this excerpt from NEO

"To support an article about a particular term or concept we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term or concept, not books and papers that use the term."

as meaning

Books or academic papers or sources of that standard, need to be published about the term or concept before a neologism can be the subject of a stand-alone article.

Another editor is arguing that NEO is saying you need reliable secondary sources, and is using books and papers simply as an example of secondary sources. "They picked two out of the long list of possible SS so that they could then contrast it: for example, books and papers about the term, not books and papers that use the term. The sentence would have become overlong if they listed all the various reliable secondary sources that are available." (See discussion.) Does anyone here recall the discussions and intent behind that particular part of the policy? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:05, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

After discussion with others on Talk:Santorum (neologism) I now agree that my interpretation was wrong. As the wording of this policy is just slightly ambiguous, I've adjusted it slightly for clarity. diff --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:08, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Quarterly update

It would be helpful if, sometime in the first week of July, someone would add the changes to this page from April 1 to July 1 to WP:Update/1/Deletion policy changes, 2011, which is transcluded at WP:Update. - Dank (push to talk) 20:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Deletion is not an appropriate response

I propose that the following:

"However, after copying, the final disposition of the article is up to Wikipedia. If the article cannot be renamed, merged, or rewritten into a stub encyclopedia article about a subject, denoted by its title, then it should be deleted.

A template can be used to point to a Wiktionary page from a Wikipedia article which has encyclopedic content; for example, the code {{Wiktionary|dictionary}} produces a pointer to the Wiktionary definition of dictionary as illustrated here. it is possible to salt them with a soft redirect to Wiktionary using code such as {{Wi|dictionary}}"

should be changed to:

"However, after copying, the final disposition of the article is up to Wikipedia. If the article cannot be renamed, merged, or rewritten into a stub encyclopedia article about a subject, denoted by its title, then it should be with a soft redirect to Wiktionary using code such as {{Wiktionary redirect|dictionary}}. Unless independent reasons for deletion exist, the revision history of these articles should be preserved in order to maintain attribution to the original editors.

A template can be used to point to a Wiktionary page from a Wikipedia article which has encyclopedic content; for example, the code {{Wiktionary|dictionary}} produces a pointer to the Wiktionary definition of dictionary as illustrated here."

I have omitted mention of "salting" etc. because the way I see it the back-and-forth dispute between soft redirect and standalone article is a normal editing war which can be addressed with page protection if necessary like any other, with no special policy distinction.

I have also changed Template:Wi to Template:Wiktionary redirect because the latter is recommended by Wikipedia:Soft redirect, whereas the former (literally) has a bold in-your-face policy quote which I think we don't need.

Fundamentally, there should be no reason for WP:DICT ever to come up at an AFD, because it concerns only where content is best displayed. There is no need ever to suppress page history over this sort of concern, and it is a great distraction. Wnt (talk) 17:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

This proposal is not helpful: there are editors who would add an entry on Wikipedia for virtually every word (in English and other languages). Such activity is strongly discouraged by the current wording, but would be rewarded by the proposal. A corollary of this proposal would be that every non-notable neologism, and news events, and more, would each get a soft redirect to some project with an influx of editors who believe that everything should be documented on Wikipedia, and that would not be helpful for the encyclopedia. Johnuniq (talk) 00:44, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• The OED reckons that there are about 250,000 words in the English language. Wikipedia currently has 3,661,056 articles and so we are well past the point where we need have any concern about having an article for every word. If there's a word for which we don't have an article or redirect then I'd want to know why.

• Wnt's point is a good one. When I see WP:DICDEF cited at AFD, it is usually on the grounds that the article in question is short. And yet this policy makes it fairly clear that shortness is not a valid reason to consider an entry inappropriate - it's just a stub. The actual point of this policy, as stated in the nutshell, is that we should cover synonyms together rather than separately. For a rare example of this point being made correctly, please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drifter (person). Even there, the deletion process is inappropriate because the result sought is merger into vagabond, not deletion. So, it would be a good thing to state emphatically that DICDEF is never a reason to delete so that editors are less likely to misunderstand the policy and waste time at AFD. Warden (talk) 07:59, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• DICDEF is never a reason to delete: That is one opinion, but those who believe an accumulation of cruft is damaging in the long term disagree. Johnuniq (talk) 10:17, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not just cruft (stuff you don't necessarily want) it leads to really stupid amounts of duplication. Everything anyone ever wrote would have to be in 4 or 5 places or more because of synonyms and multiple definitions of words. -Rememberway (talk) 12:44, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Isn't that the usual situation with redirects? What makes these articles different from any other in that regard? Wnt (talk) 18:57, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I looked over the situation with Drifter (person), and it illustrates some of the nuances of the situation not covered in current policy or my proposed revision.

1. Clearly, a Wiktionary soft redirect should not take precedence over a conventional Wikipedia redirect to a relevant article. Therefore, we should say "renamed, merged, redirected, or rewritten into a stub encyclopedia article..."
2. Likewise Wiktionary soft redirects should not be "salted" (or full-protected, if there's a difference) if there's a chance reasonable editors may find a way to add a conventional redirect instead. I think I imply that to some extent by my proposed changes.
3. The interaction of disambiguation and Wiktionary redirects should be examined. I don't think we should have Drifter point you to Drifter (person) and then that points you to wikt:drifter for which one meaning is a person. Rather the disambiguation page should point you directly to a Wiktionary definition. Except, in this case, it should actually point you to vagabond, because as I just said, Wikipedia redirects should have higher priority.

Thanks for this example, which really pointed out some deficiencies in the policy. Wnt (talk) 19:17, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

If you remove this as a deletion criteria, then articles like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Directional Michigan (3rd nomination) probably cannot be deleted. (Directional Michigan is a simply a term for Eastern, Southern or Western university sports teams, but Northern usually isn't included because they're better or something, but other than pointed out that the term is used sometimes, the article was content free). I think that the delete voting may have failed without it, and there's nowhere you could sensibly redirect it to, and it's not really encyclopedic- the teams don't really have much else in common. -Rememberway (talk) 12:43, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem I have with that is I just looked up "Directional Michigan" in Wiktionary and didn't get anything. I don't think WP:NOTDICT should be deleting stuff if we're not getting it transferred over to Wiktionary. Certainly I have no idea what the term means, and without the Wikipedia history being available, I have no simple way to start a Wiktionary entry on it now.

Please note that my proposed change is not meant to dispute that an article that is only a dictionary entry should be moved to Wiktionary; the question is, what do we do with the remains of the article? Do we make a soft redirect to Wiktionary - which is permitted but not apparently mandated by the present wording? Or do we discard everything in it and forget the entry ever existed? I much prefer the former option, and it is done with many words (just look here). Why not do it in every case? Yes, that means eventually that if you look up any actual word in Wikipedia you'll get a Wiktionary link if nothing else, but I don't see that as a fault. Wnt (talk) 18:55, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't necessarily think that Wiktionary want directional michigan either, but maybe they do. -Rememberway (talk) 01:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

• Directional Michigan is a straw man — it's not a word, it's not notable and it's not in dictionaries such as the OED. Warden (talk) 06:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

It is a dictionariac phrase, and reasonable evidence was shown in the AFD and the article that it was in use by various media organizations, it seemed at least reasonably notable, and had been used for many years. But there was nothing encyclopedic about it, and it was deleted partly under this policy. -Rememberway (talk) 20:51, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The thing is that what is allowed in Wiktionary is not determined by Wikipedia's policies; it's quite possible for someone to create an article that doesn't sit well with either reference work. I mean, sure we can always slap a {{copy to wiktionary}} tag on it, and then transwiki it, and then we can delete it here, but you should be very certain that we need to be able to delete things for being unencyclopedic. -Rememberway (talk) 01:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that "unencyclopedic" differs from "not a dictionary". In fact, I think WP:NEO is breaking away from its parent document when it is used to bar neologisms an editor just made up, because it's actually referencing WP:MOS and WP:OR. I don't think that should confuse us into making NOTDICT a general cause for deletion. Wnt (talk) 18:59, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

You're in a very small group of people if you think that dictionaries are encyclopedic; dictionaries are usually considered unencyclopedic by the vast majority of people, and what is deletion for if it's not for removing unencyclopedic material? -Rememberway (talk) 20:51, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not my point. Dictionary definitions aren't encyclopedia articles; but other things are also unencyclopedic. The sets aren't the same; one includes the other. Dictionary definitions, in the narrow sense, can be dealt with by putting them in a dictionary. But other unencyclopedic stuff, like words an editor just made up and wants to promote, are neither dictionary entries nor encyclopedia articles. Wnt (talk) 05:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

• In the interests of progress, I began with the small step of substituting the template Wiktionary redirect for Wi as discussed above. Wnt (talk) 18:59, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

• I also took the liberty of reverting a recent change by Fuggedaboutit which added a summary of Wiktionary inclusion criteria - my feeling is that it is simply beyond the scope of this article and it's better to link to it than to try to make our own thumbnail sketch of it. Wnt (talk) 19:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

  I agree. I saw that change earlier, and I almost reverted it myself for the same reason. It's not a bad addition, it's just... well, as you said, beyond the scope of. Well, it's beyond the scope of our Project to speak for other projects.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Listing synonyms

An editor at femininity insists that they be allowed to list the synonyms for "femininity" in the article, not within a discussion of the word's meaning, but simply as a list. I removed the list and explained on the talk page that lists of synonyms belong on Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. The editor reverted the change and restored the list. They also seem to be of the opinion that removing the list is a POV issue rather than a scope issue. Could other editors please join the discussion. Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 18:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

AfD

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English words of Italian origin. The case for deletion is based on this policy. Borock (talk) 19:16, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

How do you create an article?

Please tell me how to create a new post here. I am trying to create one on a new word I just came up with but can't. Please teach me how to. I found the button before but now they changed the system on how you can write an article. Please email me at (email retracted) and tell me how to write an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Metheinventor (talk • contribs) 04:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Read this page, and our policy in verifiability before creating an article on your new word. It's probably not allowed under our guidelines and would be deleted. Secret ^account 04:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggest refinement

There are many topics where the title covers roughly one subject, or more specifically, one closely related group of topics. But, within that scope, there is variation. To treat the subject accurately, one must acknowledge that the topic is really a TERM, and cover the fact that them term has had different meanings, but all within a general topic area. Some examples of this are: Every article on (the name of) a musical genre,, Political correctness, Intelligent design, Homophobia, Global warming, every article on (the name of) a political philosophy and many others. With respect to this policy, when someone quotes wp:not a dictionary, if taken literally and rigorously, all of those articles should not exist. But secondly, it prevents or discourages editors from treating the title/topic as being a term, which is really needed for accurate coverage. I think that some accommodation is needed for "in between" area articles such as the noted examples. North8000 (talk) 11:58, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. Encyclopedia articles are about a topic. Dictionary entries are about words. A musical genre is a topic. It may go by multiple names but it is still one conceptual topic. A dictionary entry on the other hand would have the same explanation for each synonym where an encycloepdia entry resolves the synonyms via redirects.
Note: That topic must be defined as part of the encyclopedia article but it is only the start of the encyclopedia article. Every one of your examples goes well beyond the purely lexical. None of them would be eligible for removal under even the strictest and most literal interpretation of this policy. Rossami (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Let me give a more specific/fleshed-out example. There is an article World music. This is a heavily used term, but the definitions of what type of music it encompasses vary immensely, with only some vague wisps of thoughts in common. Covering "World music" inevitably means covering the TERM, it's history, meanings and usages. But this guideline, (and it as you restated it) says that such would be improper. North8000 (talk) 19:19, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

What an article. The opening paragraph translates to me as "World music is traditional music from any culture other than my own." It's an inherently subjective topic. That said, it is still a topic - a discrete concept even if there is no universal consensus about what "world music" really is. I will concede that the current wording of the article focuses very heavily on "the term". Much of that is resolvable with modest rewording. But even without that reworking, the current article passes WP:WINAD - yes, it includes a discussion of history, meaning and usage but only as a start. And that's all the policy says - articles may include definitions but they must at some point go beyond that.
In the case of "world music", the article already exceeds the merely lexical through:

1. discussion of that ambiguity of the genre (which not the same as ambiguity of the phrase),
2. discussion of the musical origins and influences of the genre and its variants (which are entirely separate from the lexical origins of the phrase)
3. discussion of its implications as a marketing ploy (including the backlash cited in the Criticisms section)

The laundry list of festivals is questionable to me. It's definitely not lexical content but it does not seem especially encyclopedic either. But list management is a separate content debate. My point is that this article already surpasses the requirements of this policy. It does discuss the term as a term but quickly goes beyond it. That's what we want and that's all that this policy requires. Rossami (talk) 21:27, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. As a sidebar, that particular article has been an orphan and a mess. I've been doing some work on it but it has a long way to go. But I thought that it would be a particularly good example of the quandary I was discussing. Another example is where the title of the article "YYYY" is a contested-but-heavily used pejorative term for "XXXX", where "XXXX" has more neutral or less pejorative names available. Should the article be about "XXXX" (and thus imply that "XXXX" is "YYYY") or can/should it be about the term "YYYY", it's history, various definitions, promulgation of use etc.. Or is the latter improper? I'm thinking about 2 examples like this; let's ignore the one I'm in a dispute at ( Homophobia complicated by the fact that there are 2 definitions, only one of which is contested ) and go to one where I'm not ( Political correctness ). North8000 (talk) 12:17, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I consider most of those pages about pejoratives to be clear violations of this policy. I have been involved in debates on a number of them. Unfortunately, WP:WINAD is widely misunderstood and those pejoratives are often fiercely defended despite an absolute lack of non-lexical content. I try to content myself with the old wiki rules now at meta:, especially that the wiki is not perfect and that eventually we will succeed. It's a matter of picking one's battles.
As to political correctness, that's clearly an encyclopedic topic with social influences and social commentary that goes far beyond the merely lexical. It is independently discussed as a social construct and as a negative influence on some aspects of society. Serious, scholarly books have been written on the topic. It is disappointing that the current article focuses almost exclusively on the phrase as a phrase rather than on the social construct as a concept but that's a matter for editors to sort out over time - a matter of bringing the page into proper balance with some lexical and more non-lexical content.
Again, take what consolation you can from meta:eventualism. Cold comfort, I know, but it's the best I can offer. Rossami (talk) 20:06, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. But to debate this a bit further with you, if there is an article about a pejorative term which refers to something that also has a more neutral name, I would argue that 1. there quite a lot to be written about the term itself (who invented it, what are their motivations, who is using it, debates about the term and its usage etc.) 2. Unless the article were deleted (as I think you are espousing) the next best thing would be for the article to be able to turn its lens onto the term itself. If the article covers only the (renamed) object of the term, the whole article becomes an instrument of renaming the subject to the pejorative term. For example, if the term "Solyndra Boy" became a wp:notable term for President O'Bama, should the content of the "Solyndra Boy" article be President Obama (thus reinforcing the pejorative renaming) or could it also significantly cover the term itself (who made it up, who is using it and why etc.) And, if it's the latter, would it be good to acknowledge that articles can sometimes include coverage of the term itself. ? North8000 (talk) 00:44, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

If the only unique content we have is lexical (meaning, etymology, usage, etc), then yes the page should be converted to a redirect. An article about the term as a term violates this policy. So to follow your example, if "Solyandra Boy" became a notable synonym for President Obama, that would become a plausible redirect to his biography page. That biography page should, of course, include a discussion of the scandal leading to the notable pejorative and perhaps the resulting social impact (who uses the pejorative, etc). The way to comply with this policy is to remember that the biography is the encyclopedic topic, not the pejorative. The biography can mention the term - can even go into it in detail - but can not solely be about the term. Rossami (talk) 03:17, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

OK, that's a good answer for that type of case, which is synonym for something that already has an article. What about a term which, to the uninitiated, appears to be about a single subject but is really about a multitude of subjects? Also, a major complex term which really a "lens" (an "eye of the beholder" situation) that is a way of looking at (a) subject(s) rather than the most common name for the subjects? An example that combines of both of these is World music. I would argue that an article which covers the "lens" in cases like this where such is a big complex job is actually about a subject. In other words, to say that there are some exceptions to "not a dictionary" when the term itself is a huge and complex topic, even when there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the term and a single subject behind the term. Without this, a wide range of articles (such as most of the examples I gave at the beginning of this thread) are in violation of "not a dictionary" as it is currently written. In my view, a rule that conflicts with common accepted practice is a recipe for trouble. North8000 (talk) 12:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Only a few editors take this policy literally. Scan the archives for many discussions and RfCs and arguments (and dozens of examples of words that have had enough written about them in Reliable Sources (that are not just dictionaries) to have entire articles written about them.

If that seems like it will take too long, perhaps glance at this table that I whipped up a few years ago, Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a dictionary/Draft RfC on words#Table of evidence. That contains most of the meat of the dispute. —Quiddity (talk) 21:03, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Its true that in those special cases where it logical to violate a literal-reading of this guideline, editors tend to sense that and do so. But that still leaves two issues. But this still leaves two issues. Especially for people who take them seriously, we owe it to them to not write a guideline in order to cover a topic properly. The other is the usual...use of a guidelines against its intended purpose to conduct warfare. In two contentious cases I've see, a term had two closely related meanings, and in each case this guideline was cited in order to write an article which in essence said the term means only one of the two. North8000 (talk) 21:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

{{outdent}A good example is Folk music. As I got deeper and deeper into sources, it became clear that "Folk music" is THE common name for two major distinct types of music. (In this case the decision was even simpler, because there is no other common name for either of them.) So the article became an article about both of them, essentially about the types of music that people comonly use the term "folk music" for. It would take a while to write good wording, but I think a tweak which basically follows currently accepted practice in Wikipedia would be good. It would basically say that:

• When the same term has more than one meaning, and the potential article is about a set of closely related meanings (for example, Global warming, World music, Liberalism, Discrimination)
• When the term is a "lens", a way of looking at things which may be covered elsewhere, but has substantial coverage of the type to satisfy notability (for example, Political correctness, World music)

Wp:NotADictionary does not forbid having an article on the term, and related meanings and material that it encompasses. North8000 (talk) 21:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what exact change you're proposing, but if you think you can make this policy clearer, with an example or two (not based on their current state, or an ongoing edit war), then give it a shot. We'll tweak, or BRD, if there's a problem. :) —Quiddity (talk) 22:24, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll noodle on it too. Maybe me or somebody will have a wording idea and either propose or try it BRD. North8000 (talk) 22:28, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Upon closer look I noticed that what I was suggesting is already in the lead, briefly: "In some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject, such as Macedonia (terminology) or truthiness." But it is not in the body, and it is widely ignored when people quote this policy. MAcedonia is a good example twice over. One, it is a term, and two, multiple closely related meanings of the term are covered. So I think that this would focus more on putting something into the body that helps this. North8000 (talk) 14:20, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm still working on it. North8000 (talk) 11:52, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Still working on it, almost done. working on it at Wikipedia:Strategic issues with core policies#WP:NotADictionary needs tweaking to match the reality in articles. Took more head scratching than I thought. North8000 (talk) 14:13, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

See also, current discussion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Propose adding guidance on etymology sections. –Quiddity (talk) 04:14, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

(copied from my talk page) Thanks for the compliment and post. I did a lot of analysis of the example articles, (and ones similar to them) which are articles that are actually focused on and defined by a term rather a single subject behind the term, but where the existence of the article is accepted and a good idea. And then put the result into words. The core question of my work is not whether or not to do etymology, it is identifying what is already "working" in Wikipedia (on what appear to be "exceptions"; topics that appear to violate the policy but clearly have been rightly been accepted as being articles. ) and then understanding what is happening at / in common with those and putting it into words in a succinct way. I put quote marks around "appear" because, the policy already allows for exceptions, but few have noticed that when they mis-quote the policy, mostly because that part is too brief, not explained, and only in the lead. Actually what came out is that they are not even an exception to the core tenet of wp:nad. I think that I've really found something useful. North8000 (talk) 11:07, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, here goes. North8000 (talk) 12:44, 16 December 2012 (UTC)